Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
26. at the same time so many of you know they also have an index a great way for us to measure as a community just how we're doing and making impacts that some of it is obviously secondary data like I presented some of it as you know surveys that your own students have taken for student voice and we know as a community and highly concerned about it that the community ranks pretty low from youth voice and perspective about being supportive and being nurturing on this and that's one of our big concerns that we're really trying to address and we know that another piece of work I think is important is giving youth themselves more voice and choice in the programs and services delivered to them that's one of the fundamental guiding principles giving families and giving youth more voice and choice of those things that they have available and accessible to them so this youth Ambassador group is one of the most important aims of getting representation of Youth voice into this process which is a really important piece of the pie and then later you'll be looking at this a small group of those stakeholders say well how we even figure out if we're accessible so that group identified seven factors what they thought for accessibility and they created the seven dimensions of Equitable access and you can see the seven here a pretty simple tool uh it pretty much asks you how you think you're doing on the dimension and then it actually how you think we as a community overall are doing on that Dimension itself so it looks both at an organization or a team as well as the community level itself it's a tool as well as a process to kind of have a conversation a tool that you'll see here in just a few minutes yet today and so Equitable access was a big piece of the project that second layer of the cake if you recall is all about place and we kind of said with that you know area where you live shouldn't determine your potential or even full potential outcomes in life and we know from the data we saw that that can actually be the case and can happen we partner with iupuc Dr George Towers fantastic if you've never got to know Dr Towers but he helped us visualize equity which we'll look at a map or two here in just a moment that he did and he said it has two goals one we want to help people visualize the diversity within the community and show there's actually a spatial dimension to our diversity and to our Equity but also more importantly we think we can find out different strategies within the community that we have employed before by looking at data in a new way so that was kind of the rallying crawl that George helped us with there's Bartholomew County we already looked at the census tracts they're marked in Black but one thing I want you to know is census tracts are divided again into smaller pieces called block groups the block groups are shown this map in red so instead of 15 census tracts you now have 59 block groups so now we're finally getting down to the level of Raj Chetty and their data six tenths of a mile a block group is about a thousand people it's about 1300 in Bartholomew County but just to kind of let you know the red lines kind of show you how those are divided up so there are 59 of those block groups so a map kind of looks like this when you kind of color code it uh in so how do you read these and we're making all these Maps available to all of you we have a tremendous amount of data the colors are the percent of whatever variable is being measured the darker the more so this is where kids live so this is the youth population children under 18 years of age so the darker colors are where more children are present in terms of composition of that particular neighborhood it's a dark places where children congre the actual numbers are the absolute numbers of children so one's a very kind of a comparison and the other one is the actual data itself so it probably won't surprise most of you to know that our highest concentrations sit in these these four areas there are about a thousand individuals under the age of 18 in those areas the largest grouping here is the South Side kind of split with Mount Healthy this census uh black group here 1700 youth live there the hot that's the highest concentration of those under 18 actually in the county if you look at this now this kind of goes back to something we've already looked at this is median household income again darker I mean Tire lighter means lower on this area so you can clearly see some variation here I'm going to push in a little bit to the city okay and now I'm just going to push in just a little bit more up toward the airport here and specifically here because I want to show you again how quick kind of neighborhood effects can kind of change if you go up right Middle Road which goes right up that you essentially drop one hundred thousand dollars a year in median household income going from the south kind of part of that direct angle and going right across the line in that area so there are places and numerous places on this map that you'll see very very similar variations for instance here medium 75 000 dropping down to twenty seven thousand uh one street over again these are median values the Staggering thing to me if you kind of look at the scale on that I got back up to do that the bottom number was about twenty two thousand and the top number is about 160 000.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so that's the range variation or if you did the same exercise we do before the lowest number of block groups in the high it's a hundred and thirty three thousand dollars of annualized income difference from the lowest to the highest now I told you it was 66 earlier but we're looking at census tracts but when you get down to the neighborhood level the variations even much much wider this is why Raja was kind of advocating for the hyper local kind of uh factor or the look here's an important one for you families with children below the poverty line again darker tends to be more acute the highest number of absolute families sits again in this area about 256 families uh sit up just south of the Airport runway that's their highest kind of concentration of those areas and this is educational attainment something this is high school diploma or lower so your dark chocolate areas are the places that actually have higher concentrations in fact the dark chocolate that's 67 to 82 percent of the people in the dark chocolate ones the highest level of educational attainment is a high school diploma or less so the dark chocolate areas are the places where educational attainment I think lags or is in variance with the places kind of around it and one more map here this this is children under 18 living with neither parent or a single parent highest areas here again I think the three kind of similar areas kind of pop up if you kind of take the aggregate of what George kind of ran when I was a zoom in for you if you kind of take the aggregate of what George kind of ran the whole idea here was we want to democratize data not only among our group but everybody is why we're making the data available to all of you and to everyone in the community itself and there's two reasons we do that one from an appreciative endpoint these are 15 distant systems in here they're not actually our weakness I there are there are strengths because when you begin to look at data this way you can actually come up with new strategies and new insights and new kind of new bodies of you know work that can be conducted but more importantly you know in all of this you know we're not here to compare these places we're here to figure out how to best enrich and cultivate and looking at data in this way helps us do that in fact if you look on this area there's about 860 families right after covid that had filed for some type of Public Assistance uh in that 12-month period with with children shouldn't surprise you these are the paces that showed up on map kind of after map after map in these areas 600 in other words of the 860 families sit in just five block group areas so what is kind of the group doing well one one of the teams in the work has actually decided to go with Taylorsville and thanks to sedal Gantt all the great leadership being provided up there as well as Tsukasa and healthy Community there are a number of on the ground kind of place-based organizations working together today our idea is get them to work even even stronger together it's a place that's very much Hispanic and Latino as you know has its stability rate that's pretty high 80 percent of the people stick around from year to year uh the lowest in the county is about 50.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so that's not a bad rate on that but a community with very unique challenges right it's a desert for many things be a food desert a transportation desert Etc so there's an ambitious set of neighborhood engagement Pilots going on right now in the community especially using Taylorsville as an area of that and there's so many people working in that area some of them knew each other some didn't so the first body of work is just connecting the connectors helping those that are actually out there in those neighborhoods building relationships with the residents of those communities make sure they know each other better understand their work better and figure out how they can work more closely together to make better results in that area and I'd be remiss if I didn't thank the United Way who's helped us conduct numerous listening sessions in those communities again using residents as the actual facilitators themselves use an appreciative based inquiry questions such as what do you love about here what would make it better for Youth and so forth these have been tremendous insight into the process that we couldn't had otherwise it's also been the most difficult part of this work it wouldn't surprise you that some of these listening sessions you wouldn't be shocked to say you know there are tears there's anger there's recrimination there's a lot of different types of emotions and attitudes that run very very strongly around these topics and issues and it makes the work quite honestly some of the most challenging bodies of the work but as we said earlier voice and choice is one of the most important principles and that's what it takes I think to achieve it and then finally here we must ensure Equity before we can enjoy equality we're all after equality but you have to ensure Equity that the track has been you know set up on the racetrack with the lanes staggered appropriately even be kind of for the race begins we have to kind of figure out the equity places we said from Ross chetty's research many of you familiar with tufaturo your future the Latino education work it's proof positive that you can put coaches and mentors and a plethora of community organizing and support together to show that really over time you know you can close Equity gaps on not only high school and education but also College enrollment data and Beyond appreciate my slides I apologize my slide's not more up to date on those data points but I think you still see the trend in the correlation the importance of the work and the community thanks to Cummins and their care which has come into advancing for racial Equity is actually now formed a very similar body of work around black and biracial community and we're so proud of the guiding team we've hired actually a facilitator for this work Felicia who's actually from Louisville Kentucky worked for Goodwill Industries for many years so we've got people now on the ground that are working this on a daily basis trying to improve the outcomes we think before this moonshot we've got three stages where we think we're actually at if I push in on this I think you'll see I think we're right on track you know we said we wanted to I'm sure Equitable access and so it was a group working on that instrument that you'll kind of work through today your various facilities in the metaverse and Beyond uh but also we said neighborhood engagement had to be critical if we learned anything from Raj Chetty Place matters a lot and then finally systems building support getting our own cells better aligned from our organizations that serve using data in a new way but also redesigning the systems themselves was a really important body of this work so I'm really proud of the team so we're going to conclude by just saying how are we going to get there so a couple thoughts on this and something I want to kind of impress upon you our community has taken on huge challenges before with great success one of the biggest challenges was right in the middle of the last century and if you recall this is the birth rate per 1 000 people and right in the middle of this chart highlighted in yellow shaded here in Gray is the baby boom generation and that demographic force was one of the greatest challenges our community as well as many ever really had to face in the modern era right after the war because if you really looked in Columbus plat map in 1950 we hadn't built a single School in over 22 years at that point there was just really no reason demographically to do so but now with the baby boom generation coming on we realized we were going to have to build a new school every two years for the next 15 years many of you know this story our first attempt on that was the Jefferson Elementary school project and if you look at the community's history and all practical accounts they said it was kind of an unmitigated disaster Forbes Magazine actually ran a story in the community and said the Jefferson project was built on the cheap and it showed and their words within the first year it was experiencing a tremendous amount of maintenance issues and that Community worries it looked kind of like a cookie cutter and they worried you could see one there tomorrow and on that corner tomorrow and the next day and so forth it was a real black eye on the community on the school bar and it wasn't the way you'd want to start addressing the greatest challenge what had been up to that time of the last century now Crosstown little struggling entrepreneurial startup trying to take some diesel technology and commercialize it and for 17 straight years lost money didn't earn a dime of profit that is until this gentleman came about this is the young jarrow and Miller just graduated out of Yale he was stacking grocery store shelves in his family's business out in California as you do I guess if you graduate from Yale he had a liberal arts major and the joke was they didn't want him anywhere near the family's core businesses which were located here in Columbus Indiana which are basically General Stores Banks and financial institutions but this little struggling entrepreneur business was losing money and nothing to lose so they brought Jalen Miller back to Indiana they gave him his first desk shown here inside Irwin's bank and they set him off to work they told him make that little startup profitable or divest the company from the family portfolio he went to work in Earnest and over the next 60 years obviously became the great Steward and president and CEO of Cummins engine as you know today a great Fortune 150 Global Powerhouse over 20 billion in sales more than 55 000 employees given the day that's more than the population of our city of where it is but before General Miller would turn that small startup into that Global Powerhouse he had a problem he had two he had a business problem and a community problem and the business problem was how do you get smart talented people and their families to come move to a community that few people had ever heard of and has lousy looking schools and so many of you know him being a liberal arts major and a very different take on things and he loved this quote by Winston Churchill that was dedicated to a church after the Reconstruction uh in in England where Churchill said first we shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us and he was a powerful believer in the context of place and the way it shapes people over the course of their lifetime and so as many of us know what's now affectionately just called the offer was put forth and the offer was simply here are five mid-century modern Architects on a piece of paper and if the community interviews all five which was the only string attached and chose one of them Cummins would pay the architect's fees on the BET next Elementary School built five interviews were conducted and I think we know the history in 1957 the Lillian C Smith Elementary School was constructed and it was an overwhelming success not only architecturally but for the community put Columbus on the map for being someone who was willing to invest in the stakeholder who has the least amount of voice at the table Our Youth and our future and so two years go by and of course people say hey can we do that again and they did it again and again and finally in the 50s it was formalized as the Cummins architecture program more than 70 different buildings and projects have been either funded or inspired by that and it's created I think some of the greatest probably collection of assets for any city of its size even your city you're sitting in Chicago I'll tell you what we always tell everyone this is No One debt corrected me but you know I think that you were the very first school corporation in the country to go K-12 PBO and I cannot applaud those efforts on that and no one's ever corrected me using that stat so I think you are that congrats on that we took as a community if you recall an abandoned air base and we actually turned into one of the most collaborative post-secondary campuses where Purdue Polytechnic Purdue University Indiana University and Ivy Tech all collaborate share assets share facilities provided by a community gift the Columbus learning Center they provide dual credit stackable degrees credentials and it's quickly becoming the number one campus a choice for bcsc students the Caesar Pelley Advanced manufacturing center of excellence the brand new IB tech building if you haven't seen it you got to see it fantastic incredible and we took a five-year pilot with Indiana University for the IU Center for Art and Design in terms of the J Irwin Miller School of Architecture bringing everything kind of Full Circle the community has always kind of had a way of knowing how to do this build a home-grown Community Learning System in other words we've built a learning system in a way where we've become more of ourself in the process which is an amazing thing to do and it was always kind of built on this idea there is this thing called the Columbus way I mean I know there's books that are kind of titled that but it does exist and it is a real thing and there's three things in particular I wanted to kind of share with you 15 years ago we got together with some of the leaders that made a lot of those projects happen and asked them how'd you do it what was the approach what was essential what went wrong how do you fix it and they told us three things they thought were pretty important and what were those three things well number one Mr Miller wrote passionately and is how he turned around Cummins and if you look at some of his readings and writings it's all there when speaking to businessmen in 1970 he said this the American systems public or private they were created for a world that no longer exists and yet it's our normal preference to rehabilitate the damaged products people or in your case students than it is to transform and reform the systems themselves it's our natural tendency to fix people and not fix systems and that's not what we should be doing even called this systemness and the idea about getting system is all you and I need to do no matter where we are in the system it's just look up one level higher than us so if if you're a teacher in a classroom you think about the students interaction in the school if you're the principal at school you think about the students flowing from other schools into your school and the students flowing out to the next school if you're I happen to be in the school board a cabinet are they actually what kind of administration level you're connecting to the community making sure all those various assets support and serve kind of the needs not only economically but also from the advanced citizenry uh in that area but all you're ever really asked to do is to think one level up and isn't that what general Miller did you look up for purpose and you look down for function depending on what question you're asked and a lot of people thought he got that idea from the great architect Elias searing who said you always design something in the next larger context that's what he did when he had a talent problem he didn't fix the company fix the community the second kind of principle is based upon that one we've already said this one it's a system saying not a single thing but the second principle is really based on the first one he wrote extensively about a different kind of model of leadership which was almost heresy at the time it wasn't stakeholder capitalism or shareholder capitalism it was stakeholder capitalism and he wrote he didn't seek Commons as an organization he saw it as a network of relationships and the leader's job was to understand how those leaderships were different and distinct and then and this is like a fantastic quote on that it's basically the fascinating problem is figuring out what our responsibilities and relationships are in those five areas and one of the most disastrous things any organization can take is make a single aim at making Profit just take out profit with student outcomes and I think that's actually true same things there it's the responsibility of the relationships that are most important and if you take care of that outcomes tend to take care of themselves this what he said the system is the way that you and I work together it's just a set of relationships so if you want to transform a system you transform those relationships so we got our system we know how we're going to kind of rewire the thing to produce different outcomes but then how do you do it well he kind of had some thoughts about that as well when he was inducted into the building Hall of Fame he didn't talk about architecture buildings he actually said you know architecture is something you can see but there's a spirit and a temperament and a character though in this community and it's an invisible thing but it's something he said he was most proud of because in a democracy the process is more important than the product and he was right you know collaboration just isn't come by us spirit it's a lot of work it's a process and when you get it right it's supposed to be a common approach and a common language that a community uses to actually work together and this community always seemed to have that today we call it the stakeholder engagement process it's all about relationships whose relationships do we want to build why are those relationships working the way they are what can we do to further those relationships further and and how can we actually tie that back into Community itself again this is something not invented this is something discovered over many decades in this community but what they really discovered is important is the process can't happen to people and even though you may want to be a servant leader and do things for people the process has to be done in participation with people and that's when it works at its best so we have a history of doing this we know that the process is the product and so I want to kind of say If you think about this process has been employed to many things even with bcsc I grad counseling counts and here's my most passionate plea to you when you look at those maps and you look at the great challenge ahead of us and the great moonshot and you say we can't do this on your own your answers you're absolutely right and nor can the community do it without you if you need help I got a piece of advice just ask just tell us what kinds of help you need to make your schools and your places and communities Serve by those systems better we want to hear that just ask that takes us to the final thing I want to share how we do him a couple numbers here and then we'll be done Jamie marasotas is the president and CEO of the largest foundation in the country supporting education called Lumina Foundation and he wrote a book a few years ago right before coven called American East Talent how do you attract develop and actually deploy uh talent in a 21st century Workforce area Lumen actually created kind of a better housekeeping designation or seal for those communities they found were rocking it Knocking the cover off the ball in that area and they identified these 26 communities across the country and here's that list I highlighted one in particular you might be interested in red and I think it's so funny they actually had to put Columbus comma IND on the list because everyone would have thought it was Ohio right it looks like kind of a standout and I mean that in a very very good way because a lot of people like why are they on there who are they let me tell you why I think we're on actually on that list let's first of all for all the work I just kind of showed you has taken play but this year in February a pretty important study was conducted the 355 metropolitan areas in the United States and they wanted to find out where is educational attainment increasing the fastest I was a study done by Dr Richard Florida so you know men from the rise of the creative class he coined that term and when they ran the data on all 355 communities lo and behold if you look at the top of the list for small and medium-sized metros it's Columbus Indiana notice we're number one for small communities notice we're also number one for all communities so out of 355 metropolitan areas we're ranked number one and for those who can't see it in the back and for those who can't see it in the metaverse right number one increase over a 10-year period around educational attainment and that's so much contribute to all the great and hard work that all of you have done to make that happen that's staggering there's more maybe you remember last year around this time the Wall Street Journal came out with this story and we're so proud this loose Elena Michelle an employee of the Community Education Coalition and her family it's something called the diversity index which is kind of the probability of two randomly chosen people would bump into each other would they be different by either race or ethnicity the higher the number the more diversity that a community has and when they ran that data with some modifications The Wall Street Journal did lo and behold who ended up on top as the fastest growing area for diversity in the last decade why The Country Rose 22 percent Columbus Indiana was ranked number one for increasing diversity 67 growth rate on that I'm here to tell you I don't think those two things are accidental creating good economic and good educational outcomes leads to people wanting to come to those opportunities from a vast diverse and widespread array those things are tightly correlated by any shape or means and we should be very proud of them an important thought it's just as true today as when Mr Miller said it 1971.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
it was a dedication of the Republic building when it opened as the headquarters for the public newspaper and on that day I think he put a passionate plea out to us basically saying our success in the future is going to depend on our ability to change systems and Equitable redistribution of wealth so that no doors of opportunity are closed to any American simply by reason of where he was born or how much money her parents had or because of his race or her religion and I think you see why we're doing the work we do and why systems and fairness to open opportunity are so important this is what the community of Columbus has always known Excellence is kind of a form of deviance and what we've learned by going out to other communities and coming back is something I think we all take for granted but a community becomes excellent because it's willing to do things that other communities don't want to do and why do we do it because I think in the immortal words of genuine Miller nothing is more expensive in this world than mediocrity especially when it comes the advancement of our youth and I'm pretty sure you'd agree with me on that so thank you so much Dr Roberts for the opportunity to be here with you today thanks for your kind attention on a very difficult day after a very long holiday I so appreciate all the work that you do and thank you and have a great rest of your PD day thanks [Applause] well thank you to Mr Hess for those words as we work as a school corporation to truly make sure that every child has Equitable access to opportunity a few things that I heard Jack say as he finished up there he laid out three really focused areas I think for each of us focus on stakeholders the people that we serve that'd be our community our parents our businesses our partners our students our faculty our staff all of you focus on relationships among all of those stakeholders and focus on the process it is about fixing or reforming the system not trying to fix people so again thank you Jack for that information about our community and giving us some steps in a direction of making sure we are providing access to opportunity for each child what is next is from a department standpoint from a building standpoint you're going to be having some conversations about what Jack shared with us today I have sent a link out via email with Jack's presentation as a part of that so the data might be easier to see and look at also some other links that are in a different a second email that has information about the rest of the day so from now again to about 10 45 we're going to be diving into some of this information answering some questions to kind of get us started and then that youth accessibility assessment tool the jacket on the screen earlier we'll be looking at those seven dimensions and trying to figure out are we a welcoming providing a welcoming environment for all of our people is transportation someone that makes it easy for people to participate in our curricular co-curricular extracurricular activities are things that we do affordable for everybody are the pathways that we make available truly accessible for each child so be having some of those dialogues and conversations in it 10 45 if you choose there is a half hour time frame that you can log in and get some questions answered about a number of topics and those topics and those links that I've provided and then again the rest of the day based upon your situation individually with your department it may look different but the PD day for the most part is from now until three o'clock so again thanks for your participation engagement this morning and have a great rest of your PD day thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right Jason are we good to go all right good evening thanks for being here um we will go ahead and get started we're live streaming this presentation just to make sure that folks that couldn't be here could still access the information we've got several folks that are going to help do this presentation Dr Sullivan our assistant superintendent will play A Part carry all day and Dustin Lemay are directors of teaching and learning will play A Part as well and appreciate all their hard work I also want to thank Cindy Simmons our school board president for being here and Anne Engelhart one of our school board members for being here as well I appreciate them being here to to hear input from our community so we're going to jump in and get going on on this presentation about enrollment growth and future building needs I know if you're watching this online it might be hard to see the screens but all of this information is posted on our website in short videos so you would be able to see any of the information on the slides by accessing our website I'm Scott Windham superintendent of Avon schools and our goals for this presentation are we really want to provide some updated enrollment growth and demographic study projections about our growth in Avon schools and then we're going to review three models for you of how we could accommodate enrollment growth that none of which would take effect until the 25-26 school year so we're talking about two and a half school years from now that any of these models would be in place serving our kids and talk a little bit about our timeline we have three strategic goals that our school board has adopted for us as a school district centered around improving academic achievement of our students creating systemic and purposeful Innovation and then supporting the whole child those goals Drive everything that we do as a school district we share reports on them at every school board meeting and they're all really centered around our mission that all belong learn and grow and what I love about Avon is that our all just keeps getting bigger more families are choosing Avon for their children and to raise their families and we're honored to get to serve more kids every year that want to be a part of our school district so as we think about our journey as families we often equate what happens in a school to our personal experience as homeowners if you're like me my wife and I started in an apartment that was our first place that that we lived and and uh then we started our family and started having children and many times at that point that might be when a family decides it's time to buy a house in the beautiful community of Avon maybe more children come along and so space starts to get tight this is often the time when as parents as homeowners we start getting creative about space if more children keep coming so maybe we have to get bunk beds maybe we have to convert the office into another bedroom maybe we end up parking the car outside the garage because we want to use the garage for living space those are exactly the kind of conversations that we are having as a school district and that we are using every available space in our schools and we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail just imagine if the kids kept coming and kept coming many times our goal as homeowners is we want to pay off our house we want to be debt free and not have a mortgage I understand that that is certainly my goal as a homeowner as well but what we cannot do that as a growing School District because kids just keep coming it's not like we can eventually hit our uh stop our enrollment growth and no longer need to to accommodate more students we've continued to grow and grow and grow and are to the point where we just can't keep creating more flexible opportunities to serve kids the way that we have over the last few years what's been really impressive about our school district and is really a testament to the great leadership of our school board is our last new school was constructed in 2010.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
beautiful thank you Mr President Dr Smith members of the board tonight I bring to you uh an informational item as an additional appropriation needs to be brought before the board to to fund our debt service fund um when the dlgf finalized our budget for 2022 the payment for our common School Loan Fund that closed in December of last year uh 20 20 21 was not known and uh thus was not included in our appropriate approved Appropriations for 2022 so tonight we're going to bring that to you later on none of these changes will affect taxes they just give us permission to spend the money that's already in our budget foreign our second item under uh additional appropriation sir um This was um uh Mr President I'm not following the second item I'm sorry come on any questions are coming thank you second item yes sir thank you that's okay you kept me on my toes there and I appreciate that there's a point of clarification Mr President it was a you have two public hearings tonight for the record so this is the second public hearing oh okay yeah thank you Mr President Dr Smith members of the board once again as a second um public hearing item tonight we do bring forth um a presentation regarding our middle school facilities renovation expansion update lecc transformation and a new educational Community Center project with us tonight from Barnes and Thornburg are our legal counsel Mr Jeffrey quakenbush and from Baker Tilly belvia gray and they are here they presented at our last uh board meeting on November the 14th they're here to answer questions and follow up with anything that you may have at that for them at this time wood Ward yes sir later this evening we will bring that back for for as a recommendation for approval thank you sir there it goes Mr President members board Dr Smith again now we're moving uh quite well to LC with that West Side as we try to enclose that as the weather begins to uh change on us uh inside LC media and art area continue on uh site Improvement you'll notice a uh a pathway now on the north side of the varsity baseball game we're going to get trucks moving in and out that direction rather than through the parking lot and work has started in moving Earth on that 20 acres LC Plaza we had a little bit of delay there but they're catching up the concrete is almost done and they should have the asphalt here in the next two weeks to complete that area uh LC pool Foundation is going quite well moving along the weather has helped cooperate here and we've got another good week coming up so a lot of concrete will be poured ln3 story continues on almost uh fully secure and enclosed on the front entry a lot of progress on the first second and third floor of the three-story building some of the new areas in the three phase are a three-story phase 1C again another art room and a main artery hallway into the new three-story Ellen Poole big poor that was poured all in one day and continued non uh stop and uh did quite well and they are progressing with the sides of the pool hundreds of cubic yards we had a continuous flow of concrete trucks for almost eight hours so a lot of concrete again the Mechanicals continue on uh in the uh other part of that facility of the pool of course the project tonight with the 1028 will allow us to move prior our move forward with our middle schools LACC program renovation and we're also still doing some renovation here with the HVAC enter two middle schools in lecc questions next June thank you Mr President members board Dr Smith to bring to you tonight for first reading policy package volume 35 number one the package consists of 21 policy revisions and two new policies the revisions as always are deemed necessary to comply with changes in federal state law this needle of revision package is presented as a first reading tonight no um I think the policies is presented are in order however obviously this is just first reading so if you haven't had a chance to completely review the policies you know let me or Dr harsh partner know if you have any questions at all but it'll be back for a second reading at our December meeting thank you sir any other questions or comments from Andy Boardman I had a question on one of the specific policies but should I shove that and then just reach out to you okay go ahead and publicly ask okay it was policy eight one two one uh personal background checks via contracted Services um with the expansion of our managed Services some questions I get sometime are you know what is the process for screening our managed service employees and I believe I just wanted to verify this policy covers that and it is done by the con the managed Service Company correct but in complete alignment with how the district does the background checks on District employees correct okay okay thank you for the verification correct thank you any other questions or comments thank you let me try it again with you Mr Met miles that's right thank you sir Mr President Dr Smith Mr members of the board we'll we'll get through these uh tonight I bring to you our September and our October uh financials included under separate covery are the budget summaries for both the general fund and the transportation fund as I mentioned for both September and October um give you a moment to look through those foreign hearing no other questions we are where we thought we would be as in the words of my predecessor and that's uh those are financials for tonight is our ending balance why is our ending balance so high um what do we have 18 million dollars in that ending balance our expenses uh to date are just a little below what we projected you know going into the year so um again some of that goes back to uh open positions that maybe we haven't filled throughout the district some some of the Staffing challenges that we've had we have a well we have a three pay period month coming up or we just had one um so that we've we've had those we have two of those per year and we've had both of those now so um we do have some um some ketchup pay that we've we've got coming uh soon to us as far as retropay and um so that'll be on uh this month and as well as next month and all stipends have been paid they just they were not reflective in these reports but yes they will be in the November okay so and then we have as you recall we'll have one again in 2023 based on the year-end cash balance thank you you're welcome any other questions wow thank you let's start with our foundation okay well let's start with our foundation and while we start with the foundation uh let me just pull up some notes so I don't forget something in just a minute well I want to say that the um I don't see the notes but um the thanks for giving reception was a success and our students provided the music provided the piano music and did a beautiful job I'm sorry I couldn't be there but it was a great success thanking our major donors and please don't forget I believe it's March 10th Friday March 10th is our Foundation gala please attend you can get your tickets at Ms dltf .com and um it's it's going to be a it's going to be a great year it's an anniversary year so it's going to be a real special special Gala um so look we look forward to the gala and to all the things that the foundation is doing for our kiddos well as the year turns we will have our committees um working on scholarship winners and um because we've got a lot coming up for the end of the school year so stay tuned yeah on the uh thanks for giving reception Westminster um hosted that for the first time and you know it's nice because it's a Lawrence Township of course location but they have a new Social Hall there so it really was a very nice event and all and I think they'll probably continue to make that available to them validation in the future so thank you it's good again law is parked and Recreation Saturday the Lawrence Christmas parade and tree lighting went well the weather was decent it was well attended the district was represented by the msdlt Drumline and then since we've had a pickleball theme this year I am pleased to announce that the common Council just approved funding for eight additional pickleball courts at Lee Road Park expanding to 16 and if you've been out there you know that they're very busy pretty much every day it's open so we will have updates on when they'll be constructed in 2023 here soon thank you Ms Norman any questions for our committee reports any additional thing for policy thank you award on to our action items approval of middle school facilities expansion update lecc transformation and new education Community Center project thank you Mr President again Dr Smith members of the board as a follow-up to our November 14th work session when we presented information about our new middle school facilities renovation expansion update the lecc transformation and the new education Community Center we had no comments or questions from the public at that time tonight was a follow-up to that again with our legal counsel and Baker Tilly here hearing no other additional comments tonight we ask that the board approve the 1028 preliminary determination for the middle school facilities renovation expansion update lecc transformation and new education Community Center project as submitted just go ahead oh so moved second hi unit polls the same motion carries thank you thank you thank you approval of additional Appropriations man thank you Mr McGregor Dr Smith members of the board once again um follow-up from earlier tonight from our public hearing asking for an additional appropriation again this is to fund and just give us permission from the state to expend dollars that have already been included in our budget to cover our debt service fund and so at this time I would ask the board to approve as submitted so moved questions or comments all those in favor signify by cni aye and it pulls the same motion carries thank you Mr miles thank you approval of dual language program recommendations Mr President members of the board and Dr Smith that our November work session the team brought to you a recommendation to expand our Spanish Immersion two-way program at Skiles test Elementary Sunnyside Elementary and Belzer Middle School for the 23-24 school year I ask that you approve that as submitted so second yeah well done no destroy questions or comments all those in favor signify and I I follow the same motion carries thank you Mr President members of the board and Dr Smith at our work session in November Mr Andy harsher director of secondary education brought to you recommendations from our curricular advisory committee that he leads each semester and those courses there were many that we went through that evening but all of them are either dual credit courses or they're part of the next level programs of study and so we ask that you approve those courses as recommended for the 23-24 school year so moved second carries thank you thank you good evening president McGregor Dr Smith members of the board in November I brought you some preschool updates and am asking for your approval as we recommended year-round preschool and then the need to also increase our rates so moved second Amy Norman questions for comments all those in favor singing Papa saying I I Interpol is the same motion carries thank you approval of request to publish RFP for students good evening Mr President Dr Smith members of the board tonight to recommend the board approve the request to publish the RFP for student Chromebooks as submitted so moved any questions for comments all those in favor singing Papa saying I I can impose the same motion carries thank you because president I move that we treated agenda items 5.07 through 5.12 is a consent agenda for the board's consideration second moved Mr Dick Breezy second Miss Wendy Muslim to item 5107-5.12 as consent agenda items questions or comments all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed the same motion carries thank you and move approval of the consent agenda second move and second move Mr Dick Freeze's second is when the muscle to approve the consent agenda questions or comments all those in favor signifies the same motion carries thank you Lord thank you administrators thank you all foreign well we just voted on it but I'm excited about the offering of the year-round or the expansion of the preschool programs I've really seen firsthand how access to Early Learning is important but also making it convenient for our families to be at the home school year round secondly I was able to attend the National Association for gifted children conference so I want to thank Miss Laplante in the district for inviting me to attend it was very informative as a parent but mostly from a board member it was very helpful from that lens to see how we can think about this from a policy level and I saw the same themes that we're working on with Equity access eliminating barriers for these programs so that I again that was very very great insightful um and learning from people all over the country too um and then my last point I guess as the district were always you know we're highlighting um I guess we're kind of leaning into culture uh cultural competence um being wanting our students to be comfortable in who they are in their backgrounds and I just wanted to highlight that November is Native American heritage month and I brought a little show and tell um if you know since your teachers um this is from my tribe I have paperwork from the Department of interior you're welcome to come look at it later but um I just wanted to highlight I think native tribes make up about one to three percent of the US population right now currently there are no federally recognized tribes in the state of Indiana but I'm thankful that we have a district that's committed to educating our students on the history of all of our backgrounds so thank you oh okay oh yes I'm sorry um I was going to say that for oh oh so this is a bald eagle head I have Mr Parish I have um paperwork from the Department of interior so I don't go to federal prison if you need a native tribal members uh can this is from my Chippewa tribe it's used by tribal elders and ceremonies um Chippewa and other tribes believe the bald eagle flew so high in the sky that it could carry prayers to the Creator and it's very symbolic and used in The Opening Ceremonies at the powwows so this was something that I've tried to share at school when we've had children like gone to my kids classrooms they've sent me several eagle feathers and different symbolic things used in Native culture so um just encouraging from the student level up to the board level digging into your background it's it's a wonderful thing that we're doing but but um this is my bald eagle head my family heirloom and it's got some other feathers that are used and then these are my oldest daughter's first pair of moccasins [Applause] well following bad my grandfather came no no okay so um I would just like to say that um both of our children Miss Puckett's children and my children have gone through the immersion program and uh no how impactful it is both learning a second language and the the academic achievement that allows the children to gain but the cultural awareness it gives all of our children in that program and um Dr Hunter um watched it Bloom at Skiles test and helped that bloom there and to see it bloom in another space school-wide is really a dream come true um I think um it it opens our children's Minds to recognizing culture and parents beware you will be warned in public places how to act and how to behave in in other cultures thank you thank you thanks to the district for that freezing I agree with the comments about the expansion of those programs I do think that's really good and all and thank you for doing show and tell excellent [Laughter] he's got some pictures I think I'm saving them for you I'm just going to share one of my favorite quotes that ties into all of this and for let me just say thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that because a lot of thank you for taking that time to share um quote if you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head if you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart so as we expand our immersion program there's just this is speaking to the heart of our community and thank you all that's it get you to the game right there's a game tonight right again I want to thank each and every one of you for participating in our room special recognitions I know we kind of take it for granted what happened on September 9th but there was a life-saving event and those guys are that team are healed so we don't want to just take that for granted it's like that here it's funny because I heard one of the students said that uh oh my God I thought oh yeah I didn't think it was on end and then when Mr Steve came back he was asking how he was doing so that's just that kind of got that just so it speaks volume to the people we have in there and I was just uh wow they are definitely Heroes for us thank you for that for our last board meeting for 2022 will be on December 12th that meeting will start at 5 30 p.m that will be a combined work session and monthly board meeting Dr Smith Mr President just leading into that that even is also a very special evening because we'll do a special board recognition for Two Gentlemen that is sitting here at the Deus so that special recognition will start at 4 30 for the two of you and family and and community members that we're going to invite to join us for that evening I also just like to remind the board we'll do our new board orientation on December the 16th and so just so for the record so you guys will know that but uh special recognition uh December the 12th starting at 4 30 for the two gentlemen sitting to my left thank you Mr President either okay all right thank you Lord if I don't any other comments you know questions we have come at the agenda I'll take a motion to return so moved second we are adjourned thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so remember back a couple years ago as to exactly why I joined politically in December of 2020. slow down for a minute and realize who the class of 23 is the class of 23 were a freshman in March of 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and that's River Birch Elementary so 12 years ago was when we opened our newest Elementary School River Birch since that time we've added over 2 100 students to our district so again our board has made really strategic decisions that have allowed us to grow such a significant number of students without opening a new school since 2010. so how have we done that well a few things one of our strategies has been to make our smaller schools larger so over the last few years we've enlarged Hickory we've enlarged Maple we've enlarged Sycamore we're getting ready to enlarge pine tree to maximize our SM our space and our smaller schools you'll also see some things on this list we're definitely using more Portables this year than we have in in the last few years we're redistricting subdivisions before a home is built to send to class to schools that have more space getting really creative with space in our district and then some longer term Solutions as well there's lots of information on our website about the Avon High School project that is underway now that will take us at the high school to accommodate 4 000 students but these other items on this list have really been our focus at K-8 to delay the need for a new school I also want to talk about White Oak we're in White Oak right now at the back that's what used to be the White Oak Gym White Oak is a building that was built in the 1960s and really when we analyzed it with Architects is not able to accommodate the kind of Elementary School environment that we want for kids today and so we made a very strategic decision again the the school board thought well into this that rather than get rid of white oak or try to make it into an elementary that was not going to be up to the standards that we have in Avon we converted White Oak To Be An Early Learning Center that allowed us to serve preschool here got preschool out of our elementaries to free up classroom space at the elementary schools so it might not seem like white oak becoming an Early Learning Center impacted our elementary enrollment but it did significantly help because we were able to get preschool out of our elementaries into a home that can serve preschool students for years to come all of these projects have been able to to be accomplished with no increase to the taxpayer and no referendum funds used for construction projects and so really pleased that we've been able to go this long without having conversations about a new elementary school but a new school build but certainly the time has come so Dr Sullivan is going to talk with you a little bit about some of our other enrollment information thank you Dr Windham as most people know we have become the third last our third fastest growing School District in Indiana only behind Franklin Township and Zionsville Community Schools from 2019 to 2021 with adding an additional 536 students this map shows you our redistricting you can see by color where each School lies and you can see some outliers that are circled because there are schools in these districts who are at maximum capacity and so we had to send students to other schools outside of their District so if you look at Maple you see the orange circle in the upper right hand corner that shows that there is a Housing Development that's been moved to Sycamore and if you look below that there are three circles in green two and Cedar one in Hickory all of which are going to Pine Tree because again both Hickory and Cedar are at capacity this very busy slide lets you see some of the upcoming developments you see three that are going to be in the river birch District two more that are going to be in the maple District another in the maple District in Brookstone and then three more one in Hickory and two in the Cedar District two more that are going to be added to the Hickory School District and then there's one the settlement West that'll be in Cedars District this forecast was done by the board to project where we will be as far as students from today which is 2022-23 through 2031 2032.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I've got two young kids one is in second grade at EMS I'm sure many of you have heard it as well I've always been told to be careful what you say and do around them they're always watching they'll you can bet the class of 23 was watching the previous committee back then too in addition to academics we think of our high school years as a sort of writing passage a series of unique life events that prepare us to enter the general Society we often make 13 to 14 year old kids to 18 year old young adults ready to Take On The World we do this through social activities like sports performances clubs prompts pancake breakfasts getting dinners fundraisers all sorts of other events so I'll ask again who is the class of well they were the blacks who were told that they can't finish their freshman year in high school they were the class we're told they can't start their sophomore year in the classroom they were going to pretend they were most schools of good enough education and they could use some kind of reformant that milky really understood they're the Juniors who were made to work through massimages majority of their youth had events canceled and now they're seniors who have had just about every normal variety of Passage that you and I take for granted stolen next email included the line we have made concessions for the greater good time for the administration and school committee to allow us to have this day without fear of retaliation again here they sure have made their fair share of the sessions for the greater good and they've yet to know what a normal year of high school is like remember we're not done with this year yet and if you look around at some of our neighboring communities you can probably see certain areas gearing up to ask Megan her classmates to make even more concessions all they ask for is the opportunity to salvage what's left of their high school years to come together with this incredible achievement and I think would be terrible not to listen to them where I hope is that we start to see this culture ship now this week I talked to superintendents Angie and future superintendent Costello constantly love the need to start operating in one District about three years ago we stopped being three individual schools and became one district and how important it is to unify our two elementary schools around this idea what better opportunity could there be to do that than this week how great would it be to see Team Pride at all schools this week if the administration and teachers can make it happen on such short notice wouldn't it be great if players could tour around the elementary schools talk to young kids about what it means to be part of a team and part of the community have a pep rally have the bands play where the team colors show how it will encourage the young kids to get involved and participate in school activities whether any sports or anything else all right so now we're going to hear from the community and the administrators administrations that share what they've come up with and then we're going to discuss and vote as a committee we're going to hear from the public about this and do the numbers I do want to ask that you limit your comments to about three minutes but I want the committee and the administration to hear exactly what this means to you and what you think we should do this week and in the future when situations like this arise so that's it we'll open up a public commenting session I have one request prior to coming up meeting um Mr Dave arkand and then there's some walk-ins um that I signed in on the cookbook um if you can speak loud enough well there's a microphone here I believe graduates as well as a parent of a current plate so I'm here tonight to make an appeal for the early release of schools on December 2nd so everybody can attend the game referring to but ask that you consider these couple points as you make your decision first of all this is special it's Unique maybe not once in a lifetime but it's close not the team historian but as far as I'm aware these two schools whether it's individual high schools or in the combined West Coast program they've never made it this far in the history of playing football in Massachusetts there's 275 football teams playing this year there's only 16 left so we're in the final six percent that's pretty amazing number um these kids in this entire Community will remember this experience for the rest of their lives I'd ask you please don't become part of that memory in the form of remember when to wouldn't release too early so everybody could go watch the game okay number two this is a Toronto team um so yeah they practice at West Boylston from the shirt says lines but there's a lot of tohonto kids on this team uh you know with all due respect to my friends over at WV to Honda students uh easily make up half the team roster all for the team captain so I think over here I think I saw them all here in the front row um are from Toronto um 18 of the 22 starting positions on the teams are Toronto kids the hotel members of this team want and need your support as they represent this entire community in this unique experience this is your team this is not just WB um I'll close by saying I can't pretend to know the entirety of your criteria you must consider when you're making a decision to modify the school calendar it's been you've cited several reasons that I wasn't aware of uh what I do know is students in the school district have the rest of their school years college and their careers focus on education and work they have a single opportunity to represent their team at a state championship football game please do the right thing here don't ever up on the wrong side of History is here okay we're both nervous okay my name is um I'm a 2003 graduate at Toronto my parents are graduate from Toronto my husband's teacher at Toronto my daughter's in preschool at Toronto I have a daughter in second grade at BBS so it's in our blood to be stag fan and against everything I know would be a lion's man and so for you guys know for me to support the scene it helps at the most of them okay I emailed Mr zany and Mrs Costello earlier this week when I first heard about the miaa's decision to play this game at the least opportune time for anyone that works or attends this field I was on the fence about coming to read it out loud because I've never done anything like this previously but after speaking to my nephew Bobby Humphrey last night I chose to come Bobby would obviously love the support of the entire District but feels a little strange after that Court I told him that I would come and read my email and let everyone know that yes it would mean so much to him as a captain of this great team to have his classmates teachers and administration supporting them in the most important game of their career I'd also like to say that regardless if this is the decision made tonight my family including my husband the teacher I talked about my daughter at Thompson preschool and my daughter at EES will be taking time off school to attend we believe this is an important Community event that will create last few members for our family and we also believe that we'll show our kids that hard work does pay off sometimes in the form of getting to play at Gillette speaking this that wasn't money I'm sorry okay my email is I'm reaching out first and foremost as a supporter of the state finalists with oil to varsity football team secondly I'm reaching out as a parent of their biggest fan this is an unprecedented precedented time for our school district and one that I believe should be fully celebrated although the boys wear West Boylston on their shirts and helmets they are at the core of the hanco team they are packing stars from boys and Berlin and I believe their peers and teachers deserve the time to cheer them on as they play on the historic field at Gillette Stadium having grown up in Boylston and lived here my entire life I know moments like this could potentially be once in a lifetime if you could possibly find it in your heart to give kids and staff an early release to celebrate this momentous occasion I believe we could do more for the district morale and overall happiness in many three hours of schooling possibly could my daughter is a second grader at Bes and regardless of your decision she will be released early that day to watch your cousin the biggest Idol Bobby Humphrey in his final High School game of his career I know it means the world to him to have his teammates who have worked their entire lives from this moment to have their fans who have cheered for them at every game along the way be able to also cheer for them when it needs the most Sports have Toronto are doing so well recently I think showing support for our athletes who go a long way with your goal is to retain students in the district I know what spoilsson has already declared a half day for their Staffing students please follow their lead on this one and give the kids these kids the respect and fan fear Fair they have earned and truly deserve thanks for your thoughtful consideration on this matter foreign hello and thank you for allowing me to speak today I'm Meg Edwards my twin brother John has been on the team her has been on the team for the last three years and I've been watching him play since he was five I'm a student here in tohonto I'm a senior in the class of 2023. as you know our peers online team have had a once in a lifetime opportunity to play at Gillette is important to the students and faculty as well as a community to go and support the achievements of our football team they have worked tremendously hard this season and deserved as many people as they possibly can support the student body especially in the class of 2023 has missed out on a lot of opportunities for the in our past four years advice for three years in high school this is quite possibly the senior's last opportunity to be together outside the school we would appreciate the support of the amazing Administration and school community I submit a petition with over 80 signatures and I gathered her in just thank you hey guys thanks for letting me speak I didn't really prepare anything but what I can tell you is have any of you in your high school days have a team that played in the safe lives can anyone raise your hand you did I I did not fight oh no did you have a team that played yeah I don't remember but I know Coach Collins so it was ready I didn't have a team but when I was in seventh grade I went to Nashoba Regional and the boys soccer came in 1990 went to the city finals they played doxbury they won 3-2 right I didn't have any friends on the team I didn't have the brother sister it's part of the community and I went and supported those kids just like other policemen all right now here's the thing listen I'm so glad you read that email because if it was the Pantene at Symphony Hall I would be there if it was the drama team the drum club that made it to the stage I would be there and if you look around you can ask all these parents that are at the games I'm at the games I'm at the basketball games I don't have a dog in a place possible not the basketball games I know the son that plays basketball I'm not the field hockey teams I'm at the soccer boys soccer games I go into all the games why because I'm a part of this community and I want change what I've seen in the I have an 11th grader in an eighth grade what I've seen in the five years we've moved to town 17 years ago in the last five or six years we need change right and we have the opportunity to do that now right we have we have two we have open positions coming up we have rotating people onto school committee Let's Be the Change Change for good right we're a community we need to do it together and these kids deserve it if most people knew and I know the girls soccer team the boys soccer team they all put in a lot of work if you know what the day looks like for some of these kids it's weight room in the morning before school it's school and they all do really well at school right so take that off the table it's not listen to school they all do it really loud school right then it goes weight room at night after everything's done for team then you play a game right then you have three days to get your body ready for another day of practice right some of those days aren't pretty right you're not walking right you're not walking right you're banged up you're bruised you're cut right you you need help you need tubs right you need to get ready these kids deserve our support and they've put in the time and now it's our turn to support we need to put in the time thank you very much yeah thank you Alma paramedic I'm sorry hi um I'm Alma this is my twin brother um I'm speaking on behalf of the class of 2024 as a you a lot of you may know our grade is on a lot of our graders on the Lions football team we as a class want to support our friends that we have spent so much time with these past years at dejanto while we know it is academics are important this is pretty much like once in a lifetime experience our own players are playing at the Gillette at Gillette Stadium the same field that the Patriots play on that's that's pretty cool um so what we ask for is your support whether it's a fan bus or a half day or just no penalization for whoever leaves turns during during the day to go to the game um I went to a student council conference a couple weeks ago and a lot most of the most of it was about um bringing more Spirit into our schools after life we lost two years um it's a we need more spirit and I think whether whether it's a concert or a field hockey game this is a great start to shift back into a normal preppy peppy school um it's not just it's I mean obviously it's about football but it's bigger than that too it's um other kids looking up to these people it's yeah um thank you [Applause] see some discussion going on oh yeah sorry not a lot of starters from a school Wilson anyways but I'm sorry um we got a lot of support from West Boylston already a lot of our fans and our students coming to the game and that's because the half day if we didn't have that day we wouldn't have as many people coming as I know that there are and to have double that amount with to octo support that's even better but we small schools both ways that's why we're Co-op so the more fans the better the sport really does help I know I play on the team so I know what it's like to have fans cheering you on you make big play and when you make it this far to a stage like this at Gillette Stadium it's it's amazing so having fans there to support you more than they're here thank you [Applause] anybody else buying the last part all right uh we'll then move on to our discussion uh if you have anything yeah um so when we look at these kind of decisions safety percent all of my 30 years to teach you that's a teaching at the high school and so the last thing we want is students rushing to an event and getting hurt because you know trying to get try the two hour drive 30 minutes so that's one of the things you can say the other thing is whether we're doing something that's a question here whether you're gonna release fairly through the elementary school and I think to get some kind of reason why we need them as a businessman touched on it also definitely realized that there's been a lot of families left students at the elementary school some mentioned at the high school so and also whether we're under people business so teachers get attached to these kids they work with them for a long time and so they want to they want to participate there are really three options those are logistical problems with that the things that are probably more concerned with like how many bunches how many notes come in but really on you'll know is that we have to track down it just because the other is the half day keep quiet by the school committees and the reason it requires a vote by the school committee because it's a half day and it would have to be data and then the third option is which doesn't require a book by the school community and in that case foreign um so many high school Industries have some flexibility of solving some extra time so that's because the most amount of time in school and still gives the flexibility of getting to the event without connection too much the elementary school Monday after school programs so most of the families who use that utilize the accessible program um Jack sorry I didn't realize half days had to be made up so would you have to make up a half day would you add half day on your calendar if we did vote okay performance so we have to schedule a full day so as a day off the school year for teachers and students and that we have to vote if we if we think that a half day as well or uh yeah okay and what's yeah and what's the what's the time difference on it early so a half day after Elementary so you're talking to 1056 and early release you said the earliest you can do without having to make it up will be well we decided when we talked to the high school administration to upstairs because we're going to have lunch expense so they can get all the functions that they could plan for that so you don't have to worry about that Elementary School and again if somebody you know somebody who puts the defensible and said you know you're only need some extra time that's fine I'll show you they have the flexibility to do their companies yeah so um first of all I just want to reiterate what Mr Topman said football congratulations really no matter how the game turns out on Friday you should be very proud of yourselves but we're looking forward to celebrating Adventure Friday um I also want to say congratulations to the students and the community in this group uh as the many emails came in honestly I felt proud of you all for pulling together rallying about something that was important to you 'd be really nice to see we've got brothers and sisters getting along that's great um I want you to know that I think I can probably speak for everybody here that you have our unanimous support as team and with their accomplishments and I think the discussion really is uh how do we how do we facilitate this among the logistics you know any discussions I've had with the other committee members that's not the question it's just in that group navigating the details and making this uh something that works out yeah I'm hoping that we can we can shut down a concern that I I have also heard through contact with committee from elementary school parents specifically is that you know there are some that are more removed from from the Athletics engaged we're not there yet and some of those parents do depend on their kids being in school they're having jobs so my question was just angry if you were to apply the after school programs or something to coverage with parents families to take part in everything you know because there's a lot of paperwork and responsibilities because I said mostly most of the families who utilize that program they do because they have issues can I ask the question so is the points are moving in several times at 12 30 to be able to facilitate three lunches and not to have to make another day so yeah anyways so for the lunches we just passed earlier but just to be to be clear the elementary school children that are already enrolled have coverage but those that aren't interested only if we do an early release my understanding is that if we if we go about a half a day then no after school right yeah we didn't check for the afternoon because we could work on that we could do that because I guess that's a long time right right because it would be we did but again appreciate from examples Nursery Church we're talking about two hours in one day so foreign people at the time yeah I wanted to ask a question too so there's a lot of criminalization and I understand like in the high school level there's certain classes for that um at the elementary school said I have a lot of communication concern about working parents trying to figure that out and probably many of you do take care of you know use the absolute program but and you don't so I guess at the elementary school level I didn't think or even at high school like a dismissal was not trapped like a party or a Thompsons or penalizes so I guess if if we were to separate the condo in the Middle School from the elementary schools for an early release would I don't understand that there would be any penalization for someone to dismiss their child in the road Philippines foreign okay another month but they won't do that for mornings I guess you're right after school you did have to register and you had a picture day yep yep right okay um let me ask this question kind of going along what Jess was saying about credit and like so for these high school kids if you do an early release like the players I would assume they're gonna have to leave I don't know at 10 o'clock in the morning I would get what time does the game start two three sorry we do an early release is that what is that going to do with these kids are they going to be penalized because it doesn't affect that I mean they play sports so what if a student wants to leave they they all get out of school yeah like no uh High School what time did you say high school gets out at noon yeah no for early release release I want like I get the point of not want to do the half day right because then everybody has to make it up to the teacher so it's in a way better to work with some teachers um 12 30 will be enough time from high school yeah visit yes I mean the football team's going to be up whenever we have to get a popular that's 10 10 30 11.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you can see that it projects that we would have ten thousand five hundred and twenty students this year which is about 130 less than we actually have but this was a very rigorous or very aggressive forecast and you can see if we look in three years at 25 26 we're projected to be at 11 110 students and then by 3132 we're projected to be over 12 150 students yeah so we have less than that about 120 less than the 10 520. and if you've been in the district any amount of time you've been able to drive around and see that we have Portables at several of our schools including intermediate East West Maple Hickory pine tree and Cedar so if we did redistrict a couple of years ago at the elementary level uh when we expanded Maple when we expanded Sycamore and Hickory uh and converted White Oak to be a preschool Center we did redistrict at that time this slide shows you what we estimated in redistricting with what the current enrollment is in those schools redistricting is not an exact science it's hard we have a whole Committee of parents and administrators that helps us redistrict we are projecting into the future what cornfields we think will develop into new subdivisions and you can see on this slide uh in several schools we underestimated the growth that would happen there Cedar Hickory maple in Pine Tree we overestimated the growth that would happen in Pine Tree which is why on that slide Dr Sullivan showed you we are redirecting some new developments into the pine tree uh area River Birch we underestimated and Sycamore was remarkably close uh to the the numbers that we had estimated there but as you can see in general we have trended higher than what our redistricting estimate was for uh the the that was completed in 2020 and 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we've had games we've had State Games already that we had two o'clock that but the reason this was an early game is because we get all the games because of daylight savings with the soccer teams you can feel about you can we've had to go an hour and a half away and we had a two or two o'clock game and we had to get them outside 12 o'clock or whatever they're going to be this message for the fans anyone going for this game yes we're going to have buses here for the fans that want to be there for one o'clock yeah opportunity I do not realize half days have been made up I thought that we put a half day on the calendar it counted as a full day in the 186 or whatever the town is foreign yeah obviously I know you don't make the rules I get it no it's made much yeah no I get it down here as well sorry I just wanted to ask so I know as a senior we have something called like senior privilege where at the end of the day of the study we're allowed to um you know leave early and I was wondering if maybe that would be possible to do during The Lunchbox so if people have already had plans for lunch with their families need to go like together um and they had relatively today wanting to go to the game there would be a way that doesn't happen bringing like permission notes beforehand being like I wouldn't be that my child at that time and then with the penalize for it and they will be able to dismiss that launch foreign you know what it means in the front office has to be prepared for the house so with an effort to fix on one end ocratulations for the day um [Music] so here's the other thing if we make if we made it a half day and you have to make a full day why won't you just cancel school that day um we're talking about hours here it's like what if you just canceled school that day like a snow day and you made it up well I'm just saying if you have to wake up all day to get it back that you have to get then you have to make it before that you know why would we go for them the recommendation is the early release 130 covers all those questions covers all everything lunches get the kids home get the kids to after school that need it so I think the recommendation is an early release don't have to make it up in the future go have fun at the game go win the game he wants to fill up for the game you get the proper load so we could have called right now uh just to approve an early release or something like um earlier release but it was either an early release which we would have to make up again yesterday so do I have a motion to approve the calendar change from early release um to make it to really exploring if you can create that as well not sure numbers because I know the Ohio foreign Elementary School then it should be one way back it is foreign little dismissals I'm I don't I don't know I don't know but I need to have one discussion about this music no I think the elementary school will be fine unless there's kids that have siblings yeah I think you know we're having this discussion but we need to consider what is development school which if we can't provide enough care and we have to you know pivot stinks again right I I don't think it's enough to say we have to get lunches on here but there's something close to 20 percent I think they can take their lunches what Jeff what happens on what happens on that day yes you can opt in on a half day lunch yeah at any school you would just miss your last period and you go eat your lunch so regardless if it's a half day or a roller lease if you need lunch you get one I think the difference so I think you know the early release considers that at least if you want to make sure yeah I make a motion that we just keep it as a regular okay the district wide happened uh yes I I think yes correct thank you yeah so yeah yeah let's do it again the difference here is uh Schools get out in elementary reserves it's 10 56 here at times uh we think this will alleviate potentially some front office Dynamics with dismissals you just you pull the Band-Aid off the whole District let everybody go do what they want to do and support the team right he's after school care is still open Play I said I'm sure right just in general that's not confirmed to see you guys I'm still trying to understand why half day on school calendar if we turn a day into a half day it happens like I just I don't want it so why why would there be a difference between the ability to provide after school care according to the newspapers yeah it's an hour and a half we're talking an hour I mean we've just been checked I'm not saying check that out about that um so emotions on Behavior give them well because we went to the early release are you ready for vote of the motion it's all baby clothes yes all right thank you [Applause]
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
in some school districts as growth happens one of the strategies that is used to accommodate growth is to grow class sizes so rather than having 22 or 23 students in a class you'd have 26 27 students in a class that is certainly an approach that many school districts take when space when enrollment grows of course in Avon we don't want to do that that is not something that we want to do because our community supported a referendum an operating referendum in 2018 that one of the primary focuses was on reducing our class size on this slide you can see that we've been able to hit our class size Targets in all levels that we indicated in the referendum Elementary intermediate and middle school and we've been able to do that while decreasing the referendum tax rate so the voters approved a tax rate in 2018 of just over 35 cents our board has never taken the full amount of the referendum tax rate it has decreased Ever every year since and in 2022 the referendum tax rate was 25 cents which is a 29 decrease from what the voters approved so we've been able to hit our class size targets and drop our referendum tax rate every year and we're seeing the positive results from our focus on class sizes this slide shows you our academic performance our State ranking in terms of the percent of students who passed both portions of ISTEP and iLearn so in 2011 if you've been around Avon for a while we had a failed referendum in 2011.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
at that time we were 19th in the state in our uh ranking of percent of students that were passing ISTEP as our class sizes went up after that failed referendum our ranking in the state went down that was when class sizes were over 30 and many of our classrooms especially at the elementary Intermediate Middle School level then in 2018 you can see that's where we hit the bottom of 55 that was the year we passed the referendum and you can see the last three years since the referendum was in place we have seen a steady improvement in our academic achievement of you can see in 2022 where the 26th highest performing school district and if you look at the 25 that are ranked above us we are one of if not the most diverse school districts in this in the top 26 if you look at the percent of our students who are on free and reduced lunch or the percent of our students who are multilingual so again great progress that our teachers are making as a result of lower class size and we don't want to give up our focus on maintaining low class sizes so one of the exercises that we've been working on over the last few months is to really analyze how many classrooms do we need what spaces do we need and so on these next couple of slides you'll see a summary of Number One how many teachers are teaching right now in Portables so you can see right now we have 12 teachers teaching and Portables at the k-6 level then we've summarized repurposed spaces meaning that there are teachers teaching in classrooms that were not intended to be classrooms stem Labs that are now classrooms The Outdoor Learning Center has a classroom at Maple that has been converted into a classroom art rooms science labs that have been converted to classrooms we have 18 classrooms right now that are being repurposed for classroom spaces then in the fourth column classrooms needed by 2627 that's looking at the demographic study that Dr Sullivan shared and projecting out based off of the enrollment growth that we project that we will see by 2627 we can extrapolate how many additional classrooms we will need so you can see by 2627 we would expect to need about 50 additional classrooms uh based off this calculation if you go out to the last year of the demographic study 3132 we can expect to need about 66 additional classrooms to serve students based off of these numbers the only column that changes on this slide is the classrooms needed by 3132 because we've accounted for additional growth so the big questions really are it's not as simple as just saying we need to build a new Elementary because yes our elementaries are crowded but our intermediate schools are also crowded our middle schools are almost out of space so really at the K-8 level we need to have some conversations about how do we grow how big do we want our intermediate and middle schools to become is now the time to examine reconfiguring our schools to allow us greater capacity to grow over the long term so we're going to talk a little bit in a couple of slides here about school funding as we talk about construction of new buildings new schools that really is impacted in our debt service fund so that's essentially the fund where the school district pays their mortgage if you go back to the the first couple of slides that is where the school district uses property taxes to pay for buildings that that is the only fund that we would use when we're talking about building new schools or renovating our schools is The Debt Service fund we do not need to access a referendum for construction in some communities when they talk about building a new school they also start talking about a construction referendum that is not us we do not need a construction referendum and we won't use any of our existing referendum to pay for buildings the reason we're able to do that is that we have capacity in our debt service fund this is a slide that comes from our financial advisors and you can see the cliff that comes as building as we start to pay off some of our buildings our debt goes down and that gives us capacity to fund these projects so when we say that there's no impact to the taxpayer that's because that dotted line going across is our tax rate and we can accomplish these projects and keep a steady tax rate for our taxpayers so you'll see these visuals on every model that we talk about tonight we're going to show you three models the three models cost different amounts of money and you'll see that but the thing to remember is we can we can accomplish any of those three models with no impact to the taxpayer because of our debt service fund and the debt that we have falling off and we do not need a construction referendum so there would be no referendum impact as as we look at those three models so let's talk a little bit about the three models and then uh we will go into each of the models in a little bit more detail so I'll do a high level overview and then I'll hand it off to Mrs alday who will dig into model one so in in model one this is more of the status quo model it would maintain our current structure of our school district we would still need to build one new elementary school that would serve grades K through four we would need to significantly expand our intermediate schools grades five through six and we would need to expand the middle schools but it would keep our current structure then if you look at models two and three that's really where we get into two models that would change the structure of our district so in model two we would send fifth grade back to the elementary schools so all of our elementaries would become K5 we would need to build a new K-5 Elementary School to accommodate that we would also convert intermediate East to be a K-5 and convert West to be a middle school grade six through eight so we would have three middle schools that would all be grades six through eight the third model does the same thing sending fifth grade back to Elementary in sixth grade to the middle school but it does it in a slightly different way and that we would convert both of our existing intermediate schools to become two elementaries that are grades K5 and then we would need to build a new 6-8 Middle School so if you're here in the room before I hand it off to Mrs alday you should have grabbed a piece of paper when you came in that is a little note taker for you for each model there's a place for you to take notes and then at the end we'll break off into small groups and have a chance for you to give us some input but as we go through these models if you have questions or if you want to take any notes that's what those sheets are there for so Mrs alday if you want to talk a little bit more about model one thank you good evening so as Dr Windham said we're going to dig into each of the models and so the first one is model one and so with model one that's keeping our same structure um so we would stick with K4 elementary schools five six intermediate schools and seven eight middle schools with this model we would build one new elementary school and then with our existing six we have a total of seven elementary schools we would expand both of our intermediate schools and we would expand both of our middle schools so when you look at any of these models there's positives to each of the model and there's some challenges to each of the models when we think about positives the model one is there's it's kind of staying with our status quo so there's not much impact to the structure of our school district um with this model our intermediate intermediate teachers and staff they have worked so hard to build great positive learning experiences for our students and so we know that they would continue to do that and work really hard to have those great learning experiences um in this model we know the construction would be one new elementary school and when you look at construction costs the most cost-effective school to build and our models would be in elementary school so that's a strength to this model um there's also some challenges when we think about this model when we say with our same structure there's we like other like um which is different from other school districts with the intermediate model we have more transitions so our kids will start at K4 they transition to the fifth grade they're there for a year and then they transition the middle school there for two years and then they go to the high school and when you think about it we have you know approximately let's say 800 850 850 kids there each year there's 425 new families coming into that school and new students coming in there and 425 leaving that school and that's just a lot of relationships and we know the power of relationships um another area when we think about this model is with having five six at the Intermediate School our sixth graders just don't have as many opportunities with extracurricular so Sports and different clubs where other districts in our conference have sixth grade at the middle school so their students get to participate in those um another thing when you think about this model is the curricular piece a lot of curricular companies they will have K5 they make resources for K5 and then there's resources for six eight we're Le we're living this right now with math we use one math resource bridges in K5 and then we use a different one in sixth grade the sixth through eighth grade and with that it just inside the same school it just makes it challenging for teachers and for students and one other piece to think about in this one is um if you have dropped your kids off or picked your kids up up at East or West it can be congested we have a lot of kids a lot of families a lot of cars in that area and so it's just when we look at this model it'll even get even tighter so with this model this slide will just show you like what we're forecasting um how many students how many sections of students in each of the schools so again K4 would have seven elementary schools with the six existing and one new school and you can see what we're projecting for enrollment and 26 27 and really when we're looking at schools we would expect with this model that we would have four elementary schools that have six section schools when you think about a six section school that means we had we would have four elementaries that would have six classes of first grade six classes of second grade and then we would have three of those elementary schools that would have five section schools so five first grades and so on and you'll see well even 3132 the enrollment goes up some but we stay the same with the sections of schools at the 5 6 level when we're looking at those two intermediate schools expanding we're looking at just under 900 at the 26 27 and then at 31.32 each of the schools will be over 900 um would have over 900 students again at Middle School staying with the two schools we'd be looking at already at 26 27 already being over 900 and then within a five years we'd already be hitting the Thousand Mark so we'd have over a thousand students at each of our middle schools this is a drawing of a possible floor plan really to show that if this model we have the capacity on our current site to do these additions so this is the intermediate school you can see that school that is turquoise is intermediate East and the turquoise is the existing um building and then that darker blue is where we would need to expand so if you think about that's right up it's we're right up front where that portable is right now and it would go into some of the parking lot but we had the capacity and on the other side the yellow the school um the darker the the muted yellow is the existing building of West and that brighter yellow shows where we would expand to have additional classrooms and even you can see that orangish color where we would expand a second floor into that Media Center so again we have the capacity but we know this is already a tight footprint that we'd be making tighter this slide just demonstrates that when you look across our conference across our area we have districts have different ways that they structure their schools and a lot of the school districts around us have that sixth through eighth grade some do they have exactly like we do at seventh and 8th grade and there's even some that have fifth through eighth in the buildings and you'll even see on this slide there's a variety of sizes and again I think Dr Windham said like what side where do we want to be like what is that right amount of students and what feels like too much and you'll see there's schools that have middle schools that have close to 1700 students and I mean a lot of middle school students and one at one school so we're just thinking about what what do other schools have and what do we want for our students again um Dr Windham shared we're going to look at some costs any time that you're looking at school construction costs and when you're looking at over 100 million dollars we know this is an expensive project and that's part of school construction the one thing that's why our school board has been so diligent and been so thoughtful about what can we do to avoid building schools because they're expensive in this model you'll see there would be the cost for um building a new elementary school there would be some additional classrooms at our other elementary schools to expand you'll see that expansion at both of our intermediate schools and you'll see the expansion out west I mean at both middle schools for that grand total in this project um the one piece as we said too we're able to do this with zero impact to our taxpayers and zero impact to our current referendum so when you look at this model this is just another way to visually look at this model um and so if you look at where it starts at the Y we have one preschool and the Orange shows at elementary schools we would stick with our current six but we'd add a new school then again this one has the two intermediate schools the two middle schools moving up to one high school so in a nutshell that is model one and Dr Sullivan is going to give you an overview of model 2.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so Mrs alday showed you model one which doesn't change very much about our structure model 2 begins a change in our structure so as you can see from the graphic up top there will be no intermediate schools in model 2. that means we'll build one Elementary School convert East into an elementary school convert West into a six through eight Middle School having a total of three middle schools remember that all elementary schools will now be K through five so the positives are there's one less transition which means our students won't go from elementary to intermediate they'll go from elementary to Middle then from middle to high there'll be more time for middle school students to build relationships with students and Families curricular alignment as Mrs alday spoke about most curriculums are K-5 most middle schools are six eight and then of course you go to the high school there'll be more extracurricular opportunities for our middle school students again our sixth grade students will have more opportunities at that point East and West utilization and traffic would be similar to the current way it is now challenges is there's an impact on the feeder system we will now have eight K through fives and three six through eights for middle schools East will still need a kindergarten classroom and a playground update West will need additional classrooms and flex spaces and there'll be some crossover between elementary and middle schools for example Elementary music classrooms and abandoned Orchestra spaces will be shared baseball and softball for South and the new Middle School would be at a separate location and west and south will have a shared football stadium and track so another way to look at model 2 is by 25 20 or 26 27 we'll have a projected enrollment at our K-5 schools of which there'll be a a four thousand 595.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
what's that 6.95 and that means we'll have five five section schools and three four section schools by 2031 our K-5 schools will have a projected enrollment of 4 825 students which will be five five section schools and three four section schools our new three middle schools which will be grades six through eight will have a projected enrollment of 2730 students which will be an average of 910 per Middle School and by 2031-32 there'll be a projected enrollment of all three of those middle schools of 2965 students with an average of 906 or 988 students per School this graphic allows you to see where East and West will become a middle school and an elementary school and you can see in the green and in the yellow where there will be additions to both schools you can also see that in the lower part that there'll be additions as far as what will be a playground over to the right if it was actually over a little more do you see that we would take a look at what we would do with the tennis courts and so the grounds around both of these would be also updated here's another view who speaks about what I was talking about when you look a little bit more closely at the additions at the ground there's a new playground Avon Elementary to the right the tennis course would be updated and then there'll be a new practice field where um it would be outside the football stadium and those Aqua colors those would be where the new classrooms would also be one of the things that we already have as a district is our board has had the foresight to already buy land where on we could put a new elementary school and so this first site shows that it's north of Sycamore on Dan Jones Road and it was purchased in 05 and it's about a little under 39 Acres we'd also have a site for an elementary school at Whispering Pines which was purchased in 09 by the board and it's a little over 32 Acres cost considerations just like in Model 1 model 2 does have a considerable cost and a middle school expansion is quite costly you can see that both model 1 and model 2 have no impact to the taxpayer nor will it have an impact on the current referendum the last graphic shows another way for you to look at how this plays out for us would be that we'd have one high school that would be there in yellow which would be fed into by our three middle schools which will be north south and then of course West would be a middle school and then we have our eight K-5 elementary schools All in Orange which would all be fed into by our White Oak Elementary priesthood preschool at this point Dr Lemay will talk to you about model 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you Dr Sullivan um as we look at model 3 one of the things it does is similar to model two um the first thing we do is as we look at our elementaries we convert intermediate schools East and West into elementary schools and they will serve grades K-5 and then our and then we actually build one new Middle School serving grades six through eight some positives we'll look at the positives and challenges of this model some positives would be that elementary students would be on a shared East-West campus and then this model would avoid needing to build a new Elementary School and there's also less new construction on the already tight East West Campus also similar to model two we'd have uh additional extracurricular opportunities for our middle school students especially for our sixth grade students who have uh very few opportunities to participate in school-based athletics and extracurriculars right now and then it does maintain property and this one's important maintains property on the north-south sides of our district for future elementary schools if needed some challenges for model 3 again similar to uh model 2 both East and West will need some additional work we need to add some Kindergarten space the playgrounds that we have now are not appropriate for our younger kids so those would need to be addressed as well the East Performing Art Space could be underutilized so we'll need to consider that baseball and softball for South would be off-site and then in this model we're building a new middle school and that does cost more than an elementary school as we look at model 3 again this is uh exactly the same as model 2 at K-5 we uh have eight schools six of those are already we already have their existing schools and then we add East and West as K five elementary schools and as we look at six eight we have our two existing schools middle schools north and south and then we would build an additional Middle School so as we look at the footprint of East uh our east west campus and some work that we would need to do there's less work to do as we said in this model if as you look at the yellow uh up up towards the top those are new uh kindergarten classrooms and then as you look uh just below that you have two new kindergarten classrooms for West and then below that they're outlined in red those are existing classrooms that would be converted to kindergarten classrooms and again so you can see in this model compared to model two there's less work to do construction on the outside especially so again with uh well thought out planning we do have space we do have land for a new Middle School we have almost 80 acres acquired in 2010 and that's just it's near the the Prestwick area parks and press Wick subdivision so again this would accommodate the new middle school and all the athletic facilities needed for a middle school again with the other uh just like the other two models there is a cost and as we mentioned uh it does cost more to build a new middle school so you'll see that and again the other we have additional classroom spaces at K5 at some of our elementaries transitioning uh intermediate uh to elementaries has a cost but then you can see the cost of a new middle school but again all this is done without impacted taxpayers and without using uh referendum dollars and finally for model 3 again we'll kind of look at that structure and how it flows we start with our uh with our preschool at White Oak and feeding into eight elementaries again uh six of those are already existing adding East and West as elementaries those all flow into uh three middle schools uh two existing north and south and and we build our third middle school and all three middle schools then flowing in uh to our high school so that's a look at model three so in these next couple of slides you might be wondering well why didn't they think about this option and chances are we probably did and so what we tried to summarize on these a couple of slides are other models that we tossed around and thought through but and then why we didn't feel like they were the right models for us moving forward so for example things like build a new Intermediate School and a new K4 different different scenarios what if sixth grade went to the elementary there are school districts that are k-6 so we tried to look through some of those models and wanted to make sure that we were transparent about why we didn't spend as much energy going in to develop these other models as we did the three that we have gone through with you so far this evening so all of this information is online if you're curious about these other six models you can certainly get more information and look at them in more detail online as has been said multiple times we can do these projects with no impact to our taxpayers and no referendum we know we have future conversations I've started or I have finished doing this presentation at all of our schools so some of these are questions that have come up from our staff as we've been talking through these different models but some will also come up from our parents as well but as I said at the outset we've got two and a half years to have further conversations once we determine what model that we want to move forward with so looking at our feeder system what elementaries will feed to what middle school we would certainly need to look at that and get that resolved need to look at the Staffing differences between the different models and the different levels the difference in Staffing between intermediates and middle schools as an example what would that look like for student and staff redistricting we would certainly work on that that year prior to this taking effect school start and end times we would have to explore what that looks like and any changes that would need to be made there and then some of our teachers have had questions about licensing specific to fifth grade and sixth grade there's some differences in how licenses are issued at those levels so we have time but we know that there are more conversations that will need to be had over the next two and a half years so our timeline as I shared I've been doing this presentation at all of our schools got those wrapped up prior to Thanksgiving we shared this presentation at our last school board meeting on November 14th we've got this presentation and then another one on December 1st a chance for our community uh to see this presentation and provide input then on December 5th and December or I'm sorry on December 5th we have a community presentation that will be more of a gallery walk where we'll have Architects here and we'll have these floor plans up around the room where people can come and actually see some more detail about what these floor plans would look like we've got a couple of those scheduled for staff but then one on December 5th that will be for community all with the goal of uh hitting a timeline of December 12th uh that the school board would vote on our future structure while we do have time building buildings takes time to plan and so our goal is if we can get direction uh from the school board at in our December meeting then we can head into 2023 starting to look at designs and finalizing plans and financing and all that goes in to school construction so that we can have these uh this new structure in place for the 25-26 school year all so that we can serve more kids that we started out talking about one of our parents that's here mentioned she moved here from another community that is declining in enrollment I've said that at every presentation to our staff that I have done over the last few weeks most school districts in the state of Indiana are declining in enrollment so I get it that change is hard and we anytime we start talking about chain possible changes to the structure of our district those are hard conversations but I would much rather be having growth conversations than the conversations that are happening in most school districts across the state where they're declining in enrollment they're talking about consolidating schools they're talking about cutting programs riffing teachers cutting teachers we get to have growth conversations because more families want to be a part of our great school district and so I I know these are can be challenging conversations and change can be hard but I'll take these conversations any day and and and I'm just honored to be serving in a school district that can continues to grow the way that Avon continues to grow we are going to break and do some small group small group input sessions if you're watching online we're going to stop uh the the live stream but there is a survey that you can take online you can access it through this QR code if it doesn't work through the live stream it is on our website but on the survey we'll ask you what do you think is the most important factor that we should be considering maybe it's cost maybe it's what gives us the most capacity to grow in the future so we'll ask you to identify what's the most important factor for you and then also give us some strengths and some challenges about each of the models we've listed off several but we know we haven't hit all of them and would certainly value additional input so if you're watching this on the live stream we're going to stop but please complete your survey and then we'll give some directions to those here thank you very much all right so what we will do is we can consolidate into one table um and get some
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
red light is on all right you guys thank you everyone for joining us um before we begin may we have the instructions for interpretation with thank you participants is thank you so much um first on the agenda there is a need for an executive session this evening I moved the Board of Education convene an executive session for the purpose of CRS 24 6402 4B legal regarding Suncor and CRS 24 6 402 4fi Personnel may I have a second a second thank you Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms lipado aye Ms Molina aye Ms Zubia aye thank you we'll be back at 6 p.m and we'll get started with the board meeting thank you I just saw your text I'm sorry you got in apparently yeah sorry oh red light is on thank you everyone Welcome to our November 29th special Board of Education meeting well uh can we begin with the instructions for interpretation again sorry interpretations presentations I'd like to call the meeting of the Adams County school district 14 Board of Education to order uh Ramona can you conduct real call please Mr Amador here Ms Estrada here Ms Lovato Here Ms Molina here miss Zubia here thank you next is approval of the agenda may have a motion to approve the agenda for the November 29th 2022 meeting so moved oh second Ramona roll Estrada I miss Zubia aye thank you next on the agenda is 2.4 resolution 22-016 regarding the be the change Community School uh secretary Zubia would you please read the resolution sorry I got room sorry yeah no no I have room no no no thank you so rest of uh of course resolution regarding be the change Community School charter application whereas under Colorado Constitution Article 9 and 15 the Adams County school district 14 Board of Education the board has control of instruction in its public schools and whereas Colorado law expressively states that the holding a public office or employment is a public trust created by the confidence which the electorate electoral reposit ah yeah sorry it's been a long day reposes in the Integrity of public officers members of the general assembly and local government officials and employees a public officer member of the general assembly local government official or employee shall carry out his duties for the benefit of the people of the state 24-18-103 and whereas the board and its superintendent Endeavor to maintain the public trust through their acts and protection over the Adams 14 School District Adams 14 and students staff Teachers Community and resources and whereas Adams 14 proudly serves a highly diverse and unique student population in which a substantial majority face socioeconomic challenges and are linguistically gifted at rates well above State averages and whereas the board believes all Adam's 14 students deserve rigorous and effective academic programming to enable them to achieve post-secondary and Workforce Readiness and postgraduate success and whereas the charter schools act allows charter schools to submit applications to local public school districts to establish a charter school within the local public school district 22 30.5-106 and whereas the board like all other local Boards of Education must balance its local control powers and public trust applications with the requirements of the charter schools Act and whereas on August 1st 2022 the board received a charter school application the application from be the change community school and whereas required by the charter schools act the district conducted a review of the application and whereas the district's review revealed that there were numerous and substantial concerns about the application and whereas the district provided be the change Community School the opportunity to address the concerns of the district and whereas be the change Community Schools response to the district failed to alleviate the numerous substantial concerns about its application and whereas these numerous and substantial concerns involve be the change Community Schools projected enrollment is not significant enough to match its proposed low growth model be the change Community Schools highlighted its out of District enrollment as a key feature of the need for the school but only 18 of The Limited intents to enroll were from Outer district for the future 9th grade class be the change Community School elect appropriate financial planning for federal funds Staffing and student needs be the change Community Schools governing board Is Not Elected by parents of the school only requires one Community member and the risk is substantial that the governing board will not be representative of the local community it intends to serve be the change Community Schools insurance coverage does not meet the minimum requirement of the district's threshold for insurance coverage there is insufficient evidence that parents were actively involved in developing programming or Mission Vision of the school and there was an observable lack of a community attendance at the three public presentations that were afforded to be the change Community School there is a lack of evidence of commitment from families that have declared their intent to enroll in the school and there was no defined plan to enroll students that are not currently attending Adams 14 Schools be the change community school has not provided evidence that it was secured it has secured Aid location for the school be the change Community Schools investment of human capital time and collaboration needed to develop a cohesive and viable curriculum was insufficient be the change Community School lacked a clear alignment of student discipline to the district's discipline Matrix and procedures and a lack of identified expulsion procedures and programming and the level of programming and services is not developed to meet the very need of special populations there is a lack of understanding of the level of Staffing that is required to serve special populations and it is evidence in the financial planning section that there are inadequate programming and Staffing allocations and an underdeveloped plan to provide such required Services now therefore it be resolved because of the board's public trust obligations the board's Fidelity to its constitutionally derived local Control Authority in the numerous and substantial identified concerns evident and be the change Community Schools application it is in the best interest of the pupils the district the community for the board to deny approval of the application all the information referenced above including but not limited to Communications reports draft contract application documents recommendations and resolution are hereby incorporated into this resolution and made part of the official record unless protected but from Disclosure by state and federal law thank you secretary Zubia um given that may I have a motion to approve the resolution to deny the be the change Community Schools Charter application a motion to approve thank you discussion read through your application and our district accountability committees um analysis and internal Review Committee analysis there were many many great things I know you guys have put a lot of work into this um I commend you all I think our staff and our DOC for reviewing all of this um there there were a lot of great things um and I just want to thank you for your time any other discussion all right uh Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina sorry Ms Molina I Miss Zubia I thank you um next on the agenda is 2.5 approval to apply for easy supplemental grounds this grant not only supplies funding for high quality tier one instruction for marginalized students but also CDE will provide up to one hundred thousand dollars in the form of this grant to support the Adams 14 reorganizational effort funds will be used to support all members of the reorganization committee from all of the involved districts allowable activities include but are not limited to hiring an external facilitator expenses associated with stakeholder engagement expense expenses associated with meetings such as food child supervision Etc and expenses associated with communication and I believe we had both supplemental information for for both of the uses of the fundings in our board docs may I have a motion to approve the easy supplemental Grant someone thank you oh second all right Ramona broke aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina aye Ms Zubia aye I'll take a quick break so people can exit all right um next on the agenda is 2.6 election of officers other than president pursuant support policy BDA this evening we need to elect a vice president as that position is currently vacant do we have nominations for the office of Vice President um I'll start um I would like to nominate director Zubia for the vice president position do we have a second I nominate myself so it's totally acceptable dominate myself [Laughter] yeah we need seconds for either of those seconds do we have any other nominations do we want to have discussion um do you have questions about the role no I don't have questions about the role I just um should have discussed it I think between all of us or individually with us I just don't I don't understand like the process for it kind of how we're electing officials yeah so I mean I just don't think that was discussed with everyone including new board members yeah so I don't want to vote on anything if I'm not clear should we do we want a table while we discuss the roles a little more clearly or um we don't have any statutory requirement to do this this evening Julie so you so you have you have a motion on the on the floor right now and I guess you could do a substitute motion to table it or you have two of them actually right which is a little odd to have to without a second I would I would substitute to table this okay for their discussion okay so you so you move a substitution I removed this episode okay you need a second for that I'll second that okay so then you'll have to do a roll call on that so I don't think there's enough time um between directorometers the opportunity to Second would I be able to thank it at this point it's been seconded by Madam president no I'm the second either one of their first substitute motion has already been made and has been seconded oh I see I see okay unless you're willing to withdraw your substitute motion and your second then you can I I would prefer to table it only because I think it warrants discussion just given the apprehension happening now um I would prefer that we talk about that and and clarify the roles um of each position and then bring it back if there's no requirement to have to do it tonight I would do that too okay are you guys okay with that yeah okay well then uh there's the roll call then hi is this I is all right thank you we will um need to make time to discuss that hopefully we can talk about it a little bit tonight during our Retreat and then um we'll bring It Forward at a future dates all right um next on the agenda is an update on Adams 14 reorganization committee um we had our first reorganization committee meeting on November 15th there are 12 members on the committee three from each of the four districts involved Adam's 12 Brighton 27j Mapleton and of course Adams 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
miss Larry Wood is that you on the phone yes thank you perfect thank you foreign ready good evening thank you for being here I'd like to welcome you to the regular board business meeting for Tuesday November 29 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
but call the meeting to order at 6 15. um okay tonight we have a special sites and Facilities meeting thank you all for joining us tonight I know um is all from our regular schedule but we've got some couple of important things on the agenda tonight that we've got to move forward so with that I'm going to turn the reins over uh to Dr selig Who's going to give us the rundown of uh what's going on thank you Louisa and again thank you to all the board members who joined us tonight I know a emergency flash emergency meeting on a Tuesday night uh in between holidays is not how everybody prefers to spend their time but we'll be as quick as possible and uh I think uh I think we'll we'll move along with some pretty good information here so there's two big items on the agenda the first is the capital budget process and the second is going to be the HVAC Grant the HVAC Grant has two action items um which we'll need to send up to full board and the um the minutes from these will have to be submitted with our application uh when we send it by December 1st so we'll start at the top with the capital budget process and for that I'll throw it to John yeah okay and um enrich two so um the city of Danbury uh each year has a capital budgeting program where they um solicit Capital spending uh requests from different departments um and um it's organized by Sharon calitro in the planning department and becomes part of the the mayor's budget and um generally what happens is projects are looked at and and put into one of the next five years uh to be funded and then um depending on what's in there the city will fund the projects uh in two ways last year they took about uh three million dollars of projects and just included them in the city budget just like any other line item there were a couple things for us in there and then uh some of the bigger ones they may pull out and finance those by issuing General obligation bonds the most recent example of that was the Cardis purchase but right now they're collecting those projects Antonio um collects them for the schools and includes them in a section of the capital budget called public buildings there are other projects for their projects for other departments in there as well the only difference might be those other departments also put in projects themselves but ours are there so what we'd like to do is Express to Antonio what we think are the most pressing priorities we have right now and then ask him to include those in the capital budget the he submits on our behalf so rich has um the the list many of the things you'll be familiar with um and well Rich I'll let you take it from there and can get back to that sure I'm gonna share my screen let's see how this goes there we go can everybody see the the list of capital projects Okay so we uh we try to prioritize them as as best as we can could and some of these items are consistent with what's already in the public buildings budget uh you know the top one replace windows at Great Plains School great play in school is one of two or three schools where they have old single pane windows they're probably original to the building um a lot of them are hard to secure at night um you know one and a half million installation of soffits on the open overhangs at Milleridge primary that's also the with the asterisk that's in public buildings but they usually put various schools so Milleridge primary you've probably heard the open soffits there's a lot of piping that birds and bats hang out on and we get a lot of bird droppings it's it's very unsanitary for the kids to be you know walking around there and we've power washed it before and within a few weeks you know the bird droppings are back on the ground so that soffit would take care of that problem and it would give the school a nice clean look as well uh replaced Danbury High School stadium lights with LED lighting uh last week uh Brian Harrity might foreman and myself met with musco lighting um to get an approximate budget price to replace all the stadium lights with LED lighting uh every year we we spend a significant amount of money just on bulbs in and ballasts and and the lights are getting to that age where they should we should look into replacing them um 50 000 for mechanical study to install air conditioning in schools um you know that fits hand in hand with a few things I I believe we still have money in the Esser fund for indoor air quality um in addition the state has come out with this initial grant for uh air quality projects or HVAC projects and they've sort of alluded to a second round of uh grants coming out in the next year or so so this would prepare would prepare us for future grants to be able to take advantage of that um Paving and sidewalk uh school bus parking at uh Danbury High School John do you want to elaborate on that at all yeah um with the increased enrollment uh we've had to add more buses there and and we don't have a place to park them all safely anymore we had a pedestrian engineering company come out you know right now they're they're double stacked in the afternoon and in the mornings uh in the front and uh that's not a safe way to uh Park school buses it very much uh frowned upon and we'd like to uh Park some of the buses over by the gym but uh where they were at one time but we need to reconfigure that parking lot to make it a little easier for buses to turn um and that's what what this money would do we think it's a it's a safety uh for reasons of safety uh we're being advised we we need to do something hi Rich thank you John thank you uh um create classroom and media center at Moore Street um right now they they have like a portable partition up uh to to be able to segregate you know students in a learning environment but it's not really um you know that that great of a setup so we what we want to make a more permanent classroom uh South Street ASL office space and modulars right now we have two larger areas that uh you know I've met with Carmen the principal and we we're looking at making uh the classroom's a little bit smaller in creating office space in there replacing stereo doors at Beaver Brook hundred thousand um anybody that's been to Beaver Brook you can see there's a fair amount of uh rotting going on in the in the door frames as well as the doors so it needs to get taken care of sooner than later install air conditioning at Ace um as we do more and more education in the summer it's it's difficult to deal with with the the temperature of those rooms so I I think it's something we should start looking at uh bathroom remodels fixture replacement at hazetown uh looking at taking some of the older tired bathrooms and giving them a facelift uh replace flooring at King Street primary um you know just to put a new more modern uh lvt in which would be a no wax floor it it creates it gives us more time in the summer for painting and other detail cleaning items instead of stripping and waxing uh construct security vegetable at Great Plains School uh 70 000 I've actually met with the contractor and we're we're working on getting a price a a tighter price on that uh convert building control systems so right now we're in the middle of converting I should say public buildings has converted three or four schools to a better easier to use system um and this would help us take care of probably at least Danbury High School and a few other schools uh replace exterior doors at Rogers Park uh these are specifically the double doors that go to the kitchen area um the doors and the door frame they're both pretty beat up and could use replacement repair front entrance supports at Morris Street that whole entrance we're going to need to look at getting uh repairs done to that um it's it's getting getting to the point that uh it's definitely gonna need repair soon um we'll replace the loading doors and frame at Rogers Park that I sort of alluded to that and the uh the last one um repair Ellsworth roof leaks um since before we put in solar panels there's there's been a significant amount of roof leaks at Ellsworth you know anytime we get a heavy rain and I think we really need to look at a a more permanent fix I know the city has come there and done several um interim repairs but I think we need to to take a more thorough look at that uh replacement of clay traps district-wide uh what we're talking about there is with the art rooms a lot of those clay traps are 50 60 years old and they get clogged and and you know we lose lose the use of that sink so we've we've done some replacement of clay traps at Danbury High School but I would say we need to look at Broadview Middle School in Rogers Park and there's also some rooms at Broadview Middle School that used to be art rooms that are that have those clay traps and they so we we could just pull those out and do some re-plumbing so the sinks are a little bit more usable uh line striping of parking lots at all schools this is probably something we should do a few schools a year uh just to keep ahead of the game uh replacement of playground equipment at Milleridge primary um that's that's been an issue uh there's been some vandalism there in the past year uh replacement of exterior fences we have a lot of fencing that's seen better days and then I just put it put in their install air conditioner conditioning at five elementary schools you know we'll know better what schools to Target after we get this study done for the uh installation of air conditioning Rich what's your total Capital request here then um but I believe it's about three million dollars thank you I'll add it up I know that the cities uh cities budget for public for public for schools for public buildings is about 300 million but they do have uh the Career Academy in there and that they have a Early Education Center in there so a lot of it is larger School additions uh rich I get uh 4.1 million oh okay yep four million 140.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
two of the members from each district were approved by each of the Board of Education from their respective district and the third member of each team was approved by each of the district's District accountability committee are charged at the first meeting was to elect a chair Vice chair and secretary the officers are myself as chair Lori Goldstein from Adams 12 as Vice chair and Amanda van blericom from Brighton 27j as secretary um it was a very short meeting 30 minutes I think um the committee also discussed having a facilitator um and the entire committee felt that that was prudent and that it be a third party um for that Miss Sue Kim from the Attorney General's office will be providing legal assistance to the committee and I've asked her to help with timelines and deadlines that the committee must meet I've also asked her to provide information on statute 106 versus statute 129 in terms of proceeding and moving forward and that should be provided hopefully or at least discussed at the next meeting finally superintendent gadowski made the suggestion that the next meeting be held here in Adams 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above