001All right. It is 5:30. Um, I'd like to call to order the meeting the special meeting for general purposes, Wednesday, April 29th, 2026. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Can I get a roll call? Sure. Mr. Brazil? Up, you're mute you're muted, but I see you, Joe. I'm muted there. Yeah. I see you. Mr. Casey? Present. Mrs. Chesak? Present. Mrs. Cleary? Present. Miss Fox? Present. Miss Merkel? Present. Mr. Zlaky? Present. Mr. Triano? Present. Mr. Borthwick? Present. Nine present. All right, the purpose of this meeting with that special meeting has been called for general purposes and has been duly advertised. Okay, can I get a motion
002to approve the agenda? I move to approve the agenda. Second. Okay, on the question. Roll call. Uh Mr. Casey? We're approving the agenda, Mr. Casey. I don't think he's participating. Is he is he not? Okay, I'm sorry. I thought he was here. Yeah. Okay. Um Mrs. Chesak? Yes. Mrs. Cleary? Yes. Ms. Fox? Yes. Ms. Merkel? Yes. Ms. Truszkowski? Yes. Mr. Triano? Yes. Mr. Brazil? Yes. Mr. Borthwick? Yes. Nine affirmative, eight affirmative. Okay. Solicitor's report? Nothing for the meeting. All right. Superintendent's report? I'll do my comments Monday night at the full board meeting. Okay. Any public comments, Jenny? No, we don't have anyone that signed up. Okay, so we start off with a under the operations committee, that's Joe Brazil with uh motion to approve demo bid packages. That's that's you, Mr. Brazil. Yes, I make
003the motion. Approve the demo. Second. On the question? Roll call. Uh Mrs. Truszkowski >> Wait, on the question. Sorry. I was I was trying to unmute. Um I had a good conversation just prior with uh Superintendent Keating and she chimed in a few other people um to help me understand the cooperative purchasing and such. Um just really briefly since I needed some clarification just for the record if um um I don't know if Mr. Laffey or um if I think it looks like Chris is here from um Quandel. If someone just wants to explain um how the cooperative is working um the and um the walk-through that was done to make sure it's in scope um and why this is the recommended choice uh this evening. Whoever wants to take that. Certainly, I'd be happy
004to explain the cooperative piece of it. Um it appears that one of the bids that received was through a job order contracting or a job through KPN, which is a Keystone Purchasing Network. Um it uh a cooperative purchasing is a is an agreement where an agency, an authorized agency, conducts bids on behalf of other agencies as well, which allows people like school districts to piggyback off them as an allowable allowable procurement method. Lowbar did submit a bid, which again, we did conduct a public bid, meaning that it was open to other bidders. You know, we we we solicited multiple proposals for this. With the the proposal that they submitted, I believe it appears is is per the KPN contract Jack pricing, which they're utilizing some pricing that's incorporated within that cooperative. It's It's Attorney Moran.
005Pat, it's also the lowest proposal, correct? It is It is Attorney Moran, correct. It is >> Right. It is at about 311,000. It's lower than the two other bids received, which were at 472,000 and 465,000. So, approximately about 150 to 160,000 hours lower. Thank you. All right, roll call. Um Mrs. Jezik? Yes. Mrs. Cleary? Yes. Ms. Fox? Yes. Ms. Merkel? Yes. Mr. Sklaney? Yes. Mr. Triano? Yes. Mr. Brazil? Yes. Mr. Casey? Oh, he's not here. Never mind. Sorry. Mr. Borthwick? Yes. Eight affirmative. Okay, next over to the policy committee. That's Director Fox. We will have a motion to approve first read policy 304.1 nepotism. Second. Second. On the question? Um on the question, as policy chair, I did have a few questions um just about how the changes came about and um I I have
006some further questions of how they interact with the ARs. So, I'm definitely not opposed to um updating policies. I would just like the opportunity to take them through policy committee, um which I would like to schedule a policy committee um after Monday's meeting before our next meeting. Um, so to be able to sorry, have that conversation, I'm asking to um table this motion so that we can have further discussion of how this interacts with the AR and the changes. Um, so I'll make a motion to table at this time. I'll second. All right, roll call. Uh, Mrs. Cleary? Yes. Ms. Fox? Yes. Ms. Merkel? No. Mrs. Lucky? No. Mr. Triana? Yes. Mr. Brazil? No. Mr. Oh, sorry. Mrs. Chesak? No. Uh, Mr. Borthwick? No. Three affirmative, five negative, motion fails. Okay. All right, I think
007that means we can do a roll call on what's on the floor. Mhm. Okay. All righty, Ms. Fox. >> Is there not a further on the question after after that? Cleary or Cleary Merkel? >> One one more one more, a director can speak twice on the question. Okay, so one more round. Okay, so I guess at this point because the motion failed um to table, um like I said, I'm not against updating um this policy, but um to clarify this policy is in regards to nepotism and hiring relatives of the superintendent or board members. So, the original policy strictly prohibited it and the new policy allows it with some constraints, but they're very, um, they're very vague. Um, so that's why I was hoping that we could bring this to policy committee first. Uh, so
008that we could discuss them and talk about the implications of this. So, just to clarify again, uh, this is first read, so second read will be in three business days on Monday. Um, but this original policy, which was adopted in 2014, prohibited nepotism and this new policy is committed to fair and transparent hiring practices, but doesn't prohibit it. Um, so that's why I thought this was a really important topic to be able to talk about through committee. Um, but I just wanted to state that for the public. That's all. Uh, I have a question. Under the old policy, were there any occasions when a board member's family member was hired under the old policy, which stated prohibited? Does anybody have that answer? I don't know how we'd know that. I mean, you'd have to remember
009that. Uh, so July July 26th, um, of 2021, that did occur. Um, So, we had a policy that said prohibited, but it happened. But it happened. Okay. Yeah, I want to say for policy. I want to say for the record that this policy, and this is for the public, this policy actually uh, the the rewrite of the policy strengthens uh, our anti-nepotism policy. It does a lot of clarification. It requires that should central administration and the superintendent discover that that there is a relative applying for a job that they are to immediately notify the board. That could That was not in there previously. So, the board will be made aware more quickly. And secondly, what's important is this updated policy also precludes board members from being part of the interview process should a relative be
010applying for something. So, for those who don't know, we kind of have like a I guess you would call it a round robin where different board members will sit in on interviews through a rotational basis. So, if a relative were to be part of the interview process going forward, that board member would no longer be allowed to be part of it. So, what this policy is doing based on my read, uh is strengthening our anti-nepotism policy. Okay. All right. >> I just don't know what I was going to say I don't know what the hurry is and why we just can't put it, you know, put it off so that we have an opportunity to discuss it during a policy meeting instead of feeling a little rushed on a Zoom. But, that's just my opinion.
011Thank you, Carol. We We have two We have two reads of this. And at no point has anybody normally policy or any committee meeting actually for anybody, you send a request and it gets scheduled. I've not received any such request. We just got this policy on Friday. And I didn't see it till Tuesday cuz board docs were knocked off on Monday. And the second read is in three business days. Okay. I mean, everybody is welcome to read it, think about it, talk about it, which we just did, and then also do so at the meeting and vote yay or nay based on their feelings. All right. Roll call. Ms. Fox. No. Ms. Merkel? Yes. Ms. Zlucky? Yes. Mr. Triano? Yes. Mr. Brazil? Yes. Ms. Chesick? Yes. Ms. Cleary? No. Mr. Borthwick? Yes. Six affirmative, two
012negative, motion passes. I believe that means we can do if somebody would like it a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All right.