001Good evening. Welcome to the Springford Area School District board meeting. Tonight is Monday, September 29th. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. >> Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge alce 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 Springford 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
002the meeting, members from the 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 in the area in which you reside before your comment. >> Good evening everyone. Thank you for attending tonight. Miss Schmidt, could we have a roll call, please? >> In person, we have Mrs. Dearorf, Mr. Jackson, >> Mrs. Herman's Dr. Wright, Mr. Lackey, Mrs. Goldsmith, Dr. Chararma, Mrs. Weine Garden, and online we have Mrs. Westwood. >> Thank you very much. Um, as far as announcements go, I
003don't have any real formal announcements except that as a knows, we moved our voting meeting to tonight from last Monday for those to celebrate uh the holiday rashana. So to everyone who does celebrate that and I hope that you had a wonderful holiday. Dr. Scanlin, anything on your end from announcements? >> Uh no, I just I'll cover some things in my report tonight. >> Okay, wonderful. So we'll move on to public to be heard. This is on agenda items only. So if there's anyone that wishes to speak, please approach a podium with their name and township of residence as well as the agenda item for which you're referencing. Okay, seeing as though no one's approaching the podium, we'll move on to board and committee reports and we will start with Mrs. Wearten with the Western
004Montgomery Career and Technology Center. >> Thank you. Um, we met the JOC met on September 8th and we welcome new member Mr. Bill Thompson, a representative from Potts Grove. He is replacing Dr. Nippert. Uh, we the school has begun sending out their bi-weekly newsletter as they did um last year. And we were pleased to know that Dr. Scanlin visited uh to see what was happening at the Western Tech Center. Our cafeteria and culinary department is complete. So that's a very exciting milestone. And they have wrapped up 95% of the implementation of the new keycard readers in the school. And that is a special thanks to Senator Pennyuk for the funding. And this is also exciting. The county is discussing whether we can have students attend the first responders training pilot program. If it's approved, we
005would send three students three days a week and all four um CTC's in Montgomery County will be participating in that program. Um so we have noticed um in terms of student enrollment uh we're enrollment is just under 700 students and we're up 25 students this year and we've had significantly less um add and drops than in previous years. So that's fantastic and it was a quick meeting. So, our next meeting will be October 6 at 7 p.m. at the Joocc. That's all I have. Any questions? Oops. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Weinearten. Okay. Uh, next we have Mrs. Westwood who is on Zoom for the Montgomery County Legislative Committee report. >> Can you hear me? >> We can. >> Okay. Good evening. Um, we have not had a meeting since June for legislative. We have
006our first meeting for the new school year on October 6. So, I will report back in our October board meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mrs. Westwood. Moving on to the uh PSBA, Pennsylvania School Board Association Committee report, and that would be Mrs. Goldmith. >> Yep. No updates tonight. >> Okay. Mr. Lackey, Spring City American Legion. >> Nothing to bring back to the board at this time. >> Okay. And that will take us to uh property, which was uh originally scheduled for our work session. Mr. Jackson, do you have something for property? >> Uh, property is going to always bring it home. Uh, meeting was held on September 10th. Uh, meeting was called to order at 700 p.m. Items discussed was the Spring City Ele Spring City Elementary School construction update. Mr. Dan gave an
007update regarding the status of the project, which was primarily closeout items. There was an operational update that was provided. There are five pump replacements at the administration building which is complete. There's preventive maintenance for all HVAC systems that were completed dur during the summer. There was a transfer switch at the flex flex building which failed in a temporary rental unit is now in place. There was also discussion regarding the proposed capital projects. Uh there was paving at Limmerch and Upper Providence are both complete. A boil and pump reimbursement refurbishment at Brook Elementary is complete. Um and the generator at Roy Ford is complete and operational. There was also an update provided by school police and safety update. Um phase 4 camera project at BES and UPE and the district office installation integration is was completed
008as of August 25th. um purchase and installation of the birectional amplifier at the high school um was completed on August 25th which was funded by a PCCD grant. And that was that concludes my discussion, Madame President. >> Thank you, Mr. Jackson. Any questions or comments? >> Okay, moving on to Dr. Scandlin for superintendent report. >> Sure. Uh yeah, good evening everybody. First of all, congratulations to Khloe Chen. Uh Khloe attended the Future Business Leaders Association High School National Leadership Conference in July that was held out in Anaheim, California, and she placed second in the conference in her event, which was business law. Now, there were over 14,000 attendees at this conference. Uh and 800 800 of those attendees were from Pennsylvania. So, Pennsylvania has got a good representation with the future business leaders association national
009national organization. So, congratulations to to Khloe and her teacher Carol Carol Sheek and the spring for chapter of FBLA has about 40 students participating. So, congratulations to all of those students and congratulations to Khloe for that that recognition at the national level. Our Golden Rams marching band uh competed in their first event of the 2025 season. Uh that was just recently on September 20th at their US band's home show. And congratulations to the marching band for earning first place and winning in categories such as best music, best visual, best percussion, and best overall effect. Uh congratulations to Andrew Walls, our band director, our music staff, and all the parents in supporting the musical arts. Uh most importantly, congratulations to the students for an outstanding performance uh in the marching band. Our capital planning uh update
010continues. As uh Mr. Jackson said, we did an update at the property uh committee and that just recently uh we are meeting weekly with our architects to develop a more specific timeline for project development. Uh ga we're also gathering some research data on full day kindergarten uh and a cost analysis of that as well and also our middle school model. We'll be providing updates at the October 13 curriculum and technology committee with the curriculum aspects and the October 14th finance committee with the financial aspects of where we are with with uh with this plan. And we also have a public community meeting scheduled on November 12th and that will be uh at uh at our high at our 1012 high school building. Spring city last week received the permanent occupancy permit uh for the elementary
011school. you know, we had a temporary permit until we we went through a final inspection. We did that. We we passed. So, we have the permanent occupancy permit now. And uh thanks to our facilities director Dan Pelgrren and his staff uh for ensuring that all the final details were in place for that final inspection. Uh the Springford community is invited to attend the Spring City Elementary School ribbon cutting ceremony. That will be Tuesday, October 14th at 5:00. Following the ceremony, guests will be invited to uh take a self- tour, self-guided tour of the building and uh take a look at some of the renovations and spaces that are in there. So, be sure to mark your calendar. Excuse me. Couple of upcoming dates. Thursday, October 2nd, uh there is no uh no school due to
012the Yamapore holiday. And then Tuesday, October 7th at 6 o'clock is our community relations committee. And Monday, October 13th, uh is our policy committee at 6. and our curriculum and technology committee uh follows at 7 o'clock. That concludes my report. >> Thank you, Dr. Scandan. Um questions or comments? I will just uh say that, you know, I am looking forward to the Spring City ribbon cutting. It's a long time coming. I know that uh we had moved it in October so that we could ensure that, you know, uh Mrs. Choy and you know, a lot of uh folks that were instrumental in bringing this forward were available. And I do hope that the community does join us for this, especially um you know, I I see some former board directors in the audience today. So
013hoping that our former board directors that were uh involved in in some of the earlier phases of the project as well as maybe former superintendants, we'll see. Anyone that wants to celebrate the opening of this um reopening of the school, I I hope to see you there. Thank you. All right, moving on. Mr. Mr. Fitzgerald, do you have a solister report? >> Just briefly, um, and I I'm sure some board members may be aware of this, but just for the general discussion, um, about PIAA and a recent consent order that they entered into to permit students who are rolled enrolled in, uh, private, uh, Christian schools or private religious schools to participate in public school athletics and extracurricular activities. This was an order that was entered into roughly about two weeks ago with the PIAA
014to permit such participation. Um it will have an immediate impact on every school district who ha that might have schools within the region where students attend. They can now potentially be eligible to participate um in in our programs. And this is a long time coming. Um there was a case out in the western part of the state about seven or eight years ago where a family argued and I think justifiably so. They said, you know, if charter school kids can participate and homeschool kids can participate, why can't we? And the Western District said, "Yep, it sounds like the law is discriminatory." And ultimately the what had been practiced for 60 70 years has has wilted away and now ultimately you may see students who are in schools that don't have these programs that can come
015and and participate at Springford. So we'll see how that impacts us. >> Thank you, Mr. Mr. Fitzgerald, any questions or comments? Okay, then we'll move on to the voting portion of our meeting for the community. The voting portion of the meeting uh is something that we discussed at our work session two weeks ago. And of course, a lot of these action items were also discussed in the committee meetings earlier in the month. So, uh we're going to go about voting on them at this point. So, if anyone wishes to separate, please do so. We'll start with section five minutes, letters A through C. Is there a desire to separate? If not, can I have a motion? >> A second. >> Second. >> Any questions or discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. >>
016Mrs. Westwood. >> I. Okay. Any opposed? >> Okay. Motion carries. I'm getting messed up. Mrs. Westwood's here. Still 90. 90. Okay. Uh, moving on to section six, personnel. I'll give you a moment to see if you want to separate anything. >> Can we separate L, please? >> L. Okay. Any others? Okay. So, we'll take section six, letters A through M, minus L. Do I have a motion? >> Is there a second? Second >> questions and discussion. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Mrs. Westwood, what is your vote? >> I. >> Motion carries. 90. >> A couple things here. >> Um, >> sorry. >> Yes. Go ahead. You want to say before we move on to the next one, go ahead. Since we we we approved uh some some
017personnel uh changes and some recommendations for personnel there. Uh it is my pleasure to introduce our uh our newly appointed now supervisor of operations, Mr. Mike Zendic. Mike is in the audience tonight. Mike starts tomorrow. We have a big list for you, Mike. So congratulations and thanks for thanks for coming out. We also have uh Raven Kerry uh who's being uh a status change from head custodian at Spring City to a a lead custodian. Uh Raven's out here tonight and she has I was talking with her before the meeting. She has been preparing for this uh this October 14th date over at Spring City. Raven, thanks for coming out. Congratulations to you as well. >> Congratulations to you both. Mike, I'm looking forward to getting to know you. And Raven, I feel like I know
018you. You're a staple. We love you. Congratulations on the move. >> Raven is great. All right, moving on to personnel section six, letter L. Do I have a motion? >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Questions and discussion. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> No. >> Could you use the microphone, please? >> No. No. >> No. >> I'll put my microphone back on. And Mrs. Mrs. Westwood, I just want to clarify. I think I heard you say yes. Am I correct? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you very much. That motion passes 63. Moving on to section 7, finance, letters A through H. >> Do I have a motion? >> Is there a second? Second >> questions and discussion. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >>
019Any opposed? >> Okay. Motion uh Mrs. Westwood >> I. >> Motion carries 90. Moving on to section 8 programming and curriculum letters A through C. >> Do I have a motion? So move. >> Second. Second >> questions and discussion. >> All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Mrs. Westwood. >> I. >> Motion carries 90. Okay. Moving on to section 11, letter A. Do I have a motion? >> Second. >> Questions and discussion? Okay. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Mrs. Westwood. >> I. >> Motion carries 90. And then section 12, we have theformational items uh that we discussed last week as it relates to the capital plan timeline. So, no changes on that as presented two weeks ago. And that takes us to board comment. Do
020we have any board comment tonight? >> I'll go first and last. >> I was going to say that's presumptuous. I'll use my mic when I say that, but go ahead, Mr. Jackson. So, every meeting I talk about transportation and I encourage the community to go to your various townships and voice your opinion regarding transportation. You're concerned that your kids are coming home late, they're being picked up too early. As I always say, once it comes to the school district legally, we have to educate these kids or our kids. But if you're concerned, please go to the townships. go to the planning commission meetings the developments that are coming in and I'm an engineer by training so I support building uh completely however we are so prime example if you have an hour circle from the
021time you start school to come back to school and it's based on 50 kids you can stay with that hour circle you get two no two new developments and all of a sudden now you have an additional 100 kids you're not going to make that hour circle circle and it's simple but nothing is being done to the roads. We are building communities which is great but the infrastructure is remaining the same and this will continue to get worse. Um right now I think Upper Providence because that that is where I live is probably 92% built out give or take. Um it's only going to get worse for the district. So, it's going to be the constant complaints about transportation and travel. There there there are only so many roads we can travel here that we
022can take to stay within a defined timeline. And you know, I for one support going to the townships. That is where you make your points. That is where you go to the planning commissions when everything's being designed and developed and voice your concerns. you're a taxpayer, you have the right to go there and speak your mind. The same way you come to the school district and say, "Hey, my kids's late." At that point, it's a wrap. So, please go to the to the head of the line and speak with the various um township supervisors, voice your concerns in the planning meetings, voice your com your concerns in the um zoning hearing boards, which I served for five years. So, I'm telling you if you have that concern, please go there. The second item is budgets
023and I'll stick with Upper Providence. There are budget workshops going on. You're concerned about your finances, I encourage you to go to the workshops. There's a workshop held on the 25th of September. There are two people from the community. That's it. There's another workshop tomorrow about budgets. And the final workshop regarding budgets is October 7th. We always hear, at least I do, "Well, Mr. Jackson, I didn't know about the budgets. I didn't know they were having meetings." All of what I'm telling you is public information. You get a newsletter every four months that tells you what's being built, the timeline, um the number of uh occupants that we think is going to um be in the various communities. This is all public information, so please take it upon yourselves to get involved um and make
024your concerns heard. Thank you, Madam President. >> Thank you, Mr. Jackson. >> And Mr. Jackson, if I can tag on to your first point, go to those meetings early. Don't, and I don't mean early like show up early. I mean in early in the process because by the time those roads are going in and those houses are coming out, you're too late. You have to pay attention early. Um generally if it's happening near your neighborhood, those developments have to put out notices and they're literally pieces of paper often shoved into a ziplockc bag stapled to a small post on a corner. When you see that, that's almost too late. So that's when the discussions are beginning. And if you show up when the roads are going in, it's too late. So you have to be
025attentive and start to go to those very early in the process in order to be considered by the township. That's just my two cents having been one of those people. >> Thank Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Wearten. And I know, Dr. Scandlin, that a lot is being done to look at transportation from an administration standpoint. In fact, I do just want to call out someone who in the back of the room I'm looking at Mr. think because I was driving home from work the other day and uh I was going down Black Rockck Road and I was pretty sure I saw you sitting on the side of the road and so I I texted you. I said, "Jim, are you sitting on the side of the road? Are you okay?" And you're like, "Nope, I'm
026just checking out bus stops." So this is our CFO taking time out of his afterchool day to go sit at a bus stop to ensure that it's doing what it should be doing. And Dr. I don't know if you have anything else to add to that. >> Yeah, I mean a couple things. One, uh I had an opportunity to meet with several of our township uh uh managers last week um about development just trying to work in concert with them. Uh their budgets are January 1st, so they're that's why they're having their meetings now. They are they're six months ahead of our schedule. So they're on a you know calendar year. We're on a fiscal year. Um, and and as far as transportation goes, I I think transportation has done a really good job this
027year in terms of of keeping buses on time. Uh, there was a lot of work of front-end work done in the summertime with uh with Kuster's garage and Karen Henry and our transportation office. Uh, we'll tell you about our process when we when we get concerns about bus and bus safety and and bus stops. Uh, we do investigate those. Uh, Mr. Frink's been out to to review a bus stop. I've been out to review a bus stop. uh and we and we make some determination. Uh those stops we we believe are are are safe and if somebody says, "Well, we don't agree." Our only other option is to go to PennDOT and PennDOT will come out and do a a review of a walking route to the stop and and and we can we can
028submit we have a couple of them we're going to submit to PennDOT uh at this point. So So there's a process that we go through and uh we want to make sure we get the kids get our get our students to school safely in a timely manner. And uh it it is a it is a it is a it is a hard task because we bus to 61 different schools every day. Now we have 11 schools, but because we bus to all the charter charter schools within 10 miles, private schools, approved private schools for some special education placements, they're they're going to 61 different stops every day. So we're mandated to do that and we're happy to do that because they are they are students in our community and they're getting educated appropriately. But uh
029each year that uh and a lot of districts are struggling with with busing because it's hard to get drivers. They have the same CDL licenses that um truck drivers have. So sometimes bus drivers can go make more driving for uh you know a trucking company and they'll get their CDL through you know through through their uh you know their transportation group that they're working with. So so we are we are doing all we can to try to ensure safe transportation for our students. >> Thank you for the update. Board comment. Any other board comment? If not, we'll move on to public to be heard. This can be on any topic. So, if there's anyone that wishes to speak, please approach the podium with your name and township of residence. We have we have two people
030approaching the podium. >> Yes, we'll we'll give some extra time. >> Thank you for your patience with me getting up. I appreciate it. Uh my name is Addie Magcgar. I am the librarian at the Royersford Free Public Library and I'm just here with three updates. Library card signup month was in September. We had multiple local celebrities visit us, including state rep. Joe Seresi, Mayor Alex, and three of our own Springford school board members. Uh, Mrs. Hermans, Mrs. Deerorf, and Miss Wine Garden came out to sign up for library cards. We appreciate all of the support from all of the folks that made it out to sign up this month. There is still one more day, 24 hours to come out and sign up for a card and be entered into our prize pool. So, we
031have a Philly's prize, we have Franklin Institute tickets, and we also have a specific prize for kids. So, come on in and get a library card if you don't have one. October is band books week and the ALA has sent down the theme of censorship is so 1984 this year. So, we are doing a competition with local bookstore Star Books. We will be asking you to cast your ballot for your favorite display and you'll be entered to win. I believe we're doing uh Phillies tickets this year. So, please come vote. Tell us which display is best. I've heard Starbucks is using their cat to win. I don't know if that's cheating, but whatever. And then finally, our book sale was this past weekend, September 26th and 27th. We saw lots of wonderful community members come
032out and take part in the book sale. As far as school people are concerned, all teachers, par professionals, therapists, homeschool parents, or anyone else in the education sector can come out this week, Monday through Saturday, October 4th, and get a bag for free. that also includes substitute teachers because we know just how hard it is to build a classroom library. So, thank you all for your time and have a wonderful rest of your day. >> Thank you, Miss Addie. Always looking forward to your updates. >> Good evening. I'm Adam Koopa. I'm at Upper Province Township. I wasn't expecting speaking this evening, but I heard a lot of discussions out talking to your township representatives. spent two years in the Upper Providence Planning Commission. Uh resigned just less than a year ago and I can't stress
033enough the importance of residents participating and communicating with their plan planning commission and their board of supervisors. It's really positive to hear that superintendent was speaking to the board members uh or the board of supervisors, Upper Providence. That's a it's a great thing. I think in the two years while I was with planning commission, one of the biggest stressors we had, and we're not the board of supervisors, but every time there was a development that came to the planning commission, we always asked the question, what kind of coordination happened with the school district? And unfortunately, it was really none. Uh because we had questions about what is the traffic studies, how does it impact our students, uh the busing, etc. And there was never any answer. So maybe with the leadership and with more public
034uh participation, we could look to improve that at least in Upper Providence Township. And for fellow residents, just a reminder, a lot of the roads we speak about, especially when they're state roads, um it's a little bit more difficult to have some of that development be supported because they're not fully controlled by the township. But thank you for time. >> Thank you very much. And I'll just follow up on that. I know that Miss Schmidt, you are still looking to schedule a board meeting with the elected officials of the various townships, buroughs, municipalities uh that encompass spring forward sometime in October. So hopefully more to come. More to come on that very soon. Okay. And we hope to see our elected officials there. All right. Any other board I'm sorry, public comment? Okay. If not,
035motion to adjurnn. So moved.