001Good evening. I'd like to call the Wednesday, March 18th Spring Ford Area School District work session to order. Please rise 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 for all. The Spring Ford Board of School Directors believes the community has the right to bring before the board issues and concerns they may have about items on the agenda or about items in general which affect the district or their children. Because of this belief and philosophy, the board will schedule a time at the beginning and conclusion of every meeting to have an opportunity for community members to share their concerns with the board. At the start of the meeting, members from
002the public may comment on agenda items only. The school board will move through the meeting agenda, then at the end, when prompted, there will be a time for public comment. This meeting is being filmed to be broadcast on community cable channels and online. Individuals intending to make public comments should be aware that they are being filmed. Speakers will be asked to state their name and the area in which you reside before your comment. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being with us today. Ms. Schmidt, could we please have a roll call? In person tonight, we have Mr. Lackey, Mrs. Westwood, Mrs. Winegarden, Mrs. Yut, Dr. Sharma, Mrs. Geerdoff, Dr. Wright, Mrs. Hermans, and online, we have Mrs. Goldsmith. Thank you. I do have an announcement. The board held an executive session tonight at 6:30 to
003discuss a personnel matter. Dr. Scanlon, do you have any announcements? Um I do not. Next up, we have public to be heard. This is on agenda items only. If you wish to speak, please approach the podium with your name, township of residence, and the agenda item number. You'll have 3 minutes. Seeing no one approaching the podium, we will move to presentations. Tonight, we have our capital plan presentation. This presentation serves as an up-to-date [music] summary of the multi-year initiative designed to reduce the number of grade transitions >> [music] >> at full-day kindergarten, balance enrollment in our elementary schools, and provide a 10-year maintenance plan for all district buildings. So, I think [music] first up, we're going to have Dr. Scanlon. Thank you. Can I just double-check something? I apologize cuz when you have your microphone
004on, I do hear buzzing. I'm just wanting to make sure that it's not being picked up over Zoom or in the community. That you can hear everyone clearly cuz That's cuz you're talking. Thank you. We all good? I think so. All right. Thank you. Uh thank you. Thank you, everybody. And um I want to just commend the school board and the community, the Spring-Ford Area School District community, the staff, our administrative team, and all the people that have been involved in this process. Uh we started back in August uh with a culmination of about 2 years of some studies that the school district had done in looking at its capital plan. Uh and the the questions were were posed back in the summer, can we look at a plan that A is going to renovate
005all of our facilities for the next 20 years. And we've talked a lot about that in some of our our facilities in our our finance committee meetings this year about um how we've done that and how we've how we've grown and we'll we'll walk through the summary of some of those. Uh the second piece was uh the discussion about full-day kindergarten. It's been several years of discussion about full-day kindergarten in this school district. Uh can we do that if we're if we're going to go through this, can we can we look at full-day kindergarten and is that feasible? And the third part was the board was concerned about the number of transitions that students go through uh with a K to 4 and then stop at 5 6 then 7 then 8 then 9 and
006then into the 10 12. It's a lot of transitions for students and what's some of the research on that. So, we put all of that together as the as the the target and the challenge as we took a look at this. And of course, you got to be able to afford all of this as we go through it. So, let me let me start with our what we'll cover tonight uh as part of our our enrollment growth history. We'll take a look at that. I'm going to start right out of the gate with a recommendation that we're going to we're going to make to the board and that will be our administrative recommendation. Uh talk about the process, the planning, the design, all of all the different steps and things that we've been going through,
007not only this year, but really going back to taking a hard look at our facilities since 2019. So, it's been it's been a lot of a lot of work and of course, the Spring City project was was I guess the first part of the renovation plan that took place a couple of years ago and just finished this this past summer. The planning components, what are all the components of the plan, what did we look at? The timeline of the recommended action that would need to take place. And then what would be next next step components. The two components for funding of this, the capital components, that's that's the facility, [clears throat] the bricks and mortar, and then the operational, which is the staffing. Those are ongoing costs and we have a recommendation to to cost
008that out, how we make that happen as well. This is really there's a lot of information in our demographic study about the growth history in the school district and how we have grown in the last 25 years from about 36,000 uh people living in this district to over 53,000 residents. So, it's it's been pretty quick. The housing and and growth that's been taking place in the early 2000s, we were getting a lot of children a lot more children out of our homes than we are getting now and of course, we had a lot of homes being built. So, the district was forced back in that late '90s early 2000s to quickly build schools big enough that we could put a lot of kids because we were getting a lot of children from from the from
009the developments. We're still getting developments, but we're not getting as many children out of those developments now and we don't anticipate that over the next 5 years. New new children are coming, but we also see some of those those communities that were built back in the '90s and 2000s that are starting to age out. And as new people are moving in, there just aren't as many people aren't having as many children in their families. So, that's all that's all part of the demographic study. This graph is is one that summarizes all of that pretty quickly. The actual the actual population that the grade that I just talked about, the 53,000, you can see from 2000 to 2010, number of residents was almost parallel to the number of students in terms of increases. And for the
010math people, that same slope means it's the same rate of increase. If you see what's happened since 2010, we've kind of leveled off with our students. We've gained a little bit and and since 2020, we've been pretty stable right around the 8,000 mark in this district. Uh and we anticipate that to stay the same, plus or minus 100 or 200 students each year with bubbles of kids, but we don't expect to see those big big increase in in in students or population as the population is starting to to level off, but grow a little bit. You can see in in the last 5 years, but not certainly at the levels it did in 2000. These were the five scenarios that the the board and and our architects, GKO Architects, uh looked at in terms of
011what what are some of these options we can look at. Those were the five pieces that that we said, let's let's tease these out, let's cost these out. We went through that process and do a half-day kindergarten K to 4 keeping keeping everything as it is. Can we do that? We look at full-day kindergarten K to 4 keeping everything as it is. Half-day kindergarten with K to 5 moving into fifth grade, that would create a 6 7 8 middle school model that reduces that gets at reducing the transitions goal. Or full-day kindergarten K to 5, uh which which builds smaller additions to schools. Or full-day kindergarten K to 5 that builds a little bit bigger additions to schools that gives you some space and and tell you what our recommendation is for that. Uh we're
012recommending after looking at all of this analysis and and I'll get to the next piece about what are the components that we wanted to see in this plan. Uh this option 4A, a full-day kindergarten program K to 5, would be would be 6 to 8 middle school. So, the 5 6 7 building would convert to 6 to 8. And we would be closing the eighth grade center in the fall 2030 under this this option and this this recommendation. One of the other things that we we did it wasn't part of our charge for this study, but it was one of those organically um found things that happened as we were looking at the size of that middle school with a shared auditorium cafeteria space that the 5 6 7 building has a big huge stage
013that doesn't get used most of the day cuz currently there are 11 lunch periods in there. It's used as a cafeteria as well. And so, that really doesn't it really can't use the stage. You have to you have to find a way to do lunch in some other way. It doesn't have a separate lunch area from an auditorium area. So, as a as a consideration for this this this recommendation, we asked our architects to give a couple designs if we were to add an auditorium in that that space, uh what would that be? That cost is about 14.5 million dollars. That is above and beyond the the recommended base plan that we're recommending here. But we said we should at least have a design so when we get into that design phase in 2 years
014for that middle school, you can design it. You can you can go through land development to make sure you plan for it. Uh and then you can put it as what's called an alternate bid in your bids and see what kind of price you get on that uh and decide if you want to do it or not. But people were going to ask about it, so as part of this study we we said we we we cost that out and that is in the that is in the report that that you have before you. By the way, that report and the board should have a copy of it is about a 35-page report that is a summary of all the documents we have sifted through, and and the online version gives you links to the
015other couple hundred pages of documents that are supporting this this 35-page summary, but we wanted to memorialize all of that so that you have it, the community has access to it, the staff has access to it, students have access to it, and and be very transparent about the process. So I want to talk a little bit about the the process for the decision. And and again, the whole whole I guess formal process began back in 2019, which looking at just the physical assessment of all the buildings. That's when the first facility study was conducted and just saying, "Okay, where are we with these facilities? They're they're coming on 20 22 years old. Now is the time we need to start looking at them cuz by the time you you sift through it, usually it's three
016or four or five years from a from a facility study till you actually decide if you're going to put a shovel in the ground somewhere, and and by then these buildings start to age a little bit more. So we had this whole assessment done in in 2019 and 2024. And in in the process in 2023, the the first decision was made to expand and renovate the Spring-Ford Elementary School. That was about a $22 million project that was finished in the summer. Many of us went to the dedication and it's operating. It's a beautiful school. And there was there were some really nice designs in that that building that took place. And then in in March August 25, GKO Architects came in and looked at at they looked at that big report and they were tasked
017with trying to come up with some some ways to reduce the transitions. Could we add full-day kindergarten? I think we had I mean it was I think it was 10 or 11 different options that were considered. Some were too expensive. Some didn't quite get the space. Some didn't meet the goals. And it was it was whittled down to those five that I that I showed in the previous slide. In September of 25, the the school board decided to bring in Sundance Associates, a demographer. Sundance has done a lot of work in Pennsylvania and New Jersey with looking at enrollment projections. And part of that process is communicating with the townships to see what is on the books for development. Analysis going back the last 10 years, five years. There's a couple different ratios that are
018used in that that study to see how many students are coming out of what kind of home. So if it's an apartment building, if it's a townhouse, if it's a single-family home, if it's a three-bedroom home, a four-bedroom home, all have different numbers and scenarios. And and that was that was done in 2025. We actually had Sundance revise that that study again this year, originally conducted in 2024, but to revise that to see if there's anything new or the projects that were done in 2024 that were on hold, are they started yet? So we have really updated demographic information for the for the decision process here. In October, GKO Architects presented some different scenarios to the Board Finance Committee meeting. That's when we I guess officially kicked off some of the the deep dive into
019into into this this study. November, we had a community forum to talk about the capital plan. It was and we and it was also the first of 12 faculty meetings. We actually did a presentation at each of our schools for our faculty, invited them to come out and give us input so that people knew what what some of the options were, what kind of the additions were going, what would be some of the programming we were looking at. And we began all that in November. Keep working through that. We had multiple staff committees to meet. We had and and you can see at the back of your report the number of people, the names of the people that were involved in this. What would our middle school look like? What's that model going to look
020like? What's full-day kindergarten going to look like? We involved our principals. We involved many of our teachers in that process. And and to come up with not only the the physical plant, but the program piece. And and this particular recommendation is really based on programming and then the once the programming was done the facilities piece can be done based around the programming. In February we presented again to the the Board Curriculum and Technology Committee, middle school model, full-day kindergarten model. We started having some discussions about that. Got some feedback from from the the board committees on on that process. Went back and made some revisions. Went to the Finance Committee on the capital costs. And and the this this school district is in a very good position in terms of financing the capital projects because
021of all those buildings that were built back in 2000. You have to take big loans and bonds for all of that stuff. They're typically 20 years, 25 years. A lot of those are starting to fall off and you're in you're in a sweet spot where as those bonds fall off, you still have the payments in your in your budgets, so you can take new bonds and really not increase the payments. Obviously depending on what the interest rates do, but you have the money budgeted in payments before you go spend that on something else, now's the time to roll it back into new payments for construction. And you'll hear more about that in just a few minutes. In March of 26, we were again back at the Finance Committee looking at operational costs. And you know,
022board members said, "Okay, great. We can we got the facilities piece, but how much staff are we going to need?" And there is some there is some efficiency in going to a model where you have 6 to 8 where you have one schedule in a building as opposed to two, which we currently have. There's some efficiencies with making moving kids. We have to redistrict students out of out of some space. We have some open space in the school district now, but we've got to move some kids into those spaces, so there's some efficiencies there. That helps us with some staffing. So so we talked about all of that and and presented what the operational costs would be if if we adopted this full-day kindergarten and a 6 to 8 model. Again, March of 23rd we
023had a which is where we are, which is which is the the recommendation and the time that the board would vote. So here are some of the basic components of the plan. And I think this this this point A, the 10-year renovations to existing facilities, that was one of the one of the points and one of the goals, one of the three big goals in here. Can we do full-day kindergarten? Can we reduce transitions? And can we renovate these existing facilities? Renovating the existing facilities was always part of the school district's plan. You have to do that to keep these buildings up and running for another 20 years. That is about $78.6 million. So the business office, the the facilities office, the the school board has been talking about how do you how do you
024keep that up? There's always capital money every year in the budget. And $78.6 million, if the board does nothing at all doesn't adopt full-day kindergarten, don't change the transitions you still need to begin on a $78.6 million facility renovation plan. So when you when you look at going from that that base plan to just keep what we currently have, that will keep the eighth grade center open, you need $30 to renovate that eighth grade building. You got to start that pretty soon. You go from there to you have an opportunity to go K to 5, bring full-day kindergarten in to the $103 million plan, you're looking at over 20 years investment of about an additional $25 million. The second part, the renovations and additions to the elementary schools to prepare fifth grade and and full-day
025kindergarten again, that's just about $25 million. So that that's your program that's your operational costs to make those programs work. You want full-day kindergarten, you need a little more space in those elementary schools. You want to reduce those transitions, you need a little more space in those elementary schools. And if you're going to go 6 to 8, you need to do some renovations to that that middle school building to make sure that you're set up for the for the middle school teaming structure in grade 6, 7, and 8. This would also close the eighth grade building and not until fall of 2030. So we still have to keep that building going and and working and operational because that we're not moving students until all these construction projects are finished. So we would still need that
026that building for for swing space. I think as one of the former board members asked about in the fall. And that would be our swing space building to to keep kids while we did the renovations to 6 6, 7, and 8. We would do additions to Brooke Limerick and Oaks Oaks. Oaks probably needs an addition anyhow because it's pretty crowded down there. In fact, there's a big new development the Parkhouse development. And one of the recommendations we're making is is we got to start telling people when those houses are built that they're going to get moved not that they got to go to somewhere else. They're going to they're going to most likely go to UPE, the Upper Providence Elementary School. It's it's about the same distance from Oaks because Oaks cannot take any more
027students. In fact, I'll show you a slide in just a second what happens if if we don't do anything at Oaks and how crowded that will get. The Evans Elementary, Upper Upper Providence Elementary, and Royersford get some some renovations in some of the pieces like bathrooms for kindergarten rooms, making sure we have enough small group instruction rooms and large enough rooms for learning support, speech, occupational therapy. And and I'll and I'll show you what we talked about with our principals and our architects here in uh in a second. The assumptions to renovate space. So, all of this plan and we said to the architects and met with the principals, okay, looked at this enrollment for fall of '29 and fall of '30. We want to maintain large group instruction rooms in every school. And I
028know board members, we've been on some tours of buildings this year and you've seen uh large group instruction room. I don't think Oaks has one right now because it's being used for space. So, we want to make sure that every school has this this this space and if you get a bubble of kids that you need a an extra section for a special, you might need a space once a week. You got to have that space. Or you're doing picture day. Uh I was in a school a couple of weeks ago, they're doing picture day in the gym and the phys ed teacher had to go into their LGI space to have for that. So, you need you need a place for those kinds of activities and for teachers to bring a whole grade level
029of students if they want to do a a grade level activity. So, that was one of the goals. We want to make sure we maintain an LGI room in every school. We want to include bathrooms in each kindergarten classroom. So, that's why it's important to know how many students do we anticipate, how many sections, how many have bathrooms now, how many don't, are they all in the same part of the the wing? Those are were some of the minor modifications on on the buildings that aren't getting an addition might have to take place. We want to make sure that art, music, Ram Quest, uh phys ed and library all have dedicated rooms for space. We don't want We don't put art on a cart. We don't want to be sharing space. We want to make
030sure they all have dedicated space. Uh we have estimated the number of special education classrooms needed. This is one of the things we looked at in terms of special education numbers. This district is very attractable is is attracting a lot of parents who have children with special needs and it's because of the the outstanding program that's delivered for students uh in the classroom in the schools. And that number seems to be getting bigger and we've we started to see the the trends of that, uh which is why we said, I think we got to recommend going to a little bit bigger additions so that you have a a room in your building that might be open if you need to add a special education classroom along the way in the next few years. That's why
031we're recommending 83% capacity of schools rather than 86. Gives you a little more flexibility for some of the unknowns that are out there. Uh small group instruction rooms, so we looked at reading, we looked at uh English language learners, we looked at speech, gifted, occupational therapy, physical therapy, all of those small spaces. Some schools have really nice rooms. Some schools have full-size classrooms right now where they have the space to do that. Some schools are in a closet where they have to do that. So, we want to make sure that there's ample room for all of these services that are provided to our students and that was an assumption for the for these renovations. We did a class size estimates based on our guide our current guidelines that these would be the maximums uh that
032we have in our our our current guidelines. Again, those are guidelines, but we had to start with some assumptions as if you had to put that as as many in, how many rooms do you need uh to make that happen. This slide depicts the uh taking our demographic study and aligning it to the architect study for the renovation plan. So, we spent a lot of time with the architects and our principals, especially our elementary principals, in looking at our current enrollment. You can see on the left-hand side, those are our elementary schools, what our current enrollment is. Um if you add fifth grade in, what would be our projected enrollment in 2029. And then you would see the number of students that we're going to be over our capacity uh or the number of students
033that a building can take. So, on the far right side is our our target number. Uh we're going to add additions, as I said, to to Brooke. So, Brooke would actually uh if you really shoved it really tight and wanted to put a lot of kids in there, you can get like 790 students in there. But at 83% capacity, which gives it a little more room, it's about 660 students. So, we we looked at the demographic study, how many students are are we expected, where they are, and and how many we're going to need to move out of schools and which schools can take them based on the additions that we're going to that we're going to build or based on some some uh schools that have room. Uh Upper Providence Elementary School currently has
034about 430 students in it. Last year we were able to put all of the Spring City students in there while we renovated the building. So, they have a lot of open space right now. Now, they are expected to get some growth out of some of the developments in in that township. So, um we can move some students into there. Uh we might when our in our redistricting plan have to move some out into some of the the the schools that are going to get an addition, but that is going to be part of the the first phase of of next fall to do that. But this kind of lines the demographic study up with what we need to build and how much space we're going to need and how many students we expect in the
035schools, K to 5 with full day kindergarten. And I'm going to turn it over to kindergarten to Dr. Murray. Good evening. I am very excited to be sharing with you the recommendation to move forward with full day kindergarten. Um our we've done a lot of research looking at both national trends as well as local trends with regards to the benefits for full day kindergarten. Um certainly that we one of the benefits includes increased time for reading and math, but that's only one small portion of the benefits for our students. The idea that students would then be able to participate in all of the the full scope of specials including art, music, PE, Ram Quest, and library. Currently, they're not afforded that opportunity, so we can increase the time for those specials as well as access
036to daily lunch and recess. Um also making sure as uh Dr. Skelton just mentioned, having bathrooms in each of our classes. But the part that I really want to focus on is the focus on purposeful and intentional play for our kindergarten students. Much of the research really supported the idea that students engaging in purposeful, meaningful play opportunities helps students grow not only academically, but social-emotionally, behaviorally, um builds um executive functioning skills, cooperative learning skills, the ability to work through problems, solve problems, and just uh play alongside their peer. That research is really outstanding as far as the benefits for our students. So, a lot of our focus on the full day kindergarten will focus on this idea of purposeful place for students. Our intended outcomes with implementing full day kindergarten includes academic improvements, but also
037social-emotional improvements, those skills such as self-regulation, the prosocial cooperative behaviors, social competence, problem-solving, and as I mentioned, those executive functioning skills such as time management, peer collaboration, um and those just cooperative skills that students need to to build their repertoire. Um additionally, the skills such as organization, time management, attention, and ultimately our goal will be to increase the readiness for first grade. Here you can see that the components of a the kindergarten plan that I mentioned and what we do stand to gain. This is a a sample schedule that students would experience where their morning would start off with morning meeting and discovery time, which is a time for students to engage in um SEL lessons, looking at social-emotional competencies, how do they interact, looking at calendar, um but also incorporating some of that discovery
038time and purposeful play. And we can see with a full day kindergarten, we can increase that by 10 minutes um and have ensure daily access for that. The core reading program in ELA would increase by 40 minutes, so we would gain some time there for our reading and um as well as math, which would be an increase of 20 minutes throughout the um the every day, as well as 40 minutes of access to our specials. I mentioned earlier, currently our half day kindergarten students only have access to art, music, and PE. With the full day program, students would gain the access to Ram Quest and library as well. Um additionally, our WIN time, as we refer to it, um WIN stands for what I need. It is an intervention block where students get individualized um
039instruction in the areas that they need, which is why it's called WIN time, what I need. Um the idea here is that students in full day kindergarten will be able to have a dedicated time within their schedule that can be used for very purposeful and targeted interventions or enrichment as the student needs. These interventions can be ELA, math interventions, or they can be social-emotional or behavioral interventions. It really can be across the board and is targeted based on what students need. Lunch and recess would give students the opportunity for that social-emotional time to interact on the playground and play with each other and solve problems and just learn um learn that that opportunity, that cooperative play. Um and then I mentioned earlier the the instance for purposeful play. This is where we would integrate our
040science and social studies, so students would also have daily access to science and social studies in the full day kindergarten. Um and this would be an additional 40 minutes of intentional purposeful play for students. And again, I want to talk a minute about purposeful play because it's so important to this model. This is not just an opportunity for students to play alongside each other. The teacher in um purposeful play plays an important role in designing learning targets and designing an opportunity for students to play around a center target. So, it's really important that the purposeful play there's a lot of intentionality to it. There are a lot of opportunities for students to discover, to learn on their own, and just slow down instruction so that students can learn through discovery and through hands-on activities. And
041with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Gardy to discuss our middle school model. Good evening. Um thank you for having me tonight to talk about our recommendations and findings for middle school model. One of the first things we really want to focus in on is strengthening our interdisciplinary teams. What that means is making sure that students belong to a group of teachers, that those teachers get to know, and those teachers work together for those 120 130 students on that team. Providing that support throughout the day and throughout the year. Additionally, we want to enhance our advisory program. That would include some of the things like MTSS, our target times, the what I need program times, a home base for students to be able to get the supports that they need. So, every student
042is advocated for by a team of teachers. Additionally, we're want to look at exploring um additional course offerings for our encore areas, special areas, offering diverse electives, giving students a balance of that rigorous academic offerings, as well as student autonomy and some exploration. Those subject area type like coursework will come to the committees once we work with teachers, but we've built a schedule to look at how the students would be able to get more offerings based on their choices and their interests. As I shared previously, we worked with eighth grade students to kind of get a sense of what they would have wanted if they had had this opportunity as a middle school model. Um most importantly, we already do this with our fifth graders, but really developing a sixth grade transition plan. So, because
043they'll be leaving an elementary school for so many years, coming into a middle school, we'll work with our teachers, our counselors, our principals to make sure that families and students are supported as they transition to a middle school. And lastly on this part is the commitment to fidelity, really supporting all of the research that we looked at, talking to other middle schools as well. It's that fidelity to the teaming and the interdisciplinary supports. Um making sure that we're implementing that support throughout the year, throughout the teams, and making sure that we give each student the opportunity to succeed. Just more specifically related to that conversion of a middle school model, um looking at implementing that 5-6 flex building to a true Spring-Ford middle school. In grades six and seven, we would have five-person teams like
044I mentioned about that teaming. Students would have reading, math, science, English, and social studies as their core subjects. Moving into eighth grade, students would have math, science, English, social studies, and either world language or additional reading. And looking at grades six through eight, I mentioned already, we would include specials as part of their daily schedule. One of the big key components to middle school model is making sure that teachers have that opportunity to team plan. So, that would be built into the schedule, and we would dedicate two special education teachers per team to provide that comprehensive support services to all students that need those supports. Um and again, I mentioned already, but the specials would allow then students to have elections of band, orchestra, choir, or general music within that day. Right now, we have
045that structure that they have lessons, but they have many ensembles outside of the school day. We would plan to maintain two school counselors per grade level, and time built into the schedule for students to receive that extra support through MTSS. This is a sample schedule, again, not related to any individual periods, but looking at what a sixth grade schedule might have, reading, English, math, science, a lunch period, social studies, have health and PE. There'll be a special area rotation, and additional time for MTSS and target time. Very similar in the seventh grade schedule with the addition of an exploratory world language, and then in eighth grade, that world language becomes a full course, and students would receive reading minor unless they need additional reading support, and they would have that reading major component. And at
046this point, I'll turn it over back to Dr. Scanlon. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Murray and Dr. Gardy. They have spent a lot of time looking at the research and best practices in developing a schedule, uh and trying to incorporate uh many of the I mean, we do a lot of great things for for students now, and making sure that we incorporate those into our schedule and work from that uh to to make it as as as good as we can with the middle school model, give give teachers time during the day, give students time during the day to to provide uh to provide help and and professional development. This is a timeline that we have we have used throughout the process, and for uh for engineers, for the finance department, and for our
047facilities department, it it's pretty common. It's really how you design projects and what what's the phasing. But for those of us who are former English language arts teachers, I want to put that slide in words. So, here it is in words, same slide. It's >> [laughter] >> the same, great. It you know, the final vote, again, Monday, uh the board would This will be a formal action item on the board agenda on Monday, March 26th. Uh and in April, we would begin that design phase of renovations to schools. I mean, we need to get started right away because remember, the piece of the renovating schools has been on hold until we went through this process. That has to begin, and there may be some projects that we want to get started this summer, some of
048those smaller minor ones, but that has to begin, uh which also there I think there is a a need to as as part of this, uh if if the board does vote on this, we need to quickly assign our architects and approve our architects uh in terms of of getting them on board to to do that design phase. Uh designing for a a renovation is going to take about a year, go through land development. So, it's it won't you won't see a lot of that happening this summer other than some of the minor renovations of that we're planning for that $78 million. Uh we also in August would put together a redistricting committee. Part of this process is moving students out of some of the crowded schools into the schools that have a little bit
049of space. Uh that that needs to be done cuz we're we're basing a certain amount of students coming out of a school and going into a school, that's how big the the the additions need to be then. Uh if we don't move students, we're going to have to build a huge addition at Oaks, and we just don't have the space uh nor the capacity for the uh the site area over there to do that. Uh redistricting committee would begin uh in September. That's one where we'd recommend involving community members, staff members, really be open and transparent about that, look at the different options that you have with setting some of those numbers, how many do we have to get, what's going to what's coming out of what development, um and and begin that process so
050that a recommendation could be made sometime this about this time next year, so people know 2 years in advance who who's going where. As new people move in, it's an opportunity to move people into the newly created feeder pattern rather than move them twice. So, by giving a a 2-year advance notice, I think it's important for for families to plan, and it's important for new families moving in as well. March of '27, uh bid documents would be prepared. Again, takes about a year for the first elementary projects. Uh in talking with our architects, they're they're they're pairing these bids together uh with Limerick and Royersford as a bid. Uh the following month, we would be seeing bid documents for um uh Oaks and UPE. They're going to they're going to go together, and then uh
051Brooke and Evans. And those are the the renovations. Spring City doesn't need uh significant renovations cuz it just went through a big renovation, but uh we just have to look at the space in there and how we're going to utilize that space internally. In March of '27, look at uh there's a piece in here where we we were closing this eighth grade center. And I know that we've received uh in the last 6 weeks some questions about what we're going to do with that building. And one of the things that that we said at the very beginning of this process, um that building is is been here over 100 years. It was the old high school. There's a lot of emotional attachment to it. Um it's it's going to take some time, and I think
052it's going to it's going to need to be vetted with a lot of input from the community and staff about what we do with that building. And I know people have opinions about it. Some say, "Let's just close it, knock it down, or let's just sell it, or let's just repurpose it." You got to cost all that out. You got to cost all that out. Um that is not part of of what we were charged with here. The decision is is whether you're going to keep it open or close it. We're recommending we close that building, repurpose those costs into the renovations, repurpose some of the the staff savings into the staffing needs that we have, and um but you got to decide what you're going to do with that before before you get to
0532030 when that building does ultimately close. So, again, 3 years advance notice on that. You start that process uh in uh in uh 2020 '27. In June, we would anticipate uh next summer begin some of those elementary project renovations or shortly thereafter, depending on how that bid process goes. Um and here's a here's a timeline for redistricting. Uh if you that we did put in the report, what you would need to do with your committee, uh when do you need to do things with your committee, when do you go out to your your community with some updates with that, and then make the the final recommendation uh to the to the board for uh approving those new new feeder pattern boundaries, and then implement those in August of 2029 when you would go to K
054to 5 and full day kindergarten, start your middle school programming with just uh six, seven in that middle school. Eighth grade remains, but they would they would be in a a middle school model in eighth grade, and then the following year, the eighth grade teams would all move into the into the new building. These are targets of our recommended action. Again, redistricting committee would make a recommendation for how we're going to balance out these schools by sometime around April of 2027. Eighth grade center planning is going to make a recommendation the following spring. So, each spring you've got some big, you know, some big decisions to make. Bid documents for that middle school renovation. So, it's about March of 2028. So, you have Again, you have a little bit of time to think about how
055that's going to work. Elementary's first. Once those documents are done and we're out to bid and start that, we then begin the process for the for the the design of the of the middle school. And the middle school things like additional family consumer science. How many how many tech ed labs? Like we might to add some of those those pieces in there. So, that that design phase is going to it's not going to expand the footprint. You know, unless we go build an auditorium, but in inside the footprint to make sure that we're going to meet all our program needs based on what Dr. Gardy had just outlined. The fifth grade students would in in August of 2029, people say we're moving the fifth grade students down to elementary. We're not because they're going to
056be fourth graders one year in a building and they'll remain fifth graders in that same building. So, it's they're just going to remain in that building in August of 2029. The seventh and eighth grade students would remain in that 567 building. That gives us the swing space. We we just have two grade levels in there to begin those renovations while we still have students in the building. That's why we need to keep that eighth grade center. We can't do those renovations and meet this timeline if we put all the eighth grade students in and and we got nowhere to put students while we're trying to design a couple more labs or a couple more FCS rooms. And then August of 2030, all students all the eighth graders would would come out of that. We'd close
057the the eighth grade building. We'd close that year and all the 678 would be up and running. So, it's really a two-year phase-in process for the programs fall 29 and fall of 30. So, with that, how do we staff all of this stuff? I'm going to turn it over to our director of HR, Beth Lease. Good evening. We worked really hard to try and forecast five years out what staffing is going to be looking like for a full-day K fifth grade elementary model and also shifting to a 6 through 8 grade middle school model. We had to put a lot of assumptions into effect. We are assuming that we are using this year as our current baseline for staffing. We're assuming that our fifth grade will have the same percentage distribution of students as the
058fourth grades do. We're assuming that the increase in overall enrollment numbers from 2025 is all kindergarten. And then we're also assuming that we're using Well, we are using the GKO numbers. So, as we did that in looking at potential movement across the district with redistricting, we are anticipating a need of six new classroom teachers. Six and a half new student support specialists and that's to help support our students with the WIN programs like Dr. Murray was speaking about and also help support our MTSS model. And we're also projecting a need for four assistant principals. Those four buildings that you see on the screen are going to be quite large and we do project a need for assistant principals in those buildings. In shifting to a 6 through 8 grade model, at this point in time,
059we do believe most of our current staff can help staff that without many new additions. However, we do project that we may need need two elective teachers once we figure out what those electives might be. Thank you. So, how do you pay for all that? Right? A lot a lot happened here. Um But, one thing that I do want to talk about briefly is to kind of kind of rewind a little bit and go back to the beginning where Dr. Scanlon was talking about the long-term projects that we've already had on our schedule. This this district has done a really good job of working through long-term models and long-term planning and putting the finance numbers around those. In addition to that, as you can see from the slide here back in 2010, the district had
060about 80 $185 million of debt on its books that we were servicing. You know, that was right off after the wave of that population growth and we did some work on this building. We we built the 56 center. We built UPE. We built Evans Elementary, where my kids went. Um so, since that time, you know, 16 years later now, we're at about 25 I'm sorry, 57 million in debt. So, we've done a great job of of of burning down that debt, I'll call it. Um In addition, you can see we had made some budgeting adjustments along the way when the debt service was very high during those 2010 type years, we ran a budget line for debt service of about 16 and a half million dollars. Now, because there's been some decreases in that debt
061and some of that debt has fallen off, we some of the debt we kept on our debt services and repurposed and some of it we took off for for for budgeting for operating things. But, we do know that times like these tell us that we have to keep that debt service line within our budget and we have to maintain it. Not only that, but going forward because the cost of doing these types of projects, renovations, cost of materials, labor, you name it, goes up over time, we need to make sure that our debt service line in our budget continues to increase accordingly, which we have built in to our our forecasting model. So, we did have a debt cliff in 2025. About $5.5 million came off our debt off of our debt service, but we
062didn't take it away, right? We left the major portion of that within our debt service line. We did use some of it to pay for some of the commercial real estate assessment appeals that we had to to make you know, to balance the budget this past year. So, but the majority the majority of that is still on there. We've been looking at the debt service budget as I said and keeping that and growing that back to where the 12 million where it was and then beyond over the years. I think our forecasts were were estimating about a 5% growth on that because that's generally what these types of costs construction wise are are increasing year over year. Although, we did go through a period where it was much higher than that. Um But, how do
063we pay for the overall construction of all this? Well, the annual budget, as Dr. Scanlon had alluded to, we do have currently we have about $2.2 million in our annual budget to deal with what we call summer projects, paving, rooftops, all of those types of big projects, some HVAC work, those types of things. And that's going to be increasing over the next couple of years as well. So, a piece of that's going to help pay for that 78 million. That's the the number that Dr. Scanlon talked about before. Already in the plan. We also have approximately $10 million in our cap reserve and this is why it's there. To help fund these types of projects to get them kicked off. And of course, it's there for rainy day as well should something bust as as
064we're going forward as well. Um We have also put together our debt service plan. I I drew up a debt service plan long-term, you know, taking into account when debt issues are falling off of our budget. Um When we'll be putting new debt onto our budget to deal with these projects and future projects down the road. We have reviewed that with our our good friend Ed Murray from Stifel Financial and he has said, "Yeah, that's a good model. We can follow that model." And that is built into our long-term plan to cover not only the 78-79 million dollars that we know we have to do, but also the additional 25 million that will help finance this project. But, that's not the only thing we have to worry about cost wise. We have to There's also
065a cost to buy or build and there's the cost to own, right? So, Mrs. Lease was talking about personnel. That's certainly a big component of it. What's that going to look like? They're going to be There's going to be associated costs with those. Eight teachers is going to cost close to a million dollars when we get down to the road in 2029, right? We don't need it all right now, but we know that we need to build up to that as as we go forward. Um bussing for full-day kindergarten, that's going to increase our runs in the morning. So, we know there's going to be an increased cost there. But, we also know there's going to be a decrease because we're not going to be doing midday runs anymore. Almost a wash. Not quite, but
066pretty close. Um the assistant principals that Mrs. Lease was talking about, student support services, some supervisory services that we know we're going to need. So, we know that all in all come budget time 2029, we're going to have to look at about 3.1 to 3.2 million dollars in in operating cost. But, savings. There's also some savings. We also know this you know, the study that Dr. Scanlon and I have done looks at the students that are currently in in our charter schools. We have a large portion this more recent years than it had been in the past of kindergarteners. Why are they going there? Because we don't have full-day kindergarten. That's why. Will they go there after we have it? Probably not. Would their siblings come back with them? Probably. So, when we look at
067those things, we we estimate and and Dr. Scanlon thinks this is a conservative estimate. I like to go conservative, so there it is. Million dollars about of cost coming back to the district right off of our operating budget. It costs currently this this year approximately $50,000 a year for a special education student to go to charter school. And about 15 to 16,000 dollars a year for a non-special student. That money comes back. And the hard part is is that, you know, when folks are going to charter schools, which which is fine, it's their choice. They they should have that choice. Um when we move one or two students or five students, it really doesn't impact. We're we're not allowed to drop our cost in our end cuz we still have the the big need. But
068we end up having to pay out of the budget. This is going to bring some of that back. Midday bussing I talked about. We know we're know we're going to have some position reassignment once once the eighth grade the eighth grade building closes, we know we're going to there's going to be some synergies there. Whether that's backfilling, you know, positions along the way and that type of stuff. So we're estimating about an 870,000 dollars savings in energy. Um that 100-year-old building isn't terribly efficient, right? Uh we spend approximately 300,000 of a year just on electricity in that building. That's a big number. Um coming back in will we be adding space uh you know, new space with additions? Sure. Will it be energy-efficient space? Yes. That number, you know, we we estimate that that number
069along with heating costs and those types of things are going to are going to draw back draw that back down. So when you look at it, the net net there is about about 720,000 dollars of additional operating costs 3 4 years from now. So what's the play? The play is you start building up to that in your budget now. So what does that mean? We we we call it uh dedicated millage or or or designated fund balance. There's probably a million terms to throw at it. But what that means is you take a portion of money into your budget and you don't spend it, right? That's creates creates the room in the budget, right? So not only So let's say it's 250,000 dollars a year. Next year it's another 250. The year after that it's
070another 250. Now I'm at my 750 to you know, 720 to 750,000 dollar number. Not only that, but I've also put aside another million and a half dollars that I can put towards the construction costs, right? So that helps that helps on twofold by doing that piece. Creates the operating budget room when the time comes and we have to employ all of this, but it also gives us the opportunity to reduce the amount of money that we have to borrow when it's time to build or do some of the other projects that we know that we need need to get done. And with that I'm going to turn it back to Dr. Scanlon. >> Yeah, thank you, Mr. Fink. That is um 6 months of work, lots of analysis of of documents and a lot
071of time with with team and and a lot of people in the school district and community. And let me uh Let me just summarize all of that in this one slide. Again, our final recommendation is adopt 4A of the facilities plan. That does give us 83% capacity of our of our buildings. That builds a little bit bigger additions in in that scenario. It's 103.5 million dollars. Begin the 10-year renovation process of our schools and begin that process this summer cuz again there's we put that on hold for planning until we decided what we're going to do. The attendance boundaries, again, we've talked a lot about Oaks. We we got to proactively reassign new developments that aren't built yet that are supposed to go to Oaks and we needed we need to do that immediately. Talk
072to realtors, talk to developers as people are looking to to purchase a home in those developments. Let them know that that that is not going to be Oaks will not be the school cuz we cannot take any more students. I think the Parkhouse development anticipate 189 students coming out of that. All right now scheduled to go to Oaks. We've got to provide immediate relief at Oaks. We won't we won't get these additions built in time by time those those those those houses are built. They don't currently have any built yet, but I'm told that it takes about 90 days to build a house and about 2 years to build an addition to a school when you get through land development. So they're they're a little faster than we are with that whole process. The redistricting
073process should begin next fall and make sure that we again give our give our parents plenty of notice about where those redistricting timelines are going to be moving. You know, estimate probably between maybe 400 and 500 students out of some 8,000 is about what it looks like when you look at the initial numbers based on what it would be in fall of 2029. So give plenty of notice on that. A full day kindergarten, we're recommending implement full day kindergarten. There's a lot of research in your report about it. We are the only district in Montgomery County of of the districts in this county that don't offer full day kindergarten or the public schools. As Mr. Fink said, we have many of our families are going to charter schools because they do offer full day kindergarten.
074And what we're finding is they'll stay for second first, second, and third grade because they might have a younger brother or sister going and they want to be on the same schedule. We offer full day kindergarten, you will you will see those numbers drop dramatically. We spend about 5 million dollars a year in charter school payments. We anticipate get back a million. Mr. Fink and I went round and round on that. I'll concede to the conservative number. I think you're going to see a bigger savings over the 3 years of implementation of this plan. The the middle school in grade 6 to 8 and again there's a lot of information about the the middle school process, the value of that. The the fewer there's a lot of information in your report about trans closing the
075transitions. In the eighth grade building, we have those students right now for 1 year just getting to know this the students now and they're going to be off to another building next year. So getting keeping them a little bit longer, getting to know them in that whole 6 to 8 model, we're recommending that happen in fall 2029. Close the eighth grade center fall 2030. As I said, that gives us some swing space for that year of renovation of the of the 5 7 building to be converted to a 6 8 middle school model. And that would give us a little bit of space to do some of that in a in a faster manner to do it in a year as opposed to two summers. And then the final piece again was not part of
076the initial project, but consider a middle school auditorium as an alternate bid when you do those bids and designs in a couple years. We anticipate that to be about 14 to 15 million dollars. That was not part of the initial project, but I think it's something that you may get asked. We did have our architects do a couple designs on that and it's probably worth at least putting in as an alternate bid. You don't have to accept it. The way alternate bids work is you do a base bid to do the renovations and then some alternates that you might want to do if you get a good price on it. So we're recommending that you you include that as part of it, but certainly not not a must-have, but it certainly would be um would
077help with programming at a at a big middle school with 2,000 students. And at that we'll entertain questions. I will go to the board. I just want to make one comment first. You mentioned how many people helped with this project and we've had, you know, got to hear from a few of you tonight. Um but I think it's really important there's this appendix in the plan that we have has a list of 60 names of [music] staff members that have been part of this project. So I definitely want to thank I'm not going to read them all out, >> [music] >> but recognizing that there were 60 people from all over our school community that were involved in that and then also our community members, too. >> [music] >> At the two growing together workshops
078that we've had with our community. So I think it's a really >> [music] >> a big testament to our community and the dedication and and you have my appreciation and thanks for everybody's hard work for this. But I know I saw Mrs. Westwood. I think she got her hand up first and then I'll go around the table. Actually, I'll go I'll just go in order. So after Miss Westwood, I'll go to Dr. Wright and then we'll just go down. I have two questions and I don't know, Dr. Scanlon, if you want to answer these questions. They're fine they're financial questions. The the first one is in the packet that we have for the I believe for the scenario 4A there's 108 million dollars in construction, but you had another slide in here I think that
079talked about the 103.5 infrastructure maintenance costs and the 78.6 must do to maintain schools. Like I just the first question is I want to understand what is the total amount that we would be looking to finance between the maintenance and also the administrative recommendation for 4A. Define it when you say finance, I think you mean you're borrowing. Yes. Approximately 85 million over the 4 years. 85 million over how many years? Over 4 years. We we would expect it to be about we think four tranches. We would probably do one small tranche this year, a bank-rated tranche of about 10 million dollars two medium-size tranches the two following years and then it bookend with another bank-rated tranche of another 10 million dollars at the end. Okay, thank you. The second other question was you had mentioned
080Mr. Fink the net new budget need for 2029 is the 720,000 and that we would work towards that. I also know we have a as of the end of February 701 168 gap to close the gap in our budget to get to the 3.5. Can you talk a little bit about your high-level thoughts about how we might build towards that year over year to 2029 or 2030? Sure. We've been Dr. Scanlon and I and the rest of the team have been working really hard to to look at you know, personnel hires and those types of things. Backfills. There's a couple of maybe some smaller revenue opportunities that will add up. So we're looking at multiple different ways to address the current gap and to build in the designated fund balance needed to get to that
081720. And the last one, I'm so sorry. That's that that amount that we would need for this year to help build towards that that's in the budget already or it does not. It was not in the version that we talked about on at finance committee earlier this month. Was that last week? It is now, but there have been some other alterations as well that we'll go through in finance committee in April. Thank you very much. I do have one quick question, but other than that I did want to say to Dr. Scanlon and to the whole team how impressed I am by the thoroughness of this plan that you took the input from so many people. It is very reflective. I find it fiscally responsible while putting students first and also really kind of prioritizing
082the the state-of-the-art programming. I'm very excited about seeing where this leads. I'm very thrilled that we are finally have a plan, a road map that we can go by because it was a very overwhelming task when I think when we all first looked at this. But the prospect of having full-day kindergarten finally, you know, I In fact, I'm thinking maybe I need to run for a third term so I can be here for the for the end of it. But anyway, I do thank you so much for for all of this because we have been talking about it as a board and even previous board members for a while knowing this needed to be done and I really feel we have a very thorough clear plan of what was an overwhelming task. You make it
083seem simple and I know it wasn't. So thank you for that. Quick question, just I didn't pick up on when would we start redistricting or moving students? Um We would start with again new developments next next fall for the new developments that are not currently built. That would be phase one of redistricting. Once the redistricting plan is finished in about this time next year, you'll be ready for fall of 27 for probably new people moving in to go to the new feeder patterns if they're in an area that's going to be redistricted and then fall 29 would be all of the all of the changes would be made. Thank you. Um yeah, I'm just going to echo probably what everybody else is going to say as well. I mean, there's 60 people listed in the
084acknowledgements of this report, teachers, principals, counselors, supervisors, coaches. Um they all gave their time and expertise to build something that goes well beyond just like a facilities plan. Uh that includes kindergarten teachers thinking about what a 400-minute day looks like for a 5-year-old. That's eighth grade teachers thinking honestly about what a middle school should feel like. That's staff who give their give up their time to sit in on focus groups and fill out surveys and actually engage with the hard questions. Um to the entire administrative team and everyone who contributed to this plan, thank you. Um to echo what Dr. Wright said, this is a a thorough, honest piece of work and it shows. I'm incredibly appreciative of the fact that we have something this well built in front of us to make a well-informed
085decision. Um So with that said, um you know, the uh I had one question about the budget and this is just sort of a curiosity. I saw that the total amount of debt in 2010 was 185 million. I'm just curious, what was the budget back at that time? Oh, jeez. I'd have to go back and look at that, but 10 years ago, I'm going to guess it was probably around 120. Okay. I was just curious. That's all. I'm sorry, that would have been 15 years ago. That would have been probably around 120. Thank you. All right. Thank you for this. I have two questions then two comments that I really just kind of want to reinforce. So I'm not sure if my questions are best suited for Dr. Murray or Dr. Gardy, but with regards
086to full-day kindergarten, I mean I mean the research is very clear and as Dr. Scanlon, you mentioned we're kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being the only district in Montgomery County without it. So this is like something I'm very excited for. But I'm really curious because, you know, one thing that we and Dr. G, you know this that more and more students are being identified for special education services at younger and younger ages and I'm curious just from your professional expertise, to what extent do you think that full-day kindergarten might level out that initial playing field a little bit cuz I have to imagine that being able to keep them here, being able to control what we control um as far as the programming might have a broader, longer-term impact with what
087we see as they progress through their elementary years. I absolutely think we'll see a positive impact with that because you're looking at being able to get students interventions earlier and being able to provide support. So while we see an an increase in ELA and math time, that's only one very small part of the the puzzle. Um being able to have more time for students to interact with each other and build those executive functioning skills and collaboration skills and um you know, maybe some of the behavior interventions that need to occur earlier, this will also afford us opportunities for students to get interventions such as OTPT without pulling students from core programming, which currently now is very difficult to do. So I would envision that we would see um that work towards the positive because we
088have more time with students to be able to provide that. Not sure if you Sure, I can add to that. So speaking from the early intervention lens, um you know from the board memo, we have about 94 students coming in from Montgomery the IU receiving services. 27 of them will be receiving full-day K because they're in full-time programs. So looking forward, we'll be able to utilize full-day K for all 94 of those kids coming in, which it only benefit them being able to stay for a full day. Okay. Uh the second question is still around curriculum and programming. So I know Dr. Gardy, you talked extensively about the research that's being done on the middle school model. I'm curious and this might be a premature conversation and it might be something that we we talk
089about in like a future curriculum and technology meeting, but to what extent are there conversations happening on like what will that fifth grade experience look like? So we know what the sixth through eighth, but you know, I think you mentioned it Dr. Scanlon that we are doing a lot of great things now that we want to hold on to and in my opinion as one board member, I think one of those things is like the teaming model that we have at the 5/6 center. And again, while they may physically be located in the elementary schools, to what extent do we hold on to some of those practices like that to help smooth out the transition from fifth grade to sixth grade? That's an excellent question. We actually did have a meeting to talk about that.
090I think we have more work to do, but one of the things that we heard loud and clear from the fifth grade teachers is that they really valued the teaming that occurred at fifth grade and being able to have switch pairs and multiple teachers. That's one thing that came through loud and clear with that. So I think we would be short-sighted to just say we're going to just put fifth grade in in the elementary and just assimilate just the way it was. I think we have to take the parts that worked in our current model and meld that with the parts that work from an elementary model and see a foot in kind of both doors. What we want to do is make sure that as we have transitions, whether or not that is fifth
091to sixth or then eighth to ninth, that there is always some type of kind of slow bleed where you can blend the two levels together so that students are better prepared for the next level. So taking again some of those transition pieces that they'll see and work that into the fifth grade. I think there's a lot more work to be done on that, but we did meet to talk about that to see, you know, what what were the pieces of fifth grade that those teams really valued and that's something that came through loud and clear. Yeah, we and we had a lot of discussion about teaming and teaming is a is very valuable for our teachers and and valuable for our students right now in grade five. And that's something we want to continue the
092discussion that we had some you know, whether you have if you have an odd number of sections, if you have five sections in there cuz right now the teams are two. Do you create a sixth section or do you do teams of three? So we would probably do teams of three. So we have to see what that looks like versus teams of two. So those are those are some of the detail pieces we got to work out. Um again, if the board approves this plan. So I did have two comments. One of which and I would say that these comments really kind of stem from what I observed attending the community forums. So I want to hit on two things. And really, you said it, but I want to reinforce it, is the eighth grade
093center. I think one thing came through loud and clear when I was observing those meetings is that there's a lot of emotion and sentimental attachment to the eighth grade center. And you have people on both and when I say emotion, it's both sides, right? It's people who are in favor of keeping it, people who are opposed to, you know, you know, wanting to see it kind of close and sunset. And you know, I think that's really a reflection of just how much our community cares about the student experience and what happens here at Spring Ford. So I think any emotion is good emotion. With that said, some of the things that I heard in that community forum were things like, well, what about repurposing it? Like repurposing it, have you considered, for example, like an
094education early education center? Have you considered making it another middle school? Like is there other utility for it from a student experience or classroom standpoint? And I you know, I know that GKO who is here in the audience like as part of your study like there were a lot of those options. You're shaking your head that were explored and you know, I think what I want the community know is those weren't just pushed by the wayside. When we think about like what are the options here, it really anchors to those three goals that we set for ourselves as a board, right? Bringing full day kindergarten, reducing transitions, enhancing like the middle school experience, and of course upgrading our facilities. Um doing any of those other things does not check off those boxes, right? You're increasing
095transitions. You're siloing a small subset of students and not giving them the full experience that other students would be getting. For example, if you were to put make that somehow that's very small building a middle school model. So, you know, I just want to be very clear with the community that like this board, this administration, our partners at JKO JKO were very thoughtful in exploring some of those things and it it was not unnoticed. So, um that was one thing. The other thing I wanted to talk about was um I love it Mr. Frank when you talk tranches. It's like my favorite thing. And then talking about the financing here. So, one of the things that I've been hearing and again, partly in the community forums and partly just like through informal, you know, uh
096social media, word of mouth is just like the funding and financing of this. And I think that there is a misnomer when you see a number like 78 million or 103 million that you automatically go to, oh my gosh, my taxes. Like it automatically goes to the tax impact. So, like again, just trying to keep this cuz we live and breathe this every single day. Capital expenditures like this are not funded through the general budget. Your the general budget is impacted to the extent of your debt service payments, right? You're talking about issuing debt. You're talking about um using capital reserve to some extent, but replenishing it over time. So, it does not necessarily equal tax impact. Um and by the way, I'm just going to go trip down memory lane. We saw this in
097action in 2022 with the Giza project. So, for those that don't recall, this district did a lot of uh capital improvements, Oaks roof, ninth grade you roof, the um flex I think it was a heat pump. I'm looking at Mr. Think the heat pump at the flex center. Uh we upgraded lighting throughout the district and there was a lot of buzz. Like, oh my gosh, my taxes taxes taxes. And what we came to find out was because of the debt cliff and because Mr. Fink and his team are very thoughtful about how and when we issue debt, we actually were able to facilitate those at a net neutral impact to the budget. Little to no impact to taxes because it was already built into it and um again, things were rolling off and it was
098already there and we were planning for it. So, I just really want to make it clear the community when you and it's not just Spring-Ford cuz I you know, we have neighboring districts that are going through a lot of um you know, whether it be building a stadium or doing this. They see a number and they think, oh there goes my taxes. That's not how it works. That's a very simplistic and frankly erroneous way of thinking about how you fund projects of this magnitude. So, thank you. That's it. I just wanted to reiterate and concur with Dr. Wright. Um I think that um the work that has been put into this plan is incredible. Um everybody came together and has worked very hard. We've listened to this plan a couple of times now. I am
099looking very forward to seeing full day kindergarten come to fruition. Um and also I think that um um Erica brought up a good point and that is how is fifth grade going to transition? And I'm looking forward to hearing about those team focused ideas. Thank you all for everything that you've done. Dr. Scanlon, [clears throat] I mentioned this to you last time as well. This is not a report, this is a dissertation. So, technically we can graduate these 60 people and above do fully holding the dissertation. So, this is a true doctorate. Really appreciate everyone's work and effort put together in this report. Um I I think before I comment one more thing, there's one thing that was missed on the full day kindergarten. When we have that, we're definitely going to have travel time
100that's going to be saved. I am I am in that stage or phase where I have to plan for kindergarten for following year, not the next year, but some of my my friends and family members are getting in that phase to get ready. Just to give you a gist that how are they looking that next year is basically that somebody has to drop their kid either at the school or at the daycare and then somebody the bus will pick them up to go to either to daycare or the school depending on what they get a.m. or p.m. And then there will be another bus for the aftercare. Just imagine five-year-old or six-year-old having to travel and having this much commute time which they might not be looking forward to growing up to go to get
101a actual job when they will be at the age of 18 because they're going to be really bumped about the traffic and the commute time they're going to have. So, that is going to be a big saving that we can give back to them so they can have the playful time. Because I know when I go pick up my son at the at the daycare, he's not ready to leave because he wants to spend every single minute with his friends. He's not ready to go home. Not that he doesn't like his family, but he wants to spend more and more with his friends and he wants to just hang out. So, this will give them the schedule looking at the schedule and um talking about the morning activities, calendar like the pledge of allegiance. All
102of these activities are going to really enrich our kids uh early stages so they're better prepared for for their school time. Uh this other comment I was going to make which I forgot now. Um I am very for I'm looking forward to the full day kindergarten. I know my son might be missing this um but as my daughter grows grows up, uh I am really interested that this is going to really help our community and the families who are here there who have younger kids and the families who will be moving in in future to our our community, they're going to be really benefiting from this decision. Thank you. Mrs. Goldsmith, do you have any comments to make? I would just like to reiterate what everyone else has said. Thank you. Mrs. Westwood. I didn't
103want to belabor. Thank you. I didn't say that in my first comment cuz I get excited about numbers like Mr. Fink, but but yes, thank you for everything. I'm also excited for full day K, the middle school model etc. which we've been talking about for some time. Um the one other question I just had and Mr. Fink, maybe this a little bit of this goes to what Erica said, but I was thinking about this when you were talking. In in the past and I think you did this last year when the debt service rolled off and I'm maybe like Dr. Scanlon this way where I'm more visual. Like with the with the borrowing and you can tell me if this is an unreasonable request. With the borrowing of the 85 million over the four years
104and then the cap reserve of the three to five million and like some of these other things. Is there a way just when you're thinking about it is a large dollar amount. Just to visualize how that will work out over time in the borrowing. I think it would be helpful for the board potentially to see that visualization and to understand the point that I think Mrs. Hermans was trying to make, but I think it would also be helpful potentially for the community. Are you are you asking the timing of of the borrowing? Is that what you mean? Um do you remember last year when you did I guess they're called tranches to use your word, but you had something around like the debt service and what like almost something so as an example, if you're
105borrowing 85 million over four years or maybe it's a little less if you're borrowing from cap reserve, showing um an illustration of what that borrowing would look like, you know, some of it's bank rate, some of know it wouldn't have all the right rates and all that. Just more so to visualize roughly how we're looking by tranche at the borrowing over that time period to understand it is not just we're borrowing 85 million in one year, but I just think that visualization may be helpful. Sure, we can we can go through that again at a April finance committee if you like. Is that is that adequate? Uh maybe it's just me like I I would like to see it before we make a decision, but if that's not feasible, we can we can or maybe
106it's just more like talking through it a little bit more. I'm just trying to understand. >> it a little bit more. The the timing wise what and and I'm looking at it on my screen now. Really just a time plot. It's not terribly pretty or anything like that, but what we're looking at here is we're looking at about 13 and a half million is written into our operating budget right now to cover what I called earlier the summer projects. Right? So, adding up that block of time which is included in the 78 million dollars that Dr. Scanlon was referring to. That's about 13 and a half million dollars. Um we would borrow about I'm going to not about. We would borrow 10 million dollars in 2026. So, that's this year. Once the board approves this
107plan to move forward, um I'll start talking with our friends at Stifel Financial to start getting the paperwork ready and to um Mr. Fitzgerald's office as well to start getting that paperwork put together for that first bank rated tranche. You remember that the bank rated side of it is favorable, which is why I'm trying to book end this that way where typically you would get a lower interest rate on the bank rated and you would have a shorter window for for being able to refinance that from 8 years down to 5. And that could certainly save some interest payments down the road as we go through, too. In in 2027 we would borrow $40 million. That would really kick off a majority of the elementary level projects that are there. In 2028 we would borrow
108another 26.5 million. That would tend to not quite finish everything off, but we'd be pretty close. Including a good portion of the what would what would now be the 678 building. And then finally in 2030 we would borrow the the rest that last tranche of $10 million of that bank rated debt. In addition, what we have in our model right now is pledging about 3 and 1/2 million dollars on the front end. So that from our capital reserve that $10 million savings account if you will. To start funding this piece and then over time we would start you know funding the the money through the operating budget budget, excuse me, to put that back in over time. Does that answer what you were looking for? I think so. I'm just trying to determine the confidence
109that we have and the the borrowing amount and then just adding the additional 720 into the into the budget. So it's it's helpful. Thank you. Yes, Mrs. Hermans. I just wanted to say one thing and I'm going to channel my inner Mr. Jackson. This is an investment just like the way you invest in your home. Can you hear the words just to you know, channel him. So I think he would be very proud. So thank you. Okay, is there any other board questions or comments regarding the capital plan presentation? It's karaoke night here at the school board work session. Okay, well [clears throat] thank you so much Dr. Scanlon. Let me just do a real quick summary. First of all, somebody mentioned about a district dissertation. There was a lot of a lot of writers
110in this plan. And to take all of our voices cuz we all had a piece of this. And I said look, we got to we all got to own this and and have a piece. But somebody had to take it all those voices and make it one and that was Aaron Crew. Spent hours editing all of this and Aaron, thank you to you and your team for for doing all of that. I mean a lot of people to really thank for the process cuz it was I mean there was a it was a team effort. All the teachers involved. The pre spent a lot of time with principals. We have Joe and Kevin from GKO architects. We spent every week we met with them about analysis and based on programming that we heard we said,
111"Okay, here's what we heard at that program meeting. Here's what we need to now look at for design phase. Is where we still within the scope? What do we need to change?" Met with architects. Deb Smith and Kristen Schmidt in our office scheduling all kinds of meetings all the time and and then managing a lot of the the office organization that had to take place. It was great to see Jim Fink in the business office and Beth Lease in HR. As I always love them when they're together. Trying to figure out staffing drives most of the cost and we argue over how we're going to do it and and and those two can they can they can beat each other up and then at the end of the meeting they come out with a with
112a common goal. It's it's it's really fun to watch, but but good team building exercise. Dr. G with with special education. We had a lot of conversations about special ed and make sure that we we built our our special ed services into the plan, especially the middle school model. Every team has the same services for special education. We thought that was important. And and and doing all of that. Dr. Murray and Dr. Gardy working on a lot of the program pieces and the research that was done, particularly fifth grade transitions. And again, all of that we we kind of summarize here. There's a lot of detail in in that report. Brianna Andalucia was doing a lot of the full day kindergarten making some calls to some of the you know, some of the other places
113that that already had it. Dan Pellegrin was part of those weekly meetings from facilities and he certainly is going to carry that heavy load of when these renovations began and overseeing all of that. So so so Dan has has been all part of that. And and Jason Hill keep make sure we had all the technology operating for some of this stuff and has been a big part of this team. You have an amazing administrative team here doing a I mean a heavy heavy lift with all this stuff and kudos to the board for supporting the process and all the discussions we've had at committee meetings. We give our recommendation to you and the rest is up to you on on Monday. Thank you very much. Okay, now we're going to move into section four of
114our agenda action items. We have two action items tonight. So we will be voting at a work session. Section four items A and B. Do I have a motion? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Questions and discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Actually, I'm sorry. Mrs. Goldsmith, what is your vote? I. That was an I. Okay, motion carries 9-0. Moving on to board and committee reports. We will start with Jason with our student rep report. Good evening, everybody. For our March rep report for past events, we have the class of 2028 FPC parent presentation having on February 18th. For the musical, we had a lot of events for that. The spring musical gold card showing was on February 26th. The musical night showing on February 27th. And the musical
115matinee and night showing on February 28th. We also had SAT testing on March 14th. And moving on to our future events. We had or we have Actually, yes, we had the college and career fair tonight for high school students, March 18th. There's no school for students on March 20th for Eid al-Fitr. The end of the third quarter is on March 26th. That's coming up soon. District string jamboree is next week on March 26th. The class of 2027 junior prom is also next week on March 28th. Grades 9 through 12 band concert will be on March 31st. Spring break from April 2nd to April 6th. The district jazz concert is on April 8th. The NHS induction ceremony is on April 9th and then finally SAT SAT Sorry, ACT testing is on April 11th. Thank you and
116everyone reminder to keep up your weekly assignments and check the weekly update for the news. Thank you so much. Also, we have I think the 26th we're also doing our student rep interviews. So we're bringing in the new guard and then you're going to be the head big time senior student rep. So go, Jason. >> [laughter] >> Next we have community relations with Mrs. Weingarten. Thank you. I'd like to give this report next week. Got it. Thank you. Mrs. Pekaj you make sure we add that to the agenda for next week. Next we have curriculum curriculum and technology with Dr. Wright. >> Oh man, I skipped right over that. Policy. I know. Mrs. Hermans is going to give the policy update. >> to be giving it in lieu of Mrs. Goldsmith who's on Zoom. So
117policy committee, we met on Monday, March 9th. We had good attendance from the board members, Mrs. Goldsmith, Mrs. Weingarten, myself, Mr. Lackey, Dr. Wright. And we covered some old business. The old business that we have been continually talking about over the last few months is service animals, policy 718. I think we finally got to a good place where we feel like there might just be some minor changes that we want legal to review and then it'll be up for first read in April. As for new business, we discussed policy 117 homebound instruction. No changes are recommended, so it will not come forward to the board. It will just update the review date. We'll look at policy 201.1 administration of beginners early entrance. It was discussed and recommended again for legal review, so you'll likely see
118this on the agenda again pending our discussion in April. For April. We looked at policy 214 high school commencement recognition. It is under legal review. Again, will come forward for first read after that. Policy 342 jury duty. Policy was discussed, recommended for legal review and then first read. We have the policy 810.10 electronic records retention. Again, still under legal review then I'll come forward for first read and then discussion of policy 819 suicide awareness prevention and response. It was discussed and no changes were recommended so we'll just update the review date for that. Policy 829 electronic signature was discussed recommended for legal review and then first read. Outside of that, our next policy meeting will be the first I say the first second Monday in April. Any questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, next
119we will do curriculum and technology with Dr. Wright. Thank you very much. The curriculum and technology committee meeting committee met on March 9th. Mrs. Winegarden and Mr. Lackey were with us there. For technology Dr. Hilt provided updates regarding the e-rate mini bids. The district will be reviewing the bids and will make recommendations to the board once approved the purchase and installations will commence in July. So there are no nothing on the agenda specifically that you will see for technology. Moving on to curriculum Dr. Giambattista and Dr. Gardy provided information regarding the recommended adoption of second step as an SEL curriculum to be implemented as tier one and tier two supports. This resource will be available to students in grades 1 through 12. This project will be funded through the PCCD school safety and mental health
120grants. This programming will be on the April agenda once we have the final approvals from PCCD. Dr. Mary also provided information about a service agreement with Tyler Technologies for PA E-Tap and Comply. This product will replace Frontline Professional Growth. That you will see that on the agenda. Dr. Gardy provided information about K5 numeracy interventions through numeracy consultants to support mathematics interventions as part of our MTSS plan. That also you will see on the agenda this evening. Also on the agenda there is the adopting of our K-12 guidance plan that aligns with PDE but that is at no cost to the district. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday April 13th at 7:00 p.m. in the district office room. Please join us. Thank you Dr. Wright. Are there any questions regarding curriculum and technology? Okay, moving
121on to finance with Mrs. Westwood. Good evening. The finance committee met on March 10th at 6:00 p.m. in the district office. We went over ongoing business so all these numbers are as of February 28th, 2026. For cash we have 123.4 million cash on hand compared to prior month that was 128.8 million. Last year at the same period we had 130.2 million was due due to Spring City renovations. For revenue our local revenue sources are looking good. Other sources are up mainly due to interest from investment plans. For expenditures we are under budget in benefits due to low medical claims for the month of February. For assessments we gained 2.7 million since our prior meeting in February but increases are still coming in at a slower pace. At transfer taxes were 93.4% of the goal achieved
122for the year and we're pacing at 3.2 million for the year which is higher than our forecasted budget of 2.5 million. 2026 and 2027 budgets have been adjusted to reflect the higher amount of pacing that we've been seeing so far this year. For earned income tax or EIT we're 500k ahead of the prior year to date which is a 5% year-over-year growth. We're pacing at approximately 15.3 to 15.5 million for the year. Similarly we've made budget adjustments for next year to accommodate that pacing. Self-funded health insurance that's going well this year which is a nice change from prior years. Our claims are actually below expectations this year. We're currently pacing at 250k to 500k under the budget for the year. We do our second look with Riskiny that actually came back and it's better than
123expected which is good news. For food service we've served 529,000 meals so far this year. Year-over-year labor is up 6.5%. Supplies and product are up 3% versus our revenue which is up 1%. We spent some time going over a budget update. So Mr. Fink reviewed changes since the proposed preliminary budget which showed total revenue changes decrease $3,814 and our expenses decreased by about $110,333. The budget gap as of the February I'm sorry as of the March meeting was 5.78 million which is equates to a 4.02% tax impact with a budget gap to get to our Act 1 index of 3.5 is $701,168. There's still some unknowns that we have that will be going through. I'm sure we'll get some updates in our April meeting. Some of those include health insurance our state budget which is
124unlikely we will know before we have to vote on the budget commercial assessments, transportation etc. We just spent a lot of time talking about the capital plan so I probably won't chat a lot about that for now. I think we're formally I'll I'll brief there. New business we are in the process of looking at a transportation contract update. So we have four companies that gave a proposal. One was very high so we've excluded them from further considerations but three were relatively close so we will talk about that more in the near future. One other update that we did not discuss at this finance meeting but we have discussed at past meetings I wanted to just mention is we have talked about the fact we've talked a lot about local taxes and the impact on local
125tax payers and for some of you who have been following the meetings you may recall that in the fall Mr. Fink and I partnered with Joe Webster's office to come up with a draft resolution to try to do a study to take a look at this. There are other states unlike Pennsylvania that assess local taxes in a different way than we do. So at this point it's been introduced as House Resolution 368 and it's currently being assigned to a local government committee so we're making some progress. We are going to be working with administration to write a letter to the committee and specifically appeal to the committee chair. So we are hoping to make some progress. Certainly I'll encourage our board members and share this to reach out to the committee as well to try
126to get some traction on this. Outside of that we have our next meeting on April 14th at 6:00 p.m. and hopefully you will join us in the district office for the meeting. Thank you. Thank you so much Mrs. Westwood especially for that extra work with Representative Webster's office. That's that's a huge impact that that could make for us so I know we all appreciate that very much. Are there any other questions Mrs. Harmon? >> Mrs. Westwood do you have contact information for that committee that you could pass along? Thank you. And when is ad I know I might be jumping I don't think we have PSBA on tonight but do we know when advocacy day is? May 4th. >> May 4th. So be a great opportunity to advocate for that as well. Yeah, Heidi's probably
127going to say maybe Heidi you want to say it? You love Star Wars. Oh right, May the 4th. Yes. All right, thank you so much. Moving to property with Mr. Lackey. Thank you. Property met on Tuesday March 10th for maintenance and operations facility crews are transitioning into spring prep across athletic spaces. Work at McNelly Stadium included field clean up, turf grooming, pole vault padding installation and restroom setup. At the ninth grade center baseball field a new batting cage was installed. Ram Stadium dugouts were cleared and the bathrooms at both Ram and McNelly are being opened for the season. Initial painting has begun at the ninth grade center grass field including benches, trash cans and goal areas. Additional work included building storage racks for pole vault pole vault equipment and competing and completing an emergency gas
128pipe repair at the eighth grade center. District-wide operational efforts include successful software removal response during the February storms allowing schools to reopen on time the following day. At the high school the main gym divider curtain has been removed and is under evaluation for repair. The district continues advancing facility master planning work with weekly coordination and final building assessments nearing completion to help guide long-term capital planning. We are also progressing towards a new custodial services contract with a recommended provider identified and a contract execution expected this spring targeting a July 1 start date. I want to thank Mr. Pellegrin and the facilities team for their continued work preparing our buildings and athletic spaces for the spring season. Moving on to school safety. School police have investigated over 450 incidents since late August and continue active monitoring.
129There were four Safe to Say tips received and investigated in March and Lightspeed tips reviewed and addressed promptly as well. Coverage was provided for recent events including playoff basketball games and the Titanic musical with more more events ahead. From a training standpoint Lieutenant Phillips will be attending Taser instruction certification and defensive tactics level two instructor training in June. School police officer Height is preparing the mandatory Act 55 training for all staff which will take place in August. And all officers are currently completing the required MPOETC training courses for 2026. On the grant side the application has been submitted and we are waiting the award announcement for the PCCD safety and mental health grant for $250,000. I also want to take this time to recognize Chief Boyer and his team for the consistent disciplined approach they
130bring to school safety every day. Uh on the agenda, we have three action items that will uh all be from property. The first is synthetic field testing at McNelly Stadium. That's a 3-year contract not to exceed 11,600 total. The other is elevator maintenance and inspection district-wide. This is an annual agreement not to exceed 980 per month. And lastly, we have a fire alarm inspection uh district-wide. This is a 3-year agreement not to exceed 23,900 per year. The next committee meeting will be on Tuesday, April 15th. And that concludes my update. Thank you, Mr. Lackey. Are there any questions for property? One comment, um uh to to Mr. Lackey's uh point, uh Chief Boyer and Mr. Pellegrino, they're both are great leaders in this uh school district. Uh they add true value and I feel like
131they have such a such a big pair of shoes that we will eventually will have to think about how we can fill them. Uh each and every member of their team truly put hard work. Uh they really think about that how can they really help our students clearing the snows and times of such as uh crazy storms that we had at this winter. Uh thinking about the safety uh that Chief Boyer looks and tracks 24/7 a day, which is truly unbelievable that how can these people can really think about how to support our our community, our students. So, really appreciate them for doing this hard work for us. Are there any other questions? Okay, MCIU with Dr. Wright. Hi, thank you very much. Um some highlights, just a few, from the MCIU meeting on Wednesday,
132February 25th. Um Dr. Brandon Langer, who is our director of the Office of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, presented uh did a presentation containing information of $63,500 in revenue from communications contracts, $100,000 revenue from para uh paraeducator grant that was received. And the MCIU Ed Foundation has raised $105,000. In upcoming events, we have our fundraiser with with mini golf instead of our regular golf tournament. We're going to try a mini golf event and Phillies night. So, I'll provide information to that to our board members. Um Mrs. Edling, uh who is our um I guess our assistant director, stated that the legislative breakfast panelists will be Representatives Bradford and Pennycook. And that North Penn students will um moderate. So, I know some of us here are hoping to come to attend that event. Um that is March
133March 27th. And the theme this year is school facilities. Uh we did have our um audit our um financial statement reported was a a clean report just like we do here. The the IU also has to have their audit. I was able also to attend something at the um one of the IUs for Head Start. And it was so great being in the building. It's so amazing the things that they are doing there. Um PATAN or PATAN, depending on how you like to pronounce it, uh which is part of the IU um has uh was celebrating 50 years with IDEA of IDEA. So, um the MCIU is the managerial agent of the East. And the funding is from the special um Ed Department uh special education, I'm sorry, in the Department of Ed. So, um
134so IDEA has was celebrating its 50th. Um we also the special thanks to the Montgomery County Commissioners who joined Voices for Education to highlight what the is a legislative meeting look like. Overall, the program is to help students learn skills for navigating civil discourse and advocating for important areas of focus. Um the students will be traveling to Harrisburg on June 2nd to meet with legislators as well as holding a press conference on the steps of the capital. So, we really are doing a lot of great things at the IU. Our next MCIU board meeting will be held on March 25th. Thank you. Thank you so much. Did the deadline pass for the legislative breakfast? I know Ms. Schmidt has been emailing us, so. Okay, great. Perfect. Moving on to our Assistant Superintendent's report, Dr. Murray.
135Good evening. National Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th, otherwise referred to as 314. Since March 14th was a Saturday this year, we celebrated in Spring-Ford on Friday, March 13th. Pi is the mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Although the digits are infinite, many of us know Pi as 3.14. On March 13th, more than 250 sixth-grade students at Spring-Ford Intermediate School put their memories to the test um for their for this year's Pi Day competition, creating a record-setting celebration. Students competed to see who could correctly recite the most digits of Pi. This event held on March 13th culminated in an extraordinary performance by first-place winner, Jonathan C, who shattered a 20-year record. Get this, by recording and reciting 1,067 digits of Pi. It's It's just mind-blowing. Uh it's incredible
136after memorizing them in just 2 weeks. Um I believe the the previous record was somewhere in the 900s. Second place went to Arnab um V, who recited 828 districts uh digits, and Shreyas P, who earned third place with an impressive 670 digits. The annual Pi Day competition celebrates students' enthusiasm for math while encouraging perseverance, focus, and creative learning. Congratulations to all students who participated in this event. And finally, as a reminder, kindergarten registration is open. We encourage families to enroll their children who will be turning 5 before August 31st um as soon as possible. Registration is available on the district website. And that's my report. Can I add to that? I don't know if anybody gets the Mercury, but it was on the the cover above the fold uh about it. Thank you to our
137communications person, Aaron Crew, on making sure that got there. And I always get a little excited about it because I was one of the people who as a math teacher, and I probably told you all this, that the along with Holly Smith um Barb Christ and Mary Pat Long, that started this. And it was always so much fun to see the enthusiasm of the students, but also the parents who appreciated so much that their children had that opportunity to compete in a way that they never would have before. So, I'm just thrilled to see that it it's it's still around. Something that it's great. Thank you very much. >> many can you do, Dr. Wright? >> [laughter] >> Thanks. Stop it. There was a lot also a lot of pie eating that went on that
138day as well. I think they had a lot of extra and I I I do feel um not a little responsible, but proud to have a little touch as the student, Johnny, was um in my son's class with Mrs. Wright. So, very proud. Yeah. Yes, yeah. >> [laughter] >> Uh Dr. G, do you have anything? I do. Just two brief, but just as exciting. Spring-Ford night at the Phillies. Enjoy night at Citizens Bank Park with a hot dog in your hand and a Phillies hat on your head at Spring-Ford night at the Phillies on Monday, May 18th, 2026. Join friends at Citizens Bank Park as the Phillies take on the Reds. And all while you're supporting Spring-Ford Educational Foundation teacher grant program. A portion of each ticket sold will help fund innovative projects in our
139classrooms. Tickets range in price and location from behind home base in the 400 level to in the outfield in the 200 level. Grab yours now and be a part of the Spring-Ford fun at the ballpark. Again, the date is Monday, May 18th, 2026 at 6:40. And secondly, Oh, sorry. I was going to say so, can we re-advertise our meeting since it's such a worthy cause? Oh, it is a on Monday? No. Monday. Yeah. Monday, May 18th, we have a board meeting and it's the Phillies night out. Maybe we could talk to Dr. Burkhart and Ms. Crew, maybe we can take our show on the road. >> [laughter] >> Um Uh you know, in the Diamond Club, perhaps. Why not? Uh it's our final budget night, so I do think, you know, that that's going to
140be a meeting that we'll have to attend. But it's definitely something we can talk about. >> But Dr. G, I apologize. I was thinking that was the end of it. So, my apologies for interrupting. Go ahead. Real quick. March Man March Ramness. Get your voting thumbs ready because Spring-Ford is ready and about to kick off the most talked-about event of the year, March Ramness. Spring-Ford Area High School offers over 90 extracurricular clubs and sports, but which one will you select as the 2026 March Ramness winner? Will the Irish Exchange overtake the football team for a third championship? Will there be an upset from the staff? Will a 16 seed overthrow a first seed? It's all up to you, Spring-Ford. Check out Spring-Ford's Instagram account at Spring-Ford ASD for daily voting updates starting today with the
141first round of voting. And that's the end of my report. Thank you. Any questions or comments for our assistant superintendents? No? Okay, next our solicitor's report with Mr. Fitzgerald. >> Oh, thank you and good evening everybody. Uh no report per se this evening. I just want to thank the board for approving the transition for my practice group. We are we're heading to a new firm, McNees Wallace, in just like 3 weeks. Um it's been something that our group has been working on for the better part of the last 8 9 months. Uh we're very excited about the new platform and and most importantly um for for Spring-Ford, everybody who works on Spring-Ford matters from special education matters, right to know matters, real estate matters, they're they're all making the transition. Um and our office is
142about a mile from our current office. So, instead of being in on Jolly Road in Blue Bell, we'll be on Plymouth Road in Plymouth Meeting. So, uh we're pretty excited for the for the move. So, thank you. Thank you very much. So, now we'll go into reviewing items for our voting meeting next week. So, get your agendas ready. Um so, first we'll take section six minutes A and B. And then we have section seven, personnel A through U. That's a lot there with ESY coming through. Okay. Next we'll go to finance, sections A through F. All right, section nine, programming and curriculum, sections A through C. Section 10, conferences and workshops, we don't have any on this agenda. Section 11, property, sections A through C. And then section 12, other business, we have policies for
143first read and approval. Um Question on number 12. Is this Is this the action item uh letter D? Is this where we appoint Dr. Wright back to the MCIU? Is this what that is or is this something else? Yes. Okay. Is Maggie's name in there? I just There's a blank line there, but >> line. I want to recommend Dr. Wright. Just put Dr. Wright in there. Everybody all right with Dr. Wright? I I would I would be, you know, honored to serve for another year. Great. Thank you so much for your service, President. And then we have one item um section 13, informational items for our tenure, which brings us to board comment. Is there any board comment tonight? Okay, Weingarten. Um I just want to say thanks uh not to reiterate what everyone said,
144but I really appreciate the presentation slides really focusing on making this very very large project very much easier to understand from a community perspective. We know all the hours that went into from, you know, where are we going with these ideas, what will it take to do that, but to help the community understand, you know, timelines and movement, I think this was a really great step in helping clarify a very complicated thing and how it ultimately will impact families and students. Um I think it was incredibly uh well done. So, I appreciate that perspective. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Weingarten. Is there any other board comment? Mrs. Harmons? I have one um and you'll probably hear this next week as I do my report on the JOC, the Western Montgomery Career and Technology Center. Um
145but I think it's very timely since we do have our partners GKO in the room. We've just gone through this extensive capital plan presentation here at Spring-Ford and what better way to celebrate it than to go through another feasibility study and another capital plan presentation uh this time for the Western Center. So, um for those that haven't been following our JOC meetings, we have been talking about what does the future of the Western Tech Center look like? Um what does that look like from an expansion? You know, we have certain goals that we've outlined in our last JOC meeting, which I will reiterate next year, but in term or next year next meeting in terms of wanting to see expansion of programs, wanting to look at spaces like a gym, right? Knowing that physical education
146is something that is still a requirement for students, yet, you know, when you look at the spaces that they're using, they really don't have um that that facility there to be able to support like that that they're they're making do. But um so, there's a lot of things that that we've been talking about and um I want to draw your attention to something that was in the board memo, you might have seen it, but uh Mr. Livingood, executive director there, has um wanted to start the conversation with all three boards, Pottsgrove, Upper Perk, and Spring-Ford. Um and you know, I've kind of teased this out a little bit. The first step is to offer Western tours to all 27 board members. Um this is something that he has put a couple of dates out there
147during the day specifically so that you can see the facilities while students are there in action. Um he has said to me that if anyone does have a problem with it, he would be more than happy to entertain an evening, but again, you kind of don't get the full experience there. So, if you have any conflicts, um please, you know, you can certainly let me know and I could pass it along to Dave, but um if you could fill out that survey as soon as possible cuz I know he is quite antsy to to kind of get those rolling. Um the other thing I want to bring your attention to, which again will probably be in the update next week, is that the reason why we're doing this is again to see the facilities knowing
148that there's a lot that's potentially on the horizon there at the Tech Center, but um you will come to get some information that there will be a and I don't know if we call it a convention. I don't like the word convention, Dr. Scanlon, but it's like a meeting of the whole among all three boards. So, um on May 4th, which is our standing JOC meeting, there will be a an invite to all 27 board members to come in attendance. Uh we will have GKO, who by the way was approved as our partners for this feasibility study. So, we are working with the same people that are sitting here today. Um GKO will be there to present their findings. Um he'll Dave will give a presentation like WMCTC 101. He'll talk about articles of agreement
149and really this is just for you all to kind of get a better understanding of like what um you know, kind of like what's on the horizon cuz I know that there will be probably some future conversations that have to be had with all 27 members as it relates to the funding of the capital plan. So, this is all just uh a little bit of a teaser. So, but so in summary, fill out your survey to get a tour at the Western Center. Thank you. Is there any other board comment? I just wanted to mention that um we might not have noticed that two of our principals are here, elementary principals. Didn't know if you were going to bring that up or not, but um Mark Moyer from Oaks Elementary School and Rob Moyer from
150Brooke Elementary right are here and I always appreciate when any of our administrators, all of our administrators who are willing to give up their time to come to our meetings to um to answer any questions or to support us. Thank you. Or watching online, which we know that they do, too. Yes. Oh, just a just a quick thing regarding the building tours and actually Dr. Moyer on the left, there's two of you. Um was there some of the uh my left? You? Yes. >> [laughter] >> Yeah Yes. Yes. Um from from Brooke. Um a few of the board members, I think a lot of the board members have gone on tours recently and a few of us went um on Monday and I have to say it was the best day off I think I've
151taken in a while. We got to tour along with Dr. Scanlon, the principals, the high school, three of the elementary schools, and unfortunately the seventh grade center got cut short, so I didn't get to see my daughter in class I was hoping to, but if you ever want to see the impact that some of these teachers um and administrators are having, it was a pretty phenomenal day. Like um you could just see like how happy the kids were and how much they were learning and how passionate the staff were, but it was just um thanks again for I don't know if that was you, Dr. Scanlon, whomever organized it, but it was a really um great use of time. So, just thankful for that and thanks, Dr. Moyer, for opening your doors um to us
152and the other administration administrators. And I'm going to thank Mr. Moyer cuz I was on your tour a month ago and it was again to Mrs. Westwood's point, it's just very eye-opening cuz you hear things that Dr. Scanlon says like, "Hey, Oaks doesn't have an LGI room." And then you go tour it and you see, "Oh, crap, they don't have an LGI room." Right? Or they're using a very small space that is not meant for OTPT, but that's what they have to do to make do and it just brings what we saw today like so meaningful in terms of why, in my opinion, this capital plan needs to be approved. So, thank you, Mr. Moyer and Dr. Moyer. And all the other administrators who toured and we toured with. Every Moyer in Moyerville. Um it
153was also great to see some um emergency weather planning in action going down as well, which which we will not speak of. Um but it's just watching everybody have to pivot immediately and how many, you know, your the text messages going off on your phone and the fury of activity that had to occur uh really quickly to make sure our kids got home safe. Um so that was an an added excitement piece that we saw and um I I really think the the impact of people that are making decisions for children um being able to see that in person um is really important and so it's it's always it's always a pleasure whenever we get to interact with any of our students, but actually seeing that learning take place and um I was really blown
154away just by how much learning was occurring um because I'm a a substitute school nurse and I I work in a school in the beginning of the school year. I'm there from day one, you know, through November. It's a little bit different of an environment than what I got to see this week uh because, you know, we're almost through the school year. So, um it's really really great kind of to see that progression of how much time is spent in the beginning of the year just learning how to be in school and back in our desks and all of that and following that through the process to now in March where they're just locked in and getting work done. So, thank you to everyone that participated in that. Is there any other board comment? Yeah,
155just just one thing with uh I know it's not on a formally part of the agenda, but we did spend a lot of time talking about capital planning and the next phase. I will definitely put that on the agenda on under one of these uh items, I'll probably under other business, as well as a recommendation for GKA Architects uh to to be our architects for the first phase of design phase. We'll put that on the agenda. Awesome. Uh so we'll move into section 15 public to be heard. Is there anybody in the public that would like to speak to us tonight on anything related to Springboard? Okay, seeing none, do I have a motion to adjourn? Yes. >> So moved. All right, thank you. Next