we will begin with excellence in academics on may sixteenth third grade students if our hill presented by a time under the direction of ms or o'brien the students read a novel research to famous person and wrote a first person account of his or her life the students then presented their project in valerie h very a living history museum after completing cleanup projects and recycling projects in their own neighborhoods the students wrote narratives in spanish to tell what they had done graduation said freshman connor ward's who was awarded a certificate of distinction twenty one thousand high schools nationwide the magazine ranks schools based on overall student performance on state tests and advanced placement tests on may tenth sixth graders  mcmurray elementary held their annual stand in the global sense student homerooms representing various countries in student proceeded through speakers to learn more about other cultures to end the day students have the opportunity to sample foods from across the world thanks to some help from the homeroom parent volunteers again their choices include everything from all as command earlier this month eighty five students were inducted into the national honor society of peter sounds of high school is outstanding students represent not only the high academic standards of the organization but the ideals of character service and leadership as well into the senior students listed above upon completing their studies at the western area career and technology center these students receive their certificates in a special ceremony on may fourteen media students from peter since your high school came home with top honors in the twenty's in yule's t v student video festival hosted by robert morris university the event honors outstanding work in video and film productions submitted by students from across the region the winners in their categories are listed on may seventh the high school celebrated their evening with the arts it featured in our show choral concerts and displays from departments including family consumer science media music tech add and theatre as well as the diversity  selections from the interactive club high school art teacher margaret because alice has been invited to become a member of the fist for waterfall of science an organization that has existed since one thousand forty five selections never work were included in their show waterworks two thousand and thirteen at the third street gallery in carnegie this month students of pleasant valley are turning trash to describe their with their recycled art creations though students have been encouraged to turn household items or natural objects into art that is being displayed in the school library the art display is part of peavey's ongoing effort congratulations to high school creative writing student bailey graham who's recently learned that her short story will be published in teen magazine congratulations to the p t fencing team who ended their season last month for the first place finish gradually since the team members above the defeated fox samples the take on the title this spring has been around morning season for the in the end the fourteenth for getting into the w p i l playoffs the teams listed above advance the playoffs this year was both across teams and the softball team continuing their playoff run this week go indian excellence in leadership on may fourteenth the education foundation held their first annual membership next year to stay safe you through the many parents and staff members who have made the first two years of your organization some to success mark are a couple breaks in a staff appreciation week a time when staff members are reminded of how much they are valued by parents and students as well as the administration and school board celebrations were held in all of our buildings honor teachers and support members more than thirty six hundred students from across the state took part in this year's s p l a state leadership conference of the thirty six students from peter sound who qualified for the event happened them finished in the top ten in their event with four students qualifying to attend the this month pleasant valley held their annual talent show peavy idol featuring students and staff performances for two hours get in the packed high school auditorium were treated to students who danced played the piano told us and even showed off their for a wonderful cause the evening raised nearly ten thousand dollars for the american cancer society kate thanks mrs boucher for putting that together a lot of wonderful activities occurring throughout the district it's hard to keep up with the ball but there are also impressive when when we see the video clips that include superintendent at this time we will take questions and comments from the floor any parent gharyan resident or community group will have the right to present a brick last suggestion or complaint and cernan district personnel programs or operations of the district at the same time the board has a duty to protect its staff from harassment consequently the board does not and will not condone personal attacks directed toward district personnel it is  intent to provide a fair and impartial manner were seeking appropriate remedies and he suggestions or complaints directed to individual board members and or the board shall be referred to the superintendent and or appropriate administrator for consideration and action personnel complaints directed toward an individual or individuals are not subject for discussion or review at a public meeting of the board of school directors good evening everybody my name is chase manzo of one twenty scarborough lane and i am representing the high school's executive leadership council and student council and i am a chairperson of the technology committee at the high school i am here to emphasize to you this evening the ongoing issues that we have been having with our technology as all of you know we are in a phase where we are deciding whether or not to approve the technology budget and decide what we should do pertaining to this  issue and i am here to emphasise that this is becoming a huge issue the problems that myself along with hundreds of students and teachers are dealing with at the high school is becoming an issue that but passionate about and when i caught wind of the budget issues i wanted to jump on it so that i could let all of you know the issues first off the entire school district we have hit very close to rock bottom with our computers because of the age many of us want to stay as far away from computers as possible but the bottom line is that their magic they help us explore innovate learn and expand our boundaries they're incredible there are about two thousand desktop laptop computers in the school district three hundred have been replaced that leaves just over sixteen hundred machines which are of the age of five to six years or older how long can a computer possibly last i know i have a p c i took really good care of it i'm one of only a few of my friends that have never broken a phone that p c lasted three and a half years we are going on five to six years with our p c s and keep in mind that students are the ones using them not bad considering it was a seven hundred dollar machine ours or ours are much cheaper machines i have not gone a day this year without asking our techs up the high school why he's carrying a laptop or  desktop down the hall and they've always said it's because a service they're treated respectfully doesn't matter these machines are constantly running constantly communicating with our network and they're slowing down to field some examples of how these machines are at least at the high school level we have our classroom for the future cards which were granted to us in two thousand and eight that's five years old the media department which was purchased in two thousand and seven the desktops are six years and the science department and business department which are two thousand and six that's seven years  now i just want to emphasize again you should have all received from the finance committee meeting a copy of the petition which was signed by over seven hundred students at the high school because they are really passionate about how old our technology is getting and they are absolutely one hundred percent requesting that we go with the for your budget program that's been proposed to the board by mr duke malloy and i would just like to emphasize that the system is getting so old we're going to have to start putting bandages on our computers that totally outweighs the cost of replacing these machines because of the support that it requires from our technology department and second of all we're not getting the value of our dollar by trying to bandage these computers  at the last meeting it was proposed that we tried to do the virtual desktop after further research with the virtual desktop virtual desktops are tasks stick in commerce environments and education environments but a lot of the programs that we are running at the high school level which are starting to also become out of date don't do well on these virtual cloud servers because we're taking now a computer smashing it down into a wire sending it to the district administration office and then sending it back to that work station that's taking all of the power of that single computer and mixing it with two thousand other computers in the district i just would like you to understand that for what use we need at the high school level it's simply will not work well it will work it just won't work well tonight i'm joined here by mr nate duty and mr greg a letter both are also executive officers at the high school and they would just like to speak to you briefly about some of their concerns good evening as chase mentioned my name is class officer at the high school i just want to thank the board it's a real honor to be able to come here as a student and speak in front of the school district so i thank you all very much as we had stated at the finance committee meeting the growing technology problem at the high school truly is a problem and it needs to be a priority that the school board addresses there have been the high school uses more the most amount of technology more than any other building in the district and so we obviously have to have a priority in making sure we have the technology that we need for class work and for other things as students need it for and we need a budget that can support this demand and this as i said before you know it needs to be a priority this cannot be something we keep putting off as we have in the past now i and some other students many students have faced many problems and personal experiences with the current district computers as she said are aging up to seven years for some of them who times are taking way too long they are cutting into class in some of the labs we have a library the library computer lab it takes some of the machines fifteen minutes to boot up and have the student log in and get ready and have all their files there and that's just taking too much time away from a forty one minute period and newer machines have proven to boot into the network a lot faster than these older ones and that's just common knowledge you know the older in the sheen gets the slower it gets and so when we have these two times exceeding this fifteen minute mark it's just getting to the point of what is the point it's just cutting into too much class time and these computers should not take any more than five minutes availability is another big problem  at the high school there are not enough machines to fit the needs of people now doesn't help when everyone's cramming to do a project at the last minute but you know even just trying to schedule a lab teachers will not fight necessarily but they will try and get into the computer labs whenever they can because there aren't that many of them and so it's and it doesn't help when the machines take too long to log and that students have to go to another machine or if the machine itself is broken so we need newer and more reliable machines that the students are able to use and then again these machines have low raw ability and that reliability has been affecting everyone if the networks down students can't access their files and as proposed in the finance committee about the virtual desktop it is a great idea in practice and for light use but as as chase said some of the programs we use the high school require so much processing power and that if everyone were to be using it there's no way that our virtual server here would work and then also if the virtual server here goes down every computer that it's relying upon that will go down as well  so that the proposed idea was to lease computers from a company that every four years this company would come in as part of the lease and replace all of the machines and upgrade them and any time there be a problem if a screen is broken keyboards not working or something of that nature they would come in and replace it as part of the lease and so leasing option or leasing alternative instead of buying all new computers completely would be a much cheaper and much more efficient route  are high school and also not learning about the newer forms of technology that are at the current world is using we're using software we're using microsoft office two thousand and seven we're now on office two thousand and thirteen students are expected to know how to use this kind of software and there's as greg will mentioned there's so much software we use at the high school that's just no longer being used by the real world and that creates a real problem we have online classes at the high school that are trying to teach students to be ready for college and to teach them you know this is how you learn in college to online classes some of your classes will be that way and we there's no point in having an online class if the computers are taking you know if they're not reliable if they're cutting into class time or if they're not having the programs that the real world uses  really does create a problem and then lastly it's important for our students to learn these new forms of technology as i said so that they can exceed in the future and so many studies have proven that girls that fall behind technologically will fall behind academically because they cannot compete with these other schools and so the leasing program will really help with this leasing program will allow us to get newer machines more frequently and it will be a much cheaper alternative than having to buy them in bulk as we have in the past thank you allen ik and i am here to talk about some of the software issues that currently face the high school the can the vast majority of the computers in the high school are running windows x p which is going on it twelfth birthday this spring and on its twelfth birthday and spring of twenty fourteen every computer in the district will essentially expire because microsoft will no longer be fixing security issues with the software so if a devious hacker or somebody wanted and found a hole in windows x p microsoft would say tough luck so and then the news that the students are being taught old skills skills that no one uses and nobody cares about because they are that old students are going to be expected to know how to use windows eight and windows seven which are the not even the newest versions of windows but that is the industry standard currently and the graduating class of two thousand and thirteen is also going to be know how to use office two thousand and thirteen which is the new or the newest version of microsoft office word powerpoint and excel another thing another software issue that currently faces the school district is the adobe products which use ado we the photography classes use adobe photoshop which is a very resource intensive program and the computers that are there it cannot handle the workload that these programs require if we do not do something about these computers now worse things will happen and eventually some computers might not even turn on because they are just too slow and simply cannot handle it and without and this leasing program provides the perfect opportunity to fix this growing problem and if you don't and if you plan you fail to speak receiving but there was just miscommunication and so that's why he's on on there but of course we're responsive to your you're signing up i'm really happy to have you absolutely and thank you for saying again and again i especially appreciate of of both of you for speaking to me district trying to understand certain procedural aspects of how the district is handling events that occurred within our health to things that i don't know necessarily if it's a recommendation or if it's kind of an open forum question of trying to truly gain an understanding for what the policies and procedures are for the school district when a child has been exposed to content that is outside the curriculum grade appropriate and so it's exclusively narrowed to this it's not an employee issue it's understanding what level of communication is conveyed to the parents and so that's an open question and so i don't know if there's a policy that we can have a discussion on or if there's facts and circumstances that you can direct me to that i can understand so i'm going to start there ok mr brands that are typically this is not a back and forth andras ation that's not the format for this however that's what i'm prepared to go either way so that however you need to address your concerns to the board everyone understands what they are and as you're doing and are solicitor and our superintendent or any of our minister writers may be able to share some information with you and shed some light on that the typically it won't be a back and forth body case between the board in this talk to the venue so i don't know if that if mr camus could and dr you know i don't necessarily want to go into details of the matter i want to understand that's right ok and so from my perspective as a parent there has been a lack of communication between the district and the parent there was  events that took place that clearly were not in the realm of the curriculum that my child was exposed to and to this day even this morning in conversations that we've had i'm still struggling with the displayed and so i as a parent want to have the ability to have those conversations have those very specific conversations with my son about what he's seeing in class and this is a third grader we're talking about here ok and so i understand what i had done was reach out to the administration  we had a conversation was very helpful we had a series of conversations that reached out to the president of we're here was was nice enough to attempt to understand my issue and attempt to point me in the right direction to which i had a s conversation superintendent the outcome of that conversation i don't have a positive feeling too because i'm still trying to understand here before you what is the policy  i'm trying to gain ground on the second issue that i have is the manner in which the waiver was obtained to interview my son discussing these issues i understand there was a ploy investigation i also understand the waiver that was provided that i have seen and that i have witnessed in no way shape or form categorizes what from a parent's perspective my child was dealing with and i had no appreciation of damage or you could make the argument that it was absolutely reckless to send that home and to have a parent think that we are talking about classroom activities and curriculum when it involves something entirely different so my family signed a waiver because it came home apparently with a host of other issues that had no color attached to it and i understand there's a legal perspective here but from a parent i lost an what point in time to let him know or her know that there's been an issue in the classroom it may not be criminal in nature but it clearly clearly those are rife with the curriculum should be when is that communication made and under what auspice to you as a district gain consent from a parent to interview a child a child in third grade superintendent and i think we will try to get back to discuss that issue you can't discuss here at the school board meeting you do ration issues about procedure and that's what we're here to and that's what we like the residents  timeship to come to us about you know concerning procedures that we can look in had discussed maybe fine knows better help in your case the parents understand what's going on with this situation  absolutely i mean the concept here is look we can't prevent the situation from occurring again but i think we can we can examine how we've handled it and examined did we handle it appropriately and did we handle it with all parties interest being considered clearly you have an employer matter clearly you have to handle that it seems to me in this instance that the parents were the last people to really happy in true communication plan and understanding of the situation again we're still trying to understand and where i have an issue is i took missteps as a parents because i had to make assumptions on the content of what he's what my son saw so i have a real conversation with him because i don't have the facts and circumstances i have a wrong conversation i'm rus period after you've had this opportunity to take a look at this and you know i know there's a lot of legal matters here there's a lot things be considered but if you could then inform the board some changes or try to do a better job of communicating their course the all situations are unique the board realizes that but if you could just let us know whenever that is and you get to that point in time with the situation that would be helpful for the board so we all understand what we can do and when the point that i would absolutely implore you to make is to the extent you send a waiver like that out it's misleading it's absolutely unequivocal poor this action ever has to be taken again think of how the parents are going to receive this and how they're going to feel after you read a release to interview a nine year old boy about circumstances that exist in this class and it's done under the guise of curriculum it's done under the guise of classroom act there might been some maybe some version we can use of course you know there's a legal there's a are there any further questions or comments from the floor mr taylor please state your name and your address for the board taylor the fourth one thirty six golden eagle drive after mr brant that i'm not sure of mines live the life you know what you're going through because i have two kids in the elementary  well so i'm sorry my point that i would like to bring is from the finance committee meeting that happened last week mr belzec was nice enough to send a copy of the reports that were brought on the projector because they were tough to see in there were no copies it was nice to get a chance to be able to go through them and although i have not had enough time to be able to peruse it with the findings background there's two points that i want to make and one is i would look i would want the technology department hopefully over the next month as you finalize their final budget i know they're looking at the preliminary this evening a look at maybe master licensing from the cloud based computing aspect of things i know from my business as a real estate broker the adobe suites you spend ten to twelve dollars and i know that we're not looking at a per user base but you have a lot more that you're look so you're of course going to get cost savings associated with numbers that i'm not sure you access to the entire suite of products yes that also could bring in to a problem of what the internet connections are to each of the buildings etc and the fact that the hardware not may not be so be supportive of it but at the end of the day that stuff you're getting the latest and greatest up to the minute whether it's security releases features that exist except for a and i know that for office that i use on a monthly basis  exchange server which is outlook in addition to adobe i'm not paying more than twenty dollars a month now granted i have no user purchasing power etc and i know that not everybody is on it at one time but you might buy five hundred licenses and you are only a certain number of those based upon the fact on how often it's being used in the in the district per classroom the etc but these people are willing to talk to large institutions in a school district as a business from the standpoint of you're running a fifty three million dollars budget and last time i looked you have purchasing power and so with that being said these kids should not be dealing with this they've come they've spent time one of them i know that's a senior i don't know him personally but for him to still want to be involved in this a month before graduation to me that individual cares about the problems that exist and if you of sixteen hundred computers that are over five years old i have an i phone that's that's two years old and i have had to upgrade because all the securities didn't work and i can no longer use a banking application and i'm just one individual they're trying to you know get prepared for the future and they're going to spend fifteen minutes of a forty one minute classroom setting and are going to wait for a computer to boot up that to me is ludicrous and again it's just an opinion but i wanted to mention that because that totally not right number one and number two is the expwy situation there right because i hope that after the meeting and if that's going to expire in january of two thousand and fourteen i think there's there are three levels and getting ready for it i think the latest  version of the windows eight is coming out in the in in september by september and if they're looking at an x p none of these programs are going to exist anyway i can assure you that the latest version of whether it's internet explorer or any type of  browser that you're looking at one of those things are going to work it expect expiate specially if it expires so i think that those are two major items that maybe what the board and the finance committee in addition to technology are going to look might want to look at the last thing i would like to mention is something on a lighter note and that is a thank you to three people that i've seen in the agenda they're retiring three of which that i had when i graduated while i was in high school between ninety one and ninety five and so i think we should all a special shout out to coach mays this is chest of who is the president of or for the international club which i was president one year and vice president another year in addition to mrs fox from the organ the orchestra those three people if you look at all of their years together you're close to i would say almost probably century of yours th individuals have given to this this township and to me that deserves a round of applause because those are some  different board member at the march meeting regarding the safety issues on the high school field to which mr can best responded and i just wanted to make sure that the public knows about the report that the board received in april on april fifteenth from d m a sports group which is an independent group not affiliated with the architects not affiliated with a turf manufacturer who i won't read the report as is ten pages of it but the field results say the g max test results indicated that the field is within suggested impacts safety limits the data for the head injury criterion is also shown it is within a safe and acceptable range so i just wanted to make sure that the public knows that because many of them were sitting here hearing that the field was potentially not safe and this test advertise for seven when their replacements for mcmurry school library and two in the corridor by h h s t r as outlined in their letter to us dated may seventeenth two thousand and thirteen as attached am going to want to read down through the books i am going to make mention of the title so that it's on camera and folks can know what titles we're looking at if they want to commit to look at the books however the first recommendation is considering motion to approve the following coarsening changes and it peters township middle school language arts department eighth grade literature one to literature foundations literature to enriched to literature studies second a man to a the second is there any discussion mathematics if i forget to say it remind me and i will i did want to make a comment before i make the motion that all of these books are subject to the final curriculum budget that will be approved by us next month so because of the time period that these books have to be believe the books too will be on display and they are separated by content area and whether the text will be used to high school the middle school the elementary and so forth and so it's clear for people to say they do typically follow the agenda list the way they're outline ok ok great and for those that are online courses you endeavor to put something out there to explain the online ones as well ok let's try this consider a motion to approve the following textbooks for initial presentation in mathematics high school algebra two foundations algebra two academic and algebra two honors which use the same textbook a p statistics initial presentation in the science of our going on pleasant valley kindergarden science a closer look at our home pleasant valley first grade science a closer look our hero in pleasant valley second grade science a closer look at our home pleasant valley third grade delta science modules earth moon and sun high school a p chemistry and organic chemistry moved w presentation in social studies elementary pleasant valley in power hill pearson my world social studies program kindergarten my world social studies second grade my world social studies elementary d v m power hill strata logical program first and third grades strata logica elementary pleasant valley in power hill third grade economics for children pittsburgh from the air empowered third grade invented engineer and pioneered in pittsburgh things we've made the war that made america pittsburgh in the state of pennsylvania elementary mcmurry fourth grade u s regions junior geographer atlas if brady united states making a new nation sixth grade my world geography eastern hemisphere middle school seventh and eighth grade u s history covers beginning to eight hundred seventy seven civil war to present the world geography high school academic and honors american history academic and honors economics academic and honors studies american legal system p economics a p government politics and a p psychology so i think it's been moved and we have a second is there any discussion at all in favor  finance mr mcnary there were two hundred as committee meetings held one on april twenty ninth and the other on may thirteenth to review the various components of the journal find and other budgets and as a part of that  the tentative budget will make a series of motions for this and as a reminder that this is going to expense side of us were just the revenue side of it at the final adoption in june the first motion will be to adopt the preliminary final general fund budget for two thousand and thirteen fourteen school year and a minor fifty three million three hundred thirty eight thousand one hundred eighty nine dollars american with the second is there any discussion all in favor i passed as she passes mr belford next motion will be to adopt the tentative technology budget in the amount of one million one hundred thirty thousand four hundred eighty six dollars excluding motion would be to adopt the tentative curriculum budget in the amount of three hundred fifty two thousand twenty four hours and seventy five cents and move to where the second is there any discussion ocean passes mr bowers like next motion will be to adopt the capital projects budget for thirteen fourteen school year and the amount of one million five thirty five nine hundred ninety four second moved away the second is there any district wide priority list of time i did say in and since i have heard quite a bit discussion instead of a building priority list i believe she was correct upon reflection i agree with this of those results that in my opinion and my vote this does not prove to me at this time that it is about most urgency to be spending nine hundred thousand supposedly  she's obviously entitled to her opinion on this and her coach i just wanted to make a few player find statements capital budget projects the capital projects budget when adopted does not mean that we have to spend  money individual projects within that budget would have to be a pork proved by a board vote and that is specifically an outline of the process no argument on whether we're going to do it or not i don't care if it would be a million dollars for something else in there it's just structure but i would say that people tend to call this a football field it's not just a football field choose by our community it's used by most of the other sports at the high school the band in a lot of other issues so that's that's just a statement on what we call to what i would prefer to call the high school stadium not the football field those are of my only two konitz i want to make about that is there any other discussion one other comment or make is that the capital projects budget is a little different than the other parts of the budget which are have to be submitted to p b s or as a cap or project budget is essentially an internal document that if we want to transfer from the but capital reserves into this that can be done by the majority voted board at the time so therefore we do have the flexibility to either spend it not spend it to increase or decrease it so it's more of a formality at this time than anything else for the last time will be motion to renew the food service contract with their mark for one year with the option to extend for one additional year less required to competitively bid by the  schedule the next phase going to a meeting on the tenth and we want to get on a schedule that leaves this week in between time depending on what does the information that the business office and administration receive from the eighty year or other sources ok thank you mrs cradle that's what'll end up being at the adoption in june ok another question procedurally we have a lot of detail on the budget numbers is board members have suggestions about potential ways to reduce that budget should we send them to you so that you can share them with the administration can we sent in a stray ssion copy us the chairperson i think the whole board should be covering suggestions that i just don't want to get into policy i don't have anything this evening but i will say that we do have several policies that need to be addressed and that as soon as we get through some of our meetings that we are having regarding our superintendent search and some of these finance and runs issues we will probably have to schedule a policy meeting some time maybe even throughout the summer which i don't really like to do but maybe toward the end of june or the beginning of june or as soon as we can wrap up some of these other things keep that in your mind complicated and brian and mr guy are in this public and i've been doing most of our work through e mail but the ones that are remaining would like to do be able to sit down and do it in person and this is you know there they've been extremely busy with some unforeseen inventions and the end of the school year so i believe by the time we have our next meeting we get the six that are remaining will be finalized and then every all based groups will have their western area career and technology center mr vest you did send us the information on that on the meeting at the right mean yes if that if it went yes and you received the e mail that has the date on as well which is why i brought that up and should of all receive a date in the time to say that it will be a loss to have them go but i wish them happy retirement thank you i also had one more question on numbers were doctored imperial will there be any impact on the extended school year regarding the summer hours or do those are those all included in what we have here i believe mrs kelly we've had there's we've been discussing that at the administrative level and i believe the majority of conflicts has been worked out and work and we're concerned about building in the ground but i think everything has been pretty much worked out  bananas twice and we have a sack is there any discussion i just had one question number nine date me on the seasonal bus cleaners i don't remember that in the those actually go in june until august timeframe is or it's intended to be open ended or  still it doesn't hurt to walk into it make sure that we don't have more people than we were when the last time it was twenty you do or not well so the question on number ten is obviously if mr bell sic is going to look into it that that will answer my question because he doesn't you don't want to have somebody being paid to drive the bus in the bus extending the hours if cleaning the bus is supposedly part of the driver's job so i don't know what the job is and how it's delineated i just am seconding that agreeing with the idea that mr belzec should look into it and i think the message is that if there is these folks are being approved then it should be payment for work completed not happen go for lapping and i think we could sit you will be ok let me take item number four separate separately and we would ask for approval on this extra duty athletic personnel more an item four and we would add language to that that would read pending receipt of one updated clear