School Board Work Session 2-28-2022

001so mrs are you there yep okay are we just missing director gilmartin and director holmes is that what you're seeing oh there's director gil martin i think maybe just director holmes i think that's the only person we're missing director holmes okay let's just give him a second i know i was having a hard time getting in as well i don't see mr mcandrew i'm here oh there you are thank you okay director holmes i see him here he's here ian okay i don't see him but i see he's signed in but i can't i don't see him so i don't know if he can hear me i see him here oh there you are i see him okay great so i think we've got everybody here then right so we can go ahead and call

002to order our work session for monday february 28 2022 uh please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice sorry about that mrs why would you take roll call mr keswick president mrs cleary sorry present ms cruz present ms fox present ms good martin present mr holmes present miss you present mr mcandrew president mrs johnny present night present thank you okay we'll go right right to our agenda under budget and finance director gilmartin okay um under the consent agenda we will have motions to approve the bill list the exception bill list and bill lists capital improvement bill list delinquent tax report treasurer's report repository sales budget transfers if

003any in disposal of assets in if any uh mr laffy i think everything is straightforward there but is there anything we need to touch on no those uh those items uh director gil martin are our standard monthly uh agenda items for the budget and finance department very good thank you uh we will now have a discussion review and motion to accept the 2020 audited financial statements and single audit we have carl hogan with us this evening mr hogan i believe you're muted all right if i can just introduce carl carl is the partner for bbd llp which is our independent auditors uh they've been on with the district now for the past two years to do to complete our 2019 and this uh the 2020 audit thank you everybody can everybody see my screen yes

004okay cool um so i'm gonna give a brief uh synopsis we're just uh wrapping up the uh 2020 audit and it'll be um the game plan here is for the audit to be on the agenda for next monday nights meeting for full approval um i know pat i mean the numbers you're going to see here tonight are what pat have been reporting to everybody in the board um you know at the conclusion of 2020 and i know he had reported the results of the audit and where you stood uh related to your fund balance etc so this is just kind of a putting a ribbon on things and uh wrapping things up for 2020. i'm just going to go over some of the highlights in the financial statements the first being uh the independent auditor's

005report uh standard independent auditor's report outlining management's responsibilities our responsibilities um you know there we have one little change uh an accounting principle for the current year about as exciting as it gets related to gas be implemented in new gatsby during the current year um related to your fiduciary activities but the most important thing here is this opinion paragraph right here um basically stating that the numbers that are presented to us by management for the year ended uh december 31st 2020 were fairly presented um there is another page to the uh audit opinion um basically outlining what what type of responsibility we're taking for the different sections of the audit report being the required supplementary information and the other or supplemental information and you know what kind of opinion you received on those or what

006kind of opinion were given on those types of additional information within the report all right so i'm going to skip to the back of the audit report i'm going to make this quick to get to the most important part of the audit i think and that's the results for the year ended december 31st 2020. um this is your budgetary comparison schedule for your general fund this outlines what your original budget your final budget and your actual numbers and how you came in the first thing i like to highlight is that you know when you put your budget together for um 2020 this is right before covet 19 and a lot of the things that you anticipated to happen in 2020 as we all know um didn't come to fruition not only for the conclusion of

007the school year for 2020 but also for a good portion of the 20 you know from september of 2020 i guess through march of 2021 you were kind of operating in virtual mode so a lot of the things um that you anticipated to happen especially as it pertains to expenditures didn't really happen um kind of went in a good way in terms of the expenditures though because what was budgeted what actually happened um so just to kind of go over some of the results for 2020 here um local source revenue and state source revenues were pretty much right on budget especially the state source revenues you know what the state's going to give you on an annual basis so that's always going to come in within you know a very good budgeted range there but

008the federal source revenue you typically know what you're going to receive there as well but during the current year um right towards the end or going into the 2021 school year you received additional funding through the cares act which was used so that's accounting for um the increase in the federal source revenues as it pertains to your budget so when we go what you're going to see in 2021 you're able to plan for that a little bit more knowing what kind of funding we're going to get through not only the cares act but also through the sr funding um one two and i guess three will be hitting soon as well so overall when you look at your revenues and you look at them as a comparative budget i mean pretty much right on budget

009less than one percent and we look at 165 million dollar budget that that came in right on um right on budget but here's where things the expenditures because of cobit 19. um if ever i'm sure everybody remembers march um you know you went to the virtual mode and you were in virtual mode all the way through the end of the year as a result a lot of expenditures that you anticipated to have related to being in in-person learning didn't happen and resulted in savings um across all the various functions so some of them make sense because they weren't paying your transportation uh carrier the buildings were closed uh et cetera so overall um your budgeted expenditures were actually 10.5 million dollars under budget compared to your 165 million dollar uh budget and it's all being

010driven by you know not incurring expenditures related to in-person learning and not being open you know right at the conclusion of the 2020 uh june 30th 2020 school year so when you put your budget together you budgeted to have a balanced budget and then uh you actually added to your fund balance 10 million dollars all being driven by the expenditures there so at the end of the day when you look at it refund balance was at 1.4 um relatively low um so you know even though um your budget didn't go as planned it would turn out to be a positive uh financial uh situation for the district actually adding money and giving themselves a little bit of a fun balance so if you remember the district was in a deficit situation got itself into the

011black during uh 2019 now and at the end of december 31st 2020 you have a fund balance and uh you know uh almost at the eight percent that's allowed um by pde at your end so uh any questions concerns like i said as i know pat reported this to everybody related to this um just a couple other pages i'm going to go over real quick this is the same information i just presented to you for the general fund but during the current year um we had some a lot of audited activity that we need to audit related to the capital projects fund and the debt service fund um during 2000 right at the conclusion of 2020 debt was issued for new capital projects um here's that money coming in and was available to be spent

012which i'm sure a lot of it has been spent during 2021 and then also in 2020 the 2014 general obligation notes were remarketed so the district was able to take advantage of uh you know a favorable interest rate environment to be able to remarket the 2014 general obligation notes then here um this is your balance sheet um balance sheet is basically and your assets over your your current assets over your current liabilities in the excess of the assets over the liabilities being your fund balance so once again here's your total assets most of your assets being in the form of cash and amounts due from the state at year end um liabilities at year end primarily consists of accounts payable and amounts that are due for accrued salaries um to be paid out over the

013summer and then the excess of those assets over the liabilities being the 12 million dollars we just spoke about there's the 33 million dollars of the capital projects fund for the bonds coming in at the end of the year and then the 1.3 million dollars that's set aside for a future debt service within the debt service fund um i know this is a really long document and when you get it next week um you know i don't i mean i don't think many people expect everybody to read the whole document but what i really um encourage everybody to do is to read pages i believe it's pages three through fourteen or so um i think pat's done a really good job in doing management's discussion analysis so a lot of the things i just touched

014based on you know just here i think pat's putting a really good narrative form within management's discussion and analysis um to kind of talk about you know you know what happened during the year in a short concise manner um in particular um i think the stuff that's really good that pat put together here um starting here on page number nine talking about the governmental funds and kind of talk about your tax revenues your expenditures your comparison year over year and more importantly is the information he discloses on the general fund budget and the reason for those budget variants is that we just went over in the in the back of the audit report and he puts it in pretty good detail um right here um kind of you know lays it out but not in

015a real long form but just you know really short concise etc does anybody have any questions so far no okay so finally we went over what kind of audit report you had um we went over um where you stood financially at the end of the year and then finally i just want to talk about the summary of the auditor's results um we expressed an unmodified audit opinion um we didn't have anything that we would consider a significant deficiency or material weakness within your internal controls we didn't have any kind of material adjustments that would need to be reported to the board of directors and also this section talks about the audit the special audit we do of your of your federal awards and being uh this current year where the major federal awards were title

016one and your child nutrition cluster and i would assume go moving forward uh in this upcoming year your essar funds will be the major program so that's all i really have to add you know pat and i and my team have been working on improving the financial reporting of the school district um we've implemented some new reporting related to your other post-employment benefits etc so we're going to continue to work on that and uh you know can you continue to work uh enhancing the financial statements yeah if i can add to that carl thank you and uh director go martin if you don't mind um working with bbd and carl we the district has at this point has is now fully utilizing our fund accounting software for all funds uh that are that are reported

017uh in in the financial statements that that was a task that we were able to complete in the in the prior audit um and carl if if you don't mind you know you you mentioned the the fund balance we show it as as unassigned um it you know can we talk about the other types of of assignments committed and or i'm sorry they're having fun balance committed and assigned and as we prepare for the 2021 audit report what would what actions would the district need to take if we wanted to commit or assign some some of our fund balance in the next year so so like uh in the past scranton has never been in a position where they've been able to so pde only allows you to have eight percent of unassigned fund balance

018eight percent of next year's expenditure budget and unassigned fund balance so it's never been an issue at scranton because they haven't had that but now it looks like you're going to be in a position to be there and for 2021. so um but what you need to do is if you're in excess of that 8 of your next year's expenditure budget of your unassigned fund balance we have to anything above that eight percent you need to either what we call um commit or assign fund balance and here's within your notes to your financial statements and definitions of commitments assignments uh right here so a commitment is where the board takes formal action to uh or takes form um takes formal action to be able to um commit fund balance uh you know for one time

019uh expenditure so like something for capital projects um for retirement rate stabilization amounts because of the increase in the fees feasers technology purchases but only for one time but only for one time non-recurring expenditures and then there's also assignment assignment is when the district's management is given the ability to assign fund balance without it going through any kind of formal board approval most of my school districts the school board likes to do the commitment because they like to do that formal board approval related to the commitment um you know some some allow their management to make that decision with the assignments but now they're gonna be probably over that eight percent for 2021 um the board needs to start talking to pat and talking to him what do we want to actually commit those funds

020for or have pac assign those funds um it better in excess of that 8 of the next year's expenditure budget and uh carl thank you um again this is something that the board and i have talked about and uh our superintendent and recovery officer about uh committing or assigning some of these funds and as you mentioned the capital project fund so um you know we we will look to do that in the upcoming year so it's all positive news that you're you know have a fun balance to be able to do that now thank you mommy anything else i had one question something i noticed go by um on the page where you had the numbered findings i thought i saw something that said one significant deficiency and i'm just wondering if that was a

021typo or if you could expand um i think that was related to was that related to last year pat i think and it might have already been fixed but this is just this is back from february 7 so okay this is it's been updated but i didn't want to present yet so okay there's a there's a there's something called the data collection form i believe it was the i think that's what it was uh related to and it was that is it okay okay thank you anybody else okay thank you very much thank you have a good night okay we'll move on to a motion to approve and discussion on sale and disposal procedure for assets in the library at scranton high school mr laffey do you want to take yes yes thank you dr

022gilmartin um as we are approving or as the board has approved the the stem program for scranton high school um to be located in in the library um there are um a lot of obviously materials furniture uh library books and and other items that will need to be re removed from that area to allow for the program to uh move into we've started a process um miss miller has has started a a nice process to hopefully you know transition some of these materials out of that space so we we just wanted to give you an update on where we are with that so the process started with a complete inventory of approximately eighteen thousand five hundred books um that were located in in in the library and the furniture which which includes bookshelves student desk

023catalog folders etc um miss miller uh created a schedule that was prepared for the books and furniture to offer to schools within the district um that's part of our policy policy 706.1 point for the disposal of district property is that we need to first look to reallocate it throughout the throughout the district if we can so starting with the high schools um we've already seen a list i believe where over approximately over 1900 books have already been reallocated and i don't think the intermediate schools have even started this process yet but um so we are in the process currently of trying to reallocate these resources these materials this furniture throughout the school district and i believe the timeline for that process to conclude is on march 10. the the next step in our policy for

024the disposal of district property is to solicit for the sale of items okay it once once we have whatever remaining materials are there or or furniture is there we we will begin to solicit for the sale of those after that anything that remains unsailed on sale unsold excuse me can be offered for donation there's been discussions on whether possibly offering it to donation for students and i believe the board would would most likely support that and then once any items remain uh either not not reallocated sold or donated we would then have to go to the complete this disposal process so that is all in the works right now as as we speak but what we will be bringing to you uh at the next meeting is a list of all the materials that we

025want to um authorize to begin that process for thank you pat i think that makes a lot of sense does anybody have any questions just i just wanted to make one point i'm sure that we've looked to all the other schools to see if there's any materials or anything that anybody needs in their classrooms or can use in any other areas before we were to donate or sell anything i'm sure we've covered that yeah president yani that's actually the process that that we're in now where um starting with the high schools and working down um principals and teachers have been reviewing that inventory of 18 000 items and basically assigning their name to it of what they'd like to transfer to their school thank you we've already probably touched upon this but i'm going to

026ask there is absolutely nowhere in that building to store those books i have a problem getting rid of those books forever because once they're gone they're gone and i just find that that's problematic um i understand technology and i get it but books we should not be getting rid of books physically removing books we should find a way to make this work well i think we've just described the process and that we are reallocating these throughout the district i understand that but i want to see if we can make sure we keep them in the school that they're in i understand the process but i want to see if there's no possible way to keep them in the school that they're in for the kids that are in that school and that will attend that

027school in the future i think what i think what we could do is once we're done with the process if the board would like us to do this i'm just listening um before we sell anything um we can look to see if there's a place that we could store i mean every every through this process every school is having an opportunity to go through and and you choose what they want i understand what you're saying director homes you don't want us to get rid of anything for future so what we could do is see what we have at the end before we sell and report back i'm not really sure you know we already have a storage problem as it is um but you know again if that's if that's something the board wants us

028to look at we can do that um mr miller didn't you um say when we met on wednesday that like right now the majority of the books are being redistributed within the scranton high school for instance like the art department is took all of the art books and they're putting them in their respective classrooms including some of the bookcases in order to store them yeah yes that is correct the i believe almost 2500 of the 3 000 books so far that have been claimed are claimed within scranton high school and as i've noticed claims for instance one of the history teachers made a couple of claims i then found additional books within that topic and made suggestions and asked even if you know these are the same books in that type of category would you

029be interested in these and so a lot of them have been taking on those that aren't even on the list yet as well thank you uh miss miller are where with regards to how many schools are left with regards to having the opportunity to go to scranton high school so far only scranton high and west side have had that west high school have had that chance it just opened today for the three intermediate schools and we'll stay open this week for that and then next week open for elementary schools that schedule is also in the stem folder that jenny had shared with the board okay so we'll have a better idea of what's left over by by um within two weeks yeah the end of next week i believe okay thank you mr laffy will

030have discussion motion to approve the forecast five agreement can you tell us about that please uh yes uh so uh thank you director gilmore um so forecast five is a software program that i think you've heard me just talk about before in in the past this is a program that is utilized by uh i i believe many school districts in in in the state of pennsylvania um i don't know the exact count but it is a very unique product it offers you know forecasting um abilities multi-year budget projections uh historical budget comparisons all all within within that software system itself so instead of having to create that um you know with you know reports and excel documents this system will store all of our budget data it it will be uploaded it will provide us

031with some great comparative tools to kind of see where we're heading you know like if you want to know what the impact of let's just say a uh tax increase is you know i mean and you it would forecast that out over the next five years or so you know you can adjust your assessments to determine you know um what's the trends uh that that you're seeing there it's it's it's a really um unique budgeting tool and i think forecasting tool that um that i've had my eye on for quite some time um it also includes a section called five cast it it allows you to create various informational dash dashboards um one of the examples i showed the board was an esser dashboard so anything coded to [Music] the funding source for essert is

032automatically compiled and is presented in this very easy to understand easy to read illustrative summary to show you know how you're investing those those dollars those resources part of the part of the program also is an area called five site um you know it it allows you to compare your your data i mean for scranton school district with that is with data from other school districts throughout the state it it uploads a afr information um from all different school districts and you can you know you know you might not want to compare us against the statewide but you can narrow it down to a smaller um to a smaller area to more people of of your peers districts of your size compare your salary and staffing levels again as i said historical budget versus actual

033reports it even has um some educational pieces of it comparing your pssa assessment versus your peer your peer districts it helps with enrollment trending um again as i mentioned tax rates and assessments um you know it's i think it's a very valuable tool it's something that again as i said i had my eye on um we did budget for it as you recall we budgeted if you remember the final budget on november 30th included 55 000 for various um new software programs for for the district uh part of it was for the business office and uh this is the um this is where i would like to uh uh with your permission enter into an agreement with forecast five it's a pro-rated agreement for the year of 2022 at an annual cost of twenty one

034thousand sixty four dollars what is the annual cost going forward pat not program where are we starting like are we starting at march or april or yeah starting in march okay so that's about three quarters of a year then yep yeah so i mean if you annualize it out if if um if you felt it was a useful tool uh and you wanted to continue with it it would probably be about twenty eight thousand dollars annually okay very good thank you again it's fully budgeted for does anybody have any questions very good it certainly sounds like a very valuable tool from a lot of angles assessing where we stand planning for the future and and also there seems to be a transparency piece to this as well so that's great thank you uh discussion possible

035motion for real estate assessment approvals uh at the moment we don't have any to discuss uh but again this is one of our we we wanted if something were to arise during this week we would be able to provide information to the board in the weekly packet uh for a vote on monday night okay thank you uh then we will have a motion to approach i'm sorry uh we have a discussion on contracts update so this this is an item that i want to add to our standard monthly meeting um per policy it's actually we're not going to ask ask you to vote on on anything for this it's just it's just me providing an update to the board per our policy 610 the board grants the board secretary or the business manager acting as

036the purchase agent the authority to purchase supplies and award contracts in amount in manner designated by law that the awards and contracts must be reported at the next public meeting and cannot extend exceed state bidding thresholds it must not exceed 12 12 months so um what i wanted to make you aware of is that the operations department again as i noted we budgeted fifty five thousand dollars for various software programs um uh mr rucker has identified a program called monday.com it comes with an annual amount of eighty two hundred dollars eight thousand two hundred and eight dollars money.com is a work operating system that allows like organizations or teams to run and manage various products and workflows in a centralized application so you know the way i visualize it is you know he creates or

037we create a project you know whether it be um you know i can't think of enough of an example and all the communications and updates occur within this module i think it it will be uh it will help us i think manage a lot of the projects that we have going on i think as you're aware um you know not just even uh operationally with the capital projects but various initiatives that we're hoping to uh to bring back to the district it will allow us the central administration you know to keep track of these and to make sure that we state that we stay on target um the with within the 8200 cost the business office will have some access to it as as well um again this this is as i noted before this

038was also but systems like these were also budgeted for in in in 2022 thank you i i think it's important to be putting these systems into place and i think as we continue these conversations and these things come forward the question i would have is how are we assessing them and making sure that they're meeting our expectations annually before we go forward again to extend a contract or enter into a new agreement down the road i think that's just something you know each department needs to keep in mind so that the board can understand how this has performed and one question i i feel like i saw a note about this maybe in our packet are we being cognizant of the fact that these systems need to speak to one another and that may not

039be so much a question for you pat yes yes that is something that's very important um as we move forward right that's great to answer your question yes thank you any questions anybody else we'll have a motion to approve the single tax office audit back to you mr laffy yes thank you as mr hogan just presented the financial statements for the scranton school district robert rossi and company was the independent auditors for the single tax office audit so it's separate from the single audit you may have heard mr hogan say single audit that's an audit of our federal awards this is the single tax audit uh it was uh they were awarded the contract for the 2019 and 2020 audit of the single tax office um there so the audits are complete and i will

040be sending them home um in the board's packet uh as you asked mr hogan with their was there any findings there was one finding with from mr rossi the finding is i'll summarize is that the single tax office maintains a master bank account that accrues all the interest and assumes all fees for the three taxing bodies they they then have three separate accounts that disbursements are made from um according to state statute the interest belongs to the municipal corporation that the principal of funds belong they they noted that a proper separation will facilitate a more accurate accounting of the tax collections and the recommendation of the auditors that procedures shall be put in place uh to separate those tax collections i think in a more frequent basis um so that the out so that any

041interests and fees accrue in the sub accounts not in the master account uh that's something that i that i will um i think along with uh controller john murray from the city of scranton we will work with the um with the single tax office to hopefully put procedures in place to eliminate this finding moving forward great thank you very much and finally we have a discussion possible motion on the business privilege mercantile tax payroll prep tax conversion uh mr laffey i think you have some information based on the list that we've defined coming out of our last budget and finance committee meeting uh yes one one of the items that came up was i think where where was the city in their process and um where was the single tax office in terms of issuing

042the business privilege mercantile bills i spoke to the city last week they are they are holding weekly meetings with burkheimer um again as noted at the um budget of finance committee meeting i believe legislation will be presented on march first for for the berkheimer agreement um the weekly meetings at this point have focus around the the tax payer instructions and the tax bills themselves they have they're working on the template document and according to city representatives i believe their target is about two weeks from now to have those bills issued i think in the first couple weeks of march um i reached out to the single tax office for the status of the business privilege mercantile uh invoices or bills they went out at the end of i believe early last week they issued about

0435 000 um bp merc uh tax bills and payments have already started to to come in the the amount is i don't think it's a large amount at this point but payments have started to come in and and they did note that um some of the payments needed to be re returned due to some taxpayer confusion i guess people utilizing the old tax bill and continuing to pay the city of scranton's business privileged mercantile share um on that form as well pat did did they say like when we they refund like in situations like that how long it would take for somebody to get a refund no they didn't uh director mccann i can follow up with them tomorrow and ask them that question but um the timeline for refunds i i did not get

044a i did not ask that question i apologize i can find that out for you though okay thank you yep so just so i understand mr laffy they've they've confirmed that the business privilege mercantile tax bills have gone out and they've already received payments yes okay so if we were to consider um even trying to make this change as we discussed at our budget and finance committee meeting um what kind of headaches would we be looking at in in that case well i think as i noted at the budget of finance maybe we we'd have to come up with some type of refund process for sure what that looks like i'm not exactly sure at the moment that's something i'd have to work with the single tax office on and i i am fearful that

045that as we discussed last week layers a great deal of confusion over an already confused process you know we've noted this evening people print the old bpm return and pay as they always have we still have the education piece coming out from the city mr audi when we last spoke you were going to look into any potential legal parameters around timing of potentially rescinding attacks or i don't think you felt as though there was really anything that would clearly prohibit us from that but i am interested to know if you came across anything i i have not um director gilmartin i i have not been able to find any law that specifically addresses that issue okay but there is still the concern of having already levied one rescinding it and levying a second just broadly

046that's a concern there's definitely that concern and then there's the color of that concern because you know it doesn't necessarily have to have been litigated uh it could be a novel issue that someone could raise and say we believe you violated the law by having these two implemented in the same year at the same time especially having already had the bill sent out and people haven't paid them i mean i i am of the opinion that at this point with that action having been taken with returns having come in i would not want to see the the single tax office thrown into turmoil because of a change in our plans you know there's there's already a great deal of work i think we can be doing together with the single tax office with increased communication

047with really redoubling efforts on real estate tax collections the delinquencies we've discussed i think there is plenty of work to be done in a positive direction rather than trying to undo something that we are still able to consider going forward um you know if the bills were not out in collections had not begun this might be a very different conversation but i feel as though so many of the things that we were kind of holding our breath thinking well if it works out this way or that way then maybe have them as we've said the horse is out of the barn and i think someone said galloping away quickly so you know i i am of the opinion that well i am very much in favor of this tax and do wish we were doing

048it hand in hand with the city i i simply don't want to confuse an already complex situation open us up to any more potential litigation than may already exist in just the normal conversion and you know not really be able to assess the the impact of this you know i'm i'm hoping this is going to be a very positive change for the district and i don't want to see that muddied by doing it in a confused way director martin i i couldn't have said that any better um in addition to all of that my concern is for the cash flow um of what could happen with the cash flow with the district if if we were to try to make this change for 2023 so i i think what i'm hearing if i'm correct is

049that we will not be putting a motion on our agenda coming up on march 7th to make this change but i think that this board is very open um to considering this for 2023 and again we would need a vote to do that but i think we can certainly continue to to work on this process and work with mr laffy and direct mr laffy to um include that in our preliminary budget for 2023 as we as we move forward is there anybody else that wants to make any other points to that um how soon can we vote on that for next year we are mr laffy correct me if i'm wrong but we're thinking we could even do that prior to june 30th so you know i believe so yeah i'm sorry the act one

050timeline director mccander is very clear that in and around july 15th again i i i have to refresh my dates but um i i would or the district would need to make a proposed preliminary budget available for public inspection with adoption of a preliminary budget the first week in august it doesn't have any parameters about how early you can actually do that so i i would think it's something that we could possibly do before june 30th and i will review that with solicitor audi as well and i i would certainly encourage us to continue these conversations you know mr laffy will continue his work with the city i think we want to continue our communication with the single tax office and look for ways that we might be able to increase our revenues to help

051mitigate any potential shortfall and you know keep our our open line of communication with senator flynn with other state representatives and just keep them abreast of our process and our progress here and you know hope that the steps we are taking now will will be enough to keep that funding in our coffers so i do have a question about this tax i mean if it sounds like we're planning on holding off for a little bit i'm not opposed to it but i know the referendum that was done it was november so if we plan on moving forward i would like to know um you know obviously we don't have this information right now but maybe it's something we could look into that if the voters of scranton if they still feel the same after a

052global pandemic i know many people they've had their financial situations change over in the course of the last few years so being that this referendum can have um you know businesses have said it can have a financial burden on them i would just like to know if they feel the same way as they did in 2019 when 72 percent were in favor of this tax and with that being said um if perhaps we can get a general idea of the businesses that would actually be impacted by this tax how many businesses would leave scranton how many would have to like close their doors so like i said i i'm i'm not opposed but i just want to know like almost like what we're dealing with like to this extent so and and this kind of

053gives us more time maybe to get that sort of information i i think director cheswick you will find that a great deal of that information is compiled and the drive is available with our league of women voters and scranton tomorrow forum with the presentations through the tax policy working group and the chamber of commerce uh the powerpoint presentation that the city presented to this board you know certainly please take a look through that information and if you have any specific questions you know we're happy to address those i i think in terms of the referendum i don't know that that is something that you you know mr audi i would look to you for that i don't know that not being required to do that i i don't know that that is a step that

054we would take i think you know we we've created a lot of opportunities for people to come forward and voice their concerns ask their questions about this and you know i think now as we said with the referendum this wasn't thumbs up or thumbs down yes do it no don't do it it was we support the consideration of this because we are the people who levy the taxes and you know while we certainly want all of the feedback we can get it is up to the nine people on this meeting to distill all of that down and make the decision we feel is in the best interest of the district i i agree with what you said director good martin i don't believe um we would be able to put a referendum out just on

055um but first of all the requirement before when we did this there was actually a legal requirement that we had to have a referendum if we were going to do this that's since been um changed so we don't we no longer are required to have a referendum and i think to um put one out would be um it was burdensome and cumbersome i will tell you when we had to do it by statute i think we'd have a very difficult time doing that but i agree there are other ways to measure the community's um interest in this great thank you very much i think that's all we have for budget and finance okay thank you thank you um under community relations director director holmes yes good evening elect to make a motion to accept a

056donation from home depot to whittier elementary okay under education director cruz did we lose director cruz that wasn't working i think you're muted sarah yes sorry my com my uh intro internet that went out um okay are we are we on education yes yep we're right at education now okay all right sorry it's our education so tonight um we will have a presentation from uh mr jones haney principal of uh northeast intermediate i asked him um to give a presentation tonight similar to the one that mr gilroy gave last month i thought it was only a pro appropriate for him to do so so mr haney you have the floor okay thank you very much good evening everyone i was asked to provide a presentation in regards to supervision at northeast so i'll make it

057a brief supervision is a critical component in regards to us maintaining a positive school culture so the greatest amount of supervision that we have in place right now is occurring during our student arrival our student dismissal and in our transition between classes we've been working with our students regularly to promote daily routines including their lunchroom procedures stairwell procedures and reinforcing positive behavior in the transition between our classrooms one of the things that's been very helpful to us is the additional 15 minutes in the teacher's schedule before and after school that's that's really helped with our supervision our administration and our sro are supervising the cafeteria we are assigning our sro and our hallmarks and even some of our teachers um as students are in the hallways uh to critical areas where issues have occurred to

058try and uh prevent anything from going on uh we will be implementing the social emotional learning uh in the near future which we hope will have an impact over on student behavior and once our auditorium is is up and ready to go again we will be uh reintroducing our school-wide positive behavior and support program uh to really put it out to the kids again so a lot of positives and moving us in in a good direction there the greatest need that we have uh is for personnel in regards to maintaining adequate supervision is in the cafeteria our main entrance and during our uh during the class periods not in the transition just one of the biggest things was because of the change in the schedule losing the extra related arts class we lost all of

059our teacher duties at the intermediate school so some examples of where that impacted us was in a cafeteria we would generally have five to eight teachers supervising now we only have two aramark employees supervising between 200 and 300 students so that's put the sro and the school administrators and instead of kind of monitoring the cafeteria we're now actively working with each student in regards to our main entrance previously we always had a teacher assigned to the main entrance that would supervise any visitors coming into the building and people leaving we no longer have that and with the cut in our clerical positions the now we're down to the clerks that are remaining uh handling all the normal office duties along with also trying to supervise the building entrance and uh finally another area that we've

060been impacted is in regards to the hallways during class time we always had one teacher stationed outside of the bathrooms and usually another teacher in a different part of the hallway so currently the best we can do is use our hallmarks and our sro to walk around it's definitely helped us to some degree it's better than not having anyone of course having the teachers prevented a lot more than what we're able to do now so overall our teachers our parents our support staff administration sro they're really everyone's doing a phenomenon i can't ask any more of them in terms of keeping our building operating in a safe and orderly manner in spite of you know the loss of our duties of course re-implementing uh the supervision that we had in the past would would be

061ideal and would help us move towards a proactive stance as opposed to a reactive stance and would provide for an even safer and more orderly environment so um that's what i have and i'm not sure if there's any questions or not but thank you very much uh mr haney could you speak to um the fifth grade um transitioning into your building how how that has um how that is working out okay uh so the fifth grand transition uh went very well overall we were able to keep the fifth graders from interacting with the sixth and eighth graders for the great majority of the time there's always going to be some interest you can't prevent everything uh but we've had very little uh issues in regards to that certainly i'm not aware of any issues where

062a fifth grader has been interacting with an eighth grader or anything like that maybe fifth and sixth grade but that's all normal um even on the buses we haven't had many issues um surprisingly enough some issues are with the fifth graders creating problems with some of our older students so uh overall i i have to say i've heard nothing but positive from many the parents um there's still some concerns here and there about the changes but but overall um you know and i'll put the great majority of that on our teachers the fifth grade teachers that we had coming in did a wonderful job of creating you know what we call that elementary experience so uh really the the great majority of the credit should go to them for what they created and but overall

063i've heard nothing but positives and we continue like everything else we continue to monitor it and you know make revisions as as we see fit okay does uh any of my colleagues have any questions from strahani in terms of [Music] his presentation i have a question just off his presentation though maybe to miss you or an administrator is there an update on the um security guard positions i think maybe that would help some of the issues that were brought up this evening uh we did hire one security guard i'm going to let mr rucker tell us the date that that individual started or will be starting and we are posting for another security guard that we have not filled yet so mr rucker what is the status of the security guard mr jones will be

064starting on monday and we still need to hire another one so we will be reposting yes ma'am very much and where will mr jones be located or stationed mr jones is going to work uh from the admin building and be assigned to buildings in need there's one and we're going to spread him where we feel the most need is for him that that will vary um there's not going to be one location it will be across the district depending on the situation what's going on and where we need that individual uh for the day he will not be in the ad building uh permanently or constantly he will be out in the schools throughout the day we just it'll be determined which schools need need him the most at that time mr rutgerson since we

065have an audience here what kind of a background are you looking for for this open position i'm looking for uh i mean the ones that we had apply were retired police officers the one we hired is a retired police officer i would look for somebody with a background in law enforcement or military or or some other way some other schooling or method or anything like that that would make them good for this fit and that that'll be posted um tomorrow you said superintendent mccarron or that's what if if it's not already posted um you know when we weren't able to fill that position um i was i directed them to repost so i'm assuming it is posted again if not then it will be up tomorrow mr haney thank you i really appreciate hearing about

066about your school and about the fifth graders because i know you know we've all had our had our concerns so we're hearing all good reports so that's very helpful thank you thank you thank you thank you mr haney for the update i really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to present this evening okay moving on we will have a motion to approve permission to attend if any um then we also have a motion to approve the 20 uh 2022-2023 uh district school year calendar and then we will have a discussion motion to approve um esl consultant con contract um melanie wolfe from greenberg mrs greyback if you'd like to speak to that certainly director cruz thank you so melanie wolff greenberg she's an educational consultant and she specializes in esl policy and

067procedure and she's also an instructional coach and she's going to be providing not only professional development to our eld teacher she has in the past and she would like to continue doing so in the future she has worked with our program for the last five years and provided outstanding eld pd to our both administration staff teachers and non-eld teachers so she's proposing to provide specific uh consultation focusing on curriculum writing for eld elementary and intermediate we've also we've begun that program last year and we're trying to um really make it a more uh detailed curriculum so we've called her in uh as an expert in helping us wrapping that up she will provide consultation as well on analyzing our access scores for our ls and our state assessment scores along with identifying needs assessment of

068our eld program to address our english language learners she successfully provided consultation and pd to the scranton school district's eld program and she desires to continue her partnership for us during this next school year so that's a little background about her and and what her goal is and why we would like to incorporate her moving forward and continue that partnership will this contract um is it for what what is the duration of it it will be for this year it's it's basically based on certain sessions that she has identified her availability to meeting with the teacher so it's it's not a weekly thing it's more of an as needed during uh during the year and what will be um her her compensation it should be on the contract that was submitted is was there a

069contract submitted miss miss cosgrove submitted a contract um was that in your board packet i apologize i thought that was already it she said that she sent it jenny do you have that yes that was included in the board package that was included i don't have it up right now but it was included i could find that amount for you and get back to you on that i don't have it pulled up right now okay thank you thank you mrs grayback you're welcome you're welcome and then we will then we will have a motion to approve um scranton heist scranton high show acquires a night amplified show band out of state trip to mechanicsville virginia and that is all i have tonight for education thank you director cruz um but before we lead into operations

070i just i just want to point out that we'd like to add two operations under new business um the new cdc guidance came out late friday after we received our agenda and after we had that prepared regarding masking so attorney audi would you agree that we could add that as a as a discussion possible motion for our march 7th meeting at this point i would you're not deliberating on it and also it is um it is new material that can be considered an emergency situation under the circumstances thank you okay director hume i'll turn it over to you oh you're muted director hume you're muted i do it every time thank you just before i go ahead i'd like to circle back to the education committee to director cruz i was thrilled to learn just

071how fantastically well our show crier is doing in its out-of-state trips we have had phenomenal results i think i can't remem okay never get old my brain isn't remembering there was a second place in the third place in our last two trips and i can't remember which one went where but they are phenomenal and um i hope at some point we get to hear them um [Music] present their absolute showstoppers because this is it and i wish them really good luck in mechanicsville hopefully they're not gonna thank you jack yeah no i no i said yeah i think oftentimes we we see them practicing um when we when we come to scranton high for for meetings if i'm correct oh we did but i saw um somebody had posted a on facebook a video of

072their performance where they came in second uh recently and i tell you glee your heart out our kids are phenomenal and um very proud of them and i think that i hope i hope as a district we get to see them at some point okay so moving on moving on sorry about that sorry but um it was very exciting okay we have a discussion and a motion to approve the stem m academy design budget update um as reviewed with the integration team and i think this would be i see uh ethan lurking in the is that you can yes yes director hume um so just inform the school board that we did meet with the integration team last week and provided an update to the stem budget that basically hones in on the final cost

073with receiving the furniture quotes that are going to be provided under a purchasing agreement that was approved by the board i believe keystone purchasing network and pepum are two of the ones being looked at those final costs will be resolved tomorrow we have a meeting with the lowest responsible furniture provider and we just need to confirm a couple of the furniture items um that will be presented to the board at the meeting and i can tell you that we have a line out of 280 000 for the furniture we will be under that cost well fantastic thank you ethan uh and we look forward to having a pleasant surprise next week at our meeting thank you anybody with any questions on that one um okay we will have a motion to approve the change order

074to armstrong which is eac-001 director hume if i can if i can just say something that should what that should be there actually won't be a motion to approve that should be a discussion on change orders similar to the contracts in the budget and finance area um i think what we like to do is have a standing um change order update uh per policy 831 the superintendent has the authority to approve change orders up to five thousand dollars and then they shall be reported to the board at the next scheduled meeting so the the change order in question is a zero dollar change order and it merely uh actually advances it moves up the timeline of the scheduled work uh ethan can you confirm that yeah so that's a order to the environmental abatement contractor

075um eac and there's there's no cost with this change order due to the um extended school year um we didn't have the documents revised at the time of bid for only this contractor and we had them completing work before the students were out so we had to modify his schedule by 10 days okay so that's fine thank you pat i think that's a great uh step forward if we do have um as in the as you said the the updates monthly and then we the final item for operations apart from the new business is the discussion and the motion to approve the updated west grant and intermediate school budget so this budget we reviewed that's in your packet with the integration team as well and we've decided that there are three additional items that really

076need to be included as part of the renovation scope one of them is to replace the carpet which we've talked about and we've we've been through various iterations of the budget but it's felt that this carpet needs to be replaced it's duct taped as it is now and it's also received some water damage recently so it makes sense to include it one of the additional items is to repair some joints in the masonry that's on the outside of the building that's allowing moisture to get in around the windows and the final one is to bring up the fire alarm system throughout the building now we had originally spoken with the city and it's not a requirement that the building be brought up to um a modernized system however we felt that this was just not

077necessary for a safety standpoint for the students and community and then additionally on this budget there are some yellow items listed there we are providing those as alternates so it allows the district some flexibility on the day bids are received to be able to choose these if the funding is in place and appropriate so some some of these alternates include replacement of the ceilings throughout the building a conversion of the planetarium area a library a sprinkler system just as we did at armstrong if you remember we had the sprinkler system listed as an ultimate that on bid day was was basically a bargain price and the district chose to accept it adding additional safety for that school and those costs again they're they're not in the budget but they're included as alternates and then we've

078we've outlined the architect's fee to proceed with um at your at your approval proceed with documenting those alternate bids okay and do we have that budget document the the updated judgment with the estimates or we just wait for next week so you should have that in your board okay thank you um i'm trying having trouble pulling that up hang on i can't i can share it with you if you'd like that would be wonderful ethan if you wouldn't mind that would be much easier than my okay give me one moment here okay i'm getting there i don't want to project the wrong one so and while we're waiting director cruz i did find the um the contract from melanie wolf greenberg in your packet so if you need that shared as well again i can

079reshare it but it is in your packet and it's broken down by consultation and elementary and intermediate curriculum work so can everybody see the budget on your screen um if you could make it that's teeny bit bigger that's a bit better yeah all right you might have to enlarge your screen a bit or um so as you recall we originally had the option to budget um that remains in this column here and now we have option two plus budget with select upgrades select upgrades are these tan colored items here so the carpeting is listed here uh with 560 000 the vertical cmu control joints is here forty thousand dollars and that's to be completed with the uh window repairs and the final one is the building wide fire alarm system replacement here for 900 948

080so those costs are basically included on this line item here so the original previous budget was 4.1 million and it's now 5.2 million then we've outlined these yellow items as the um the choices that allow flexibility on bid day to at least consider them because if you didn't document them now and have this option you'd never be able to go back and and implement these options so they're listed here they can potentially be included in the project um again that's the building wide sprinkler system there's some lighting replacements conversion of the planetarium area to an art classroom um and to replace the ceilings throughout the building so those total up to 3.9 million dollars of alternates okay all right so when do we expect the bids for uh to be in ethan do we have

081any we're actually in the design process of this through august this will be issued for bidding until september so there's there's a lot of time in the process to um review the budgets and keep keep the board updated at this point okay thank you very much indeed um i think that makes a great deal of sense uh if we can't have the deluxe cadillac uh we don't have to have the volkswagen we'll go somewhere in the middle for the prius i think it's well done thank you very much ethan um thank you directors anyone with any comments on that i think you're i think you get a you get to say goodbye ethan i think all right thank you very much for having me thank you thanks ethan now director yanni um the i think

082you said you wanted to have a discussion on masking yes i i mean as we all know um new guidance did come out from the cdc so i think we need to discuss whether we want to add a motion to our agenda for march 7th to follow that cdc guidance so where do we stand right now we stand that it needs to be voted upon because right now we're fully masked is that correct that's that's correct our health and safety plan would need to change uh to reflect that we would be following cdc guidelines if that's what the board chooses uh moving forward and i think everyone on the board received that from me friday night but basically cdc changed its school guidance and based on the new county metrics it is recommending universal school

083masking only in communities with high level of diseases for all others it would be optional so if the board chooses to continue and i think all along that's what we've been doing is following cdc and doh so if we continue on that path then the the health and safety plan would have to reflect the um basically what i just stated so we would need a motion to um revise the health and safety plan that is correct to follow the cdc guidance regarding masking correct so i guess that's what i'm looking for input from my colleagues on the board do we do we want to add that motion to our march 7th meeting uh i'm in favor of it i think it's you know i'm okay with going optional as long as the numbers are where

084the cdc wants them to be um so that's my thought on it my my i agree with director mcandrew my only recommendation would be that we we're coming we're coming now to having a better handle on the on the pandemic i'm just wondering whether we should rather than voting on a motion every time they change we simply update the health and safety plan to say that we will follow the guidelines of the cdc and give the superintendent when the without having to wait for a separate board motion that should the county um you know should the cdc guidelines call for masking the superintendent has the authority to reintroduce it if needed i don't think it's going to happen but if we should get to that situation that would save the board having to vote on

085emotion each time the cdc guidelines changed how do people feel about that i have a question are we i just make sure that we're still in the clear are we supposed to just be adding this to the agenda are we allowed to deliberate this right now being as it wasn't on the agenda john or are we just supposed to be deciding if we want to add it to the next meeting i thought we could discuss we could have a discussion we're not necessarily we're deliberating next week because we'll we'll have a vote next week thank you i'm just saying not not pro or con but i'm just saying is it is it simpler to give us a more flexible motion so that we don't so that we we do that and i've been unless people

086are happy coming back and voting on it each time guidelines change that's something for my colleagues to discuss i think a motion to to follow the cdc guidance is appropriate i'm a little bit glad that the timing of our meeting buys us a bit of a delay here rather than you know just one day yes and the next day no but you know i as we've said in previous meetings we've committed to following the cdc guidance so i think it is appropriate in this at this juncture as well and students always have the option to wear masks right so i mean any individual person if we give you know a student can always wear one we're not telling them they can't so i do feel that we've we've stood behind the cdc guidelines and i

087think it's best that we stay within those guidelines so i would like to see that motion then be added to that agenda i agree okay thanks this is or we can add that for next week okay okay thank you hey uh personnel director mcandrew sure so we're gonna start off with a discussion of the personnel report yeah we um i had been asked to add this to um to the discussion of the possibility of splitting up the personnel report i know mr audi had given the board some options so i think at this time i'm looking for direction as to what exactly the board would like with the personnel report and if they do want to split it up how would they like that to happen uh jenny can you briefly speak about past practice

088and maybe what you see as maybe potentially best practice moving forward sure um i recall we used to separate them into leaves of absences appointments assignments retirements so there would be probably four or five different motions under personnel my thing is retirements leaps of absences resignations if they were to all be still on one that may help and if you were to just separate the assignments and appointments rather than have five different they used to be broken down into superintendent's report numbers so each report would have their own number and it would be a superintendent's report because the superintendent was making the resum the recommendation so i did look around at other districts to see what they do john you could help me out here i don't think abington does that i think they all

089have they have it on one report like we've been doing i don't know but i i think the difference um if i may is you know when you have a smaller district there's not as many um actions and and varied actions on a particular report and i think what's what's happened in this district is there's so many varied actions that someone may object to one or two of them yet have no problem with the others and the problem then becomes for the director how do you handle that um i like your idea um of you know having the retirements and the things that really you we you know you can't vote no to um put it put those all together and then just have the appointments and assignments um separate i think that's a great

090idea wouldn't it be so if you have appointments and you're for some reason you're not happy with one of the appointment you vote no that whole section then that could affect five ten fifteen even more you know people on the list to me uh i always like just if i have an issue with the situation or a certain appointment to make a motion to pull that out and vote on it separately and director mcandrew i don't think there's a rule that prohibits that that's not been the practice that we've had in the recent past but that doesn't mean that cannot be the practice in the in the future i could i just say that i um i find that when we get down to as a board past this is scranton there's a history in

091this of boards and employments and appointments and things i i feel uncomfortable and certainly from a personal matter as myself as a director will not single out um an individual from an appointment i will either vote for if i feel very very strongly i'll vote against the report uh if i don't feel very strongly i'll hold my nose and vote for the report but we have such a history not this board not the previous board and possibly not even the board before that but there is such a history in this district of board members and appointments to paid positions in the district being conflated muddled and sometimes uh not perhaps as freshly smelling as they should be i would feel very uncomfortable with the board making individual recommendations on individual appointments of individual people to

092individual positions that's just me i as a director will as i say follow my gut and follow the guidelines as we go if i really can't stomach having someone in a position i'll vote against that part of the report however having said that i do like the idea of separating the report out into the two parts but i think we need to be very careful um about appointments to paid positions in this district as a board if we don't trust our administration to make good recommendations then we can reject them in total mr hardy no i'm feeling if we vote say there's 10 people on this one section if we vote no the whole section because it's one position we're not comfortable with what happens to the other nine people when or actually the whole

09310 people when like do they show up to work the next day you know especially if they already started and stuff like that because i know a lot of people already start before we even we even vote on it so to me that's just i mean if i was watching like i would wake up and say am i supposed to go to work because i just got voted no on so what would be well you're right especially if there's a majority of the board members that do that um you know that would that would it could create havoc because there are many situations where there's a retroactive approval of uh an assignment so uh that could be a problem you that that's a valid point that that's one of my that's one of my concerns

094right now is um as you know we're filling teachers constantly so if and we're starting them before as past practice and the board uh policy we're starting them before they actually are voted so if we say no i mean let's think about what we had last month we had three pages of personnel so all in one document where the you know the board was concerned we say no to one then it's the whole thing so i think you know as i listen to this i usually try to give my opinion i think it it's coming to the point where you know i think it if the board has a problem with an individual hire um then i think they're you know the best practice would be to to to take that separately and vote on

095it i don't know how else we do that without affecting like you just said director mcandrew if we have 10 hires and not all 10 of them started all of the teachers started and you vote that down then what i have 10 classrooms without a teacher how do we do that if i notice i know we had this conversation last time when we there was an issue with the last personnel report that there were some concerns and then um some thoughts changed afterwards and so with proper process that would be addressed before the vote so if board directors are saying there's a majority issue with one direct one position that would then be discussed prior to the vote of the personnel report so a remedy could be found kitty you speak on this much better

096than i should go ahead i think to rose earlier point i think this is this is about the process and this is about trusting the administration i think it is going to be a very rare instance where we have a personnel report before us that a majority of the board would have a concern over one individual i think there could be times when maybe one of us has a a personal relationship or a prior professional dealing with someone that we think you know i'm not just not comfortable moving forward here but there would be no reason for me to bar this person from employment i think that's where we get into that murky and difficult area of separating this the personnel not not separating it into sections i i personally not to get off on

097a tangent would like to see some templates of these things before making any final decision i think talking about this is a little bit difficult i'd love to see two or three examples you know here's option a here's option b here's option c we like a or we'd like the top of a in the bottom of c you know i think we we i would feel a little more comfortable making that decision seeing it in front of me and i jenny is nodding her head yeah so i'm sure that's something we can do but i i think the the broad issue here as catherine said is about that process and is about the the work that goes into the interview process the recommendation process and to rose point we do have to trust our administration

098that doesn't mean that we're not ever going to have hesitation about an individual candidate but i think that's where that anonymity and the respect of and the the process of nine people make a decision and when that decision is made we move forward together each of us has to do what we feel is the best at the moment but i think it's going to be a very rare instance where there's one candidate that five or six or seven or nine of us say no we don't want this person so i i i feel like we could be i don't know that we have to make a plan for that today i think we can deal with that on a case-by-case issue as it comes forward but in terms of dividing this report i i think

099that's a very reasonable proposition well i mean i'll be honest i have an issue and i understand the times we're in i have an issue with the retroactive approval however missy i certainly understand where we're at today's times going back 15 years ago we had many subs or even 10 years ago we had subs and it was much easier to fulfill positions because i feel strongly that people should the time where that's very difficult today you know just filling spots and not having subs and leaving classrooms empty so i think in today's world right now until maybe we get back to an era where there's a lot more people you know subbing and things you know i i guess we have to do the retroactive approval even though i like i said i have an

100issue with it um and and the other thing too is you know people leaving other districts to come to scranton which does happen you know you don't want to leave your position or put in your resignation until your board approved and the fact that the last um list was three months worth of hirings that seems a little out of lineup i mean i don't underst i don't understand why we didn't have others monthly and why there was such a large report um i mean lumping the leave of absences and resignations and retirements together probably makes sense because you can't tell somebody they can't retire or they can't you know take a leave of absence if you know that or whatever but as far as the hirings i do like katie's idea of maybe getting some

101ideas of what some other districts do but hiring 85 people in one lump um with all different categories was i think a little uncomfortable for me to me too it's like just a personal thing it's transparency to the publics like i want them to know why i'm voting no to this section so even if i do onto the question say why i'm voting no i don't want to affect every you know other nine ten people so to me it's i always want the public to know why i'm voting no and if i just vote no to a section and not saying thing or not try to pull one out i i think it's gonna get like a transparency thing i think though there there is also the question of professionalism and respect for the individual

102i you know i would i would certainly think if your concerns about an individual rose to the level that they had to be shouted in a public forum you might bring that back to the administration and and make make the appropriate individuals aware of that you know i'm i'm talking about an instance where you say you know i just i'm you know he was my math teacher 10 years ago and i didn't like him i you know that's a silly example but i i think we have to be very careful about calling those kinds of things out in a public forum john if i'm off mark there please let me know no i mean i certainly a board director is certainly entitled to vote no and say i'm voting no to the specific person that's

103their job um i have no problem with that obviously um the reasons that you're voting now i would be very you know i'd be very careful about what i would say in public um but if you're good if you're gonna say no um i think that's fine i mean i don't see any reason a board member can't vote no on anything that's that's part of their job but i do agree i do agree that you should be careful about what you would say about a particular person obviously i agree so mrs orr would you then be amicable to maybe coming up with a couple templates for us and i think we could could at least review that and then see if we need to discuss it further sure i i mean i can send what

104we used to use i think um there's some there's some administrators that are with us now that would remember the reports that we used to vote on and you know teachers were separate from the administrators they all had their own number you know superintendent's report number 13 12 i want to you know and it would be assignments and appointments the next one would be the professional appointments the next one would be leaves and that leaves of absences and so forth so but i can i can send you all examples of what what we did in the past and it worked well i think that would be helpful okay thank you director mcandrew did you want to continue does anybody else everything we're good so we have a motion to approve a settlement agreement and then

105we have a motion to approve the personnel report that's it um director fox policy yes we'll have a motion to approve first read um policy 832 educational equity we will have um currently we'll have a discussion and then we'll have a motion next week for the stomach uh somehow if i could speak tonight sorry some academy policy um ms miller are you speaking to or that else yes so i put a policy in front of the board for the stem academic policy which is in regards to the eligibility of students who are enrolled within the stem academy where they would be able to participate in co-curricular activities after school activities both social and academic as well as pia athletics and that's all outlined within the policy do you need me to go into any detail

106or mrs miller i think you should just explain again i did talk about it publicly but i think you should explain seventh and eighth grade students will be attributed back just a general overview so that everybody hears where we're at when they get to ninth grade they have one time to choose if they're from west side so i don't want to speak for you but yes okay so uh intermediate students who are accepted and enrolled within the stem academy would be eligible to participate in all co-curricular pia athletics academic and social activities at their home school and for state reporting purposes all achievement scores would be attributed back to their home school once a student who's enrolled in the stem academy enters ninth grade which wouldn't begin until the school year 23-24 any student whose

107home school is west script in high school would be given a one-time opportunity to choose which high school they wish to participate in those activities for this would only be for students whose home school would be west scranton students whose home school of scranton high school would remain as participating at script in high school they but our west grant and students who would be enrolled in the program would get that one time opportunity to either stay participating in after school co-curricular activities extracurricular pia sports social and academic activities at scranton high school or if they would like to participate um at scranton high school where they would be taking their classes and that would be a one-time opportunity that they would then be locked into for their high school career um nine through twelfth um

108unless they're removed from the program or leave the program and return back to western high school yes and again one of the things that i know the principal of west grantham high school had said that does that mean all of the scores again would be attributed to scranton high school if he loses those students and as ms miller already stated for state reporting purposes so that's your pssas that's your keystones all of those scores are attributed back to your home res of residence so it will be attributed back to west grant and so even if a 9th grade student who is from west side lives in west side chooses to go to scranton to the stem academy chooses to participate in the academic programs at scranton their state reporting requirements will go back to their

109home school of residence yes and i just want to say i really appreciate the work mrs miller that you put into that and superintendent mcteeren into looking into that option and the research that went into it because i think now west grant students um that may have been hesitant because they didn't want to be completely separated from their friends i mean they're still doing their summer activities doing their summer things with those that group of friends they can still keep those they can make the new friends at scranton so i think it's a win-win so thank you for that sure can i just ask one question i was reviewing the policy and one thing kind of popped out at me and i wasn't sure if it was clearly addressed and the one thing was let's

110just say because you were saying something or i was reading the policy and there was something about if they weren't able to maintain due to academics in the steam program and they went back to west but they were on the football team at scranton because they chose that what would happen so you know my understanding talking futuristically yes so my understanding and miss miller correct me if i'm wrong they would be go back to west grant and they would participate in west granton athletics that is correct correct okay so they all yes i got that okay so if they're dismissed from the program at all for for those reasons academic reasons they go back to the their home school of residence and they participate in the pia programs within that school thank you sure director

111hume has her hand up did you have your hand up director hume no i'm sorry did i hit the wrong thing you just have your little hand that's okay okay um does anyone else have any further questions on that okay so then we will have a motion to approve second read 626 procurement procedure attachment um and then also the agenda says first read 0-006 b-o-g but this would be a second read because first read was last meeting um if i can confirm that um is that okay do we just make an adjustment yeah sorry about that that was my copy and safety that's okay and to add to that on i believe we need to add um second read for policy one two two to the agenda also i don't believe it's on the posted

112agenda i think i i did paint it there there is the one two two extracurricular it just it just says first read for the public notice of board meetings and 122. so that just needs to read second read it is it's on the agenda the updated one that we received i don't think it's on the one that's in board docs so it's probably been posted publicly but i think board doc still has the one without this all right thank you for clarification that is all for me okay thank you director fox um special education dr director czech under special education we will have a motion to approve settlement agreements if any and that's everything thank you and then vendor relations director cleary um okay thank you we have a motion to approve the stem academy

113furniture purchase i can i i can speak to that um i believe ethan covered it pretty well when we spoke about the updated stem budget obviously this is the furniture that's necessary it's included within the budget for the stem program and with a line a line item of 280 thousand dollars as ethan noted we anticipate coming in under that amount and it will be purchased either with i believe he said uh kpn but it's actually pepum or source well depending on which vendor both are approved cooperative purchasing agreements thank you mr laffy okay i think we did fairly well this evening um is there anything else that anybody wants to comment on for the greater good okay then i will entertain a motion to adjourn