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BELLEFONTE -- The Bellefonte Area School District Board of Directors approved an over $59 million budget that included a slight tax increase.
The 2023-2024 budget, adopted without further discussion Tuesday night, features a 2 percent tax increase. The breakdown looks like this: 52.5103 mills versus 2022-2023's 51.4603 mills. The adjusted index is at 5.1 percent.
Overall, the budget sees $59,775,000 in expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year of July 1, 2023 to June 20, 2024.
Ken Bean, Director of Fiscal Affairs, has presented the budget to the board several times and opened the floor for any discussion before the final adoption.
Prior to adopting the budget, the board heard several presentations regarding the district's students.
In the opening items on the agenda there were two different presentations on the amazing things Bellefonte Area students have done this school year.
The first presentation featured two incredible students from Benner Elementary who have blown away the competition at a state-wide Stock Market Challenge against not only students their age, but also high school students.
Their teacher, Nick Downs, felt it was important to introduce the students to financial literacy early on in their school careers.
Brayden and Linden started with $100,000 in their portfolio. Throughout the 10-week competition, during which they could only trade at certain times of the day, they made 166 trades and turned it into $6,706,709.12.
Next to be highlighted were two Destination Imagination teams who did well in their respective challenges.
The first team was named team [Insert Name Here], explaining that they chose that name because they couldn't decide on a team name.
[Insert Name Here], composed of Isaac Rainey, Madison Smith, Zach McCamley, Mac McKean, Ryan Smith, Kaitlyn Gutierrez and Megan Campbell, placed first in the state in Instant Challenge, and second in the state in Central Challenge.
The team was expected to create and present a "flipped tale" which is a tale inspired by a well-known story, but focuses on a new main character. To do this they had to be knowledgeable of literary devices, be able to integrate them into a presentation and much more.
Team SOUP, composed of Brady Wynkoop, Hunter Peter, Addison Frazier, Gavin St. Clair, Eric Young, Reese Houser and Brenda St. Clair, was tasked with designing and building a roller coaster that needed to be assembled and tested during their presentation.
They came in first place in the state in the Central Challenge, which enabled them to move on to Global finals with teams from across the world.
Team SOUP traveled to Kansas City, Mo., and represented the state of Pennsylvania in the "Parade of Nations" at the Opening Ceremony. They had many experiences during their time in Missouri, including a Duct Tape Fashion Show and taking some time to visit the National World War I Memorial.
After the student presentations, board members were presented with information about the Family and Consumer Sciences Department for Bellefonte High School.
Taught by Shawna Weaver and Amy Barth, these courses have been updated to include the most recent research-based approaches to the topic. Basic course descriptions for numerous classes were described, as well as requests for new materials and texts for the classroom.
The next presentation featured BeLA, the Bellefonte eLearning Academy.
Jennifer Brown, Principal of Virtual Learning, spoke about BeLA enrollment, the growth of BeLA over the school year and the marketing and highlighting of BeLA.
The ultimate goal/objective by the end of the 2022-23 school year was to have BeLA virtual curriculum maps written including activities, tools and resources with Google Classrooms set up to start the following year.
According to Brown, they have accomplished that goal.
Brown spoke enthusiastically about the curriculum, the teams who put together that curriculum and how they review student data to determine student needs for reading, math and literacy.
It was an excellent segue into a discussion on the Bellefonte Area Middle School "MAP" Testing.
"MAP" or "Measures of Academic Progress" is a norm-referenced measure of student growth over time. Assessments, along with other bits of data, give a detailed report about where each child is on their learning path.
MAP testing revolves around goal setting, allowing students and teachers to come up with goals to strive for.
The testing is broken into four quarters, the first has a review of the previous year's results, a round of assessments and then a round of conferencing with the student to determine their goals.
The second quarter includes professional learning sessions to support teachers and team meetings to collaborate on cross curricular instruction with the current needs of the students in mind.
The third quarter has another round of assessments and conferencing, followed by realigning instruction based on the data received.
The final quarter includes PSSA testing, Algebra I Keystone Exams, final assessments and recommendations for future courses.
Based on this data, any teacher can see the growth of the student throughout the year.