Bulletin Board
September 2024
Dear North Penn community,
Welcome back- the 2024-2025 school year is well underway!
All 18 of our schools have hosted their Back To School nights. The feedback from students, staff and parents has been overwhelmingly positive, especially with regards to the cell phone policy. North Penn has joined the many other districts throughout our nation, recognizing the harmful effects phones can have on all of us and will enforce restricting the use of them during the school day.
Our NPSB Committee meetings have resumed after the summer break. These meetings are all available to view on NPTV live and then saved for later viewing. I encourage you to tune in and remain informed as to what is happening in our district. The meeting schedule can be found here.
Our Facilities & Operations Committee continues to focus on the NPHS renovation project. There will be two bidding phases to the project. The first bid request will begin this December, with bids being awarded in February 2025 and construction beginning in June 2025. While this is a multi-year project that will inevitably cause some disruption, the goal is certainly to minimize it and to do as much work as possible over the summer months.
This first phase will include renovation of K-Pod. While K-Pod is not as old as the rest of the original structure, it is easier to start the construction there while still finalizing the design and bid specifications for the second phase of the project. Also included in the earlier phases of the renovation will be the construction of additional classroom space, as opposed to putting up any modular units. This will be able to serve as swing space during renovation of the remainder of the building.
In the meantime, our facilities team is also working on other buildings, including conducting a comprehensive playground assessment at all of our elementary schools for safety, accessibility, and consistency. This assessment is due back at the end of the month.
Our Safe Schools committee approved our new visitor management system, Navigate 360. We currently use Navigate 360 in some other applications and transitioning will allow us to better streamline our system, digitize our platform for drills and give greater redundancy with notifications.
I would also like to remind everyone of the Safe2Say program – the app is included on our student’s Chromebooks and is accessible online here. It gives you the ability to notify the district anonymously if you see or hear anything concerning. It has been very helpful to make district officials aware of potential issues since its inception and we encourage anyone who “sees something, to please say something”.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Tina Stoll, President
Education/Curriculum/Instruction Committee
The ECI Committee met on August 20, 2024. At that meeting, results from the Belonging Surveys were presented to the committee. The surveys were administered to secondary students at the three middle schools and the high school in the Fall of 2021 and 2023.
Facilities and Operations Committee
The Facilities and Operations Committee met on Monday, August 26, 2024, in a virtual format. There were no items considered for action. The Committee was presented and discussed informational items, including:
- Mr. Linski provided an update on the Act 39 - Lead in Drinking Water
- High School project activities
- High School schematic schedule
- Summer projects and activities
- Update on the 10 year Capital Project Plan
Finance Committee
At the September 10, 2024, Finance Committee meeting the financial reports were reviewed in addition to the following items:
1. The Committee heard presentations from Dr. Kristen Landis, Director of Technology, and Donna Dome, Curriculum Supervisor, regarding the request for proposals results for a multimedia creation and presentation application and a math and English language arts support application. Approval of the proposals appears on tonight's agenda.
2. Mr. Skrocki reviewed the professional services policy as it relates to the banking request for proposals (RFP). Due to the favorable terms, fees, and interest rates, the administration is recommending waiving the professional services policy and continuing the contract with Univest for an additional three years. Univest has agreed to honor the same terms and conditions for an additional three-year period. A comprehensive RFP process was conducted in 2019 and Univest was the most favorable proposal. An RFP will be conducted again in early 2027.
3. Mr. Skrocki reviewed a situation with a 2023-24 order for propane buses where five buses did not arrive until after June 30th. The money was allocated in the 2023-24 budget and remains unspent. The invoice for $611,310 was paid for using 2024-25 budgeted funds. The administration is recommending a 2023-24 transfer to the Capital Reserve Fund so that the bus replacement plan is not compromised by a delivery timing issue. The purchase of school buses is a permitted expenditure from the Capital Reserve Fund.
4. The Committee heard an update from Ron Linke on the Federal stimulus funding.
Policy Committee
The Policy Committee met on August 26, 2024. At that meeting, the committee reviewed three policies based on recommendations from PSBA. These policies were placed on the action meeting agenda for a first reading.
Safe Schools Committee
At the August 26 Safe Schools Committee meeting Mr. Rhone discussed a new visitor and emergency management system by Navigate360. The committee voted to move Navigate360 visitor and emergency management platform to the action meeting. In informational items, Mr. Rhone provided an update on completing the digital mapping for the rest of the district. Dr. Kristen Landis provided a cyber security update. Mr. Rhone and Dr. Nicholson discusses the district Youth Aid Panel (YAP) implementation at the middle school level. More information will be available soon.
NPSD Educational Foundation
The Foundation will hold its annual golf outing on October 1st at Talamore Country Club. More than 100 golfers are registered and we are extremely happy with the amount of sponsors who have partnered with us this year. This is our major fundraiser for the year and helps us to fund more than $100,000 in innovative projects each school year.
October 1st will also mark the start of the U-Knight to Inspire staff giving campaign. Every year during the month of October we ask NPSD employees to consider donating to the Foundation. Those who do are eligible to win great prizes.
Finally, in October we will open the mid-year grant request cycle. All staff are invited to apply and should watch their email next month for more information.
Any questions related to the Foundation can be directed to Christine Liberaski at the ESC, or you can learn more at npennedfoundation.org.