001Good evening. Welcome to the April work session of the Rose Tree Media School Board. The school board holds monthly work sessions to carry out its responsibilities in public as dictated by the Sunshine Law. At these meetings, the board standing committees conduct the work of the board through discussion with the administration. We welcome the public to these meetings and depending on the length of the agenda may be able to entertain public comment. If we're not able to address comments, we encourage emails to either committee chairs or the administration. As a reminder to where our conversation should focus, the students are the center of the RTMSD learning community. Our mission states that all students will reach their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical potential in a safe environment that celebrates diversity, individual talents and efforts, and promotes collaboration,
002caring, respect, and leadership. students will be wellprepared to create meaningful and productive lives in a global society. All right, we will begin with the presentations. We will start with the bus camera program. Dr. Malash, >> thank you Dr. Napsson Williams. I am excited um for this first presentation this evening. Sergeant Larry Baker is here with us from Upper Providence Police Department. Many of you know, probably know Sergeant Baker. Uh he's been on the Forest Not Providence for 24 years, I think, now, right? Um and he is one of the partners that we've worked with on a regular basis within the school district. Uh one of those other responsibilities that he has taken on over the last few years um since we have had the bus patrol system um is he takes responsibility in Upper Providence
003to review uh what comes through from bus patrol. So, we asked him to come out. There's been some questions recently. We had a discussion, oh, probably a year ago or more um about bus patrol. What did it look like for us? How does it work? Um there's been some additional questions. So, we asked Sergeant Baker, as honestly, he's one of the experts to be here with us this evening. So, Sergeant Baker. >> All right. Thank you very much. I um appreciate you inviting me here. Um, I've been with the bus patrol since its inception in 2022. Um, so we uh partner with the bus patrol and ro media school district um in addition to media burrow and uh the Pennsylvania state police jurisdiction where um Roary Media School District um they uh encompasses all the
004jurisdictions. um you know just from the onset the bus patrol program I had a lot of questions but as I really got into it the program is um it's really eye opening and um from a police perspective I uh it allows the police uh to be everywhere at once and just in the last three to four years have I I've done Um, I can honestly say that there is a an issue with people not uh respecting the uh the eight-way lights that uh the school bus has on the bus. I've been a bus driver for 10 years with the Wallingford Swathmore School District as part-time. I did it because I wanted to drive my sons to the sporting events to watch them. Um but uh so I have a firsthand knowledge of what should happen
005um from a bus driver perspective, how they are supposed to operate a school bus uh when they're unloading and discharging students. And uh so uh there's there's the big um uh advantage to that and trying to make those corrections and then trying to um one of the big aspects of it is education and trying to get uh not only uh the it's basically the population who drive to uh adhere to those um those bus lights and also know the laws regarding when they can't go past the lights and when they can. So, um I made up a a PowerPoint. It's it it looks long in length, but it's really uh it's really short. Um there's a couple videos uh in it. Um it's going to show the um what the bus cameras are all about,
006my review process, uh the appeal process or the contesting of the citation. And then if time permits um there are statistics as ro media school district as a whole which is just one very small snippet of uh the the bus patrols uh scope and that uh with the bus issue. So um I'll be h able to answer any questions that you have at the end be transparent uh 100% and um we can take it from there and I can just uh talk about it as we go. So um that one slide before it all begins with the partnership between Ro Street Media School District uh the police department and which equals success of the safety of the children. So the safety of the children begins and thrives with partnership. If we didn't have the partnership,
007this wouldn't thrive as it's as it is happening now. So again, school bus safety uh it starts here with bus patrol and with this partnership. Um real quick, why do the stop arm camera technology matters? Uh four reasons. one because it prevents tragedies. Um there's stronger detection. The cameras itself are are three times better than the the eye itself. Um it is a proven deterrence once there is known that there's cameras out there. No different than red light cameras and speed cameras and things like you see around. Um and then there's no cost burden to um the the school district with these cameras uh installed in the in the in on the school buses. Just a little video real quick one. So this is just a small it small snippet of the problem we face.
008Um you see there right up there protecting students starts with smart enforcement. Nearly 40 million drivers will illegally pass a school bus uh stop school bus this year. Bus Patrol's school bus safety solutions is designed to stop this dangerous behavior with AI powered stop arm technology and full and fully managed enforcement program. Uh what is automated stop arm enforcement? Uh automated stop enforcement uses smart camera technology as you see there mounted on the school bus to detect when vehicles illegally pass while the stop arm is extended. These incidents are recorded, reviewed, and submitted to local law enforcement for review and and approval. And we'll get to how that happens uh in a minute. There's a nice video that spells it all out. Um so, the governing legislation for enforcement that allows us to uh uh
009enforce the school bus, there's two there's two uh legislative enforcement. Uh one is the uh 3345 where it's meeting or overtaking a school bus. Um and then there's 3345.1 which is the automated enforcement of a failure to stop for school bus with flashing lights. So those are the two legislations for enforcement. Now there's a difference between these two. The first one just the 3345 with meeting or overtaking a school bus. You have to have an officer uh you have to be stopped by an officer. Uh, and if you're cited and found guilty, it's a $250 fine, $35 sir charge uh plus cost, which goes back into a program for school buses. Uh, more importantly, uh, five points assessed to your driving record plus a 60-day suspension. So, that's if you're actually stopped by an officer.
010The other one is the enforcement uh 33 point uh 3345.1, the automated enforcement. This is not deemed a criminal conviction. It is a civil violation of a $300 fine, does not become part of your driving record, there's no merit rating for insurance purposes, and does not uh authorize any uh points. So, uh it's a the more the most important thing to take away from the it's a civil fine of $300, nothing else punitive. Um and with this 3345.1 the automated uh enforcement there is a reputable presumption that the owner of the motor vehicle uh was the driver the one who went through the relay. That is that is kind of very important to understand uh where the appeal process comes into. So that it's it's it's the presumption that the owner is the driver of
011the vehicle at the time of the violation. So I want to get into the nuts and bolts of this uh how the stop uh arm camera works. Um I think that there's a a video about a couple minute video after this. From smart light bulbs that adjust to daily routine to chat bond in mere seconds, AI is quietly making our lives easier. But its power goes beyond convenience. It can help save lives, especially the lives of our most vulnerable children. I know that might have been just a little bit little bit long, but um I think it was worth it because it tells you the nuts and bolts on how how the video works. Um, so the violation process, I would just want to go through that real quick with you. Um, so it and
012this is kind of reiterates what the this the slideshow said. Uh, the video a powered uh detected once there's a violation it secures that evidence and video evidence. Um then expert review and law enforcement review which comes to me and then a citation is issued four steps you know simple as far as just to understand the process but then there's once that happens once you identify a a violation and then it gets packaged up and then and then gets to me then I have to uh review each and every one. I go to the uh what's called bus patrol. It's an alert bus and I have a queue which every potential violation goes into my queue for me to re to uh review each and every one. Um so that's so I go to the
013website and that's where all my evidence uh is held. Once I click on a specific evidence, this is what I see. The top three are videos. The next three are um are pictures, still pictures. And then it says when the violation was, where it was, the the location of the owner of the vehicle, and then it gives me a map of where the uh violation occurred. So, and it's GPS um coordinated, so it's um and me knowing the whole town, I know exactly where it's at if I need to just tweak where the location was. So, sometimes at the side streets. Um, so this is an example of a more recent one that I uh um had to review. this 2100 block of uh I think North Billy Creek stopw it it might be a
014little deceiving but for me I know that where that person was at and being a fisheye uh kind of a picture and And being trained by bus patrol, we know certain areas where it's even back even further when that came on. >> And doesn't the bus have yellow lights on too before that? >> Yeah. So, if we want to play this video again, just take just look in the laptop, you'll see you go back one. That one you'll see a little red dot in the top left. >> That's okay. See the yellow dot? That means the the yellow flashes are on. that it'll turn red once the activates. >> And and Sergeant Baker, one of the things just to highlight just for the board members and the folks that are in the room or that
015are watching home, this is from our school district from March 25th of this year from Ridley Creek Road. Yes. >> This is not an example that that Bus Patrol just puts out. This is one that you actually reviewed. >> Yes. I I made sure that so you understand. Right. It's just um so then I may look at the front view. So this is the camera in the front where you'll see where that car is when the bus stops. See that? So you see how back how further back that was. That car had ample time when to see the the yellow lights come on knowing that the red lights were going to come on right after that. And then the third one is kind of like this is where I just make sure that the plate
016matches up with the car and all the information. Um, you won't be able to see the plate because I I blurred it out, but appreciate it. >> It'll So, I usually stop it there and I can see the plate and make sure it matches up >> and correct. >> Sorry, took me a moment. So this is all like in the package the evidence package that you get. Yes. When and you can review each of these. So it's not just the still photographs. It's all the different >> Well, this is you're right. This is this. So the next three the next three slides here are still photographs as well. >> Okay. Yes. >> All right. So you get the video clips that you look at as well as the photographs in order to get a more
017comprehensive overview of what? >> Absolutely. Thank you. So this is still video number one as the see the you see the car already passed still video number two of that car which you see I I put up I just made that one up. >> We appreciate that. >> And uh and then you can see where basically it is in relation to when that red light comes on knowing that it's it it's probably about 10 feet back further. So, with all that to say, the next slide, I am going to approve it. And so, I would hit that yellow approve, I mean, I'm sorry, that green approve button bottom left as you see right there. And I go to the next one. If I had to disapprove it, I'm sorry. No. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If I
018disapprove it, if I did not believe that was a a violation or there was some mitigating circumstances that you know what, this person didn't have time to stop, maybe there was an obstructed view or maybe the bus driver just didn't activate their uh lights properly. Um, which I see a lot of that. Um then I can disapprove with reason which could be there's no violation as you see someone up there duplicate violation unable to stop did not pass a school bus. So there's different reasons why I can uh disapprove um a violation which I do with many if I could ask how far in advance of stopping does a bus driver need to turn on their yellow lights. So, it's 150 ft from when the this the school the school bus is approaching. >> Not
019to get too into the nitty-gritty, but depending on speed limits, depending on what road they're on, that is at some point somebody decided through science and physics that that's enough time for the bus to reach its destination and for somebody who's approaching at whatever speed to stop. So the the theory goes that that's why they have the yellow the yellow lights. Um in fact there there is a law where you can't speed up with yellow lights but but the it's that when you see those yellow lights and it's it's you know driving education 101 when and I got it too. When you see those yellow lights you know that bus is going to be stopping and soon going to be putting the red lights on. So, I don't know the ex the and it's probably
020pend dot um I'm sure it's pend dot uh uh how they came up with those those reasonings and you know the the stopping power of being able to stop your car and um but it's I think it's just it's bus it's just driving 101 and I >> think I was just wondering for us regardless of pendot if if if our policy was turning them on a little sooner not not even to help the people who obviously don't care but like to to help us in case somebody is finding it difficult to >> so the bus drivers are trained that way. >> Yeah. >> And they're and when they take their bus uh they take their test they go through I think it's even more stringent now you know how many weekend training and then they
021have their bus test and they go through the whole gamut and they're talking about what they should be doing as they're taking their test. Okay, I'm coming up to a school bus. Uh, I'm going to be unloading. I got to put my yellow lights on 150 ft prior to the stop. And then, um, when I get to the bus stop, what they should be doing, the school bus drivers, is um, stopping, putting on their air bra, and before they put those red lights on, they got to be, you know, they scanning. You're always scanning, and then and then activate the red lights. Um, and some bus drivers don't do that. Some >> I mean, even when I'm on the street, it looks like there's, you know, stop and then immediately stop. That was always my
022my my big uh argument. I'm saying, how can I in good conscious approve a violation when a school bus driver activates their uh you know, they have the yellow on, no problem, but then they activate the reds while they're still moving. It's it's Yeah. So, there's there's and they're they're trained that way. Supposed to stop, put your air brakes on, and then you're always scanning as you're always scanning when you come to unloading or uh to a bus stop location. And then you're So >> you hit on something important though and you went through it fast, which is that when they put on their yellow lights, you have to stop unless you're physically unable or whatever the law is that we, you know, we're supposed to remember from driver. >> Yes. Slow down. >> Yeah.
023>> But most people view that as an a window to speed up before the light goes on. And people drive too fast throughout this community all the time. elves. >> Um, I do have a question though about the the bus drivers and we have great bus drivers. Um, but can you get a sense of any drivers who might not be doing what they're supposed to do in terms of the lights and then uh they're still rolling and they put the stop sign out. Can you get a sense of that? So then we would know and could deal with that. In fact, when I see something very egregious, I um save that video and I send it to Bonnie and I say, "Bonnie, come on." You know, you you they got to stop at they got
024to they have to stop, put the air brakes on and do X, Y, and Z. >> And and she talk and Bonnie, she talks to them. Okay. Um, so I think I even one time said, "I'm gonna cite that bus driver because I think I don't know if there's a federal law that you have to do or something like that, but I was like, you know, it's just uh mistakes happen. Sometimes I forget. I get it. But you can tell >> it is one of the advantages of having a relationship with Upper Providence and, you know, Sergeant Baker specifically because he will provide that feedback, right? Very direct, very honestly, right? Right? Because that again the goal is safety. If there's things that we can be should be doing better, he's going to let us
025know. You know, he's and he's talking about anytime there's a citation that goes through or anytime there's something that comes from bus patrol, you know, the system has picked it up. There are three people on their side that have watched it. Then he has to watch everyone that takes place in Upper Providence. You know, the the folks, same thing. Media Burough, an officer or somebody from Media Burough has to watch everyone. state police, you know, on the state police managed roads have to watch everyone before it goes even further. So, he gets a a bird's eye view and having driven bus, you know, with kids, it gives him a great perspective. So, he provides that feedback, which is beneficial. >> I just I caught most of it, but I want to make sure I heard
026all of it. Um, so from what I gathered, everywhere upper Providence, of course, but all of our areas, yes, >> a human being is looking and reviewing this footage. >> A sworn officer. >> Thank you. human being but a distinction right AI and all this stuff I just want to make sure right so a human being but also a sworn officer is reviewing to make sure that it meets a threshold for this um yes because as you say mistakes can happen and there can be things that >> you know can be difficult when you're on the road if you have an obscure I just want to make sure we're being fair with everyone there >> 100% I I was talking to the superintendent and when this first came out I first year I think I
027reviewed 2500 videos and violate potential violations and that that was a lot. Yeah. Um so and I can tell you and I don't want to be labor the point. I can tell you that the biggest offending location is North Providence Road at Park Avenue right in front of Rose Street Park. People don't realize that while it's a four-lane highway with a fifth lane as the turning lane that there is no physical barrier there. No me no grass medium, no jersey barriers, nothing there. A double yellow line does not constitute a a divided highway. So I c I could see when the when the school bus is stopped there at that light at Park A 10 15 cars are just going by. Um but with that being said I am very conscious and aware that people
028can't stop in time. um that their view may be obstruct obstructive because there's a big tractor trailer which they can't see a light coming the other way. Um I look for those that are just egregious where I might count the 3 seconds after that bus has already put its red lights on and then here comes a car. So those what I look for. So, I think that I don't want to jump ahead, but I think you were going to get to the appeal process. Like you have your review process and >> just just in case you happen to miss one of those. >> Not a problem. Uh this is the this is a citation or notice of violation that goes out to um those that are approved for violation. Um it'll tell you where to
029uh go to look at the evidence package to see the vehicle, your own vehicle. Um and uh where to uh if you wanted to pay, you can see pay by mail down there. Um and gives you all your rights up there uh for but most of all that gives you your it gives you a location on the on the internet through bus patrol to go to your ev evidence package and view your own vehicle and to say that wasn't me or I went, you know, I didn't go through a bus. So um yeah, it happens. So, the important part is contesting a violation. Um, and keep in mind this is a civil violation prior, and you're you're going to laugh at this one. When this was when this became uh since its inception in uh
0302022, anybody who wanted to contest the ticket had to contest it at our magistrate level and they would have to pay another hundred and some dollars in civil fees to uh contest the ticket. And if you're found liable, not only do you have to pay the $300, but you already lost the hundred and some dollars that you paid for civil. And it was ridiculous. I was trying I it was it was it was the most it was the stupidest thing that I ever heard. But I there's nothing I could do about it because that's how legislative is. So um but that's changed, thank God, with uh this past year. So when a person gets a um a citation, they have 30 calendar days uh to uh contest it. Um everything's fully managed by the as
031you saw the video, the bus patrol and pendot. And this includes scheduling uh correspondence and adjudication. Now this is where the change is. There's two ways now that they can an individual can contest a citation and it's through a pendot hearing. If they want a pendot hearing, they can go schedule a hearing online and contest with a pendering officer at no cost. or they can mail in uh a determination without attendance, meaning they can they can mail email in their documents to uh the the PENDOT hearing officer and he'll make a determination and email you back with with a with an outcome. And I've seen it where like um I well if you go back to where the presumption is where the owner is the offender well sometimes your your your son or daughter might
032be and you weren't the driver. Um so say so one of the one of the um uh incidents I had where the guy provided a plane ticket and a hotel receipt for his work that he was in Texas at the time of the bus violation not liable he did not have and li and this liability is not transferred it's not transferred so you only have to prove that you weren't the driver. If your son or daughter or aunt or uncle were the driver, you are not um you're not you do not have to tell the judge that. You only have to show that you weren't the driver. So, it's not transferable to the next next person. Um >> question about the schedule. So, once that violate violation is filed, it's out of your hands, our
033hands, and bus patrol hands. is now Penn Dot's hearing officer who's determining the schedule. >> Yes, they determine however they do that. Um if they they they schedule it, >> but that's but that's pendot. >> That's that's pendot with the hearing officer. I don't the the hearing officer is a pendot official. So they're the ones that do schedule how they schedule it when all that stuff. >> No, >> I I do not know that. Okay. Uh yeah, that's that's kind of the uh that other process. >> That's beyond it. >> Yeah. >> Um so real quick here, I just wanted before we uh so and I'm going to reiterate the rebuttal presumption that the owner of the motor vehicle was the driver time violation. Key assumptions to the presumption and liability that the registered owner
034is liable for $300 fine regardless of whether they were driving unless a specific defense is proven. meaning they prove that through hard documents. You just can't say I wasn't driving. You just can't say that. But you have to provide hard documentation that you weren't the driver. Um even leased vehicles. Um for lease vehicles, the lease is considered the owner. So what I do is um I just say need leasing information. Bus Patrol has partnerships with the different uh rental car agencies and they're able to know at that specific time that per this person was uh um renting the vehicle and was driving the vehicle and went through. So they'll contact them. Um nature of defense, it's a civil violation, not a criminal convention, does not add points to license nor impact insurance rates. Uh the
035owner can contest the liability providing evidence that they were not operating the vehicle at the time. The owner here here's here's where this we were talking about the last part. The owner is not required to identify the actual driver only to submit evidence that they were not the driver. What once he they there's not liable they weren't the driveral driver because sufficient evidence was provided case case is done. So if you want to look at some statistics this is the end of it. Um, so >> what do we do? I mean, do we do anything in terms of educating the community? I know, you know, we took the driver's test like 30 years ago. There were there wasn't AI. There weren't, you know, uh, cameras on the side of the bus. Like, is there And
036we do put up signs for like speeding, violation, fines. Like is there anything in the community that says you're going to get a $300 ticket if you don't abide by? >> So I mean I mean right now the best social media aspect is our Facebook page, the police page, anybody's uh township pages in our jurisdiction. That seems to be the best avenue. Um, I know Bus Patrol has some other avenues of trying to communicate the uh the the $300 fine. There's been some uh I don't know if you saw some snippets of news that other townships and towns, Montgomery County are or have implemented bus patrol. I don't think there's enough, you know, not as much as you hear about speed cameras and red light cameras and and things like that, but it's getting it's
037it's getting its push. Um I wish I had an answer for that one. Um but I don't I we just do the best we can with trying to push that through the social media aspect of it. Is there anything the district can do about uh putting something on the buses themselves that says, you know, speed camera enforced or something like that near the stops? >> Yeah. $300 fine. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You could they probably won't see it if they're driving. Maybe advertisement when people are when you're stopped and just kind of its own advertisement, you know, maybe in the top there. Speed camera. general fine just you know by fruition just people looking at it. Um I mean that's certainly an idea. >> Yeah if something um just real quick >> of all the
038three jurisdictions of Ro media school district there's been citations reviewed have been 13,151. So those are citations that 20 um >> 22 >> September 1st 2022 >> to yesterday. Um, so that means a the bus AI has packaged has saw through their AI technology potential violations, packaged them up in evidence package, had reviewed by reviewers at bus patrol and then ones that they believe that are violations get down into my queue as an evidence package for my approval or disapproval. >> Those numbers decreasing every year or has it been a steady? I believe I'm speaking for upper providence now it's decreased >> okay >> for me for revealing I've noticed that um >> I think it'd be important for us to know from the others as well >> we can ask bus patrol to break
039that down jacket it's a good question um Vanessa and Bonnie and I met with one of the reps from the national office of bus patrol on Tuesday earlier this week Vanessa Tuesday that we were with Rick um he came up from DC to so we we can certainly ask him to break it down. Um >> my reason for asking is because if it's supposed to work and people aren't >> reoffending, >> right? >> But also the whole system is violation funded. So they have some incentive to make sure that violations keep happening, right? We as a community should make sure that they're decreasing, but they want to make sure they're staying the same. >> So I think it would be good just to check that. >> Yeah. To break that. So one off uh one
040off uh decreasing that that person just you know um stopping one person from doing it out of a community of however many we have is probably not the most effective way to to get people to obey the law. So, >> and clarification on that 13,000. Uh, that that's how many you've reviewed or that's how many the >> total I have my own numbers. >> Yeah. >> Um, and I'd be more than happy to send them to you for for the four years. I just thought of for for presentation purposes for the grocery I thought showing everything the whole school district has. Um and that's state police, media bar, myself, 13,151. All three jurisdictions. >> All three jurisdictions. Okay. Now, if you go to the next slide, >> sorry. >> That's all right. >> Squeezed a
041little too tightly. >> Approval rate. So, you can't right there. So there were of those reviewed there was 8,6 something reviewed. I had it on my notes here. 8,6 >> 800,621 which is a 66% approval rates. >> That was a question I had. So of the ones you or all the districts reviewed, >> 60% of those have been 66% have been approved and the remainder has been declined. declined disapproved or >> okay >> out of state or something like that. >> They just stopped them at their >> All right. So that is >> and if you see I'm second from the bottom. >> I have the most. >> If you you go to the right I I'm in like the I can't even see that number. I'm >> 5,215. >> Yeah. So >> um Yeah.
042>> Just tying in with that for a quick question here because that was one of the ones I wondered about. Yeah. >> Another one is it was at the beginning you or the video mentioned that you know it's been a proven deterrent. >> I would be interested in that proof. I'm not disputing it but I I >> I would love to know how we prove that it's a been deterrent for that. Um I think it's another conversation people have talked about, you know, is it is this kind of thing meant to be punitive or educational? Right? There's a difference, right? People we should know not to pass a bus. So is it punitive? Okay, fine. Or is it educational? If there's not a deterrent, it's not educational. So, we need to figure it out. So,
043what our our goal is behind the program >> also add to our questions for >> 33. So, 33% are found to be not in violation. What is the effect on that 33% of people, how many of them in the past have had to pay that extra money to appeal? So, the ones that have been approved, >> the ones that have been approved, >> I I'm confused. I think Hillary, that they're two different numbers. The 34% Exactly. before it gets to that point. So, they don't even know, I think, that they're on the campus or they don't know. That's true. Are there any other repercussions that that they've experienced from having to >> unless they were kid and they got a ticket? Yeah, >> my my I um Rick Bberg. >> Yep. >> Um about a
044couple weeks ago was up in uh put in sly upper Providence Township Police Department in Montgomery County um where uh they it's like kind of like an east little summit and one of the things I would like to see they only gave me two choices approve or disapprove. I said it'd be really nice if you put I can click a warning button. So, and something goes out to them saying you were called here here. However, you're not you're not uh you're not in violation, but this is a warning. So, they don't have that and I think it would be very helpful. So, so that's why maybe you know the disapprove and the 33% that's maybe why that that number is what it is because maybe the officers are like um you know it's it was
045so close let's er on the side of disapproving it because maybe they couldn't stop too fast and kind of what I do with like the up at Providence and >> can I follow up with you a little bit on that Park Place um Rose Tree Park intersection where you said the vast majority majority of yours come from? >> Yes. >> Um I'm not sure how we handle it, but it would be good to have some sort of warning, whether it's on the park sign and the red letters or a banner over. Um my husband was one of the 13,151 at that very specific intersection going No, no, no. He's going north on 252 and so he's in the far right lane and the bus is over on the farthest lane from him. and he's in
046a pack of cars and when he sees it, he's like, "Wow, everybody should be stopping, but the people in front of him aren't stopping and if he slams on his brakes to stop, he's going to get rearended by the guy behind him." So, he made the call to to continue on, which I agree with because >> a $300 is certainly less than our $1,000 deductible, plus the potential injury that he could have sustained from being rearended by someone. And that's a really tricky spot to be in. Um, and I just said, "Look, technically you broke the law. $300 is less than and it's a whole lot worse than having being rearended, but it's really sticky for those people who are in that situation and the people in front of them don't stop and you've got
047someone right on your bumper." >> Is that recent? >> This was right when they first started. >> Okay. I've I've I've >> And I said, you know, >> I've been more compassionate. How can we how can we you know do something there at that intersection to warn people like you know hello school bus stop and let you know whether it's the sign on the during rush hour you know you don't necessarily need the park sign to be advertising you know whatever but there's got to be some way to alert people you have to stop >> so I also brought up an idea and well it was through a grant pendot grant that you there's an automated uh grant out there through PennDOT and the only thing that would qualify are those tin those metal know
048triangular signs that said school bus stop ahead. But who really >> Yeah. >> who really looks at that? And I actually gave a a a suggestion to the if it was a um permissible activity having a portable sign right on um >> the the grass to uh right before the uh that school bus that light is saying school bus stop ahead violation fine. um what they qualify for because digital signs don't qualify, but that's something that that could be put out during rush hours or significant times and people at least give them a biting chance. Um >> so I'm still >> for a grand for that one, but and also try I'm sorry not to cut you off. Also try to get that bus stop moved. >> Um and I asked Bonnie many times, but
049I just don't think it's possible because >> we can't we can't turn the bus around in there. you can't turn the bus around even with the I said how about the little small bus and she's like there there was a she came up there's a reason because it has to do with the route and things like that. So >> kids >> um >> number of drivers >> with the grant cover um I mean I know people get a lot of junk mail and they throw things out all the time but >> just something explaining that 352 and those are not divided highways. I mean, I I think a lot of people are probably getting them on in Middletown on 352 for the same reason. >> That's the other high. Yeah. >> When you go through
050and look at the data is right out there before the light by the Presbyterian church and all it's >> often put banners all the way across that four or five lane section of road when there's a big festival in the park. So, I'm going >> at the beginning of at least the beginning of the school year or the last couple weeks in August. School's starting soon. this is a bus stop finds $300 and at least it might get somebody's attention or something. >> Barbara does she does the social media push in the beginning of the year as well about buses being back on the roads and bus safety and you know watching for our kids and and that kind of thing. It is it's a you know and and listening to Sergeant Baker and the
051work that he does with it and he certainly is much more intimately involved in this piece of it than we are. It's it's absolutely a challenge, right, about how do we gauge where's our responsibility financially and otherwise as a school district to provide it. And I hear what he's saying that the challenge is, you know, the volume of traffic that drives through this area. Um, and people become blind to what it is that's around them. You know, they're engrossed in make a list of things, right? The front seat of the car as as they go through um really does become the challenge. doesn't mean that we can't try additional things and and put our messaging. We said Barb's done some good ones, you know, to put out. Um the problem with that intersection is there's
052a light there, too. So people they may see the they may see the red light on the left side, but they're seeing green. >> So there's a there's a two Yeah, exactly. Disconnect. I even thought about maybe can can the school buses put an opticon as we're going through that and put the opticon on and make everything red so that way the other side's not coming. So no, that's a tricky one because when you have maybe different school buses >> um I I do have a question though um about your suggestion about the approve, disapprove and warning. Now that would be bus patrol having to put that in, right? >> Yes. now. So, we could as a school district say that maybe that's something that seems reasonable to do. I don't know. I mean, maybe
053that's more of a discussion, but if it's, you know, you you know, those sort of eh, >> you hit the nail right on the head. If bus patrol is all about child safety, then they should not have a problem about putting in a warning um button that that puts out warning letters to say you were um caught on the bus camera, potentially a violation, but not this time. And they might think twice now coming to that, but as of right now, they could do it again. And so you're not there's no uh learning behavior when nobody knows that they could have had a violation. So why can't we put a warning on there and and have a letter sent out? >> So maybe that's something the school bus I mean the school district could advocate
054for. >> Ask that question. >> Yeah. I have a different question here. Um, last time we talked about this a year or more ago, we were asked uh to increase uh there was an issue with scoff laws, people who were not paying their fines. >> Yeah. Yes. >> And uh and we talked about uh enforcing and following up. >> Yes. >> Uh what's happened since then? I know there's been some concern about how how how stringently that's been followed up with and whether the timing was worked out in terms of people who are appealing and all that kind of stuff. So I know there was a grace period for those who um were scoffs before that it's almost like they got exempt um before the uh let's just call what it is collections came into
055play and I think I've seen a couple where collection I seen in collections just browsing through I think there was like a $60 charge to pay for the collection so I' I've it's implemented um And so that's something I can certainly um pull data from to see you know the violators the the ones who um have already paid the ones who are 90 days late ones who things like that certainly can be pulled. That's that's a easy number. Um but I really think and I mean let's call what it is. It's also and I hate to say but I've said it before it's a money maker as well. It's a money maker. Um, but you know, it's a money maker that is invested back into the community. Uh, with, you know, like for the police
056department, we invest the fees that, um, do you know how the fees are broken down? So, if a violator pays a citation of $300, $250 go to the school district, $25 goes to the bus patrol themselves and 25 go to the police department. And every month, uh, we get a notice of, uh, deposit of what the fees that were accumulated from the month before. Those fees go back into uh the police department to uh, fund technology. um the $250 for the school district. While that sounds a lot of a lot of money, and it is, the school district has to pay fee back to bus patrol for, you know, the the the maintenance of the the the the um the cameras and whatever fee that is. So you're not >> you're not making too and
057and just to go back to a comment you mentioned a moment ago, >> bus patrol is clearly out there to make money. I mean and that in itself is not a problem necessarily as long as the technology we're using is being used correctly and thoughtfully to protect our children and our buses. >> So I'm not opposed to a company doing it. I guess my concern is just making sure that the process in place is truly providing a safety to our children and buses and being implemented in a way that is fair and thoughtful to our residents. Right. That's really the the thing I just want to make sure we're doing okay on. >> Yes. >> Um >> I believe it. I believe it is from you know I was skeptical in the beginning you know
058and and after seeing you know the videos and going to the uh you know the inaugural summit and the conferences and um you know they the bus patrol with all the different partners they have um I believe that their their priority is is child safety um from just from my own personal experience with that Um and so I >> then we'll get the data on deterrence and stuff like that just to sort of see because I'm always interested in seeing how that backs up. I mean we all know even and I know you're absolutely right t at least when I took the driver's license like driver's test decades ago was way before AI but it was still illegal to go past a bus right that was there dropping off children. We just over the years
059implemented more and more safety measures, the arm and other things to ensure that drivers don't go past. So, I'm not against having another tool to protect the children. I just want to make sure that like you're saying that it's being implemented thoughtfully with fidelity and it's actually >> and protecting all the needs there. So, that's my big thing. those lines. I'm wondering when you disapprove, is there a way like at the end of a month, you could generate a mailing list of the disapproval ones you did and could the school district mail out our own sort of like warning letter like, "Hey, just so you know, you were flagged. Here's some safety tips or here's here's a reminder." Is that something that you're able to easily generate? >> Probably going to cost more though. >>
060Yeah, >> that's that's the bus patrol. That's why we could let them know that that's something we want, you know, and I I don't >> and I'm happy to endorse like the board writing a letter and potentially getting other boards we know to write similar letters, but the reality of that becoming, you know, into fruition in some near time is probably slim to none. So I'm wonder if we're concerned about safety and warning our community, is that an opportunity for us to >> So Jackie, I think it what you're asking would either have to come from the PD or from bus patrol. We don't get the offender information that doesn't come on our side. >> I'm wondering >> Sergeant Baker has different access, but I understand >> someone could he generate a mailing list. >>
061Yes, I put it on my list of questions for Rick Bert from bus patrol. I would I would say that it would probably need to come from bus patrol because they have the evidence package >> and that evidence package or on the bus patrol can put them right to their um to the or to their to their violation so they can see that what they're doing. um you know just to get a letter know that's you know that's good in itself but if you can couple it with visual >> then it it might have a better impact with with that. So um anything you want. So >> all right do we have any more questions from the the board? We might have a a few from the community. >> Okay. >> Yes. And let me
062just say before we start, um, if you could make sure that your questions are concise because I have to repeat them, um, before they're answered because, uh, people who are listening cannot hear. >> Chris, I'm Bill res and I am a buck patrol viol. And so I watched the video and what I saw was that the yellow light is there. So my precise question is um with a yellow light, what's the driver's responsibility? Are they supposed to stop, slow down, or be prepared to stop? >> All right. The question is about um when to stop for the school bus with the yellow light. Um what should you do? Should you immediately stop or be prepared to stop? What's the law? >> So there's there's there's two facets to that and you hit them. When you
063see the yellow light, you're slowing down to prepare to stop because you know that school bus stop, the the next lights that are going to come on are the are the red lights. >> But just so you know, the research I did. >> Okay. Well, >> I have to repeat this. So, you have to be concise and then we got you have another question. Okay. >> I said slowing down. Um, the second thing is the video that I that you just showed, which you found him guilty, it seemed like from the time that the stop sign came out, there was only one or two seconds to stop. How much time does a car need to be going 25 miles hour to stop? Like, do they need more than that? One or two seconds to stop
064to a full stop. There's a question about how much time does a car actually need if they're going 25 miles per hour. >> So that's why that's why you see the three videos. The one video shows you where you're at in relation to the fisheye. And I'd mentioned that if you look at the front the front video that that car was significantly back further. So you have to um you have to look at the full package. And so what I saw was the yellow light come on um and then when the red light come on that car was it it appeared and I would say for everybody that it was right right in front of the bus when in actuality it was probably about 10 ft further back and that's why I wanted to show
065the front view in relation to that fisheye view and which shows that that that red light and the stop arm was out way before that car even got to the front of that bus and it was probably a good 10 feet away from that maybe 10 to 15 feet away. So that's that's kind of why I share that. >> All right, we have another question. >> District encompasses several jurisdictions. Sergeant Baker, are you the only one who is reviewing the footage? Okay, there's a question there's a question about whether um Upper Providence Sergeant Baker is the only one reviewing the footage since the school district encompasses a couple of townships or few. >> Oh, that's a good question. Thank you. Um Upper Pro I just do for Upper Providence. Um media burough has their own
066reviewer, an officer and the state police have their own reviewers. Um and they're located in Harrisburg. So um because of the three jurisdictions, each one is responsible, each law enforcement is responsible for their own jurisdiction. >> One of our school buses, how did you get that footage since our buses were currently not equipped with those cameras? >> The Rose Street Media School bus, they are >> I'm sorry. Yes, >> there was a question about the footage and the Rose Tree Media school buses are equipped with the the safety cameras. >> All right. >> Yes, >> it's been three years. The program has been three years. Okay. >> All right. I think that is it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Can I just make one last comment? >> Yes. >> Um, and there's
067been questions about the cameras. Just so you know, those cameras do not pick up um anybody inside the vehicles. Um there's, you know, and that was like there's no privacy being uh um compromised. All the camera does is it just it captures um the the plates. Okay. That's why they have like the the the cameras pictures back further. It's really hard to really even hard to see inside. Um so there's I know there's been questions about that. I just wanted to bring that up because with cameras nowadays, invasion of privacies and things like that. Um other than that, any other questions? >> Yeah. Um I I emailed uh I think uh Dr. Scott uh with the the national action plan for school safe school bus safety. This is what I attended uh about a few
068months back and uh it's great information. Uh it's the summit. It was the first annual summit down in Washington DC and some great information and it can even take you to the the bus patrol site where there's a lot of education material there if uh you want to uh try to incorporate it and be more than happy to um collaborate with each and every one of you to be part of the show. So >> and and we'll I will send that to the board uh in the next email either tomorrow or next week. So >> okay thank you. Thanks for the invitation. >> All right, >> Joe. Can we also maybe incorporate some of that on our transportation department web page? >> Yes. So, it's a good question, Jackie. So, when we met with the
069gentleman from bus patrol earlier this week, we actually took a look at the website. He had some suggestions of things that can be at our website and what's already on there and some suggestions of additional information that can be added uh onto there. So, yeah, good question. >> All right, so we'll move we're moving on. The next presentation is the proposed final budget review. >> Dr. Scott, I get >> Yes, Dr. Scott and Miss Hogan are going to And then Miss McCann, I am sharing if you can allow me lost it. >> Okay, so we're looking at the 2627 proposed final general fund budget. As you see on the timeline, September 1st, PTE published the act one index of 3 and a half%. On December 11th, the school district um school board adopted the resolution
070to not exceed the act one index. This month at the legislative meeting, we are hoping to adopt the proposed final budget. On 58, we'll have it available for public inspection. On May 18th, we will offer public notice of intent to adopt the budget. And on May 28th, we hope to adopt the final 2627 general fund budget at our legislative meeting. Some key points included in the budget. Um, local revenue has been based on our current revenue collections. It includes updated state subsidy for social security and peasers. For our expenditures, we have nine faculty member is retiring, one administrator retiring, one's resigning, and AD soup 2 is retiring. Our contractual increases are listed. We're maintaining all of our current programming in the proposed budget. We've updated medical prescription rates, vision, life insurance, and accidental death, and
071dismemberment have not changed. This slide just shows the six new positions in this budget that we discussed last meeting >> and then we'll discuss the changes since we last showed the budget on March 2nd. >> Excuse me. I'm so sorry. You said the six new positions, >> right? >> Oh, and you're adding Okay, thank you. Okay. >> So, the changes you'll see social security and pasers decreased due to the retirements. Um, local taxes increased due to updated assessment numbers from the courthouse. And our projected use of fund balance decreased slightly from the last presentation down to 4.5 almost 4.6 million. In the expenses, the salaries and benefits decreased again due to the retirements. And then there are departmental changes that increased the budget. >> And the departmental changes are well some of them we talked
072about in the March meeting. They were DCIU charges for special ed. Some other DCIE charges for other the other contracts that we approved, they were different. Also, we had a little bit of change in like some of the federal programs that were incorporated and I think that it a little bit of change with the debt, but that was mostly like moving changing from interest to principal, but the total change was $946,445 since the last time. And that's just taking looks at the um expenses which we'll continue to do even through May. So the next slide um shows our revenue and the use of estimated fund balance bringing our total revenues and fund balances to 137,685,992. And then expenditures are broken down by object. And you can see how we get the total there. >> And
073we also included I guess for the boards there were questions about what each the ones the twos. So we added that in that we're not projecting now just to make it a little bit clearer. >> Then we showed in a pigraph on the next one the revenues. As we all know the majority of our revenue is made up from local revenue. We have a tiny tiny sliver from federal and some state revenue. We are required by PTE to present the budget in the 2028 format which is what you see on the next two slides. So, here's all the local revenue. And then we have state and federal. Then we go to our pie chart of our expenditures. You can see most of the budget is salaries and benefits. And then the other pieces of the
074pie are listed. And then again, we're required by PTE to present it in the 2028 format. So you'll see that on the next slide on page 11. This breaks it out by function. Thank you for breaking that out with the debt service that I asked for last time and everything. I appreciate it. And then the next slide shows the millage impact um using assessed values. So we kept the three figures that we used last time. You can see the proposed millage rate there. And if you have an assessed value of 298460, it would be an additional $164 to the taxpayer. The median millage of or median assessment of 3.8660 would be an additional $212 to the taxpayer. And then a higher assessed value of $498430 would be a $274 increase to the taxpayer. So, we
075will continue to review all of our revenues and expend expenditures. Um, hopefully we'll get our federal programs approved soon. We'll have final numbers for those. Um, we hope to adopt this proposed final budget as of April 23rd and then, you know, we're still looking at it, but then hopefully we'll adopt the final budget on May 28th at the legislative meeting. Can I answer any questions from the board? With the uh additional expenses that you uh had to figure in since the last time you presented, were they more or less equal to what you were estimating they would come in at? >> So, I'm sorry. you're saying are were they more or less than what we estimated. So when we had the March meeting, we did not have DCIU's numbers. So that budget was prepared using
076the same numbers from last year. So then when the numbers came in higher, that's what we changed it to. Yes. and um the use of funds. Are we still in the same situation we've been in for as long as I've been on the board where we budget for use of reserve funds and then we're budgeting for a worst case situation and we expect that to be less by the time >> correct so using a conservative approach. So we are budgeting worst case scenario and so far we we have budgeted using fund balance and we haven't had to and like I explained last year and the year before that it the number grows and it's kind of going the opposite way of what we would like but it's still a matter of the just the worst
077case scenario and the conservative budgeting trends and what we So I'm trying to um the slide 10 and slide 11. It's not an easy like cross between the what makes up the total like the salaries are kind of spread between two different divisions. Like >> slide 10 is showing it by object and slide 11 is showing it by function which we're required to from. >> Okay. It's not easy to just like cross the Okay. >> All right. I see the board is sort of digesting the information. Are there any other questions before I look through the community? We're good. Okay. All right. Yes. Okay, there's a question about the proposed 3.5 act one index and there's a question about whether um we intend to reduce that um before May when the final budget is presented
078for vote. So, Miss 17, good question. We will continue to look at this until the final budget is put before the board for a vote in May. If you recall, last year, uh, the board, and Dr. Scott, if you can remind me what the board approved with the increase, and we did not go all the way to the increase that the board had approved last year. We were at 1 64. Miss Hogan, do you recall? I'll find out what the actual numbers are. 1.62. So yeah, we'll continue to look at that. I I honestly my my most honest answer is we won't know until we get into May and we continue to finalize and get additional numbers that come in. Um but we will talk about that at the May work session and then finally
079when the budget is there on uh at the legislative meeting in May. Okay. >> there's a question about whether we intend to use any more fund balance. >> Dr. Scott or Miss Hogan, would you be able to address I don't expect I I think that my understanding is the only thing that would happen with fund balance that's presented here is it would decrease with the expectation. Is that accurate, Dr. Scott? between now and May with the hope that we don't receive any additional increases in expenses then we would look hopefully to decrease the use of fund balance. >> You have another question. What's up? >> There's a question about is there any projection on where we will end at the end of the year? It's still too early to tell. >> So, exactly. So, at
080this point, we don't have like we normally don't project out cuz I think you we normally do not get to the end of this until September >> of expenses and revenues. So, we we haven't projected how this year will end. in past years. >> Okay. So, you're what? I'm sorry, I have to repeat it. So, if you could give me your statement or your question so I can say it in a concise Hey. Okay. Um the question is that the the tax base did not grow. So is there any concern that the revenue is not keeping up and that there might be a deficit this year? >> Sorry. Can you Yeah. answer that or do you need more clarification? So when you're saying that the tax base didn't grow for what we're using for 2627,
081that's when But what you're actually asking is do we think we'll actually use what we budgeted for 2526? Is that what you're >> um Well, actually what I noticed was you very complicated. I know she buds 1,900 or 1.9 million this year for 267 interim taxes with 1.7 last year but you actually the district only received about tax base. >> Okay. the question the question or the comment seems to be focused on the fact that um our tax base did not grow. Um if you guys could sort of provide some color to uh the comments and questions. So there were some like as you see the 800 if you want to go back to the 800 and something for assessments. We were aware that there's like two big parcels that came up for interims that
082were appealed and we felt that we need to wait until the appeals were um decided on. So that was one of them was the difference of the 890. We're still waiting for another one. So, those interims haven't come in yet, but they will come. They'll start coming in in the next couple of months. And you know, interims again we get up until is that one through August as well or is >> through August for the May. >> All right. Um, is are there any questions more questions from the board? >> I had a question. You mentioned last time that there was 350 15,000 basic ed funds and 270,000 of special ed that wasn't included in the budget because they hadn't passed Shapiro's budget. Is that still excluded? >> It is still excluded until it's passed.
083We don't add it in. >> Yeah. And most of the times it's not passed by the time we adopt our budget. So if those increases do get approved then that will help some with the budget. >> That'd be one of the reasons we don't use our projected fund balance. Like I like we said we budgeting for worst case scenario. All right. Anything else from the board? All right. Okay, there's a question about what if the is it the general fund drops? What would that do to the credit rating? So if we do wind up using um fund balance, of course, as you know, whenever standard and pores, they routinely will evaluate our expenses and if we use them. And then if it's in the middle of an evaluation, then the it would be up to
084them if they want to decrease our rating. But it it's normally not one year where they decrease it. It's normally like a pattern. So if there's extraordinary expenses, that type of thing, they do take that into consideration. We also have before they make any changes, we do have a lengthy credit call where we can explain like, hey, yes, we use fun balance, but this happened, that happened. So that sometimes helps. At this point, I've been through three of those. So, >> not yet. >> No, we've three rating calls since I've been here. >> And Dr. Scott, you just did one. >> We just did one incentary. >> In February. >> They're fairly stand. >> No, they're regular ones where you go through and they >> they routinely are looking at all school districts. So the
085only time if you remember I think back right after co we had one where they took us from a positive >> and but then they switched it right back. >> Yes. >> So >> I I do want to make sure I understand something Dr. Scott and I I feel like it's something that you've addressed and or Miss Hogan at different times. Um but there is a fine line right like where and we've also had the other financial adviserss come. You can get penalized if you have too much fund balance right. So there is an area that we should be within so that we have some fund balance, but if you have too much that can be a problem as well. And I don't know if you can just quickly remind the the board and listeners
086like what is that that line? Because it's something the school boards need to be mindful of. We can't what was the district that just got in serious trouble because they had too much of a fund balance. >> The board has a policy that we must keep it between two and 8%. unassigned. Why is that policy done? Do you remember like what the sorry what why we have this policy and you're absolutely right and I appreciate you clarifying between two and 8%. So that's something that we and it's a policy we've all gone through and discussed but also because of those kinds of things where there is that concern about having too much of a fund balance because at the end of the day that is taxpayer money. The school district is was not just here
087just to save and save and save and accumulate. We should be using it for public betterment. So >> sorry. Thank you again, Miss Shel. What is it >> by law? Correct. Thank you. And just wanted to say that in terms of the conservative nature and just being aware of the budget, we do routinely like we go through expenses. And we also get to a point where some people in the business office might make other people unhappy when their expenses do not pass muster. Um, we also if we get to a point like March and we notice that there are a lot of unspent funding then we stop spending or we'll say unless it's totally necessary we're going to stop spending because if we got through March and we didn't need it then you can get
088through June. So we do take some actions to be mindful of the expenses that's going forward. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. Um if we don't board doesn't have any more questions um we will this will also be up for our May work session um for review. This is not the first time of course that we've looked at it. We've had multiple times and we will have another one before the legislative vote. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um next up we have the AI update with uh Mr. Dockerty is it just and Mr. Ros Good evening everyone. Um, for the audience out there, this is Bill Dockery, assistant superintendent, um, with Mr. Ed Roth, high school principal. Um, we were asked tonight to give an update on the status of AI in our school district.
089As we know, we started to discuss this really last school year and um we're here tonight to share with you where we are and what our plans are. Just um as a little bit of background, as we started to have discussions um back in the summer and in the fall in my regular meetings with Mr. Roth, you know, we knew that at the high school that would be a particular interest in AI and how to use it. So, um Mr. Roth really um you know volunteered to help out um leading the initiative and helping us figure out how we want to implement AI in our school district. So um he's here tonight to share our experiences. >> All right, good evening everyone. Always nice to be here with you. Um so as you are well
090aware uh earlier this year uh policy 815 was passed by the board uh to give us you know some parameters around the use of generative AI uh in our school district. Uh you know there's four key components there and our work really revolves around digging into these four components. Um one obviously everything we do we want to make sure that you know we are ensuring safe and legal use um and that you know safe for kids and adults and legal you know most talking about us right you know AI is something that we talk about in schools often uh we talk about student use but of course there's a ton of professional uses as well and when you uh talk about professional uses in a school district you start talking about sensitive data uh so
091we want to make sure that we are protecting that data uh if and when it is used uh you know with AI just like we do with any other systems that we use uh whether they be electronic or even you know our paper records. Uh we also wanted to make sure uh that we start you know identifying tools that are appropriate for use uh in schools uh you know again both for students and for staff. Uh but our focus has been you know at at the high school starting to look at appropriate ways uh for our students to use AI in classrooms and helping them to learn uh you know appropriate ways to use AI in an academic setting. Um we want to you know set forth some expectations. Uh we know that students and
092staff are going to use AI whether we tell them they have the green light to do it or not. Right? this is the world that we live in. Uh and so we want to you know help guide our students in terms of you know what expectations we have, what expectations the academic world has for them uh and what expectations exist in professional settings. And then none of this is any good without you know good training uh to both teach people how to use the tools that are available. We know these change by the minute. Um, most importantly, you know, responsible use. Um, and that is something that is consistent with everything else that we do. We teach kids how to responsibly use the internet. We teach them how to responsibly use and not use their
093electronic devices. Um, and we want to do the same with AI. >> So, and just to um I just want to restate that these four components came directly from the policy that you adopted. um in December. That's where those components came from. They're all part of the policy which was the initial conversation of the work. >> All right. Um so at the high school we have uh started work with a committee that consists of teachers, administrators uh and some of the instructional coaches from the district uh with a goal really to to help us start to build an understanding uh of where we are. Uh we're going to show you in a minute. you know, we have surveyed our staff to get a feel for how they are using it professionally uh and the extent
094to which they have begun using AI with students or permitting AI use uh you know for our students. Um we also want to build understanding you know for our staff and and you'll see we have some staff who have never used AI or think they've never used AI um probably more appropriate. Um, we want to build our understanding of what tools exist, how it can be beneficial to students and staff alike, uh, what guard rails need to be put in place. And if there's one thing that I think we have in common with every other school district that I've talked to, it's that we are all really just learning. Um, we're all building this understanding of of where we are and how the world is changing. uh we do want to develop guidance again, you
095know, kind of aligning to the policy that was passed. Uh you know, we need more of an understanding in order to to do that at a greater level. And the ultimate goal is is what we're here for, right? We want to educate our children. Uh we want to make sure that not just in the high school, but you know, K to 12, that we start to teach kids what is appropriate, not appropriate. At our last committee meeting uh at the high school uh well actually our a couple meetings ago, I talked about how in our family March Madness bracket poll um entertainment purposes only. Um my 11-year-old daughter uh immediately went on AI to research her bracket. At our meeting this week, I let everyone know that she won. So I came in second. Um,
096I hope that my daughter learns that yes, it's a tool, but there are guard rails, right? Um, it's not just how to use the basics. I think a lot of our kids use AI, you know, they use chat GPT the same way they use Google, right? They punch in a simple question, they get an answer. Um, you know, we need to teach them more than that. Uh, I liken it a bit to Excel. We have many classrooms in the school where Excel is used. We have a few classrooms in the school where kids really learn how to use Excel the way that it was designed to be used, you know, in our accounting classes, in some other courses. And I think that that approach to AI is going to be the same. You know, we're
097going to see AI in all of our classrooms. And I think eventually we're going to have some classrooms where kids are really learning uh much more in depth from teachers who are experts in the area. and you know districtwide this past fall when we started to have the discussions we really found that it was really difficult to talk about the use of AI when not everyone was using it or using it on a particular level so really even as an administrative group we've um we've joined an educator AI account for all of us as a group and we're really learning together sharing how we're using it to be more efficient and um learning and growing and it's really just within the past few months of becoming more familiar with it ourselves and better versed. It's
098helping move the conversation forward. So, um we're in phase one at all levels. So, um so here's you know four key areas a little bit redundant. I don't want to you know tell you this. I talk too much as it is. So I don't want to say the same things over and over, right? But um academic integrity when you talk to high school teachers, that's our our number one concern. That's the thing that comes up in the faculty rooms day in and day out. And so we want to do a lot of work on that. I will also tell you that, you know, I think in our latest meeting, uh what we all realize is that we don't need to change much about our academic integrity policy. Um cheating is cheating. Kids have always cheated.
099>> Kids are always going to try to cheat. Um, and whether that's with the internet or, you know, writing the answers to a quiz under your watch in seventh grade at Ashlin Middle School. Um, I've heard that happen. Um, or trying to copy an essay off the internet. Um, kids have always done this. They're always going to. And they're going to do it less when we teach them. We're going to they're going to do it less when we teach them what's appropriate, what's not. I think our high school academic integrity policy that's in our our course guide is really good. um you know it doesn't just cover the basics. Um and our kids are taught that in their classes is something that we go over and the modifications that we want to make to that
100honestly are very minor. Uh they really will just you know we keep talking about wanting to take a conservative approach. Um and I think that that's the right thing to do as we are still developing knowledge. Uh but we also know that we don't want to wait 3 years to build a great pool of knowledge before we start utilizing AI in our classrooms because that wouldn't be appropriate. And so we just want to modify that just a bit uh to make sure students know that they can use it when they're told that they can use it and in ways that are acceptable for the assignment that they're working on or for that assessment. Um we don't want it writing their creative essays. uh but we do want them to start using it uh in other
101ways whether it's as a thought partner or to you know maybe help them uh manipulate a data set if the goal of the lesson is not to learn how to manipulate the data set. Um you know if the goal of the lesson is to learn how to add we don't let you use a calculator we teach you how to add. Uh but once we're doing more advanced things and that's not the goal anymore then we give you a tool to do it and we want to take the same approach. Um we do want to build again not just 9 to 12 but you know K to2 uh lessons to teach kids really just an extension of digital citizenship um privacy and safety you know a bit you know about students we want to make sure
102students are cognizant of what information they're putting into AI just like we talk to them about all the time with social media and the internet um and obviously you know as adults who are using AI we want to make sure uh that we are only using it you know with sensitive data in ways that we know that that data is protected it uh you know in accordance with board policy and and the law. Uh and we do want our staff, you know, we've got a lot of staff who have a lot of hard jobs. Uh we want to teach our staff how to use these tools to be more efficient, to spend more of their time, uh you know, putting their talents to use. Uh you know, maybe and uh having AI do some of
103the work that takes up a lot of time but keeps them from getting further down the task list. So that's again, you know, all things that we are starting to work on right now. We surveyed the teachers at Penrest just to get a feel where do we stand? Uh this is within the last month. Um you know, what are you doing professionally? We have not done a lot of work with teachers at Penrest teaching them how to use AI professionally. Um but we wanted to know how many people do it. Uh and so you know, you can see the results there. We're a little all over the place. Um, a third of our staff never or almost never uses AI again knows that they're using AI. Um, we have some who use it every day.
104Uh, and increasingly we have teachers who are sharing some ways that it is making their life a little bit easier. Um, things that they're trying and failing and that's okay as well. Um, but you know, we're working with a staff uh that you know is is a bit all over the place and I think that shows why we're still in that phase one of building capacity and knowledge. >> Sorry, just a quick question about that data. How did you gather that information? Because at least at the school I'm teaching, teachers are all over the place on using it and I think some would be very hesitant to acknowledge that what they're doing. Right. So, is this collected like is this anonymous that they're able to do? Because that would I just wonder like how honest
105people are being about sharing some of that information. >> Great question. And if you notice there's 63 responses. So, that really is about twothirds of our faculty. Um I am sure that there are some folks and this is something that we talked about in our committee meeting the other day when we were looking at the data. Um and one of the things we talked about is just getting past a hurdle where people feel funny saying that they used AI. Uh you know that it is okay to take your lesson plan and see how AI would modify it with parameters that you give. I I give the example you know a couple years ago we sat in here and uh the CNI team did a great training for our district coordinators um talking about a number
106of things and one of them was the development of lesson plans using AI. So the social studies teacher in me, I tried to pick one of the most boring topics I could pick and have AI give me sample lesson plans that would be better than what I gave. And so I asked for lesson plans about the economic impacts of the Civil War. Man, I wish I used it as a teacher because those lesson plans were far better than what I was doing. It doesn't mean that I wasn't a good teacher. It just means it gave me things to think about, ways to approach it with students. I wouldn't have taken that lesson plan and just used it, but it was a great thought partner. And so we want people to feel comfortable doing that, admitting
107it out loud uh at a time where we still have many folks who feel like it's off limits. You can't do it. It's just cheating. That's not professional. Um I like to say, you know, NFL teams hire people to to crunch the numbers so that the head coach doesn't have to. I think teachers can do the same thing. you know, the more that we can have other, you know, other tools helping teachers, uh, you know, focus their time on what happens in the classroom, the better off they're going to be. >> Um, I have a question. I have a few questions, but one is while we are encouraging teachers to try it out, we still haven't given them uh rules about what specific models they should be using. And we also haven't given them definitive
108um uh restrictions on the type of information that they can share. So I think it would be really easy to say you have questions about an IEP and you're just going to upload whatever information you have. But we haven't to my knowledge because we're still in stage one done enough training to give the appropriate parameters erase all student data etc etc. Is that where we are? >> Yes, pretty much. >> Okay. We really >> we're getting there. We are absolutely getting it. >> But again, most people don't know what it is. I mean it's really easy to tell people which we have. >> We don't put student data into AI platforms because we don't know where it goes. like we we have told people that no identifiable student data goes into any AI platform. That's
109been made clear. >> Um but we'll talk a little bit more about that. But um but that's one easy parameter. But in terms of you know how to use it in the classroom, >> that's something that's going to evolve over time. Yeah, I think that how to use it piece is is uh you know putting it into practice and >> kind of learning together with it etc. But I am really concerned in a number of ways about the safety of >> No, we are we are absolutely also and we don't want to use any AI tools that scan our documents that have any student information in there. >> Yeah. >> Right. So we've talked about that. Absolutely. I think my concern is that even at home when educators are doing whatever and if they're not
110using approved like we don't have an account for the district in any way because we haven't decided what platform perhaps we want to use. I think we're just a little kind of behind if we're also at the same time encouraging teachers to practice. >> Yeah. And to be honest, I don't know that I'll speak for myself at the high school. I don't know that we're even encouraging in practice at this point, right? We're we certainly have people who are working on it. This is us kind of getting a pulse as to where they are. Um your point is a great one. Um >> I I'll also say too, I so much appreciate you being here, but I would also like to see the middle school principal here because those kids are using it, >> right?
111Your 12-year-old just used it for her bracket. >> Oh, yeah. She's still in elementary school. Yeah. >> Right. So like this is it's a broader than the high school. >> It is. >> Um again, you know, I have my own thoughts about where the other third of the faculty would fall, you know, with confidence level. My guess is a lot of them would fall into that low category, but I could be completely wrong. Um but you know, again, it's just a snapshot. You know, the numbers are what they are. Um you know, our job obviously is to, you know, work with teachers and and learn more about what those numbers are telling us. This is for professional use was that like a you specified that in the question. >> So this question in particular is
112just confidence level using AI. Um there were question there was a question that asked how frequently they were using it professionally. There's also a question asking how frequently they are using it with students. So we did separate those two. We didn't ask confidence level you know between the two. I wonder also personally if people are could draw the line on how they're using it also just to know are they are people >> not using it all because they're not comfortable are people using it personally and they're comfortable but not using it professionally because they line >> um so here >> it's okay um you know here you know how often you know are allow allowing students to use AI tools academically. Um you can see most of our teachers are not um I I think
113the true number out of our 100 faculty members is probably higher than 82%. Um there are some isolated cases of of teachers who are really you know kind of digging in a little bit. you know, we've got a a teacher who, you know, led students through using prompting, uh, you know, the teacher wrote the the prompts for students to use to give them feedback on a project that was not an AI based project. Um, he just was kind of testing the waters a little bit. Um, honestly, it it worked rather well. part of his, you know, messaging to the kids really was, you know, how would you have done this differently if you just put this information in and asked it for feedback? You would not have gotten the same feedback that you're getting with
114the prompts that I am developing for you. Uh, but as you can see, most of our teachers are not doing that at this time. >> Okay. So phase two and and Ed started to talk about this is is you know as we get more familiar and using it then making sure that everything we do is aligned to some type of guidance. A lot of the guidance is already there and it's just applying AI to these things. So with academic integrity, honesty, ethical standards, making sure work is original and promoting critical thinking. That's um probably the theme that I hear the most from people is that, you know, we don't want to take away the opportunity for kids to think critically and creatively by using an AI tool. Staff efficiency, we talked about that a bit,
115but again, as we use productivity tools, um we also have to reinforce the fact that if you use AI, then you are still responsible for your work just like the students are, right? So what you produce is yours. Privacy and safety. We just talked about that. Yes, we have to get more clarity on this for sure and needs to be a priority. And the next one is is definitely going to be work ahead um in collaboration with our curriculum and instruction team. But how are we teaching students about AI? Um responsible use emphasizing critical thinking and some key questions that we need to decipher throughout um our next phase here is you know what do we want students to learn about AI? What are we teaching them? Like what does that look like the actual
116content? When will they learn the content right? So will we create some elementary lessons, middle school lessons and high school lessons? and then who will be delivering these and when in this in the particular schedule. So big decisions to make and um some work ahead for sure. >> Yeah. Do you have a question? >> Um maybe it's coming up but I do I think I've asked this question before. I have a real concern. I don't know what's happening with the school counselors association and how they're being prepared to work with students who are um leaning into AI a little too much for companionship and mental health. And I have a real concern that we will need to deal our counselors will need to deal with students who need some help. >> Yeah, I think that
117that will certainly need to be part of the teaching about how to use it. Sure. >> How long do you think it's going to take us to get through these phases? I'm just concerned because AI seems to be ubiquitous now. >> So again, like implementing change at in schools in particular, no matter what it is, definitely obviously takes time because to train teachers and and their time and we certainly and there's a process and a strategy for it. Um obviously not everyone's going to be ready at the same time, but you certainly don't wait till everyone's ready. you have to, you know, form a coalition of people then and and grow it. So, you know, as I'll I will skip ahead to the next um slide. Teaching and learning, obviously, we evaluate all of our
118programs then once we get implemented, but let me just get to our what next slide to answer your question. So, you know, the capacity building is going to have to continue and that'll continue on ongoing, right? It's not as if once we're done phase one, we don't continue to expand, right? they all overlap. Um so for next year, you know, you will be introduced to a new job description um for next year for a supervisor for technology. So part of that job description that has changed is really um the leadership capacity of that person, the role that will be the point person for these committees. And we expect when that happens, we get a little bit more traction to the committees that and the work that's already started. Um, to answer your question, probably, you
119know, we probably won't be able to start a curriculum for elementary people and elementary and middle school students. It'd be tough to do it midyear depending on where we put it. So, we might have to wait till the following year, but it depends on the amount of lessons, the type of lessons, and the people that are ready. Because if we if if it's a few lessons and we can work it into, you know, a special area rotation, then that could or advisory at the middle school, like that could happen a little bit sooner, right? But this work is starting now and throughout the summer. So really, once we start to get a better sense of um who's going to do it and when, that could speed it up. I would say absolutely 100% like a
120year from September we should have the whole thing laid out but I think within next school year um there's a chance that we'll be starting to implement lessons on a rotating basis for sure. >> You said elementary and >> yeah I mean that's what I'm thinking right now like we don't Oh I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, high school of course, but again like high school again, we haven't had any specific discussions about it, but I think at all three levels there has to be some teaching specifically that's developmentally appropriate to the application that they're going to to use at those levels. So, I don't really know what it's going to look like yet because we haven't gotten like specific content for that. >> So, I just want to clarify. So, all three levels potentially may see
121something starting to filter in during next year, but definitely September 2027. Correct. That is accurate. >> Okay. >> So, I I do have a question about the levels and I'm curious about the educational conversations that are happening about regarding appropriateness. We've been through so much technology for students. We've been through iPad programs which may have been good, might be questionable. We've been through, you know, our kids have phones. Countries are banning social media now. There could be a case made for delaying certain types pieces of AI can be taught as far as like it's pattern recognition. This is how it's actually built but but maybe there's no use that happens before a certain level in the community what's happening. >> I would agree with that. Right. And that's um I really made a note um
122when Ed mentioned a conservative approach because that is what we know and what we're hearing is that you know when screens came and phones came and there was this excitement right this is their future and we have to get ready for it but we didn't at the time in 2006 didn't understand the dangers associated with and everything else. So we are really approaching this very conservatively. Um in that sense we want to be super thoughtful about it. So again if you're asking me personally like I think that we should teach fifth graders about AI. I don't think we should necessarily be putting them in front of it and using it at that particular time. understanding the dangers, understanding where the data comes from, how it generally works, understanding what teachers expectations mean, like those kinds
123of things. But um and then as they get older, I think that's when we start to talk about more of the sophisticated applications that students participate in. But again, I'm one voice and you know, >> I'm I'm sure this will come as part of your work as well when you're looking at, you know, this community gathering information. Just to add on to Hillary's point, I think the the thing that everyone encounters whether they want to or not is everyone does a Google search and the very first things that pop up are the AI summaries. Yeah. And that is right away. >> Well, that's why >> Oh, I'm not saying they're right. What I'm saying is that's what everyone sees and that's what my students right away go to. So, without even, you know, it's I
124mean, we everyone is behind, right? It's just the way of it and how to have a systematic approach even when it comes to basic basic research because even if you're not putting it in your classrooms, it's it's just in front of >> well and that's one of our biggest challenges is that all of these systems that we and programs applications that we already have in place have been adding AI into it, right? Just like Google and everything else. So to um shut it all down that is that effective like not you know so how do we do that? How do we manage that? That's why I think that, you know, the work is identifying, you know, as a classroom community, we want to use this one for this particular purpose at this particular time. Maybe
125that's how the conversation goes. But I definitely think we are all very mindful of all of the research that's come out, you know, anxious generation, everything else about the phones and the screen time. Um, you know, we believe strongly that schools are the place for personal connection. Right. And we'd never want to replace that. That's why we're here. So, um, you know, AI is a tool obviously, but we want to be careful about how we use it and we want to teach kids about using it. Um, but it's really hard to do that if we don't know how to use it. So, um, so we're learning and as adults, but we have to be careful about how um, we promote it with our kids. And Bill, if I could chime in just for a second,
126when we um you know, this this past meeting of our committee at the high school, you know, the the conversation about, you know, developing lessons was not really about teaching kids how to use AI. It was more about, you know, hey, you know, that Google AI summary that you see is 80% accurate, right? our librarian uh talking about, you know, that would be a great lesson for him to do with our freshman seminar students. Not about, hey, come on in. Let me teach you how to use chat GPT, but let me show you why that shouldn't be your first go-to. Um, let me show you, you know, the limitations of the tool. Um, there will be a time where you're going to learn in certain settings how to use that. We don't know where that
127comes yet, right? But we do need to teach kids guardrails. And I think the, you know, likening it to social media, I think what we see now, I have far more kids in my office now who tell me, I don't have this. I don't have Snapchat. I I'm private on all my accounts, right? We finally, we as society, not just schools, but we caught up to teaching kids the limitations and the dangers of it. I think that that really has informed a lot of our thinking about again the conservative approach. Let's teach you where the guard rails are first and then we can teach you, you know, how to perform within those. Um the guard rails have to come first. >> So I appreciate somewhat the conservative approach because I just never want to be
128conservative ever. I think you should always full steam ahead. But I just part of the reason with social media is we didn't put any parameters on things. Right. Right. >> I mean I did in my house. My daughter still chides me about that but she doesn't still have Instagram which I will very proud of as a parent though hated. Um but we didn't say no. We didn't say you can't do these things. And I'm afraid that we we wait and we wait and wait to figure out how we're going to use it. But maybe it's beneficial to say some you cannot do these things and I'm pretty sure you could establish a list of things you can't do like over the summer. >> Yeah, I think so. >> Right. Because otherwise they're using it. >>
129Yeah. >> Right. Like and we can wait and we can wait until we're ready, but they are using it >> and all the Yeah. >> I think we have to say how you cannot use it. >> Yeah. I agree. And I'm not I didn't mean to imply that nothing's going to happen until a full year from now. Like all these things are happening all at once, right? Right. By the time we have a full curriculum together, like you described, like I didn't do a good job of explaining that timeline, but um but that's reality, right? That should take a little bit longer than putting some guidelines together. I agree. So this spring um toward the end of the school year, so again, when we have a supervisor for technology in place, when that happens, then
130we'll bring the committees together and really reorganize. This was um you know, this and I've told Dr. malash. This this is really this is one of the most difficult tasks that really I've encountered in my time here in at Rose Tree Media because it's this nebulous fastmoving thing that we're trying to wrap our arms around ourselves and it's complicated. So, um you know right now like just having the opportunity to get organized and to learn it ourselves is just where we're at. Um but I do think it's been time well spent. We've spent some time with Sam Warmanda who did a presentation for us and gave us some um you know some tips for kind of accelerating our own learning which has been helpful but I agree I mean nothing here happens fast enough like
131there's no question right and it's just and that's really the challenge and I feel the urgency and I agree I think that you know parameters are easier to set than you know necessarily the other things so I do think that that is something that can and should happen. But again, it can't just happen in a vacuum. We have to gather some people together to to be able to do that correctly. >> I want to say Jackie, thank you for saying that. And Bill, I understand what you're saying. And my first few questions were really just that. It was really just >> there are some very >> important and serious things and they just need to have. It was just like putting together it putting a policy in place even though that policy might be somewhat
132fluid and you're also still running a whole school. >> Yeah. And the policy but again the policy helped us organize it and it was the impetus to get us started right and like I said before like we could do it either way right we can get started then when we're when we get all this done then we can implement a policy or you can do the policy first and that can guide the change which is what's happening. >> I have a question. I mean this is obviously a ton of work and as you just said you're running a whole school along the ways. Are there like best practices that we can borrow from that can maybe eliminate some work. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. >> Yeah. So that's and again a lot of
133the school districts are in the same place >> and um it's really >> Yes. Right. But a lot of that is you know it's almost like walking through a school and say what are your best practices for teaching this particular activity or lesson and you see some great things here and great things here maybe not. So again, like there are some and compiling those and then structuring those and communicating that. Yeah, I think that um that are some things. >> Yeah, I guess I mean I guess I just meant specifically to some of the the guide rails which kind of seem somewhat they're probably pretty common sense I would imagine for a while. >> I think some of them some of them would be and again we have a good resource um with Sam Warando.
134We're reading his book um shift the entry point which is helpful. So yeah, I I again I don't think coming up with the guidelines will take too much time. I really don't. And I do think that that's a good tangible thing that we can start with. For sure. >> I would be more concerned about our seniors who are going off to college and writing college essays and like with not knowing the expectations or even um just from experience teaching on the college level like textbooks are already >> Yeah. trying coming up with ways to teach them how to identify AI hallucinations which um you know like to run something and see like find the error >> before they even know how to use it you know so that they know how not to use it
135but also like how to identify when they're getting bad information. So that that's my concern before like the elementary and middle schools like what what what do our seniors >> Yeah. And that's really and to your point like that was really what was the the reason why there's such a strong committee at the high schools because they clamored for it, right? Like they're yelling to us like and they're in all directions, right? So it's what do I do with this? What do I do in this situation? How can I use how can I not use it? How do we just shut it down? Right? So like they really were um coming to us and that's really you know Ed put a committee together with really um a nice wide variety of voices. >> You know
136it's interesting um one of the teachers the other day said that you know we are in the same classroom navigating Shakespeare and artificial intelligence. Uh, and I just kind of laughed and paused like it it is true, right? Um, and at some point we will feel comfortable blending Shakespeare and artificial intelligence. Um, I I think you know our kids I think that the one message I feel confident our kids get a lot in class is we do have a lot of teachers who are very upfront with do not use AI on this, right? >> You know, where appropriate. We have a number of teachers. Our English department makes it very explicit. You know, AI is not permitted. You know, when you're writing this paper, AI is not permitted for this. You know, we talked at
137our last meeting about parameters that college board puts in place in our AP seminar courses uh and AP research. Um when we had, you know, our junior parent night uh month or two ago, um one of the college reps was very clear with our junior parents saying, you know, really got to talk to your kids about AI because in my region I got nine of the same AI generated essay. Um and everybody kind of, you know, like laughed and went, "Oh boy." Um, and then at the same time, I've heard college admissions folks talk about appropriate uses. We led off our committee work watching a video uh where they talked about the buckets that college admissions offices put uh letters of recommend or not letters of recommendation application, your your essay. Um, and there's almost
138nobody at this point who says you can't use it at all. um that's different than what we are saying. And then I know on the professional side, our counselors go to meetings and they're having folks say, "You guys are crazy if you're not using this, but let's talk about how, right?" You know, like don't send us an AI generated essay about your kid cuz we know what it is. Um you know, I was at Westchester the other day with, you know, uh kids getting ready to graduate with teaching degrees. Um, and one of the feedback that they got was, you know, don't have AI write your resume because we know and it will get discarded. Um, so I think that will continue to kind of trickle down, um, both to our kids and to us,
139um, the more that we can learn from higher ed and professional world, the more that we're going to be able to educate our kids and prepare them for it. Can we just and I know it's been a long conversation and it won't be resolved tonight. One thing I would just ask when we consider this too, right, is that there's all students with all different abilities and learning differences and I know that some of the programs like Grammarly the regular version versus professional can have a very it's a big spectrum about how much is still that student's voice. >> Um, and so just to look into those kinds of things too, like what those things are because it can >> it can be a really difficult thing. And so I know some students they're like I'm
140using Grammarly bits but the Grammarly pro and it they drastically changes what they're writing versus fixing things and I know there's a bunch of other programs but just I think that's worthy of a conversation on how to do it. That's a good example. >> What works out well for the teachers and students and making it's also like I know there's all these AI detectors and it's a hot mess. It's like the wild west wealth out there and it is really upsetting if somebody's accused of cheating or what. So there's a lot to navigate and I just hope that I'm sure your committee will look at all of it. >> And we have and that piece of it that's up there in terms of monitoring tools. That's one of the ones that we've talked about. >>
141So I guess one of my questions though if all of our students are using we can pretty much agree almost every student is using AI for something but a third of our teachers don't. How do we move that needle? Because the teachers I think need to understand what the students are using. How do we get the teachers over that hurdle? I mean, I agree with what everybody says. They need guidelines. This is what AI can do for you because there are some of our students who are going to be go enrolling in collegiate programs for which they will be expected to know how to use AI. So, if we say no, you can't use it at all, that doesn't serve them well either. So, we have to figure out what the balance is about, you
142know, like for example, in a lot of business applications, if you write terribly and you use Grammarly to fix it, everyone says, "Congratulations, well done." because they don't really care if you use Grammarly to make your presentation better as long as it's better. And I think >> but they do care in the arts and I'm just saying that there's area there, >> right? Every kid's going into something different. Yeah. So we do need to let our kids know what a what a good use of AI is and what a bad use and I think it's urgent like way urgent at this point and waiting till middle of 20 the next academic year is really really late and I just that was only for the it's only the realistic that we can put a curriculum together.
143I mean that's what that's probably how long it takes because the teachers that teach it are teaching something else right now, right? So it takes time to build curriculum >> even a curriculum but what do we do in the beginning of the school year? How do we let kids know right in the very beginning of >> now that's something different right that's something different >> I think you mentioned you said the best practices right and that's something that you could put together >> we can start that this >> something is definitely we've already started this in our in our discussions and I know there's probably a slide Mr. Ryussell Dr. Kunat, they've been attending opportunities, but we've already started that with our instructional coaches. So, that idea that there's not those parameters yet talked about
144or started, they have been um so we need the curriculum is a different piece, but this whole process under bill started September, right? So, that that is something that we've already moved on. So yes, things like that, those discussions are already in place and will continue to be in place for our teachers. >> So in a situation, Ed, when you, you know, a teacher says, "Don't use AI for this," and the students know that that teacher doesn't know how to use AI, what's what is the when why would the kid not use AI? >> Yeah. And I I think it's a great question, right? And listen, before this year, right, you know, we encounter the the teacher who says, you know, Ken, you you used AI, you failed this paper. The kid says, no, I
145didn't. And then it's this like age-old debate, right? That, you know, it's my 16th year as an administrator. It's my 16th year of trying to figure out if a kid cheated or not, right? >> Um, and I don't think it's going to stop. One of the things that we've been working on with teachers is like, let's go back and really think about what good instruction is, what good assessment is. You know, I got asked by a family member who, you know, my nephew was accused of cheating in a high school class. Said they used AI. They were calling me kind of like, well, you're a principal. How do we prove the principal wrong? Oh boy, I love these. Um, and I actually went back to realistically an argument that I got from one of our
146students because the kid in this case was right. There were two really small pieces of writing, not big enough to accurately be detected by an AI detector, even if they were great tools. And we know that they're not. I think one of the things that we've really seen over the last couple of months at the high school is less reliance on. and we were getting bombarded with we need this tool and that tool and this tool. >> Yes. >> And when these cases would come to us, I would then take them and I started just plugging them into, you know, plug it into chat GPT, plug it into Gemini, plug it into Turn It In. And when I've got four different tools giving me four different answers, >> we can't defend that. So now, let's
147go back to the teachers and let's talk about what we can defend. when that kid turned it in back in the day when I thought a kid copied an essay off the internet, I started asking a kid a lot of probing questions about that essay. You either know it or you don't. And I think we're very quickly getting back to that. Um, you know, in my news and notes to my faculty last week, I sent uh an article about, you know, the increasing reliance on oral exams at, you know, uh, Ivy League universities. There's no better way to show you know something or not than stand in front of me and let's talk. Right? When I see Madame Jackson giving an oral exam in the hallway, no kid is faking their French fluency. You know
148it or you don't. And if you don't, she will make sure you do, right? Cuz she's awesome and she's retiring and I hate it. Um, but I think we're getting back to that. And I think it takes the question of what tool do we use out of the equation. the tools can help us. Yeah, they're going to flag things. You know, I turn things in for my doctoral, you know, for my dissertation and it often comes back and says, you know, a small percentage of I know I didn't use AI. It freaks me out every time. And then I have professors saying, relax, you're okay. >> That tool is a scary thing. I think it is, is the assessment the right thing? You know, can we get kids talk about it? My advice to my
149nephew was, "You better be able to go in there and tell that teacher everything you know about that assignment." Um, and he did. And then the teacher said, "Well, I guess I'm not going to win this argument." Um, we have to be realistic about it's not an argument, right? If if learning is the goal, how do we make sure the kids are really learning in a way that Turn It In is never going to be able to decide for us. >> So, you know, as you can see, there's layers to this, right? and um and complexity. But again, we have um we have a structure in place. We'll have a supervisor for technology in place to help us. And we will continue to provide you updates along the way. But I hear you loud and
150clear in terms of timelines for for guidance and some of those that lowhanging fruit in terms of safety and guidance right away. I do hear you. >> All right. >> And I agree. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Let's see. Next, another presentation. Next up, we have Mr. Daniel Arison, director of student services, will provide a student services trend analysis. All right. Good evening everybody. Um, for those that are that are not in person, I'm Dan Harrison. I'm the director of student services. Uh and tonight we're going to talk about building how we have been working over the last year or so about building a coherent system of support within our student services department which is really just talking about how are we responding to our increasing needs and changes of our students
151in a very intentional and sustainable way. Before I get into the weeds of talking about uh the work that we've done, I really want to just call out publicly the student services teams particularly at the central level but also in the buildings. The work that this team does on a daily basis is absolutely exceptional. And in particular, when I think about the work that they had to do last year in the 2425 school year, when they essentially had three directors before I got here and then now a year's worth of change, change is hard. Having to take leadership and direction from different directors is very hard. So the work that this team has done in really challenging circumstances was truly exceptional. So, I wanted to at least call them out tonight publicly just to say
152one, I am very grateful for the work that they do, but two, this team is an exceptional team. The next slide that's that's linked here more for reference for the board and also for the community. We share this data every year. It's the PEN data reporting, which is what how we get our federal funding with um our December one count. the the top is hyperl if the board or the community want to go back to look at data going back to 2002 uh 2007 2008 the one thing that I will point out on the slide and we're going to talk about it um more as the presentation goes on is that our data is relatively stable in a number of areas. The one area that we're going to really talk about and drill down tonight
153are those four areas up kind of up at the top in terms of looking at um disability categories. Autism, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, and intellectual disability. The reason we're going to really talk about that, and that goes into the wise of of why we're really talking about wanting to build a coherent s uh system of support, is the profiles of our students with an IEP continue to change and evolve. The board has heard me say this many times before and when we talk about those disability categories of autism, emotional disturbance, ID, u intellectual disability, or multiple disabilities, you're often times talking about a student whose needs are not singular, right? So you may have a student who has a behavioral need, a learning need, a speech and language need, a sensory need. So there's a
154level of complexity to that disability and then how the district is going to respond to it. As our district grows, so does the quantity of students. Even though we've remained relatively stable in terms of our percentage of students with IEPs, just 15 or 16% of 100 is different than 15 or 16% of 500. So the number of students continue to grow and that puts an increased demand not only on our system but also on our staff, right? So, we want to be mindful of that, making sure that we have systems in place to support our staff so that when they're working through cases, they're able to get the support that they need in order to be successful. And then we continue to know this just as as a as a team here, the costs period
155continue to rise, whether that's in special education or elsewhere. If we're talking about services that we're providing within the district, if we're talking about placements that students may need or the cost of cyber schools or or charter schools, those costs continue to go up. So, we want to make sure that our system is built in a way that keeps that in mind and tries to mitigate that as best as we possibly can. This work connected with the goals that the board set for our our administrative team. Specifically for us tonight, we're going to talk about the goals that were in the areas of safety and wellness and looking at at the the audit of of our uh student services programs. Keeping in mind that the focus throughout the course of all of this work that
156we did was not having isolated programs, which are exceptional, but we wanted to make sure that we were building that system and thinking when a child gets to us in in kindergarten at age five, what's that outcome going to be? whether it's at graduation or at age 22 and making sure that we are being very thoughtful in how we build that K to2 continuum through all of our programs. If we do this well, we're improving student outcomes. We're we're strengthening our staff capacity. We're going to talk a little bit tonight about reducing adversarial interactions, but I think we've got some great data points that show that we're having great success in that area. And then we're also working to improve long-term cost predictability. We are not going to be able to do special education and
157not spend money. We know that the variability in cost is where budgeting gets really really challenging if we're not able to project forward what we think our students are going to need and then we're having to go find services or we end up in an advers adversarial situation where now we're trying to figure out compensatory education. Those are mitigating factors that really can blow up our budget. If we're able to do this really well with this system's work, we'll be able to at least try to control our long-term cost predictability, which helps us plan out in into the future. The work that we did this year really was rooted in this idea of hospitality, which sounds weird like why why would we talk about hospitality in a special education or student services world. But when
158we we use Danny Meyer in particular, Danny Meyer runs a number of restaurants mostly in New York and he has this concept and idea of a 51% solution. One of the things that drew us to the work that Danny Meyer did was he has restaurants that are not necessarily rated as the best restaurant, but they're consistently rated as people's favorite restaurant. And that idea of what we do is important, but how we make people feel is just as important, if not even more so important than those technical skills applied here in in a special education world. We have technical skills of instruction and intervention, data collection, analysis, communication, collaboration, compliance, and documentation. But the relationship pieces of of thinking about optimistic, warmth, empathy, self-awareness, curiosity, work ethic, and integrity are absolutely essential when we're talking
159about how we support other people's children. This is a standard that we really want to hold ourselves to as we're doing this. Well, why why would we want to do that? Why have a 51% solution? Well, the the first is we can teach those technical skills, right? With solid professional development and strong leadership, we can teach our our new staff and our existing staff how to do instruction and intervention, how to collect good data. We can even teach how to collaborate and we can teach how to be compliant. But we can't necessarily teach do families feel supported when they come and work with us. When we have those feelings of optimistic warmth and empathy, it's going to lead to a little bit more family trust in what the work that we're doing. It's not necessarily
160enough to get the job done. We can't just make people feel good and think that everything's going to be better. We've also got to be really good at our job as well. And when we do that with curiosity and work ethic, that's asking good questions of how can I support his child? Digging in with the grit and the resiliency to try to figure out those complex needs. Well, now as a team, we have better problem solving. We're having that interdisciplinary approach when the team is able to approach complex problems open with an open idea and being thoughtful and families are trusting us. And then those last pieces, we're doing it with integrity and self-awareness. That sounds like, well, of course, we're doing it with integrity. Part of that integrity is is what we're saying in
161an IEP meeting, what we are doing on a day-to-day basis or what we would like to do. We want our paperwork and our conversations and IEP meetings to represent what we are doing. The hard part in in anywhere with the self-awareness piece, it's easy to own the outcomes when things are going well. We have to have the self-awareness to be able to say when things aren't going well, let's come back together and do something. How can we try to make a change to make things better? Because when we do those things, that's when we have defensible decision making that really really helps us. We do have preliminary data that says is is this worth it or was this kind of bonkers and you know what what was this guy thinking? Our litigation costs the cost
162that we have have to to to defend ourselves. I don't have specific numbers because we're not through the end of the fiscal year yet. But if we look at 2425 and we look at 2526, I can safely sit here and say that we will absolutely reduce those those numbers by 60%. >> It may even be more than that depending on how the the next three months go. Let's knock on a lot of wood there. Um the other another another data point that we can look at is due process, right? Families that are at the height of confrontation with the district. The only issue related to due process that the district has had to deal with in this school year that you know things that were connected to last year they carried in the only new
163issue related to due process was a case where the district filed for due process in a situation where we really felt that we were right and we were because at that point the family then withdrew their complaint and said you know what we're actually good we don't want to go to a hearing which allowed the district then to say good we didn't want to either but you know we can figure this out in a very different way. Families are not asking for to go to mediation. They are asking to have informal meetings, which is a meeting with with me and another supervisor where we're able to kind of work through the differences. So, the conflict is still there, but it's not in those cost prohibitive things related to due process or um mediation. Before we
164get into talking specifically about what happens in the classroom, I do want to talk about the absolutely essential work that that people are doing that are outside the classroom. This is not peripheral work. It's absolutely essential to the work that we do. We have talked about our psychologists in different ways over the course of several meetings. We've talked about nurses. The one thing that I do want to highlight tonight, I know that it's getting late, so I'm going to jump right to counselors and social workers, is there is an increasing demand on what is being asked of schools to support families and specifically parents. And in the context of special education, it is a an ability to access FAPE or that free and appropriate public education. when it comes to attendance or when it comes
165to mental health supports, the work that our counselors and our social workers are doing is significant. The community resources are not quite there or if they are there, families have a difficult time accessing those because if you're not a private pay insurance, if you're trying to use different types of health care, you're going to be on a wait list for 6 months or longer. So, our social workers and our counselors are are really bearing the brunt of that and the work that they are doing is absolutely critical to what we're doing in the classrooms. And then pivoting to the classrooms, these next three slides I'm going to jump through pretty quickly. The way we set these up as we were looking at our programs, we really went in with some curious questions and then we
166laid out what we've done. Then we'll talk about the in influence of what um what this has had on our students as as we get at the end and start to summarize it. Specific to learning support, we really wanted what we were finding at the beginning of this year is that we had six different schools and six different ways to intervene with students especially if it came to reading. It wasn't necessarily a systematic approach. We've worked very closely with curriculum and instruction. We've developed a tiered system and we're ready to roll that out so that if you are in a roaster media school and you need a little bit more help in reading that looks the same whether you're at Indian Lane or whether you're at Glenwood because that profile shouldn't change based on the
167teacher that you have. Right? That's our our students our programs. We've worked really closely with the high school team in the block schedule. That was a big change in delivery of support and being 100% transparent. There's still work to do with that. But one of the things that I'm really really excited about, particularly in our special education world, specific to learning support, is in next year's school year. If a child just needs a check-in, and I say just needs a check-in, but that would be the lowest low of of support, we'll be able to do that. A co-taught class, be able to do that. A co-alk class, maybe with a little bit more support and having that achievement center, be able to do that. Need even more, and we'll be able to to to grow
168that all the way out. based on that student's specific need. We're also going to have adapted content courses specifically at the high school. That was some learning that we got from some of the litigation that existed, you know, prior to me getting here that we needed something between our classes that maybe f focus on the functional daily living skills in a life skills environment and the gened class that is, you know, a college prep course. We needed something in the middle and but and next year those classes will be in place with the goal to continue to develop that. That's great work that's happened at our high school and really a lot of credit to Lauren Dailyy Clark and and Tiffany Orin for the uh collaboration that they've had at at our high school. specific
169to emotional support. The first thing I want to do before we even get here, and I should have added this to the slide or not, I I want to call out again Kylie Buchcci, Amanda Fletcher, and Sarah Lacata at the middle school. As the board knows, we approved an emotional support teacher, and we're unable to fulfill that position with a successful candidate. So, that position remained open. We're at the final stages and we we we expect that we'll have uh we'll be staff full for the for the September start of school year. But throughout the course of this year, Kylie, Amanda, and Sarah picked up and and carried the emotional support case load in addition to their learning support case load. And we did not need to look at more restricted placements for any students
170at the middle school. So with the teachers doing that, now we did add some behavior support. We added some paraprofessional support to the middle school, but it was really great work that they that they did at the middle school, and we're very excited that we're going to be able to continue that program, not just at the middle school, but into the high school next year. We also opened up our K2 classroom. There's been s significant success in that classroom this year. students that were not only able to start the school year who needed that in September, but we've also had students across the year who came up and needed a little bit more support. Rather than having to look at out of district placements, we were able to work with families where you're still in
171a neighborhood school, you're just not in the neighborhood school that you started at, and the children are then going back into a mainstream environment at Media Elementary. That's been very, very successful. the IU has been really helpful uh in helping us with that self assessment getting ready and then as the board knows we've really learned from from SYA and the successful program I mean we literally have nationally recognized teachers and administrators in that program and there's a lot of flexibility with time space and pace that students have in that program that we've been able to apply at our elementary level with partnering with other local districts and and looking to then ahead of what we can do to be able to do that maybe in our own district as well. And then last, talking about
172our life skills and autistic support. This is some of some I've really enjoyed I've been very personally invested in this work. Um, you know, again, thinking about how we're going to ensure that our students have access to independence. Um, when we're talking about our students with the most complex of profiles who are likely going to stay with us until they're 22 years old, we've had committee work that this committee has been outstanding at Indian Lane. It's been regular ed teachers, special education teachers, speech teachers, encore teachers, par profofessionals where we really came together and just said where are spots and where are our pain points and what can we learn from that? And then we went and did some visits not because we wanted to replicate other schools but because we wanted to say everybody
173else is doing it too. What's something we might be able to borrow and then make it our own? And that was really part of the work that we said we are not going to Garnet Valley and bringing back oneto ones for everybody because we know that that's what Garnet Valley does really really well or we're not going to Tri Chester and we're worried about ITT or the that instructional teaching time because Patan said they do that really well. We want to just see how they operate their programs and then how do we marry all of those into our uniquely rose tree experience. It's been great work that that's going to continue into next year to help us even personalize our schedules even further for our students. And then last but certainly not least, we've been
174able to to um expand our community partnerships and our linking learning to life with other community members uh or other community businesses based on very specific stu uh student needs. So when we talk about impact on students and I'm going to just jump you know you know put ahead you know because I in the interest of time we are absolutely seeing that increased capacity. Our teachers are reporting that um and we're and we're able to plan forward very very succinctly for our students. You know looking at at where they are now in elementary school seeing what middle school can look like and then growing into that middle or high school experience as well. I'm taking an a awful lot of pride in in that um improved experience in terms of being consistent and collaborative for
175our families and staff. I've received a lot of feedback. I know that our teams have received feedback from families that are are reporting that they're feeling hurt. Um I take a lot of personal pride in the fact that families have chosen not to hire attorneys, not to file for due process, but to say like can we have a meeting first? doesn't mean that every one of our conflicts get resolved, right? And I'm sure there may even be a couple parents listening right now. They're in the chat going, "This guy is full of right because they have not been there is a no that comes with some of some of the the decisions that we have to make." But I don't want parents walking away from us feeling unheard. You may be heard and the answer
176is no, but we're really working very hard to to present in that type of a way. And then this last part of financial and system impact and and Dr. Scott, I'm sure, has some thoughts and in her thought bubble right now when I talk about this, right? I mean this very sincerely when I say we're not going to be able to do this and not spend money. It's going to cost money. The budget is going to have some pain points for all of us and some of those pain points are going to be within the special ed and student services world. But if we can do this well and reduce the variability, well then we can start to predict out long term. Well, you know what? I know in a one to three year I
177need a reading teacher and we talked about like a a reading teacher a couple months ago or we need a nursing service that we're able to predict. Well, all of a sudden that does help our business office in terms of how we're we're planning our budget out and projecting out. We, you know, have said this multiple times, but we really just we want students prepared for their next step and we want to be coherent in that process of what we are doing looking forward. We're the the goals that we're preliminarily looking at for next year. It is not a a redo. It it is really a refinement of the work that we're doing. We're setting ambitious goals of trying to bring some of our students who are in cyber charters back. So, we're going to
178have personal contact with each of those families to see what we we can do. We're ready to go with our our secondary emotional support. Uh we want to just continue evolving our programs and and refining it. And then we really want to re-engage with with parent support groups. That's something um that we're still working on. We have a couple good ideas of how we can really do that and do that well beyond just having the workshop um because that's hard for parents to come out for at night. you know, how are there ways that we can meet families where they're at and re-engage to to really just continue to foster that connection. We also want to continue our work with reading intervention, take a look at our code of conduct, and then Mrs. Fletcher, I
179did, you know, make a note, but we're, you know, we're going to talk a little bit later about approving the 339 plan. That's a compliance form. the work that we really want to dig into is actually part of our goal next year in terms of counseling supports um and you know how we can make that that K to2 continuum. >> I do have one question. Thank you for this. I'm so thankful for you and the work that you've done so far. So kudos. >> Thank you. >> Um one thing and you may have said it and I may have missed it. I love learning about how students have been impacted and families have been impacted. How have our educators been impacted by some of the changes that have been made? And again, you may have
180gone over it. I may have missed it. I'm sorry. >> And I didn't get into I didn't get into it very very far. Um, we've gotten really good feedback from from our teachers. Um, the committees that I've been able to sit in personally, just the opportunity to to be able to say like, hey, this is what's going on. Help me understand, you know, what's happening. Our teachers have been really really pleased with that. Um Lauren, Tiffany, and Jen meet with the teachers monthly and then we meet weekly as a team so that we're trying to be very um responsive to the concerns that come up of our of our teachers. But the feedback that I've gotten has been very very positive. >> We have had less attrition. Am I accurate in that assessment >> of
181our special ed folks? Yes, >> it it does seem that way. Um which I which and that goes to building that staff capacity. Um the work in special education is not easy. It is not easy and teachers oftentimes do not leave. I mean some teachers leave the profession but some teachers just leave special education. Our goal is you know if you need a break or you want to do something different good for you and we're going to support you with that. But if you are excellent at what you do in special education then we want to keep you in special education. And even if that means doing something different within special ed that's great too, right? You don't have to stay in the same position forever, but we want to have our high quality educators
182stay within that supportive environment. >> And um I ditto really happy you're here. Uh I'm in one of those massive parent groups and consistently over the past few years people will say I'm moving to the area. What area should I live in? and it was like don't go to Rose Street Media School District. And so like I'm seeing that like people are saying they they've had um really positive um experiences now like that's not the you know I don't see that trend anymore. So and I know it's because of the work that you've you've done here and the shift in the district. So thank you. I I appreciate you saying that, but I really do want to go back to that that second slide of I mean, the team here is exceptional. Um, and I
183have been really really honored to get the opportunity to to speak on the on their behalf. Um, I'd love to take all the credit, but at some point there's going to be that negative and I will absolutely take all the blame, right? But, um, no, the team really is I mean, been really really excellent to work with. >> Um, I have a comment and a question. I just want to echo again and I will use your slide. Thank you for your hospitality as a special education parent myself. >> Thank you. >> Um I do find it um very helpful when the team is empathetic and um listens to the family. So um thank you for that. I think it's super important um and very welcome. So that's my comment. Um my question is um very
184specific because again given my personal um experiences but I'm just curious in your visits to Garnet Valley however heard Shai Chester um as far as life skills and autistic support goes what was what what did you find there that they're doing that maybe we're not doing that possibly we could bring um and then my my question is sort of second at the elementary level at least a year ago and maybe it has changed this school year I'm not or life skills and autistic support were separate and then when we get to the secondary level they're combined. Um I didn't know if that was um intentional. Is that a staffing thing? Um I know my now my question's a little bit complex but um sure or compound I should say. Um so >> that's where I'm
185at. >> Garnet Garnet the visits and and to be to be 100% transparent to everyone uh the Hford visit was scheduled and then needed to be rescheduled with weather in February. So, we haven't been there yet. Garnet Valley and Chai Chester, it was I I'm thrilled that we were able to visit both because they gave us very opposite perspectives. Um, Garnet Valley and obviously I'm very familiar with it is onetoone with every student everywhere. The Garner Valley team was very open with our team about, you know, because I think our team went in, especially some of our regular ed teachers saying like Dan's taking us to Garner Valley so we can see on the ones and then we're going to The Gardener Valley team was very um open with saying that poses a real challenge
186to independence um you know because students become dependent on that adult. The Chai Chester visit was absolutely eyeopening for our team and we did that. It was not intentional. It just happened to be second. They probably had a ratio of about 3:1 and their classrooms were so calm and just I mean the kids just knew what they were doing and the staff were they almost walked away I I want to say in awe. I mean, we we could not have been more complimentary of the work that the team at Chai Chester had done. And I think that gave our staff a new lens to be able to say onetoone when needed, maybe not so much when when not needed, and the higher level of personalization that happens with um that mainstreaming time. So, you know,
187right now we kind of have school schedules and that drives a lot of our mainstreaming, not all of it, but some kids maybe can do a little bit more mainstreaming and some maybe need a little bit more um you know smaller and vacuum environment where I'm able to kind of work on those skills before we're ready to apply it. So, I would say Karlene that was the biggest takeaway um in terms of of of what we've been seeing from Indian Lane. Um, specific to that question about bringing uh together life skills and autistic support, elementary, the difference is you have the ability to do that because you're also you're in that one home room. Um, whereas at the secondary level, because students start having a little bit more of a diversified schedule, bringing the the
188groups together, and then when you're working in that work experience, there's just the opportunity to be able to do that in in one space. Yep. Okay. >> Anything else for Mr. Harrison? And I don't know if any of you are keeping score, but it was April 10th last year that Dan Harrison first presented to the board on his fourth day of work. >> That is true. >> So celebrated his anniversary. >> I have stopped counting the days. >> I would literally say today's day 52. Today there people are like, "What are you doing?" If you stay a little bit longer, we might even make it to April 10th at this point. >> Could be about >> right before my wife had texted me. She went, "How did it go?" And I just wrote back still
189waiting. I know. Yeah. So, I'm glad that I was able to. >> Thank you. Thanks everyone. >> Thank you. >> All right. We will move on to our next presentation. Um Mr. Roth is still here and Mr. Ry Shussell um will present the high school courses under 15 enrolled. >> Yes. Thank you, Dr. Napster Williams. The the gentlemen are coming up to the table. They're going to get themselves situated. Mr. Harrison, I think, is going to stop sharing his screen and Mr. Ryusel is going to jump in and share his. This is an annual presentation uh by policy. This is something that we present to the board each year. Um, tremendous amount of work goes into this at the high school level. Lots of people involved uh in preparing uh what ultimately will be the
190master schedule um and based on the enrollments that are here. As we have learned many times over the last year, Mr. Dr. Rime Shustle is an absolute expert in manipulating um the student management system to tell us how many where who chose who has something as a first choice and a second choice and where does that leave us in our schedule. So Mr. Roth, Mr. Rimes, I'm going to turn it over to you guys. >> Good evening. Uh thank you for having us here tonight. Um I actually credit my wife for teaching me how to use Excel to manipulate data. uh she's a tax accountant, so I would not be able to do any of that manipulation without her guidance there. Uh we're here tonight to talk about uh student uh requests. Um I think
191it's important to understand that as of right now, there are no schedules made. We're still determining how to put that schedule together based on the student request. Uh we use a student centric approach to scheduling. uh we put out um here's the courses that are available to you students and uh based on the request feedback then that's where we focus our energy into the number of sections we will offer. Unfortunately that means some courses run or requests for courses run a little low. Um some classes we're not able to run because it's too low. other classes we will combine together to uh help them run either in a companion mode or so teachers are able to u serve both sets of students at the same time. Uh and then other courses um have a certain
192level of um importance into the programming that we offer uh the students or uh how they serve the school and so we look to run those uh courses even though they are under 15 students. Uh here you can see at the top the courses that uh will not be able to run this year due to low uh requests. Um some of these courses it could be due to the new requirement of personal financial literacy for all students that now every junior has to take that. And so um the courses that are listed here were typically going to be junior level uh electives. And so that might be part of the reason why they're so low. Um I I can't speak to exactly why they've dropped down low. Um AP Spanish literature for example, that was
193going to be a new course offering. So that we don't really have that coming off the ground yet and where that's going. Um so that there's our do not offer ones. Uh our combined courses, uh these are some of these courses are ones we would look to combine anyway. Um, for example, the early childhood practicum, those are the students that go out into the elementary schools and help with our ele students. That course has historically always been combined with another FCS course. Um, this year it was a little tough because the teacher had to combine it with a foods course uh in the fall and while she was supervising those teachers uh students going out. Uh, luckily we've been able to add an intermediate level of the early childhood practicum. So now we have three
194levels of that course. Uh and so the um practicum students will combine with that new intermediate level and so the teacher will be able to focus a little bit more on what they're doing there. Um as tradition, our yearbook courses, they will combine together. Our art major courses will combine together. Um this year we needed to combine our AP computer science courses together. The the numbers were just uh lower. Again, I might attribute that to uh the personal financial literacy and being a junior level course. Um, new this year, actually, these courses were intended to be put together. These are our life skills students that will have companion students with them in their elective courses, uh, PE, art, music, uh, computers, potentially a foods course, um, and art courses. And so th those students will
195go together uh as they work through um our multicultural literature and women in literature courses will combine together um as they did this year the advanced architecture and advanced engineering. These are the students that are working on solo projects uh in engineering and architecture. They've kind of gone through those programs. Um and our Latin courses will combine uh courses that are under 15 that we will still run. Uh portfolio prep, the culminating art sequence uh course, uh students preparing for college, putting their portfolio together. Um AP drawing, uh the kind of the precursor to that portfolio prep course. Uh trouidors are our young uh developing uh ensemble for teners and bases. They're changing voices. uh they kind of need a safe space to be able to have that the changing voices before they're moving on
196to the more advanced choir. The ambassador choir, the the performing ensemble that represents the school and various uh u um things outside and in the community. Uh percussion ensemble developing the specifically the percussion skills um for those students. Uh international relations keeping the breadth of courses for our social studies course. uh AP economics, again keeping a breadth of of uh courses available for social studies. Uh AP Chinese, the culminating chi uh course for Chinese. Um this year our Chinese teacher was out for half the year and so we're hoping that her being present, she'll be able to get those numbers back up again and be able to do recruiting. >> She back now. >> She um similar with the Chinese three. So we're hoping those numbers will come back up. uh French one. Uh this
197is actually the first time where we're offering just French one and not a 1A 1B. Um we've been able to do this because of the the block schedule. Um and hoping to keep that continuity of the program there with that. And then TV production 2 um this year that was combined with TV production one. We're hoping we can have it as an independent course and that stu that course will focus on doing our penrest news production and some highlights and covering sporting events and things like that. >> Any questions about this from the board? So, I have to say, of course, I'm concerned um that the African-American studies course isn't running. Um with the pool that you have of the relation between African-American students in the school that would possibly be able to take this
198course, like what percentage, what number are we looking at? >> I'm sorry, I'm not really understanding. How many African-American students would be >> Seniors who would be able to take this course. >> So, uh I will say, you know, the course has run the last two years and it's been a diverse uh student, you know, enrollment. >> Asking about we're about uh I want to say we're about 4% uh African-American um which comes to be about 12 students per grade. um you know and then you know a number of students that are are multi-racial um and not you know certainly not all of our multi-racial families include African-American u but if you're asking just the number of African-American students per grade it's roughly about a dozen >> guys you also have there's a new course
199that's running this year about African-American history in Philadelphia in the area right >> yes so we we are offering a half credit course uh Philadelphia African-Americ American history. Um, that course is running right now. There's 26 requests for that. Um, I think that might be part of the personal financial literacy. So, the personal financial literacy is a half credit for juniors. Juniors seeking another half credit gravitated then toward the um, uh, Philadelphia African-American course, which is another half credit. And we're hoping that that will then be like, okay, now we have 26 kids that took this course. We have a whole cohort of kids that then will be really apt to be able to take the AP African-American studies course their senior year. >> Feel like we should ask more because it's so late. >>
200Good. >> I do have just one quick clarifying question. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know it's past my bedtime. Trust me, I'm um >> these are courses that will still be offered again next year. Like it's not like they're being taken out of the curriculum. They're just not going to be running this year, right? >> Um with the exception of possibly the modern Shakespeare course. This is the second year we've offered that course and >> an AI. Are we going to do that? >> Maybe that's what we change it into is an AI Shakespeare course. Um but uh when we see trend of courses that are low requests for two three years in a row maybe it's time to revisit what we're offering students uh maybe pull our students a little bit what are you
201interested in taking and then adapt those course offerings like so >> or present Shakespeare in another way you know >> like Shakespeare has got plenty of attention with the curriculum I'm not too worried about his particular literature Right. But but yeah, so you wait a couple of years, right, until you decide, okay, it looks like we maybe need to try another thing. So these will most likely besides the modern Shakespeare reappear as an offering. >> That is the intention. Yes. >> I do think the digital photography though, we bought some equipment and everything in hopes that this class would take off. >> So the intro to photography course um still has a great number of students. Um, I think we're over 50 requests for that. And then you also have to consider that's just primary
202requests. We have probably about 75 alternate requests for that course. Um, I again I can't speak to right now why that's not metriculating into that second level, but there is a lot of interest in digital art. It's just more at that intro level right now. >> One of the things that Mr. Ry Shustles worked at the art department on is kind of helping to create more pathways kind of see kids through we don't want to isolate them to programs but to see them through uh some programs so that way we get longevity in programs like that. >> Okay. All right. Thank you both. >> Thank you. >> I will stop sharing. >> All right. Um and our final presentation for the night but not we have more to do after that though. Um >> short
203we have the K to1 center update. Dr. Malashsh. >> Thank you Dr. Naps Williams. Phil Solomon from ICS. Um one of our our partners in the project is here with us this evening to provide us with an update. If you recall, the last formal update that Phil and members of his team did uh was during the February work session during the March work March work session. I provided uh just a real brief update. So, Phil is here this evening um with uh some important things to discuss. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me back. Um I only have about five slides of presented material, so I'm just just letting you know. Um when I was here last uh we did we went through a pretty substantial update. We talked about um applying
204for the grant. Uh the building had been progressed as far as it could be um before we could before we get land development. We had ongoing ongoing discussions with uh the Philadelphia meeting room. I've been using the the term to church for them. They're religious organization. And we needed to progress that further. we needed to have some kind of a agreement with the church to be able to build the rest of the pro uh project. So, we had also gotten a formal appraisal for the land that we needed. Um traffic study was complete and we were targeting for land development in March, April. Clearly, it's April. Um, so just a quick reminder, uh, PennDOT was already planning to realign Rose Tree Road with, um, the Granite Run Mall light or I forget what it's called
205now, but right at the Middletown Road, what's it called? >> Prominade. Yes, I'm sorry. I >> old habits die hard. Um, I have I have blown that up over here just to show kind of what was happening with that. And you can see this is the area where the building should go. There is also a piece of the land from your neighbor that need that will be needed to realign the road. Um, there's information available for this. This is a long-term project. I put the website there for anybody who wanted more information on that. It's it's not new news, it's old news. Uh, when I when I look at the property that's getting developed, there's this little piece of land. I'm just going to point to it with my pointer. Uh, that is on the
206PMR property that is needed. It's about a quarter acre. Uh we've been working to I guess put together an agreement uh for that quarter acre land and this is kind of the the progress that's that we have made. Uh we met early in November. The township would prefer not the PMR church already has their permits. They're permitted to build. Um they will have right in right out on Middletown Road preferences. they the township did not want that uh after the the realigned road. They've encouraged them to get in touch with the school district and see if we could work something out. This is the the tasks that we've done since then. We met with them. Originally, it was very good meeting. Looked like we were going to be collaborative. Uh met with them again in
207December to to talk about how we could collaborate. Um they had met with the township. Appraisal was done in January. Uh then we got a request from the church uh for that piece of property. There's some laughter, but for $3 million. Um just to remind you the the stated value of that land from an appraiser uh who works with PennDOT and who would appraise and pay was about $83,000 >> and they purchased their entire multi-acre package for 1.5 million. >> Uh I believe that's yeah the correct million little perspective there. uh took us a little bit back, you know, and I was like, you know, that was maybe maybe this isn't going to work. And we we worked through this a couple different ways. Came back in February after we met again um with a
208revised request for $1.5 million. Uh again, um I think that's that's maybe a non-starter for public money. Um we got our official appraisal. um we've evaluated different ways to work with them like maybe maybe it's not a money thing, maybe we can trade easements or they they need some things on our property. Um so we tried to work through that and the solicitor, your solicitor has actually kind of uh told them here's the parameters we can work within and we've actually not heard back from them. So uh having >> I'm so sorry. I just want to back up for a second because I it's you're going through a lot of important information and I know we are all more or less familiar, but in case anyone is listening, the big thing that I want to
209make sure we're really clear on is that the church went ahead and said we want $3 million for that piece of land >> that has been valued by not just like an independent >> an independent appraiser >> independent appraiser worth only $83,000. We at no point would ever consider paying $3 million for that land. I don't want that to come out there. Right. That's not what we are considering. That's what the church asked for. Correct. We said no. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And and Susan, it was it was $3 million in involving >> work and property and money and it was a whole that was the the valuation of the package in order for us to acquire that >> less little less than a quart. >> And that was their ask. I just wanted
210to be very clear that it was never a question of paying that. That is what they have asked for districtly. You wanted us to somehow change this. Here's all of the impact. I had I had listed as impact before. Um so there was a lot of wish list on there. It was just a non-starter. the let's take our property from a really nice Toyota to like a Maserati in terms of what they were asking us to spend that money on for this. >> Um yeah, so we've been back and forth a few times. Uh and it it's been very slowgoing. This is five months now when we thought maybe it would be a month or two to try to work this out. So, you know, they they have now changed legal counsel. They've still been
211slow to respond. Here's the problem. You cannot submit the land development plans until you have some documentation of how you're going to put that realigned road on that piece of property that is on the neighboring property. So that either takes the shape of a memorandum of understanding between the two parties or evidence of eminent domain filing. Now an eminent domain filing doesn't mean that's what's going to happen, but it puts parameters around this whole discussion. Um, and if a agreement can't be made, then it does go to a court and they determine the value. We already have it appraised by people from PennDOT who would appraise this for this kind of work. That's where the $83,000 came from. So, in order to not delay the project further, I mean, we would recommend the district consider
212that. Um if we continue to delay and wait >> consider eminent domain for that piece of property. Now remember this is not a surprise that this property this property was going to be used for from PENDOT to build this. That was known when the property was purchased. That was known when you purchased your property. This is a long-term thing. The district is essentially accelerating that process and you would use the same process that Pendot would use. So no difference there. Um as I said, even if you're in an imminent domain uh process, you can still, you know, have a negotiation and still have some kind of me memorandum of understanding without it being a legal issue. Uh this just puts a limit to how long that will take. So you said when we file for
213evident domain then we can submit to >> you can submit with just the filing >> but just so just the second we file it or is there some process that has to happen before >> it has to just be legally filed that this is this is the path you're taking. So there is some verification that has been filed through whatever I forget the jurisdiction but yeah you have to file it in a report >> but if if there's an if there's opposition from PMP towards it >> doesn't matter doesn't matter >> you they the township will still review the plans >> now they're not going to let us build until that's done but they what they won't do is review plans that has something that you're building on somebody else's property without some way to
214do that. That's what they they won't accept that. We've already run that to ground with the township's um legal council. Uh so that this is these are the two things. It's either a memorandum of understanding or evidence of em im eminent domain filing. >> So if our if our council files for eminent domain on Monday, then we could >> I can take that filing with the plans and specs that are ready submit it and they will give us comment on that. >> Okay. and they they will assume that this this that will takes quite a bit of time. So they figure that by the time that is worked out this will be worked out as well >> and we are only requesting eminent domain for property that pendot would have taken whenever I do that
215project or whenever they would have done that project. >> Look if it were possible for us to move it and not have to do that we would but we can't. That's what Pendot has said. It needs to happen and like we're not in a position to, you know, to argue with that. >> Or would we? That's that's the road they want to build. >> And we're doing the same process that Pendot would. >> Correct. >> We would be purchasing that land from them. We would have to pay them fairly for that piece of land. >> It's still a fair value um transfer. >> Um just like they were going to take the property that you know is on your land as well. Now, when we submitted that grant, the nice thing is that you can
216use that property as kind of your match. So, you know, it was uh that's a benefit. Yeah. I wish I had better news, but you know, >> all their plans have already been approved by Middletown, but now they can't move forward because of the same issue. Is that correct? >> They absolutely can move forward. Yeah. They there there's no reason that they can't move forward. We're not we're not prohibiting them from doing anything. >> Um this was a good faith effort, you know, that was requested by the township and we did a good faith try to make this happen, but the timelines of the two projects are they just are not compatible. They need those built next year. I mean, we wouldn't be to this road for quite a while. >> Did the township request
217anything of them at all? I mean, I know that they have all their other plans, but in light of the road that will likely be accelerated. Has the township asked anything of them? >> That that I do not know. Yeah, >> that we don't know that, Shel. That's really a question for them. We haven't and the again, so the the challenge of it is because we have not yet been able to make submission to the township, you know, other than the discussion take taken place between the engineers and the professionals. there's not been an opportunity for the planning board to review and ask questions about it or to make suggestion or for council to review. Um they just haven't had that opportunity to do that. >> This is not PennDOT requesting that we do this
218project early. It's Middletown Township that wants us to realign. Correct. >> So the way it worked, if you remember, we did a traffic study and there was an existing traffic issue in the area. Part of the solution is this big pin dot project and this piece is the piece that would be on your property that you would control in order to help solve the problem globally. There was different ways that you could do that in a temporary format, but to actually do this solves the problem permanently and was marginally more costly. So as a as a good neighbor, a good citizen, this was the right thing to do and I think the board chose to do that in lie of some of the other lesser >> Yeah. As as we know, as we've discussed in
219here, right, there's a there's an issue with traffic, right? There's an issue with traffic at 352 and Rose that that exists that that's an existing condition. you know, the the board as we went through a number of times and discussed, you know, to take this approach addresses it for the use, the limited use that that's going to be in the in-n-out for the school and the everyday use for the community, you know, that has existed and will continue to exist. >> It also improves our future because if we were not to do this, when PENDOT then did go through with the project, it would be disastrous. >> Yeah. You'd have to redo everything. >> Yeah. And it would be just complicated for our day-to-day in and out. So, >> well, and it would be with
220an active school. So, it would just be very very complicated. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> Okay. I mean, I think we should just move forward as much as possible and hope that, you know, we can still have conversations with the church and which you can >> which right, which I know that we're committed to >> to try to come to some resolution. >> Agree. You know, I I still think I've I've thought it along as we go back to the original meetings that we had with the the folks from the the church back in November. There's an amicable agreement that exists in here. It's just a matter of getting to that. Um, you know, and uh I I've asked our solicitor to prepare the paperwork for eminent domain knowing that we would be having a
221discussion, you know, this evening to get board perspective, you know, just on on where we are. We don't have any we have to move forward, right? We we cannot wait any longer uh in terms of of where we are. We need Middletown Township to be able to have the public discussions about the school and about the road that that has to occur, right? There there are too many u there's been too much discussion on the side that's existed. It needs to be a formula of public discussion that takes place about this, you know, and that's this gets us to that next step. And I think too importantly, we want to pay the fair market value for that piece of property. We don't want to pay $3 million for a piece of property that's worth $82,000
222because that would be this irresponsible. So, if this is the way we have to do that, this is the way we have to do that, >> right? You know, we as a board of education or board of school directors and as a school district, you know, part of our primary responsibility, go back to the the lady's presentation earlier is we have to be effective and efficient stewards, you know, of the funds that we're receiving from the public, you know, and how are we providing service to the public, right? That that's our responsibility to go through. And to say that we would pay $3 million or and the equivalent of $3 million of work and land and all kinds of other things for a quarter of an acre of land is it's just it's always as
223Phil said it's always going to be a non-stop, right? That that just does not make practical sense and we could not do that. >> Are there any other questions from the board? Okay, I think we have a um something from someone in the community and again I just need you to to be brief. >> How long does the eminent domain process take? >> Um Miss Puff, that's a a question really for the attorneys. I know once it gets submitted, there's a time frame um that the current owner of the land can respond with with questions or concerns and then there's a legal process once it gets on the docket. that would occur here in Delaware County um you know through the legal process. The the time frame that I've been told is you know soup
224to nuts would be done within six months >> but this could be another six months. >> So the the question the follow question was could this be another six months? So it could take six months. It's going to take six months to go through the process with Middletown Township and with PennDOT and they would be parallel paths that would be occurring at the same time. >> Middletown So the followup question is we can't file with Middletown Township until this is taken care of. Correct. As Mr. Solomon just went through, we can't file to do work on a piece of property that we don't own. Right. So either the memorandum of understanding that we have an agreement that's going to take place to purchase it or the eminent domain filing that we're going to go through
225the legal process to acquire it and to still purchase the land. But you're right. I think you're mis not approved. Just filed. >> Just filed. Filed. >> No. No. just you have to file that you are you are taking >> y >> that's when that's when the >> if it's not approved >> that'd be unusual because then pen couldn't build a road there either >> so there's a question of whether the uh the eminent domain is not approved >> well again like so many things I guess we would have to cross that bridge when we get to it um you know the the plan is described you know is one that comes from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, one that's been supported and touted and advertised by Middletown Township. You know, they they host a pend
226to come down. They had the open house um you know, over at the the township building. You know, the we are not You're correct. You are correct. We're not going to make 3524 lanes. Yeah. There there's a legal process to go through. Um, according to the the lawyers and the folks that we have spoken to about it, it's a pretty straightforward process and based on the history of what the design is for this piece of land, it should be a pretty straightforward process. Should that not go through for some reason, we'll have that discussion publicly about what is it that we do for next steps. >> Okay. All right. Um, we're gonna we're going to move on now. Can I say one thing because I think there was a mis the the question said we
227can't file anything with Middletown until the eminent domain is settled. >> Okay. That's what Phil said. >> We just we have to we have to either have theou or we have to have evidence from the court that we have filed to begin the eminent domain process. Correct. Not that it's been come to resolution or been adjudicated. >> Correct. >> All right. Um >> thank you. >> Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. We have something else. I didn't see your hand. >> There's a there's a question about what are the legal fees for filing uh for eminent domain. >> Mine, I don't have a dollar amount. We have a solicitor that that we work, right? There's a it's an hourly piece that that he works on um to do that. that the eminent domain filing process is a
228pretty straightforward one um to go through. I can see if I can come up with an estimate for you, but I don't I would I would be just picking a number out of there. I really I don't have a a number to be able to give you sitting here tonight. >> There's just a question about whether or comment that this may be costly. So we again we believe you know that our solicitor and the firm you know that of which he is a part of which is larger than just the education department will be able to handle um the filing and any work that needs to be done on the legal side you know for the eminent domain process but I can get you a perspective on what that is. I just don't I' I'd
229be guessing for you which wouldn't be fair. >> All right so we're going to move on now. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, we we'll move to finance and operations. We'll start with uh capital projects update. Uh Dennisi and uh Mike Nolan, >> excuse me. >> Good evening, Evan. Okay. Go through our capital projects listing. >> No, didn't have it. All right, that's fine. Want >> me to share? Light up. Okay. Media media skylight. I've been told that the components are fabricated, scheduled for delivery within the next couple weeks. So, everything will be there ready for the start of work as soon as school is out. Spring delay track and field. We had our um bid opening yesterday. Bids were received. I'll show you in a minute the bid tabulation. Um, all of our
230approvals, MPDS permits, township done so that nothing's going to hold us up there for construction. Construction is scheduled for the spring summer 2026 and probably early fall depending on >> weather. Correct. Right. But hopefully we'll try to get it done by September. Penrest Turfield. Uh that's been that contract's been awarded. Bids were received in March. Uh field turf is the contractor construction should be starting there again miday and will be done should will be done by mid August for school. Uh the Glenwood and Rose Tree HVAC from last summer they are complete done punch list everything. Springton Lake cafeteria interior punch list work has been partially completed over spring break. Few items left. Exterior site work was supposed to start this week. I don't think we've seen much of it. Maybe weatherwise. Hopefully next week
231we'll be better off for doing some seating and fertilizing. Media Indian Lane that's in progress. All the corridors, all the ceilings have been removed. Ceiling tiles in most of the classrooms are done. New light fixture being are being temporarily hung and duck work should be starting soon in the corridors. 2026 capital projects bids were received on March 10th as contracts were awarded and construction will start soon as school is out. Can >> I ask what the Glenwood HVAC unit replacements are? Didn't we just put them in? >> What's I'm sorry. >> The Glenwood HVAC unit replacements for 20. >> Yes. I that that was from last summer and I just I kept carrying that cuz there were still punch list. >> No. All the way at the bottom. >> What I miss >> right there.
232>> The capital improvements. >> Yeah. It says Glenwood HVAC unit replacement. >> Yeah. We got four units that had to be replaced. >> Oh. >> They're additional from the previous summer. >> Okay. >> They were due to what, Mike? >> Yeah. They they were running pretty good uh two years ago. Um they use the old refrigerant. So um we wanted to upgrade them to the new refrigerant. We had some problems with them last year and since we're doing all these projects, we want to get them all up to up to date. >> Um Mr. Nolan, maybe you can answer this. Um I know Mr. Roth is not here. I know at the legislative meeting our student representatives mentioned the Penrest bathrooms and issues. Um I'm wondering if you could talk about what those issues are
233this and um because I know you are very um vigilant about taking care of our district. So uh what's going what >> can you just tell the community what's going on in the in the toilet rooms at Penrest because it I know it's not that we are not fixing what's the problem is. >> No. Um we definitely have some some issues. um they are isolated in issues for sure a lot of days. Um we get a lot of clogs that we can't control, right? So um we have our in-house plumber that takes care of them the best we can. Sometimes we have to bring a contractor out with a jet machine to do so. Um so that's that's a reoccurring issue um that >> is that a defective um unit or is it um user
234error? We'll >> say user error. Um, we get we get clogs, right? I mean, and when a jet machine comes, I don't know if you ever seen a jet machine, it's a truck that comes with a machine on the back and it high pressure water clears the whole pipe out all the way to the main. So, um, when that happens, we're clean. We're And I'm going to camera it to make sure we're all good. There's no broken pipes. We're clear. And the next day that this actually happened, the next day it happened again, right? So, um, I was actually working with Mr. raw of figuring out, you know, what was going on in those bathrooms. >> So, is it a question of maybe there's something other stuff is going in to the the toilets that's
235a problem and that maybe I mean that needs to be addressed by the students because I mean it sounds like you're doing what you can, but if things are being done intentionally to clog them, >> that that does happen on occasion. Um, sometimes my plumber will text me pictures of what he pulled out of these toilets. >> Um, and it's things that shouldn't be in the toilets, right? So, and sometimes you could tell it is accident. Some, you know, there there was a picture of a a >> in a staff bathroom that was a a bottle of fragrance, you know, that must have fell in there and got flushed. So, sometimes it's by accident. Sometimes I think it's on purpose, but, you know, it's it's not unique to here, right? So, it's going to happen.
236We're here to fix it. though. Um the other um things that were brought up by the students were some toilets leaking. Um again that happens every day all day. So we are on top of it. We have our incident IQ and I met with the students uh last year and I think I'm going to meet with them again. I talked to doc Dr. uh Ed Roth about it um as as well with Jenny from food service, Jenny Lee. So, um, we like to keep that communication going because, you know, we told him if we don't know about it, we can't fix it. And, you know, the next day after that board meeting, I was in a high school making making my rounds, right? >> So, um, yeah, we just have to know about them and
237sometimes we don't know about them and that's my concern, right? So, um, you know, I definitely take pride in the school and and I walk around definitely the next day. I was there early in the morning, trust me. And >> we know, we know, we know you take care of stuff. That's why I wanted it to be addressed because I knew it was it wasn't it was a larger issue and I'm glad you clarified. >> Yeah, for sure. We we try to stay on top of everything. It's it's an ongoing fight, but that's honestly that's why we're here, right? If they don't break things and we're not fixing them, then we don't have jobs, unfortunately. So, >> um don't start breaking things. I mean, best case scenario for maintenance staff, right? Is is everything's running
238great and and we're taking it easy. That never happens. Okay. But that is best case scenario. >> We did have a very quick follow question about the restroom issue that brought up. Have you noticed has there been an increase in incidents either intentional or otherwise or or is it just >> No, it's not really an increase >> like >> No, I mean it happens down at the stadium bathrooms, you know, like >> absolutely. I just wasn't sure if there was a happens on TikTok or whatever. There's a >> No, I don't think there's a phase going on. I just it's uh >> you know, high school kids being high school kids most of the time. >> And you know, when it happens more than one day a row, we start looking at the camera and
239say, "Is this a trend? Who's going in these bathrooms?" I work with um Ed Ross about figuring out what that could be. So, >> thank you. >> Yeah, no problem. >> Okay. Do you have to bid that by chance? Let's say yes. Yep. Is right track. >> Yeah. If you have the whole tab, that's all you got. recommendation from this is not here. Oh, >> I'm back on. Can I continue to share? Sorry, that's what I'm looking at. You can't hear it. >> Okay. This is the bid population for the um Springton Lake Track and Field. Uh Field Turf is the low bidder. They were also the low bidder on Pancress Turf Field, which is good. We have one contractor to deal with for both. Makes it a lot easier. As you can see, the
240bids were pretty close. And if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see that our budget was 2.6 6 million and the contract was 2,ion582. So we're right there and the rest of the bids were well within range. Okay. >> Do you have the one for the uh soda to start? So as you're aware back in May of May 20th, 2025, we were awarded a grant for a solar project. Um, we did a feasibility study at a couple schools. We determined that Rose Street was going to be the best school. Newer roof, um, plenty of sunlight, um, and it just made sense for that school. Some of the other schools needed has had some older roofs and it would have took a lot more money to get them, you know, new roofs on and then
241put solar on. So, um, as a starting point, we we we've received some bids. Um after doing a structural survey, Pico had to approve all this um we had uh two bids come in. Um and we we got them on March 31st and so we have a bid at 815,35 and 30% of that cost will be covered by the grant. So >> do we know does anybody know what like a projected savings of doing something like >> so savings um so simple payback will be about eight years um over 30 years it's $1.1 million. Yeah. And so the offset of the building will be for that building. That's why we chose that building after doing the feasibility study will be 99.7% of the electric cost for that building. >> Wow. >> Pretty good. It's good.
242>> So we did the high school. They have so many rooftop units on the high school and skylights and things like that. I believe the uh the offset was about 27%. >> And we have some older roofs. So when we went to Rosary with the newer pitch roof, the shingles are only two years old, I believe. Yeah. >> Um, it just made sense with the offset in in the cost. >> Do we these panels? >> We will not >> questions. >> Yep. >> That's all I got. >> Have a nice night. >> Thank you. We have a few more items under finance and operations. >> Yes. >> For the rest of the agenda, unless there's any questions, we can just do consent agenda. We do need item G, three delegates. Well, we're entitled to send
243three delegates to the um the uh excuse me, the PSBA delegate assembly. There is no virtual option this year >> and it's in Cumberland Valley somewhere in Cumberland Valley on November 7th. >> Just say Jackie has done it. I've done it. Shelley has done it. It you've done it. >> Thank you'all all very much for doing it. Well, no. What I'm saying is what I'm saying is if you haven't had an opportunity, it really it really is pretty great and and you you see how the system works at another level, I recommend uh that those who haven't done it >> or those who have done it can continue to do it, you know, whichever way. Is anybody interested in uh doing where where's Cumberland Valley? Where's that? Yeah, I think mid >> somewhere in the
244middle. >> Yeah. >> Well, maybe it's getting late >> that I have to do I have to go to that's a different as liaison. >> Yes. >> Oh, you know, I'll go if nobody else wants to go. >> I can go to New York and get it. Yeah. Yeah. Do we >> do we need to decide it right now or can we >> No, if you email me before next Friday. >> Okay. Well, good. So, you're not tomorrow. Okay. Yeah. >> All right. >> And then if there are no other questions on the remainder of uh finance and operations, we will move on. All right. Thank you. >> All right. So, we move to uh education and wellness. >> Oh, I'm I'm sorry. It says comparison report. >> There's a question about the budgetary um
245comparison reports and um whether there is an attachment I guess online. >> It will be posted online tomorrow. the budgetary comparison reports. >> You can poke >> test, >> but they will be attached tomorrow. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. All right, we're good. All right. Um, so education and wellness. >> Thank you everyone. Letters A, C, and D are things the board has seen previously. Not these particular items, but items similar to it in the sense of approving services for a host student uh at Lwin that we will be reinforced uh reimbursed for. C and D are contracts that we have with agencies to provide services um on an as needed basis. Letter B I would anticipate would be the one area where there may be a question. Every four years we are required to submit
246a compliance report with chapter 339 that says we have a compliant guidance plan in the areas of academics, career readiness and social uh social emotional support. What this what we're asking the board to approve is that we do in fact have that plan because we do in fact have that planned. uh it does the plan does not get into the details of questions like you know the what we talked about with the AI and the companionship that is work that we are going to continue to do with our counselors. This is just saying that we had the components of a successful counseling plan. >> So is there a document somewhere >> where can we find it? >> We can make sure that it is uh attached to the to the agenda. Absolutely. Yep. Mhm. >>
247And the other two are consent, ourou with the University of Delaware um that we have had at the high school over the last several years um and our lease agreement for technology questions. All right. Thank you. All right. Um so now we are moving to human resources Dr. Saladino. >> Good evening everyone. So how are you? So, we continue to have uh items on the agenda with staff members making some decisions about their intentions for next year. We've got three more retirements of non-instructional staff. Uh you'll recall that with our teachers there was a um kind of a deadline for them to indicate their intentions. There is no such deadline for our support staff. So, we're continuing to receive uh some retirements of some long uh serving staff members. Uh we are happy for them,
248sad for us uh as they make plans to retire. Um we also have some uh folks that are leaving us pursuing other opportunities outside of Rose Tree Media. Uh so again, some just some routine items. I'll call to your attention item F. Uh there are some revised job descriptions for four positions uh that exist in the school district. Uh these job descriptions are have been updated so that they more accurately align with the work uh that those individuals in those positions are doing. Um so the assistant superintendent, it really is a change of the title. Uh previously the title of the position was more focused specifically on curriculum and instruction um and now it is more broadly focused on the entire K12 uh school system. The director of curriculum and instruction position uh was formally
249a position that had multiple areas of responsibility um and multiple uh departments included in the title. It was a mouthful. Uh and so Mrs. Considine. This is the position that she currently holds. Uh she is going to be overseeing curriculum and instruction. Uh and that her title is being updated to director of curriculum and instruction and under that will be responsibilities for technology. Um similarly her administrative assistant really an update in the title of the position to align with her title um as well as to capture some of the responsibilities that go along with that department. The supervisor for technology is a revised position description. Uh we have a retirement of one of our longstanding uh colleagues who is actually with us at the table uh tonight. Uh Mrs. McCann. Um you'll recall that that
250retirement was approved a few months ago and we are sad for her departure but excited for her. Um, and so this was an opportunity for us to take a look at all of the important things that she does uh as well as to think about our needs moving forward in the area of technology. So we are changing the title uh for that position to supervisor for technology. Um in addition to the many things that Mrs. McCann currently does. Uh the person who takes over for her will have some additional responsibilities really with an instructional focus um bridging the gap between sort of the technical elements of the job as well as the application in classrooms for teaching and learning. And so those job descriptions really have been worked on over the last couple of months
251and we're pleased to present them to you for your review uh and hopefully for your approval later on this month once the job description for supervisor of technology is approved. We will then move forward with recruiting for that position. Overall, I'm happy to share with you that we are in uh high gear right now with uh recruitment for next year. Uh we are actively interviewing for several positions that uh are replacements for folks that are retiring that you've previously approved. We've posted for those positions. uh we are interviewing and right now I'm hopeful that even by um the legislative meeting in uh April that we'll have some candidates to present to you for approval by being out on the market uh this early. I am really confident that we're going to get some awesome folks
252uh to join our team here in Roere Media. That really has been our goal to get really out in front so that we are um able to secure the best talent that is out there and available for our kids and for our classrooms. We're going to continue that work. So, you'll see some folks on the agenda hopefully in April and then more folks in May. Uh this is going to be a a very busy and active time for our team. If anybody has any questions about any of those items on the agenda. >> And if really quickly, I'm always surprised when resignations don't say after 20 or 30 years of service, but it does happen with our food service workers quite a bit. Um, is there something we could do? >> The positions are part-time.
253Um, in both of those positions, I know that folks are pursuing opportunities where the position that they're going to be taking just is has more hours and with more hours comes higher compensation. So, um, those positions are great for people who are looking for four hours a day. You know, if you're looking for more, that's, you know, that's not what that role is. So um they are a little bit more transiency in that way but you know we're we're happy for the folks that you know they have found something to move on to. >> Okay, we're good. Thank you >> everyone. >> All right, so we have policies um for discussion. >> Yes. So, we we had a good discussion at our uh policy committee meeting uh a couple of two weeks ago uh I
254guess that it was through and in here just so you can see what's listed on the agenda. There are a number of items that will come up for first read in two weeks on the 23rd and then there were three items that will be we carried over for additional discussion during the May policy committee meeting. um if you'd like to weigh in. One of the things that we did spend time talking about and and we're going to look for some perspective and thoughts from the board just is about the school year calendar for 2027 2022 academic year. Uh as you know we are starting the academic year for students um on August 31st this year, a week prior to Labor Day because Labor Day is September the 7th. Um so we are starting uh on
255August 31st as are most of the other districts. uh in the surrounding area. We put together two calendars for 2728. One that starts again before Labor Day because next year Labor Day is September the 6th. Uh it's almost just as late as it is this year. Uh and one that starts us after Labor Day in the traditional um look. Um both of the calendars maintain graduation on the first Friday in June and school finishing the second Friday in June for students which when we went out to families and community last year was an important piece um that folks weighed in. Um but we put both of these on here. There are advantages and challenges to both of them um you know as you look at them. For context, I did um we did go through
256just to look about what other districts have been doing with start school year. Um Chester County, uh all of Chester County last in 25 and in 26 and I'm assuming again in 27. Chester County, it all starts the week before Labor Day. Um in Delaware County this year uh 2526 school year um Garnet Valley, Ridley, Upper Derby, and Wallingford started the week before Labor Day. All the rest of us started after Labor Day on Tuesday after Labor Day. Um just about everyone is starting uh either August 31st or September 1st this fall. Uh there's only a couple of districts. The only ones that I'm aware of are Innerboroough and Pendelo who are starting after Labor Day this year um for students. So for you to look at, you know, give perspective, see what you think,
257share your thoughts. Shel, you have thoughts? >> Um the graduation always being on the first Friday in June. I know that was raised last fall, but that's not really been a tradition here. As I looked back on the calendar, that's not been a tradition. So I'm not sure and it's not part of the contract with Newman because when we looked into it then we had to quickly get a ca get a spot with them. We didn't have a contract with them. So that's not been a traditional in the 2021 it was the 10th of June. So I'm not sure why it always has to be that first Friday if we don't have a contractual obligation to it. So if we can look into that and just figure out where that came from because that just
258really hasn't been a tradition here in the district. Is it a problem with it being on that first Friday? >> I think it really pushes for that. So, you know, I I was very concerned. E Easter was very late last year. It really bucked up against graduation because it was so late and it gave only a couple weeks for the AP students to go in there. And then some people were saying, you know, had neighbors and stuff had approached me about we don't have Eid off. We don't have other religious holidays off. And so we did a survey of the school, rightfully so. The, you know, Bill and and Joe were like, you know what? Well, let's find out if that's because other districts do offer those holidays off, you know. So, we did a
259survey of the district of our parents and we got a fairly good response rate. The one thing that was interesting is that they couldn't really agree on anything. Did did you want Easter to always go around or did you want spring break to always go around Easter or would you like it to be a fixed week? Some say yes, some say no, some say I don't care. So there was really not a strong sentiment on anything except for one thing. And the very one thing, it was like 70% said we want school to start after Labor Day. So I kind of feel like we went to the our community with the express notion of saying what do they really want? let's build a calendar around what they want. And so I'm hardressed to say when
260we when we did all that work to survey them and then we say we don't really care what they want. We're going to start it before Labor Day anyway. It doesn't really it doesn't really sound like it's the right thing to do. >> And I I mean I think you started talking about graduation on Friday. So what what does that have to do with >> because it pushes it makes it it pushes back the start date to accommodate June 2nd when June 2nd is very early for graduation. There'd be nothing wrong with having graduation on June 9th. We've had it before. We've had it later than that. Just in the last 5 years we've had it later than that. >> But it also depends on like >> wouldn't we have to analyze the calendars in
261those previous years to see when we started and what was going on? I mean, I I I'm just trying to figure out it's just >> if we start after Labor Day and we have a January 9th or a June 9th graduation date and a June 14th end of school for everybody, that's very much in keeping with what has always been in this district and it's not outrageous. We're not suggesting June 19th or anything like that. >> I hear what you're saying. I mean, I we just have to do what what works in terms of the the calendar. I was just I wasn't sure. I mean, I don't I don't know if it matters about the graduation if it's on a it's usually on a Friday. Right. >> Right. >> Um if it's on the first
262week or the second week. I mean, I I don't remember. I think it was the first week years ago or what. But I'm just trying to get a sense of why >> it matters. >> I I guess I I my one apprehension with putting too much into that survey. I I vividly remember sitting on my couch filling it out while watching TV a couple what a year ago and like the way the questions were worded I as I recall it didn't in any way correlate hey would you prefer to start before or after Labor Day but if you start after Labor Day you're going to potentially go later into June like the survey wasn't worded in a way that you could necessarily correlate those two things and maybe I should have been thinking a little
263bit harder looking at a calendar but like I I mean it >> did did But I should ask the question about the opposite >> finishing. Is it okay to finish in the second week that you asked that question? >> Okay. Well, it goes to show you how much I remember filling out that survey. Um >> I I I think this is all just a matter of personal preference. Like I don't know. >> I mean, and it's all it's sort of this issue about >> we're doing all the schools will be air conditioned. I remember that was an issue. I mean, maybe we need to evaluate that as well because that was the oh, we're starting if we start in a August, it'll be hot and then we don't want to go too late cuz it'll
264be hot now. Y'all got air. Y'all All right. So, I mean, we need to sort of rethink it in terms of >> sports too. >> Well, that's that's an issue. And then the other thing that we've talked about in the past two, well, the sports start date is dictated by PIAA. So, we have no control over the so that just is. But as an elementary parent, I'm sure you like again, we are not in the child care babysitting field. However, there are no summer camps the last week in August because all the >> it is a disaster for working parents that last week in August. And selfishly, yes, I would like my kid to go back to school. >> It's a reality for so many. I mean, anybody really does. But are there school are
265there programs like the second week of June, the third week of June? >> There are. Yes. >> Already set up. >> Yes. The And I will say this, >> it's they can staff the early June dates because college kids are home. They can't staff the end of August when the college kids have gone because who are summer camp counselors? College kids. >> We did do the survey >> the survey and it was like that was the clearest number. one thing. >> Well, I mean, go ahead. I'm sorry. >> Parents really felt that way. They could have said, >> "How many people answered this?" >> Tired and didn't answer the >> I don't know. And they didn't think about not having rule. I mean, if you have working families who really struggle at the end of
266August to find uh child care, then that's uh something we should be considering even if they're only 30% of the >> So, we're So, we're saying we would start on August 31st. I think we're saying we're discussing it. What? Which one? >> 30th. How is How is that going to help with the last week of summer camp? >> It's not. >> It's two days. How many days are >> No, but you're adding an extra If you don't If you start September after Labor Day, you're adding an extra week of no coverage. >> So, I will just throw out here and then maybe this is something that's fruitful for a further discussion at another time because I think it's a bigger issue. Um, it's also possible to, and I have vague recollections of the survey, and
267I'm tired, but sometimes something in the abstract can be a little bit difficult to wrap your mind around as well, not recognizing, hey, yes, okay, we might start a little bit later, but most people aren't thinking that Labor Day is so late. It really is late this year and what exactly that might mean. So, in principle, you want to start. We also have just a second. We also have a lot of people who just don't take surveys for a lot of reasons. they are overwhelmed and busy and tired and dealing with all the things and we have to like consider that as well. So, I'm just saying I think we got a lot of factors to consider and we're not going to be able to do it justice tonight. Is this something we can have
268further conversation about because it's just not going to be resolved in one evening? And I think there's a lot worthy of consideration. >> And I think >> I will just say we starting this upcoming year August 31st because Labor Day is so late. Like at what point is Labor Day not late anymore, right? Like >> if it's only on the first or the second, like Joe, what is the like six, seven? I like what are we doing here? If is it always going to be too late? I don't know. I just >> Or do we all do we offer child care? >> I don't staff a lot of kids. >> Come stamping. I mean, I think it's unfair to say that if people didn't participate in the survey, we should discount the results. Every family
269had the opportunity to weigh in and hundreds of them did. I also >> and we can't just throw that out and say those hundreds families don't matter. >> I don't think we're we're saying that. I I do think Well, Lisa, I'm saying that things have changed. I mean, I know it was last year, but things have changed and we need to make sure that we pay attention to that, too. And I think uh Susan, you're right about, you know, maybe putting the dates here. This is when it would start this and so people can see, but at one point it's going to be like this is the survey. This is the answer. Um, but I think being more specific about the dates might help too because usually like Labor Day, when is that? The second.
270Oh, I'm good. you know, you don't think about it that way. So, >> it's in those >> so we can re reflect further um about this. We don't need to make a decision tonight. >> Okay. >> Having us when is the time to have >> so ideally I would like to have the calendar adopted before we leave in June. Right. So that that June 11th legislative meeting >> can >> how are we going to come to some resolution as a board based on this discussion today >> well we have to continue maybe think about it >> some additional questions that were asked about what is there a historical piece about what's been done and when you know we can pull the the data that hard data back out from the survey last year about what
271that looks like and honestly we can talk about if we want to you know put something back out to families and say just as a snapshot here's an option. This is what we're looking at. You know, what do you think for 2728 and go from there, you know, to get people's perspective and feedback. We look at it, you know, educationally. Um, what goes on in in classrooms that week before Labor Day is always going to be more beneficial than what goes on in classrooms the second week in June or the third week in June. Always going to be more beneficial. Um, we're going to provide students with additional academic time prior to for the value that they have, the state tests that come up, AP exams, you know, all of those different types of things.
272Um, you know, just provides what it looks like. It also provides opportunity for us to spread out and do professional development differently to be embedded for professional staff. You know, what that looks like during the course of the year. um could also up also up for up the opportunity as we've talked about you know what's it look like with because we look at 990 hours and 900 hours you know for what an academic year looks like but about do we need to do if we have to close because of weather do we need to do an FID day every time we do that or is the opportunity just to say we're just closed you know that day >> and I think the last time we approved calendars we did two academic years I thought that
273was really helpful. So if that is something not to complicate the conversation because Labor Day will be slightly earlier or the second >> we have graphs for 2829. We we I can pull those out as well. >> I would I think I think it was worthwhile and it was helpful in planning to know two years out. I thought it was nice. So I think that would be very helpful for families to know. >> I also think it would be helpful to come up with some policy because like having this conversation all the time is like >> syncing policy said the calendar. This is what the galler is going to be would be the cleanest thing in the world. >> Like if it's what if it's before? >> Yes. Then we're going to start the the
274the Monday. Yes. The Monday before Labor Day will be the first day or Tuesday after unless Labor Day is >> is on this day, sixth or seventh >> and it'll be >> okay. I I would like that. I like guidelines >> and I think we need to be consistent about what we think about it because we also had a lot of conversations about how many half days are in the calendar and how half days are very difficult for families of young children and finding child care and the response to that was that child care was not our problem and it was not our business. So it's not our business when it comes to half days but it is our business when it comes to not having camp at the end of the summer. So we
275need to be consistent in what our what we're guiding our decisions on. And I'm I'm not again I'm not saying that childcare is not is our responsibility, but there are options when there are half days. The leading edge program is an option every time there's a half day that you can send your child to. It costs money. I'm not saying it's the the best option, but it is better than an absence of any option. >> But I will say this as a special needs parent, that is not the case for special needs families because >> there's a yes. if if you have the means and ability, yes, but it's not the case for every student. So, it's just something to consider. >> So, I guess this will be on our agenda for our next work
276session and people come and with comments or thoughts and seems like we'll >> maybe have to make a decision. Maybe we could make wait until May. I don't know. >> And Dr. Nap Williams, we will move it to the discussion for May. It will not appear as the calendar will not appear as a first read for April. >> Okay. >> So those items that a discussion for May does that mean that the next policy? >> Yes. >> The next policy. Okay. >> Yes. >> Good question. >> Thank you. >> Always tired. >> We can have a discussion during the May work session. We can certainly have >> Yeah, that's what I just said. We're going to have it at the work session. We can I mean we I guess we can bump it up a
277Well, we'll have to see if uh where it should go based on what we have, but I mean I guess that makes sense. >> We can put on early and if it goes on early, we're going in order Williams. >> Following the order. >> All right. Following the order. All right. Well, that is it. What time is it? I was right. 10:30.