School Board Meeting - 4/1/25

001e e e go ahead and call our curriculum and extracurricular uh committee meeting to order tonight uh everyone's present except for Neil he is excused tonight uh we did not have executive session um public comment I don't see anything under Athletics I don't see any other other Student Activities so we're at curriculum I guess we'll turn that over to Joe all right um wait just one moment please as the uh as a chairperson of the curriculum committee I just have a I just have something to say on a personal of a personal nature before we get started um I would like to thank everyone in the Upper Adams Community who has shown me support since my father passed away in January my father lived with me at our home in Orangeville and his absence is

002deeply felt by my family and me your cards emails and phone calls have been a great source of comfort during this time of bereavement I would like to especially thank Mrs Krauss Mrs Hall and Mr Mrs lustig for coming to pay the respects at my father's funeral as some of you know I returned with my husband to France at the beginning of January in order for him to have a heart procedure done with his regular doctor a week after our arrival I received the call that my father had had a stroke and only had a few days to live I got on the earliest plane and landed in dullus rented a four-wheel drive and made my way back home in the middle of the snowstorm all all the while communicating with the hospice nurse to

003arrang for my dad to come home for his final days on my way home I was mentally preparing myself to jump out of the car and immediately start shoveling my sidewalks to make way for the ambulance carrying my dad home when I pulled in front of my house tears welled up in my eyes my neighbors found out we were in trouble and had everything cleared off and ready I tell you this because if reflects the True Heart of our community neighbors caring for Neighbors it is why we all love to call this place home this is the true heart of caner country because of my husband because my husband had to reschedule his procedure for when I could be by his side what was supposed to be a six week stay in France has now

004been extended a little longer moving forward I submit that the most important thing we need to be talking about in upright of school district is how we can put our heads and hearts together to find solutions to our current challenges we need to be talking about healing divisions we need to be talking about balancing the budget and using our resources wisely so that all of our families can flourish and all of our students can succeed thank you thank you Maria very nice um I do want to back up I did did skip over we did have an executive session on March 24th and that was a for our superintendent search I forgot to announce that so now we'll move on to Joe all right uh good evening everyone uh this is an exciting evening for

005me as well as the presenters here in the audience we are coming to the end of a three-year Journey uh working on our science curriculum here we started and I'll go over the timeline with you but we started uh three years ago um talking about scope and sequence and then moving into writing curriculum and this year uh choosing resources so I'm going to walk you through uh the presentation here it is an agenda manager so if you're on this side if you don't want to turn around you can uh simply follow uh Along on your computers and I have some uh wonderful Rockstar presenters here this evening I'm part of my these are my science leaders uh they're going to share some information with you as well this evening and then we'll ask for your

006approval for these resources at the next board meeting all right so the first slide um some of these slides may be familiar to you because we presented back in October about the steel standards and approving that curriculum uh was a big deal for us because that allowed us to move forward with some resources so steals uh stands for science Technology and Engineering environmental literacy and sustainability it's it can be a mouthful obviously the acronym Steels is much uh preferred Steels grew out of ngss that's another acronym Next Generation uh National Standard science standards ngss so like Pennsylvania does in many areas they don't like just to adopt a national set of standards they like to take those standards craft them make them their own and that's what they did here with the steel so although

007their their tweak they are based out of and have grown out of the ngss standard so we have both National Best of Both world both National and some State initiatives as well so if you want to review the timeline with me I can walk you through it uh back on J July 8th 2022 the Pennsylvania approved the steel standards uh out of committee but in the Department of Education and rolled it out to the school districts and challenged them within three years time to be ready to implement these standards in your in the school district so our first year was 2022 2023 and that was dub the recognition of need and what we did there is we looked at the new steel standards we looked at our old science standards and what we did and

008we tried to figure out okay what are we missing where are the gaps what are the same what are the differences and try to figure out where the where the area of need is going to be what's going to change in our curriculum are some topics are they going to need to be moved to a different grade level or be removed all together or there topics that are nowhere to be found and we had to add so those types of discussions occurred all year until each grade level at the end of the year had its own scope and sequence of how they were going to move forward with science 2023 2024 was that curriculum writing revision uh two terms you're famili you should be familiar with uh by now uh you heard about it when

009we did the World Language approval and you heard about it in October when we did the science approval so we talk about cuds and we talk about student learning maps and if you want to think about cuds as like a blueprint to your house right you need plans you need designs to build this house so that's what a cud is a cud to tell we write down what we want our students to know and what we want them to do and out of that helps us make our student learning Maps which are sets of questions this is actually the building of the curriculum what do we want our students to be able to answer after we're done teaching a unit a concept and all of those are outlined in every student learning maap so that

010took a long time even into last this past summer last year at this time 2024 2025 we finalized everything here in the fall for you and we um shared it with you in October at the board meeting and got approval for the curriculum so the curriculum is approved uh and our teachers worked very very hard on on that and we're excited to look go ahead and look into resources uh one other thing I have on here is science pssa so right now in April at the end of April we're going to be giving the science pssa first time ever in fifth grade it used to be fourth grade now it's fifth grade and in the other grade is eighth grade that's still the same uh so the fourth grade teachers may be doing a little

011dance I don't know but the fifth grade teachers are now on the on the hot seat uh per se but this year uh the science pssa I don't know what we're going to get back because this is going to be our Benchmark year so typically in a benchmark year the state doesn't likes to keep things close to the v a little bit cuz just getting that Benchmark data to give you cut scores later on uh in future years so hopefully we'll get some data back uh but it probably won't be like we're normal used to seeing because it's going to be based off of the steel standards not the old Pennsylvania science standards so that's the the big jump this year is there a reason for that uh they felt fifth grade better with the

012way the steel standards are mapped out uh the grade level bands that would be the end of the second B B so we have a K2 band and a 35 band and in the fifth grade kind of is The Natural end of that and then the secondary band is 6 to8 9 to 12 and that is pretty common I I would say across the state even across the country those of the gray bands Publishers Bas their curriculum off of their resources um you you go to conferences a lot of the workshops and everything will be designed that way a K2 a 35 a 68 and a 9 through 12 that is sometimes problematic for us because especially at the sixth grade level for some reason because that's 678 that's always that block and we always

013have we have our sixth grades kind of tied with the elementary so it's always pulling that sixth grade up to the uh middle school and getting those three uh in line and that's the same way with the steel standards because you have Earth and Earth in space physical science and life science those are the three concepts six seven and eight um and six doesn't necessarily align curriculum wise standard wise necessarily with K5 in in a typical uh curriculum mapping and of course next year 2526 uh the implementation of the steel so next year will be our first year we're going to roll this out uh excited to uh to do that so tonight I have some presenters here uh for uh to share some information with you we have Rachel ventur she's a second grade

014teacher at Biglerville elementary school she's my K2 leader I have Ashley Wilkinson she is uh at the intermediate school she's my 3 to5 third the fifth grade leader so she pulls up those third grade teachers and uh reaches out and connects them to the fourth and fifth graders and I have uh Brook Gates she's my sixth through eighth grade uh leader and she is currently at the middle school she's a science teacher one person I am missing this evening is Lisa libram she's our high school leader uh so I'll try to channel her when I get to her slide I don't necessarily look at nice as she does but I'll do my best and get that information out to you uh what they're going to do tonight is share with you what uh we have

015one major resource for elementary for K to four and then we have another resource which is five six and eight and then we have one resource at the high school level for biology and you're probably say why see that seems a little sporadic why isn't more because what we did when we went to that needs assessment we want to be fiscally responsible we want don't want to break what isn't broken you know fix what isn't broken so we were doing great things our Scott science scores have shown that so but where those holes are plugged that's where these are these uh resources are going to fit in so so without any much further Ado I'll turn it over to uh Rachel Ventura all right do you want to um she's going to talk about the

016mystery science at the elementary level Joe would you like okay these are some teacher guides from second grade again I'm Rachel I teach second grade so I'm used to talking to a room full of seven and 8y old so it's a little intimidating to be talking to a room full of adults so anyway but I love Mystery Science I found Mystery Science after Co I um I think they had like a free year that you could like sign up and you could get all their lessons and stuff so I um I wouldn't do it like all the time but whenever we were like reading about something like we were reading about erosion in language arts then we would um do like one of the erosion activities on there and so kind of each year I

017would kind of pull a couple more lessons in just to throw in some really more Hands-On science because we didn't really have anything like that um but now this year I started piloting like almost every single lesson so I've been able to go through our um four units that are in second grade and I think this summer I got an email they're supposed to add another unit to second grade but anyway I love Mystery Science um I can't see the screen here we go so I've been pil piloting it and like Joe said Mystery Science we're going to be um kindergarten through fourth grade is going to be doing Mystery Science so there's going to be some consistency between all the grades that's nice that not one grade is doing one thing thing another grade

018doing another thing um something that I really love about Mystery Science is that the videos are really engaging for students and they're really nice for me I'm in the classroom all day with my seven and eighty olds I teach math and reading and writing and spelling and all the things and so it's kind of nice how Mystery Science lays out their um curriculum it's all online um you can print off worksheets and you can print off the activities but all their stuff is online and so each well let me back up each unit is based on the phenomenon I was practicing before the presentation it's based on the phenomenon um which is just kind of like for second graders like a question that engages them in the unit um so this uh right now we're

019on a the plant adaptations unit and the big phenomenon was like looking at Death Valley and I guess like in the 90s one year like all these wild flowers grew and then we're kind of like okay like why are the why are there wild flowers in the middle of the desert all of a sudden and and then like a couple weeks later they disappeared and then like s years later they reappeared and then they went away after a couple weeks and then like 11 years later they came back and so that's the phenomenon that we're looking at for this entire unit we haven't answered it yet so I can't tell you the reason but I have some ideas my second graders have some ideas too but anyway so and then that's the phenomenon and then

020they take you through a series of lessons and um so for example the last lesson that we just did was um oh and by the way our second grade standard with plants has to do with like pollination and seed dispersal so the previous the last lesson that we just did um they it gave them a question in the beginning of this lesson and the question was how did this COA seed on this one Island in one part of the world it's native to this island how did this COA seed and that tree end up on the other side of the world and that's like the only places that they are and so so we kind of go through an exploration and it it walks us through three different seeds gives us like a maple seed

021and some other seeds I don't remember on the spot but they don't actually like Mystery Science doesn't send us those seeds instead they show us how to make a model of those seeds so like for the the maple seed it's like one of those helicopter seeds so we print out I like print out this paper and then it shows them how to like cut it out and like do a little folding or whatever so that way when they actually throw it up in the air it like rolls around like a helicopter so it shows them like how you can make a model and do experiments um even though you don't have the actual seeds with you so anyway it walks them through and it helps them to like come to the realization that each seed

022is different and seeds um get dispersed or they travel in different ways some are with wind and then they eventually realize at the end of that lesson that this COA seed it did not travel by wind it traveled by like an animal maybe a bird swalled it in its stomach and landed in um the other island or whatever so it's just super engaging because I mean even for me like this is my first time going through some of the lessons and I'm like I don't know what is it like can I fast forward and just find the answer but nope I got to follow along with my students so it's it's super engaging and I just love it and um I think I was going um to this point earlier but something else that's really

023nice for me since I talk all day to my students and they just need a break for me is Mystery Science walks them through step by step of what to do so for example with those C's when they were like cutting and um folding like I didn't have to show them they had people on the screen showing you okay first fold it this way and then I could just be like okay look look I'm going to replay it look look well and they're like is it this and I'm like just look I can't tell you just look so it's really it's really nice for me so it's student friendly and it's very um teacher friendly um what else were we going to say um sorry you can talk about your exle I got excited about

024so for fourth grade um we piloted one of the units up till this point we have been the tested subject so yes fourth grade teachers are really happy fifth grade students are not because they had to take the test last year now they have to take it this year and my two fifth graders aren't very happy um so up to this point we did a teacher made curriculum um and we really covered all standards in grade bands K through 2 and then also third through 5th because we were tested in fourth um so for us to have something with and the standards we got are brand new we're able to keep bits and pieces of what our curriculum are but we were thrown a lot of new standards for instance um four of our units

025were on animals and their habitats and their adaptations and food chains and ecosystems we now have two standards so four units down to one unit so we really had a shift in our standards um so we piloted Mystery Science and we did do our animal unit on Mystery Science instead of our old material um the videos are extremely engaging for students and that would be my number one pro to Mystery Science it is engaging so one of the handon activities we did is one of our standards we still have animal adaptations um the next life science standard we have is how do animals use their senses to send signals to their brains to tell them what to do so in Mystery Science the kids had to pretend to be raccoons so the first part of

026the activity is they had mystery items and they had to put their hand in the bag they knew it was a cotton ball but a raccoon didn't know it was a cotton ball so the first thing we say that's not what it is you are a raccoon so they got a cat a raccoon's memory so part of this standard is everything has to be done by a model and you will see that most likely on the PS it say with a model and how are you using a model to answer questions so they had a brain model and they were given scenario cards that they had to put for touch smell and sight so the first thing they did they had to touch what they knew was a cotton ball but it wasn't a cotton

027ball and they went through their memory cards and anything that matched that memory they put in the brain and then the next one was sight well we're definitely we don't have a raccoon in our classroom pet Petree in my room guys um so what mystery science did is they gave us a simulation of what it's like to see a raccoon they have extremely poor sight so the video was very very blurry and all you saw was this little thing scurrying through the leaves or the blur that was there so they took their sight memory and they put it on their brain to figure out what did we use for that and the last one was smell we didn't smell anything again no racco in my classroom so on the smell cards and it walked them

028through this because this was abstract for fourth graders or any students and the lines represent what it smells so on this one it's like a little squirly line it that remembers sniffing something large and musky like a bobcat or a coyote well they already knew from their touch and their site it was small so that didn't go in their brain so then they went through the ones that were here and weeded it out using their memory to figure out what animal was in that bag and it ended up being a and then the next item was aluminum foil they knew it was aluminum foil but using their memory cards and their senses they figured it out that it was a hot dog in aluminum foil and how would that raccoon get that item and how

029would they get the food out of that I'm going to pass this around for you um it can stay here and then if I need to get it back I can get it back yeah I think that pretty much I can also add add on to the assessments to this so our job is to prepare them for lifelong science scientist um so bigger pictures we want them to be engaged in science we want them to be scientists we're preparing them for high even higher order when they get to middle school and high school but we also have to prepare for pssas um we piloted Mystery Science each of the lessons has an assessment we use those as a teaching point for the kids because this was a very new way to take assessments for them

030because they were all scenario based so it involved reading and then it involved taking your reading finding evidence to support your answer so we're bringing reading which reading is always in every subject but that's not our typical or the way we used to assess we used to take notes home study they studied they took the test so we wanted to make sure they were prepared um so we did our lesson assessments as our teaching points and then we gave a unit assessment which was three scenarios and about 15 points for the kids so we also wanted to try to get that built in because we wanted to make sure fourth grade was really giving them those text and scenary experiences that they will see later on and Inspire we thought that was really important and

031also to get the true piloting for Mystery Science we also did add that they have English and Spanish everything on the website too since it is like an online um the consumables for this um Mystery Science offers you to buy them in their nice kits they also cost a lot more if you buy them through Mystery Science so later on we'll talk to you about how we're going to be hopefully purchasing those supplies any questions on Mystery Science before this we move on to the next onee so they sell hot dogs and aluminum foil I I just have an affirmation I've used Mystery Science before and it really is is fun and engaging and for being an online platform they really do integrate a lot of multisensory activities learning experiences for the kids so I

032wholeheartedly approve of mystery science of Mystery Science I keep on wanting to say Mystery Science Theater um and the um I did notice it wasn't English and Spanish are you going to elaborate on what that looks like in the classroom um I have not needed to use the Spanish copies I haven't either I would about when SCH student who speaks mostly Spanish I would proce see using it if we have a student who comes to us who has very little Spanish uh English background we would pull those materials but we would definitely be working with our ESL teacher in that area too because that's where they're the experts at okay thank you good job thank you so at your seats uh before we move into to inspire science you have a variety of different units

033around the table I think there's four that we passed out as well as as we move to inspire science you have three different units you have a fifth a sixth and an eighth grade that you can pass around you will get a teacher sample you will have a workbook sample and then a this is more of like a scope and sequence of the entire uh program that we'll share with you uh if you want to see any more in depth or if you want to see all the we can't bring the entire uh re amount of resources over here we certainly can make a time for you to come out and see us at the buildings and the teachers will be happy to sit with you and show you everything that that we have uh

034and everything you're seeing this evening was piloted was vetted and sometimes multiple things were piloted and this was the winter per se um so uh it has been in use throughout the year and we we put it through some criteria so share this do um do each of them get their own I had to work with Partners on that activity um I'm a big partner group person in science um I think that's the best way we learn is from each other and bouncing ideas off um especially I teach three science classes um I have about I also have life skills push in and our behavior interventionist pushes in with some of her children but this year my cohor is of so when I'm done I have about 77 students with the people who push in

035um I'm sitting at about 20 27 learning support in my classroom um I'm also sitting at ESL in one of my classrooms so I when you're doing Hands-On manipulatives I always like to make sure they're with a partner um just so they're hearing each other's science talk as well right um the other thing I wanted to add and I'm sorry because we were moving on to Mystery Science is Mystery Science gives me the flexibility to also be my own science teacher so when I say that I was also able to bring in um my stations that I used to do so we're still talking about animal adaptations so we still ran our St stations that we did in the past but instead of taking a whole week on animal adaptations a whole two days on

036camouflage a whole day on beak activities I was able to put them as centers and the kids rotated it through next year we would like to do two days of it that's when I was able to also pull in advancing science um so into the classroom so it gives me flexibility that I can still we can still as teachers in fourth grade and K through third shine as individual teachers um we are very consistent in our building so if I'm doing it in my classroom Mrs Herzog is also doing it in her classroom so all 125 fourth graders are getting the same experience so I do speak volumes on this being available for all students across um learning abilities especially when I'm pulling in some of those life skills kiddos and Behavioral support students um

037it's very accessible to them are you sure I don't know I don't all right so for those of you that don't know me I'm Brook Gates I teach seventh grade science here at the middle school um and you'll notice up on the board um looking at the middle school right now um we're asking for inspire science for grade sixth seventh and eth and the reason that seventh is or six five six and eight sorry and the reason that seventh grade is not up there is because I currently already have inspired science this was what we um purchased when I came to the Middle School six years ago so we will be continuing with that um and because I spoke very highly of it I really enjoy it it's a very good um resource we also

038then decided to Pilot it in fifth and sixth and then we're also going to gra it get it for 8th grade um while we're here at the same time for consistency purposes so we will be using Inspire science from 5 to8 um did you have anything you want to add okay awesome um so when you're looking on fire science it comes with an online component um which is the same textbooks that you guys are looking at those workbooks they come online and then there's also the entire workbook um that you see that's actually in print so I use the workbook um for in the classroom the kids don't write on them because I teach six periods so I have 137th graders um I don't have the luxury of having some other people to collaborate it's

039just me so um we use them but they don't necessarily write on those or we can use the online component where they can then type in their answers but they're still able to see the exact same thing um and in those workbooks we have some Spanish copies in the classroom so as I was saying earlier I have a student in my class right now um as she started in the beginning of the year she spoke very little um English and now she's she's doing really great but it's awesome as a teacher because I know exactly what page I want to show her and I know what it says in English so I or and so I can show her like so she can read it and get a basic understanding of what I'm talking about

040or what the activity or whatever the question might be and she'd be like oh okay and then she can do it and it is awesome to see that because when you first have that barrier and you can't like just very simple words or some words that maybe have the same mean like it's the same word but it has different means like read and read right they're spelled the same and she may not necessarily know exactly what I'm looking for so I can show her the exact same page like it's page 21 in English it's page 21 on the Spanish copy and I can show her and she's like oh yeah and then she can do it and that has been phenomenal so um I had when I didn't have that before um that was a

041struggle um to kind of have that communication with them um Inspire science is also phenomenon driven so at the very beginning of every single unit when you guys are looking at those um papers you're going to see that each unit starts with a phenomenon so I think about my very first unit which is an introduction to life um it comes with a video on the screen and I show a time lapse of candles and if you've ever wanted to keep seventh graders busy for a couple seconds watching time lapse of candles is a great time we try to figure out which one goes uh most the fastest which one's the slowest we put all kind of things in there but um watching that it's amazing to then see kind of what they think it means

042to be living so it just starts to kind of get their brains talking about whatever it is that that unit is so we play the time lapse and then on the first box it's like um what characteristics do you think all living things share and they're going to start giving you things like well they move they breathe they do these things and it's like okay but then we start to get to is fire living based on the things that they're saying and they're going to tell you yes most of the time and then I start asking other questions and then as we start to learn all of our characteristics so it's not that they move or that they breathe right they're made of cells they um grow and develop they reproduce these are the things

043that then they start to come back to and we're like oh well is fire living so we go back to that question the entire unit and then at the end they now have all of this information that helps them say or um justify yes it's living or no it's not living based on this evidence um so you can see that they're written in uh claim evidence reasoning so they're talking about this is why it's not living here's my evidence and I'm I'm giving you my reason or my justification of why I know that that's not true um so it's really more in depth than just straight here's your you know characteristics of life memorize them we move on um we're constantly going back back to that and then we can start throwing in other things

044um is water alive and you can really now start looking at that and you're way more engaging than just straight memorization um other ones are going to be like making models um I think about the one question that starts our unit and it's a scenario about a fisherman who goes to the goes to the lake and he's really annoyed about all the sea stars eating all of the um I forget what they're eating but they're they're really upset so this fisherman decides to cut them in half and throw them back into the water he comes back a couple weeks later thinking that all the sea stars are going to be dead but in a matter of fact they multiplied right so all of the and they have to then draw a model to justify what

045they think is happening there um and then as we learn all the things about how that actually happens then they can kind of come back and talk about oh this is why they regenerated or this is why there's more sea stars um so it's it's really a like to see that engagement level um it's really great and then that is going to help them um when we get to the pssas they's claiming that the questions are going to be a little bit different the questions are going to be that three-dimensional learning they're looking at making models justifying answers um so doing that in the classroom is then going to help them um hopefully for those exams as well I'm going to talk about the online interactive components um so I have I have the pleasure

046of having two fifth graders at home um so I get to hear them talk about science which is amaz amazing as a science teacher they so this week I'm like okay what what's something you're doing on the online component that we can't do in the classroom well apparently they went fishing and the whole idea of this is how do humans impact our environment so they went fishing they caught some fish but the fish were never replenished so we went fishing again and we went fishing again and we went fishing again so overall they learn that over fishing causes animals to become endangered or eventually extinct um another activity that wasn't online but was in the classroom is they were learning about overpopulation so they had an area that was taped out on their floor and

047there were rabbits and then they had a fox so rabbits um they learned that rabbits repr reproduce very quickly um foxes not as fast so they would throw their Fox and the goal was each Fox needed two rabbits so they quickly learned that they didn't have enough foxes to keep the rabbit population down and if their Fox did not get two rabbits or eat two rabbits that fox died so I got to listen to my kiddos talk about how they did the online component and how humans impact that but also how ecosystems are balanced um one of the Hands-On activities that my kiddos talked about and then I went and got materials from fifth grade teachers was an energy and the ecosystem so I'm going to pass around what is in that kit so Inspire

048not only comes with the materials you see and not only comes with the workbooks but they also come with handson kits the first year um due to the budget already needing to be in place that were um the fifth grade teachers and sixth grade teachers are asking for the kits and then years to come um just for the consumables to be replaced so I'm going to pass this around so you can just see what is inside a Kit um for instance when I look at this a consumable would probably be the radish SE probably can't use those every year um and the that the non-consumables would be the beakers and the balances so those they wouldn't need to use year after year so what they had to do in this activity is the students did

049an experiment and they comes with each kit comes for a class of 24 so they got enough soil Pebbles and sand for students this is I'm didn't bring in the large bags of them and they ran water through each type of um ground covering and then they tested the pH of the ground covering this allowed students to have that Hands-On learning experience that they're looking for and then they are doing they're reusing the soil or they're using soil to do the um handson activity with growing the plants so these are pH trips and here are your samples if you'd like to pass those and the kids when they come they're very organized like they'll say like write on their unit one you know book two whatever it is and so everything is you know you're

050looking right there I think it says unit one um it's all right there it has a nice label it's just what you need just for that unit so with the Inspire science I know for life science you get four books so there's four separate units and then there's those kits that go with each one very well organized um and a lot of the things in mind are not necessarily consumables it's like heat lamps things that you're not consistently buying every single year right any questions for Mrs wison or it sounds so exciting sounds like something I would have enjoyed yeah to have that hands-on experience it's really like I know life science I feel like it doesn't always have all that Hands-On as you think about like um physical chemical or some of those things

051but even when we're talking about the parts of a cell which kids are really struggling to you know even visualize something like that well we talk about the cell membrane and how only certain things can go in and out well in the kit they get a window screen and they get bird seed so the seed is small enough some of it falls through the screen some doesn't so now they're it's not always necessarily like I'm touching a cell membrane but they're getting that visual like oh okay so only some things can go flow into this cup and some can't and now they're making that connection versus just reading that in a book it's just reinforcing it I mean hearing it but they're also doing yeah Absolut so even those they're just like small little investigations

052but it does add a lot of you know a lot of Engagement in the classroom the other thing that our fifth grade teachers did is when they learned about the fishing when they did that simulation um they ended up the kids were really begging for them to do an endangered species um writing so they brought that into writing class and they're hanging up in the hallways right now and the kids got to pick an endangered species um gave details about that endangered species but in the end they also had to answer the question are zoos helpful or are they harmful so I just brought it all around that okay we're doing this in science already how can we also maybe tie that to reading and writing yeah there's a lot of writing involved and Inspire

053I think that's a change we're going to see for the pssas um just based on what we're learning when you're giving those scenario Bas it questions there are pilot questions that can be pulled up on PD's website um but I I do feel the level level and rigor based on these new standards are coming at us and what I love about inspires if you look at even some of the like questions asking you know at the end of the unit is it's asking students to make models where justify what they're learning but every kid does that differently so some are going to draw pictures some are going to give you just words of what's going on some you know they they can kind of show that they're learning in different ways and that's really cool

054even you're like oh my gosh like that's so neat that's a great drawing or whatever it is um they can kind of in individualize that learning and the other thing that I we really liked about Inspire is there assessments you can modify and you can change so if you are going through it and you're like okay as a science teacher with children who are very all their learning capabilities are everywhere we do have tests that are adapted or modified with inspire you can actually go from four choices to three choices or if you're doing a scenario based you can give those kiddos a sentence starter um and print it off so it looks like the other assessments um that that's allowed on the online component for inspire I really appreciate I just love that I

055just love that the differentiation is built right into the program that's wonderful it um so I think the other important note to use is inspires from mcra Hill which is also our language arts program K through six so there students are already familiar with the learning platform and next year the push out for it is going to be seamless because Josh has been working really really hard on this really hard on this um that it's you can also the text can be leveled based on students abilities so you do have the ability um there's indiv there's individual readers they can be you can push it at a different level same context but different levels and that's on that's important to know that comes on the on line component so you saw those little guided readers

056right there those readers so chances are we're getting these on level online these are already online on level but you can also get them on different reading levels so it's accessible for all students I really appreciate what you said when you were talking about endangered species and there's certainly a lot of really exciting learning that can take place with with uh those topics I person personally was involved early on in my career uh in an dangered species efforts uh that were successful uh with this particular animal to take them off of the endangered species list so it can be you know a real positive experience not only for the students but for the world itself that have that that uh that particular animal a ticket off and with the the steel standards too so we

057then have the ability to kind of like I know we do in basic species and we talk a lot about the spotted Lantern fly and W it relative to what is happening here versus an invasive species in you know California like where the kids may not have any experience with that but a lot of kids have an experience with the spotted Lantern fly especially in Adam County you know so um we definitely talk about it and the one year they researched that pry mantis um will actually eat the spotted Lantern fly and chickens if you have chickens at home they will eat them too so we actually hatched spotted Lantern flies in the classroom spotted mantis and took them out and put them into the schoolyard um in hopes of like helping you know eradicate

058the spotted Lantern I think it's important to also know like the writing assignment the kids were begging to do that like let us do that because we do they remind so there's a overlap so up till this year it's been old science standards we're piloting the new standards but up till so the fifth graders who took the pssa last year we as fourth grade teachers were still responsible to cover all the other standards so fourth grade teachers really had this year to dive into the piloting because we were still held accountable for those standards we did an endangered species it was um we came last year to present it with part of the technology presentation but it was very quick research like why are they endangered where do they live and how is what's making

059them endangered and how can humans help them their research project in fifth grade was much more in depth so while they were exposed to an in fourth they were able to connect it to fifth because Mrs King was like well you already did one in fifth or fourth grade and they're like no no no please let us do this like she said it was amazing how these kiddos were begging to do a writing project which they don't normally beg to do project um so I thought that was really interesting and they didn't care that they learned about it in fourth grade and you will see some Gap like I don't want to say gaps but it's going to be a learning curve um these standards are new these implementation are new but in the heart

060of it we're trying really hard to get these kids excited for Science and become scientists to ask probing questions who are inquiring who are communicating with each other they're collaborating um the four CES are at heart um with science and we find that kids are successful with science and I like to think it's a lot of the hands on um I find that my learning support kiddos are doing really well in science because it's that one area they can blue um so I think it allows us to do that you mentioned studying one particular endangered species which species was it oh they got to pick oh okay yeah so and I'm pretty sure she gave them like a website that they had to use um with the information on it so I'm trying I can't

061even remember what my kid said there I know last year um what might they had did a quick research one of them did a dolphin one of the dolphins that in the endangered species so we try to make it Pennsylvania based if we can um but you are very limited on re the the knowledge you're getting that's age appropriate so there's there could be there's an endangered species from Pennsylvania that doesn't mean the material on the Internet is age appropriate so when I want my kiddos to do research I give them the websites because it needs to be age appropriate they need be able to understand what they're reading I'm sure making these changes is difficult as a teacher and it's a lot for you guys to undertake but I like to see your excitement

062about it I'm sure it brings the excitement out in the kids yeah I think that yeah absolutely you just totally the kids are excited about it and I think that that makes you're conveying it out more fun for us absolutely when we're having fun they're having fun right just to piggyback off what Mrs Wilkinson was saying that these are brand new standards so we are impacted just like everyone in the state is with the new standards so we're going to take the test this year we're going to get those Baseline scores and it'll be a learning curve we're going to see how we're how we're doing how our curriculum we can only make our best guess just like every other school district in Pennsylvania and then make adjustments along the way because they are new

063for everybody all 500 still 51 school districts have Dr any questions for uh Inspire science thank you okay we're going to move to the high school and this is a little different because instructional delivery is a little different at the high school because it's a lot of digital and you know that from those of you whove been in the district for quite some time you know we don't have very many textbooks at that High School level It's All Digital resources and this is a digital teacher resource um so it's not necessarily like a textbook or something that the kids are going to go in worksheets workbooks that nothing like that this is more of a teacher resource where teachers can go in pull out resources as needed and Implement them into their daily instructional plans

064uh based on what standards they're addressing at the time so this is called bscs my first question was what does that mean so biological sciences curriculum study so this was born out out of the 1950s from the National Science Foundation and that when it when that organization started coming into uh Vogue at that point in time that's how that National um Next Generation science standards bloomed out of that and that is where they anchor all their resources from the ngss but it also parallels very well with Steals and we went on to the Ed reports here which is a national uh overall evaluation independent evaluation of programs and this bscs is definitely near the top um for hitting all those Steel standards in addition uh all the science the whole science department was asked what

065do you need we're looking at that scope and sequence did read did the curriculum what else is there that you need they were pretty content with what they have they have things in place but this is one area because of that Keystone biology test in 10th Grade they wanted that extra resource to have that foundation for that uh particular Keystone exam so they uh looked at uh these resources they piloted these and the bscs came out right on top so if you want to know what that looks like this is a a graphic again these are are teacher resources so it's four units and they put it in a nice graphic for you they have human health human impacts four units and there are three chapters per unit if you want to U look at

066it that way and then here are the concepts that the teachers can draw upon for their instructional delivery everything from the body systems uh to DNA photosynthesis and then uh the ecosystems um in unit four so again this is much more limited than what you've seen K to 8 uh but this is what they need science is of interesting curriculum area because it's not like ma math or uh language arts those of you that might have been here I don't know if anyone was here for wonders or math and focus time or have uh seen that discussion we want that consistency we want K to six K to six because we want those foundational skills to follow and build upon each other all the way up through where science is very content driven very concept

067driven throughout so it's very eclectic so one of the things that you will you heard us talk about this evening was consumables that were consumables and that's why at first glance when you're looking at it it seems like it's a little bit of a hodge podge of stuff and it is because that's science the consumables you know we have we're still going to purchase consumables uh we're not throwing out what we've been doing if it was working so a lot of the things that we purchase each and every year we're going to continue to purchase each and every year for consumables that's the you know the the sand the seeds the plastic cups the marbles those types of things as well as replacing equipment as needed I say equipment we're talking like a magnify goggles

068um microscope something like that and we can borrow a lot of those things as well from advancing science and some of our partners in the community but lab supplies experiment resources different activities that the students and the teachers do those all fall under consumables and I don't know if Mrs wilon you want to yeah share a little bit about that that is pretty big in um the steel standard is the design process um so what we do is a lot of Hands-On inquiry and the kids are trying to come up with their own solution so in fourth grade one of our first ones if they have to create their own Tech Decks um and then if they complete the tech tech so if you don't know what a tech tech is it's a little um

069skateboard that you use your fingers for so the kids love them so you're kicking that off the beginning of the year Well we do two other ones before that because that's pretty that's pretty high that's pretty in-depth for kids and then we do an enrichment activity for the students who finish early they have to build the track for it so we try to do these about every month every other month um but they do come with a cost because they are consumables the kids get to take those Tech Decks home to rip them apart I'm ripping a kid's heart out so we're going to take them home for them um but they also are really simple ones like in January we make snowball launchers it's a plastic cup it's a balloon but there are and

070tap um so they're exploring and their goal is to consistently get the snowball the farthest so the word consistent is far the key there um sometimes we tell them the supplies and how many but how to do it on them sometimes we say you can use whatever you would like we say that we I would be out of tape if I didn't give some kind of limitations to my uh tape supplies um so when we're looking at resources it's helping those type of activities as well so at this point when I come to you with uh curriculum needs and program needs and Stu like this is my used car salesman speech how can I get you in the car today what do you need to make this happen what can I do for you guess

071what this is going to be easy for me tonight because this is Grant funded there is no cost uh to the district we have grant funding to purchase these resources uh we obviously just need your approval and blessing at the next meeting and we will go ahead and get get these resources in the hands of our teachers and our students but uh this never happen so this might be my once in a lifetime speech I can say this but uh we got we got a Ready To Learn grant that uh specifically is targeted for academic needs and working with Mrs Hobbs were're able to make this happen without additional costs or budgeting needs how long will that Grant last you for Joe Joe um I have a question yes yes I just got an email

072today from the shared Waters U from at Lincoln Intermediate Unit 13 uh if you recall last year I went to the professional development there and they gave us kits well this email was asking if we wanted a refill we were allowed one refill is that something you would like me to follow up on to get a refill or just let me know if that's something I should follow up on sure um I believe we collaborate if you uh remember we collaborated with advancing science uh with those kits that you were able to uh provide us so we certainly can uh reach out and um see if they need some refills for that CU that that particular resource has benefited not only us but the entire County so that's been wonderful oh thank you I'm so

073glad to hear that thank you so much and back to your question you said about the grant it is a onetime grant so we need to spend the the funds by June 30th is the limitations on that okay and Joe can you remind the board or tell the board what a curriculum like this Costo um I would say the the most expensive Inspire science is probably around 880,000 Mark it's going to be for us mystery science about 15,000 and the high school again it's a different piece we're looking about $1,000 it's a teacher re only resource so it's not it doesn't have all those ancillary components and it's a one-time hit except for the consumable part of it which is ongoing yes and we've been and most all the principles have line items in their

074budgets that every year they have they budget for for those consumables as needed thank you and part of our job as science teachers will do to make sure those grade levels will'll get a reminder saying at budget time which is October usually so in October if you didn't know this in October teachers are preparing a budget for the following year yes so to just give them a heads up like you might not have done these kits yet but you really need to go through that list and anything that's a consumable we need to budget for budget for your science journals if that's something you want again um only because October is still the beginning of the year for us so it's still a overwhelming time of the year and we are using uh part of

075this grant for consumables as well and when possible and when fiscally responsible to do so we're trying to order some multiple years worth of consumables since we have that funding right now again pre-planning making sure we we do our due diligence tomorrow questions thank you thank you drive the car home thank you appreciate your enthusiasm thank you do these things oh yeah actually do these things go with you too uh I think I they stay so are you keeping these inspir if you want to keep them I can give them to can you inter are you done looking at them or okay hello are your guys' classes I guess so we're really blessed at the intermediate building since we are um departmentalized I teach 45 minutes of science um every day to three classes and

076then I teach 45 minutes of social studies a day for each class um then I have a I work with a language arts teacher and a math teacher so our time is divided now they teach math for their that whole block and they teach language arts for the other block and we rotate three times a day um at the intermediate building we are set up five deep which is typical K through six about five teachers per grade level unless you have a class that's really large so in first grade they have a very large class um the other pod is set up with two teachers so they teach math and our our math teacher teaches math and science and the language arts teacher teacher social studies so each grade level in our building is a

077pot of Two and a pot of three so I think Mrs plank you're the only one who's had kiddos go through our building right so um when I had her daughter she went through all three of us so we have a pot of Two and a pot of three and they rotate and the time is split evenly between the subjects I'm going to let you I I am excited that science um is grade level standards now for the science part of Standards because it really does um put science in every grade when you say it's a grade band like K through second or third through fifth um unless you have an experience like we do where we can break standards apart it's science can kind of be forgotten so this kind of puts a little

078bit more emphasis on the importance of science so I'll let Rachel talk about what was the original question that I was just curious how long the classes went because it seems like a lot of you know like a lot of stuff that you're getting in packed into it 45 minutes like yeah and at the elementary building it's also very difficult too because there's a lot of different like children who are going out for different groups like ESL or like reading groups so like our schedule I can't really speak for like every single teacher even like within second grade like we all different schedules and stuff and how we break up our day um I try to leave like the end of the day like the last 25 minutes is for science um and also like

079consider that my whole group reading time is about 20 minutes and then I have reading groups where I teach students how to read like there's a lot of different components so hard it's hard to just give you a number it also depends on like what we're talking about like in language arts like if we're reading a lot more about erosion I keep saying erosion but we do read a lot about it but it's just like a really nice ties into science um then like then I don't really need to like read as many of those texts if that makes sense like you still like read them but I don't have to spend as much time because then there's more like okay like since we're reading about it let's do the science experience so you can

080understand it because it's hard for them to understand what erosion is but then like when there's other weeks in language arts where we're like not necessarily like it's not a science standard it's just we're learning about um how to be a good citizen which is more like social studies stuff so then like that's a little bit harder to like fit everything in to the day and I don't know so like the science can almost be spread out through maybe a couple different classes like you can that's how I do it yeah that's how I definitely do it is one day we might like engage them in the lesson maybe we'll have time to start and then we'll pause and this activity took two class periods yeah it I did definitely did not we weren't a

081raccoon just for one day we experienced for two days and there's another lesson about um which is very new for the fourth grade is uh plant adaptations we've never had to teach that before that took us four days so we sit down as professionals and we go through the videos and we say okay what are we doing here and what day are we doing this knowing that we do have fourth graders and it is inquiry based and then how can we also bring in our own teaching and our own Hands-On learning so we do have the flexibility of doing that which is really nice and there's a lot of um especially in Mystery Science we like do a lot of discussing with like the class like getting their ideas that's the whole that's the whole

082thing so it's kind of also hard to like to be like this is where we're going to stop it's kind of like well we kind of went a little bit longer but it's okay because we're all more students are par participating and we're all getting ideas so I don't know I'm I I have um a a little bit more of flexibility since I have the students a little bit longer um yeah so and at the middle school it's a little bit different so um at a certain time we all switch classes so we might end a discussion like hey all right we'll pick up here tomorrow and you lose that enthusiasm sometimes but um Science and History are 42 minutes a day okay math and Ela are 86 minutes a day um so where the

083kids are doing mods in math and Ela they have period for Science and History um so I teach six 42 minute classes every day um sometimes when I know that a lab is going to require a little bit more um I can talk to the history teacher and what we'll do is like we'll do a double period so they'll have um my like odd classes will have a double period with me so they'll have um about 86 minutes with me on like a Monday and then they'll have I'll have the other kids on Tuesday and then the kids that were with me on Monday now have a double period for history um so we do have that flexibility just requires a little bit more planning on on our end to make sure that we both

084have have something that we can do for that 86 minutes um I know sometimes she does things too where then she'll want that 86 minutes I know when they do like their historical walk of Biglerville and different stuff um so we we work well together to do that that's awesome yeah especially if I know that something's going to like take a long period of time now discussions and things like that um you know it's just kind of like it builds you in um the excitement right like oh we'll find out more tomorrow or that's where it will end you know um I try to get like a good like wrap up and then that's where we're going to it keeps them like linging to find something new the next day keeps the mystery yeah you

085can't quite do that in the middle of a ex so when you know that something like I know I do a cellular respiration lab where we use sugar water and yeast and we actually blow up a balloon with the yeast inside the the balloon blows up um the balloon and that takes like you know an hour to watch it all happen so knowing that that's going to happen we we plan for that yeah that's pretty and I think they have I think that's also part of the reason the high schools going into some of those blocks things next year is to do some more of these things yeah yep integration is a big key so if you remember we when we presented the curriculum it's impossible like you said to get all those sign standards

086especially in like a 25 minute period a day for elementary and what we did that first and well even second year figured out what standards could be taught in other subject areas or maybe there's something like a motion could that be in fed uh you know that those typ even this special so kind of divvied out the the workload a little bit that way when we could the environmental literacy standards you're you'll see can attach to a lot of science standards but really go into a lot of our reading uh program with Inspire and I know we can talk some of the Middle School ones in with our history teachers thanks thank you you thank you anyone have anything else for curricular curriculum or extracurricular okay we will move into our business meeting okay sh

087okay uh we'll start with property yeah there's a attached Surplus list of tech items and um that has all listed in things that are wrong with those and then also the AGI repair Surplus which I believe is is that part of the buy out thing yeah from yeah that's what I was thinking I was actually right yay but um you know when the new computers are coming in those would be the old computers going out so that's what's on the Surplus list so just to speak on that AGI repair one that's just a small snippet of what's being bought back I just we have a a small Surplus right now of of computers on the shelf that aren't being used so with us with you approving this small Surplus for that buyback we should did

088a little bit more money back from the buyback versus when we do the mold at the end of the school year so that's just any questions on that thank you heather uh Transportation uh as your list there there's a couple drivers to be added to jacobe and to one to fum and that's our recommend approval questions that will take us to finance Mr Walmer okay thank you Mr Vice President we have a few items tonight we'll start out with the U merger or acquisition one of the two um between stock and leader and Sexton and stump which the new company's going to be named for the the merge company is going to be sex uh so we have a couple items there the engagement letter and then uh client transfer election which is from our

089solicitor uh but this is going to be an approval for the remainder of the current fiscal year and then also for uh next fiscal year as well okay uh the next item is homebound instruction uh for student 3903 from March 31st of this year till April 25th of this year uh the hourly rates 3659 not to exceed 5 hours per week hourly correct is that correct hourly rate Okay the third item is a Kelly education update and if you could look at it in the board agenda some of the metrics that Kelly Education Services has provided to the school district um Mrs hops did you want to mention something yes so um I just wanted to highlight like we've had an 86% fill right with Kelly education so far this year which I think is

090great knowing that you know we've had absences we're still trying to get folks in every month you're approving new subs and they are picking up um positions so I think that is great to see um probably within the next month or two I'll be bringing the rates forward for the next fiscal year so I just wanted to highlight what they've been doing for us also they kicked off in March doing some staff incentives knowing that this time of year we see more staff taking days off so we want to make sure that we're maintaining our fill rate so they actually did a March Madness so they actually did award one of the employees um perfect attendance for the month of March and these were just shared with me earlier today and that's why I wanted

091to highlight it this evening that was Valerie Baldwin and then we had two uh Subs that were recognized and we and I have their pictures up here online they took pictures this is Phyllis wagan she is one of our support staff individuals that she will pick up sub positions down at uh Biglerville Elementary and ALS on the right is Ashley fre that is our um contact that we have with Kelly education and then we had a professional staff member that was sub that was recognized and that was uh Mrs pel so I just received those this afternoon and I just wanted to highlight that and share that this evening with you um so I think you know once again we're trying to do really good things and partner and it's been I think really good

092um sad to know that Kelly education is being looked at in other school districts because I think we've had a really good success rate than that we've been maintaining and it goes with our connection that we have with Miss free and you know a lot goes a lot of kudos to to our building administrators and our other administrators that work with Ashley as well as getting folks in so that has been a really great partnership that we've had within the last several years things have seemed a lot smoother with Kelly Services in the mix over the last couple years so that's a good thing congratulations to those two too that's really neat uh I'm going to skip over the budget for now and go to some different items and then we'll come back so item

0934.5 is the csiu service contract this is a renewal not to exceed $22,000 uh a slight increase it looks like it's going to happen of about $1,000 this is the software that that Shel uses for counting and various other modules that go into it so that'll be on the consent agenda in two weeks for approval uh which do you want to do next Food Service or the budget we'll do food service if that's okay okay sure um so um what's attached in agenda manager is we released an RFP for our food service which we have to do every 5 years even though every year we still come back and we renew that contract so as the memo States we released the RFP we had six vendors that attended the pre-bid meeting they need to attend

094the pre-bid meeting if they wanted to bid on it so they came in we tore the three buildings they were able to ask any questions they were not allowed to take videos or any photos and then they were able to submit questions back to us if they had any we did not receive any and then the rfps were due last Thursday um during the bid opening we had three vendors that responded um as mentioned in the attachment that was Chartwells the nutrition group and the Mets company and as outlined also in that memo the top three criteria items were items that we could not change those were items that we had to rate basically by the state guidelines so we could not change the ratings on those the other options down below were ratings that

095we could assign that talked about student engagement um profitability I don't have that pulled up since I have the other presentation pulled up but you could see where everyone lied and we each we had a committee and each one of us had to rate those independently so looking at all those we are still recommending that we stay with Chartwells for the next 5 years um that is what we would like to recommend to the board we've had really good success with them currently where we saw the main difference in the profitability if you're saying why aren't you going with the company that has the most profitability was the cost in personnel and that mainly came we have a very seasoned director here Mr costic you know compared to a new company coming in they're going

096to have a director that would be of a lower cost that was the main difference between all of them along with some of their rebates where the Nets was only going to give us about $9,000 in rebates and you're saying what's a rebate on the food side basically it's Consortium buying so if you are saying to a vendor you know I'm going to buy a 100 cases of chicken nuggets the vendor will give you a better price versus if you're only going to buy 25 so the Mets company was giving us the less rebates Chartwells was giving us more rebates back when we looked at the details and M Mr cosig was here originally with chart Wells and left and went to another school district and came back last year correct yeah thanks for that

097update I I like how I like your process it's so clean the way you go through it I like the idea of a committee some of these things are not quantifiable it's about feeling you know some of the criteria that you have so I think you did a great job and it's a value proposition too you're taking everything considering all the everything that each one of these three vendors brings to the table so I appreciate the process and I think that I think that um he made a good good choice and that the best floated to the top and uh that'll be on the agenda in a couple weeks as well and I really have to say kudos to missl she heads this up she she is excellent in what she does and she is

098spearheading this so a lot of credit goes to her that's good it's a shame that only three out of the six deci deed to move forward it would have been I guess it would have been more time consuming on your part but um but for whatever reason three three got into the mix so good so we'll move on to the budget and this week we're going to talk about Revenue correct a few weeks ago we talked about expenses now we're going to move to the revenue side of things the the top lines and some of what Mr Alin talked about during curriculum you're going to see tie in a little bit later when we start talking about state revenue just to you're going to say how do we always work together like we are constantly

099communicating and tying things together and working to see how we can make things better for the district with the revenue that we do receive um so as we were talking about the revenue this evening you're going to see some projections in there for where I think we're going to end up for 25 we're going to talk about 26 I'm going to give some historical information and then we're going to just confirm the timeline moving forward knowing that the Board needs to approve the budget in June and in between there we're going to talk about if there's anything else that you want me to repair going forward so just as a recap for fiscal year 25 when we did the budget the board approved a 0% tax increase once again the board approved the budget in

100June of 24 the state budget wasn't approved till July of 24 it should say not 25 and and from that we did receive additional State funding what I currently have built in looking at fiscal year 26 is at 0% this is the way I always start until we figure out if we have to have a tax increase and that direction will come from you as the board as well I always start with state level funding as we mentioned and I have on the next slide Governor Shapiro did mention there could be additional State funding I do not have that included because once again that's only that was mentioned in February and we haven't heard any additional information to this point and some of that would be a lot of risk asking the district to take

101that on at this point and federal funding is level funding according to the funding adjustments that Mr Alin talked about last month as well and I know there are some additional questions moving forward about Federal funding we will cover that so once again just a few highlights um from the shapira's budget we talked about this um last month so I'm not going to read each item again this is just what was stated back in February and as we mentioned in the expenses School business we're very unique in how we budget and the same as the same case in the revenue side so I just detail this out some of this may be a repetitive information for you but I just like to repeat it as we move forward so once again we always talk about

102the general fund which is the number 10 so when you're looking at those invoices and you see that charted accounts um every month at the voting meeting you'll see it always begins with a 10 and then on the revenues it's broken down into four areas 6,000 7,000 8,000 and 9,000 and we talk about local state federal and other Finance services and on each one of these I'm not going to read each area but I will highlight as we move forward looking at the revenue we're first going to begin with local Revenue the very first one that I have listed is the 6111 that's our function code for taxes um that's all the money that we get in from the real estate bills that get mailed out in July you can see our historical Trend you

103can see where I think we may end for fiscal year 25 which I think we are going to be under what we originally budgeted um but we're still coming in at almost a 99% collection rate now with this um taxes are still coming in during that penalty phase until April 30th so we may get closer but do I think we may make up that 130 I'm not sure um at this point you're also going to say if you're looking at fiscal year 26 why are you looking at almost 14 million when we budgeted just 12.5 million for this year and that is because and we're going to talk about this when we get to the state side right now we're just looking at local r but when we get information from the state May 1st

104or thereof about the homestead Farmstead that actually comes off of this top line that I'm talking about this local and it'll be applied to the state so when we talk about State you're going to see I have a yellow arrow and that's because we don't know what that amount may be yet so it just goes from one bucket to the other bucket at this point so that's why you're going to see that big variance if you're looking at why is that so no I'm not saying there's a tax increase here it's just because we're waiting for that Homestead Farmstead information to come in and then we just talk about interim taxes once again um interims are if you're doing any Home Improvements this is where you would might get an interim bill for any improvements

105that you did to your house earned income is the next largest area that we look at those are the folks that are working in our district or not in our district but within our community that pay in for the earned income now you can see historically we have under budgeted in this Revenue area so I have increased that pretty much you know $500,000 from what I budgeted for fiscal year 25 to where we I think we may be for fiscal year 26 and that's looking at the previous year fiscal year 24 we are at $3.4 million so that is another reason why I increased it for fiscal year six also with this I reach out to the York Adams tax Bureau and you know they say right now we're trending about a 3% increase so

106even if we have a 3% increase from the fiscal year 24 to 25 we're right at that 3.6 right now for fiscal year 25 so we may gain some than that 3.5 that I have projected for the end of this current fiscal year transfer taxes is you know know is people are buying and selling homes within the community that's where that money comes in I've kept that level we've seen that being an Evan flow and that's a really a hard one to predict because we don't know how many homes may be sold within the coming year depends on interest rates it depends on a lot of things and then we're a big commercial property that might sell that happen we've been waiting for many years and then delinquent real estate once again taxes that are

107not paid in the current year the following year they could be collected and they would then come back to The District in a delinquent tax area interest on investments interest rates are starting to decline once again how low may they go for next year once again we don't know but I did increase it where we are currently for this year but I was very conservative in that number going forward and the Ida pass through funds that's the um we us usually find out usually late fall early January the Ida pass through funds that we received from the IU once again we don't know what that number is so my projection for fiscal year 26 was just a based upon what we've been receiving the average in those previous years and this is a very detailed

108slide I'm not going to read each one this is the the rest of the items that fall underneath the local revenue and you can see everything on here is about stable you're not going to see a lot of variances what I have and this is you know once again information that where we've had consistency in the previous years and what I'm projecting for fiscal year 26 so any questions on the local revenue and really local revenue is the only thing that we we can really dissect and really look at you know based upon history moving forward in the state and federal those numbers or those budget amounts are given to us by those entities the state or the federal um so as you look at the state budget and that's anything that begins with a

1097,000 number the first one is our basic education funding so you can see for fiscal year 25 we budgeted 8.5 when the state budget was passed in July we know that we're getting 8.7 so we gained $200,000 from what we we were not anticipating so once again I used that number what we're going to be receiving this year as the base for next year and at the end of the slide presentation I do have some links so if you're like I want more information on this so if you do click on any of those links you're going to see what the proposed items may be for basic education special education I did not include those numbers because I didn't feel it was a significant amount to include and I thought it would be a bigger

110Risk by putting it in the budget where in previous years we saw a swing of maybe $400,000 so I went half I was sort of conservative this year like for basic education we're looking maybe an increase of about $100,000 doar which if we put that in I think that would you know and if we don't get it I think that would we would be over projecting and then we would be at a shortfall that we can't do anything for as we look at vocational education you're going to say why is there a red error what we're predicting for the end of fiscal year 25 to what is being proposed for fiscal year 26 is actually a decrease so we're actually projected at this point to lose money on um a vocational education subsidy of about

111$30,000 and I know you're probably saying why is that I can't give you an answer of why um it's just sort of what's out there at this point I don't know if you have any com directly from the governor's budget the governor will say on one side that he's giving more money to the career and Technology Centers which is true but he's also taking money away from some individual districts like ours so once again I do have that if I saw a decrease I did reflect that because once again I wanted to be as accurate as I could special educ once again I just used a flatline of what we're going to be receiving for this year if you look at that report like I mentioned the increased for special education was very minimal of

112as a projection of about $47,000 so that was not included going into the next slide looking at our reimbursement for transportation um we are receiving about $85,000 more than what I had projected for fiscal year 25 once again this is all each September we have to submit a report to pde it's called our err report and it's all this mathematical equations behind it goes on number of miles the year of the buses gas formula all that once again that's very hard to predict so I use a flat number going forward the next two areas is What U Mr Albin was reflecting in his curriculum presentation just moments ago the ready tolearn block rant the very first one that has about $269,000 in we have received that over the last number of years and that is

113has been used to offset for class size reduction staff cost down Biglerville Elementary that's what we've been using that for the next line when you see with the green arrow the 8 142,000 the new one that is what we're anticipating and wanting to use for the curriculum the science needs and you're saying well what else did you do with the $841,000 there was a list of items that we can use those funds for there's about 22 items which includes like offsetting cyber costs for fiscal year 25 so that's what we're going to be using we have it for science we have it for um trying to think dashboard for power school correct some power school information are one online cyber um it's not edity imagine learning they Chang names so many times so we have

114a list once again this is us collaborating and this is helping to offset what things that we currently have in our budget we're looking at those one-time things that we need sort of like you m of you came in at the tail end of the Esser funding that we used it for those sort of items this is sort of what we've been doing with this as well so once again we are supposed to get the $842,000 again next year if all goes planned there may be more funds coming for that but once again we don't know that information and that is not factored in just what we have received this year is the 842 guaranteed for next year yes okay and we have already started a list of the items that we currently have in

115next year's budget that can be offset good and I'm assuming that's the same as he had mentioned before it needs to be spent by a certain correct yes and you know once again we have these many years ago I'm going back to when we started receiving these different Esser funding buckets you know every time we got a bucket it could only be C spent on certain items and this is falling into that and then sometimes it gets nearer as you know we receive more funding and that's where it gets very challenging on the next slide once again these are all the other items that fall underneath state revenue and the very first one I have highlighted with a red arrow currently in the budget for fiscal year 25 when it was passed in June or

116in July the district is receiving Charter School reimbursement that is not one of the items that is in Governor Shapiro's proposed 26 budget so that is taken out so that's about $74,000 that we know we will not receive in that area is the do you know off the top of your head if they're ready to learn block grant adequacy supplement you mentioned that it can go to offset cyber does any idea if that can go towards Charter as well yes okay yes both so that might be an option that corre and then looking down through everything is sort of stable once again it does have pre in there we have to uh resubmit our application um we're looking at 170,000 once again that is a pass through so if that would come in lower that

117would be just lowered on on the expense side the other item that I have highlighted in red that was part of the budget for 25 was the feminine hygiene products not a large amount but that was included that was not one of the items that was included for the fiscal year 26 budget and then once again the yellow arrow that I have highlighted that's where the homestead Farmstead amount would come in that's supposed to be released a little bit after May 1st so we may have it in time for our next committee meeting to discuss um but once again that would just offset and reduce the local tax revenue what is a migratory child that's a report that's done through pims if there's certain qualifications then we would receive additional funding for those students it's

118it's just as it sounds yes and there's a probably certain criteria on the Pim side that's all and it's $40 per child is how it works out and then it also looks at their historical attendance information it's their formula that they give to us we don't do it and the very last two lines um the reimbursement for Social Security and peers that is is all tied to payroll so as we are updating our projected salaries for next year that number will be updated as well going forward can I can I try to help do Mrs Halal and ask you what rent and sync fund payment sure that's a great question that's better than Jerry so on some of our bonds that we have we have a 2017 Bond a 2019 Bond a 2019a bond and

119a 2024 Bond we get through plan con it's it's a reimbursement process that we get from the state so two of our bonds qualify for some reimbursement back so when we make payments in are interest and principal payments when you and you'll see those on the invoices you'll see one in the fall and you'll see one in the spring um then we would when I submit the information to pde we get it's based upon a formula a reimbursement formula and our Aid ratio we receive money back from the state is that some of the money you found when you first came here yes I thought so okay I'm gonna I'm gonna one up Jarry so I'm going back to migratory children in our industry that is not a term that is used anymore so can

120you explain what a migratory child is sorry if I'm putting you in the spot we one second please that that term isn't used anymore so hold on I just need to have the number so what I have at the end of the presentation is a slide that has links and the one I use all the time is our chart of accounts this is how we code for schools so you can put it and actually I have let me see if I can blow that up this is the information that P has a what that would qualify for I don't understand what I'm looking at shall sorry this one here highlighted okay this is the pde definition of what qualifies okay okay all right thank you sure that okay got it thank you so if anyone

121is curious what any of those numbers if you click as I just did in the presentation the chart of accounts and you can do a control fine or a command find if you're on Apple and type in the number it'll take you and it'll give you the more information it's in the function the numbers that are in the function code yeah that's what this is going toine okay thank you sorry that's me CER show help no thank you that's very helpful thank you we know thank you we know sh any other questions when the state one thing I wanted to highlight on the state side as well is our historical Homestead Farmstead information you know so once again this is given to us by the state each year but you can see here historically how

122it has has increased over the last 5 years it has increased over 50% for our school district and you'll you know other districts have received increases as well you know whether theirs is as much I didn't map that out but I think that so this is what is coming off the real estate bills that is sent to your homes and you're going to say well how much does that look like so you can see here on the next Slide the average for this current fiscal year so for 25 when bills were mailed out in July of 24 you should probably saw on your tax bill Homestead Farmstead amount on average that was about $410 per taxpayer that qualified in our area in our school district that is a significant amount off of a tax bill

123you know looking at it historically um and you can see on the far right hand side we haven't raised our taxes in the last three years and when we did the last time we raised it was back from 21 to 22 going in the 2122 tax share of 2.1% so when you look at all that together you can see really over the years um Homestead Farmstead amount has increased that amount has been passed on to the taxpayers and even when we did have a tax in increase the taxpayers in our community still had a reduction overall to their tax bill of a little bit over $100 you know when you look at the whole five years this is the one thing that's become real significant lately because it has been increased and it kind of

124Simply is comes down to this if you say this year we're not going to raise taxes and that Homestead Farmstead goes up well you're not raising taxes but if they signed up and please you know if if if you know people that don't they do it in January sign up for Homestead Farmstead got to make sure you do that but ultimately if you say zero tax increase it's not zero if the homestead Farmstead goes up it's actually reduction so when I talked to Shelly I said you really need to do a comparison so the board can see over the last 5 years in one of those years you did raise taxes 2.1% over those years what did the average taxpayer in Homestead Farmstead pay what more did they pay over the last five years and

125actually they've paid $100 less even when you raise taxes so it's really something that I I know tax time can be a challenging time for all School boards and school board members but you need to understand is that increases some you may increase taxes and they may not see a tax increase if they're in uh the homestead Farmstead that chart on the right is really deceptive when I was looking at this yes the the intervals are 0.1 yes and and so you look at it and somebody not listening to this presentation could draw the conclusion that we raised quite a bit of Mills and and really it's minimal and if you made it actual you wouldn't even be able to see it what do you have any idea what the percentage of residents in Abraham

126School District that are in the homestead form inead compared to just the general population is there an idea how many there is probably at least off the top of my head probably about 75% that do qualify it's generally above 70% okay so each year we approve a tax resolution so I could pull the tax resolution from last year it tells us actually how many households um and I want to say that number is about 2400 okay that qualify for the but this has not been like I said recognized as much and except for the last couple years because that's been a focus of the administration to drive that up and that's why I can't tell you enough friends relatives everybody tell them that you know that this is out there and and go ahead and

127try to qualify it's not hard it's very easy um and quite frankly we could uh look really we ought to look guys just to put that link on our our actual website so that people could just click on it and see but the timing you can't do that right now uh but we could probably put something that that they could just click on and and link to it might be better maybe add to the newsletter when it is available just to give people a headset that that's and it doesn't pretty much everybody qual qualifies for it it's on your primary residence correct right and and it's interesting what you say about you know over the last three years taxes have remained consistent but as you mentioned the Homestead Farm St act um funding has increased

128so you could go back and look at your tax bill over the last three years and see what that exact number is and actually see that property taxes have decreased correct essentially to to your to your wallet over the last three years it's interesting to consider and good point thanks for making that your other costs have not decreased I'm sure your and your your bacon your gasoline everything else and then as we highlight just on the federal side once again this is the title funding that Mr Alin highlights every month during his um one of his board reports and I have projected level funding for fiscal year 26 um we did receive the question well you know there's some talk about what could happen to Federal fund you know you're hearing some things at the

129federal level I'm going to let Dr Bell take that one okay that's fine um everybody's had discussions of okay Department of education's shrinking so therefore the money must be shrinking or this must we've got no indication that there's any loss of any money at all um the the the true focus is has been more on the actual departments themselves at the federal level not money however for your input you know not everything comes from the Department of Education that comes to a school district there's the Department of Health actually pays into uh the department of AEG uh the uh they they have different parts some come from nutrition uh so it isn't when when some people just hear okay Department of Education that's not where all our money comes from that's not where all schools

130money comes from and we currently have no indication that there's going to be any decrease at all in the funding uh the only thing that we've heard is that there might be a different department with overseeing good to know and Mr Alvin will be attending his conference here in May so we might find out what our actual numbers would be going into next fiscal year later in May so that is one item that will be updated as well and then I just included because when we were receiving the aser funding that came all through in the federal and because we were charting out historical information I've shared that as well once again that is no longer available and all those funds were spent by the allocation time and then the 9,000 this is just any

131financing so when we did our bond refinancing from last year and when we looked at the audit that you approved and you saw that the expenditures were like 45 million like how did that happen that's because we have to account for the revenue and the expense side of bond refinancing that gets into this 9,000 Series so when you look at everything together of everything that we just spoke about you can see I have everything charted out regarding local state and federal once again highlighting that the majority of our sources comes from local funding 53 % and then from the state side and then about 1% from the federal side so now you're saying okay we've already talked about expenses back in March and now we're talking about Revenue so where does that sort of leave

132us right now right now as of today we're looking at about $2 million deficit and now I know you're thinking now how are we going to cover that so if you look at the next slide and then if you also look at the handout that I gave you this is your handout to take home this evening and your last handout was on a yellow sheet it's the one that says draft at the top it's the same information that's up on the screen but there's some information that we can already cover that I would like to recommend to the board of how we can cover this variance and then we'll open it up for discussion so if you look at the bottom of this sheet that's in front of you if you're looking at the screen

133what's highlighted in the yellow um if you look at where the line says medical of about $125,000 that is amount that we can take from our assigned fund and pay into LBT because that's one thing that we said that we were going to be doing because we raised the rates that the employees are paying for their insurance next year this was a way to contribute to the fund as well so 125 can be used from that also looking at the technology um back in January I believe it was it was the board approved to purchase the iPads here for the secondary Campus of about $800,000 those that amount can come out of the technology so we have some funds that we can use from those assigned funds it just decreases those buckets moving forward so

134now you're left with about 1 million 1.1 million are saying how can I cover that once again I just put a scenario together you know it's up to the board you make the final decision and I just recomended here I used 60% coming from the assigned debt fund and 40% coming from the unassigned fund you know once again trying to keep that in line according to our board policy about our unassigned fund we need to keep about 1 to 8% in there so it's whatever number the board feel feels comfortable with and that is board policy 623 if you wanted to review that at all once again that's up to for board discussion you know how you would like this once again this is not including a tax increase if we would if the board

135would choose to have a tax increase you know your variance your deficit amount would be lower and then how you would make up that variance would come from different funds at lower amounts in addition remember so we're using this year's funding rates because that's the only actual number you can really look at uh you really we we don't even want to have an intelligent guess as to what funds may come or not come from the governor's budget because at the state level they haven't even begun their discussions uh back and forth of what's in and what's what's out so when you look at this part of this big gap would be no money in a large sum of money from from the grant funding or the subsidy funding really is what it is that's not

136in this number if it comes in that's 800,000 850,000 off the top so it's a little hard uh to show you actual and budgets but this is really the the best guess scenario Shelly it might be good um okay when when we say this comes from the tech account okay these are like your savings accounts correct okay what's in the What's the total amount we have now in the tech account and that would be in if you look to the column to the left of the yellow you can see we have about 1.8 million in the tech account currently so by using the 795,000 we would still have have a remaining B just shy of 1 million and they're going forward once again a Bo Direction you can move those funds around but once again

137we've you know back when we came to the board and you approved in January about purchasing the iPads it was committed that time that we would use the funds from the tech account so when you look at that yellow block to the left of the Yellow Block is what we have yellow block is what is being proposed to to fill the Gap and then to the right of the Yellow Block is what would be remaining correct if everything happened exactly the way it's laid out there now and that would leave us at 3% in the unassigned once again so now I open it up for board discussion um any discussions from the board I think I I want to make a point uh they're ready to Learn grant 860 841 841 okay so let's assume

138that comes in then we're down to like3 $400,000 350 around in $350,000 roughly Gap that needs to be filled we pretty confident that that's going to come in uh so I think we're in a good spot here budgetarily you're your basic Ed and and special ed that's how they classify those those are the ones that increased very small um which really aren't included in here that total is 135 those together sorry just and I didn't know that worries um in the past have we not considered budgeting P's money and then when it came to the time to balance the budget it wasn't needed correct that's what I thought so even in some of these situations what we can budget may not be what ultimately comes out at the end of the year correct because even

139moving forward into the next fiscal year expenses may come in lower Revenue may come in higher so then we may not need to use what we're laying out now and then that healthc care money that's that's been sitting there for several years because of a funding holiday that we took correct and so this is a way to to use that money that was already contributed by the members correct thank you I think we're in a great position and a smart budgeter smart person who is smart who creates budgets is very conservative they estimate their expenses high and their revenues low so with that in mind I'll again say I think we're in a great position budget wise for the school district in going into next fiscal year so thank you for that presentation if there's

140any other comments or questions if I may just add I don't want you to think that we sto looking expenses for next year you know that's an ongoing process so coming into may you know we'll be talking about the preliminary budget that you'll need to pass that can be higher than the final budget in June so when we meet and talk about this at Committee in May if you think we're going to need a tax increase or you want to build one in we can and come June we can always take that out so I just want to make sure as we're going forward and to close out I just provided a historical information about Adams County um I think this just shows providing what districts across our County have done over the past several

141years those in green are the districts that had Zer in you know zero increases you're going to see some people if you look at the actual and then the millage that's currently what their tax rate is and when you look at the adjusted index that's the highest they could increase their taxes so you can see some districts went to the max some districts did a half that's what I believe we did back in 2122 we went half of what our Max could have been at that point so there's different reasonings for different districts of what they might have done some districts may say I'm going to raise it 1% as well and put that right into capital reserve like they have a planned purpose for that or a building project down the road things like

142that so it's all that planning for that future expense and something that the board might want to know if the district raises 1% tax what does that give us it's about $130,000 additional revenue and on the district would gain 130 and the individual taxpayer would have generally 23 to $25 increase on their tax bill yes okay excluding Homestead farmstead might as well say that since we talked about that so much and once again if you need any of the links of anything I referenced I provided those sources for you okay thank you Mrs OBS that's all I had Mr Vice President thank you wmer thank you sh um go to Personnel Mr lustig yes thank you very much uh just before I came to the meeting I did go through uh the entire Personnel uh

143issues and uh saw that we had eight uh items to um to look at this evening so I have the numbers here and I'll uh pause after we have addressed each one of these in case there's questions or comments uh if you're on your computer you can follow along with me if you'd like uh the first uh one to look at is 5.2.1 uncompensated leave and you'll see um uh uh that uh we recommend approval on that next one to go to is 5.4.1 uh supplemental contracts Athletics and you can see uh what is being considered there the next one is 5.4.2 supplemental contracts educational the next one to look at is a volunteer services 5.5 the next item to look at is other cont contracted Services uh RAC 5.6.1 that's our custodial maintenance and

144grounds um uh cons consideration there the next one after that is other contracted Services uh Kelly education uh permanent staff 5.6.5 the next one is uh Kelly education teacher substitutes 5.6.1 and the final one is uh the very next one 5.6 6.2 Kelly education support staff substitutes and that um concludes uh our my report thank you Mr LTI does anyone have anything else for this evening we are adjourned thank you