excellence trying to do something a little different many of you know what the administrators and teachers do every day because you can see them every day for a little less transparent and what we do here in santa are one of the things that we're going to try to do every time a celebration of excellence is putting a little bit of up about what the departments and central office or transportation for example services special education putting out celebrating all the work that they do kind of the work of the work behind the work done so we'll start doing that it's a tradition now every month you've been there we're going to try to do is reach or one central office person a month so that you get to match a name to a face and know a little bit about what what they do you're to see that we are there's going to a little bit of overlap in terms of responsibilities if you're not going to want everybody to come back every month so that you can actually see it through our staff we're going to see they are a lot of shared responsibilities and one of the things that we're trying to do have shelley go ahead and present the celebration of excellence with a new addition excellence in character it evening everyone i just want to give you a brief overview of my major responsibilities and roles relate to curriculum which encompasses all subjects in great skated twelve critical and tells not only the content of course it also includes the materials used in the course along with the instructional strategies and assessments that are developed to engage the students in learning this umbrella of christian women compass is everything from college gone wrong meant summer program common assessments selection of textbooks curriculum mapping and the development of the curriculum budget and the annual publication of this a newsletter or aka the curriculum instruction in assessment tonight you will notice on the school board agenda components of the curriculum development with the new course proposals and the new name change in addition to the program an eighth grade literature is being proposed with the pro bowl of a new novel for this spring at this time a education committee or p a course standards will be discussed this slide depicts the other responsibilities that fall under the realm of the assistant superintendent curriculum the you may not be aware of such as a comprehensive plan which is replace a strategic plan the district is waiting for final approval of a comprehensive plan that was submitted this past november imagination celebration is the celebration of arts in the district the district department works collaboratively with the administrative team in the development of the in service training for staff during the instructional team meetings time is spent with the principals to review curriculum related topics we quest for excused absences intel signing the request for excused absences when students are absent due to an educational trip accident reports are repeated and find that up with these reports are collected on the number of accidents location of accidents and injuries involved next time we have this questions and comments from the floor and under these guidelines if you'll please step to the podium and state your name address and this is governed under the school district policy thirteen twelve moving on then there would be an opportunity to let the end of the meeting if there's anything regarding to agenda items they want to have anything under old business we go that extra mile and every one of them said yes we really think that there will be a marketplace that kids want to do the norm and in fact that we may in fact have the opportunity to do something that's not only beneficial to stop problems that we have our advance but in fact be able to start teaching some of those social mores we've seen the last our society day felt were you know not using social graces i don't know what with two five ten or so all six hundred of them i wasn't there saying you know i believe there is a way to handle this situation we're talking about the it's a great idea i think will it work i'd be curious to see i'm ok with i was here with a survey going out you know if that's something the administration has time to do that spoke to you i give those kids credit they were very respectful to you at the high school when you spoke to them that they you know they obviously felt that they you know i'd be respectful to you and good for them because that's  not sit well with me and it never will my son wasn't there but there were six hundred kids that were going to open the doors and the kids out on the street on a winter night and one half of them don't cry i just can't cause a lot of problems but i think we do have to seriously think about it i mean because this is not a school sponsored dance it was another group who was doing it outside group who was doing all the chaperoning aside from you as a volunteer and aside from the volunteer the high school principal on to assistant principals i mean i think to get to the point where we have to say to outside groups i'm sorry you can't use our facilities because you're not supervising the six hundred kids there appropriately so i think we have several sides of this issue of what the procedure should be and i think that's something that dr french's new working on that i also want to add that i feel that  know we have great children who are supported by great families and lots of volunteers with wonderful activities there's always room for improvement and that's where we put it back in the hands of the administrators and the student leaders and the students themselves to figure out we solve a problem that happened and they're working hard right now to do that and they will come back with recommendations i can certainly put this is something that we can something that since may not have thought about dance lessons or put it back to them i know enough about children to know that if they don't want to do it and they don't believe it they're not going to do it but if they want to do it a practice things can happen that will put it back to their level leadership in the students there to decide this is something that they would like to do i have complete confidence in moving smith yes i have some other new business on an entirely different subject has to do with air quality in our buildings i know that there there is the distinct possibility we had our meeting with the town council a couple weeks ago and we were told at that time that drilling into the marcellus shale is going to happen in peters township at some point in time and a concern that i have and that's why i'm bringing it up to the board that there are problems with not only water quality but air quality we don't know where exactly the first wells will be drilled but i think i have been in touch with a group who is in a collaborative effort with karnit carnegie mellon university they have small air quality monitoring devices that they have big given the grant that they will loaned to the school for a certain amount of time a month or two allow us to take their quality readings in our schools and then they take them back again and then at the point in time when the drilling starts then we'll put them back into the school and they can just in time and if there are any changes and i know there are people in town who are very strongly in favor of drilling in the economic advantage it gives to them and there are people who are opposed to it but i'm not taking the either side on that i'm just saying we as guardians of the health and welfare of our students certainly should be able to monitor the air quality in our buildings so if the board is interested in doing this i would recommend to bill that at another buildings and grounds meeting he would be willing to put these people on the agenda i spoke to them today they said they would come it would be able to give us some information on how this would happen when there's any interest this is met with this be a part of a research study and i realize you're saying that they were blown us this for taking it readings now and that when it happens that drilling comes but i also know that universities get grants grants for reasons and most of the research as what we've done research and other stringent requirements and authorizations that need to go into doing research especially when it comes to young children as simple as their quality might seem to you and i i know it is one of the risk areas because children are involved so i'm just wondering if this institution and organization would be using the data for more than just informing us it would be research based honestly can't answer that i know they told me today that they are doing this in conjunction with carnegie mellon so it's very possible that it is they said they were field testing but i think that that's the kind of question you could ask when they would come into the buildings and grounds meeting they would give this presentation you could ask them because they said no i'm sorry and theory i mean i'm all for making sure we monitor our student safety both in water and air but again this is an issue i think that we have to be very careful because to have our five thousand students in a research study based on here boy opens us up to some issues like this and i don't know that the students are involved they're only measuring the air they are taking measures but if they're to building they would be part of well it's a good it's a good question i'm sorry i don't have the answer the other new business ok we do want to comment that before the meeting this evening we had an executive session that was regarding litigation and some personnel issues also want to take the opportunity that are to say that on the eighth of february we had a goal setting meeting on a saturday morning and the board members and the staff were here and it was a very productive morning a lot accomplished and we're looking forward to the risaldar results that are going to come out as we  for the minutes for the regular meeting under western area i have one correction from our report it says it says she stated she had the opportunity to tour with mr mc it's just that they had put in mr macmurray and i toured with congressman tim murphy she couldn't hear me on that tape where was i that was on the number one under the approval of the minutes and for the regular page one zero two i'm sorry under the board meeting minutes page one  for the try to do to every year keep its players so this is a part of a long term plan of rotating every so often and they've in historically they've done analysis on how long the bus last and they use each and then they rotate them in a found an education committee meeting was held on january thirteenth there are several new courses name changes and one school supplemental text the first section is new forces suggesting case since we are in college and they would not have the ok the fine arts department will have an art history course that will be a semester course mathematics department will have algebra one  the middle school new force recommendation consider a motion to approve the family new courses in the peters township middle school for two thousand and fourteen two thousand and fifteen school year e c i t which i believe is business curricula cision such as this and again respecting your opinion mr merrill curricular decisions should be paid by people who have training in curriculum and to make the assessment that because you read a book and you feel that it's for the high school again having a great appreciation for your ability using your knowledge i'm going to defer to our curriculum experts and i think this board should do likewise i don't think we should get into the practice where board members should be evaluated curriculum it's its  correctness for the level it's being prescribed i think it's a dangerous slope because then you can put that on every single thing we do curriculum and i would just argue being married to one who does this on a regular basis that it's not as simple as reading a book and make an evaluation on its content and i'm not trying to be critical of your evaluation of it i'm just saying i think this is a slippery slope that we're going to start going down if this happens all the time because by asking for five board members to look at a the item eight it anyone have any other discussion they like to bring up ask me do to step in sophia i can answer your questions if anything comes up but what i put together with her just a summary of some highlights within the report i want to touch on sort of put them on one page somewhere on flipping through the pages they ought report itself the page numbers that are to the right  there are they actually pages in the auto report so you can go back later tonight and make sure all these numbers all tied together to once it was actually in there the first thing you see in our report for the year end of june thirtieth two thousand and thirteen is the independent authors report  format of this report that sure looks a little different than what you've seen in prior years we implemented the clarified standard so the formatting looks a little different breaks down and gives a little more highlight to what the auditors responsibility is the management's responsibility  and still provides our opinion in there and in our opinion in the financial statements is unmodified does state the financial statements are fairly presented in almost every specs in accordance with the only accepted accounting principles that saw in one of the opinions in the financial statements themselves as it relates to the financial statements on page eighteen and there is the balance sheet for your governmental funds you have three governmental funds a general fund a capital project funded debt service fund your fund balance and your general fund  balance is your asset less reliable residual your fund balance is broken into two categories assigned and unassigned assigned is an amount that's been set aside by management for certain for certain items the total assigned from balance seven knowing eight hundred thousand dollars in the simon store for future debt service cost of three million dollars and future increases in employee retirement costs of four point eight knowing then your unassigned fund balance at the end of the years three million three hundred  seventy five thousand dollars i capital project funds money money is in there at the end of the year fund balance of seven point eight million dollars and there's a small amount of eighty dollars in your debt service fun at the end of june also the next day it would be on page twenty in the financial statements the statement your statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance for those same funds your general fund your total revenues for the year were fifty one knowing one hundred fifty nine thousand expenditures forty five knowing six hundred ninety thousand had other financing uses of about four point one million dollars that represents the majority that represents monies that were transferred over to your debt service fund to pay the current debt that was due on the bonds and notes of the district for the year so the net result there is your fund balance actually increased for the year by one point one million three hundred thirty five thousand or thirty one million three hundred thirty four thousand dollars now in your budget that you prepared for the twelve thirteen fiscal year and just a painted a zero increase in your in your fund balance meaning that you budget that your revenues would equal your expenditures for the year and when you look at the next item the revenues in expenditures you can see where those variances were and why the actual fund balance increased the financial statements or schedules in the back on pages fifty three to sixty that breaks down your revenues by local sources federal sources state sources in your expenditures by function and object shows your original budget the just the budget and then the actual numbers those up mt sun a little more detail than what we just looked at and the totals here but overall your total revenues came in over budget to what ninety six thousand dollars which is point six percent of your total budget so as you can see there you're pretty much on target with your revenue side  not that far off when expenses expenditures came in under budget by knowing thirty seven thousand dollars or two percent so therefore that's the reason your fund balance increased revenues and more little more than what you expected expenditures under what you expected so fun balance went up that was the net on proceeds from the two thousand and i believe two thousand and thirteen a thirteen be one of those issues of the three million dollar face to face and on the bonds plus a premium on those bonds that was transferred over to capital projects on for future capital expenditures your debt service fund you did up a bit a bit of activity in that fund you did issue bonds you also refunded issued refund bonds of a twenty four million two hundred fifteen thousand dollars those bonds defeat prior bonds that were outstanding and the details of that transaction is further disclosed in the footnotes on page forty five chose what bars were refunded into fees and discusses the savings on those in the present value savings in the economic gain on that fees and on the other side of that page there is the the other fund that the district does one of the other funds the district does operate the food service on the net change or the change in that position  meaning that the change in the revenues over expenses for the year for the year two thousand and thirteen was a negative thirty five thousand dollars meaning that the expenses exceeded the revenues by that amount and then a comparison to the prior year that amount was ten thousand dollars bet is something that we've seen a number district with the change in the type of meals that have to be served the cost seem to have been going up in a number of districts and revenues have seemed been coming down due to that little bit more can stringent meal plan that you have to serve out there the next section in the financial statements will be the footnotes they provide additional information on the amounts in the financial statement talks about the basis of accounting talks about the different funds it provides details on your  the face value of the par value of the bonds and notes you did pay down and principal two point nine million dollars in principal on the bonds and store in the year excluding any of the defeats and issues are on page forty seven is a foot in regards to the peace plans the public school employees retirement plan obviously i'm sure that's been a bit of a discussion in and all districts and budgets mostly budget time there is a footnote in there that does show the payments that were made by the district into the plan for the last three years just to put it in perspective going back to six thirty eleven district contributed one point four million twelve two million one and this last year three point two million so you can see obviously you know what those costs are going and where they are that's sort of gives you a black and white number there the last section in the financial statements is the single section this section is required because a district does expend over five hundred thousand dollars in federal funds your total federal expenditures were seven hundred  sixteen thousand dollars just over slightly there and the results of the the author of are those federal funds is reported on page sixty eight the one we test one major program during the year or two major programs depending what the requirements are the program we selected this year was the i d f a special education program and the result set a report on their state that there was no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies and controls over that program and no material instances of noncompliance with the results of that idea a program so that's that's all positive obviously from that standpoint that very quickly is the summary of a you know the seventy page report that you have  to be concerned with yes there's a couple items in there one that will be implemented next year as gatsby sixty five gets me stance for the government accounting standards board which i'm sure you're pretty interested in but it's something we have to comply with to stay within gap one of the things will be a change in what an asset a liability is whatever i know it seems silly that you have already but they know what and as a lot of it was i did too so one of the things that was point issuance cost which were previously considered as an asset on the government wide statements is no longer consider an asset so that will be taken off as an asset on your government wide statements the other big statement i believe is ghastly sixty six seven or sixty eight that won't be implemented for your school until fourteen fifteen y fiscal year that deals with pensions and how pension liabilities are going to be reported in your financial statements that statement going to change that part of the liability of the un or the unfunded actual crude liability a piece of that is actually going to reliability per school with the potential negative visibility that that could show i would assume the most of the agencies and so on are familiar with how this affects it i think they are the main with the plan that  dish school district public school districts have is that since it's a car sharing plan that actual crude liability doesn't really show up within the footnotes itself you have to actually go to peter's audit report which is one of the states in the footnotes to see that but i think it's only one of the things that bond ratings agencies going to knowing that that's you know a liability it's a future cost and pain that there was a plan in place to fund that hopefully that's the right plan so we'll buy some of that is research on balance that probably affects that well and that is one of the positives you have is you do have believe it's four point eight million set aside for future increases in cost too so that would be something that would look at and say it's a positive step you know peter stacia school district has taken to help fund been articulated and mr bell that correct me if i'm wrong but beyond assigned amount of three point three thousand five million goes towards the accounting number of a maximum of five percent of your budget that the state requires those are back caps without what we carry as a fund balance you're going to mention about the management or i can if you want but if but if you have to go right ahead and i'll just going to point out to the rest of the board there was only two real issues that were cited one of them is credit card usage and policies and procedures and dr french is well aware of i sure going to get that taken care of and then the other one is the timely deposits of activity feeds most of those activities come in the form of cash and there was just some concern about the timeliness of that being deposited and not hanging on to comes underneath the fact of that change and so i commend mr carey and those on the board previous board for making those wise decisions otherwise you would not see a positive bottom line this year so i just note to the board that that was a very good those are policies to replace current policies and we want to do them in a factual room late material so there will be one more policy committee meeting with another batch of policies and then we will come on  first read for those we also discussed a proposed policy that's on her second reading for tonight policy fifty one twenty seven graduation requirement  limitation and the requirement for a speech class and the last committee so i would like to move to divide the question into two parts as follows w to consider a motion to approve the second reading and adoption of policy fifty one twenty seven as it relates to all changes except deal in the nation of speech as a required course for graduation first motion would be to approve the policy fifty one forty seven with all changes except the elimination of the speeches or wire for us and then motion to approve approve the policy with everything except the elimination of the speech from fire and everyone gets to vote yes or no and then only as it relates to the speech so that both are as it relates to all changes except the elimination of speech as required course for graduate second ok so this motion if you vote no to say yes we're going to prove everything except the speech component which we will vote on next correct and this will be a roll call she's made it's very difficult be to approve the second reading and option a policy fifty one twenty seven as it relates to the elimination of speech as a fire of course from gradual i got it ok and  interfered with students ability to take other courses that were in that student's life pursuit as an optional course he would have had the flexibility to take that course of another time or not to take it all there really is a coddling of students who haven't significant amount of outside public speaking experience whether forensics debate national history a whatever hand have substantially less to gain from the course than many students there are students who find public speaking totally paralyzing and concentrating  experiences into a single porters could be a devastating emotional experience whereas in bed english skill sets in other courses it maybe is that skill acquisition should be sprinkled throughout the student's high school career there are students who desperately need to take speech and i know that there are parents who have avoided or have appreciated the fact that they don't have to instruct their child to take speech because they need it as a life skill i think there are many benefits to eliminating it as a graduation requirement and it's time for parents to step up if their child meets the life skills they need to tell their child they need to take the class a has sent out information to school districts saying that it took such an extraordinary amount of time for administrative years to get that information and put it in the form because you can go to blown audit of that as opposed to me reporting notify the students and parents handle that this is being done by mail and really we would have to post a notice on each school bus and school vehicle giving people notice that i state of the state in his call to reform pension program for teachers and how the legislature is not acting on this and so i would encourage the community members and everyone to contact their local representative and state government because this issue as we all know affects the school district and the school board significantly in a financial way and the state legislation needs to take action to deal with this and it just keeps getting kicked down the road down the road and so you know when you consider a significant portion of our of our expenses come there i would occur as a community to take action and contact the local representatives because at the end of the day just school board all school boards are going to have to deal with this going down the road and what the article was saying today is the  as part of their clinical requirements the practical nursing students are required to spend one day in an elementary school and one day in the high school to observe a school nurse and this observation is being done here in piers township thanks to dr french and all the districts here in washington county and i'd just like to tell her thank you for being a part of this and six students from western area are going to be coming to our schools between march and july and i think this is a good collaborative effort with our western area and i just wanted to let you know about that thank you and in full disclosure i have the entertain someone else to make this motion our number eleven regarding the budget i can make some comments on i will consider a motion to approve the twenty fourteen fifteen intermediate unit one general operation budget in the amount of five hundred forty nine thousand five hundred twenty two dollars with peters township school district's contribution sixty four thousand nine hundred eighty seven dollars and ninety two cents this represents an eight thousand and forty four dollar and seventy one cent decrease in the budget from the twenty thirteen twenty fourteen school year with a second thank you well one comment on this is the general fund is a very small part of the intermediate unit the entire budget when you throw in all the governmental funds another is probably around fifty sixty million the general fund used to be funded by the state which was cut out several years ago so now it is purely funded by  es we called enterprise type activities there they go out and they have patton which is a teaching organization and some other ones that actually raised money and as a result of doing this for almost seventeen years they've not actually increased the overall general fund budget they've actually made it up as you see this year ours has gone down because we're allocated on a student by student basis so over the years i've been very impressed with the intermediate unit supports that we offer examples of the we don't have to employ certain groups because we can because sharing we are also part of consortium for our financial benefit so it's a wide range from a direct service to resource sharing even to educational placements where the convention happens once a year and that's the next time you see and what that entails is that there's twenty five school districts that comprise the you and once a year there's what they call convention which is a meeting of all the directors from each of those and thirteen board members are elected from the twenty five school districts and that's a three year term at this time is the opportunity for questions in common period on agenda items under the same guidelines as before good evening my name is sandra winslow i am the president of the chair boosters and with respect to the new business that was discussed tonight i just have something that i'd like to advise the board first there's no doubt snowball dance has been acts of fundraisers at the chair boosters have put on for many many years i have actually participated in last four dances it is the intense and it continues to be our tent that we promote a safe as well as fun dance for all the students to enjoy with respect to the decisions that were made that evening i do not believe that the boosters had any authority nor duty to trump any of the decisions made dr frank with respect to the meeting that you talked about with the administration i would just request that possibly a member of the chair booster board be present as well as to assist in writing and implementing any policies or site if there ed and because this is a decision regarding boost organisations and fundraisers in general we may possibly want to open that up to the other chair booster i'm sorry the other groups as well anyone else moving on any correspondence anywhere like to share ok no not since we had several meetings we needed to get on a schedule ok all right we still have two was a discussion on the goals that we discussed on the eight which we could piggyback that on some other evening or put it on maybe the third in attendance then and see if there's any other personal items that we might want to setting goals goal setting would be a public meeting or so i would be closed all the other ones are open not yes because of public record that