the i do i want to just share some good news that was recently published about the district in the allegheny institute for public policy as one of their news briefs they made the comment  after some research rating that our school district has one of the best education values in the state if not the best in terms of outcomes for dollars expended and what i want to do is just as thank the board for the sound fiscal management and thank our staff and community for having such high standards for educational excellence  academic graduation the middle school math counting members above who finished first in the competition at washington and jefferson college on february seventh three members of the team also earn top marks in the individual competition as well students who are organized by teacher kristin mckeon well now compete at the state competition on march twenty eighth third grade students of pleasant valley were treated to some hands on experience during their science unit on the rock cycle the students receive their rock and mineral kids from the pittsburgh chapter of the society for mining metallurgy and exploration every fourth marks the one hundredth day of school in peter's township and elementary students marked the occasion with classroom events and games that centered around the number one hundred students and staff about our hill were also encouraged to wear one hundred items of their choice that day bringing out the creativity in everyone this month but murray elementary held their annual career fair with more than twenty professional sharing information about their careers with the students professions included engineers scientists military professionals a pest therapist and therapy dogs a local sportscaster a diamond specialist and more the event is organized by counselors brenda growing and stephanie ali excellence in the arts to mark your calendars for the upcoming spring musicals at peter's township high school and peters township middle school as well shows with their dates and times are listed above and ticket information may be found on the district website excellence and athletics congratulations to the eight outstanding student athletes above these students signed letters of intent this month to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level february marked a random act of kindness week and pleasant valley students and staff were challenge to perform acts of kindness throughout the week and each act was rewarded with a warm fuzzy pompom that represented the warm fuzzy feeling we get when we're kind that the end of the week all the pompoms were collected in the library as a visual of how kindness spreads national honor society sponsored the district's annual tournament between the faculty members of each building and this year the game was volleyball once again the middle school left with the trophy but the real winner was the make a wish foundation scholarship fund the total donation of nearly thirty five hundred dollars raised at the event january thirtieth mark a second annual middle school dances on to raise money for st jude research hospital students and staff have been working hard to raise money over the past month with a total of twelve thousand dollars to be raised with more than one hundred forty dancers participating they were able to easily meet their goal with a grand total of more than nineteen thousand dollars in all teachers stephanie van balan and liz plato led the team of organizers excellence and leadership congratulation to the staff members above who oversee video grants from the peters township education foundation this year thanks to the support of our school one community the foundation was able to donate more than ten thousand dollars to the schools through this program last week the high school counseling department hosted a college planning night to share information with parents who students about the college admissions process presented included mission counselors from area universities and topics ranged from writing a quality college essay to the nuts and bolts of this year the dishes will once again be participating in the peters township dead console park with the washington while doing this partnership between the township of commerce and the district also serves as a fundraiser for these organizations with the district portions of porn the education this time is your opportunity for questions and comments from the public or the formal guidelines stepping up to the podium podium in your name and address held on january twentieth and the twenty sixth and then again immediately preceding this meeting we also had a public meeting with the council on february second to discuss items of joined told business we did have one item and does this need a motion or looks like it's just information as long as we recognize the acceptance of the approval letters from p d and plank on in our minutes we can just leave the mess as it has a bit there so that's all you need is that we recognise that in the any other old business anyone has they like to bring up pay moving on to new business we have our monthly motion to suspend policy ninety three sixty eight seconds is for moon a second any discussion on favor next item is under business office and we have a number of items under there for approval do we have a motion with a second it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion approve an unpaid five day suspension for an employee number zero to fourteen fifteen recommendation approved an unpaid one day suspension for employee zero three fourteen fifteen ok mrs smith education ye smith so today there have been the final exam committee has met on two occasions and we have a great turnout for committee members are thirty eight committee members is made up of parents teachers administrators and school board members and  the committee is wrestling with three main questions the three questions are how should final exams be weighted comprehensive assessments impact final grades and how should final grades be determined and where the this committee is right now is  they're running different scenarios not on past graduates to going back and looking at all of the former records and running all the scenarios that they're coming out with in terms of potential changes to see how those changes would have impact student outcomes just to make sure that there might not be any that make sure there's no unintended consequences of the would recommend changes so they're at this point right now where again they're just doing running some analysis of potential changes and we anticipate information back from from this committee within the next month unable to be with us he's out of town so i will make a recommendation to somebody else would be kind of to make the motion first i these three motions already relate to the preliminary budget which we were adopting early this the first will be to adopt the preliminary general fund badgett for the fifteen sixteen school year any amount of sixty million four hundred fifty nine thousand four hundred forty six dollars the final budget must be adopted prior to june thirtieth so ok all in favor adopting this place ai and a post motion carried second motion will be to adopt a tentative fifteen sixteen technology budget in the amount of one million nine hundred thousand three hundred eighty four dollars and again this budget will be adopted prior to june thirtieth two thousand and fifteen this budget is included in general fund budget for moved so up in a second place has been fifteen sixteen curriculum budget name on a four hundred thirty one thousand five hundred forty dollars this budget will also be included adopted prior to june thirtieth and is included in the general fund budget so moved so that moved  we were we started was with the assumption that we keeping on keeping steady state in the curriculum budget so the work that we have right the estimate that you have right now is the worst case scenario which is carrying over from last year and last year we had a significant math adoption we're looking at revisions this year and we're working the staff is working with teachers and administrators to figure out how what's the best way to approach that we're not anticipating a significant program adoptions we will come forward the education committee to talk about some of the language arts that we have smaller ticket items so i'm not into supporting that we're going to see any significant increases in this budget  policies that are listed on the agenda were discussed at committee and there for the first reads as most of you know we are doing a rewrite of all of our policies so many of the will not show up for a second read which makes them in forcible and till probably the june meeting several of them that especially those that relate to the new clearance policies and in particular the student wellness policy will go up for a second read next month i wanted to highlight just several minor things that constituted changes from what was discussed at the committee level what happens after our committee meetings is that we make all the changes that are recommended and then we send them off to either our solicitor and or r p s be a policy representative to review to see whether they feel any additional changes need to be made there was one and three zero four and that jest our language had the superintendent being able to grant provisional employment if there was no significant findings and the p s p a representative requested that we just include in accordance with state law because there were some other instances where you might  permit provisional employment so that changed from committee also in the child abuse policy eight o six we added a definition or clarified the definition of a board approved volunteer just again for clarification purposes it was not substantive and those were the only changes on there i just wanted to make a note and this relates to policy nine sixteen is for those of you who do end up having to get your f b i clearance they just reduce the price from twenty eight dollars and seventy five cents to twenty seven dollars so you will save a dollar and seventy five cents goes policies are on for free first read and i would ask the board if they have any other comments or questions or change suggested changes it changes sponsoring legislative forums which are basically online webinars where they have several legislators and a p s be a moderator who ask questions and directs the conversation the next one is on feb twenty third at five pm and you're able to set that link up at home so i wanted to let you know i tuned in for the last one that was held in january and it was interesting they discussed the basic education funding formula and pension reform and  interesting tidbit of information one of the gentleman was actually on the basic education finding commission and he indicated that the finding commission their report doesn't have to be back until june to the gov they want to get their recommendations in before june in the hopes that it would could affect the distribution of monies in this budget year and they talked about wanting to narrow down factors that they've been crisscrossing the state and asking people what factors should we consider and they want to try and narrow that to about ten to try and accomplish a fair distribution of monies they all thought that they'd probably start with the number of students and then look at poverty levels english  language learners in their districts and those are some of the things that they mentioned as being more probable than not that would be included in that funding formula the other interesting thing on pension  which i was very disappointed because one legislator was on the education committee made the comment that he did not believe that pension reform or the pension was at a crisis at this point  and you could tell that they don't agree because then the republican caucus member indicated that that was their number one priority so when pressed and asked did they feel like there would be legislative reform of pension past this year that just was sort of will we could see something but it might not be comprehensive and then lastly the one interesting thing they talked about was the best way to work with the legislators and some recommendations that i thought were good was first do your homework before talking to them know what you're asking for and what their position is they wanted you to establish a relationship with them before you actually need them which is always would be a good practice but also they talked about wanting to see some grassroots efforts and some comments they talked about the last time a p s p a web an ark heard on pension reform and the legislator or only had two personal emails from constituents on that particular  topic they noted that a lot of times they will receive the mass letters i know a lobbying organizations create the mass letter you just sign it and send it to them and they said although they keep track of those it's council about two weeks ago was kind enough to allow them to come and talk a little bit with the parents about their programs which was a good thing and the parents were very receptive of that and last week they came to our college fair up at the high school and that was that was a good thing also so i've actually been the motivator to try to get them to come out more and because of that i've had parents ask me i do want to tell you what programs western area has just to remind you mind us all they have autumn a can excursion tree childcare collision repair cosmetology call unary arts electrical occupations apprenticeship the next meeting is actually next wednesday on the twenty fifth i cannot go in my alternate cannot go so if anybody is interested in attending that please let me know and that concludes my  i always forget that word the every little bit here we go again you all of my reports first i want to say if you know ron goes to all of these meetings the one thing i did notice is very few board members go to these meetings with these a superintendent so we got to commend you ron and commend our board for attending this as the meetings because i noticed there are quite a few board members that were not there so i did have to say that  also our speaker was i tended with dr french and our speaker was ira weiss who's our solicitor and jocelyn was there also and let's see i'm not going to give a detailed explanation like lisa did because i'm not a lawyer but i will tell you it was talking on hiring to firing and employment requirements an educator discipline which was actually pretty interesting and the discussion covered certain aspects of employee discipline including mandatory reporting and strategies for effective discipline and mr weiss likes to talk so it was a long talk but it was very  under the intermediate unit the budget for the intermediate unit is approved by you to the subordinate districts prior to being approved by the intermediate unit and what we have is our portion of the general fund for the intermediate unit this is i believe its eighteenth year that the unit has not increased its overall allocation of the districts i think ours went on a thousand dollars or so this year so they'd have had a lot struggle with trying to keep funding with it being reduced i to keep outside income coming in to keep the allocation to the districts reasonable so if we could have a motion to approve the intermediate allocation to the district this year there is a discussion any public comment on that ok all in favor say aye plus i motion carried by the annual intermediate unit convention is the twenty fourth which will be at the hilton garden inn south point california is where they usually have and it's under renovation is here the speaker will be rocky bleier which should be an interesting evening that night if anyone's interested still going on and that concludes my report requesting action on extra duty personnel and programs items number one through four through the motion one ok i have a question about number two the high school band that occurred last week it did so why are we improving it today we're proving it today because it was not reported in a timely manner and the only decision we had was to not allow the students to go which certainly would not be something that i would recommend so year this is the third time this happened and we talk about it when it happens in my request somebody needs to be held accountable and it looks like no one's ever held accountable and we so i so it just defeats the purpose of what we're doing here as far as approving things prior to so why do we bother if they're slipping through the cracks and they're still going and i don't want i don't want this to affect the children but somebody at the ministry of level steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again but one of the things we always end up just like you would mention were in there just the dilemma i never want to deprive a child of being able to go on an opportunity but it seems like so is the band i mean it's this is  forgiveness the forgiveness kind of ends when it already happens and we have to vote on it and that's where this with this this one fell in but there are certain form that we fill out so that we do that we can go through it here to make sure that we have appropriate subtile ridge to make sure that we have funding to just also verify that it is a safe trip is an appropriate trip and it goes through two levels over here and then my secretary puts it on the agenda we need about it as a team are at our meetings so there is a pretty thorough process and it is frustrating when they don't go through that process because we have so many other people who do put it through that process and we g professional practice and we go through use of this is anybody turning in paperwork we hold people accountable for training grades and on time for all of those things and we go through you know not speaking directly this case you can go through different  example serious misconduct so then i guess there's no no motivation for people to do with the media there is you know you never want to violate the rule of really upsetting the superintendent and i be honest with you excuse me is there a timeline stablished for turning these things in and are these things like the band in the choir in that are they selected at a later point of time and this is sort of a last minute kind of thing to in fact put these people into these these positions no no yes there is it there is a time line we send that reminders but i'll give you an example if you look at the wrestling team there are a number of these things on here that are in the we don't even know if we're going to go you just know the events going to happen so we don't know if we're going to stand by we have fantastic swimmers in wrestlers i know we're going to be sending people to these events but we the staff will put in to get approval for these events without even knowing we have children qualified and in that case that's really what should happen so the dollar amount is then put in whenever the number of students come out when we do a worst case scenario  actually putting it on because i know that there would be especially when and when this occurs and it is of no fault of your own that it would be very easy just to you know squeeze your eyes roll tide and forget to put it on so i want to thank you for putting it on me i just wanted to just bring it to the attention again and i'm not taking it out of no no i want second so yes this is not this is not about you because i know it's not you the last person who we trying to do that was some of the fundraisers because that we can do a little bit in advance we we could we could try to do that the only downside of that then it's not ready in a board member's mind because sometimes it's helpful to have these on an agenda knowing their upcoming film you know i think in that i think in this case i do believe that we did we do have structures in place and will not see  i think that we will have in this particular case some of those will be corrected we will not i will not be ringing you for any anything retroactive which with regard to this so i don't want to change the procedure because we have one or you know one or two outliers and there are other there are two other pieces to that and that is that all of these kinds of activities the statistics calculus sat on the first of july we know exactly when they're going to be the most part we know where they're going to be and this doesn't jump up and bite you now occasionally you know a child will qualify for special events or some special competition or something that's different i get that this same same with history day there's no excuse for history to not being on here we know perfectly well that this was in march in the sense in may and this means and you can i bring up another issue yes during the presentation tonight we heard that some of our students qualified for the state math competition in march we funding it it's not in here if they're qualified for the state math competition it's a march in march so this one i do know it's it's after the day after our after the board ok so it's already on the march agenda ok that's what i just wondered because les said trying they're good with numbers thing i would tell you we have the power and i don't know the answer to this question do we have the praga to say look this stuff happens the sponsor doesn't get his expenses covered i would probably have the solicitor answer that offline it would get his attention yes it's just something i think the solicitor will consider all yeah i think it's something that's more appropriately discussed as a personal item which would be executive session but  as far as jolly speaking you couldn't compel an employee to do something for their work and not cover their expenses so i mean you can make decisions about who companies your students on your trips i mean you can make changes to who would accompany a student trip but if you're talking about an individual i think it's something that's more appropriately discussed and executive session although we already make decisions about not covering all the expenses for a person who's an employee who's going on a trip so we have some latitude at least that we know of we do we have very clear ministry regulations about what we're covering and what we're not covering because yes you know that to get a check who could write that into an and and two don't you think like the realty it's upon us and not speaking about this particular individual or not by i know they come in wind big swee sometimes where were we are approving extra duty positions but isn't that where essentially the teeth law is in that you know you need you know majority vote to get put into an extra duty position nobody is just appointing him them we actually vote if they get those particular things so maybe that's where and if we continue to see a particular person or group doing their you know as long as there's an alternative person who wants that position is it would harm the kids in you might have to wait till the next time you're proving it but i also would like to point out that this is been a rare occasion that we have had these even though did not pass or they passed i'm sorry and so they next motion would be to see we already have that on the floor so we can go ahead and do that so we have number two the first we we will do that we were just deciding how we're going to vote on it so ok so i just time is discussion on that one item i i do have an issue is because it's come up before but the problem is if we vote it down what do we do with this money and i need to and also i thinks some of this was it was for lodging for the students also that's i mean i don't i guess you don't foretell how you're going to vote five is this logistically who is this being paid to do you know is this on a credit card or a school sends a check there that's going to put you on the spot and probably you know it's simply a little different it was actually being reimbursed to an individual as opposed to this if it is a that i can remember lynn was saying we never voted against it before turning in your updated bylaws that's prospect if everybody had a heads up everybody knew ok fine this is it there are no more exceptions i'm not sure given our history in the past i completely agree i'm annoyed too but i'm not sure that we can suddenly make a ruling that we perhaps didn't give an a good enough heads up but dr frank you said you did address this before more in the future they will be voted down and all costs will have to be reimbursed to the district by the participant and if we give a heads up that it not sure that transmitted across the speaker but i think that would be an appropriate course of action here just one thing to i would know that giving someone who is going to participate in the event reasonable notice that their cost may not be reimbursed if it is not already been approved by the board is something that i would suggest if that work going to occur that that way if somebody participated in a in the event knowing that it had already been approved there reasonably incurring that risk of not receiving reimbursement whereas in this case they probably had no idea that it wasn't that it wasn't improved i mean the individual families of families i don't like i don't want this to come out of families and that would be fair to the children because they're not responsible for turning into people or the demi be something we would be faced with is that if in this case say that was done paid by a student and the reimbursement would go to them as opposed to the person who is policy possibly culpable for making the issue that would be something we may have to address in the future if we do the doctor french during your investigation of this incident has was the paperwork turned in but just delayed along the process or was it just not turned in properly it was not turned in a timely down and not approved activities and just said they cannot happen if they did it didn't have a serious negative impact on children like for example who is going to be a fundraiser and say no you don't have it in and we have to push to a different month or have to do this was a case where the administrator called and learned of an activity that was going to happen no paperwork was put in and the difficult decision then was to not allow these children to go in you know in a and again if you have to make that decision the children are going to and knowing that there are going to be consequences but we as a district knew that the paperwork was not turned in but still permitted them to to leave yes yes and i made that and that's why i said i'll take my lumps i made that decision i'd like to talk about this further in in in personnel close personal me and i think something i think you have to think of to not that you can't research it if i voted down and bring it back up and pay in the future but don't you think you also have to look at the policy and the employee manual to say do you even have the ability not to pay now if it's voted down now in research exists so that you know you still have to pay it it's going to come back up again but i you know i don't i'm trying to look for the avoca whole policy and can't find it but i think that's where you think that's what i'm supposed to say when i had a question about something that we already voted on and it's on page eleven and it just relates to the extra duty athletic personnel because sometimes we do get draft forms of the agenda and things show up and then there were moved when we finally and there were there was an extra duty position where someone was missing their clearances so i'm duty these these two people that are waiting for their clearances so they can't participate with the students or the activity or the sport till next month so what we've done in that what we've done in the past as soon as i get them in hand and verifies them that's where you see i put in the week in review there are sometimes from mr guy will request your permission to allow them to start prior to an official board and that's where you'll see we put the person's name what the situation was and why we're requesting that if it would delay the season for example that was my question here because i know that this is a you see you have to for in your weekly review and then i just then people will send me their comments about if that would be ok to put those on retroactive ok so we see so i know in advance if we can do that we that's what we do ok and that provisional language that we talked about today in employment could that have been take up to sixty days that's unreasonable but we just don't unless the board want to decide that we would have people with i just i would not be comfortable now i agree i just don't know how about applied to there and i was just concerned that that i certainly hope not i did have to chuckle that number five was predated by the celebration of excellen i wanted to make a comment on the negotiation that printer costs and because i think it's a wonderful savings for the district so i heard that it may have been mistress when jocks who did that so thank you but also when i saw the usage and the money that we would save on that i was wondering as you look at you know i know you don't want to be the copy police or anything but as you look over the different schools you can clearly see that in certain school school buildings there's a greater percentage of color copies being made than another's and when you realize that are eight and a half cents without respect to you know the paper or the evening you wonder is there a communication glass going out to individuals who make copies because i would never have guessed that the copy that i make at my you know when we own the copier would cost eight and a half cents with out respect to those costs so what i was wondering is if you do make a communication after down to the money comes out of our technology budget and what amcon has done for us is really i'm very grateful for what they've done the work that they did to help us understand what our copying our printing was we currently in a contract with a nother vendor with a significantly higher price what this new contract will allow us to do is it significantly reduce what our cost per page is but not only that will be able to monitor and shape our printing moving forward the idea is to not have as many local printers as we do right now but to really force some of that traffic to even lower cost m s p multifunction of ice i copiers that we have in our teachers lounges libraries the overall goal is to reduce our printer for our printer fleet significantly over the next two years at least thirty percent from what we have right now we have i would say approximately one hundred fifty five local printers in this district and that doesn't account for those that are locally attached and purchased by individual staff members those are the ones that our department supports and we pay for every page that comes out of there it has been communicated to to staff members just exactly how much it currently costs for us to do that printing they've done a reduction but there are also other things that have come up as far as curriculum changes that have also warranted the increase that we have here we don't have a lot of knowledge all we get right now are reports that saying what we used over the past quarter the paper cut software that you see here now being proposed will allow us to see down to the user exactly what we're doing we could put quotas on i shy away from that because we don't want teachers to think that they're stuck in a box not able to do those things we just want to see what we're doing and really learn from what we're doing here i'm big on analytics so any other questions yes do we have a way to track it did i and just understand you saying that we really don't track it down to the user we track it to the printer we track it to the device right now we have no way of doing it that way currently with the proposal that w in front of you we will be able to do that will be able to say we'll be able to find out who's printing what how much and where and actually do some shaping moving forward as well so if we don't want a user to print one hundred copies out of one device we can prevent them from doing that and actually direct them to another device where the cost per page is significantly lower reallocation of resources another one two if you look at some of the spreadsheets that we have in the tech department we notice that there are we're top heavy in certain buildings with color printers as well and that is a significantly higher cost to print out of that to print out of a printer like that also you get you pay for the entire page even if you print a little logo and color it doesn't matter what the coverage is it's just how many pages come out of there and color so we don't have a right now what we're going to be able to do is really look at it in a granular level and i'm sort of surprised that we don't have it when i was teaching we everybody had to come in and print put your four digit code into and they could track it down to number of pages for you and which copier used what color and everything else absolutely now remember that the mannish print service is an entirely different contract from those of the copiers but i understand exactly what you're saying and i was surprised and we're going to be implementing this thing's moving forward what we want what we needed to do is actually find out what our baseline was before sort of put too many changes in place but yes i agree and those are the one of the things that we're going to be putting in place never heard of call printer fleet before that's because it is a fleet we have a significant amount of printers here i miss mimeograph we had a number of students participate in the washington county symphony just this past weekend that they do what they call a side by side where the students come in and play instruments next to  a individual who has played for a long period of time in the orchestra there it was valentine's day so the theme was love but because of the bad weather i'm not sure how many actually made it there so  next next month i would more than happy to submit the names and also for the christmas concert for the washington county symphony had the washington county quar specific people different schools throughout the district  fourteen different districts were representative and we had a few of our students there too but i just wanted to bring that up that our students are stepping out and doing more things than just staying here in the township thank you i did  mention that last monday night we did have a session on board goals and it was a very good session it was a very long refining samoans we had and those will be being presented in the near future for solaces report ok thank you at this time is the opportunity for questions and comments on agenda on does anyone have any correspondence under announcements the one we have so far is february twenty sixth for policy that we did have buildings grounds and education as other nights to schedule so in march if we're going to stick with our and i know i have a policy meeting scheduled for monday by in order to get the policies done by june unless we want to come on a saturday i would need another one in march ok to the thirtieth that a closed or an open meeting it will be open that will be open ok the sixteenth will be a regular meeting twenty third would be education and a thirty s would be policy you know as well be it sixty six