Chester‑Upland committee approves memberships, contracts and cooperative‑purchasing participation for 2025–26

The Chester‑Upland School District Committee of the Whole on March 20 recorded approvals for a series of contracts, memberships and cooperative‑purchasing enrollments for the 2025–26 fiscal year.

Director McLaren presented the items to the committee, saying the district approved membership in the Pennsylvania Head Start Association for the period Jan. 1, 2025, through Dec. 31, 2025, and accepted several Delaware County intermediate unit budgets, including VOTEC and special‑education budget allocations that include the district’s portion of the intermediate unit total.

The committee also recorded an approved contract described in meeting materials as a contract for information‑technology management and staffing services with Chester‑Upland School District, with a stated term of March 6, 2025, through June 30, 2030. The meeting record did not provide a dollar amount for that contract.

Committee members were also informed the district approved participation in legally constituted cooperative‑purchasing programs for the 2025–26 school year, including CHIMS, Keystone Purchasing Network, the Pennsylvania Department of General Services commodity contracts and several other cooperative contracts referenced in the agenda materials.

The committee approved an award to McCathery Construction as the low bidder for a general contract to expand the Ashton's cosmetology project; the agenda item noted McCathery was the lowest responsible bidder but did not list the contract price.

Some items on the materials were scheduled for formal action at a forthcoming receivers meeting. Director McLaren said the board would vote on renewing or delegating her DCIU representation at the receivers meeting; a separate agenda item was a request to join the Delaware County Land Bank, which meeting materials listed for consideration but did not show as approved at the March 20 committee meeting.

The meeting record did not include recorded motion language, mover/second names or a roll‑call tally for the approved items. The agenda attachments referenced in the discussion were listed as the source for check registers and contract documents.

The committee also noted that DCIU (Delaware County Intermediate Unit) fieldwork and observation hours were approved for a DCIU English as a Second Language program specialist certification program for the period listed in the agenda materials (beginning Feb. 1, 2025). The meeting text included an ambiguous year fragment for the end date; the agenda presented the period as through June 30, 2025.

Details that were not specified in the committee remarks include dollar amounts for the listed contracts and the exact vote tallies; the meeting record did not provide those numbers in the discussion excerpt.

Notes: Items explicitly labeled on the agenda as “approved” in the March 20 discussion are described above; items listed as requests or to appear on the receivers meeting agenda were described as pending formal vote.