during intermission and  expectations and to rise to all the challenges that we present to them so thank you very much for your leadership would like to congratulate sue smith on her successful bid for reelection and a board member graduations to you i'm behalf of the peterson home to federation of teachers i just want to thank you for your dedication commitment not only to the teachers but to the staff and most importantly our students we appreciate your time and dedication that helps our profession we value the time that you spanned reading returning and answering countless e mails and phone calls all necessary to make the decisions that are so in part i want to thank you for the time and the dedication i truly appreciate it and i appreciate your  appreciation month some of those books are on display tonight if you'd like to take a look at the excellent selections of our librarians as school director she makes some very important decisions considering concerning our children what they will learn who will teach them and and leadership in sports seminar that was given in collaboration with p t s logic department and the p t parks and rec creation department and character counts and i'm on the character counts committee that's why i was involved with this like to thank brian guy or michelle harm from the p t s parks and recreation and dr fraid of for helping plan the seminar and in particular we had two middle school teachers who gave of their time excellently chris kelly in jason minsky and we also had the bethel park coach and christ united methodist pastor chris morgan all three of those people gave of their time without pay and doing an excellent job being in speakers at the high school it was unfortunate that we didn't have a huge turnout for this  fortunately we videotaped it and brian geier is going to have all of our coaches make sure that they do view this and as usual our joe mays came he's our mentor coach and a couple of the baseball coaches came these seminars are going to be put on more frequently brian's going to make sure that they're put on maybe twice a year and that the coaches do he's going to try to get me more mandatory that the coaches come out and that they bring their kids to be able to see these they're not just sports related but focus on life issues that are oftentimes coaches give their own experiences that kids can learn from so look let's look for those in the future and i just wanted to make sure i mention those ok thank you  i'd like to bring ups new business in that i want to mention under our new leadership our president here i think that it's i i think it's very refreshing that we have a new chairman for our committees and also vice chairman under our committees do to tom mr macmurray i think it's nice that we have under our new leadership that we've got a of almost everybody on our board everybody on our board involved in our committees and as a board member i just think it makes us just makes us fifty four dollars per year this position will be pro rated for two thousand and thirteen two thousand and fourteen be funded by the elimination of the drama director and take director for the january play which the high school is no longer all and then i looked further back in our agenda and there was no recommendation to hire someone so is the process ongoing to find someone to fill this position improvements that is to say do we have all this i didn't see the documents that i was a maybe it was a meeting or talk about the meeting but we have a prior to zation of these capital issues in these building issues and these repair issues and while i realize mcmurray has buildings and their needs because i know one of the things that works best in terms of long range planning is having priorities and meeting them one by one because you just knock them off the list and granted we're talking about lots of money here to do these things but i think of a priority list would demonstrate to the community that you know and that they can see it that we're serious about long range planning and not just meeting the need as it arises you know as a single falls off and pushing back on you know we're looking at when we need to replace the whole roof not just one single falls now he has a good target list of what he wants to hit and probably a great question to further expand on that are the ground meeting the fifth but the primary concentration is going to be probably talking about  and at this time mcmurray is actually going to be probably stepping up to the the forefront of our biggest party but i just don't i just want make sure though that with the buildings all the administrators that we have a position list that signals or is number  that we have an education committee meeting on january thirteenth at six thirty pm we focus primarily on keystone exams the p a core standards and a number of new curriculum proposals that were put forth by the administration and we even had a couple of teachers had agreed on i believe all the board members who are unable to attend the meeting received a copy of the powerpoint on the recommendations before us this evening point you to number two on the agenda the recommendation to seek approval for the pennsylvania department of education or to the county court that required back one for exemption allowing increase of the real estate or second second general fund budget for the twenty fourteen fifteen school year and the about a fifty six million nine hundred sixty nine thousand four hundred twenty two dollars so  was if we would be able to have a presentation by the current record technology to say just you know whether it would whether you have an opinion on whether you should purchase or beat having said that if anybody has any particular policies that they have issues where and game for them i asked to look at them before they would come up with that now specific vote so that you're right maybe but i want to say i've changed my opinion on this matter actually replace those one who makes his living in the public's spirit speaking i thought about this issue quite a bit and i teach and there's no more for their meetings so that we're not going to get through because it still passed without the speech requirement because everyone has their own opinion as as to how that could go so i don't see any problem with it going through on a stack of reading like this as long as if i make a motion to buy a case the vote or that's how it's written on the initial jandowae everybody has notice that is as long as you provide for kate because it people disagree so those you know yes for the speech part and i would vote no and it would go through just as i i just wondered clarify to make sure i heard that correctly so the class of two thousand and fifteen will not be required to do a presentation this year they we will consider that their board approved graduation project included the speech class they've already taken and the reflection papers they've done and so they are not required if they want to go forward because this individual student feels they've done a lot of work already they will be given the opportunity to give a presentation  financial aspects and i just wanted to just highlight two of those whining is charter school work farm and it is current legislation in both the state house and the senate on a charter school you understand exe because i actually have walked around the school and i've actually visited all the classrooms out there to to make that more to have you understand what these teens are doing we have one i'm going to tell you where they're all at yes we have one in well the in five in carpentry three in cosmetology two in childcare two in the call assistance and actually to murphy was out there our congressman two weeks ago and i walked around with him and two other board members and that's how i got to know where they all were he was doing his thing i was actually out there talking to our kids so that gave me a reason for going around and seeing the school not that i wasn't kind to him i appreciate it was nice that he came out and got his photo op which was very nice of him i appreciate that but i was able to get to see there are teens out there and say hello to them and also i want to let you know on december twelfth this was really a big deal the benetton foundation gave two hundred eighty thousand dollars to western area and chevron gave one hundred nineteen thousand dollars to western area actually to well to the welding and machine and mechatronics programs  and to the reason to those programs is because they felt that they will better prepare to students for careers in oil and gas fields which obviously are becoming more prevalent because of the mar regions so that was a big deal and because western areas hoping to start well they are going to start in two thousand and fifteen a two year associate degree program which will actually help our high school students in two thousand and fifteen because our students will be able to benefit from taking college courses then which would be fantastic so in the health care energy and manufacturing fields so lots going on in western area and becky's going to be my alternate so she's going to help me out there and that's all thank river i have a question regarding the fund raising aspect there it's their team i have no problem with any of these the concern that i have is that some of these fundraisers especially as they were associated to some of our so i'm questioning the mandatory ness of making athletes or or other groups a part of the activity meaning that if you do not participate in the fundraising aspect of it you can't do the activity and i'm i'm against that so we're going to if i'm going to vote to approve these fund raising activities i want to make sure that going forward we we could visit that issue because i do not feel that it's right to make it mandatory to participate to be able to be a part of the fundraisers i know in my own personal case my son was handed a box of chocolates and and said you have to sell this is a part of being a part of the team and i don't i don't think that's appropriate and so  as a question is there a policy if you do is this is this just a part of the culture is it something that we just accept because i'm not in favor of allowing any of our team or any of our groups to make fund raising as part of participation in any of the activities i'm just looking at the ones we're looking at today software software you know southern softball tournament you know we have to be we have to be aware that there are families in our district that might not have the capacity to participate in the fundraising aspect that should not preclude them from allowing the children to participate in the sport or in the activity but are you saying they should be allowed to go along on the tournaments or some other part of the country even if they have that was my understanding and some of these fundraiser are raising it for a particular purpose for a trip somewhere or something and you have the choice to go back a lot of my kids school for a while but it was you can sell you know x y z whatever it is or your family could just write out a check if you didn't want to hand house on with the selling or you could not participate in that that are going to become pretty example i just participated in the wrestling team taking second virginia duals national tournament down a virginia  the the team was scheduled to go to this tournament by the coach and the booster club because there's not enough money in the uk but it budget to pay for this to fundraise and so i do not believe it's appropriate to tell an athlete who is committed to playing a sport and pays the fee who is out there practicing every day that you can go to a tournament that the school has approved and the put on the schedule to compete and if you don't participate the fundraiser because i'm telling you and i know firsthand that been made and approved to go to a tournament that school district has the responsibility if we're going to approve a team to go to tournaments to big show the funds are there so that students do not have to go out there behind a box of chocolates and said go sell this or you can go and i do i do believe that's right i'm wrong but i think is a distinction between competition nuclear you go through some sort of hierarchy of a local or regional competition that you essentially win the right team wins the right through to go on to the next level as opposed to an exhibition type tournament where we have lots of teams who sign up for these tournaments that you haven't actually won something to get there and i think that's been the distinction schedule and so those two those competitions whether there will be all whether the sexual to me doesn't matter doesn't have anywhere but i get your point is well taken i think is your policy i think it's actually in the policy i can't for the moment but i think i think the answer is came on several budgets ago we actually leaned on the boosters and asked him to pay for assistant coaches we have actually put a lot of burden on these booster groups asking for donations i know of no child this be deprived to do anything and my kids are in three sports but money's not they are right now and says what we've worked with with the budget will find going to the next budget cycle that it's tough choices to make and unfortunately the pay to play was one of them and then also looking on to the booster groups again even given gift