001Good evening everyone and happy new year. Uh welcome to the January 5th regular meeting of the board of education the tradition easttown school district. Will you please stand and join me in the salute to the flag? >> [clears throat] >> Regular schoolboard meetings are business meetings that are open to the public during which we provide several opportunities for public comment on items before the board. The first comment period is reserved for announced additional agenda items and items on the consent agenda only. Additional public comment will be heard for the actions listed under the priority discussion. And the final comment period near the end of the meeting is reserved for all of the matters of concern, official action or deliberation which are or may be before the TEESD school board of directors for which which have
002not been covered by other comment periods. Each public comment period is reserved for residents and taxpayers. Additionally, the board will accept comments from sitting public officials for non- campaigning purposes and by an agreement with the TEA and Tenig, the board will accept comments from the union presidents. All comments should be directed to the board as a whole or to the presiding officer and no comments or questions should be directed to individual board members. All public comments and responses should be in the spirit of civil public discourse. Also, please be aware that intentionally disrupting a lawful meeting of the administration of a government function is a criminal offense in Pennsylvania. The school board values the opportunity to hear from the community in person and we appreciate your cooperation in advance. Thank you. Uh this evening we
003do not have because it is our early January meeting we don't have our uh student representatives and so we are and we also have no student and staff highlights. Everyone just got back today and we will resume those activities when we have our meeting at the end of January. Uh there is no additional agenda item added this evening. So actually at this point we're ready for public participation from our district residents for uh for t or taxpayers regarding any agenda item that is on the consent agenda only. If you would like to make a comment on the consent agenda, please come to the podium which is here in the front and uh we would you would ask you to limit your uh comments to three minutes at the microphone. You also would begin please by
004stating your name and your township of residence. Are there any such comments? Seeing none, then I think we're ready to move on to the consent agenda. Although board action is required, it is generally unnecessary to hold discussion on these items. With the consent of all members, they are therefore grouped and approval is given in one motion. In the event a board member wants to discuss any item, the board president will move it to an appropriate place on the agenda. A board member may vote nay or abstain with respect to a consent agenda item without the need for removing the item from the consent agenda. The action currently under consideration is that the board of school directors approves the following recommendations on the consent agenda as printed on page five of your agenda this evening. Uh,
005do I need to enumerate these? Okay. Uh, do I have a motion? >> So, moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. I have a a first and second. But before we do vote on that, uh, this evening, I do need, uh, to announce a recusal. Uh I will be voting on all items of the consent agenda except for item number seven Roman numeral 7 C1 section three routine personal personnel items and the reason is uh there is an appointment there that is uh for a niece of mine and so I would like to recuse myself from that section of the agenda this evening. I think we're ready for our vote though because we have a first and second. All those in favor, please indicate so by saying I. >> I.
006>> All those opposed signify by saying nay. >> The eyes have it and the motion passes. We turn now to the priority discussion. It it is a discussion of our 2627 preliminary budget. And it it really is a preliminary budget at this point. Uh the action under consideration is that the board of school directors authorize the administration to make the preliminary budget proposal available for inspection not later than January 6th, 2026. That we authorize the administration to provide public notice not later than January 17, 2026. that the board attends to adopt a preliminary budget at its regularly scheduled meeting on January 26, 26, January 26, 2026. There's a lot of 26s in there. Uh, authorize the administration to take any and all actions necessary to ensure legal compliance with approval of the preliminary budget. We
007authorize the administration to publish notice of the intent to file for referendum exceptions with the Pennsylvania Department of Education at least one week prior to filing [clears throat] for such except exceptions and to file for such exceptions not later than February 27th, 2026. This would be adopted on the 5th day of January 2026. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> We have our our uh first and second motion. So, we are ready now to hear a presentation from our business manager. That is Mr. Arthur McDonald. He's here to uh share this PowerPoint with us. >> Thank you, President Titi. Um I'm going to begin with the timeline that we have looked at at our last couple meetings. We're here tonight to authorize the administration to display
008a budget as we're presenting this evening. So, that will go on display after this meeting this evening if you so authorize and it will be on display until we have our meeting on the 26th uh where we vote on the preliminary budget unless there's a decision tonight to pass a resolution that is not typically uh on the agenda unless it's brought up at the meeting to stay at or below the act one index. So, uh, just for your information, I do have a resolution at the table if that was going to be, uh, a motion that was made, but I'll go through the options so we can meet the state timeline and make sure we stay on track for approving a preliminary budget if that's the direction the board wants to go. So, we're in
009January and you can see we have quite a few blocks to the right uh, yet before we get to the end of this process. So tonight uh has actually no impact on the final budget other than setting up where our starting point is and that the ending of this process is in June. So no tax rate is being set tonight and no budget is being approved. You're only authorizing the administration to display the budget. So what we've looked at um at finance and budget scenarios and typically when we look at these uh numbers we work from left to right and the leftmost column is the untreated column with new revenue. So at the uh B column is no new tax revenue and that deficit uh difference between anticipated revenue and expenditures is about $15 million
010at this point. Now, this number that you're seeing on line two for budgeted expenditures does not include the contingency amount. We do not include that in the anticipated spending number. It will be in an authorized spending number when we get to that point of approving the authorized spending, but in the slides we present in public, we typically do not show the contingency amount in the anticipated expenditure number. So, that 202.7 million that you're seeing on that slide does not include that number. Moving to the right in column C is the act one index of 3.5%. And that injects about 5.2 million of new revenue into this uh preliminary budget analysis reducing the deficit to about 9.8 million. And then moving to the right again in column D, that's the act one index of the 3
0113.5% along with a projected number uh for a special ed referendum exception. that's what we believe we're going to be eligible for uh and not the piecers or retirement referendum exception. And we anticipate or project that that amount is going to add about $2 million to the new revenue number. So that is why that number goes from 5.2 of new revenue to about a little little over 7.2 almost 7.3 which brings us down to a deficit on line five of about 7.7 million. So that's the number that we're going to work to reduce obviously over the coming months. Uh we want to get that number down significantly. So development of this particular budget in the 2627 fiscal year. Uh these are some of the things that we've called out of that um budget development and
012uh they're some of them are fairly significant. You can see we have a capital funds transfer in there of about 6 million. Uh the special ed budget is going up by a little over four million. Uh we have a significant impact to our tax revenue on the first number one there. Um we're uh getting quite a bit of assessment appeals that have been occurring over the last couple years and that's continuing and we're seeing that the numbers that we're showing you in finance and we think that's going to continue. So when you look at a comparison between the current year budget and what we're looking at for uh that's the difference in these numbers that you're looking at. So that $2 million decrease is a budgettobudget comparison. It's not a budget to projected comparison. We're
013also uh assuming that we're going to have another bond issue that's going to have to happen uh this coming fiscal year. And this is a projection of what those debt service payments will look like. Again, we'd have to go out to the market and see what that looks like. But we talked about in finance a three-year look of about 106 million. That's what the board authorized. We're about 40 million into that 106. So, this is parsing out another 20 uh million of that 106. So, it's a million for 20 million at this point with that market analysis. Now this was done back in mid to late November when we were looking at uh coming to finance in December. So that can change based on whether we do a larger bond issue and then what the
014market looks like. Um we did meet uh with our healthc care consultant. We got a first look on healthcare and that's showing 10% increase on medical script um is flat and dental is flat. All right. So, we talked about just at the beginning the options for what's going to happen this evening. So, we're in the option one column right now. We're looking at a resolution uh that's going to advance the preliminary budget uh to appear, you know, be on display and then appear in front of the board on the 26th. You're going to authorize us to file for exceptions. So, that $2 million for special ed exception, uh, we're going to apply for that and hopefully, uh, have the option to have the board evaluate whether they want to take that exception. And that, of
015course, keeps us on track with the state as far as passing a preliminary budget by February 18th. The other option you have is what I mentioned earlier is pass a resolution uh to stay at or below the index. You wouldn't have to do that this evening. Uh you could do that on the meeting on the 26th too if you decided to do that. So you'd have opportunities to do that uh tonight and then uh and we would still follow that timeline. We're not going to be able to file for exceptions yet between tonight and the 26th. It's not going to be available on the state website for us to be able to do that. So there's no application process or no uh information we're going to be submitting to the state in between tonight and
01626th. If we do that, we would be on a more traditional budget timeline. So, we wouldn't be doing a preliminary budget in January. We' fall back to uh looking at a proposed final budget in April. And then, of course, either option you take, you have till June 30th to pass the final budget. So, we'd be doing that whichever track we take. Next slide. just put in here forformational purposes for those folks uh that may not uh have ever read what the taxpayer relief act of 2006 is when act one index was established and then an explanation of the remaining two referendum exceptions that are still available under the law. Next slide is a breakdown of the tax revenue. the new tax revenue that's uh within the authorization of the board right now is only 3.5%
017and we're estimating based on line four of a projection of another 1.415% that produces that 2.1 million and then in the C column is just a representation of those numbers in millillage. Next slide. Again, justformational purposes to show you where we've been uh with tax rates. And um you can see there's a a five-year average there in the upper leftand corner. It has us just under 4%. The entitywide slide that we've been looking at the last couple years really shows a breakdown of what it looks like across just all the funds. So, when we talk about budgets in these meetings and in finance, we're really just talking about the general fund, which is um another word for the operational fund, how the school district operates. We also have um a food service fund. We have
018a capital fund. Um there's a proprietary fund, um a trust fund for, you know, scholarships. So there's several funds that are built into the entitywide disclosures which happen typically when we look at our um audited financial statements or our annual comprehensive financial report. But so this shows you across um the capital fund and the general fund really what our expenses look like. Um so when we talk about deficits uh or surpluses in the general fund there's all you have to also consider what's happening in the capital fund which is in that net capital expense column. So you can see there's been some significant expenditures in the last 5 to 6 years because of the larger projects that we've been doing and we've been doing some capital projects. Obviously where we're sitting right now was one
019of those. Uh we have the athletic fields that we're currently finishing up and then of course we have uh the new Bear Hill Elementary School which is occurring uh it's occurring now and we actually did some work on that last summer. So overall uh in at the last column you're seeing a deficit there and the reason that we can have a deficit like that is because what I mentioned earlier we issue bonds uh to pay for a lot of our capital expenditures. So that number you're seeing in that column is really representative of bond issues uh that have happened over the years to fund that uh deficit. I've been putting in a key date slide just to kind of pair down the budget calendar from six pages to one uh as we go through these
020meetings. So tonight obviously we're meeting about the preliminary budget to put on display. uh we will give the public notice in the required 10 days prior to the meeting on the 26th. We will meet to adopt the preliminary budget. The deadline to publish notice of intent to file is the 27th. So that's get we get past the 26th with that authorization, we will do that. And then uh the deadline to file is March 5th. And so typically the window doesn't open till sometime in February. We'll have two uh budget workshops that are uh board meetings. They are not uh they're board workshops. They're not finance committee workshops. So um President T will preside over those and that'll be on March 9th for the first one and then April 13th on the 2nd and then we'll
021bring the proposed final budget to you at the end of April on the 27th and then bring you a final budget on June 8th. That completes completes my formal presentation. Certainly welcome your questions. >> Thank you. So just to be perfectly clear, the the motion that we're considering right now, if we would go back to that slide with the option one and option two, is that we would follow the option one side. Correct. >> And although we would be authorizing the administration to file for exceptions for act one, it is not an obligation for us to to decide to take act one. uh do the exceptions once we know what that amount is for sure. I know the amount you have in there is approximately $2 million based on past experiences and what our special
022ed costs have been in the in the last years. But we wouldn't be making that decision regardless uh of what it is until June actually right >> in the very end. >> Right. Your vote tonight would really just leave doors open for you to evaluate what you want to do between now and June 8th. And you can, you know, basically from zero to whatever the top number will be based on the exception calculation that comes from the state, you'll have that range to be able to vote on in June. >> Right. It provides more flexibility. >> Correct. Yeah. >> Thank you. Uh >> do we have any comments or questions from board members? No. Uh I think it's proper now then to invite uh members of the audience to comment on this item. If you
023have uh any comments on this particular uh part of the the agenda, the the presentation that uh Mr. McDonald just made. Would you please come up to the podium and state your name and your township of residence? >> Good evening, Cindy Baldi to different township. I I just have a request that you consider the four payment system for taxes this year. Uh, like just judging from the way Westchester does it, they pay on July 31st, August 31st, September 30th, and October 31st, you still would get your money in before November. Um, because if if your taxes are about $4,000, four payments, it' be four payments of $1,000. Otherwise, it's 100. 1,333. Even 3333 is a lot for somebody for food payment. It's just I'm urging you to think about the four payment system that some
024of the other school districts had instead of a three. It would help out. Thanks. >> Thank you, Mrs. Voldi. this I know you've asked this question before uh and I think perhaps the finance committee would be able to answer it very thoroughly if you uh want to submit it to them. I think that would be very helpful. Are there any other comments from the community? Uh, seeing none, I'll go back to the board. Does anyone on the board have a question or comment about u Mr. McDonald's presentation before we uh actually vote on on the motion? >> Mr. Contoso. >> Thank you, President TD. I just to follow up on Mr. Goldie's question. I consider your question submitted to the finance committee. We'll we'll take it up. I don't know exactly when, but we'll make
025sure that we have a meeting where that issue is discussed and I'll let and I'll we'll let you know. >> Thank you, chair of the finance committee, Mr. Korsk. >> Uh if there are no more questions, I think uh we actually can vote now on the motion. Uh Mr. McDonald is going to do a roll call vote, please. Sure. I'll start with Miss Wild. >> Yes. >> Miss Sheer? >> Yes. >> Miss Pichioni? >> Yes. >> Miss Meros? >> Yes. >> Mr. Ktosk? >> Yes. >> Dr. Octinsky? >> Yes. >> Mr. Hong? >> Yes. >> President TD? >> Yes. >> Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. >> Thank you. A motion passes 8 to zero. Uh the next item on our agenda are committee and ambassador reports. Uh and we're going to begin actually with policy
026and miss while Thank you, President TD. The policy committee has not met since the last full board meeting. There's a meeting scheduled for tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the TE administrative offices. Thank you. Next, we have diversity. Mr. Hong. >> Uh, the diversity uh committee has not met since our last full board meeting. The next meeting will be held at 7 p.m. January 8th at the TEAO. All are welcome to attend. >> Thank you. Next, we have uh finance with Mr. Ktosk. >> Thank you, President Titi. The last meeting of the finance committee was on December 15th. We started the meeting with Mr. Live a good reviewing the November financials. Overall, while local revenues are higher this year than last year on an absolute basis by about $3.5 million, local revenue this year is
027lower as a percentage of budgeted revenue as compared to last year at this time with the primary difference from this year to last being lower amounts of real estate taxes collected due to lower assessments coming out of appeals which uh Mr. McDonald alluded to earlier. State and federal revenues are also lower as a percentage of budget this year. Expenditures and encumbrances show the instruction expenses are actually slightly lower as a percentage of budget. Overall this year, the percentage of realized expenses and incumbrances to date are tracking with last year's numbers as a percentage of budget. Mr. Livergood next reviewed the status of property tax appeals. There were over 300 properties appealed this past cycle. Only 15 of those were appealed by the district in accordance with board policy. Mr. Liverot explained that between 2023 through
0282026, lower assessments from these appeals have equated to lower revenues of about $2.5 million for the district. Mr. McDonald next reviewed the 2025 fiscal year variance for 2020 for the 2024 2025 year. Revenue variances were positive except for property taxes which was under budget by about $1.6 million. Interest income and state revenue did better than projected and in combination with other revenues resulted in overall revenues coming in above budget by about $2.4 million. On the expense side, the district was over budget by about $785,000 despite a large favorable experience in healthcare and technology and with equipment, I'm sorry, with health and a large favorable experience in healthcare and technology and equipment and textbooks ending the year with close to $1.7 million left in the budget. The largest expense driver was contracted services, IU services, and
029tuition to other schools, which was $3.6 million over budget. Approximately 3.1 million of that 6 3.6 million was attributable to special education costs. Mr. McDonald next discussed the 2627 budget development process. We just had a priority discussion about that, so I'm not going to go ahead and repeat that. Uh you can uh uh we'll be discussing though uh budget development pretty much at every finance committee meeting from now until June. So if you're interested in that topic and how it develops, please come to finance. >> It's it's okay >> like you know I start doing the committee things and the wish I had this power a couple weeks ago. Um now uh we next uh discussed the uh uh the next item in the finance committee was our 202526 projection and how we're tracking. Uh
030Mr. McDonald stated that we are very early in the process the tracking process and the projection process. Uh we'll be following in the next finance committee meetings as to how we're doing as compared to budget. Uh we next had an update on the 2024 2025 audit. Mr. Livergood stated that we are finishing off some of the details of the audit. Accordingly, we expect to have the audit complete by the January finance committee meeting next week. This has taken a bit longer than usual due to some changes at the auditor, but rest assured we have received all required extensions from the Commonwealth with respect to our audit. future meetings of the finance committee. Our next meeting is on Monday, January 20, January 12th, a week from today, 2026, at the district's offices of TAO on West
031Valley Road. And all are welcome to attend. >> Thank you very much. Uh, next we have our facilities report and, uh, Vice President Hong is going to give that report for us this evening. >> All right. Thank you, President Titi. Uh the facilities committee last met December 16th. Uh we first started out by uh doing a review of our two summer infrastructure projects which are currently undergoing pre-construction meetings. Next we turn to our athletic field project. Uh we summarized uh the current completion uh and status of the project. The athletic components of the project including the turf fields, track, tennis courts and bleachers have been installed and completed. The practice field uh and softball fields have been graded and the uh dugout and back stops um are well underway in their construction. Interior roadways and
032parking areas have base paving completed. Interior sidewalks and stairs are mostly completed. The fieldhouse um has uh begun installation of metal roofing and interior work uh tile work has been completed. mechanical, duck work, electrical and wall painting are ongoing uh at and both the grounds and the field buildings uh steel framing and decking uh have been installed. The grounds and field building installation and roofing are currently underway. Uh there were no uh change orders uh for the athletic fields project at this time. Uh we also reviewed photographs and video of the fields project u which are available uh on the district's website. Next, we turn to the Bear Hill Elementary School update. We discussed a number of change orders for Bear Hill Elementary School. Uh we discussed change orders related to uh the water service.
033Uh which amounted to $16,612.77. Uh we were we reviewed pictures and discussed all the remaining change orders uh related to that. Uh then we turned to discussing the rainwater conductors and storm water management systems uh which were uncovered uh as we were going through and uh running our our new plumbing system. Um again uh this project is a uh redevelopment of an existing building. So there are things that uh we've discovered going through the project that were unforeseen uh at the start and one of them was that some of the drainage systems within the building for rainwater coming from the roof um were draining uh had weren't weren't completely draining and were actually angled back towards the building. So they were allowing water to pull in some places. So, uh, to correct that, there were
034change orders in the amount of, uh, $227,4928. The committee reviewed, uh, both of these sets of change orders and recommended that they be placed um on today's consent agenda. Uh, we also reviewed photos um of of the project um, which are also available on the the district website. Um, finally, uh, Dr. Dr. Samadera reviewed um some quotations for a phone system upgrade. He went through the timeline for when the system was last upgraded and discussed how uh we have run out on the useful life of our current system and uh these are required upgrades to maintain our phone systems um going forward. Um, this would be a mini upgrade using the same phones and upgrade uh just various components and infrastructure for those phones. The committee reviewed the upgraded phone system and recommended that be
035placed on on today's consent agenda. The total amount uh was $352,000 $16383. Our next uh meeting will be tomorrow or next next week next January 13th. uh at the TE administrative office at 7 p.m. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh our education committee uh report will be uh done by Dr. Hutinsky. Thank you. Uh we have not met uh since the last uh report from the finance from the sorry education committee. Um the next education committee meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on January 21st. It's a Wednesday at the TEAO and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. >> Thank you. Uh ad hoc legislative committee, Miss Pione, there was no report this evening. Thank you. >> Uh ad hoc public information, Mr. Contosk, the >> ad
036hoc public information committee has not met until last report. So those no report and when we do schedule a meeting, we'll let every we'll let everybody know. >> Thank you. Uh, I'd go back to Miss Pition about she is our representative to the intermediate unit and technical school. >> The CCIU me. The CCIU has not met since our last meeting. The next meeting will be held on January 21st at the Downing Town campus on Boot Road. Thank you. Finally, our ad hoc redistricting committee which is led by Dr. Hotinsky. >> All right. Thank you again. Uh so the ad hoc redistricting committee met on uh October 28th to continue planning the redistricting process tied to the uh 20 27 opening of Bear Hill Elementary School which will be the district's first new school in over
03750 years. We covered the redistricting timeline um legal considerations and two proposed models for redistricting um and changing the catchment areas. One was a parody model which would evenly distribute students across all the schools versus a proportional model which would align enrollment with each school's capacity and would allow us to redistrict um dur or which within which the middle current middle school feeder patterns could be maintained. Um so they're um looked at the sort of advantages and disadvantages of of those. Uh the committee emphasized that the district's class size policy regardless of the size in in the buildings or size of the population of the schools will be consistently applied. Um there were about 20 parents at the meeting and we had a lot of discussion about historical enrollments, aspects of our prior redistricting process
038and strategies to manage the transition. step. Following public comment, uh we outlined the next steps uh including presenting the 2025 demographers report at the November 6 education meeting which did happen uh as we're monitoring changes because you know enrollment is ever changing and will will affect um the final numbers uh population numbers. And we also talked about scheduling two additional committee meetings to finalize the redistricting parameters and to plan for the redistricting steering committee which will be actually performing the um the mapping of the new catchment areas. So the next two meetings will be on Tuesday, January 20th and Wednesday, February 4th. Both will be at the TE administrative offices on West Valley Road uh at 7 p.m. And so, as always, community engagement is encouraged and the public is welcome to attend. Thank you.
039That concludes all of our uh committee reporting. There are no other actions under consideration this evening. So this brings us to the time uh where residents and taxpayers may address the board with anything that is has not been included on the agenda. Do we have any if you have a comment please uh step up to the podium and uh we're glad to hear from you. Cindy Burgaldi Triffer. First, I want to thank all the custodians, all the maintenance department for dealing with the snow and that terrible ice storm for hours and hours and they did a great job because when I finally dug myself out, I went over there and parked. So, I just want to make sure you all thank these guys because they're really out there in that cold and ice and snow.
040Thanks. >> Thank you, Mrs. Vicoldi. It's it's true. They are always there. And when we have snow, our staff comes in so early, very early to get the schools ready for a day when sometimes we're delayed or even if we're not delayed, but there still has a lot to be done before those doors open for our students. So, we thank you for commending them. We'll be sure to pass that on. Um this I see no other comments. So this concludes our uh our public comment period. Um the at this point in the meeting um it is time for us to make any any announcements required by the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act. And our solicitor this evening is Mr. Roose and he will make those uh required announcements. Um the board met in executive session tonight prior
041to this meeting regarding a federal court litigation matter. >> Thank you, Mr. Roose. Uh I'd like to highlight some of our future meetings. Um you may be aware that uh Dr. Robert Singh has resigned his position due to relocation from the district and that's why there are only eight of us here this evening. According to state law, the board appoints a replacement for Dr. Singh, whose term shall begin as soon as the confirmation process is complete and carries through the next municipal election in November of 2027. Information on how to express interest in that position can be found on the district website. The application window will close this Wednesday, January 7th, at noon. To complete the confirmation process, the board will convene a very special meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 15th, right here
042at Konesoga High School. And the board expects to invite approximately five candidates from the applicant pool to interview at the beginning of the meeting and vote to confirm a candidate after the interviews are concluded. After that, we have a scheduled board meeting on January 26th. That is a regular business meeting of the board. We also have one on February 23rd. And then on March 9th, we will be having a budget workshop which will be uh which will take place right after the finance meeting and that's on March 9th, 2026 at Konesoga High School. Are there any other general announcements? Miss Pichion. >> Yes. I'd like to invite uh any residents that wish to uh come to my visiting hour on uh Thursday, January the 22nd from 4 to 5:00 at the Easttown Library. Thank you.
043Thank you. Any other announcements? All right. We have correspondence. When it it does occur, it is listed in our agenda. This evening, we do not have any. Uh, so I think that we're ready to call for adjournment. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >> And a second. >> Second. >> Thank you. That's Oh, whoops. Oops. Oops. I made a mistake. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> And oppose say nay. >> Okay, the motion carries 8 to zero. Thank you. Meeting adjourned.