001Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Prior to tonight's public meeting, the board met in executive session. During the executive session, the board reviewed school district business that if discussed in public would lead to the disclosure of information or confidentiality protected by law, including information regarding student matters and the initiation of and conduct of an investigation. The board also discussed with council information or strategy in connection with a matter on which a complaint or litigation is anticipated and strategy related to pending tax litigation matters. Mrs. Anusk, could you please call the role? Mrs. Cooper >> here. >> Miss Dad >> here. Miss Finley
002>> here. >> Mr. Frank >> here. >> Mr. Good >> here. >> Mr. Hamilton >> here. >> Dr. Hasselhorn >> here. >> Mrs. Lynch >> here. >> Miss Sitch >> here. nine members present. Thank you. Dr. Reljack, could you introduce all of our wonderful guests? >> Yes, we have wonderful guests this evening and it's a celebration evening with so many good things to talk about. So, I'm pleased that everyone was able to be with us. Uh this evening, we are going to start by recognizing some very special individuals who have provided 25 years of service to the Fox Chapel Area School District. So, we have um employees who have been here for 25 years, seen many students and and entrusted many students to their care. And so, unfortunately, the 25-year employees from Fairview Hartwood and
003Kurr Elementary Schools were unable to be here with us this evening. I do want to recognize from Fairview Elementary, Jennifer Kaine, from Hartwood Elementary, Kira Dowski, and from Kerr Elementary, Connie Banachoski and Rachel Stone. So, although they couldn't be here, we are still celebrating them. I would like to call upon O'Hara Elementary program principal Kevin who will be introducing an employee who is being honored for 25 years of service at O'Hara Elementary. So Mr. >> Good evening everybody. Thanks for having us. On behalf of the O'Hara staff, students and community and Dr. Betus and myself, I would like to take a moment here and recognize Miss Julie Paratt for her service of 25 years. You know, it is one of my true pleasures that I get to have as a principal where I get to
004go into a variety of different academic settings and classrooms and I get to see the joy that our teachers and our staff bring out in our students in regards to the educational opportunities and the experiences they provide. And I can say going into Miss Perott's classroom is one of the true joys that I have during my day. So I want to thank you, Julie, for all that you've done for our staff and our students. And congratulations on 25 years. I didn't know I was gonna get put on the spot, but thank you. Um, I see some former students here. So, I just wanted to say thank you for all the memories that you've given and all the music that we've made together. So, thank you everyone. Thank you. I had the pleasure of being in
005your classroom today, so it was a joy. I also want to recognize Carrie Barnett from O'Hara Elementary, who was unable to be with us this evening, who is also celebrating 25 years. Next, I'd like to call upon Dorseyville Middle School program principal, Dr. Laura Miller, who will be introducing a DMS employee who has dedicated 25 years of service to the district. So, Dr. Miller, >> good evening everyone. On behalf of Dorsyville Middle School, I'd like to congratulate Gretchen Guyidge, who is marking 25 years of service with the Fox Chapel Area School District. Gretchen's career with the district began at Dorseyville Middle School where she completed her student teaching. Following her graduation, she was hired as a full-time educator and has remained a consistent member of the DMS faculty for over two decades. Over the course
006of her 25-y year tenure, Gretchen has contributed to the district in several capacities beyond her classroom responsibilities. International programs, where she collaborated with Mr. Drew Richards to coordinate and lead educational trips to Germany for our high school students and extracurricular leadership. Since 2017, she has served as the assistant director for the DMS musical supporting the performing arts and student productions. Gretchen, congratulations on 25 years and thank you for all you've done for DMS. In addition, I'd like to congratulate and thank Mr. Dave Dowski and Mr. Joe Isil, both faculty of DMS for their 25 years of service to the district. I'm a big talker, but I'll keep it short. Thank you for Yeah. all the experiences of 25 years. It's been a lot of fun. >> Thank Thank you. >> And finally, to end our
00725-y year recognitions, I'd like to welcome program principal Dr. Dr. Nicole Smith, who is here to introduce high school employees who are being honored. Dr. Smith, thank you. >> Uh 25 years is a long time, right? It's longer than our kids spend with us. It's longer than we spent with our parents. Sometimes it's longer than you spend with any other person. And so the amount of growth and things that happen in 25 years is really amazing. And I'm honored to be here on behalf of the high school to recognize the three employees who were able to make it today and a long list of employees who have found their home here. We'll start with uh congratulations to Jeremy Bennett on an incredible 25 years of dedicated service to the Fox Chapel Area School District as
008a pioneering advocate for the um health and fizzed department. Notice I did not say Jim. Um and a visionary for the um fax department head. Uh Jeremy has reshaped the student experience through the introduction of innovative courses like exercise physiology, morning fizzed, and online uh fizzed options. His impact extends far beyond the classroom. Whether he is coaching girls varsity basketball, boys golf, or sponsoring the skate club, Jeremy's passion for student athletes is unmatched. He is the ultimate team player, never hesitating to lace up rollerblades or jump in the pool to assist colleagues with unified PE. Having served as a steady hand as the union president during the challenges of co co 19, Jeremy has proven to be a pillar of leadership and a master of building lasting relationships. Box chapel is a better place because
009of his heart, his hustle and his unwavering commitment to our students. >> Um, thank you very much for the support and uh for the time here. I greatly appreciate it. Tonight we also celebrate Mari Cooper for her stellar 25-y year tenure at Fox Chapel area. Stand next to me. It's a little weird behind me. >> I love standing next to you. Um uh Mari has had a career defined by musical excellence and visionary leadership. As the orchestra director and department chair, Mari's influence resonates through every hallway, most notably evidenced by her recognition as the Pennsylvania teacher of the year. She has mastered the art of bringing music to the people through her creative popup concerts and has fostered a deep sense of community through student retreats and mentorship focused conferences. Beyond the podium, Mari is
010a vital voice in professional development, ensuring the growth of her peers just as she nurtures the growth of her musicians. Every time our students take the stage, we are witnessing a direct reflection of her immense talent and dedication. She doesn't just teach notes, she inspires the amazing talents that define our district's arts program. Congratulations, Mari. I thank you so much. I do talk. Um just one little thing. Um, so when I went around as teacher of the year, what I did was I talked a lot about people to to people who were becoming teachers about marolds and walnut trees. And the idea is that you find your marolds within the profession. You find people who inspire you and help you grow. So I look back at all of my music teachers and my friends who
011are in the other room and I think, wow, what an amazing group of of Maragolds. And then I think of the people who are on this list of 25 years and my dear friend, Mr. Frank. And I look at all of my colleagues and I think how many marolds does this school district have? So, thank you for this, but more importantly, thank you for hiring really great people who do amazing jobs with kids every single day. >> Last, but certainly not least, we celebrate Drew Richards for an extraordinary 25 years of service to the Fox Chapel area community. I know zero German, so this is all going to be in English. All right. Mr. Richard's uh career is marked by a tireless commitment to cultural enrichment and student growth. As a distinguished Fullulbright scholar, Drew
012has brought a global perspective to the classroom, successfully building and sustaining vibrant programs at both the middle and high school levels. From leading the German club to organizing the beloved annual October Fest celebrations, Drew has created immersive experiences that bring language and tradition to life for his students. Above all, his signature positive attitude serves as a constant source of inspiration for colleagues and students alike, fostering a welcoming environment where everyone feels encouraged to succeed. Fox Chapel is truly fortunate to have benefited from his experience and enthusiasm for a quarter century. Drew Richards Hey, I'll be real brief. Um, I've been here a long time and the other two colleagues of mine in German, we've all been here 25 years together and honestly, I couldn't imagine being in a better place and I'm so proud to
013be a member of this back. Do you want me to read the rest? >> Sure. Um, we have a number of employees who are also earning this achievement. Um, Jose Ays, Jennifer Antonikis, Bill Barley, Jessica Green, Tanya Kohler, Mary Mlin, Bonnie Paisin, but they were unable to be here tonight. Thank you for your time. Thank you. >> Well, we are so proud to have people who have spent 25 years in our school district and we hope for many, many more for them and for all of those that are still approaching 25 years. Next, I'd like to call again upon Dorsyville Middle School program principal Dr. Laura Miller, who is here to introduce two students who won first place in a math competition. Dr. Miller. Well, it is a privilege to recognize two of Dorsyville Middle
014School eighth graders, Shang Fang Fee and Brian Shu, for their exceptional mathematical achievements this year. In December, Shang Fang and Brian competed in the regional Calcus Solve tournament sponsored by the Alageney Intermediate Unit. Competing virtually against hundreds of students from across Alageney County, both students demonstrated elite problem solving skills, ultimately tying for first place in the individual category. This victory is just one highlight in a year defined by their success across numerous math competitions, and we are proud to present them with these certificates of achievement tonight. Congratulations, Shang, Fang, and Brian. Thank you, Dr. Miller. Now, we have some music recognitions as well of students who have done amazing things. I'd like to welcome district band teachers Evan Herrick, Joshua Broner, and Carly Holtz, who are going to be introducing students who participate with the
015inaugural Alageney Valley Elementary Honors Band. Hello, my name is Karly Holtz. I'm the elementary band teacher at Hartwood and O'Hara elementary schools. So, our students had the wonderful opportunity back in February to get to participate in the first ever Alageney Valley Elementary Honors Band Festival. Um, we've had high school and junior high for a while. This year is the first year it opened up to fifth and sixth grade students for a separate festival. There were, I believe, around 130 students from nine uh area local elementary schools that got to come together. They prepared challenging music all on their own and came together one day in February for a full long day of rehearsal and put on a fantastic concert that evening. So, we're excited to be here tonight to get to recognize those students. So,
016my students from Hartwood and O'Hara, if you guys could just stand whenever I say your name to be recognized. We have Clauddio Jeffrey and I'll give you guys your certificates. We'll meet in the hallway afterwards because there's quite a few of you. We also have Connor Hollis, Grant Patel, Leysa Chen, Nicholas Freedberg, Miles Glick, Michael Lewis Sukoen. And those are our students who were able to participate from Hartwood and O'Hara elementary schools. In addition to their work for this concert, they've also been preparing some uh district level concerts with us. Our Hartwood and O'Hara students have a combined concert next Thursday evening at O'Hara. If anybody is free to join, we would love to see you there. Good evening. My name is Josh Broner. I'm the band teacher at Kerr and Fairview Elementary. So, I'm
017also here to congratulate the students who participated in the first ever elementary Alageney Valley Honors Band. They worked really hard on this music, which was especially challenging even for middle school students, but they did it in addition to the work that they were already assigned for school. So, for Kerr Elementary, we have four students. We have Shihong Yu. Please stand. We have Adah Ranki. We've got Lucy Ferda. And then last up is Rowan Tesky, who I don't believe is here, but let's still give her a round of applause. And then for Fair View, we have Miss Bryley Edwards. So, Bryley, please stand. I'll give you all your certificates in the hallway, but I just wanted to say, especially as a secondy year teacher, it's truly an honor to teach these students. I feel very grateful.
018Thank you. And uh my name's Evan Herrick. I'm the Dorsyville Middle School band director, but I also used to teach elementary school. So, this was a cool experience for me uh to do this inaugural event with the fifth graders along with the sixth graders. And I just want to say fifth graders, I'm really excited to work with you next year and thank you Mrs. Holtz and Mr. Bronco Pursuit doing such a wonderful job with them. Um, I'd like to recognize my students that participate in this event. Um, sixth graders Naomi Chow on the flute, Daniel Choy on the alto saxophone, Daniel Claus on the trombone. Theta Kigman Graves on the trombone. Luca Lou on the clarinet, Morgan Love it on the flute, Tristan Ser on percussion, and Hanukkah Takano on the flute. Uh, many of
019these students do have an upcoming concert. I'll be up again to talk about the seventh and eighth graders, but uh many of them participate in jazz band and the honors band as well as the regular sixth grade band at school and their uh performances on May 20th DMS. So, thank you everybody and I'll be back shortly. >> Thank you. >> Before we introduce our next music educator, I do want to just uh make an announcement as well. We were very pleased to learn that Fox Chapel School District was named a best community for music education for the 15th year. And so that is hard work of many people including our educators, including all of our uh people who support throughout our school district as well as our families and students. And so congratulations to our
020music department and to our community for this recognition. Uh the district joins 141 in the state of Pennsylvania and approximately 1,000 school districts in the country with that recognition. So congratulations to our music educators. Next, I would like to introduce Dorseyville Middle School orchestra director Jeff Brier, who is here to introduce two students who were selected to perform with the PMEA District 1 Junior High Orchestra. And we appreciate all of you that came. I know we've got many many uh recognitions and busy families. So, thank you >> Mr. Brier. >> Hello. Thank you again for recognizing and celebrating all the all the students and their wonderful achie achievements this evening. Thank you again. This year we had two students represent Fox Chapel and DMS at the 2026 PMEA District 1 Junior High Orchestra Festival that
021was held at Hampton Middle School this past March. Uh when I say your name, please stand. violist Leila Tob over here and first violinist Louis Vandel which is right here each earned second chair at the event demonstrating their talents and their hard work ethic. Thank you again students. You you did amazing job there. I'm very proud of you. Thank you again. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Mr. Brier. We appreciate it. We have some people coming in and some people leaving. So, for those of you at home and you are wondering what's going on, we just have so many people to recognize and only so many seats. So, it's going to be a busy evening. Uh, but it's a joyful way to spend an evening. Now, I'd like to call upon Dorsyville Middle School
022Coral Director Amy Barisk, who will be introducing two DMS students who were selected to sing with the PMEA District 1 Junior High Chorus. Good evening everybody. Good evening. I actually don't see um Owen or Kora here this evening, but I'm going to go ahead and recognize them anyway. So um Owen and Kora are from our DMS honor choir. They have served um not only as choir members, but also on the choir council as officers for the last three years. And they had the opportunity um to apply to um to be selected by a selection committee for the PMEA District 1 Junior High Honor Chorus. The chorus features 150 7th through 9th grade students from more than 60 schools in Alagany, Fet, Green, Washington, and West Morland counties. The festival was held at Mount Lebanon High
023School in February 27th and culminated with a concert. The festival guest conductor was Dr. Ethan Murphy, assistant professor of coral music education at Dain University. Both Owen and Kora are active in the coral program and they I'm so proud of them, not only for their musicianship and their contributions, but they are fabulous kids, always a smile on their faces, always the first ones to jump in and offer to help. So, I'm very pleased to recognize this and I'll be sure that um that they get their certificates this week and to see Owen and Kora and the rest of the gang, the honor choir and our DMS concert choir. Our concert is next Wednesday night, so we would love to see you there. Thank you so much. Have a great evening. So, we have a few
024people to uh to bring in. And so, while they're they're making their way into our rooms, then they can be recognized. Um I do want to share another announcement of something else that happened last week. We've had a busy few weeks in the district. Um the district was also recognized uh we have a lot of artists here and our music educators, but we also were recognized as uh Fox Chapel High School was named an NSCA school of distinction and that's for its National Strength and Conditioning Association uh award. And so the high school is the first school in Pennsylvania to receive that recognition. And we're so proud of them. It's really an honor and it's uh Fox Chapari High School joins one of 13 schools nationwide to receive this recognition. So, I did want to
025make that announcement. As we're allowing some other people to come in, we're going to pause for a moment and then we'll get started with the rest. >> Thank you. We did this meeting last year. >> That's why we were in the auditori. So they were just waiting. >> To all of you who just joined us, we're so glad to have you with us this evening. It is a real pleasure to have so many people to recognize that we had to actually rec uh put recognitions into two shifts. So that is a problem that I'm happy to have. But we appreciate your patience and we're glad that you joined us. uh before you arrived in the room, we were able to recognize not only employees who earned uh 25 years of service with the district, but
026we also recommend uh recognize some elementary and middle school uh music students who participated in a variety of competitions and concerts. At this time, I would like to call upon our high school coral director, Ben Murray, who will be introducing the high school students who Oh, I'm sorry. I then I would like to recognize uh Mari Cooper, our high school orchestra director. Absolutely. I will just change around. Um who will be introducing high school students who were chosen to perform in special orchestras. >> Um so we're just going to do the whole music department at once if you don't mind. >> I would love for you to take over. So >> Oh, sorry. >> I'm okay with that. >> We are very happy to be with you tonight. We are proud to be part of
027a community that is so incredibly supportive of the arts as is reflected in Fox Chapel area being named one of the best communities in music education in the country for the 15th time. Tonight we are honoring talented musicians from the high school orchest or from the high school who participated in Alageney Valley Honors Band and the PMA honors district region and state bands orchestras and choir. Many of our students could not join us tonight as this is the audition time for PISO and Trio. PI Piso being Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra and Tribo being Three Rivers Young People's Orchestra and others are at athletic events or preparing for tomorrow's AP Chemistry Test. Um the orchestra has had a great year. For the first time in my career, which we now know is 25 years, um I
028was hoping to keep it at 10 in terms of thinking that I'd be younger. For the first time in my career, the students participated in a music performance assessment. For these assessments, students are really competing against themselves based on the standard of the music that I have selected. Our students play grade five literature, one of the most difficult levels of music that high school orchestra can play. Grade six is considered college and professional level. The students received the highest rating superior for their performance. In addition to the adjudication, the students participated in a clinic with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the associate conductor Jacob Joyce. I was really pleased with how they scored. But far more importantly, I'm unbelievably proud of the integrity that they had in their preparation and the professionalism they
029exhibited in Hines Hall. They rep represented our school district so incredibly well. Our PMEA participants also have represented us remarkably well. And what we're going to do is keep our students around um and we'll come up one by one and do it all. Um PMEA hosts honors festivals that operate independently from district festivals. Students are selected in a variety of ways for district festivals, but then advance to region and all state levels based upon their auditions. Many of our students attended multiple district and region festivals. At the state level, students may only participate in one. So for the orchestra, the following students participated in PMEA. Zing Carlo in honors orchestra. Michael Costello did honors district, region, and all state. Chase Hall did honors district, region, and all state. And I should also say that he
030just won an international competition in Scandinavia on cello. Um Finn Johnson was in honors district and region orchestra. Ozam Sak was in in honors district region and all state orchestra. Asyn was in district and region orchestra. Hayden Track was in honors orchestra. Leo Vandel was in honors and districts. And Aiden Wang was in honors orchestra. It gives me great pleasure to hand over the microphone. We're gonna do this to my uh amazing colleague and very good friend Daryl Le. >> All right. Good evening. Um, this meeting is always very symbolic because it represents the end of of another great school year. Um, being here for my it's my 21st year at Fox Chapel. Um, but we had an amazing marching season in the fall. Um, the marching band, the marching foxes are the 2025 class
031AAA champions. And I thank all of the students who are here that are members of the color guard um and the marching band for their hard work um, and being class champions. If we can give them a round of applause. Over winter break, we headed out to Orlando and we marched down Main Street in Disney World um as our bianual trip. It is a big celebration of of a great season. Um and it's amazing to have the entire band faculty um on staff working with our students. Mr. Herrich um has been with us um for a very long time and is now at the middle school and Mr. Broner, Mrs. Um Holtz who you heard from earlier. Um, and there's a lot of great things going on in the band program and I'm looking forward
032to seeing all those students come up through the high school. Um, as Miss Cooper said, um, for Alageney Valley and for PMEA, um, those students start working on those solos. They're actually out now. So, they're working on their solos to audition for next next fall and September and October, excuse me. So, they prepare, practice, and perfect those solos. and they're actually um it's literature, solo literature that's written for college and professionals. Um and they're playing at a very young age. And when they go in for the auditions, the rubric um there's three judges in the room. They're being evaluated in rhythm, pitch, and intonation, interpretation, technique, and tone. Um and those those judges rank those students to move on. Um so this year for PMA Honors Band, we had five students who were at North
033Hills for PMA honors band. Um, Nadre Digbo on clarinet, Celestial Hoe on flute, Rachel Kim on clarinet, Jack Murray Kzanne on percussion, and Joshua Shaw on flute. Give a round of applause for them. The students selected for that ensemble, there's about 140 students in that ensemble um that are made up of the top musicians from about 50 schools in the Pittsburgh area. Um, Alageney Valley Honors Band is made up of nine school districts um around Fox Chapel area. Um, and this year we had 11 students at the senior high. Um, we had Elliot Royals on trombone, Isaac Chan on trumpet, Nadre Digbo on clarinet, Caitlyn Datitali on percussion, Paulie Goyle on trombone, Celestial Who on piccolo, Roman Johnson on alto saxophone, Claire Lesnik on trumpet, Holden Link on trombone, Delaney Lou on flute, and Zoe
034Lou on flute. Get a round of applause for them. And then as Miss Cooper mentioned, um to get into the district region all state um ensembles, those students um they're selected from their audition the the first Monday in October. And um so the first step is PMA district band, which is made up of the Pittsburgh area. Um and then they advance the region band, which is made up of the nine surrounding counties. Um and then they go all the way to all state. So this year um for PMA All State band, we had 10th grader Claire Lesnik on trumpet um and senior Jack Murray Kroanne on percussion. So to kind of think about how that works, um the All State Concert Band is made up of about 140 musicians and of those 140 musicians, they
035were made up of students from 110 different school districts. So, it kind of puts that in perspective a little bit. I also want to give a big shout out to to Joshua Shaw, who for three years has gone to All States. Um, he did All State band and orchestra twice. So, it's that's unheard of that students go all three times. So, let's give a big round of applause for Josh. He won't be going for to school for music, but he's gonna go to school at CMU um in the fall. Jack Murray Kazanne is gonna be going to Pit. Jack went to All State twice last year um for orchestra and this year for band. So, let's hear for Jack Marie Crosant. And then we've heard him on the on the marching field as his trombone
036soloist the last two years. Um Elliot Broyals um went to PMA All State twice. Um he went his sophomore year um actually was both for orchestra both times, sophomore and junior year for PMA Allstate orchestra. um because this year he was on his his his parents were here on his big audition run all over the all over the world um to audition for colleges and Elliot is going to be majoring in trombone and performance at Carnegie Melon University. So let's So um as I was saying, we're winding down the year. Friday evening at 7 p.m. in the high school auditorium is our high school band concert. So if you're available, come and check out all the great things that we're doing with the high school concert band. um and jazz ensemble. Um we'll hit the
037we'll hit the pavement on Memorial Day, Etna, Sharpsburg, Lanok, and Aspen Mall all before one o'clock. Um so come out and cheer us on, especially in Aspen Mall because that's a lot of a lot of miles on our feet. And um of course, we're always excited to see all of you at graduation. So I will turn the podium over to um well, one of my good friends and my music um department colleague and neighbor, Mr. Benjamin Murray. Good evening everyone. Thank you for inviting us here this evening. The high school choir has had a busy year with various performances throughout the community. Um including our bianual major works concert uh to a packed audience to East Liberty Presbyterian Church back in October. Uh we had several performances throughout the month of December. Uh we had
038over 130 students involved in our spring musical Something Rotten back at the end of February and our choir performed in Washington DC two weeks ago. Um the students that we were are recognizing here tonight uh in the choir are those that have been gone above and beyond having been selected to participate in PMEA choir festivals and the Alageney County Chorus Festival. We have several folks here tonight. Um so we have 14 Fox Chapel Area High School students participated in the third annual Alageney County Chorus Festival. If you guys would just do a little wave if you're here just kind of uh so we can recognize you. Uh, we have seniors Dan Deamat, seniors Maggie, senior Maggie Jones, senior Ben Shuttleworth, and Robert Spenson. Juniors, we have Casey Benachoski, Bri Chetum, Evangelene Sereno, and Emma Smith.
039And sophomores, we have Anita Fava, Sophia Jerase, Cassidy Joyce, Abigail Ornellis, Addison Smith, and Marggo Walter. Congratulations to all of our Alageney County Chorus folks. Congratulations. In addition, we had two students that represented um Fox Chapel Area PMA District 1 Choir and PMA Region One Choir. And those are juniors Evangelene Sereno and junior uh Emma Smith. Congratulations to those two. And the high school band concert, as Mr. Leic said, is Friday night. The high school choir concert is tomorrow night. So if and we invite everybody to come out uh and see the high school choirs for their end of the year program tomorrow night at 7 o'clock at the high school. Um can I just have real quick all of our all of our music department students. Would you mind just standing and if you
040could head over to that side real quick all of our music department students uh from the senior high. And if we can just take one moment to recognize all of our high school music department students. >> We're going to invite uh Mr. Herrick back to talk about a few more people that have earned some recognition. >> Thank you. Um so I guess one of the cool things about being a middle school teacher is you get to bridge that gap. So I'm doing things with fifth and sixth grade and then seventh, eighth, and ninth grade when we go do these festivals. So um I get to travel with Mr. Lesnik and the elementary teachers. So I have kids kind of doing all kinds of different things which is really cool a part of my job and
041I'm very appreciative. I get to see their successes and and kind of build off what's going on in the elementary schools. Um, so back in January, uh, we had a bunch of middle school students, uh, attend the AV, uh, festival with the ninth graders as well, um, at North AlaGany and their director was Captain Regar, who is, um, a director of the US Air Force band, uh, I think it's West outside of San Antonio, Texas. He was very awesome with them. They did a great job and they worked really hard. They stayed after school several times to, uh, prepare their audition with me. So, um, if you wouldn't mind giving a wave all the seventh and eighth grade students as I say your name. Um, we have eighth grader Shangpang Fee on the clarinet. George
042Graves on the trombone. B. Kiger on the French horn. Christine Mecoll on the tuba. David Nean on the clarinets. and Charles Wang on the French horn. And then we had four seventh graders as well attend that festival. Uh seventh grader, which is very difficult to do to be playing with eighth and ninth graders that level. Uh Reed Bushnell on the clarinet, Ellie Ha on the clarinet, Christina Rani on the flute, and Marissa Wesarit on the tener saxophone. And then on top of that, this past Saturday, I took three students to PMEA District 1 Band East for junior high. So, we just did that on Saturday. Um, so it's quite new to us. Um, that kids did a great job. They they got to work under Dr. William Stoman of Messiah University. Um, those students also
043were Christine Meco on the tuba, Georgia Graves on the trombone, and Changen Fee on the clarinet. They did an awesome job. And then one last thing, all those students uh play in an extra group outside of school for me, our our honors band where they they kind of sign up to meet after school. We're going to be traveling to Cedar Point on the 15th to be adjudicated, which is an exciting event for us. And then I'm really excited to do our seventh and eighth grade concert and our send off for the eighth graders to the high school on May 20th at the middle school if anybody would like to come see what they've been working on. So, thank you everybody and have a good night. >> Thank you. And if we could have any of
044our middle school uh musicians uh just come over here so everybody can see you and uh line up so that we can give you a good round of applause and then we'll be able to see our middle school and our high school musicians all at the same time. So right over against that wall And make sure all of you stay put till your parents get the pictures that they want. These are important moments. >> One of the things that we know is that in a district we really do believe and and our board has uh actually sanctioned that through our strategic vision in in working with the whole child. And so we look at our purpose, our passion, our care and community. And it's wonderful to see all of those pillars on display through the
045work of all of the uh students that are here for the music department this evening. So thank you very much. We appreciate you all. And not to be outdone by just the music department, we have a few others to be recognized. Um we have high school teacher and speech and debate sponsor Mark Matusak who will be introducing students who won awards at speech and debate tournaments. So uh we have some other uh awards to talk about our academics as well. >> Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board, administration, teachers, parents, most of all students. Uh again another great season for Fox Chapel speech debate and model UN. We've had a lot of award winners through the uh through the year. Our season started in October and we're almost done. We still have national championships
046at the end of May. So, uh we have a number of students who couldn't be here tonight. I'm just going to read their names and let you know what they won. Um and we're going to for the students who do speech and debate, they're familiar with this. Uh we're just going to do one clap after each one. Okay? So, when I get done telling you just one clap, that's it. And we'll move right on. So we have uh seniors uh Priscilla Hyishan and she advanced to states. Anya Butler advanced to states in speech. Uh seniors Maya Agrial and Pachchi Beiel advanced to states and advanced all the way to the state semifinals in parliamentary debate. And then we have juniors uh Noel Forron and her partner Aiden Ducker who's here. You can stand up. Stand
047up Aiden so everyone sees you. Um they did a public forum debate and advanced to the state quarterfinals in that. And then our last of our state qualifiers who also get to uh go on one more. We have the team of Audi Hapold and Paulie Goyle. Stand up ladies in duo interpretation. They went to states in duo interpretation and they will be going to nationals in Washington DC to do duo interpretation as well. And then finally also going to nationals with them will be Divia Tiramala and Sabina Mantela. So they will uh have a very good time. The last thing I know it's not on there but I do want it to be said. Mr. Rob Wilson is here. He's my assistant coach, one of my assistant coaches. And this year he crossed a big
048threshold among coaches. He's what we call a second diamond coach. That means his students have earned approximately 30,000 points in speech and debate competition over the years and they've accumulated to him and that's a long career. So give him a round of applause also. So again, thank you ladies and gentlemen. This is a great privilege and a great pleasure and I hope we'll be back again next year with more. >> Thank you. >> We love following the the uh weekly competitions with our speech and debate uh team and we thank our sponsors and students and families for being here. I do have one other student I'd like to recognize and unfortunately uh wasn't able to be here, but high school student and Batty senior Grayson Patterson won first place at a Skills USA district competition.
049And although um I was unable to be with us, we will see that she receives her certificate. For those of you that aren't familiar with Skills USA, it is a very intense hands-on competition that many of our students who attend AW Batty uh uh will participate in. And we're so proud of Grayson. So, I just wanted to recognize Grayson as well. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you. >> And uh uh Miss Dad, that concludes the guests for this evening. >> That was that was great to have so many. All right. Next up, we have the Fox Leadership Council Student Representatives, Liil Thomas and Gigi Metenburgg. Good evening. My name is Gigi Metenberg and this is Lil Thomas. We have both been a part of the class of 2026 council for three years. Our class
050has been planning activities for our senior year and we wanted to give you guys an update. So last week we had our senior Pattio Palooa with three RITA and a class of 2026 poster that everybody signed. Nora Kelly helped us um write out the class of 2026 which we were very appreciative of. Um, we started off our senior month of May with senior breakfast last Friday. We welcomed our high school PTO and many senior class moms helped create a wonderful way to start May and Next Steps Day to celebrate a senior class. How many times can you say senior in one sentence? Saturday was prom we danced the night away. And coming up we have our senior sunrise on May 22nd which is organized by our yearbook and yoga clubs. and all of the seniors
051will gather in the stadium to watch the sunrise. Yes, we know it rises before 6:00 a.m. I am hopeful that many will make it. Um, we are looking forward to our senior walk to go back to elementary schools and visit our old teachers. That'll be on June 3rd after our annual senior class picnic where we enjoy one last lunch al together. The next day is graduation practice and we get our caps and gowns and that's when it starts to feel real. Um, we hope to see you all at commencement on Sunday, June 7th. And of course, we want to thank all of our teachers who have supported us through our high school journey. Um, what a fast four years it's been. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> All right, Dr. Rejack, will you
052please give us the superintendence report? >> Sure. We have a few items this evening. First, I'd like to once again call upon Dorsyville Middle School principal, Dr. Laura Miller. uh she will be introducing some staff members who will be talking about Dorsyville studentled conferences and this is a really interesting thing that is happening at DMS. So Dr. Miller, >> thank you. Well, this evening the DMS lens on Learning will be led by Emily Ghowski and Ethan Wagner. This team, which also includes Dave Snyder, who is unable to be here this evening, has been instrumental in developing and implementing our student led conferencing model at Dorseyville Middle School. The shift to include this experience for our students was driven by an analysis of feedback and best practices provided by AMLE, the Association of Middle Education, and
053our schools to watch evaluation. Both organizations identify studentled reflection as a hallmark of high performing middle schools. At this time, I invite Ethan and Emily to share more specifics of how we are working with our middle school students to take ownership of their work and reflect across disciplines. >> All right, good evening everybody. Uh thank you for the opportunity to be here uh to to talk a little bit about one of the really many great things that's happening at DMS this year. It's been a jam-packed year with a lot of new initiatives and great new things happening at the school and I think won't speak for Emily, but I think this is one of the great things that we are really super proud of and I think you'll see in the presentation that the students
054have really taken to as well. Uh Dr. Miller talked a little bit there u a few moments ago. Uh really where did this come from? uh AMLE and uh schools to watch Pennsylvania and national recognition committees that we have gotten a variety of different recognitions for over the course of the past year or so. Um really gave us sort of a an interesting challenge of you're doing great things at DMS already. how can you continue to sort of build upon the awesome work that you're doing and sort of take us to that next level sort of like what's our next and I think from the from the AML feedback there and then also from schools to watch really we were interested in how we can sort of push students to take a little bit more
055ownership of their own learning while also giving them the opportunity to form those connections with staff members and to sort of create that trusted adult um that I think a lot of times a middle school students really really need uh and so uh what we ended up doing was in terms of setting up our student led conferences. We refer to them as slicks, but u really there was kind of a four-step process. Uh the first one was uh quarterly, and I think Mr. House is going to speak about this. Sorry. >> No, you're okay. Thank you. Um yeah, so one of our challenges was figuring out how we can implement Slick into our schedule already. As Ethan said, we have a lot of new things that happen in the middle school. So, one of our
056ways of doing that was quarterly. So, we were able to pick a week out of the first three quarters of our school year and um work on our slicks. And I'll show you a little bit more of what that looks like in the week in the upcoming slides. But quarterly um our classroom teachers, they were the ones who were implementing this in their homebased um classroom. So, it was giving our students the opportunity to connect further with their homebased teacher and other teachers around the building. So the students um they were able to select an artifact and reflect. So one of our um biggest things here is developing the whole um whole student. And so developing the whole student is allowing them the opportunity to be reflective in their work. And finally our conference helpers.
057So not only was it just the homebased teachers that the students see daily, we also were able to um have some of the unified arts teachers, the guidance counselors and other staff in the building. um facilitate that conversation. So in order to provide sentence starters and um templates for the students, we created a math artifact, a performance artifact, video, science, world language, and so on. And these artifacts were all tailored to that specific subject so that students had the opportunity to go into it and create and um create a template for theirelves, but they had the sent sentence starters that allowed them to begin that work. So they weren't left hanging, but they were able to make it their own. And this is how we were able to make it work in our middle school.
058So the Thursday and Friday before, those were the students work days. Um they were able to do that in home base. And then the following week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the students would meet with their teachers on a schedule and present their artifact. And these artifacts could range from a science artifact to an English to a unified arts. And the goal was for the students to be reflective about the artifact and be reflective about their work throughout the year. And it was actually a very meaningful and excellent um excellent thing that the students were able to do. >> So as part of this experience after we did this sort of three times making adjustments every time we did this for each new quarter, uh we did ask the students sort of for some feedback
059of how they thought the process went. And certainly this is just a small snapshot of some of the things that they had to say. Um, and so I'm not certainly going to read every one of those, but to kind of give you some of the highlights on the presentation experience there. One of the things that really sticks out to me, um, a student did say being able to present without criticism. Uh, having that opportunity and really that kind of in a lot of ways was the goal of this opportunity, this project. Uh, giving students the the chance to sort of be able to freely reflect on something that's of interest to them that a lot of times when they're speaking about a 2-way homebased teacher, that teacher may not actually be the teacher of the
060subject in which they're presenting on. So another opportunity sort of when we go into the curation of artifacts, students being able to have that choice to choose something that's passionate to that's they find to be passionate about and something that's important to them. And then the creative process there giving them sort of the empowerment to be able to sort of take that project and to make it their own and to describe it in a way that makes sense to them while again sort of facilitating that that sort of student teacher um kind of bond relationship and then again you know meaningful reflection and pride. Think one of the things that I think we as a team were struck by um was that the opportunity given to students to sort of reflect and say okay what
061does this really mean to you? Uh some of the answers that students gave were really quite incredible. I think for middle school students uh saying this is something that I can sort of look back and reflect on what I have done this year maybe an area in which I can continue to grow in an area where maybe if I had to do this again what would I do differently and so again sort of developing that higher level processing skills for students while at the same time uh getting them to sort of maybe goal set for the future and then certainly through it all connections with teachers I think especially at DMS and at the middle school level for any student um being able to find that trusted adult in our school is something that I
062think you academic success does not come unless you have that trusted adult connection and we are going to do this again next year. Um and so why are we going to do it? I think a lot of what we sort of just spoke about is kind of the hallmarks of why we're continuing to do this. Uh the meaningful reflection I can't stress enough at least from my perspective how blown away we were the level of detail that a lot of the students put into this. The level of self-reflection and also I think uh you know where they can continue to grow. Think ultimately no matter what students do in life that is a skill that we are trying to cultivate um for you know success at DMS the high school and beyond. And I think
063to that same point uh the public speaking ability um you know giving students that opportunity to speak about something that they specifically are passionate about with a one-on-one adult sort of dynamic ultimately leads them to develop those skills and hone those for when they are going to be in maybe much more stressful uh situations public speaking in the high school and beyond. stronger relationships through it all. Uh the ability to to sort of again identify that adult that if there is something going on, not only do you have that connection academically because they're the person that they had that slick conversation with, but also if any other issue or sort of interpersonal thing may come up throughout the year, you sort of have that safety net adult that's now being cultivated for you. And then
064increased confidence with the students. I I think it's probably fair to say that while engaging in all this academic and public speaking and preparation for the future type work, uh the confidence of our students, I can say at least in my home base because I did as well as Miss G, uh we did facilitate these with our own students. Uh seeing the students light up with something that they wanted to tell us about that they wouldn't have had the opportunity necessarily to do that otherwise I think is one of the biggest things that I personally as a teacher that's done this will take away from this experience. And uh certainly I want want to thank everybody uh for the opportunity again to to be here tonight and to present on this really great initiative I
065think that we're doing at DMS. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> One thing I want to commend uh Dorsyville Middle School for is not only listening uh they they earned a lot of recognition but they listened to others who have also learned that recognition, found ideas that they wanted to incorporate and then found ways to incorporate that. uh and I just read their uh most recent update to uh another schools to watch application and they have even more ideas for the future and so that continuous growth is really impressive and I appreciate it. So thank you. >> Next this evening we have uh our annual data summary. I know our board academic committee and board have asked to look at some student data and this is just another
066measure of how we look at uh the performance of our district and areas that we can continue to focus on. So, I'm going to invite Dr. Edwards uh our director of student achievement and instructional verification who's going to present a short synopsis of some data uh with the board as well as it'll be available on our website. So, Dr. Edwards, >> good evening everyone. Thank you for having me. Uh tonight, I'm going to give an overview of just some district level achievement data, also some growth data. We'll also take a look at some AP data from uh last year and then I'll I'll be sharing some charter school and FCAO data and then just uh you know looking at some of our recognitions and accomplishments from the past year. So we'll start uh with some
067achievement data. Um uh firstly mathematics. Uh so on the screen you'll see uh an overview of where we've of how the district has performed on PSSA mathematics assessments from 2015 until 2025. We we've shared this uh uh you know each year uh one of the main focuses that we've had uh over the past year was kind of changing our our range. We've often looked hey what what how have we improved from 15 to 25? And while the improvement looks great and that's uh indicated in that uh green column, what we've really noticed is some of our trends uh and have changed since uh the pandemic. Uh so we've been really kind of narrowed in on how we've how our achievement levels have developed from 2021 to 2025. And that's what that gold or yellow column
068represents. So you'll see in third, fourth, and fifth grade, we've seen nice gains since 15 through 25. Uh but they're a little bit less uh from 21 to 25 because there's been gradual growth. Uh and there is some fluctuation from year to year, but overall as an elementary, we're up about 3% since the pandemic. This is uh just a graph of how our students performed on the PSSAs. uh the the percentage of students achieving advanced uh and they're quite high. So in third grade nearly 60% and fourth grade nearly 60% of students were advanced on their mathematics PSSA and in fifth grade uh 53.6%. Those are very high numbers. Uh the average statewide for proficient and advanced is is around 50%. So, we're exceeding that just with our uh students that are um advanced on
069the PSSA. >> Do you have any information about that over time? So, we have these other numbers over time, but this is just this one year. What >> as far as the uh >> change over time? Like, so right now we're at almost 60% for third and fourth grade. This year, >> was it on here? Am I missing it? I'm sorry. Uh I did not include a longitudinal overview of percent advance but it is at or above 50% pretty much year in and year out. >> Okay. Thank you. >> This is um our next slide here is DMS and their PSSA mathematics performance. Again I gave the range from uh 2015 uh to 2025. Uh this is where we've seen incredible gains not only from uh over the past 10 years but even since the
070pandemic we've seen great uh improvement in overall achievement and all grade levels. Um and when combining six through eight it's almost a 16% gain uh in achievement. So this has been an area we we've seen a lot of growth in. There's been a change to the curriculum uh a schedule change as well and it's really added to uh the overall achievement uh increasing at the MS. You'll also see here uh again we are about 50% almost 55% advanced in sixth grade. Uh that does taper off and that's similar uh compared to the state which you'll see on the on the graph there. um you know it does become more challenging as students um progress from sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Eighth grade in particular is very heavy on algebra. Uh so we typically see a
071little uh a dip in achievement and also um the number of students achieving advanced and that's similar to the state as well. As far as uh the keystones and algebra are concerned, uh we do give it to a lot of our students. Uh nearly half of our students come to high school already passing their algebra keystone. And you'll see the DMS uh results in the top table. Uh students do very well. Almost all of them pass uh year in year out at DMS. Uh so that's pretty consistent. And then at the high school, um ninth grade in particular is our our biggest testing grade. Although we do have test takers in 10th and 11th. Um ninth is the biggest. Uh and we've seen a lot of improvement there. Um not only in the past, uh
072you know, nine years, but in the past five as well. Um seen some some consistent growth. So we are we're adding on to our overall bank of students who are passing that keystone. And we also have a a very healthy percentage of advanced students uh for the algebra keystone. 45% of students were advanced this past year. The state is about 16.1%. >> Sorry, can you go back a slide? I just want to make sure I understood the difference between these two. So these students are taking the same test. It's just whether they're taking it in middle school or high school. Correct. >> Correct. So some of our students are on an accelerated path and will take the assessment in middle school. Okay. Okay. Uh those who do not typically take in ninth grade uh at
073the high school. >> Can you help me understand the waiting in terms of the the total number of students in each of these buckets? Like is it are they about the same? Is it about the same number? Is it >> the DMS is is is heavier weighted? Okay. We nearly half of our more than half of our students are coming to high school uh already passing the assessment. >> Okay. Helpful. Thank you. Next, we're going to take a look at English language arts achievement. Do >> you I'm sorry. >> Another question. >> Um, so you're seeing really great gains at DMS, but maybe not. It doesn't look quite as nice sort of this high school conversation. Are you are you seeing any continuation into those sort of upper grades? Like, are we seeing that sort
074of trend? Yeah, one one thing I I I one another way to explain it is um whilst while while the keystone uh is is given at different times throughout a student's career, we actually bank those percentages and so they have to pass it by their 11th the end of 11th grade year. They're consistently about 85%. So it's it's very very consistent with what we see with the PSSAs. Uh next we have English language arts and a similar overview. Um one thing we've noticed uh with ELA is the the the gains that we've seen in math are not quite the same as English language arts. We still have very high proficiency numbers. Um there's there's kind of less ground to gain here um than than we saw in math and we have seen some fluctuations since
075the pandemic. Uh one thing we've done in particular in keying in on the past uh five years of data is looking at our our assessment anchors. We did really have to make some changes. Those anchors that were historically low or underperforming had completely changed. So this year we we did a lot of work with our teachers. We gathered some resources and kind of pointed them in a direction uh where some gaps in our curriculum that we could fill based on these this anchor analysis. So that's really a a path we've taken. uh for this data specifically. >> I'm sorry I don't know what an anchor is. >> Sure. Uh so uh within the standardized assessments um each the test is broken down into different performance anchors. >> So for English language arts like a text
076dependent analysis is its own anchor. Uh there's different skill area in which to demonstrate proficiency. >> Correct. There's different overall skills. Thank you. >> Uh so we keyed in on some different ones um >> leading into this year's PSSA. >> Great. and the elementaryaries where we're redoing our ELA curriculum. Correct. >> Correct. And so we're also at the end of our journeys curriculum and uh are adopting uh into reading uh K to K to five. So that is also coming at a good time where we're also seeing kind of a leveling out of some of our achievement data. >> That's more anchor aligned. Um I do I I think we were doing a lot of journeys had when we adopted it initially it was it was it was it was a nice resource uh but
077there was a lot of supplementing that that took place uh to make sure we were hitting all those standards and anchors. You'll see here um we we also have a a high number of advanced students in English language arts at the elementary level. Um they're consistently around 40 to 50. I will say that fourth grade 50 is very high. Uh we're not always there, but that that was uh really great year for us. >> Uh DMS is has also been pretty consistent. Um we have not seen, again, it's it's similar to elementary. Uh the gains uh are not as great as math, but we're consistently in the 80s between 80 and 85 um within each grade level overall about 83% last year and that's been pretty consistent not only in the past 10 years but
078within the past year. Uh they recently did adopt a new curriculum. We're we're almost one year through it. Uh so we're kind of learning about that and and we'll do an analysis of hey where are the gaps in this curriculum? what anchors do we need to maybe boost up a little bit uh moving forward? And you'll see we're still around uh that 40 to 50% uh range of students advanced on ELA. Um so again, these are very healthy numbers. The the state is at about um 15% uh depending on the grade level uh percentage of advanced students. But unlike math, we haven't quite rebounded to our before COVID numbers. >> Say that again. I'm sorry. >> Unlike math where we have now rebounded to our before COVID numbers or better in reading, we have not
079done that. >> Correct. Uh the numbers in math were were lower. So, we kind of had to make up some some ground uh so to speak. Um but yeah, we've been pretty pretty consistent. Um, not much variance one way or the other uh within ELA. >> Can I ask >> Oh, sorry. >> Excuse me. Going back to this page, DMS PSSA, what do you attribute the difference between 24 and 25 on a PSSA uh ELA score? >> Well, I I I think one area we focused on in particular after reviewing the data was text dependent analysis. That's an area we think we can gain some ground. It was um you know, we're consistently looking for our students to get that it's out of a a four-point scale. We're looking for students to get a three
080or four. We had a large number scoring at at at a two. And to give you an idea, that's worth a total of 16 points. So, if you get a two, that's eight out of 16. So, it's like 50%. So, we're trying to increase that specific anchor. Uh, and that's been an area of focus at DMS this year in their instructional response plan. >> And I guess my question here, um, I think I'm it's easy to feel like, um, these are the same kids, but they're different kids every time, right? So, you can think about cohorts of children marching through these assessments by year. Um, and I >> I guess one of the things I I would hope to see in any growth trajectory, which I think was a little bit more Obviously in the
081math data is like if you look at if you if you plot if you look at these percentage of proficient and advanced students on the diagonal you're essentially looking at that cohort >> correct >> and seeing if their rates of proficiency on these assessments improve deprove as a as a cohort. Is that an analysis that you're conducting >> that we do the exact same thing. So if you uh follow a cohort in this case over three years uh you can look diagonally and follow how is that cohort performing year after year. So, while we do present the year-over-year by grade level, we're really narrowed in on the cohort by cohort and seeing how are individual students fairing from one assessment to the next. >> Exactly. Yeah. We just we're just like mumbling about the the
082sort of deltas between six and seven. >> And and I think that is that is something we we've seen consistently not only here across the state. There is that kind of that dip from sixth >> to seven. Uh so we're aware of that. We've seen it. you can see it in the data. It is pretty consistent. So, we're looking how how can we level that out some? How why are we losing students? Um, and in what areas are we losing ground? And that's where like some of the anchor analysis really comes into play. >> Okay, that's helpful. Um, and in in that same vein, I guess like I'm I'm curious if there's mobility into that proficient and advanced category for students who are not. So, like are you seeing you know, I think it's great
083that we're like so we could think about these as two problems. One is like maintaining that proficiency and advanced status for students that are in that bucket of sixth grade all the way through eth. But then are are we moving students up? Um and is that like how how are you looking at that mobility? Is there mobility and proficiency? >> Absolutely. Yeah. So we we have two and when we get to the growth data piece, one of the big challenges, how do we continue to grow students that are already hitting that proficient marker? But, you know, sometimes we look at students that are kind of on that bubble between basic and proficiency >> and, you know, how do we keep them above that bubble? Um, so that's where we really, you know, our our our
084MTSS systems really come into place. What are we doing for students when we're when we're looking at all of their data because it's not just PSSAs, it's STAR data, curriculum based assessments, you know, how are they performing on a day-to-day, week-toeek basis and what interventions might be necessary to keep them afloat. So at DMS in particular, it would be that literacy extension that we would be, you know, working kids in um who are kind of in that bubble range. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. >> And I think I touched on this already. We're pretty consistent as far as uh percentage of advanced students between 40 and 50 uh in ELA. Uh as far as keystone literature data is concerned um it has also been uh pretty consistent. We did see nice gains over that that
085you know 8 to 10 year range. Um but then in the past year it it's remained rel relatively consistent. We did see a dip in achievement last year. Uh still in the 80s. Um we've done some things already this year to kind of see uh can we catch students earlier. Also, one of the things was moving the Keystone assessment to ninth grade for our students that are in uh the u accelerated English or accelerated literature. Um and uh so we had some nice early returns as far as winter keystone data is concerned. Uh but we'll look at the whole picture after we get our spring uh keystone assessments as well. Um and then on the next slide I have uh the percentage of students that are advanced. Uh this is another area of focus. It's
086it's 18%. Um not as many as that we that we're seeing at the uh middle school level. Um but again since moving that Keystone uh to 9th grade, we've already seen through our winter data an increase in the number of students that are advanced overall. Um we're hoping to see that trend continue through spring keystones. And lastly, I have um some biology achievement data. And this has also remained very strong uh throughout uh a majority of our students take biology in uh the biology assessment in ninth grade and consistently in the upper 90s. Um, as far as achievement goes, um, in 10th grade, we we have made gains there. That's often students who are they could be reassessing uh or have been in a kind of a longer runway before taking the assessment in 10th
087grade. And our percentage of advanced students is is also very strong there. about 46% of students taking the biology keystone or advanced. >> Have we given any thought to letting biology fall into eighth grade? I mean, if your numbers are this high, 98% 96% seems like there's no real reason why an eighth grader at an advanced level couldn't do that. our sciences, it's really hard to get through all of them at the high school because you have because of the way you have to take sort of the first advanced version of the class and then the AP class. So, if you want to be really deep in science, it's difficult. Um, I'm just wondering, >> yeah, the discussion has definitely been had. I think the tricky part is we have data to show that our
088students could pass a lot of these assessments much earlier on. It's all about are we hitting them at the right time. So, uh, right now the, uh, an eighth grade student, if they're in algebra, they're already ha having to take the PSSAs and then a week later they have to take the Keystone exam. So, if we did move biology, there's kind of that ripple effect. How many assessments do we want to have a student take? Um, you know, what what and what's best for students. So, kind of being aware of that over assessing, but we do know um that there is, you know, there's room that we we could make some moves. So, we we've looked at that. I think it's really kind of looking at our overall scope and sequence K8 and seeing how
089can we progress students to make sure they are prepared and if they are, what is the right time to give them that assessment? And the Keystone has been revamped too. >> Yes. This year the Keystone is aligned to the steels standards. It was not in the winter, but it is um this spring. So next week >> it'll be interesting. >> So we are excited to see what that looks like for us. >> And just to be clear, when we talk about moving biology, we're not talking about moving the course. We're talking about moving the test, right? >> I was talking about moving the course. >> You'd have to take the stand. >> A resident biologist here. I think there's a lot of challenges with that that we can talk about at a later time in
090a committee meeting, but that's great. >> Yeah. So, >> you know, for those of us with sciency kids who are out the top end, I can tell you you miss out on a lot of things that they could have done had they had more space. So, >> um the next area we're going to take out a look at is is our growth. Um I I I added this slide just so uh anyone could view it and and kind of access some of the data if they wanted to at home. So uh you know growth has really been a focus of us uh at during our not this this most recent comprehensive plan but in 2023 uh one of the major changes we made was to our mission statement. Uh it was heavily focused on achievement
091before and we made sure to add that growth piece. Um, and I think for a district like ours that is high achieving, uh, that growth piece is something we really need to pay attention to. Um, and there's a lot of, uh, areas that we can, you know, maneuver and and think about more strategically in order to, uh, push student growth. Um, so in here I just had the PA future ready index. Uh, that includes uh, school and district uh, progress measures um, and reports on C uh, student achievement and growth. The growth within that index is informed by PEOS and that's the Pennsylvania VAT value added assessment system which I'm going to show you a little bit more of today. Um and that really measures student growth from one year to the next and it
092is based on uh past um PSSA and Keystone data. Uh and just over on the right is just a chart. We're gonna I'm going to show you a few different ones. Uh but this gives you an overview of kind of you know the level of growth um based on color. So dark blue is well above that's great. Red is well below that means you have some areas to work on. So this past year uh we received our um our PEOS data. This is all of math and in grades four through eight. We do not get PEOS data in grade three uh because it's the baseline year. Uh so they need other assessments in order to inform inform that data and the data is um based on an expected achievement uh and that's the incoming score.
093So uh up on the chart uh you'll see uh two numbers where it says achievement entering and exiting. Um the entering score is the prediction, how we think students are predicted to score, and the exit achievement is how they actually scored. So this is an average of a scaled score for for the assessment for every student within each of those grade levels. Um and and lastly on the far right, you'll see the entering uh achievement percentile. Ours are very high. So we're coming in all of our achieve achievement levels at a percentile rank above 80. The nice the great thing to see here in math, we were well above our growth expectation in each grade level. Um, and one thing I'll note is those uh entering uh scaled scores. They're all above um a thousand
094uh in a thousand is proficient on the PSSA. So, we know our students are walking in the door. Many of them they're already ready to take that PSSA. They could pass it if we gave it to them. Um doesn't mean there there isn't things we need to work on them with. Um but it just shows you that hey there's opportunity for growth there uh beyond uh you know uh just what's at grade level. Um this next one is English language arts uh four through eight and you'll see that we are well above in grades four and five and eight. Six and seven are well below. So this is uh an area we we mentioned in our comprehensive plan that we just completed. Uh how can we continue to grow all students uh you'll notice the
095incoming achievement levels for six and seven they're above 1100. So basically saying that the cohort is averaging above advanced uh walking into the door. So the challenge is then how do we continue to push and grow them. So we've been working on some different things. one was TDA's some anchor analysis, but also um taking a look at using PEOS for class placement um and how we're scheduling students and are we putting students uh in the right class so they can continue to grow. >> Do you know is that result consistent across other districts? Because I'm just noting that those students are all have like their first two or three years of primary school were during the pandemic, right? Or were near there. So they were in blended learning environment. Um I just I'm just curious
096if that is a pattern for that cohort of students across the the state or >> as far as growth is concerned I I think we're pretty unique. >> Yeah. >> Uh in the way our data looks just because it we are so high achieving. >> Um so in that respect it's it it doesn't kind of line up to everyone else. So it it is a unique problem. Not not that other places don't have it. Um >> but it it hasn't been a trend I would say. >> Okay. Helpful. Thank you. When you say using the PES to help determine what classes they're going to be in, can you just explain that a little bit more? >> Yeah, one thing PEOS can do is predict a student's um achievement level on on the PSSAs. We can
097actually go like several grade levels beyond their actual grade level to see how they would do. And there's different uh degrees of how accurate that is. In most cases, the ones that we are looking at, they're they're like 90% this student will be proficient or this student will be advanced. So, what we've really been looking at for a lot of these students are are we missing kids in some of our advanced courses that could be in them that maybe aren't uh but have PEOS data that shows, hey, they're more than capable. um they they've not only ha they not only have other data points that show that, but we've added a few additional data points to our class placement to determine are we getting the right students. And and we we've essentially uh this past
098year added two advanced courses in grades uh six and seven uh at the middle school based on the the change in our uh class placement >> and they've been successful at that >> thus far. So our local data is showing good growth. I think um this year's PSSAs will be a good indicator >> and these are some of the ones that parents get a version mailed home to them. Is that correct? like a >> for the um don't the student don't don't don't do don't do don't do don't do don't do don't do parents get any growth predictions for their own children maybe is a better question >> they do not um they get their PSSA scores the achievement levels um we we can share these on an individual basis um >> remind me what
099goes into it again I know I've asked this in committee and so many times but how is it calculated >> the P boss like is it just previous PSSA scores >> it's only PSSA say how you're going to do in the next >> keystone if you've taken keystone. >> Yeah. So it's really a predictive model that's making some expectation about the future. We don't know >> and where did like the linkets come in. >> So and that's good good question. So we use this data in combination with other data points. If we were just making decisions on this alone I I don't think that would steer us in the right direction. So when I say class placement, we're looking at those curriculum based assessments are are, you know, how students are doing uh each quarter.
100As far as grades go, we're looking at STAR scores or link scores. Uh Lincoln's new at the high school. It's it's it's it's also a predictive assessment, but it's it's aligned to year end uh standards. So that's been another data point. And then we've included PEOS as well to make those decisions. So I'll make a statement and then ask a question. So the statement is any predictive model has error around it and this is a product. It's making a prediction, right? And there's but what it's not doing is disclosing the mark like how certain it is. Like when I look at this like and anybody who's looking at this, we don't know if there's more or less certainty around any of those predictive outcomes. Is that right? Or are we are we meant to believe
101that it's >> that's what the red and the blue means. The that's the confidence level they have. If if you're in the bright red, they're highly confident that it's evidence of below average performance. If you're in the blue, you're highly confident in the above average above expect. >> It's not how far you are from your expected. >> No, that's how confident they are. >> It's their confidence in the model. If you're and if you look at the difference in those predicted versus actuals, >> those scale score points are very very narrow. uh >> maybe one question on these. >> It could be the difference of on you're talking about 300 kids in each class, right? Roughly 270 300 and they can be highly confident in these scores because there's a lot of questions, a lot
102of points there. But the SCA the actual difference in performance is really very small and you're talking in your kids averaging at the 85th 84th percentile. So your your margin for error like look at the number of points that they're they're above by on the fourth grade is that what fourth grade >> yeah that they're above by 18 17% points that gets them in the far blue high confidence that they're that's strong evidence of that that we performed above the growth goal above grade level. Well, so there's a >> they were but down by 12 on the other two grades and that got them a red. So it swings radically to the left even though the difference in points the point range on a thousand points raw scale is is actually pretty small there. >>
103Okay. I think yeah >> just it's a confidence interval. >> The scatter plot that you've showed us before in is really eye opening because you see how extraordinarily high our kids are starting out with these exams. So these is this is like the minutia of >> you're already at the top. >> This is why my brow is furrowed every time we discuss PEOS is because I think it can be a really misleading indicator. And I think what I would >> question my question for you I guess or for the board is is like what do we what do we think is the is the most common or persistent misunderstanding around this data? Right? because it I do feel like it it may generate as many misunderstandings as it resolves for folks who may be watching
104or seeing this data. >> So I I will just I I'll interject and and then I'll let Dr. Edwards kind of explain it. Pivas has been around for almost 20 years and um over the years it's become more and more accurate and predictive. This is through the Pennsylvania Department of Education. This isn't something we purchase. So, it's coming from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and it it has been shown. I I've worked in multiple districts. I was on the initial PEOS team, and it's been shown to be rather accurate in multiple districts with multiple groups of students. However, taken by itself, it's one data point, and you never would want to make a decision on one data point. It doesn't always represent, but I'll let you maybe add to that. >> Yeah. And I don't
105mean to insinuate that it's not an effective tool or one that we should be using. I mean to imply that it may be easily misunderstood. Oh, absolutely. And so can the PSSA scores and so can all of the others and that's why it's we do our best to explain it. There is a lot of information on the website that explains PEOS even including some videos but um it's still complicated. >> You're right. >> Yeah, I think I I I'm responding to I know that there are community members who will see well below and freak out. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um I think I think the important thing to know this is the report for one year. >> Uh so we do look at over year after year. We do track that. um they did change their
106predictor model this year, so it's slightly different. There's some variance. The the one thing I did want to point out, this report here is showing where they were predicted to to to start and where they ended and that's how they measured the growth. >> When we're looking at individual student prediction data, that that's a little bit different. Um it it actually has a a high degree of accuracy that we've you know we'll we'll look at those predictors and when we get our results we'll line them up together and it's very close as far as the percentages that they're predicting our students will hit and who does and who does not. So when they aren't aligning is where we have to start asking questions like hey we were predicted to hit this but we had students
107either overachieve or or even underachieve. So in that case what what went wrong or what changed h how what what uh affected that result. So I think it's you know while it's it's one single data point it it actually can drive a lot of good discussion and talk about hey what are we doing from a curriculum standpoint from a programming standpoint from a teaching standpoint that we that we can continue to work on. >> Yeah. really good to see you using growth as something that you're looking at, especially when you're looking at the level of achievement that we're talking about. We want our kids to successfully make progress over a year and that change in outlook and broadening of our perspective I think is really actually pretty important. >> Yeah, in the academic committee we
108talked a lot about the growth, the importance of the growth. We also looked at this this number broken out in different ways looking at it comparing to other school districts which was very informative because it did show while I have concerns about how this is interpreted as well because it makes it look like we're it uses especially the term well below if you look at the interpretation of that and and it is in statistical ease but it basically says >> evident where I am now I lost it. um >> significant evidence. >> Uh significant evidence, not significantly below, but significant evidence that you are below, which is it's statistical speak for statistically significant, which does not mean big. It just means it's enough to be confident that it's real. Yes, it's not a random random
109variance. Um so, and it swings, like I said, from from blue to red with just a few points spread. So, but we did look at it different ways and it does it does look meaningful. It does look we there are other school districts that also are high performing who are not seeing this a lot of them. Uh and well not I shouldn't say a lot because there aren't that many who are performing as well as we are but there are others and and so it does make us think that there's something we we can do here. >> Yeah and Mr. Hamilton that's like super helpful context that I think is a perfect example of what should come out of committee as we're interpreting this data like that's awesome. Thank you. Well, and I think the
110part I appreciate also is that this this was known um through our internal interim assessment process. So, we didn't have to wait until the PSSAs came out. Oh, like what do we what should we do with programming for six and seven? This was known. It was thought about. Look, I mean, so it's already almost like a cycle ahead. >> Yeah. G it gives you a little bit of opportunity to start working in the moment uh rather than waiting for results. Yeah, that's a massive validation of those interm assessments. That's great. Thank you. >> They're a hassle, but worth it in this case. >> Um, the next is our Keystone growth. Um, and again, kind kind of similar. This is why literature was part of that um that uh our within our comprehensive plan, similar to
111some of the grade levels we saw uh at DMS. Again, we're seeing very high levels of entering achievement. Um and you know those entering achievement percentiles are also very high. Um so again an area that we're looking at from a number of different angles. Uh we're seeing the report and we're looking at individual uh predictor models um and you know planning planning uh with that data uh so that we can continue to see growth for all of our students. All right. Next, uh we have some AP placement or uh advanced placement data. Um you know, this is uh I I share this every year and it's always so impressive and it's it's it's great to review. Uh over this past year, this is 2425 data. We had 32 A ament subjects. There were 921 total
112assessments taken. That's almost a hundred more than the previous year. um we had 80.67% of our students receive a four or five which is are the two highest scores and usually the the two scores that are accepted by most uh colleges and universities. Uh to give you an idea the prior year we were at about 74%. So we saw a nice increase. Um and I just kind of highlighted um you know the the courses with the highest exams and that's kind of year in and year out. uh US history, world history, and English language and composition. And you'll see um in the the graph it shows the number of four and five RAP students uh get in in those exams um and and what the national average looks like. Uh and we're almost double in
113in many of them. So, it's great to see. Uh next I wanted to take a look at some charter school enrollment. Um you know this has kind of seemed to level out as far as how many students are enrolled yeartoyear. One breakdown I I added uh following our academic committee meeting was looking at you know how many charter schools we service versus uh cyber charter schools. So overall we have students uh of the 55 students attend 16 different schools. 10 of those are cyber charter schools. Uh and 45 of the students attending uh are going to cyber charter schools as opposed to brick and so only 10 going to brick and mortar. Um after doing that it also made me think of our own uh online programming through SCAO. Uh so I included some data
114on that as well. um you'll see the numbers uh they they've kind of come down since uh the pandemic this year we have 49 students who are fully enrolled online. I just think it's good to know that many student we we've captured that many students. They're not going elsewhere. We're keeping them inhouse in our programs working with our teachers. Um so that's great to see. Um and overall 334 students are actually accessing FCAO in some form or fashion. So, uh, they might be doing something online because they they have to go to work or leave early or something. So, uh, it's definitely being utilized and and, um, it's good to see some of those numbers. >> And out of district students are not eligible to participate in that program. Is that correct? >> Say it
115again. >> They have to be in district to do FCAO. >> They do have to live in the district to to be part of uh, FCAO. Yes. And lastly, uh just wanted to share some of our rankings and acknowledgements um over the past year. Uh I think one thing we're we're proud of and and I think this is a testament to to everyone, all stakeholders in our community, especially our teachers. Um we we were number one uh yet again uh last year in Pennsylvania and in in the um southwestern Pennsylvania. And you'll see up there um many many of our grade levels are in the top two uh in southwestern Pennsylvania. So great to see um this data is based or the these rankings are based on the last three years of state standardized assessments.
116Uh another report that uh we receive is the US uh uh world report um US News and World Reports. Those rankings again uh as the high school is ranked number 672 in the nation out of 25,000 ranked schools, number 20 in Pennsylvania high schools, number seven in the Pittsburgh area, and number 124 in STEM high schools. Uh DMS is ranked number 13 of out of P in all of Pennsylvania middle school middle middle schools and um all of our elementary schools were in the top 1 and a half% out of 3,216 elementary schools. So again the testament to all the hard work that our entire school community is a part of especially our our teachers and really want to give a shout out to them. And lastly, um just the our our niche uh rankings.
117Uh these are typically very good. All of our schools are rated an A+. Um that's pretty consistent. It was exact same last year. Um, but they've also said uh ranked us number 69 in the nation out of over 10,000 schools, number five in Pennsylvania out of nearly 500 schools, and number three in the Pittsburgh area. So, I just want to say thank you. Uh, I hope this was informative. Uh, also want to give another shout out to our teachers. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. Um, and just thank you. Have a great night. >> Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Edwards. Uh, and now we're going to move from achievement data to financial data. Uh, >> would it be possible to do like a two-minute break since we've been in some sort of session for I
118don't know, are we allowed to do that? No, nobody just because we've been in session for two hours. I didn't know if anybody needed a break. >> Does anyone need to take a break or do you want to keep I imagine this does need >> I can step out and and come back. I've done my homework. I can just myself. >> I guess we're gonna keep >> We're gonna uh here pass this down to >> Katie. >> We're gonna keep going. >> All right. So, uh it is my pleasure to have our director of finance uh Mr. Ryan Manzer here who's going to um give some information about the proposed final budget. So, Mr. Manzer, >> I've I've seen a lot of data presentations in my time and that was an awesome data presentation. Yes.
119Um, and the actual data is really impressive. So, um, just from a little bit of a I still feel like a little bit of an outsider, but I'm really impressed there. Um, I have a short presentation for you today. Um, so I gave you the long version in April. This is now May. You're at your proposed final budget step. you adopt the proposed final budget um tonight and then it's on a 30-day display and then in June you will adopt your final budget. So you still have another crack at all this. Um included in your board packet was additional detail. So you have your um one-page summary that's included in the packet along with the a PTE 2028. So that's the official form that you will adopt and we'll submit to the state. Um one
120thing to note on that form is that that is the statutory budget that you will adopt. So you have your function levels and object levels and that's where you see your budget transfers come in as well that you adopt. Um, so there's just a little bit of a nuance there, but that is your formal budget that you that you adopt. And then there's also a whole packet of additional detail that's included as well within all your materials. Just to give you a quick update on revenues, uh, the largest change in revenues from uh, last meeting was that I included a 2.9% tax increase and that was the recommendation from the resource planning advisory committee. uh that added about 2.2 million to the real estate line item. Other uh changes just to keep in mind, these
121are things I've already reviewed that were included in last month's budget. Earned income taxes are slightly lower than previously budgeted. That's a little bit of an anomaly. Typically, those will increase from year to year, but we saw a dip last year. So, we're anticipating um a slight decline in that line item, which is a little bit unusual. Delinquent taxes are the opposite effect about a $500,000 increase from budget from last year. And then uh the state revenue that's included, you'll probably start to hear a little bit more information come out from the state on this, but we've included the budget uh the governor's budget proposal that provided a 1.7% increase in basic education and a 1.3% in special education in that $50,000 allocation in adequacy funding. Um I haven't heard any um in more information
122on if there would be more or less funding that's included in the governor's proposal. Um I I don't know if you >> I have not heard anything. Yes. Either. >> Yep. >> And so this include this is under the assumption that the governor's budget is >> or is this under a flat assumption? >> This is a assumption of the governor's proposal. >> Okay. Thank So what we're hearing from PASBO is that the basic education, special education funding that's currently in there is a pretty low level. It's at the baseline. A lot of the funding that has been proposed is in that adequacy formula that we are only eligible for that $50,000 baseline. So some of the movement that you might see is might see it come away from the adequacy funding and into the basic
123education into the special education. So feel like this is a pretty safe assumption that this is the lowest level that could that could be adopted, but you never know what's going to happen in this budget proposal. We'll keep an eye on what's happening there. >> Well, they don't really start debating that like fully until June. So it's >> Yeah, we're still early or later or later. Um, okay. So, for expenses, uh, the largest change in here was the personnel line item. Updates were made were made from the preliminary budget due to additional personnel needs. Um, additional physicians added to the budget were about $430,000. And then also, um, we took a look at the charter school rate reductions in there and we saved about $150,000 in that line item. Uh, things to keep in mind,
124things that didn't change since the last budget. um that uh wages and benefits are still at a pretty low level. They're driven down by retirements and also a declining PES rate. So it was 34% it went down to 33.59% and that may not reoccur in future years. Just something to keep an eye on. Debt service as well. Um a big change in the budget increase $660,000 due to the $10 million 2025 bonds. And then also one thing to note on here is that the capital reserve fund that transfer is still at 1.5 million just based on the revenue which I'll show you in a little bit. We were not able to increase that allocation. >> Can you talk a little bit about the personnel increase and what is prompting that >> enrollment? I I can
125just say we're looking at enrollment trends across the district and so um as to how those students are metriculating and where they are. That's >> I just wanted to clarify that was not like a programmatic change. >> It is not a programmatic change. Sure. It's just it's just a simple enrollment. >> Okay. >> Um at our budget meeting, we had set a goal of achieving a $2 million capital reserve funds transfer. What are the implications? Uh well, first of all, why haven't we been able to achieve the the $2 million the $2 million that the board asked for? >> Yep. So on the next slide here, the um the budget currently is still out of balance. Um, so with that 2.9% increase, the uh and the personnel changes that we talked about, the net change
126on our budget is still out $440,000. So, we could very well include the $2 million capital transfer. It would just change that net change number. um we just didn't have the revenue to support the expenses that were um >> or expenditures are half million too high >> for that. Yes. >> So I don't remember in the last month anybody coming up with any options. It seems like we're always at this point in May where we assume it's all revenue that we just have to raise taxes when we haven't actually looked at any a half million dollars or more that we would need to um to fill that gap on on the expenditure side and what the options would be to do that. As I recall, we made multiple requests for a list of items or
127suggested areas in which that may so >> that may be deliberated so that we understood what trades might be made. Is that >> Sure. I have brought up some of those through the meetings since January, not only in the projects and planning but in uh not only in some public sessions but in executive sessions. We certainly could come back and say what those are. uh the half a million dollars. Uh some of that is based on personnel that we are adding based on enrollment trends. Those don't have to be added. Uh some of it is also based on the new English language arts curriculum. Uh that's a one-time uh expenditure. Is that in this year or isn't that in next year? I can't remember. Part of of each year, I think. >> Yeah, there's 100,000
128in this year and then the rest is in the >> rest is in next year. And um some of it is really based on the CLR being lower. So if we wish to have more dialogue about things to cut, we certainly can do that. That wasn't the direction I had received. I had received an a a request for lists which we have been trying to share all along because you don't do the budget in in May. You do the budget all the way through. Uh those have come up. If we want to talk about that, that would be programmatic things or be personnel things. There really isn't uh much in the mandated costs that we can affect. uh we have an increase in our transportation contract this year that's contractual. We have debt service that's
129has to be paid and those are big that those two things are the biggest expenditures that are new this year um along with a few personnel issues >> and we did look at facilities pretty hard and reduce that line item there as well too and there's I know some concern with that but >> um that's another line item that we looked at. I have no interest in um reducing programs or personnel. I think it's fine to say that we've been presented with options, but as a complete board, we've neither neither in the budget meeting nor in this meeting or we nor in the resource planning meeting, which was in April, nor in projects and planning, have we had a consolidated list of multiple options that would close the gap between um the the 440 plus
130another half million if we wanted to get to the 2 million on cap uh capital transfer, which is what we need to fund buildings and improvements that we uh if we don't want to accelerate lend borrowing which we have been very responsible about and try to avoid doing too much of that. Um so my wish would be to um to be higher on on capital transfers. Maybe not a whole lot higher. Maybe not the whole two million but I'm not willing to raise revenue without seeing budget options. uh expenditure option or revenue no expenditure options uh as well because I think that's not fair to the taxpayer without um looking at it as a whole and the board making an informed decision about which which way they prefer to go. If people don't want cuts,
131then they should be raising taxes, but we should be doing better than 1.5. We know that's not a sustainable number for the capital needs we have. uh we're just kicking the can down the road in terms of funding or having to to borrow more. Um I think it would be also important wherever we go with the budget this month or we do have to pass the budget. Um that we think about policy changes to better manage this process. Um particularly I think we need to have a recommendation from the superintendent in April about the um expected expenditures for capital and a recommendation regarding the amount of the capital two whether it should be 2 million 5 million whatever it should be. We need to have a better picture and a recommendation before we go into
132the budget process uh or finalize the budget process of what that amount should the administration would recommend that amount be. Um, I think I came up with the two million. I'm drawing that line because I was on project plan before and I've heard heard from the current members about where we are and I've seen where we I've been on resource planning and see how much we're borrowing. Um, I think that's a for me that's a red line bottom number 2 million. But that's just me. I'd like to hear the administration's recommendation on that. Um the other recommendation I would make is that when we bring any budget to before we bring any budget in May that we should consider a policy change to um h require over any certain percentage expected increase which we know
133there's usually is an increase expected um that there should be say over two any expected ask over 2% be matched or presented with options for expenditure reductions at the same time. uh before we get to May. Uh that way we would have a picture of what we would be having to cut in order to compensate. I mean if we I'm saying it could be the whole amount but I would say we would expect at least some percentage increase close to you know the index as we've generally had um because there is inflation but um but that we should have that as part of our budget process formally because um the peace meal approach just isn't working for me. We can certainly adjust when the board gets certain information or the format with which it gets
134it. We did share in October the multi-phase capital projects plan with the amounts that we would need each year with the board. It was in the projects and planning committee. It was also then given to the entire board. That was the projection we had. We did have new information that came up meaning that the high school project that we anticipated came in higher which made us look at all of that again which is in process. uh which we received in April from the consultants that we were asking to give us better numbers. So we we tried to give you the information that you had. I recognize that the budget process comes different times in different months. We try and outline that. We can certainly change those months. Uh there will be less known things. We
135did give the board the budget actually a month earlier this year uh because it was still in process at the administrative level, but we showed you where we were. We can do any of those things and uh we just would need clarity on that because we thought we were meeting what you >> think policy discussion would help provide that clarity to have it more um we we all that's true and and I'm not feeling uninformed. I'm just feeling on decide or yeah decisions not not in the right in the in the sequence and timing and clarity for the the nine of us some of the three there's three three and three on each of the committees so we get some of the information we digested at different levels we get here we have to pretty
136much pass the budget because we've only got we have to post it for 30 days we can make some adjustments I would suggest that we might want to make a small adjustment but nothing significant I mean because you can't make major changes once you post it but we could make um tweaks to get closer to what we think is um >> I was I was at a professional development course this weekend for local government officials and I was introduced to a concept called pro um participatory budgeting and it's familiar with it. Yes. And for my board members who aren't, it's this idea that early in the process, even when you have this tremendous uncertainty, you use a sort of a like a toy budget, a model of what that budget might look like and discuss
137how the values of constituencies and of individuals within the room and experts within the district value the weights of those different budget areas so that when hard decisions have to be made, you're doing it in a way where everyone who is on the deciding side of the table is informed about what traits were made and why. And I know that um we you know in in in projects and planning for example when we had been faced with a very large budget for a project that we know is imminent and required we had had started having some of those discussions with three people about what you know yes sustainability is important are we getting enough sustainability out of of facilities improvements that we can count these sort of energy savings as a as a as enough
138of a benefit for example but I think if I'm hearing correctly and I and I I tend to agree it's that, you know, the the sort of high resolution view of where those calls were made is still feeling late. Um, and and I think it's and I know that resolution always comes late, but I feel like if we were enrolled more in the values discussion and the the trade-offs discussion, even as a model or paradigm, I think >> I like the idea live a sort of February or March type model budget would say what are your assume you're 2% below or a few hundred,000 short. We don't know if that's true in February or March. That's the problem. But we could we could pretty safely assume that we're going to be something short, >> right?
139But we might then know how we feel about the change >> about certain programmatic possible changes that the superintendent has already gone through the budget and the deputy superintendent uh already very rigorously at that point. But then this that would make me feel more comfortable that come May that we if we need to fill a gap and we really feel it's important to fill that capital gap or whatever the gap is that we have already vetted the other options um thoroughly. Now we have as you said Dr. Dr. Reljack looked at different things at different points and um and one by one kind of shot them down basically. Yeah. But in isolation, but not in the context of well your alternative is you're not going to fund capital. You're not going to be you're going
140to have to take a likely have to take a a um another um loan, another uh borrow again sooner than you than you would like or than we would like potentially and that will cost the district money. I mean, that's the kind of choice that we don't really have on the table at the same time. >> So, I think I think you bring up a lot of things that that we can certainly talk about. We've talked about these. I know uh both you, Miss Zitch, and uh you, Mr. Hamilton. It's why we give you a running record of all of those budget decisions to be able to review from uh every week from January on that that Mr. Maner and I put together for you. We try and encapsulate that information. I think one of
141the hard parts is always that information. We still don't even have all of the information for this budget, but you were on a timeline that's required by law. We can certainly talk about that value budgeting and what will go because we have brought up the idea of of changing how we do programming, changing how we do positions. We've brought up the idea of changing uh some of the the rigor of doing things and perhaps we need to help with that clarity of the full picture. Um some of that information is always going to be unknown. We did not we found out at 1:30 the day we were having our resource planning advisory what those uh consultants came back with. That's not for any other reason and it just sometimes takes time. That information is always
142coming in but perhaps understanding what what the the the bigger picture is. We can find there are lots of different ways to be able to do that and we certainly can. I know Miss Dad and I talked about other ways that we could do that of value judgments. We talked about that with the comprehensive plan as well. And um I'm familiar with participatory budgeting. I'm familiar with uh how you you determine what are we willing to give up? Are we willing to give up this or that and and that gives us those directions. We we have tried our best to ask you those questions as they are relevant because some of those questions are timesensitive and we can't wait till May to have that dialogue because we're in process of hiring. We're in process of
143of starting the next school year. But we could have those in the fall and have a value judgment and then when those come we have to just go back to what we value and what we would want so that as those come through. That's certainly possible >> as a as a starting point for that discussion. There's there's 10 pages of pretty granular expenditure changes relative to last year. Right? So I can see that there's >> you know prof professional services and education have gone up. We we're going to invest more in our teachers in terms of professional training which I really appreciate. Right? examples of types of um like I like non-programmatic and non-staff costs in here. So, and and I I want to push back a little bit against the the premise that all
144cuts are staff and programmatic cuts. >> I would agree, but to get to a half a million, that is a staff or a programmatic cut. It it likely is. We're not going to save that money in in uh in some of the things that we're not going to be able to buy cheaper equipment and save that money in all probability. having looked through the budget um unless we choose to put off projects which we've done before unless we choose to do other things facility projects I mean and I don't I know that that's not the goal of the board so >> I think we have had a lot of those discussions that you're talking about the value judgments and the programmatic discussions throughout the year >> and um I think part of our issue right
145now with the reduction in the um capital reserve transfer is the look that the superintendent and deputy superintendent have been having at enrollment and seeing that we're going to have to add more positions because of our our enrollment and that's why that number has changed later than than we would like. Um, so I think we've had a a relatively good uh budget process this year and as Dr. Rejack just said, you know, there's a lot of things that we don't know and things that can change at the at the end of the year. So I think with this personnel change and the the amount um Mr. Hamilton, if you if you really want us to focus on putting more into capital, then we can look at do we want to change what the proposed tax
146increase is or do we want to pull out of different accounts or if anyone has other ideas. >> Just ask a clarification question. >> Sure. >> Sorry, apparently I'm losing my voice too. And I do want to say two things could be true. We can value things and not be able to afford them. So correct. Just put just putting that out there. Those aren't mutually exclusive. >> That is true. >> Yeah. >> Um Okay. So just going back to what started this conversation. So you were saying on the expense page, Eric, this one million 530 you were thinking was going to be closer to 2 million, right? >> Is that correct? Yep. >> Okay. So the end so that's like what 470 off and our budget is already we're in the negative 440 >> correct
147>> and that would be another 470 is what we're saying >> this would be it would be 470 on top and this is but then we're doing the 250 draw down from pers. >> Yeah I saw that. >> Yeah. So >> so that would bring it to closer to 190 but then still add that four >> then you'd add >> in an ideal world. Okay. And that's with the 2.9% >> increase already this budget right? Yes, >> you'd have to go to 3.4 to pay it all out of revenue to increase the taxes to >> just to get this one >> to get the full to get the to get the 190 plus the >> plus the 470 to do it without fund transfer. >> Do it without a fund transfer >> to get new
148to get it all. >> Well, we're trying to transfer more money into the capital reserves fund which is the fund that we use to pay for all like these physical things that are all going to break. >> To be clear, that's not not an imminent need, but it is I mean, it eventually will be, right? I think we've had that situation. I don't I mean, I think we're definitely at the thing and I mean, I know we've had these value conversations and I think >> it is hard because it's hard to argue against things that you and you know, the community value, but eventually, yeah, those we're going to have to agree to hard things. >> Yeah. One of the other things that came out last week, right, was the projections for the index for
149the next several years. And so, that's not increasing. um act one index, >> right? Correct. I feel like that's a consideration >> go down to 3.3 and 3.2 in the future >> because we'd like we sort of like to measure our performance based on how >> far we are from the index, right? >> Um and and I still have so many question marks just around how much do we need in the capital reserves to be able to do this still question mark project at the high school. So I I don't know how much is enough. I mean your two million seemed I just would want to know more about >> well I mean I think haven't we like underestimated almost every capital project by a lot >> too like almost everything when it's come back
150from the committee has been like many zeros more than we thought it was so I think some of it's just because of the delay from when we talk about it till when we are able to take action on it when you add a year or two years which we have for some of those projects the numbers generally increase just based on inflation right So, the high school project, to answer your question, that's what you took a bond out to do, and the remainder is in our capital projects plan uh fund. It's already put aside because it would not necessarily be prudent to start a project that you can't necessarily pay for. Um, and there's additional funding in there for some additional projects, but for all of the projects, >> it's the same as it was
151five years ago. You have to continue to build that in order to be able to do the next and to be able to figure out how are you going to add debt service. The debt service that we added for just the $10 million bond is a significant draw on our act one index this year and especially when it's only a 3.5% index. And so um there are certainly lots of ways we can look at them. We can look at it at different times of the year. We can look at different versions of how we do that. That's not a problem. We also did start this year with uh a different person uh starting the budget who created the first budget and we had a gap and and then we have a different person ending it.
152And so we've been talking I know Mr. Manzer and I have different ways that he's familiar with doing this as well. Um which I you know I think invaluable. >> I I just want to remember that it's there's two pieces here. There's that >> and there's also the long game of what we need to be doing over the next few years. So that's what I'm tackling. >> I think my point like it's not the time to be real conservative in our savings. Like I there's nothing about the world or inflation that's like, "Oh, it's so stable. It's great. >> Um we'll be fine." So I mean, >> right? >> I don't know. Just some things to think about as as not fun some conversations are, we can certainly value things and not be able to
153afford the things. And we need to think about um like what we are absolutely not choices and what we need to be able to provide to our community. >> Yeah, they exist on a continuum of need really. Um and we're it's 3.5% is the current. >> Correct. Yeah. If we go to the next slide, there's some additional detail there as far as >> options and uh what what we have in the budget and what we additional capacity that we have. So, um, I took a few columns out and added a few columns into this slide, um, that you're probably familiar with now. Um, the one important thing to note were the no change column that 242,000 that is what was previously in the budget. Um, that is without any tax increase. That is a um
154pretty low number, 242,000. that's in the as sort of a the post CLR world that we're living in is that we um are just seeing the assessment appeals refunds. Uh there's not a lot of gain that we're getting on that no change column and that pressure is just building on your millage rate. So the other options that you see here are the threequarters index. Uh that's just a measure that I had in there for you before as well as the resource planning at that 2.9 what that provides and then what you'd need to go to a balanced budget that 3.46 46 and then the full index that three uh 3.5 and you can also see as well I always draw it all the way down that median assessed value is what we're given by the
155county of our um median taxpayer and then if they're uh eligible for the homestead exactly what their yearly increase would be and their monthly increase would be um ranging anywhere from zero to $15 a month. I think this is a good moment to just take a minute. We as a board had chosen to do a resolution around um reassessment at the county level. I plan to attend in the next month. Uh the county is having um the opportunity for people to give testimony. I plan to do that and take advantage of that moment. And I think this column of no change is a very sad column in our packet here. Um, we have done as a board. I've been on the board now six years. We have worked really hard to slow the growth of
156our contracts to be responsible to be fiscally responsible. It is really hard to look at that column and see where it sits. So, I'm not going to vote for a 2.9% tax increase. I'm sure everyone on this board is none at all surprised by that. But I also very much see and understand that column and we'll be taking action to say in public that that's completely unreasonable for a school district to uh be faced with a budget that that goes up $242,000 in the kind of world that we're living in with the kind of uh increases in costs that every district across Alagany Alageney County is seeing. So, >> yeah, I was looking into some what some of our peer districts are doing. They're having the same conversation right now. Um, and the vast majority
157are having to increase to index and some even going above. Some that have been cited in the past as being very responsible with their finances are having to go up. >> I was really hoping to to deliver a good number on that no change column to see an increase from the previous month to this month and it was actually a decrease of $47,000. So we just between that one month the time frame we lost $47,000. >> I mean this is a vote to raise our our own taxes too. This is time to remind everybody that this is a volunteer position where we all live within the school district and pay taxes. >> Yep. >> Incredibly frustrating. I think we can all agree. So, just uh where we're at, the motion tonight includes the 2.9% from
158resource planning. I do think that there's a um good conversation here or a um the balance budget column as well of that $440,000. I do not think that that can be ignored. Um it would certainly be my recommendation that you should adopt a balanced budget. Um, I wouldn't recommend anything but a balanced budget. Um, but that resource planning at 2.9 is what's on the motion for tonight. >> Have we ever voted on an unbalanced budget? What What does that mean? >> It would mean rejecting the current budget as proposed. >> You can't, >> which we haven't short balance through fund balance, >> right? It just means that we Yeah. So, we often come in I mean, this is rounding error on $125 million budget. Um, so it's not rounding error when you translated into a
159percent increase on millillage, which is the way we cate our increases. It sounds like a huge amount going from 2.9. It's each tenth of a percent is about 80 to $90,000 across 15,000 households in the district. So you're talking 12 from 12 or $13 increase to like a $15 increase per month for households. >> Um, okay, it's on there somewhere. Yeah, there it is down at the bottom. way to show off your >> So there you go. Um, so it's it's it's it's we're talking small amounts and we often come in right around this range. The concern though is like we said is we're we're we're at the very very low end below where we'd like to be on cap transfer and that the index is low in future years and we don't know when
160this property tax mess is going to get sorted out. And that's uh that used to historically provide us with a tailwind of half to threequarters of a percentage point. Uh it's providing no tail I mean a tailwind in sense that grow natural growth was there and we didn't have to raise the taxes as much when that's not happening and in fact we're having to give rebates uh to people because they've appealed >> very >> it's it's it's a it's a full percentage point probably on our budget right now what we're get what we've given back or something in that range. Right. >> Yeah. So, take the 2.9 and say that's really 1.9 in terms of growth. Inflation's running over 3% on certainly way over 3% on most of the things we pay for like insurance
161and personnel type things. So, so it's tight. It's it's it's I tend to agree that we need to go higher than 2.9. But that's why I started though with it does the only conversation the conversation I'd really like to be having had in April was it's likely to be somewhere in this range. You could either do it with you know 2.9 to 3.4 or whatever or you could cut X Y and Z. And most of us are going to probably say no. We'd rather keep the programs intact and raise the taxes. Who knows? We haven't had that conversation because we never have the XY and Z sitting in front of us at one time at the same meeting where we have to consider the options and the alternatives. I know that you got that they
162put the 3.46 on here, but didn't we pass last month that we weren't going above three? >> No, we said we won't go above 3.5. >> Yeah, that's the >> Yeah, >> that's the index. >> If I could push back against the against inflation as a standard a little bit. Um inflationary measures are really good at measuring costs, but they're really bad at measuring wage growth. So, especially for hourly workers and unsalaried workers. I know that's what the ACT index is supposed to do, but that ACT index doesn't do that equitably across types of earners, like wages are super stagnant. There are a lot of families that will not see a wage increase year-over-year as the norm. And when they do see a wage increase, it's exceptional. And it's rarely a matching the rate of
163increase of inflation. And so that this the financial squeeze even even the military rate increases from previous years hurt more now in this year than they have in prior years and this year's military increase that $180 hurts more now than it would have if it was $180 last year even though it's supposed to money is supposed to get cheaper in the future, right? Like it's supposed to be this this thing. But we're I think it's important to remember that we're taxing a non-lquid act asset. I can't go into my closet and have my give me cash. I wish it worked that way. It doesn't. We have we're taxing people on on something they can't eat and they can't sell to get groceries or to buy gas. And so it it isn't. I think that we
164imagine that this money that's appreciating in people's homes is is accessible to them and it just isn't until they sell their home. And so for long-term residents, which are community, overwhelmingly um these tax increases are truly felt. And I'm I'm cognizant of the fact that this board have we have these conversations about year-over-year increases for median households, but in five years, we're looking at $1,000 less for each of these homes than they used to have because that's how much we've added to their annual tax bill. And so I I I think that's I think that's something that I want I don't want to lose sight of is this moment financially and economically for our state and our country and also for um in the context of our past military increases. >> I would agree. I
165I think the increase in costs right now for families are astronomical across a lot of criteria in Pennsylvania. If you look at the cost of groceries, if you look at the cost of healthcare, if you look at the cost of gas, if you look at the cost of these are all exceptionally high right now. I'll get through my presentation and the last slide is a good slide as far as if there are uh folks in need there that um can't afford their uh tax bill. But you have the homestead farmstead exclusion. We do mail letters to every single taxpayer that does not have a homestead farmstead exclusion on their property to make sure that they are aware and you can look that up very easily on the Alageney County website as well if you are
166qualified or not qualified. And then as well the state has the property tax uh rent rebate program as well. Um very good program for uh low uh wage and um older Pennians as well. So, and the income limits are there for you. >> And is your team able to field calls from the community when they call with their latest bill and help them with some of this stuff? >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, we can navigate them to the Alageney County website and to the uh state site as well for these rebates. One thing that I'm interested in seeing and I'm I I'm curious how you model this is I I know that our um our county council is considering sort of a setting a cap or rate limit on the property value increases for long-term residents.
167So, it's this idea that if someone's in their home, they shouldn't be taxed out of it based on an if, you know, if you live in a rapidly gentrifying area, you purchased your home 20 years ago. If that area suddenly that your home value just starts escalating, right, it's feasible that someone upon um their assessed value can escalate with it and could potentially tax them out. Um are we prepared for that cap? Like are we prepared for rate limiting? I guess right now we because we don't have reassessment it's not been an issue but I >> gonna say right now we wouldn't see that unless the house sold right >> pretty >> and then they would >> yeah unless they've made a modification to their home and it triggered a reassessment so yeah okay >>
168I have not seen any data related to that as far as it pertains to this district or even the county level >> do we have data on the long on the length of residents like how long a mortgage has been held by the same person >> we would have access to anything that the county has so county has it then we could access it. >> Yeah. But just to understand what proportion of our residents are long-term residents that are experiencing like I mean and I think that's a question related to this affordability issue of people are on fixed incomes multiple consecutive military increases is a is a regressive taxation regime. It means that those people even though they have a higher proportion of their income is getting eaten by um tax increases each year. And
169so if we know for like I don't actually have any idea what proportion of our residents have lived in their home for more than 20 years which would put them as in a in a spot where they'd be very likely to be on a fixed income um maybe 30 years right more than 30 years if they're out of their mortgage even more likely. So I think that might be something that would help understand how this burden is felt by members of our okay >> of our community. I seem to remember last year us getting um an an assessed value number because this is like the medium assessed value but there was like a certain assessed value that the person would see no impact if it was low. >> Yeah. That that last year the um
170homestead exclusion increased >> I see. >> And um significantly and so there was a level of to where there was no impact for certain taxpayers. um this year that is a rather stagnant number. Um I just got a Friday actually even after this was published our final final numbers that will be updated in the final budget. Um but that hasn't changed. So that number is static from year to year. So pretty much the uh all taxpayers are going to see around the same increase percentage increase. So I just want to be clear before we go into the actually start our agenda that the um this is does seem somewhat unique that the recommendation of the administration is different from the recommendation of the resource planning committee. The recommendation of the administration is to do the
1713.46 to get balanced budget. What would have is that first is that is that correct? >> Correct. Yes. >> Okay. Um and the what would happen to the would we still take a P search transfer in that case? Um the I you would you would need to adjust your um you would need to adjust your uh allocations and so I think you actually might increase uh some allocation there and I think that might be a capital increase in you're trying to stay under >> right so we could move the money but I think we should be clear if we raise 346 That bring that's a balanced budget without any pie surge transfer and without any change to all other things being equal. Right. >> Right. >> Um if we only if we want to keep
172the pie surge transfer and not raise capital we would only have to raise to about 32. Um we wouldn't that's or yeah about 32 maybe 31. Uh but we wouldn't be increasing capital. We still have the Pers transfer would be negative 250 and we take the 250 from the Pers budget. >> Yeah. The the only concern that I had there is that the budget >> um undesated >> or unassigned amount I'm hearing myself here. The uh >> the unassigned >> the unassigned amount would need to be reduced. We need the computer. >> So, we have to stay within that 8% unassigned cap. And so, we would have >> Are we at risk on that? Are we close? >> We're close. >> Okay. Yes. >> I didn't realize that. Yeah. >> So, I think you would
173have to >> do a little adjustment there. >> You need to do a little adjusting. I think you'd have to increase your capital. >> You'd have to You would have You'd have to put the money somewhere, which would probably would be capital would be replaced. So, it would go up a little even at 31 or 32 go up a little bit. It would go up if we do the 346. It would go up by and we still did the transfer. We would be putting that into capital. That would get us over the half million that we need to go to go up to 2 million on cap transfer. If we >> I would have to work the numbers, but you sound close. Yes. >> Yeah. I think you're >> He's really good at math in
174his head. >> Yeah. Do it all day. Oh yeah. Um, so I just Yeah. So I think All right. I'm good. >> What was the rationale from the resource planning to give us the 29? Was did they provide some some rationale to go low there? >> So at the time that that was able to have a balanced budget. So that was that was one piece of it. >> Was that like a month ago? When was the person? >> A couple weeks ago before some of the extra personnel came into the budget. So it would have gotten us very close. It was a little under I think. But you think you're right. It's pretty close to a balanced budget. >> And to be clear, how many personnel are we talking about? And we keep throwing around
175personnel personnel. It's not like one personnel. It's like >> I didn't hear your question. >> How many how many people are we adding? >> Uh you know what? It's it's still yet to be determined. We added a few extra because we're seeing some higher numbers in kindergarten. are looking at where students are. So, anywhere from uh two to six depending uh on where those fall is is yet to be determined. >> So, I think that was part of the reason why that and I think it was a nice number too. Just >> below three. >> Yeah, I think they were trying to stay under 3% >> was part of their rationale. helpful. Okay. >> Thanks. >> Because historically we haven't been anywhere near that, right? I feel like I've seen a graph of what we've
176charged for taxes across the last 15, 20 years and it never >> we did go to 34. >> We went really close. >> We did go to over three uh the year before last we were 375. >> You've you've gone >> 375 >> the last years. I'll just um 2.3 3.75 and then 1.5 1.5 >> and just to remember uh some of those 1.5 if am I accurate in the years those are when we were being held up by uh COVID money and some grants. So, you know, for multiple years in our budget, we had anywhere from $1 to $2 million that was under grant funding that didn't come from our taxpayers that we were using to replace costs. We tried our best to not do recurring costs, but we are we now don't have
177any of those. So, some of those lower percentages are not reflective of the actual amount it would have been had we not received those. >> And now we're paying back that amount. In some cases we are paying back that amount because the CLR was also very high at that time and we were gaining you know a couple million at times or a million in in just revenue from property tax value increasing and now we've paid most of that back and we're not gaining and we don't have COVID funding and it's just a different reality. So really the legislators in in the county and state who do get paid for their positions um are the ones that can do things to to fix some of these issues. >> Everybody should go contact them. I think the
178hard part about the CLR too is that it we just use the numbers that come from the county. And so when those were adjusted and adjusted, you know, u robustly down, >> uh it's of no fault of of the the board or the district that that we were meeting our needs in in other ways and then those get adjusted down and we have to >> almost like they're making decisions without speaking to the groups that it impacts. >> Imagine that. >> Imagine. Can you say a little bit about some of the cost savings that you have been able to accomplish this year? Just >> Sure. I I'll speak about a few and and maybe Ryan can speak of some more where we um uh adjusted. We >> those never get highlighted. >> Yes, we have
179looked at cost savings. Uh we have actually uh diminished some uh use of our funds for professional learning. We have uh and when I say professional learning, that's not to take away. We're looking at doing it differently. and and so it it's not to take away professional learning for our staff, but we're doing it differently. Uh Dr. Mccommens and I looked at reducing some of the funds that we had in for bringing outside consultants in to do a v variety of things. We looked at reducing some travel. We looked at reducing um some of those other um you know uh I should I I kind of giggle. I always tell Dr. McCins he has a a wicked blue pen. everybody has to come through him and he says no frequently and that's because I've asked
180him to do so and make sure that if people are asking for educational things they have a a high impact purpose there are many things that have everything has a purpose but they have to be high impact and uh Mr. Manser actually coming in and not having built the budget that he is now presenting uh our previous business manager built it uh saw some things that he asked people so I'll let you talk about some of the things that happened from the time you came in. >> Sure. Yeah. So we just challenged every uh department to reduce where they could and that's when we saw that some of the movement from that February to the April. Um so there's several um of the administrators came back with reductions in their departments. Um one of the
181things that we touched on earlier was the um uh charter school funding rates that were adjusted that that was happened at the state level. So give props to the legislators where they where we can there. Um >> that was an important and way overdue reform. >> Yes. >> Yeah. And it's not done yet. >> There's Yeah. That's the case is that there could be still more coming on that front. Um so that's a good first step that they took. Um and then as well facilities reductions is that anywhere in the facilities if there's one-time projects that we could have removed and we've taken a hard look at those as well. >> And some of those facility project reductions. Just to be clear, when we were planning a budget in November, we actually planned this budget
182initially in October as an administrative team. uh we put a lot of things in the budget that we aren't yet sure need to be in the budget, but we'd rather have them in. It's easier to remove things than it is to add things. Uh and so some of those facility projects that we are putting off are purely because it may not make the most sense now. We might be able to get another year out of that carpet or another year out of something two years or just the sequencing. We're going to do a bigger project and so we're going to wait until we have that bigger project unfolded in because there's some efficiency of scale. So it's it's not as if we're not doing uh the typical things we would do. It's just the timing
183of those is changing and some of that timing is natural. It changes every year. And so um um we Mr. Bright Crates will add everything in that we have for facilities and then those things will start to come out as the schedule and the timeline and what we can actually accomplish uh in the facilities as well as what we need financially uh comes to light. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Mans. >> It's almost time for our meeting to start. >> Okay. >> My goodness. Yes. >> Is that it for the superintendent's report? >> One last thing for the superintendent's report. I just want to call attention in the uh back of the agenda under the superintendent's report. In June, we will be seeking your approval for a textbook for high school business
184education. It's titled Managing Your Personal Finances. And uh the information is available in there. It's for a course that's being revised to include more personal finance at the high school level to meet the state requirements. And anyone that wishes to see that uh may contact the district office and we'll be happy to to help them to review it. >> Okay, >> that is it for the superintendent report. Longest one on record. I think >> it is. >> Okay. Moving on. Solicitor's report. >> No report. >> Thank you. Could I have a motion to approve the minutes? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Wait. Or don't we need >> for the April 7th, 2026 meeting? Do we have any questions or comments on this on the uh minutes? None. Okay. Mrs. Anus, will you please call
185the role? >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> yes. >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good, >> yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Zitch, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you. It's time for our first public comment period uh which is limited to the items that are on the agenda for deliberation or official action. And we have uh Mrs. Glick. You have three minutes. I'll let you know when you have one minute left. >> Hi everyone. First and only public comment. Not sure if lack of attendance is approval or apathy. um busy, very busy, been awake a lot today since 5:00 am and hungry. So, I went I came from a baseball game. I
186wasn't exactly planning to come tonight. My fifth grader was invited for his trombone performance of the Alageney Honors Band. Um so, thanks for inviting Henley who was unable to make it. It was a wonderful concert. Um and thanks for supporting that. So, you know, there's been a lot of things on my mind as they always are. Um, I'm probably your most frequent commenter, uh, if you view it honestly. And I, uh, have attempted through voting, uh, to become a board member myself and then also an appointment, uh, that did was unsuccessful. Um, but I can still make a difference. So, um, regarding this budget, um, one thing I will comment on that was never addressed when I see the appointment is that my political view as libertarian and we believe that taxation is theft. That's
187a common slogan we all hold near and dear. Now, of course, in a society such as we have, there is taxation. I had asked that we would not increase taxes. Um, but you know, I just don't really feel like enough is being done to look at the budget each month, the long Excel sheet with all the line items to really even make any sense out of that mess. Um, there's a lot there. I think there's a lot of fluff that could be looked at more carefully. Um, but a huge elephant in the room leads to the uh electronic devices that our children are given as young as kindergarten. And I've talked on this multiple times and I would check they don't come to our home because I want nothing to do with it at home.
188The children have nothing assigned to do at home. It is here's my point. Where is the waste in the district? Look at our garbage streams. What's being thrown away frequently? What is a lot of bulk of stuff coming home to parents? There's a lot that we throw away. A lot of papers, a lot of books. >> There's never enough time. And so my point is I would watch my kids screen time. At one point I was going in weekly to review screen time because I could not get a report from home. And this ties into actually the data um summary that Dr. Edwards had provided is you guys also need to be looking at a screen time analysis of how much time our students are using on your supplied devices kindergarten um across the years
189trending over the years um but by age. Anyways, my kindergartener was only using the provided device 15 to 30 minutes a week, twice a week. Why does every single child starting at kindergarten need a device? Please, like those virtual school days for a kindergartener. It's it's not it's nothing. It's not happening. It doesn't work at home. If you guys want any input from me in the future, reach out to me, okay? There's not enough time. But the STAR test is a big thing is honestly how much of the STAR test in the elementary age is impacted by the teacher. And finally, I will say um my child has had a horrendous school year in second grade directly related to his school classroom environment. The amount of education that is >> time is up. his view
190of school has tanked and there's been irreparable harm done to him based on what was going on in that classroom and that needs to be addressed and I expect personal conversation. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, it's time for old business. The academic committee report. Mrs. Cooper. >> Yep. Uh the board academic committee met on April 20th, 2026. The committee learned about the updates to the career and financial essentials curriculums to comply with new Pennsylvania law regarding a personal finance requirement for all high school students. For this updated course, the committee recommended the requested textbook uh for approval by the full board. The committee received information about the AP business and personal finance course pilot scheduled for the 2627 school year. And finally, the committee received an update on the high school English department
191materials review process. Work will continue with another pilot of materials scheduled for the 2627 school year. The update also included the winter literature keystone results for students. >> Thank you. Any questions? >> Okay. Governance committee report. Mr. Frank, >> thank you. There was not a governance uh board governance committee meeting in April. Members of the committee finished preparing a proposal for the P Pennsylvania School Boards Association 2027 legislative platform. The proposal is to amend that platform to include language to develop and implement a five-year cycle for reassessment of real estate at no cost to school districts. The proposed amendment is on tonight's voting agenda for the board approval. And the board resolution 2026-4 requesting regular real estate reassessments that was approved in April was distributed to all Alageney County school districts, Alagany Council, the Alageney
192County Executive, and the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education. Thank you. >> Great. Any questions? >> Thank you for your work on that governance committee. >> It's like >> Thank you, Miss Zitch. Miss Zitch has done a lot of work um >> pleasure and obsession >> on the on this issue as well of uh the county having a regular cycle for reassessment. >> Anything else? Okay. Projects and planning committee report. Miss Zitch, >> thank you. The board's project and planning committee did not meet in April. Um, but some of the projects that have moved through the committee have been completed, including the Hartwood Elementary playground replacement and the Fairview Elementary playground replacement to much celebration. Uh, the Hartwood Elementary HVAC and lighting project as well as the Fairview window project are almost fully complete, too. And that's
193exciting. Those are things that we see and experience every day. The high school tennis court replacement will begin in May and last throughout the summer. Thank you. Any questions or comments? >> Okay, moving right along. Facilities and Transportation. Mrs. Lynch, could you please read the report? >> I'm moving on one item tonight. Additional school board or additional school bus drivers 2025 2026 school year. Ratify hiring the additional ABC Transit Incorporated drivers from the attached list effective for the 2526 school year. All required licensing clearances and all other essential employment requirements for school bus operators under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been verified. I move on this one item. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments? It's always exciting when we get more bus drivers. >> Maybe it's not so exciting.
194Uh we're still short. So, Dr. McCins can give some context. >> Uh yes, these drivers are are not our regular drivers. They're actually uh a list of drivers that we can go to with for field trips and charters and so forth. Uh we're still regularly we're down to about five drivers short on a daily basis. So that has dropped slightly. >> Yeah, that's better. >> Uh but unfortunately it's not the silver lining we were looking for. >> Okay. Would it would it be possible for us to sort of like um invite bus driver recognition from our community have a bus driver thankfulness day? Like it doesn't I don't I know this is >> do I think >> I was like most of the bus stops do do that. >> Okay. So, we're getting we are
195like expressing extreme gratitude in some way, material or otherwise. Okay. I just want to make sure. Thank you. Sorry. >> Any other comments? >> Okay. Mrs. Music, could you please call the role? >> Miss Dad? >> Yes. >> Miss Finley? >> Yes. >> Mr. Frank? >> Yes. >> Mr. Good. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hamilton? >> Yes. >> Dr. Hasselborn? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lynch? >> Yes. >> Miss Sitch? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Cooper? >> Yes. >> Motion carries. Thank you. Mr. Hamilton, could you please read the finance items? >> Yes. Uh we have uh eight items to review before we get to the budget motion, which will be separate. Um item one, fund dispersements, general fund dispersements from fund 10 in the amount of $12,677,96645. Item two, March 26 capital reserve fund dispersements from fund
19631 in the amount of $8,57.50. Item three, dispersements from general fund dispersements from fund 10 in the amount of 8,247,6132. Item four, capital reserve fund dispersements from fund 31 in the amount of $48,713.98. Item five, the fi finance report for March 2026 is acknowledged and filed fraud as attached. Item six, the budget transfers for 2025 26 are approved as attached. Item seven, student activity financial reports. The third quarter middle school and high school student activity financial reports are acknowledged as attached. Item eight, CSM consulting contract for e rate compliance services approved the agreement as attached. Fox player school district and CSM consulting incorate consulting services effective July 1st 2026 through June 30th 2027 at a cost of $3,000 plus the an amount equal to 3.5% of category 2 application submitted during the term of the
197agreement is the reneural services. I move that we approve these eight items. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments on these items? Mrs. Mrs. News, will you please call the role? >> Miss Finley, >> yes. >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good, >> yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Zitch, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. >> Item nine, the 2026 2027 proposed final general fund operating budget. Superintendent with the advice and upon the recommendation of administration and adisement from the resource planning advisory has prepared for pre presentation the school board to the school board the proposed final general fund operating budget for 2026 2027 as attached.
198Therefore, be it resolved to adopt the 2026 2027 final proposed final general fund operating budget in the amount of 125,332,236 as attached with a real estate tax increase of 2.9% 382 mills. Uh, and a continuation of all other taxes without charge. seconds. >> Any questions or comments? >> I do have a question that I hadn't thought of before. >> Um, it we do have a small amount of earned income tax. Is that correct? >> I'm sorry. What was that? >> We assess an income tax. >> We have the flat EIT. Yes, we have a flat portion. We can't change that. >> That's what I was asking. Yeah. And that there's no that never changes ever. It's just in perpetuity. Who >> it went down? Well, >> we have >> percentage >> the rate the rate
199is yeah is >> the rate is fixed in perpetuity >> but the uh amount we get depends on >> depends on the income. >> Well yeah no yeah I know I meant the rate sorry >> is that is that 3% and half goes to the municipality and half goes to us. >> I guess I'll let Mr. Meror kind of give that explanation. >> I can never remember the one% >> 1% half and half I was gonna say we don't pay >> Yeah. And okay and I sorry I'll just look really quick while everybody else has other questions. >> Any other questions or comments? >> So what would be the process if we want to I mean the the motion says at the recommendation of the superintendent but in fact we heard from the presentation the
200recommendation is actually a higher number. Um, so if we want to amend this, we would to be higher than what the resource planning committee recommend. >> We have to vote no on this first or make a motion. Would this have to be a no vote first or would it be a motion to >> It would be a motion to amend >> to amend. >> But is that material and it would have to be No. Okay. >> We'd have to vote again or we'd have to vote on the motion to amend and then I read the amended motion. >> Right. >> Um, And then we >> and then we'd vote on that. >> And the reason it does list that that's the superintendent's recommendation is that's under the school code that the superintendent recommends and that
201was the just you know direction that I got from the resource planning and our three board leadership were there. >> To be clear the resource planning is your advisory. So >> correct but that's how >> could come in with a different number. >> Yes. However, that's what was in the policy. So >> I don't think it says you have to take the resource plans. your recommendation is 2.9 or the 3 point >> as a function of my position I have to recommend the general fund uh the proposed final budget so that's why it's in there it's it's prepared by an entire group it was discussed at the resource planning the resource planning that included our board leadership at the meeting recommended the 2.9% I recognized that the board's leadership is only a few people from
202the board that's why we prepared the budget um and we notified the board of that right after that uh meeting in April So, Mr. Hamilton, do you have a motion? >> Well, this one was moved and second. What do we do with >> We can make you can make a motion within a >> We're still deliberating. >> Make a motion within >> Well, we're in discussion right now. Yeah. >> And the discussion is whether to uh go to a higher number um without >> Yeah. >> Are you thinking the 3.1 or 3.2 that you >> That's where I'm thinking split the difference, put some more money in the capital. We still have to draw it sounds like we have to draw some down from uh unassigned anyways because to keep us under the 8%. not
203those these these little numbers we shouldn't they're gonna probably change anyways in the next 30 days because of various factors but but that we should get closer to the um the 2 million and remember this this money gets baked into our baseline for future years if we're going to really see our uh the the index coming down um it does constrain our flexibility if they don't sort out the property tax mass we continue to see some big rebates to um we have some large property holders who are seeking large property tax reductions in the orders of that will hit in the order of of of several hundred,000 in annual revenue and and including plus refunds of the prior year and possibly two years. So um >> so to be clear those costs are are all
204of us are going to pay those >> every that just means we have to redistribute that. So to be clear, lost revenue in the form of real estate reassessment will be will be all of us paying more. >> Yeah, I think that's >> and and just to be extra clear, a single appeal, >> right? >> Well, there have been I don't want to pick on any I would like there are there are some single appeals in past and current and in the process that that are big and and what happens as you said uh Mr. is that basically we uh we when we raise taxes we're basically redistributing that amount evenly becoming social over the other taxpayers and it's a very inequitable process which is why the pre process has to be reformed because only
205the people who have the means to appeal and particularly people who have a lot to gain by that and I I don't particularly criticize them some of them have fiduciary duty to do their best uh to to manage that but and and and it's in their interest but it does just reverberate through the rest of the district in terms of redistribution to people who don't uh appeal or have the ability to. >> Yeah, we didn't create the rules of no how this works. >> We're trying to change them. Thanks. >> Yeah, we're trying to change them. >> I'm just pointing them out. I It's >> Well, no. And I think that's fair to do. Yes. Uh because I I >> think this requires a lot more thinking than one is going to get from a
206quick sound bite of something or a quick social media post. And I think your point from before, Mrs. Lynch, about how hard the board has worked over the last six years um to make this process transparent and drawn out and long and how hard the administration has looked line by line practically in a lot of cases, literally on stuff. And we are being put in a situation that we should not be in to be able to provide what we need to provide to our students and families. This is the situation that we have been put into and despite doing the right things, despite being responsible, despite working on slowing the growth of costs while incrementally kind of raising u millage rates, we're we're yet still in this position. We can say that because of the
207the good stewardship, we're in a better position than we could have been. >> But that I mean >> there is no great outcome for our community based on this. Either you lose actual programs, personnel, facilities, or you there's an increase in taxes. I mean, it's not like we're looking at this great option. We're saying no, don't do that one. we want to do this other thing. So, I mean, I I think we didn't make the rules. We have to >> do our best within them. >> Yeah. >> And then fight really hard to change them, >> Which is what we're also doing. Um, >> thanks to the work of the Zitch and and a lot of the people and getting the word out to other school boards and um hopefully making that change, but that's
208not going to help this vote with this budget >> and our superintendent community and our Yeah. and to county council and I think like this is a coalition that everyone is invited to join um because every single person in this community is affected by it. >> Yeah. And I think there's a spotlight now and a lot of the unfairness with it when it came to the CLR changes and who's taking advantage of it and the the yes the wealth distribution and all the things. It's just come to a head at this point. Um so a lot of unfair things are being highlighted. Um, but when we do look at the actual budget, which is in one of these stacks, it was coming down to like a monthly cost. I mean, it's just like a dollar
209or two in between, which I agree to the point that Mrs. Lynch brings up every year that we've added this over time and that is certainly added up. Um, and to another point as well that I know we've talked about in other year, like even this median value, assessed value is still on the quite high side for a lot of our communities that are more inequitably impacted by a lot of the cost. Their assessed values are much lower, less than half, close to a quarter of this median assessed value when I did some very quick Googling. So, just some things to keep in mind. It's not like there's a good and right vote here and we're like, "No, don't do that one. Do this hard bad thing." Those aren't the two options. So, my question
210is, would the 2.9 put us in a terribly uncomfortable position to be able to fund the more long-term projects that we were thinking we needed the 2 million capital transfer each year for? >> Well, to be clear, we probably need to be between three to four million dollars in capital transfer. The two is like rock bottom. So yes. >> So if two is rock bottom >> I believe that it puts us next year in the same we're in a hole again next year. >> Um >> because we still should be we should be moving towards the 34 million run rate to bridge the gap we have until we completely refinance one of our major bonds. um and still keep on with the responsible capital plan that >> right and I think about our teacher contract
211that is coming up for renewal and I I'm thinking long long term is the 2.9 a mistake if um index is decreasing >> yeah and the bigger expenses we're talking here are things that I think we do value like buildings not breaking or HVAC system >> but then also the the personnel added expense I I think it's a a wellressearched databacked thing that teacher student ratio has one of the bigger impacts on success of of students. >> Um so yeah, >> Mr. >> I appreciated the the logic, the rationale, excuse me, of the resource planning committee to keep it at 2.9. Since then, we we're we're planning on adding two to six staff members for next year after after their recommendation was finalized. So, I I would vote for a 3.1 to to compensate for
212the change. Excuse me. Um, and I think it's important to to point out that this board has tried to keep keep tabs on on uh on the increases and the expenses. Um and that the salaries and that the salaries for instruction which is the majority of the budget has is going to increase very very small for this year and next year. It it is the other costs that are that are driving this this budget increase. >> That's right. It's not it's not salaries this year. It's it's a lot of other things. >> Yes. the other things and the need to keep the the air conditioning, excuse me, um uh lights, uh the things that we're going to repair in the next 18 months in the high school so that we can actually operate safely. >>
213Yes. >> Any other? >> Yeah, I'd be support 3.1, but um I since I put the forth the first motion, I should probably not be putting forth the amendment to the motion. I don't know that that's a Rogers rule, but if somebody wants >> I probably could >> I could amend my motion. Um I'd just I'm getting the vibe here or not, but okay. Move to I I'll amend my motion to uh approve the budget as stated w with the amended uh millage increase and uh and associated changes to the budget. um to 3.1% millage increase. >> Second, >> Mr. Frank second. So any further discussion? >> Just one one clarification. I asked Mr. Maner to provide also the mill increase. >> Oh, okay. >> For the motion, the the 3.1 would be an increase
214of 6822. >> 6822. Is that what you got, Eric? >> Yeah. Did a little mental math. >> Got it right here. >> Me doing my math. >> So with that new change, where does that put us for pulling down from the other accounts? >> It gives us about 2008,000. It's $157,000 more than the 2.9. >> So that we would just adjust probably the pasers line item there. >> But that's still >> No, we keep the pieers at 250. We put it into cap, right? Right. >> We move we move caps to about >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So what are we up to for the cap? >> We'll be at 1.7 roughly on capex instead of 1.5. >> Yep. >> Little better. Good question. >> It's a better baseline though. I mean it is it's
215a teeny it's small amount not teeny but it is uh meaningful when you run it out multiple years. >> I feel better about >> better than 2.9. >> And then um for the yearly increase we're looking at 156 >> for the for taxpayer calculations. 159. 159. Yeah. I'll just I'll just point out related to this motion that this is actually this is not a change in how much money we want to spend. It's a change in how we pay for it. >> So this is not a change in our budget. It was a change in how we pay for that budget. >> Thank you for pointing that out. >> Any other comments on the amended motion? If I could just to restate the amendment motion here resolved adopt 20226-2027 proposed final general fund operating budget
216in the amount of 12532,236 attached to real estate tax increase 3.1% 0.6822. That's correct. >> And a continuation of all other taxes without change. >> That's my motion. >> Yes. >> So, so it is we are actually this is a change to the budget. >> No, it's a change Well, it's change to the revenue, not the expenditures, I think, is what you meant. >> We're putting more into fund. We're putting more into savings, >> right? >> We're taking less out of savings. >> We're taking less out. Yeah. >> Are you taking No, because you want to keep >> Oh, no. Actually, we're putting more into capital. >> You're putting You're leaving everything the same except we're putting more into savings >> into the capital >> capital into fund 10. >> Let's say fund the operating
217the operating budget is the same. The capital budget goes up a little bit. We haven't met it, right? >> And we still haven't met where we really want. >> Still not at the minimum. >> And and it's not changing it by changing expenditures. It's changing it by changing revenues. >> Yes. >> And then so even though it says proposed final, this isn't really the final, right? because then we vote again on June on the final final. Yes. Okay. Just putting that out there for everyone watching at home. >> Right. So the so the main thing that we're changing here is to put more into the capital fund >> and that's correct. By raising taxes >> somewhat, but we're leaving the we're going to leave the pasers. We're going to leave everything else. >> We're pay
218Yeah. >> by changing taxes 3.1%. >> Okay. >> Raising taxes 3.1%. >> Okay. 2%. >> Can I ask >> in a second, but Mr. Frank? >> Correct. >> That's right. Can I ask a clarifying question about our um earn income tax decline? I know I'm I know we're not changing it. I'm just trying to understand does what is that projection based off of? We're projecting a 3% decline in earn tax. Is that based on what people made this year? What their tax >> taxes are in? Right. >> That's my qu is that is that based on April's filing? >> He's he's making it at the podium. We'll find out. Buildings would seem awfully >> that is based on historical collections >> is what? >> Based on historical collections. So in the previous fiscal year that
219we closed um 2425 the collections actually decreased. And so now we're still forecasting an increase in those collections but is an overall decrease from one budget to the next. >> I see. So the so the April tax returns don't give you any information or are you using that for some prediction the ones that just happened? >> We do not use in um any budget year those April tax filings. >> Okay. So yeah. So I'm seeing that >> we you base that line item based on actual collections. >> Okay. Yeah. Uh so even though 2526 we were up almost a million dollars over the prior year, we're predicting that we'll decline slightly, ever so slightly um by about $382,000 in collections. And the reason I asked that is I think I think it would be it
220would be a good move for this board to reflect on past tax increases in the context of the total income tax collected. So if we're if we are raising property tax rates in consecutive years and years in which we are we are collecting less income tax revenue. That tells me that we are raising people's taxes as they are earning less on the whole. >> I'd point out we had a couple big years of tax incre increases and we're just recently seeing a cresting of that and I think it is a little bit of a bounce back from exception a couple of exceptional years. Okay. So that you have to look at the long-term trends uh for sure. Um there these are these are very hard things to predict. Uh we also can't predict interest rates
221and we actually have because we have uh capital projects and money saved up for that. We have a fair amount of income from interest that could go up that could go down. We don't know. My recommendation or hope would be that next year we take a mid-year look and see if we can transfer some of if if we're low. We we can transfer some of that residual amount that we didn't put in that we're not for that we were short still on capital if we if we turn out turns out our projections are a little low um that we would have some surplus to move into capital next year as a transfer which we did two or three years ago when we had more uh funds in our unassigned balance than we expected. Okay. Sure.
222Yeah. I think Yeah, I'm I'm less worried about income tax revenue affecting our ability to like uh balance the budget and more worried about whether it's indicative of the financial strain of our community. >> Things like a lot of people retiring or something, >> right? And I don't know. >> Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot I don't know there. And I think I think maybe I'm I want to I want to come into that the decision to raise the rate to 3.1% feeling very aware of how that feels. Um and having a feeling like I have a clear picture. I just I'm I'm I am worried about the financial hardships of our families right now. That's something I'm concerned about. >> I just wanted one point of clarification on the motion too. The um
223the the increase $57,000 increase. If you want to increase the capital allocation, that would increase the expense number that's on the agenda. If it's just simply reducing the out of balance, then that's just only that's only changing revenue. That would not change the amount on the agenda. >> So, you do want we have to change that. >> You change that number. If you want to increase the capital contribution, >> we have to change the 125 332 to reflect the cap the extra uh 157, >> 418. >> Good catch at 10 p.m. >> 482. >> Yeah. Yes. >> So it' be 125,489,654. >> This is why we shouldn't be doing it at 10 o'clock at night. What's it? What is it now then? >> That's what it is now at 3.1. >> 125,489,654. >> Yes. >>
224Correct. Okay. >> Yes. >> All right. Let me read the motion just to be absolutely the amended motion now. Um 2025 2026 2027 proposed final general fund operating budget. The superintendent with the advice and upon the recommendations of administration adisement and resource planning advisory has prepared for presentation the school board the final general fund operating budget for 2026 2027 as attached. Therefore be it resolved that 202627 proposed final bud fund general fund operating budget in the amount of 125489654. it a not as attached because it's not actually there >> As discussed is probably the right wording. Um with a real estate tax increase of 3.1% which is 0.6822 mills and a continuation of all other taxes without change. That's the motion. >> Okay. Are we ready to vote? We need a second on that. >>
225Second. >> Ron seconded it again. >> Okay. >> Oh, we're just voting to amend it. >> Okay. So, we're not voting on that. We're voting to amend it to that. So, so you move to amend it. >> I move I was the motioner, so I you don't I don't think we have to vote on the amendment since I changed my motion, >> but we can do both if we want. >> It was already seconded. >> Ron, it's cleaner if we do it this time. >> All right, we'll vote on the amendment then on the >> So, you're amending that. Your motion is to amend. >> Okay. My motion is to amend my original motion. >> And you second, >> are you seconding the amendment? >> Yes, I did. Well, he >> Are we ready? >>
226Okay. Mrs. News, can you please call the RO? >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> no. >> Miss Zitch, >> no. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> no. Motion to amend was approved with six in favor and three voting no. Mrs. Lynch, Miss Zitch, and Miss Finley. >> Okay. Now, does Eric need to make vote on it or >> I move to approve my amended emotion which is as >> which was as stated. >> Second. >> Oh. Oh, Ron. >> Oh, got Adam now. Second. Okay. >> Okay. Do we have any more discussion of this motion? >> What What exactly are we voting on >> now? We're actually voting on
227the amended motion. We voted to amend the motion. Now we are voting on the motion. >> All right. >> Okay. Mrs. Anus, will you please call the role? Mr. Good. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hamilton? >> Yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> no. >> Miss Zitch, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> no. >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Motion carries with seven in favor. Two opposed. Voting no. Mrs. Lynch and Miss Finley. Okay. Thank you very much. Mrs. Cooper, could you please read the instruction items? >> Yes, I am going to move on 14 items. All right. Number one is textbook to approve the new textbooks listed below. It's in two reading. It's for English language arts kindergarten through grade five. Uh
228the second one, number two, approve the list of candidates as attached for the June 7th, 2026 graduation submitted by the high school administration. Candidates must meet all graduation requirements by June 6th in order to graduate and see their receive their diplomas. Uh number three, to approve the district's flexible instruction day program as presented for the 26 27 27 28 and 2029 school years. um and authorize the administration to submit the application for approval to PA Department of Education in accordance with act 64 of 2019 section 1506. Number four, to approve the agreement as attached between the district to participate in the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Schoolbased Access Program um SBA for school age children for the 2627 school year effective July 26 through June 3027. Um, this is a renewal of services. Number five,
229to approve the service agreements as touched between the district and the Alageney Adult and Pediatric Therapy LLC for staff professional development, classroom planning, observation, and direct consultation services effective August 25th, 26 through July 31st, 27. This is a renewal of services. Number six to approve the agreement for educational services as attached between the school district and the Bradley Center for Educational Services for students for the 2627 school year. This is a renewal of services. Number seven, approved day student education agreement as attached between the school district and Glade Run Lutheran Services for services to students for the 2627 school year. This is a renewal of services. Number eight, approve the agreement as attached between the district and MHY family services for for services to students at Longmore Academy for the 2627 school year. This is
230a renewal of services. Number nine, approve the contract as attached between the school district, is it Ryver School or River School therapies? I don't know. For special education therapy services to students effective August uh 26 through July 31st, 2028. Uh number 10, approve the letter of agreement as attached between the Fox Chapel area school district and challenge success to administer four elementary school student surveys. One middle school survey, one high school student survey, and one parent caregiver survey within the 2627 school year at a cost of $28,600. This is a new letter of agreement. Number 11, approve the Alagany Intermediate Unit notice of adoption of policies, procedures, and use of funds as attached for the 2627 school year. Number 12, approve the subgrant agreement as attached for the implementation of the individuals with disabilities education
231act part B between the school district and the Alageney Intermediate Unit for the period of July 26 through June 3027. Uh number 13, approve the participation agreement as attached between the district and PA helps to eligible to be eligible for dispersements for the 26 27 school year to support school psychologist interns and school counselor interns and authorize the administration to execute it. This is a renewal of services. Number 14, approve the stipulated adjudications as presented. I move on those 14 items. >> Second. Thank you. Any questions or comments? >> Yes, you first. >> Okay, hold on. There was a lot. Let me go find it. Oh, do you um can you talk a little bit about the flexible instruction days? I know that that's that's been a hot topic and it looks like we're approving
232the next three years. So, the only thing that you're approving is the ability for us to be able to use a flexible instruction day. Uh the state of Pennsylvania has a three-year application. So the last application was done three years ago does require board approval. Uh in the application we have to outline how we we we would provide services. We outline multiple ways and you've seen almost all of those ways in existence this year alone. Uh we also have to outline how we will ensure students have access to nursing services, counseling services, etc. So really the application is just to permit the district to use them. It doesn't outline when we may use them or when not. The board would choose not to approve the application. There will be no flexible instruction days. They will
233just be canceled days. And um and then we would have to figure out how to make up those days at the end of the year. >> I was able to really quickly find Pem Hill's um flexible instruction day plan um on their website. It would be great if ours could be equally accessible. >> We can certainly put it on the website. It doesn't come out of the system, so it has to be generated manually. It doesn't print from the system. >> That's fine. I'm thinking mostly about all these incoming kindergarten families who didn't have the joy that was this last academic year to learn what our policy is. So that might be helpful in the future. >> And just to be clear, the the approval of it doesn't say when we may or when we
234may not use it. It just permits the the flexibility for >> Totally. Yeah. Which I appreciate and I look forward to approving. Um I wanted to congratulate and express gratitude to the academic committee for the challenge success determination. Like you guys, I know worked hard on picking a survey tool that was >> that you felt was suitable for the community. So thanks. I'm happy to see it on the agenda. >> I kept thinking during the academic data presentation like there's more to the story and that's that's the more to the story. So I I also agree that that was good work. >> Um on number nine does should there be an actual start date August something 2026 because normally all of my dates have a day of the month >> and I just caught that
235as I reading >> for the the start date for yeah number nine. just says August 2026, but normally it'll be like August 25th, 2026. >> Just as Oh, okay. >> Yeah, I just caught that as I was reading because it was a different than all the other ones. >> I'm sure the date is actually in the >> It's actually No, it's actually listed that exact way in the contract of August 2026 through July 31st, 2028. >> Just surprised us when you start using it. >> Do you have other questions? Uh I think that was other people. >> I have one more note which is um just because we're in the budget I'm wearing budget hat right now. In future times like in the fall for example it might be nice to have the change in
236cost associated with renewals like how many of these renewals are plus 3% plus 5% plus 10% twice as expensive. And I know that it will change because a lot of them don't even have a cost associated with them. And we usually say that we say say that really explicitly in our agendas which I really appreciate. But it might be helpful for us to kind of build that sort of visceral literacy around what where these costs increases are coming. Sure. Most of those I'm sorry, Mr. >> I'm sorry. Yeah, I just said we get it for the new letters. Uh so that would be handy. >> Sure. Most of those costs won't be available in the fall. I mean this coming fall they may be, but some of these are for um organizations that we have
237a relationship with that we may or may not have students attending. I see. So they open up the opportunity that if we would have a need then we would be able to access them and so we certainly can provide you with that but they may they may not necessarily result in in bills right away. >> Yeah. I mean we're we're available contract increases on upon renewal would be really helpful. >> Sure. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> I have a question for Mr. Jafrey. Um, I've recently been employed by the Alagany Intermediate Unit in their adult education division. So, I wanted to check and see if I need to abstain from voting on any items concerning the AIU. Um, also I inquired today on where my uh salary comes from, and it is actually coming from
238grants and not from uh directly from the AIU. >> Yeah, I I did review the ethics act. Uh Miss Data informed me that she had taken a position with the AIU. Based upon my review of the ethics act and some decisions under the act pursuant to the act, I don't believe that there was any conflict of interest. There is no direct benefit uh to you and any benefit that might be perceived as a result of your employment with the beminimous. So I do not think there's any conflict that would be required. >> Okay. Thank you for the information. >> Any other questions for the ELA curriculum adoption at the elementary level? And I just wanted to thank the teachers who were involved in the review of that. They put in a lot of behind the
239scenes hard work. Um and even students participated which was a really cool thing. >> Um and to say that that process was was robust would be an statement. I think that it was a a a great example of how to involve all of the stakeholders in that kind of a selection. And that's a high stakes uh decision. That's a big program. That's a huge chunk of our student population. And we saw from the data presentation earlier that that is a need. We have some challenges there. Um so I I want to tell parents that the journey with journeys is over. Thank goodness. Um because we're definitely ready to move on to the next thing. and and this is a very exciting program from what we've were able to see at the academic committee level. >>
240You're here. >> Yeah. Consider reading more books. >> Yes. >> Something to think about. >> Okay. Anything else? >> Mrs. Anus, will you please call the role? >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Sitch, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> yes. Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> And then I just have one instruction item. The AWB career center 2627 school calendar is attached. >> Thank you. >> No problem. >> Any questions or comments on theformational item? >> Okay. Um, legislation and policy items. Mr. Frank. >> Thank you. Uh I will move to approve the PSBA policy services member agreement and enduser agreement for use of the with apologies
241and gagify engageify platform by PSBA and PSBA authorized users as attached between the Fox Chapel Area School District and PSBA for the PSBA policy policy service and PSBA administrative regulation service for the 2026 27 school year at a cost of $2,900. $13025. This is renewal of services and PSBA is using a new platform, excuse me. And second, approve the following proposed amendment to the PSBA 2027 legislative platform and authorize the board secretary to verify and submit the proposal through the online submission form number 441 taxing authority school board's call on the state to establish and require counties to number one maintain a uniform statewide ratio of assessed value to market value. Number two, require uniform assessment and appeal practices which and three develop and implement a five-year cycle for reassessment of real estate at no
242cost to school districts with the rationale that it's a predictable predictable cycle of reassessment which allows for fairness and equity across the Commonwealth. This is the only way to ensure that all property owners are paying their fair share no matter where they live. The consistency in property tax value will also allow school districts to budget more effectively. I move on both items. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments on this? >> Glad to see PSBA taking this up and hopefully they or hopefully they do. >> Yes, they put out a plat PSBA puts out a platform every year. Mr. Good and myself are the representatives and each board has reps and everybody votes on these items. Um we will submit this. It doesn't mean it will get on their platform but we will
243>> it goes to their platform committee >> right >> which meets sometime I forget exactly when but we're not involved with the platform committee. >> Yes. um at this time and then if if it passes committee then it becomes an item for their meeting that we vote on that we do vote on. >> Okay. Any questions about any of this? >> I just appreciated Mr. Good's fluency and PSBA agenda setting. Um he shared that with the governance committee and I learned a lot. Um thank you for taking the move on this and I appreciate your expediency and getting this in there because there's a hard deadline for submission. Yes, we have to have it submitted in June by June 26th, I think it was something like that. >> Okay. Mrs. Music, will you please call
244the role? >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Zetch, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> yes. >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good, >> yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Okay. Miss Zitch, could you please read us the personnel items? >> Yes. The ultra fast fast version details are in the agenda. Item one, resignations food services. The resignation of Amber Eddie, food services employee at DMS. The resignation of Michelle Elcondis, food services employee at FDHS. For item two, appointments professional Lucas Double Bringing is approved as a business education teacher at Dorsyville Middle School, available due to the retirement of Jill Tape Tabis, excuse me. Item two, Joseph E. Conics is approved as a physics teacher
245at Fox Chapel Area High School, available due to the retirement of Thomas Mule. Elizabeth A. Hartman is approved as a science teacher at Dorsyville Middle School, available due to an open position. Suzanne M. Heerty is approved as an English teacher at Fox Chapel Area High School, available due to the retirement of Daniel Ker. Emily N. Janosco is approved as an English teacher at Dorsyville Middle School, available due to the retirement of Mary Leler. Molly L R Stalard is approved as a math teacher at Dorsyville Middle School, available due to the retirement of Noel Noel. Leah C. Stock is approved as a science teacher at Dorseyville Middle School, available due to an open position. And Gabrielle N. Yost is approved as a science teacher at Dorseyville Middle School, available due to an open position. Item B,
246supplemental contracts athletic the athletic supplemental contracts for the summer, fall, and winter seasons of 2627 school year are ratified and approved as attached. Item three, police officers um school police officers for summer hours. The following school police officers are approved for an additional summer hours as needed and the officers at the officer's hourly rate with a max of 80 hours per officer. Scott E. Bailey, Stanley Bradish, Joshua Deetsz, Dennis Lynch, Timothy Rush, Shannon Stan, Sanuchi, Scott Slaggel, and um Eric Valentine. For item four, advanced placement exam, Proctor, Martha Freeze is approved as an AP exam proctor at Fox Chapel Area High School. Summer programs 2026, uh middle school, Todd Ashb approved at DMS Summer Learning Academy program facilitator. Um the following individuals are approved as instructors at DMS Summer Learning Academy. Richard Deio, Kevin Gret
247Gretch, Emily Janosco, Joshua Mariana, and Taylor Trasadi. Ethan Wagner is approved as an instructor at DMS Summer Learning Academy. Item six, extended schoolyear program. Carrie Elbako was approved as a Fox Chuck area school district program facilitator. The following individuals are approved as full day instructors at FCA um SDESY program. That's Clara Barnes, Maria Chur, Olivia Thompson, and Abigail Wentling. Um the following individuals are approved as half-day instructors. Frank Bako, William Bane, Jill Bennett, Gabriella Benelli, St. St. Clair, Oliver, and Mary Swat Schwartzpa, excuse me. Following individuals are approved as full day pair of professionals for the same program. Rebecca Abney and Siora, Cara Couter, Cynthia Fondrech, Sophia Gas, Olivia Clebler, Jill Lawson, Rosanne Libingood, Eileen Miller, Primalatha, Miloa, Tammy Per Trapalo, Amy Troso, Karen Whitehead, Ethan Wagan, and Leanne Zutala. Uh the following individuals are
248approved as halfday pair professionals. Amy Funk, Teresa Kefir, Sophia Libertto, Lori TLA, Angela Wilhelm, Emily Wilham, and Autumn Williams. And then Melissa Zos is approved as a substitute pair professional for the Fox Chapel Area School District ESY program. I move on these six items. >> Second. >> Thank you for that speed. >> Do we have any questions or comments on those? Mrs. Enus musically, please call the role. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Miss Zitch, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> yes. >> Mr. French. >> Mr. Good. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselhorn, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you. All right, Mr. Good. How fast >> are you going to be? Operations and cooperative services. >> I'll be almost
249as fast. All right, I have six items. Uh first uh move on the the approve the following teams. The following teams are approved to hold summer camps activities in 2026 for athletes in the Fox Chapel area school district. Fox Chapel area baseball. Fox Chapel area boys and girls basketball. Fox Chapel area cheerleading. Fox Chapel area boys cross country. Fox Chapel area field hockey. Fox Chapel area flag football. Fox Chapel area football. Fox Chapel area boys and girls golf. Fox Chapel area boys and girls lacrosse. Fox Chapel area boys and girls soccer. Fox Chapel area softball. Fox Chapel Area Strength and Conditioning, Fox Chapel Area Boys and Girls Swimming and Diving, Fox Chapel Area Boys and Girls Volleyball, Fox Chapel Area Boys and Girls Wrestling. Number two, approve the appointment of Eric G. Hamilton as schoolboard
250treasurer effective July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. Number three, approve the appointment of Adam Good and Mary Beth Dad as voting delegates to the PSBA 2026 delegate assembly to be held November 7th, 2026. Number four, accept the donation of $100 from Kathy Wagner to put purchase books for each elementary library in memory of Millie Rubin. Number five, approve the child care services agreement that's attached between the Fox Sheper School District and KCE Champions LLC for before and after school child care services at Fairview Elementary School effective May 4th, 2026 with a projected program start date of August 25th, 2026 and continuing for 5 years. This is a new agreement and there is no cost to the district. Number six, the AW Batty Career Center operating budget for 2026 2027 is $12,473,936. Fox Chapel Area
251School District share of the 2026 2027 AW Batty Career Center operating budget is approved as set forth set forth below. Um operating budget share our share is 44,411. Debt service budget 215,887 total 620,298. I move on those items. >> Second. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments? >> KCE Champions Child Care Service Agreement. Is there any world in which at some point other schools would have the opportunity to have before and after care such as will be available at Fairview? >> There's always a possibility. This is just a a group that will be using our facilities. So, it's a private cost to school district uh to to families, I'm sorry. It's just like the YMCA program that's at O'Hara and certainly we can entertain that in other buildings. We'd like to pilot it to see
252how this group works. Um there are a number of groups out there that do that. Um we also want to see if they can staff it appropriately. >> Yeah, I'd be curious if they have a different threshold than the Y does as well because that's been an issue of getting it restarted is reaching that minimum. But >> correct. The issue is so many families are making alternative plans that they can't commit. It used to be a pretty robust program until it shut down. So >> to families comparable to YMCA's program, >> I don't know those offh hand. I don't know if you remember those offhand. I I believe it's more expensive than the YMCA's program, but I don't have those costs in front of me. >> We're h we're happy to open our buildings to
253people who may want to do that. There aren't very many people that seem to be able to staff those. So, that's always a concern. It doesn't mean that it's not worthy of continuing to try. >> Yeah, I just know our cur families have struggled for many years with this conversation. So, >> thank you to Mr. Hamilton. >> Being treasurer again. >> Yeah. >> Put those put that mental math to good use. >> Any other questions or comments for the Batty budget? I appreciate our representatives advocacy and making sure Fox Chapel gets our fair share and well represented over there. Um we have kids on the waiting list every year so it's important that that that's monitored carefully. >> Yeah. Something that I have brought up and I've started to talk to Paul about our portion
254of the debt service budget is pretty disp proportionate. um like our portion of the the regular operating budget that we have the least amount of students represented on a five-year average, but we pay the second most in bond debt. >> I just assumed it was a fixed rate. So, the bond debt is >> So, the bond debt is a whole different part of the agreement. So, um, it's kind of fixed for this this current bond debt that we're paying because it was agreed upon this, >> but I've asked if we could look into changing it because when >> I think it's like 2030 something that the bond comes up to be due. It's a it's a while yet. >> It's quite a while. >> However, I'm pretty sure they're going to take out more bond
255debt than at that time. And if the representatives of that time are not paying attention to this um I mean yeah like we're we're we're paying a disproportionate amount for the amount of spots >> so >> that we have comparatively we we pay the correct amount for the amount of spots we get for the operating budget. That's like a fixed per student for a fiveyear average. And that's why there's an issue with getting kind of increase spots because of the 30 some new students that applied for this year 20ome were weight listed. So it's I don't know about this going into next year. That was when I asked them to look up for this year that we're in. So we're we're working on some of that. But for now like this is definitely a part
256that um we can change for bond debt at least after it it won't impact the next several budgets but after that. So, so our share is written into the bond contract separately. >> Yeah. So, there's a capital funding part of our like the bylaws the the jointure agreement. >> There's a there's a different part for capital funding that the this that paid on which is separate. >> Um and it has something to do with the ratio of the assessed fair market value of property, >> right? It's basically your capacity to pay rather than the number of students that are necessarily >> Yeah. So >> I mean I have all the numbers. So we have a 15.56% allocation >> which the only other ones higher than us is North Alagany which is obviously a lot bigger
257school district for the fourth largest school district. >> Yeah. >> He's down here doing >> I double checked your math. Yes. >> You double checked their math. This is certainly not my math. But it looked Yes, it it it looked uh correct. Yeah, but we're like the fourth largest school district, but we have the second least amount of students there of the I think it's eight or nine schools. >> Thanks for keeping an eye on that. >> Yeah. So, just >> just things to think about. Um, but I think the the process we'll take is we'll like we as in this group will uh agree with Paul's help here on what the wording would be and then uh Ron and I would take that to the the the full joint operating committee. >> The the
258superintendents from the whole group have been working on how to increase the number of kids that that can attend. They are busting at the seams, but I think every district has a waiting list, but but because of our cost, >> ours our waiting list is particular to us. >> Um and so so the superintendents have been working on how to how to uh enlarge the enrollment in the current facility. >> Yeah. I know there's definitely been some improvement made and some movement. Um but especially when you look at the populations of the the high schools, it's pretty disproportionate with our size. And I think uh basing it on a historical average has been hard because the makeup of our district has changed a lot over the years and uh the desires and needs of our
259students. So just just things to think about. >> Definitely. I mean there's so such a strong uh growing interest in and their programs are so good that uh I don't want anybody to misinterpret that we're very supportive of Batty. It's making sure that we get access and proportional to what we're paying as well. >> Yeah, I feel like that's yeah growing interest uh >> for sure. >> It's true. Yeah. >> Thanks. >> Yeah, but I know they hosted a meeting and I think Mr. Baxter and Dr. Smith attended from the high school. And so, um, from what I heard, all the districts were really thankful for them kind of hosting that larger meeting and really walking them through and having a better understanding. And I think they asked for some like different timing of things
260to to help with our numbers um, as well. So, yeah, there's definitely steps in the right direction. Um, but doesn't mean we can't advocate for more. >> Thank you for that work. Any other comments? Mrs. Music, will you please call the role? Miss, >> yes. >> Mrs. Cooper, >> yes. >> Miss Dad, >> yes. >> Miss Finley, >> yes. >> Mr. Frank, >> yes. >> Mr. Good, >> yes. >> Mr. Hamilton, >> yes. >> Dr. Hasselorn, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lynch, >> yes. >> Motion carries. Okay, it's time for our second public comment period. I think everyone's in bed by now. So, no public comment. Fox Chapel Educators Association. No comments. Okay. Board comments. I have no comment tonight. Mr. Good. >> Uh, it was a long meeting, but uh it it is worth it
261to have all of the uh students come in uh at the beginning. It's well worth it. >> Thank you, Miss Zitch. >> I'm so grateful for our board. you all show a dedicated dedication to this conversation and to this meeting. >> Yes. >> That has gone on. So, I'm I'm really grateful for all of you. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mrs. Cooper. >> Congratulations graduates and uh thank you educators. May you feel appreciated this appreciation >> and always >> Mr. Hamilton. >> Uh thank you for your again for your renewed trust in me as your treasur and uh ditto on Mrs. comment about the I really appreciate this board and ability to stick it stick it through and still have really good conversation late in the evening. >> Thank you, Dr. Hasselhorn. Appreciating our teachers
262this week and always. Um that 25-y year pin thing gets me every year. So that makes the four hours of budget stuff worth it. Thank you from the the bottom of my heart as a parent to all those teachers who dedicated their entire career to us. Thank you, Mrs. Lynch. >> I know it's wonky, but I would highly encourage anybody in the district who is interested in the choices that are being made about um taxes and the amount of money that we have to spend, go to the county meetings where we will be discussing the reassessments. The reassessments have to happen regularly for us to have the income and the stability that we need to make good decisions and keep good programs for our kids. May 6th, June 3rd, June 16th, July 1st. Take a
263look at the Alageney County website. Please participate. Um, it has to it has to change soon in order for us to really be able to move forward. So, >> thank you, Miss Finley. >> Congratulations to all the students. Um, teachers, thank you so much. Principals, you were honored last week, but congratulations on all your hard work as well. See you in June. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Frank. >> Um, thanks to the to the the teachers, the staff members, and the kids that we honored tonight, and especially the parents because when you have elementary kids or middle school kids, you know that those parents are driving them to lessons and everything else. So, congratulations and thanks to them. >> Thank you. Could I have a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion. >> Yes. So, move second.
264>> All in favor? >> Meeting adjourned. Here it is. >> We did it. >> I'm afraid of standing back like I am.