several have responded to emails from patrons but as normal a couple of them here are a few things that I took away from the meeting that hopefully most of you did also Financial numbers presented by Mr Lowry were a last-minute thing that actually had to be sent out twice via errors in the first set of numbers with a very limited amount of detail provided with those numbers and with all due respect to Mr Lambert I would have to question accuracy of those numbers until fully spread that have you done it and then he even stayed into some of the projections he provided were based on everything staying the same from the district and I understood that from some of the some from State averages rather than actual District members if the plan is not to remain the same the new projection should be provided and reviewed with proper planning and good management is there even a need to close any Attendance Center in the district a big question that has not been answered or even reviewed at least publicly is the impact of closing an Attendance Center to the future of the district both short-term and long-term to hurt yourself from several sources during the hearing that very few if any Wilson students will be attending classic if Wilson's closed have you discussed the financial impact to the district I'm sure a similar scenario would occur if platform students are transferred to Wilson should the district fail in a couple of years due to undated building closure and this is not specific where would Hollywood send their students to nobody elsewhere there was also information provided that could provide the lowest cost per student for the district than the Claflin building is the one that should be closed can anybody refute those numbers are you only interested in reducing the cost per student in a small amount instead of the greatest amount possible for the district why has there not been open discussion about the option of closing the Claflin building and the overall Financial impact to the district by doing so this would also result in additional savings by no longer having a need for a former grade school Community Building if you question the numbers presented then do the due diligence yourselves and publicly share that information as asked many times over the past year why is this board not seriously investigated proposals provided by the configuration study this has been done it has not been done as a transparent open forum following the Wednesday meeting at least one board member and not in a non-wilson board member requested information from a patron on how such items such as block scheduling maybe four-day work weeks would work an obvious admission to these things have not been thoroughly discussed as those that attended Washington live stream witnessed not a single District Patron spoken of hearing in favor of closing the Wilson School the crowd was pulled to see if anyone wanted to speak for closing Wilson and no one volunteered Mr Rogers you represent all the people in attendance at night have you had an equal amount of patrons personally talked to you to close Wilson have you pulled the people you represented are you just ignoring a large majority in the favor of the select food several deals indicated this board is not directly responsible for things that occurred in the past such as failing to apply for Grants returning grants matching funds well this argument can be made everyone on this board and passports sharing that responsibility you are not just Gatekeepers you set the directions from the district and the administration should work under that direction do you have or have you it's like third goals for your Administration and if those goals were not met then why were raises you you don't get to Simply pass the bucket the bug stops you finally I do not pretend to know the best decisions I I do not pretend to know what the best decisions are that need to be made for the overall benefit of the district and fortunate for me I'm not having to make that decision but I sincerely believe that no one on the board does either at least at this point in time the lack of transparency the failure to provide detailed financial information all available options the apparent dismissal of the configuration study without reasons and the lack of active open and lengthy discussions in public on all the above clarity demonstrators whether the short-term or long-term decisions is to maintain the current District physical structure close Wilson for closed platform it cannot be made without proper and professional due diligence so I ask you not to make a rash decision decision tonight and should you choose to do so and I always respect each of you by roll calls out that vote to close Wilson demonstrate personal honesty and integrity and provide a detailed explanation of your reasoning for that vote failing to do that will confirm what many suspect this is not about finances this is not about student population this is not about speaking teachers and staff but personal agendas this is not about the kids thank you [Applause] and I suggesting okay board on Ernest daisley from Hollywood Kansas uh nothing pre-written that's just off top of my head I want to say that I'm here to support your vote I know it's a tough decision all the way around I know everybody in this community is far and wide but I will suggest that you have to do the proper thing as far as Finance goes and there's been many many consolidations down here and no matter how it's crying and whining went on after a while it all mellowed there's people here far and wide I can't tell you who's all here that's been to consolidations probably nobody liked it one way or another but it happened and the world did not cease because a school was closed in a town for as I know they're still on the map Lorraine Bushton Hollywood they're still got zip codes and mail delivery and the best you can do they're not going to linger on is maybe this will help you it reminds me of how I should look forward and I don't know the songwrite or anything but there's that country song where he says he should rip his rear mirrors rearview mirrors off so he's only looking straight ahead and I would suggest that's a pretty good attitude thank you foreign how y'all doing anybody out there [Laughter] I appreciate the gentleman that came up and and spoke um you guys remember last week frog in my throat a little bit we started off last week around leadership you guys remember that anybody are they allowed to acknowledge and Shake ahead or don't be a private response okay perfect as usual so I think the question comes up uh the gentleman before me was right you got to make a tough decision obviously there are some some issues whether they're Financial or whatever the issue may be and so some hard decisions need to be made not unlike probably a lot of places in Western Kansas probably in southeast Kansas as well tough decisions but I think those decisions need to be educated and by educated I mean thought through thoroughly every Avenue an option looked at waited amongst themselves in business when you have multiple locations they all have to stand on their own from a profitability standpoint unless there's some sort of investment being made um okay they're they're not easy decisions but I think the biggest question that I heard again and I'm I'm standing from afar I think the biggest question is why and the why that was thrown out last week and it was thrown out is really not being explained to everyone here in attendance and people that were in attendance last week I think yo to people to explain to them why and the answer why you make the decisions that you're making I think that's fair you would want that if you were in the same seat I believe we talked a little bit about bravery bravery with the kids that spoke up so be brave if you feel passionate that this is the right decision then stand up for it and say so and explain why I think most people would really appreciate it and understand it now as to the crying and whinings that was referred to foreign I guess so I just have a couple questions since nobody's going to respond has there been any follow-up to the questions that were raised has there been any other action any more transparency any more numbers put out are you all convinced you've done your due diligence that you can stand left and look for somebody in the face and explain to them why that's bravery so again probably a little late to the game standing up in a meeting where people are not going to be able to reply but I think those are questions you got to ask yourself again tough decisions they have to be made you're a good place to make them but I think give it to the people that you represent and that you're making decisions for them and their families that you explain to them why thank you [Applause] okay Roberta Meyer and Roberta Meyer I'm a retired educator and a grant writer um so I will begin first four and seven years ago there were country schools then came forced consolidation in the 60s over a short period of time most country schools disappeared Public Schools popped up in their place skip ahead to the day here we are at a Crossroads ultimately a very serious crossword still the ultimate answer the country school is public schools small schools big schools comes down to what's best for kids would you agree neighborhood schools are best for Kids Country Stores Public Schools big schools it doesn't matter if you're a big city you want neighborhood schools whether these families in a big city or a small town they want neighborhood schools you live in a small community enroll America by choice you want the neighborhood schools without all the chaos for the big cities so let's go farther let's explain why we should look quieter what's best for parents neighborhood would you agree neighborhood schools we all want the same things many parents still work an eight-hour day but with more flexibility over when and where the nursing profession leveraged shortages and threw out traditional schedules with the bedpan they now work longer shifts but last days similar to a four-day school week it's not Monday to Friday anymore cobit change us and the way we work schools should change too why haven't schools changed change requires a new mindset schools should change there are businesses they are businesses it should should change with the rest of the business world Mr Lowry you requested some information about four day school weeks and there was another board member that reached out for four day school weeks I thank you for that if you have any more questions I'd be glad to answer them either now or later there are 25 schools in Kansas mostly ruled that have saved their schools and save money at the same time the slightly longer days match on federal with parents work schedules four-day lease offer also offer flexibility you can go on with all the choices there are Hybrid models are continuing to evolve as more schools Embrace this option many schools in Missouri are considering it too Dead one too the most for the most part students are in school for four days and off for five most of your federal holidays fall on Mondays so really take that away and you're not missing a lot of Mondays if you take Mondays off but each 200 District should be able to choose Mondays or Fridays as the best option for them and kids and parents some schools have added to get to get their days in they've added like maybe a week at the beginning of the year and a week at the end to make sure they have all their account days taken care of I believe it's 186 for okay no we'll buy the hours you're by the hours okay so you would have to make sure you meet those hours if like Natoma and you do the proper planning and launch in four years you might be so glad you chose change over posting a school Natoma isn't experiencing a teacher recruitment problem either I've yet and I looked hard to find a school that went back to the old schedule the most savings come from decreasing Heating and Cooling and electrical costs transportation is another area buses last longer fuel costs are diminished still schools haven't changed very much most are still eight and three five days a week Peterson you might feel the pressure of financial concern even fear over what to do you're not alone many can relate individuals and businesses which include schools must stay in the lab usd-112 as far as I can tell is in the black the state recommends an ending cash balance of 12 to 15 percent but really how many individuals or businesses cooperate with that much cushion many businesses would be extending to have the five percent in the balance and that's your five minutes if you could also okay in fact the federal government can't keep in the in the black they're in the red and no one's closing them keep going step back and Rave out while reevaluate why you live here how has covet changed us it changed my three kids as Jobs most of them work from home or have conference ties where they Zoom so audience participation time how can you see your doctor everybody it's all about it yeah okay change is needed more than just Financial change change and the whole delivery system to prepare our students for the business world look how Amazon is enticed that should save money by shopping online if you cut across and save a school at the same time that's change Worth Fighting For thank you [Applause] there are three people that have yielded time to Michelle L brokish and she would have a total of 20 minutes all right um good evening everyone I appreciate you um letting me be here and unfortunately I think some of my talk might be repetition repetition repetition but as many of you are sports minded has given it's quaffling um you would understand that repetition is the way you learn and the way you gain experience so as you may recall I am Michelle L brokish of Wilson Kansas and I want to thank you for your time and attention to my presentation unlike Wednesday night when I was flying by the seat of my pants I have prepared my thoughts ahead of time so for tonight's entertainment so put on your seatbelts and hang on for the ride I once open by apologizing to anyone who may have had their feelings hurt by my presentation Wednesday night at the hearing in Wilson High School gym that wasn't my intent I felt that along with my demonstration I should provide examples of areas where money could have been saved since this is a money issue it was it may have upset some of you and I am sorry I am known by most to tell it like it is and that I don't pull any punches I believe that denying the truth no matter how painful doesn't help anyone I know sugarcoat facts or baby anyone's feelings and I'm not afraid to have the difficult discussions you can ask any of my kids those i Burns and the ones I've coached or mentored over the years as I have said numerous times every kid in that school is my kid and I will treat each and every one of them like they are on my own you each are in a very difficult position there is a very conditioned contentious part of me decision on tonight's agenda I hope each of you listened at the hearing and have done your due diligence in searching out the answers to many of the questions that were asked I hope each of you will take a step back and reevaluate all the possible solutions that are available to help alleviate the financial stress in our district I know several of you board members particularly Dalton have reached out and asked for more information about more inventive ways of saving money I personally appreciate your effort that is a sign of open communication and we appreciate your efforts and hope we can continue to collaborate on a better solution than closing the Wilson Junior Senior High School I know there is a letter communication circulating on the south end of the district here stating that the information presented at the hearing had quote factually interact in accurate irrelevant reason that this action should not be paid it also stated that quote superintendent Lowry has presented the board with financial information demonstrating the need to make immediate insignificant cuts to expenditures of usd-112 to ensure the fiscal stability of the district unquote I would like that Opera to prove his statement because I know my board representative had not seen any of this information prior to the previous votes on the matter only recently receiving any financial information regarding the need to close a school so if the information was given it wasn't provided to all the board members and I believe that could be a legal issue Wednesday evening we had several presentations with very valid points and recommendations I would like to acknowledge several of those I know many of the speakers presented emotionally charged please for not closing our school and that you are not really interested in the impact this is having on on the mental health of our students I know you are only interested how this will benefit Central Plains Elementary and high school so I will keep my acknowledgments to points that will harm or eventually harm the Central Plain schools and possible solutions or areas of improvement that do not include closing the Wilson Junior Senior High School I will start with Mrs Susan Phelan longtime educator parent and grandparent who presented on the logistics the logistical difficulties of transporting kids from Wilson to Claflin thank you for speaking Susan very few of our families work or do business in this direction except maybe with Millers and flatlin and HIV Communications this could change this distance to Classen is much greater than other options our families have to educate our children also how will it cost how much will it cost the district to transport these kids back and forth at least three times a day has anybody thought about wear and tear on buses and fuel costs has anyone done that math especially if it is only for four kids because there's only four that said that they would come this Direction that's only forty thousand dollars to vet cover that expenditure and what happens when someone is hurt or killed traveling that road I don't think the district can afford that lawsuit I hope you as board members understand that transporting our kids down that road and that that distance daily is a major issue for many families in Wilson and after the hearing on Wednesday night Dr Whitmer approached me and asked me if I knew how many fatalities had been on that road going south he's very concerned about that because he knows personally of two foreign policies going out on and it's something that's really bothered him after that meeting if any of you know Dr Whitmer I mean he's very passionate about things he cares about secondly I would like to acknowledge Mrs Sarah de Lobel and her financial inquiry regarding the information that has been presented to the public as an accountant she had many questions about the figures that have been made available to the public and has requested the raw data used to establish those figures for an external evaluation in an effort to help the district establish Financial stability she's brilliant you should let her take a look at the numbers I would like to know why she is being stonewalled in her request for information the financial documents of the district should be public record and as such we have a right to that information another person I would like to acknowledge is Mr Sean Henderson who spoke again this evening and he came forward to speak on the behalf of the Wilson School as a self-proclaimed Outsider he stated that he cannot see how closing the Wilson Junior Senior High School would benefit the district based on the financial information presented to the public he restated that again this evening he made an excellent valid point which I hope all of you were able to catch other than the financial information issue he said that if you presented us and us being the loss of patrons with solid financial information and undeniable proof that Wilson Junior Senior High School was a financial drain on the district and cannot be supported we wouldn't like it but we would understand your decision many of us are very logical and intelligent people who will be willing to do the right thing even if we don't like it you have not proven that Wilson Schools is a financial burden on the district you have only proven that there are inefficiencies that need to be corrected if you as a board or the superintendent have financial data to support Wilton's being a financial burden why not give it to us and take yourself this now I know you are saying to yourselves we have done but you have not proven that we are a financial burden the financial information provided to the public is incomplete you have given results of your calculations that support support your argument but you have not provided the data on which you have made those calculations what is used to figure costs per student what is the data used to calculate the cost per building and support those figures how do you write out Wilson Elementary for Wilson High School when they are all one building sharing utilities and staff how do you plan to save money when you must continue to maintain the unused half of a building this is information that could be used to convince us of the need to close us but you have yet to provide that information or prove that Wilson Schools is an issue with the district's financial help again why not give us all the records especially the data used in your calculations so we can see for ourselves or are you hiding something like your real reason for wanting to close will now I apologize for not remembering who presented the census data and the hearing that showed Wilson's population growth of over 100 people and classmates decline in population of 100 people since 2019. I feel this is critical information to address because Wilson's growth is a huge opportunity for this District in terms of increased student members at Wilson as well as improving property values which translates into more tax money for the district if you had a stateful future if we had a stable future for our student census could have grown at least 9 this year alone ninety thousand dollars in terms of you guys lost by not providing us with stability for people knowing that we're going to have a school next year those are the students who wanted to come to Wilton and not be transported South with the growth of the Wilson Community our school has the opportunity to grow as well there are many of us with thoughts and strategies that could improve not only the Wilson school but the entire District if we are allowed to continue promoting and building our high school we need to stop acting like two completely separate entities a host and a parasite and create a symbiotic relationship that benefits all areas of our district the usd-112 board hired Dr Brian Jordan of kasb to do a configuration study that was completed in June of 2021.
um I remember very well thinking that um where the community was and thinking to myself that the community should have have as much of a voice in this process as possible and one of the ways that the community can have a voice in that process at the time was uh by going to the polls and so while I believe um in having a process that works one of the things that I think has plagued our district is that we have not at times looked at what works elsewhere we've cherry-picked at times we've said hey let's do what this District does and then it's been well okay but they also do this well I don't want to look at that part you gotta look at the whole package right you can't just cherry pick things you have to look at the whole package if you're going to look at things and uh one thing I'm adamant about is uh I do not think that a superintendent should be picked before this election is over I think the superintendent whoever comes in should have the support of whoever the seven people are who sit up here and they should have uh and that person should have um that support uh however I think we have we have many districts that are unified districts that are large districts in our area that have done um a phenomenal job at this and the pool is small [Music] who want to take on this position so I think if we think we are the smartest people in the room no offense but I don't I don't think we are so going through this process and doing our due diligence to to find out and passing on that knowledge I think is is the route we should take um you tend to agree so um we want to get it right so and you know at the community and uh not just through the polls but through their input direct input um we can definitely utilize that in the process and it sounds as though these outside firms look to that as well so um yeah search firm makes the most sense to me I don't I don't have a problem with the new board picking the superintendent but I think you need an outside superintendent because I don't think right now we have an internal candidate who is going to meet the needs that we have right now so yeah I I think the uh an outside firm is most definitely uh the best way just to broaden our scope um I don't know if I would say I don't think that we have an internal candidate because I don't I don't know who I don't know all 200 2500 members within the district but I believe that I absolutely believe that a search firm will give us the opportunity to make that Pro the process objective and to cast our Nets wide so that we can get the best possible candidate for the district that the students and the staff deserve so I agree that it should be a search firm I didn't prepare anything and I typically get in a lot of trouble when I don't do that so I look forward to uh going viral again tomorrow so here we go number one thank you for 11 years of service through one of the darkest times in education we often do not agree with each other and um you have proven something to me that still exists but is fleeting in this in this in this world which is we can have really um crucial conversations we can highly disagree um even maybe not be so happy when we walk out of the room but we continue to treat each other with respect and kindness and um I I pray and hope that that um that really what seems like a really simple thing starts to make a return to um to our community and To The World At Large so for that I thank you I thank you for allowing me to have the space to completely disagree with you to not understand your point of view to maybe be closed-minded sometimes but to continually um address me and treat me with kindness and respect and um I thank you for that it is it is not always easy to be in your position and to remain calm and you have done it many times when I may not have been able to do that so um this morning my boss said to our leadership team everything you do is a choice being happy is a choice being disagreeable is a choice being um disgruntled is a choice and so we all have those choices to make and I have seen you consistently make the choice to show up and make the best of a situation so thank you for that I I just want to to say that and it struck me um right now when I was sharing that a lot I haven't always made the right choices and I'm trying to do better so thank you for that and and the service that you have provided to this District um also I just want to say um I don't know how to let tonight go and not talk about the fact that a six-year-old brought a gun and shot his teacher um obviously it made the the news headlines and um I do believe there is some sort of faint connected dot to what I just was sharing with you which is we have lost the ability to disagree with each other without there being some sort of massive other reaction and so um I I have thought about that story over and over in my head today and it's disheartening and um my heart is broken for that little that little person who doesn't understand what they did and for um his or her family for the teacher who is recovering in the hospital tonight and the fact that once again she proved to be a hero by getting all of her students out safe our teachers should not have to do that our teachers should we our kids shouldn't have to have um all of the training they have to and teachers shouldn't have to go through all the training they have to and we shouldn't have to worry about that but we do so we keep moving forward so I just um I don't know if I connected the dots tonight sometimes I don't uh do that very well if I don't think things out beforehand but um I just wanted to share those thoughts with everyone tonight and um and uh that's it so in light of you know our discussion about a search firm um you know just thinking ahead and providing you all with um lots of information that will help you as we go forward in terms of looking at search firms and doing our process and our due diligence through all of that I mean there are some highlights which are one which Jared mentioned we want to search firm who understands the importance of our community's voice in this process and our students staff parents everyone and their importance and their voice in this process and um making sure that they understand what our needs are as a district and making sure that we get the leader that can take our district forward in a transformational way and then also obviously you know nothing is free and so just looking at the information that has been provided so far we're going to have to invest anywhere from 25 to 40 000 dollars in order to um engage a search firm that will bring us the best candidate so those are just some things that we're going to have to start mulling over there are lots of things that the board has to do even though Ali had mentioned it to me there's a lot of work that goes into this process over and above all the the things that a search firm is going to do so we as a board are going to have to um Buckle in because there's a lot there's a lot that's going to be required of us and so I just want to read a statement and the statement will go out in many different um on many different platforms and um Teresa our director of communications is going to help push this out tonight but from our board we say dear District 308 community in response to Dr sparlin's announcement to retire at the end of the 22-23 school year the board of education is beginning the process of selecting a new superintendent the first step is to identify and evaluate search firms who might assist us in this process students staff parents and our extended Community will have opportunities to provide input and be involved in the search for our next superintendent after January 23rd board meeting we will share details of the Avenues of communication available specifically for feedback and put on this very important matter we will continue to provide you with updates as this process evolves thank you okay now we will have our 6.3 student ambassador report um hi everyone so our new members have officially been selected for the ssac and we're hopefully meeting on the 18th for an introductory information review on our roles and responsibilities regarding our goals for this year which include mental health Dr Paul and Miss dalquist will also be attending this meeting as we continue to make plans for this upcoming year um and I know that uh you briefly mentioned this but we're going to continue exploring the facets of mental health the sub issues that we want to look into and we do want to look into the possibility of creating another student survey that'll evaluate how students view mental health the specific sub-issues that they want us to look into regarding relationships with teachers or relationships between students homework things like that and I know that last year when we were targeting sexual harassment we built the second student survey to better understand what students understood about sexual harassment if they had any insight on how we could work to make sure it wasn't happening in our schools and that was very helpful and I think having that additional Insight will be crucial in our understanding of how we'll be able to amplify student voice in the future and ensure that these mental health problems that aren't limited to our district they expand far beyond that but within our district at the very least how we can begin targeting that here we're again going to thank everyone who applied um for the ssac position we're so excited to work with the people that are on an executive board but we want to encourage students to continue coming forward and bringing their Insight in the future thank you how many how many members are there now I think I think it's between it's a little bit bigger now it's between 13 and 14 if I'm remembering correctly um I think I think 13 is the number on you I believe yeah look at me okay but yeah so we definitely got some more voices this year having like a small group was really nice um for like that period of time but as we're addressing these bigger issues and we want to make sure that we're actually getting you know that wide diverse set of you know perspectives that our student body has like I'm really excited to work with a bigger group and to see like where our conversations will go now that we have more insight and I encourage you to continue to bring it proactively to the board you don't have to wait for a board comment or or what have you continue to use your voices and and have a seat at the table and um you know you don't need to ask permission thank you yeah we had a significant number of students who applied and the student ambassadors along with the rest of the committee conducted the interviews created the questions you know Dr Wilder and I were in the background you know just watching and listening and it was phenomenal and diversity that this group is so well-rounded now and I'm really excited to begin together to get on the 18th yeah and they were all just like so amazing I think I learned something from all of them you know so it wasn't just about who we selected but I think just having the interviews was so insightful so I guess that kind of like helped me realize that this year maybe I want to help starting expand like our student ambassador to the rest of our student body to make sure that they understand like what it is and maybe we help them communicate more directly with us because everyone has such great perspectives and a lot of our students care even though you know maybe they don't really know how to show it yet because they don't feel like they have the resources and I think that's a big part of what the ssac is supposed to do it's supposed to be a resource that's wonderful thank you all right 7.1 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda okay if not can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda you sure can but why do I feel like I'm in the wrong area oh I'm sorry I make a motion to approve all items under consent including 7.1 minutes from the December 5th 2022 Board of Education meeting open and closed session second Miss Dora [Music] aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr cloaker aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.1 is information on financial statements does the board have any questions on what's been presented this evening hearing nine go oh um 8.2 resolution authorizing the issuance of tax anticipation warrants so this is an informational item in regards to the taws and Dr pesky is going to present yeah thank you Dr Sparling so as we were just talking about in our early agenda item it's that time to look at our cash flow and issuing tax anticipation warrants for those who are unfamiliar with those tax anticipation warrants are exactly that we're anticipating the revenue from taxes our next payment will be in June but until June our cash what we have what we have in the bank for our uh our ongoing expenditures will not be enough to cover our expenses so looking at our cash flow and what I'm presenting with you here is very similar to what we had last year it's a parameters resolution and those parameters are we could issue up to 20 million dollars we will probably not based on our cash flow analysis now we will not need to borrow 20 million we're probably looking at 10 million at this point uh and the other parameter is the interest rate that you're allowing us last year it was a three percent this year with inflation um we've been advised that uh there could it could possibly be a six percent interest rate on the money that we borrow so um and then the other thing is when we sell them uh we inherent says that we would have until May 31st but looking at our cash flow of April is the first month where we're looking at a negative cash flow um and we won't get our revenues until June so we'll need those tax anticipation warrants for April May and June um and then we'll pay them back in July so we're looking at about a four-month uh four-month borrowing of uh of 10 to 10 to 15 million dollars you know something that I just thought about is pertinence of the conversation is what we're just talking about with the the importance of having a fund balance you know if we had the fund balance of 20 that equals no more taws which equals no more interest on money that we have to borrow so that's another reason again pointing out here for the reason for the fund balance if you don't mind it that equals a few FTE right so you know yes it does so that's that's exactly right we're in the business of educating kids and so yeah spending money um potentially unnecessarily but you know hurts but see to a couple things like to your point I mean I I don't disagree with you that's a great point right but but see that's that's my point right when you bring up okay well that's a couple ftes that's exactly what I'm saying like we need we need to we need to start doing this with a budget like we need to start saying hey I don't know what it is hey you know I always love you it's I don't know 50 FTS whatever it is right you know yeah I mean but that's what we need to start having that we need to start having that conversation um one quick thing on the taws um can we get a follow-up at some point at a future board meeting to see who buys and what it costs us yes we can thank you wouldn't it also be a very interesting number of all the interests that we've paid like just pick a time period in the last 10 years now I'm very proud because we did pay it off early last year and save seventeen thousand dollars so I don't want to discredit that but the amount of Interest we've paid for all these what I call payday loan shark loans has got to be pretty significant that's a great point because it has a lot of context to the conversation because um you know it may be a hundred hundred fifty thousand a year but like you just said over 10 years it's 1.5 million dollars to compound all of that too right so yeah and what what is interesting is when I think I don't know three years ago we were at we were we were at 25 million dollars in terms of tax anticipation loans and then we we inched down to 20.
foreign before I move on to the distressed unit appeals board part of the presentation are there any questions Ms Wilden that I can field in regards to Investments the money around the so you yielded 500 000 plus was there a percentage of that that were fees then so there would be a net number that is the net number that you're seeing there it's net of fees the only fees that we pay um we pay First Financial fees for transactions and for wires and things like that but the only fees outside of that are each of those treasury transactions we pay a one-time flat dollar amount fee not percentage basis and so it's usually around fifteen hundred dollars to two thousand dollars per transaction and you're welcome I'm just turned on 2022 it looks like it's about 40 percent of 2019 and interest rates were pretty unfavorable back then is it just because our cash balances are much less than 2019 or was there a different investing strategy back then um I don't have the interest rates in um off the top of my head but I think the thing that was unique about 2022 is that basically there are two halves for six months of the year we earned almost nothing and then for six months of the year and and particularly in the last few months of the year we're able to earn some more significant um dollar amounts but in 2019 I would have to look back and see what rates we earned I could pull up this presentation from 2019 and I can send it to you but no the answer the answer question is actually no they're not different investment strategies other than the ones I've shared with you foreign the state a few years ago asked every school corporation to start to um to include in their Board of Finance presentation information about this distressed unit appeals board data this is in response to basically two districts in the state of Indiana that became distressed units and so they created a set of metrics called School Corporation fiscal indicators and there is a website I've included it here that you can go see any districts indicators I'm reporting to you tonight that our financial condition in regards to these fiscal indicators is strong all cash balances are up our student population is growing steadily but consistently slowly but consistently I'll say and these are also lagging indicators they actually we won't all you can do right now is see 2020 um I don't even think you can see 21s yet there's still 2020s data and they're so they're lagging it and their the complexity is difficult to to capture around each District's unique financial situation but they do if the distressed unit appeals board ever does identify us as a possible distressed unit they do reach out to Dr Roberts myself and the school board president and there is a long informal process that districts can follow to get themselves out of trouble before there's any public shaming of a district by putting them on the distress unit list for the state any questions about the do app report and I know you don't have a crystal ball Mr Phillips but in in your opinion I mean is this I I know why it was created but would you foresee this as a tool that will continue that the state will continue to use because like you said it does lag so far behind um yeah I I just I I don't know I've looked at that stuff too and I almost kind of don't see its usefulness really it's the the only I will tell you that the the Personnel who work at doab review the data more often than what is made public to us um and do proactively reach out to districts that might be that they if they see indicators that a district may be getting into trouble um the the real benefit of this is you can export the data from every District in the state with one click and really see Trends across the state and and actually do some comparison about how we we may stand out in a positive way or a negative way compared to other districts so that's the real value of it it's a great depository for that information thank you you welcome so the next part this is also just reporting to you informationally several years ago the State Board of accounts informed us that they wanted every school district to report the extracurricular account activity semi-annually to the board so the end of each semester we report this information to the board July 1 balances the balance is at the end of the last period receipts expenditures and then the ending balance at the end of the first semester of this year here is where this is the the unique thing we've never done this at least as far as I know certainly not in my tenure here um back in November um when I was looking at our cash balances um analyzing Investments trying to decide uh our investment strategies I noticed that our extracurricular accounts we used to have East High School was the only one used to buy CDs um School extracurricular lines extracurricular accounts can follow the same investment policy for the district and choose to do so no one has done that for a long time and so I reached out to each of the schools and said here's what I want to do I want to take your money from you keep it for five months and then turn around and give it back to you and I'm going to give you more when I give it back to you so every school said yes please do so and the thing that allows us to do this is basically during this time is when the districts have cash or I'm sorry the school extracurricular accounts have cash they do all their fall fundraisers and then they spend the money in the spring when they go on field trips and do projects so anyway we pooled This 1.2 million dollars in November purchased a treasury it matures in March we'll turn around and give the funds back to the schools plus the interest earned which I showed you before is about a little over sixteen thousand dollars and so each of the balances for the schools are up just a tad from the prior year which is normal for the first semester again as they accrue larger balances and then spend them in the second semester I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the ECA report fundraisers or is there any board money as well and or I guess a county built money that goes into this good question extracurricular accounts are are the vast majority are student and family generated funds each of these so for example Central Middle School school probably has 60 or 70 sub accounts for everything from the spell Bowl team who were here last meeting so if they're going to buy T-shirts and they collect fifteen dollars per family for spell Bowl T-shirts money goes into the extracurricular account and then they write a check out of it that is 95 of the activity in here Athletics are a major portion of that particularly at the secondary schools and so the athletic funds are included in this but there are no um with the exception of during covid when we transferred some funds to the secondary athletic departments as they were having events but had no ticket sales we transferred some money in them to make them whole for that time period other than that there is no District money represented here all right last for you I have the uh we received from the Department of local government government and finance our final uh 2023 tax rate and this is good news and and and wholly expected considering the increase in assessed value for this year this this chart shows this second column here by year is the advertised tax rate that's the tax rate that the board approves in October for the following year that's a maximum and then the second the second column there the final tax rate is what the department of local government Finance approves at the end we always advertise higher than the final tax rate to be safe and then come down for the final tax rate you can see in the last few years as the state has gotten much better with timelines assessed values being released we don't have to advertise nearly as high you know we were generally advertising 30 percent higher than the actual tax rate for for decades and in the last few years it's it's much easier to predict what the tax rate will be when we build the budget and this is a uh really poor visual I apologize for the bad quality there it's a screenshot that didn't translate very well but the blue line at the bottom is is bcsc's tax rate and each of these at the top represents different comparison groups one is the state the Indiana mean is the Orange Line the yellow line is districts that are around us in the counties surrounding us the blue line is other districts with similar assessed values to us green line is other districts with similar total budgets to us and you can see that our tax rate went down from just over 1.01 since two years ago to 1.0108 and then this year that actually line does go down although it looks like in this screen it's it's going up it is not um to under a dollar 0.997 for your 2023 property tax rate for bcsc any questions on the 2023 tax rate Phillips thank you if you wouldn't mind going back to the slide that has the tax rates over time and just for my own memories sake could you remind me that the kind of thing that happened between 2008-2009 to bring the rate down so much and then remind me about the rate going up between 2020 and 2021. we'll do history lesson here we go I taught history U.S history and high school is not nearly as entertaining as that in 2008 the um actually was in 2006 seven some of the parts of downtown Indianapolis experienced enormous increases in assessed value it created an uproar at the state house and as a result in the state legislature and um Governor Daniels instituted tax rate I'm sorry property tax reform put into place tax caps which we still live with today and more importantly took over funding for most of the educate well all of the education fund moved all of the education fund used to be called the general fund prior to 2009 became the education fund and the state took over responsibility for the education fund raised the sales tax by a penny to pay for that and so that's why our tax rate went down significantly from the 164 to 112 in 2009.
those are all kind of cited as areas for growth can I can I just interject could you go back a slide first sure so in regards to areas for growth the curriculum review and selection process I know that I kind of alluded to in the past that this is something I was looking forward to having the two of you on board in your positions what do we see as as in as at a district level administrator-wise as to how are we going to improve on the curriculum what what's the pro what's the process right now and how are we going to improve on it so that's actually a great segue to the next slide um so one of the themes in the report as you read it is it's kind of they say it over and over again in different sections um document clear processes and it's really if you read the entire thing it's really not only a matter of documentation but of communicating what it is a lot of times they comment on things where there is a clear process but maybe it hasn't been communicated or documented concretely enough so in terms of the curriculum review vision process we have from April of 2019 so it would have been Mrs Oliveira who developed it but there was there's a district textbook and instructional materials adoption plan that um is in existence it includes a very detailed rubric that looks at you know diversity and Equity as core principles as well as alignment to instructional standards there's a variety of different uh it's a pretty comprehensive rubric one of the other pieces of the report that kind of occurs in this section of the report is the need to embed curate as a tool and for folks who may be on familiar with curate that is curriculum ratings by teachers and it was an initiative that was created by the department of Ed I believe in 2018 and the idea is that teachers from across Massachusetts would review various curriculum resources that are being used across the state and then rate them um you know for their efficacy and and for a variety of different areas is that something that we're currently using or we're using and right it seems like I'm jumping the gun here again yes so right now currently at the secondary level for example we are in the process of reviewing um Algebra 1 textbooks and so curate uh is one tool that we're using to evaluate them uh Ed reports is another one um the strength of jury obviously is that it's aligned to the mass curriculum Frameworks where it reports is more of a national uh tool but we have teachers from both the Dartmouth middle school and Dartmouth High School on that team and we are going to be using curate we're going to be having a representation from the publishing company uh present to that team um you know so that work is ongoing and Curie is absolutely being embedded and and a major part of that process and I have to give credit to Stephanie Church in some of our high school math folks because they've done a lot of the pre-work looking at um some of the different options we have and they they use curate and Ed reports as two tools to kind of get that ball rolling so the answer to your question is yes um absolutely and then the other piece is the curriculum Council also um has met this year and um we'll be meeting again um you know throughout the the remainder of the year um to also kind of have a role in this work as well I think I think I covered most if not all of that [Music] um take a breath so I'm going to talk a little bit about assessment and again there were some um several keystrings identified in deserving of recognition including um benchmarking that's in place K-12 we know that assessment of our students is really critical in helping us to determine whether what we have taught is making an impact on student learning right it's the shift from I taught it to they learned it and we know that we have solid benchmarks to help us to gather the data to be able to answer those questions another strength identified in relation to our benchmarking system is the process um is progress monitoring systems that are aligned to our benchmarks so um you know while the benchmarking data is sort of important because we're talking about that being the trajectory that benchmarking and that progress monitoring is our check-in along the way to assure that our kids are on that trajectory and then if they're not we need to make sure that we're putting those just in time scaffolds in place but also checking the efficacy of those of those interventions right so we're putting these interventions into place we're checking and seeing are the kids making those gains are we getting them onto that trajectory where they will meet those benchmarks along the way um to that end frequent use of data by our school level staff teams was another area identified as a strength for our district the report talks about how assessment data is used formally and informally by teachers in school teams to guide instruction at various levels and to systematically pair students with appropriate supports just in that way that I was discussing right we were talking about doing those benchmarks looking at where our kids are putting those interventions in place for the kids who need it looking at whether they're making the gains we expect them to make if they're not looking at other interventions and making sure that we are meeting kids where they are and where they need to be um and obviously we want data to drive our instruction but we want to make sure that the data that we're using is giving us the information that we need right there's something to be said if you're you can be data rich but if you're information poor and you're not getting the information that you need out of your data why are you doing it right so to not collecting data just for the sake of collecting data but really to inform our instruction and look at our processes um when we talk about areas for improvement in this standard one of the things that we're looking at are just those school teams that are reviewing the data and to Mr Tebow's point before having some consistency in some protocols around how those teams are using the data it talks a little bit about the variability in the facilitation and the attendance and the agendas and even what these teams sometimes are called right we have common planning time we have professional learning communities and so one of the areas for growth was around just having some consistency and really how those teams are using the data and what their what their um you know the the sort of logistics of running those teams and finally the report identifies communication of assessment data with parents and families as an area to continue to grow parents identified in throughout the report they identify Google classroom in Aspen and report cards as their main source of accessing information about their students progress but we need to look at maybe a more consistent structure for communicating that Benchmark data and that's sort of along the way so that we're not waiting until uh trimester ends or our semester ends to talk to parents about how their students are doing so as we think about the recommendations um they certainly grew right out of those areas for growth that were identified so we're talking about again the documentation and the communication of clear protocols around the facilitation of school meetings this is something that Mr Tebow and I have talked a great deal about as we've sort of transitioned into these roles but how he with his secondary lens and I with my elementary lens can really create consistent protocols around the analysis and the dissemination of data right so whether you have a three-year-old or a 13 year old or a graduating senior in the district what are some things that you as a parent and as a family member can expect on how do you learn about how your child is doing in school um and as we have frequently talked about since the beginning of the school one of the things we're working on is fostering a sense of belonging right you keep hearing that phrase the sense of belonging um and it's not just for our students and our staff but also for our families um and so I look at this recommendation as establishing systems to communicate student progress and assessment as an extension of that work right so when we talk about feeling like you belong somewhere there's an implication that you feel like you understand what's going on that you have the information that you need to in this case best support your child as a learner and having a firm handle on their level of progress is certainly an integral part of that work so I'm going to keep going and I'll talk a little bit about human resources so continuing on to human resources and professional development there were again several strengths as well as areas for growth identified in this standard I think the areas of strength in this standard are a little bit more self-explanatory but they are reassuring just to address the obvious as we stated in this report we don't have a designated HR department so um most of these duties fell under the previous assistant assistant superintendent's purview but they have since been absorbed by other people and sort of reshuffled and as a report States processes are in place for hiring and record-keeping and compliance um professional development systems were identified as an area of strength for our district as we continue to balance offering PD for our staff and this is where I'll just stop for a moment and put a plug in um all right we are starting our we are re going back to our five early release days from January to May where teachers are self-selecting um a strand and our strands and I've I've said this so many times but I wrote them down because I always inevitably leave one out in the areas of special education social emotional learning sheltered English immersion technology integration or curriculum and instruction um and teachers have an opportunity to earn five professionals about 10 rather professional development points in each of those areas and there's an option um to do the additional five in special education or in SEI that they would need for reimbursement recertification thank you that's a return we've had to use Master teacher for the last couple of years obviously as a in response to the pandemic but teachers are really able to select the area that they feel like they need developing in and that's provided by the district but they also receive that thousand dollar allotment to go and find other things that they feel like they need to do whether it be for recertification or just to bolster their own teaching um another area of strength identified in the report was that both teachers and Leadership see walkthroughs and observations as common practice and built into the school culture as part of the evaluation process in that this is just one component of a wide breadth and depth of data that we use for evaluation and finally they identify opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles through leadership teams District teams and other Lead Teacher opportunities another programmatic development so as we consider our areas for continuing to grow the report identified looking at our hiring systems and practices in particular to address to address the recruitment of diverse candidates as an area for growth so um you've often heard me talk in literature about assuring our students have mirrors and windows and in conjunction with that I also talked before about fostering that sense of belonging so we just want to assure that we provide opportunities for all of our students to have an opportunity to see themselves represented in our teaching community um and we also want to assure that as we identify as a community of Learners we think about ways to not only grow our students but also our staff and that we have clearly communicated processes right so we're going back to that communication and that Communications those processes as to how to advance how to advance your career for those who wish to do so so again the recommendations come right out of those areas for growth and they are certainly areas that we continue to reflect and work on going forward we know that there is a nationwide teacher shortage and that there are fewer people currently pursuing education as a profession at the state level emergency licenses have helped the pool from becoming a puddle and at the district level we continue to develop ways to promote our district and to attract a diverse population to recruit just really the best possible teachers for our students and when we think about our teacher evaluation system we do and we'll continue to look at student data as part of that system again focusing not just on what was taught but what was learned as we strive to give people really comprehensive feedback um to be you know the most growth that they can find in their own in their own work and finally we look for ways to empower and grow our teacher leaders knowing that we have a strong history of promoting our teachers and continuing to look for and also communicate those opportunities that was a lot okay so for student support in this particular area one of the um greatest strengths that was identified was really behave what they called behavior management we'd probably call classroom management and that's a credit to our teachers Dr Gifford alluded to um they visited the week of May 4th I want to say it was last year so um you know that's Prime uh MCAS season AP season it's towards the end of the year but not quite there yet so um you know when the visitors went into classrooms they saw classrooms that were consistently well managed and that's a credit to our teachers for reinforcing you know clear expectations that really provide that safe learning environment for students and that's certainly cited in the report and our teachers deserve the credit for that they also cited a strength formal assessments that are used to identify students in need of interventions particularly in ela and Mathematics as a strength as well as the support that the district provides to teachers for or from external Consultants rather regarding tiered systems of support for social emotional learning and behavior also again it was cited repeatedly throughout the document was the creation of the quality and diversity committee was cited as a strength really as a vehicle to um spearhead you know Equity diversity and inclusion initiatives so I think that's worth noting and then Partnerships to support students and families was cited as a strength as well some areas for growth again that same theme that I mentioned earlier around documentation the report notes that RTI is well established across the various levels but that there's variability within how it's implemented from building to building and again it called for documentation of a systemic approach to RTI um in terms of recommendations again rooted right in those areas of strength that district and school leaders should formally document processes and expectations related to the consistent implementation of RTI across all grade levels and that the other piece to to this that was kind of cited was you know around clear exit criteria you know they noted that there was clear entrance criteria but really identifying some clear exit criteria once a student does get an intervention to ensure that you know once they no longer need that intervention that they are moved out of those services so that was kind of identified there as a recommendation as well this is an area of ongoing work and ongoing need in the district we know that students um you know the pandemic certainly did not help uh it exacerbated many needs um across across the country um and students do do have um more needs than perhaps 10 15 20 years ago without a doubt and so this is going to be ongoing work this work is definitely impacted by the fact that we're in a period of transition as well I think we should acknowledge that right we're going to have a new superintendent we're going to have a new director of pupil support services and this work is impacted by that so this will definitely be work that's ongoing and I would expect to see it as a key piece of the next iteration of the district strategic plan in addition to that though we also do have some work going on that the curriculum Council will be taking up later this spring is reviewing and revising our district curriculum accommodation plan that plan was um created last edited as far as I can tell it was March of 2016 so it's in need of review and revision because outline throughout the Decap art interventions for tier one and tier two solid tier one and tier two instruction that should be going on pre-k through 12.
each of you can find that on the district website if you have not have your own copy of it I feel it is an insult to Dr Jordan and all the staff and patrons who worked diligently on the study to develop options to advance this district for you to ignore the study's recommendations for district improvements you may feel you are addressing the concerns presented to you in the study but you are ignoring the fact that closing Local Schools was not one of the top rated recommendations for improving the district if you are truly looking to save the district money and improve inefficiencies then look at the data majority Force again this information provides data that will require tough decisions to be made if you truly want to save this District finally we come to my demonstration Wednesdays from Wednesday's hearing some of you may think it was staged or biased in some way but the follow-up presentation by the Wilson Junior High boys who by the way I'm extremely proud of for stepping up and speaking reinforce the result of my demonstration their video presentations show that only four of 71 students pulled would go to the central plains high school next year if Wilson's high school is closed how will the loss of 60 67 students which equates to well over one half million dollars one half million dollars be beneficial to this District there are some individuals from the Cleveland Holly Ruth Western area North and Mr Lowry and maybe or who will still believe that the kids will go to CP next year I'm sorry but you are fooling yourself if you truly believe that and you are fooling the patrons of all the communities down here if you are promoting that fact it is not going to happen the only student that will end up at CP are those who have no other choice because no other district will take them and to Mr yajik's comments I would like to state that the towns do still exist and they will continue existing but this district will not with the closing of wolves I will restate my comment s from Wednesday's night's hearing if you close the Wilson Junior Senior High Schools you will be signing the death warrant at this district is that what you want to do worst case scenario you close Wilson which will result in decreased funding due to lots of students property values may drop meaning less tax money for the district and let's take less taxes impact and Claflin has a declining population which will add to a decrease in students and thus sleep funding all of this leads to even more dire Financial State than what the district is currently receiving and as shown by Mr Peterson's comments of the hearing everyone in the surrounding area is watching what is going on within this district and there will be no one willing to rescue Cleveland again when it goes under due to poor management our best bet is to work together north and south to come up with a solution to this proposed financial problem and that and that doesn't require closing any of the schools we are all yeah excuse me we all will have to compromise make sacrifice and tighten our belts to make the district viable for the future people will have to be willing to change step outside of their comfort zone and do what make and to do more to make this work because it is possible it's everyone and I mean everyone teachers administrators other staff parents Studio students and Community patrons if they're willing to do their part we can find a solution that will save this District I will conclude with we are in the fight for our lives not just the Wilson Junior Senior High School but the entire District when I stand here and I say I invite for my kids I'm fighting for your kids too because your kids are the ones that will be adversely adversely affected and dispersed to surrounding schools if this District closes and that will be the end result if you close the Wilford Junior Senior High School thank you for your time [Applause] and Simpson um Ryan pickle same thing all right hello I'm Richard Rubin first off men's the board for the difficult job did you go to that I mean I've I've served on the board and I mentioned yes there's just a handful of people I know it's ever take you on that position and it's not easy but it's a job I'm kind of a numbers guy I mean I've done all this out on the open records website on this Kansas organization also the ksde.org all these numbers are out there but I mean just a simple simple analogy is comparing our district sizes and we've got Ellenwood to the south of us 458 students USD 112 458 89 students the difference is is we have 15 more teachers because we have more buildings compare a similar stool with a number of teachers that we have would be eligible they have 180 more students and the same buildings you know in the last students we have of course our students are spending for per student guitar I mean we're just at a point where how much we need to stay and we are a unified district we need to do its best for our district decision for you guys to make but we just need to be physical and keep people from holding you thank you [Applause] foreign Roger was our representative last year uh whoever his consensus of the board will have to have training per state statute Tamara and a long list but there's like four lists the public forum list is the list to speak the public forum list is the list to speak there's a sign up there did you sign the wrong form yeah foreign board member that is interested in our representative for negotiations each other we would need a motion for that okay you mentioned my dad and he's taking my bread any further discussion all those in favor Adrian any of those motion passes for Alice and we are born representative for negotiations uh Wilson baseball and softball Cooperative agreements this is a re repeat from last month I'd like to go over this timeline just a little bit uh last April silver Grove NASCAR Wilson athletic director about be interested in a Cooperative agreement the past the superintendent about it and he agreed to go ahead and negotiate that agreement they sent their head coach down to Wilson to look at all our equipment as far as I know nothing was discussed with the board until I found out toward the end of November that Sylvan had passed the negotiated agreement or the Cooperative agreement and uh I had documentation for us to sign and that was a recommendation of the Wilson athletic director and Coach I don't know about the coaches how much they were involved as you know I've been here since July I felt like if that's was what they needed I recommended it Monday after Monday's meeting received a lot of information that that they go and seem to know anything about that which I didn't either until two weeks before or less and uh so I did not sign that agreement yet I contacted the civil and superintendent and told him there was an issue with that and so I had the ad coach meet with our players and their our players said that we would have one player go to Sylvan if we did a Cooperative agreement at Sylvan um the address then would be 12 or so if we did it here I communicated that to the silver grow superintendent in which he said okay when you split practices and dates that I said you need to put that in writing so we can review it he put that in writing I set that up to review with the athletic director of the coaches and they met and they had 14 players say that they would all in play if everything was in Wilson or uh not at all they said they're okay with the girls going to Silver Grove for softball if they want to do that so I communicated that today to Sylvan care board meeting I contacted Acacia because it was due July or January 1st that's the reason it was rushed to us in December it's and so they said it'd be fine to notify after the board meeting tonight so uh at that point I just told him that probably they would just play on our own without doing a Cooperative agreement unless someone to come to Wilson for everything for baseball so the board would like to discuss that and decide whether you want to rescind it that Cooperative agreement or put some type of limitations on it that would be great for my direction to communicate to civil growth yes foreign ers [Music] I talked to Tony today about having a standalone baseball team and then if we have enough girls interested or if girls are interested in playing softball to co-op with Sheldon buildings out the clock Andrew Sylvan wants to come out with Wilson they can come to Wilson foreign I would suggest that uh this board rescind that the motion made last month to agree to this the documentation that I received uh last month that was brought down Sylvan had proved it and then it was provided to us both schools have to sit this in so uh this came from the Wilson school last November this documentation so and I didn't sign it because it is opposition to it it was about assigned it would have been as approved last month but I felt like there was enough opposition that I needed to wait and get better guidance for that field so it's up to this board to either that's the motion then that needs to be the motion so it'll be following through and it'll be determined after the they call about what they decided on where they're at so I just if that's the motion just as you stated that would be fine and then we could go from there do we need to rescind this one first or no well you need it I would go ahead and rescind the motion that was made in December I'll remove I'll move we present the motion that was made December on the co-op agreement silver Grove and then attached to that you have a standalone baseball tape and motion and his Co-op as children wants to co-op so we welcome that and also if the girls want to play softball they would go up with Silverman and silver man a second by Chad is there any further discussion [Music] and first of all I do support the motion made and I'm going to start with that I would like to encourage our students that want to play baseball this year that they stop and think and consider what actions they're taking and demanding and consider playing some games in Sylvan if Sylvan collaps with us it's what we would want if it was the other way around so just keep that in mind excuse me further discussion here again all those together yes okay Mr Lowry do you did you get an education from silver people he didn't know he would commit to today because I called I knew they had a board on the top but I think he couldn't commit one way or the other what they would do that's all you know all those in favor of reasoning motion last month and continuing with fathers stays in motion in favor raise your hand motion passes seven zero moving on to item 12 would be donations offer for a big donation that the board can accept if they wish to the district is a motion from Roger and his second from Josh there's a donation from pitt farms and I look for further discussion I would like to express our gratitude for that donation we appreciate that very much and it goes a long way then to help the district so all those in favor of accepting the donation raise your hand motion passes seven zero Josh [Applause] I knew Mr President I moved the board to go in and exec the session and pursued that to the Kansas open meeting Act for the purpose of this soul tissue consultation with the legal counsel which would be deemed privileged in the attorney-client relationship and to include Mr Lowry and Lori kasb attorney her from and returned to open mean in this room at there is a motion like a second by Brad all over here [Music] okay okay I think [Music] back and opening surgery now the discussion for the resolution for building closure foreign so I know that people feel that this has just been a last minute thing but I would like to remind everybody that in 2019 the bush and Attendance Center was closed and the board of education at that time did give a very warning that that wasn't the end and they were still going to be tough decisions that would have to be made and I realized that there have been to brands of elections since that time and you haven't really a completely new board but we don't have the luxury of starting over every time that there was a new election and actually if you remember this report did have board member boot camp Wayne Roger Allison and Dalton came onto the board and I actually attended that with you guys for a holiday and at that time we got a copy of the configuration studies my copy of the budget a copy of our goals along with other information [Music] to try to help bring us history as quickly as possible and whatever name board members are elected can we go to kasd training to help also help bring us up to speed as quickly as possible and I have been going through all of my past emails and all of my four inch three ring binders from before we had paperless board meetings and I found the information from when I got a message to the board so I have the information and the DCS studies and the numbers and the figures of when they were considering closing Hollywood and moving to Elementary to bushing so we have a number of hidden figures from way back then so this is not new this has been an ongoing debate and ongoing discussion a continual discussions and after the best shooting pain center was closed there is the formation of the Futures committee and we that group of individuals from the various towns was born to discuss the direction they would like to see this District go and many of the people on that committee were carried over onto the configuration space and we did and start the configuration community and unfortunately coven interrupted that so it didn't go quite as important however in July of 2021 we had a full day that we unpacked the report and discussed the options and the recommendations put forward and we acknowledge the difficulties that the geographic vastness of our district and impose but you could not disregard the fact that our numbers do not support two independent Junior High and High School at that time trying to come to some kind of middle rounds we did come up with a hybrid off because also at this time it was coming to light that there would be retirements throughout the state and their own decreased enrollments in education throughout the country so we have fewer teachers and fewer people going into the field of Education so we're trying to come up with ways of including counteract this and I also try to maybe save them of course our naive hoax what about listening challenges and it was not all one-sided it was challenges from educators on both sides and I have the emails and concerns with that information as well and with those concerns and wanting to care for not only the students but also the staff and the Educators in our districts we had to switch plans it's been an ongoing discussion and they're ongoing thought process it's not new we have figures that Mr Clark emailed us on the cost of bussing students down to the South End so we have discussed that we wear ears on running between buses and in transit it all depends on if there's only four things we can probably just run a Suburban so it won't be about so all of those figures do change the figures from the state report do not change at the state report from 21 22 and return that indicate that yes junior high high school students are our most expensive students and even if we consolidate a hundred percent from both the North and the South End we're a very small 1A district we cannot afford to Independent high schools and while the distance is challenging it has been done by districts in Western Kansas there are students that are on the bus or longer than I would have and we have discussed options I'm not and I know people have said to fight until the state tells us to stop fighting but we're here to try to grow our district not to run it into the ground and I do appreciate seeing the information about the fourth four-day weeks foreign [Music] of the district and you've heard the County Commissioners talking about daycare challenges you know that we are in a day here desert so releasing children back in to [Music] um environment that they would require care and there is none out there and I know the districts where they have done that have largely Hispanic generation with over a third of the parents stay-at-home mothers and that's not the case in order and I don't mean to just poke holes and everything but when we're wanting to see large savings we're not going to see it with that do you have anything to add about the people durations so one of the things that shifted from where we started with the original Futures committee and when we went to the configuration initially our distribution of Representatives on the committee were close to being distributed based on board representation or even student population so at that point the just to talk figures here so if you want to I hate to add to the divisiveness of this but if you want to talk in terms of representation of Wilson Schools and Central Plains schools the board representation of seats that are specific to a district there's six seats and two of those represent Wilson Thorne's area the other four is right across the central plains with maybe a little bit of bleed over into the Wilson areas so when that started your board representation if you remove the at-large seat from the discussion because that should be a representation spread across probably if you remove that seat so you're talking about six seats that's a third So based on that representation a third of the committee should be representative of Wilson and North when we initially started and I kept trying to go back through emails of people who were involved at that time I think we were just shy in that third I think Wilson had a 25 representation so they were slightly shy of that equal representation based on court seats um the final committee the names that are included in the published configuration study of a 50 percent Wilson school's representation but it's a significant shift um and I remember having discussions in the room at the start of the Futures committee about what was their representation and of course there's a lot of different ways that you can look at it somewhat conveniently the board seats are comparable to our student distribution So based on our current student account that Mr Lowry shared with us Wilson students represent about 31 and Central planes represent just shy of 70 percent that makes it hard to look at the configuration study and feel like that was a fair representation of the voters of the entire District and fair distribution across the representation from the board when I've talked to people from kasb about how you see people on the configuration committee their recommendation is that each board member essentially a point and you you pick a number and whatever that number is every board member has the same number be a three for whatever your target total is you divide that across and that's kind of how the Futures committee started but that's not what we ended up with after there were some posts that Mr Clark had asked to be put on the Facebook page trying to get more people to come at the end so some of the people that were there which I appreciate the interest and the engagement please don't get me wrong some of the people that were there at the end of the discussion had not had the conversations from the start to participate and to get some of that context and to build relationships across the district with the different people participating and that representation at the end of the configuration study did not reflect the representation from a board seat perspective inside but even then with that weighted um representation I will go back to the configuration study and point out that the weighted average the highest scoring selection was the one Junior Senior High School with two elementary schools where it fell apart was in discussions of which building to locate those students in so well yes the most popular to show up on people's selection which for people who didn't participate in the survey this was sent out to those who were on the committee and you had it was I think like 12 to 14 options and you had to pick your top five and the all the options range from something very technical like move the district office to more complex of building a brand new K-12 facility which we all know is not a simple technical solution for our district with the Dynamics that we have so if you have this huge range of options that you're being presented but you only get to pick five and so some of them obviously are kind of cherry pick options of this would be easy to do like moving the district office which that was the most selected item which is a pretty technical solution that still managed to become somewhat political based on what community it was going to be located in so you have those mixed in with a land transfer um two K-12 facilities one Junior Senior High two Elementary's just leaving things how they are and writing it till it dies um moving the sixth grade which again is kind of a technical solution for a really complex adaptive problem so when you start talking about what the most popular options were selected it's hard to choose in those moments of you have the simple thing that will help a little bit that's a good solution and it needs to be addressed but really should we have had to have moved the central office as one of those things for us in our top five um that should be a more simple solution to me it's it's less of what it should take a committee to come up with that solution than some of the other things but even with that the top one as far as tallies of how many times it appeared in the top five was move the central office with 14 times the next one under that was land transfer with 13 times and the next one after that 2K12 facilities well the next one after that one Junior Senior High was two elementaries but when you look at the weighted average of How High they scored and then how much people prioritize them even with moving the central office being an easy solution the top weighted score was one Junior Senior High and two elementary schools can you state how much savings it would be versus the two different areas of that study I would just like to hear this business studies I agree that that is on the website and I would say that those numbers will have changed by now also we'll have or have there's a difference they have because Everything Has Changed by now inflation has changed do you remember what year those numbers were captured from Fred you know I was trying to remember so it's probably off of the prior years thank you I would also like to bring up this configuration study just some of the stuff I never said one since Clark as soon as I came on the board we gave me all this stuff um it says it here that you know we did not a forward to run to high schools with the size that we are um building our salaries you know above 60 of this is all public budget hearing I think he gave me this them too for that not like the financials salaries are who may expenditure and I I feel like that needs to be reduced for the amount of kids we had in this District because it's just it's just too expensive to keep going on like we are and uh Larry gave these numbers where we've lost eight of the eight out of ten years are negative and I don't feel like we can operate off of that for much longer something Jurassic will have to be done and also like Allison touched on the little things we did do in that study so I've had a lot of emails telling you that we have done nothing we did move the central office we attempted the land transfer and then the 2K through 12 sillies like I said um does not resolve any efficiency that I pulled straight out of this study um it says in the top five that Allison talked about and a main thing that was in this was the group did not feel group milk and maintaining the current configuration was not a Bible option for the next 20 to 25 years I want this District to be around forever I want migrant kids to come to this District I was in this District I feel I personally want every child in this District to have the best education that we could possibly give them and I mean that from the bottom of my heart hold on I'm sorry I I know that I'm not running this meeting and I appreciate the the passion but please keep those High comments and and we'll make this through this we have two board members up here that will make points and I promise you we will make the points that you for trying to make another concern is enrollment I've talked to some people in Wilson that agree that these low-cost numbers are not beneficial I know it's probably great dealing with your best friends about some diversity and getting out into the world going from four to 150 in a class any tough um I was at the graduation of Wilson I'm sure there were some more kids there and I just I would love for there to be more kids in the seats and uh like looking at the numbers now they have come up some there's a couple eights nine ten there's a 22 class of soft boards for juniors if that's you guys um but we enrollment is plays a huge key into this [Music] um our numbers are better this would this would not be a decision if if we don't have any kids here um I would like to touch on Roberta's emails for your four day I did read through that and I appreciate the information you guys have sent my two hold UPS on that is daycare um everybody in my family worked five days a week or seven more likely but I'm afraid that the turning these kids out of school on a day I'm nervous to go where are they going to go and um I'm also nervous that some kids may only get that meal at school and I'm afraid that they will not give that as my two major holdups I don't think that is the best direction to go in um but I do like the outside thinking of different things like that so I was also going to say that eating Zoo the central office the district office and one of the reasons I know there's been questioned why we couldn't move that but at the same time that we were discussing moving the district office it was also when we were discussing the land transfer and so we didn't want to move the district office only to have to move it again in a year um and I was actually one of the board members that was at the meeting with three of the Southern Lucas board members as well and it is a little bit irritating to be quite quite Frank that we were so willing to lose your high school and so where Lucas would have taken taken you but it's the end of the world to remain in this District and that's foreign it is but we're here I'm trying to make the best of it and we're trying to move on and we're moving forward with steps to safeguard our district and to be as efficient as we can and to be beneficial for every student and to provide quality education so we're trying to proceed and be respectful so that plans can be made for next year and Beyond that was the question I had was why was it okay to pursue a land transfer to Sylvan Lucas which proposed the same building configuration from my understanding um as to what is being proposed here keeping the elementary and Wilson closing the Junior Senior High there's a difference in miles is proposed uh pretty much a wash total um if you guys would like to hear a bright discussion from the school board do you need to keep your comments [Music] um I do have some other comments but I do want to address some things that you guys have said um so one we've talked a lot about the configuration study um in the last couple of days and we've talked about it before um and I feel like the configuration study uh has been a tool for an argument on both sides of this story um and it's it's one of the reasons that Tamara you you had said um was the reason that we needed to take action uh is that we needed to do something that was on the on the list um and that's when we just started started discussion on the closing of the Wilson Junior Senior higher um but the quick like quickly addressing the soul then Lucas issued um is for me my being against closing the high school in junior high and transferring the kids down to Central Plains High School has never been anything to do with Central Plains uh any single person or a group of people from any of these communities on this side of the district it has everything to do with distance and it has everything to do with that road and of course I don't I don't want to see any part of our school as opposable I would rather all of them be open and to be frank I would definitely rather Wilson be open but that's a personal issue and not a board member issue is the distance if we look at numbers and the configuration study if we look at numbers back from the discussions when the motion facility was closed closing the Wilson building or buildings has never been the largest saving option there are other bigger savings options especially with only half the building and the reason that I've never suggested that we close a different building a different High School in its place is for the same reasons that I don't want Wilson clothes and that's the distance that's asking any of our district kids to drive on that road foreign I do agree that as a board we are asked a lot very quickly uh when we get on on the board and you do have to learn very quickly um but that those those trainings don't talk about these numbers and I feel like that we had not as a board including myself in that I looked at these options and looked at the consequences of these decisions enough to make a financially Sound Decision and one of those things is our federal and state aid and the loss of students from this District going somewhere else we don't know what that number is the surveys have said four or fewer and I completely respect those surveys and I you know I don't know if that number is the correct number I don't know what that number is and there's nobody sitting in this room and at this table they can say what that number is but it it's a large portion would be my assumption and we struggle if we lose a few students let alone 60 70s and that's just High School now does the elementary school follow if you have a high school kid that goes to Sylvan goes to Ellsworth and you have an elementary student that's going to do the same thing when they get to Junior High are they staying so they can finish out Elementary and then move or do they move with their older civil we don't know that anymore either but we do know that that threat is there that that possibility is better and I don't feel like we have as a board looked at the consequences of that and that is concerning uh as most of you know I was on the board when you made the decision to close the ocean facility um it's not a decision that I wanted to make and I certainly didn't ever want to make it again but the one thing that we did as a board is we looked at those numbers every different direction seven different ways Mr Clark was ready to tie us all and tape our mouths because he was tired of us asking for information asking for numbers this way and that way what if we do this what if we do that what if we do this and we were up against the wall where we were even told that we didn't know if the district was going to survive another six months with the way that the configuration was but we still went through those numbers every way that we could to see if there was a better option if there was a more feasible option to keep that building open and I don't feel like we've done that as a board at all actually I know we have one of the things is that on the day that we voted on that resolution to close that facility Mr Clark handed us a new packet of information there's not new information it was just a new packet of information it was just presented in a different way but it was the same numbers that we had been looking at for ever and the outrage that existed and you know towards the board that we made that decision being provided new numbers that day that's including publicly uh statements made by members of this board I just need everybody to keep that in mind that this decision should not be made lightly it should be it should not be made as a first choice I I agree that we did move the district office unfortunately it cost us money to do it when we did have other options I do understand the possibility that that you know we may have had to move it again in a year but it wouldn't have cost us money to do that because we already had the space we already had the facility of course it would have caused something to move but the and I I've said this in multiple times both in a meeting and to anybody that will listen because you look at those numbers of the number of students we have in this District and you compare it to other districts you're right it would be better if we had one high school but the problem is is that we have a very large district and that space just doesn't make sense it doesn't I do not want my children specifically especially and or any other children to have to drive that road every day especially that 16 and 17 year old kid I drive that road every day to work and I don't want to drive it and I would ask if we looked at the other direction which according to the configuration study that was that we've discussed both as a Pro and a con is that the savings provided by closing classroom and having the Claflin students come to Wilson provides more savings than to go in the other direction would you want your kid to drive that way and obviously I would assume the answer is no is it's not the best Road but also it's because the numbers we're looking at closing half a building instead of a full building because you don't want your kids to have to drive that way I know I'm putting words in your mouth and that was just an assumption but that's the way that it looks the I do totally get the daycare issue with the four days uh that is a concern I would like to point out that both Claflin and Wilson I work hard to open daycares I the amount of money that has been donated from both communities have because in their towns is astonishing and very welcoming and so I think that there's opportunities there to be able to do that and to find daycare and to provide those options for parents that need it because of that four day and I think it's a viable option to look at because of the size of our district as an alternative to closing a high school and through through this when motions have been made again the number of students that would be attending Central claims after a move like this has been used for both sides of the argument and which is awful and I'm part of that is that we're using we're using our students and their their ability to learn and their ability to have a school to go to as a negotiation device for a building and we we use it both ways so we're saying only four students are going so that's a loss of Revenue and then you say well we'll save money on Transportation because there's only four students that statement right there is obviously very concerning for me because it looks at the way it comes across is that we don't care about the students but we're only getting four so it'll be cheap obviously not your words but that's how it sounds then okay what if we have eight students and that's one more student that men can fit in a smaller vehicle what do we have ten we don't know those numbers we don't know what that's going to cost with those discussions haven't been made and they need to even if this ends the same way those things need to be discussed it is our responsibility as a school board to have those discussions and look at those numbers and I feel that we haven't done enough the configuration setting obviously the numbers have changed the but they're not going to be drastically different but looking at what the configurations that the study says so Closing one junior senior having one Junior Senior High with two elementaries which is moving Wilson high school and junior high students too far from is a total Savings of 336 000.
now we're down to 10. yeah well but keep in mind the reason we're there right now is because of our debt service extension the money that we borrowed as soon as we spend that money on capital projects that's an additional 18 million we will not have towards our cash flow so well we still need to grow the reserve so correct and that's running so that will still be building the reserve so we will be coming down but not not a not a 20 million dollar landfall good point and and I know in the past we have we have literally had neighboring school districts have have bought them so I mean we're we're we're literally indirectly funding evering school districts so yeah it was Plainfield most recently right yeah last year was Plainfield was one of them I forget who the second one was but you're exactly right yeah I mean we want to get to the point where we're not we don't need to borrow money to pay our bills yeah that's why I really you know helping to keep the board focused on that 20 fund balance is so critical that's why it's part of The Envision 308 plan is it's a very important part of what we need to finance be financially responsible because that 25 million when we borrowed it we paid a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in interest for that and what I'd have to look in confirm but that doesn't sound off especially you probably needed it for six months and at 25 million for six months that could be very close to that I don't forget because we signed it exactly so uh today is Dr sparlin said this is just information if there's any questions about tax anticipation warrants I'll make myself available I'll be happy to answer any questions and this will come back to action to the board on January 23rd and what you're taking action on is just the parameters giving me the ability to between now and may sell up to 20 million dollars at six percent uh for tax anticipation purposes very good any other questions regarding this item all right hearing none uh item 8.3 is a continued discussion regarding vendors and contracts uh since this is a new process we wanted to put this uh on for information to get feedback from the board and tonight Dr pesky has brought this forward to show where the business office is in regards to addressing any vendors who have a cumulative dollar amount that exceeds twenty thousand and where we're at so Dr pesky great um and I I added um and I apologize about the delay but I just got this to Ursula today to post for the board but based on our last conversation where Eugene and I had done kind of sub categories and totals um so you could monitor the spending in that area I added to it that all of the totals we've been talking about so far have been what we've provided to the Auditors for last year's FY 22 budget so that's uh all the all the numbers the board has seen is the contracts and vendors that we spent last year and what I've added to this now is our current spending as of December this year what have we spent up to with the same vendors or of additional vendors made it to that list and uh I've added to that as well what the board has asked me to do or the direction that I was given through cabinet was to either if we reach if a vendor reaches that twenty thousand dollar Mark or starts getting close to that 20 twenty thousand dollar mark do we a enter into a contract with that vendor to make sure that we have the best pricing and uh and a relationship with that vendor that is uh meets the board policy about twenty thousand dollars in spending number two in addition to the possibility of entering a contract is the idea of perhaps going out to RFP for um uh for uh getting the best prices or make sure we're getting the best prices on the the things that we're buying and the third option that the board directed was to look at a preferred vendor so we can gain some efficiencies in our spending perhaps we're buying paper at 45 dollars from one vendor and that that vendor were up to twenty thousand dollars where we we could get it from Office Depot for half the price so we no longer go for the one higher price vendor and we gain some efficiencies in who our budget managers can use to purchase from when I looked at that list in cabinet and I have been going through this so Dr spiral and Faith Heather Teresa and myself have been really looking at this and and uh taking a look at the process and monitoring some of our spending and the other option that popped up was status quo maybe on here there is a vendor for instance one of our attorneys that we spend a hundred thousand dollars with well we don't necessarily have a contract but we know what they're doing for us and we are okay with that spending as our district attorney at that number so we're not gonna we're not necessarily going to revisit going into a contract we could uh we we wouldn't necessarily consider going into an RFP or we wouldn't look at going to another attorney for doing that work because there are designated attorneys so for that one we would just mark it down as status quo we know that spending what it isn't going down the list when you look at these there's some software programs that are over the twenty thousand dollars we don't have a contract with them but they're a vendor and they're just a little bit over that twenty thousand dollar Mark and we don't no one else would offer that same software that same level of service so our budget manager for that software program purchased that software so that would be another one that status quo although that is something we could look at why don't we have a contract with them and do we need to pursue that so there's kind of that gray area between status quo and actually having a formal contract with them or them just being a vendor So based on that information I've provided for the board a comparison of what we spent total last year with these vendors and then currently what we spent from July 1st until December 31st um this year and we're halfway through the year so you can take a look at uh take a look at some of those costs and what I'm looking at doing today in in terms of providing us for information from the board is to make sure that the cabinet myself are on the mark with what the board would like to do and based on your feedback I'm going to be revisiting this with my finance team to continue to Monitor and start adding check marks into these columns for instance status quo we just continue what we're doing we present that to the board and it gets a check mark it's done immediately if we need to enter into a contractual relationship believe it or not that is the same length of time as it would take to go to RFP so to do that would take about three weeks or one board meeting cycle to go through um so about a three week time frame and if we do the preferred vendors and look at reducing the the vendors and the efficiencies that we can gain in using select vendors that's something that can happen within a week just communicating to our budget managers so nothing on this nothing that the board is asking us to do would take a long time but I do want to start with my team communicating that monitoring that and making sure that we're all on the same page so one quick oh can I just give a little context um as to how we got here I think that it's really important to understand that many of the board members I won't say all we were we were somewhat surprised to learn that certain vendors may not have had a contract may have had a contract that we were not fully aware of the processes and procedures for how money was spent and also that in the business World there is an opportunity when you have vendors to either go to RFP even if you've worked with them for multiple years because typically what happens is is people feel a little bit more inclined to continue to give you certain levels of service and so I want to make sure we provide that context to everyone we also were really searching for some transparency other than a bill pay list where a lot of us were doing our own calculating and creating our own spreadsheets let's do it as a group and understand okay from a legal perspective I don't even know what some law firms might be named let's see how much we're spending on on law firms let's see how much we're spending on curriculum let's see how much we're spending on um I don't even know what we call some of these things but ed services and so forth because when you look at it as a block of money it tells a different story and it paints a different picture and one of the things that I've shared multiple times with the board members is that a financial mentor of mine told me you don't need to tell me your priorities I can look at your checkbook and it will tell you our priorities so we needed to see it in a different way um I I do want to share openly that I still strongly urge this board to put in a vendor review policy and to or of a very strong vendor review procedure if you will I think that when we don't hold our vendor vendors accountable whether it be the food service service or what have you Ingenuity or whatever it's very easy to become complacent and I would like to see us make sure that everyone is aware of our district goals board goals and to make sure they're meeting the the parameters that we've set forward and I think one of them should be Dei as well like do you have a diverse staff and so forth so I I think that we're getting there but I still think we have a ways to go and I would like to see us to put in a vendor a vendor review policy doesn't mean that we're going to pick another vendor it just means that they're gonna after so many years they're gonna come to the table and put an RFP just in like everybody else it's no different if we have employees who want to be promoted and they have to interview just like everybody else so um I think we still you know I think there's we have we we need to look for money and um see where we're spending and where we shouldn't be spending I know I talk about paper a lot I know I talk about why we're spending money on printing business cards in the digital world and then I constantly look at that Amazon number and think we've there's got to be a better way so just all right so if we were to go to contract route so I think terms of service service expectations we need to be part of it um depending on the budget manager and their inputs I think that that has to be taken into consideration with each contract if we were to go a contract route um sometimes you can um structure a contract where you don't necessarily guarantee any volume um depending on you know what that service is so I mean looking at the flexibility but yeah I mean levels of service [Music] trying to think of some of the other things that uh you know stay away from model renewals you know but obviously all that has to go through budget managers so it would be a process to get contracts out and negotiated with all of these vendors but um I think in general it's probably worthwhile I mean there's there's probably I mean Amazon is probably you know there's there's other retail vendors on here that you're not going to get that with because you're just going to go you have to go buy stuff supplies but um um I don't know I'd lean towards going contractual but I'd like to you know what what are the budget managers saying I really would like to know if they see opportunities and that's where bringing them this information will help them see that because I don't think individually they necessarily see what they're buying they don't see what all the other budget matters I don't see the volume so this is a good tool to bring to them to say well yeah it's only three boxes of paper for you but district-wide it's you know 300 boxes of paper so and that was my question and that's exactly what I wrote down to me when we go back to the context of why we were doing and I hate talking about paper too because I mean such a small item spend less on paper but contextually I don't it may not be less on paper but it my question that I wrote down can the budget managers easily search and find the preferred vendors that we keep mentioning but can the budget man do the budget managers across the district know what other people are doing because to me I think that's where we can realize the efficiencies and we may if we all can get on one Accord and start to order from that same place that may dictate that vendor or I shouldn't say dictate or well necessitate that vendor to to treat us differently because right now it may be two or three different uh people calling them and they may treat us as three or four individual customers as opposed to a one uh Community School District 308 so I think that the main thing that we have to look at as we're doing this across the board are what are the best practices for the budget managers that will help us to be more efficient so that we can now maximize the reason why we're doing all of this because if we if we don't do that then we will still um I don't think we'll still realize the benefits and cost savings from a centralized ordering process and again I I know that's probably a lot more easier said than done but I think now presenting this to all of the budget managers and having them have that conversation I think that's a place we can start yeah off of that um I thought they had a central purchasing department that we brought in in like 2013 or something like that in order to kind of handle all this do can someone refresh my memory when we had kind of removed that section understand her purchasing department why did we still have that department you know we uh I think what Lori might be hinting at is it the central warehouse staff because we did have like we had some folks in uh buildings and grounds that were trying to maintain a central warehouse and then we had some people in the finance department and it just kind of devolved uh into uh budget managers buying what they need when they need it through our partners or our vendor relationships so that's something I can look into more and whatever okay um we have we had uh at one point and I think that this was in one of the first year of finance committee meetings um we had hired uh somebody to kind of manage all purchases and it had changed how we used key cards yeah yeah I remember that exactly literally yeah yeah it was supposed to the position was supposed to be paid by the p-card um reimbursements but um yeah it's potentially it wasn't materializing um it's Mike S but yeah I mean it's a good question um I I do know a lot you know a lot of vendors um you know because I work for a large you know corporate as well they don't necessarily want to take P cards because then they got to pay that high interest uh uh The Interchange fees but uh do you do you remember that does that ring a bell at all do you no no one was before his time yeah I was like none of them were here I can talk to I know there's some people in the finance department have been here for quite a while I can ask them about that initiative who that person was and what happened I'm sure they can share that and yeah you said about 2013.
and then as you can see the tax rate slowly declined over time lots of different reasons for that but primarily um because of reforms to the operations fund and how we can we can fund the operations fund and so now we're on a maximum Levy and so if if the assessed value goes up faster than the maximum Levy then that means your tax rate goes down and the opposite um if your assessed value falls behind the maximum Levy how much it can go up in a year so in um in 2020 in May of 2020 tax I'm sorry voters in our district approved an operating referendum by 63 63 percent yes to implement the operating referendum and that started that 15.6 cents started being implemented showed up on tax bills in 2021 the that was the year the tax rate the actual tax rate was just over a dollar one and then it started to Trail back down from there it is interesting to note that uh even even with the um even with operating referendum in place we're still well below where we were in 2008 from a property tax rate standpoint the other thing I want to make sure I understand we're in the third year since that referendum increase and that referendum was approved for eight years correct any other questions from the board I got a question on the next slide so if I understand it correctly just to get new here trying to understand on the school education fund operating fund all comes from the same standard essentially rate so any difference between us and these other folks is really them taking on some level of referendum funding or something inaccessible that the state generally provides the man either in that Federal money am I correct um probably the biggest difference is going to be debt okay debt and assessed value and so if a district issues because every district has a maximum operating for the operations fund because the education fund is funded by the state per pupil tuition comes to us separate from the tax rate on the operations fund and the debt funds are paid for by the property tax rate and Associated excise taxes um fit Financial Institute Institution tax and Commercial Vehicle Tax the difference between us and those other districts is they have either issued more debt and that could include referendum debt and so they build a new building or do massive Renovations similar to our referendum that's in place from 2008 during the for the high school Renovations and assessed value so if a district issues more debt and has a lower assessed value you can probably think of districts around us that that would be the case their rate is going to be much higher any other questions thank you Mr Phillips okay next we will move on to public comments so anyone wishing to to speak during a board member when they walk in the door they can sign up on this blue sheet um no one has done that today so we'll we'll move on um next we'll do reorganization of Business Services Mr Phillips we're back on that was quick shouldn't have sat down okay yeah so it just helping maybe through each of those and and Mr McIver probably best with each of these two uh approve per item as opposed to consent um so miss Wilder we would just make a recommendation that we appoint the corporation Treasurer as Mr Phillips and ask for a vote and then each of those the same way yeah do I have a motion to proof remove approval of item 4A appointment of the corporate Treasurer Mr Phillips do I have a second second all those in favor say aye aye all right oh there's a post so for appointment B do I have a motion move approval of item 4B appointment of Paula patross I say that name correctly Charles as our Corporation Deputy treasurer thank you Mr sander do I have a second second thank you all those in favor say aye aye oh there's a post question approved um item C do you have a motion moves that we authorized our Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer as we've appointed them to invest our school corporation funds I think there's an attachment in our packets so move authorization of those folks to make investments on behalf of the school corporation thank you Mr Stenner do I have a second um all those in favor say aye [Music] was opposed my name good and then item d I move that we approve item 4D approve the School treasurer Bond Mr Grimes do I have a second second thank you all those in favor say aye aye there you go Mr Phillips next item says me I'm gonna remind myself yes I'll just added here miss Wilton three or three items here again and uh we'll be recommending that we establish border remuneration which means what we're going to pay each of you and we follow State Statute so State Statute sets a cap on the amount each of you can get in terms of uh basically a stipend and amount of money coming that's not based upon any time there's also then a dollar amount that you are allocated or allowed to receive per meeting that you attend and so we'll make a recommendation for that I'll just run through these here miss World and then we can do the vote for each of them uh letter B we have to designate a newspaper also by Statute or a qualified publication in which we would publish all of our required notices we use our local newspaper the Republic for that and then we also have given you a list of all of the school board meeting dates and right now just the business meeting dates we have left out strategic planning or other public input or Forum meetings and so those are covering from the next meet on January 23rd to then all the way through the summer which would be July 31st of 2024 so it asks for approval of each of those items and just I would recommend doing each of them individually okay thank you do I have a motion for item 5A I move that we approve item 5A as provided thank you Mr Grahams do you have a second thank you all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed good so item 5B do I have a motion to approve I'm I've moved to approve 5B you missed your major do I have a second thank you Mr Grimes all those in favor say aye aye oh there's a post thank you and do I have a motion for item 5c I moved to motion to approve 5c as written okay thank you Mr Schultz do you have a second uh real quick the board packet stops at July 15th okay so I would recommend that we update that to match 5c is written as July 31st thank you for the recommendation Mr major do I still move to prove yeah so yeah so what we would need to do a motion through July 31st Mr major has amended this we need a second to that Amendment do I have a second to that Amendment second thank you Mr Schultz all those in favor of item five just a quick check uh on item 5c in our agenda where it says July 31st did that mean to catch that entire month or do we actually plan a meeting on the 31st if our last meeting is going to be on July 15th then we might want to change the agenda yeah okay so July 15th yes make sure I understood yeah I was just going back to that doctor to make sure that's exactly what's up July 15th okay so summarize for us Mr Roberts so to summarize the last meeting scheduled between now and the end of July is actually July 15th and there typically is only one business meeting in July because of timing so we would include that and so would list that as the one so with that Amendment we need a second if we haven't had that okay okay to change that to July 15th okay so do I have a second to amend item five C to end on July 15 2024.
so the curriculum Council will certainly have a piece of that as will the district leadership team and other teams throughout the district for sure so um the final standard that they looked at was financial and asset management and again this is certainly an area in which many strengths were identified in a report and really that's thanks in large part to the thorough work that's done by Mr Kiley and his staff in the business department when you look at the identified strengths much of it is related to the work that's happening right around this time of year around budget development and all that goes into that one of the things that was stated in the report that really is worth mentioning is that even as kovid made budget development difficult this is a quote right out of the report decisions relative to funding priorities remain student-centered and dedicated to academics and social emotional learning so really a credit to Mr Kylie and his team as they took that on the other strengths included The Five-Year Capital Improvement plan which forces us to not only look at our current needs but those going forward and sort of have that proactive approach rather than just a reactive approach as well as as well as Gathering stakeholder input in the process and so when we're looking at those areas of ways to improve and continue to improve um it's I think communication again keeps coming up and this is such an intricate process I think um you know when we um I'm going to talk a little bit more about it but we certainly do a lot of trying to communicate what is a very difficult process um but there are lots of groups involved in the your committee the public hearing for the budget the budget subcommittees The Joint meetings with the select board and the finance committee um and making sure that we just have a I think a way of um communicating that that is understandable publishable easy easily accessible and then the other sort of area for growth and I'm just going to flip forward as we talk about it because it relates to the recommendations are the reality that Esther funds are coming to an end we have one more year but we need to um there's no denying that as they're coming to an end is a serious challenge for our district as certainly everything that was funded with this money is a worthy investment and it's meant to meet the real needs throughout the district so we will certainly have to continue to look at with a critical eye knowing that we will be faced with some difficult decisions um and that's that's certainly an ongoing process and one that we will be talking about forward so we'll turn it back over to you you're drinking so this is a little bit in response to I also noted what you said more of a question for the committee I also noted throughout the report in your presentation that the the report noted that the establishment of the equity and diversity committee has a real strength that committee has sort of largely been non-functional in part because I'll be honest is sort of the burden of doing the organizational work of that committee fell on me and I just did not have the bandwidth to do it I don't wonder whether we ought to have some conversations about sort of reinvigorating that committee structuring it s task and its sort of goals around the recommendations of this report but also perhaps creating a structure whereby sorry I'm going to look over at that end of the table or this end of the table but the administration is sort of you know accountable for keeping that going so that we have that there because it does seem it was mentioned under the budget it was mentioned under the curriculum and it was mentioned under student support as one of our strengths and I would hate for that to go away so I maybe perhaps we can put it on an agenda for a future meeting a way to sort of reinvigorate recharge and restructure that committee so that we continue to have that sort of strength at the report notes why don't we why don't we just put that on our next two weeks from tonight yeah put that on our put that on our agenda and maybe if if we could in preparation for this put some guidance maybe just sort of reel concretely pull out a report the things that they suggested that committee do because I think that's what should guide us in developing you know the charge for that committee to make sure we're doing the things that we've been told that committee should be doing that's fine Chris anything I know you asked questions early but yeah again I don't want to just very quickly thank you for the presentation um you know I think there are a lot of a lot more positives um there are some recommendations we take I I take these reports with a grain of salt as I think most a lot of people do um so no um great presentation you answered one of my questions already I do I did notice in the actual report that I was looking at while you were going through it was um and it just kind of jogged in my mind uh where are we at with the um the student rep because that was that was mentioned in there as well we we were actually just discussing that and we were kind of on hold I know Mr Shea had uh got the students rep elected we have a supervisor that is working with them so I think we were kind of on hold just not knowing kind of what direction the committee wanted to go in after the last conversation yeah okay and at the very least we could at least have someone come next meeting just to do the basic as we always did which is going to be a problem yeah and then decide how to move forward because I know we had a lot of conversation about how to move that committee forward yeah no great and I appreciate all your efforts putting into this thank you thank you very nice Definitely yeah uh thank you um uh you know I did I did you know take the take the report with a grain of salt but there were some some real fruits of of having it done and um just some things that I would love to see us just and it sounds like you know you as well um to see us just be cognizant of in our moving forward during this transition um some some useful you know areas of growth that we can just build on to I really enjoyed um reading through and hearing your presentation and I just love the focus on all the good stuff that we're doing we're doing a lot of good things here um and the mention throughout communication the family engagement and uh staff engagement and just it's useful I mean there's some good things that came out of it at least but thank you yeah I know I'll just um you know I would Echo everything that's been said great job thank you guys it's a lot of a lot to go through um you know and again I did cringe a little for the the Dei because that is a concern and uh you know I'd like to see it and I think we get you know it was a difficult path because I think we lost well it was we lost some focus with some other like things that were brought in around like the Indian and everything else but I do think that's something that you know the teachers have such a knowledge of their students and I think a big element of that like I know we're looking at it from a systemic you know school committee-wide but I think blaming the teachers within the schools thinking about what they need to within their staff to reach you know and again they're doing so much you know to reach our kids and the sense of belonging but you know again we saw that about you know that piece about you know the different data points and you know how do we reach these subgroups and it seems to tie in very much to the goals of that committee so I think it might be sensible to have you know some focus groups within the you know we can talk more in our our you know group Next in two weeks but some focus groups in the individual schools they kind of talk about the needs and the gaps you know maybe within the climate of the schools within and again within the staff as well and and in their students and their needs and who's not being seen you know all those things that we can tie in you know because again we're sitting here but we're not in the schools every day so we're getting that feedback but you know our teachers are on the ground so I think they they're so they're so incredibly valuable to give us that feedback so yeah now so I would just Echo that um the portrait of a learner work provides us an opportunity to get at that information as part of a broader initiative that is underway um you know particularly involving you know faculty teacher voice as well as student voice I think uh is critical to that and I think um we're engaged in that portrait of a learner work right now as as we speak so that is an opportunity for sure to to get at that good thank you thank you very much I appreciate it I wonder and it's funny is is like Ms wait we were the two school committee members that talked to you know to them and um it was quite interesting as you said it was you know an outside and then I got for I'm getting Cal this lady was from California yes type of deal and I was like how in God's name does she know what's going on in Massachusetts yeah and she had a set list of questions and I mean she was I'm impressed they came out this well and I mean that no disrespect on our right but just not knowing how big how many pages is this report when you add in the appendix with the different charts and I mean the report itself is 65 Pages yeah yeah so I'll just add on to that Mr news they had to cancel their their um visit to the Quinn School in the demell school so they actually came back uh in June so I was especially pleased to see the classroom management piece was still looking pretty good um that's great thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you purposes yeah okay old business superintendent search sure Mr noon so I I provided you um what Jim Hardy prepared for the superintendent's uh search brochure uh that version we had a there's a couple of small typos in it that I relayed to Jim but haven't haven't gotten a revised copy back for you yeah but that's for your consideration okay I think the intent of that brochure is to move the schedule up as as quickly as possible you'll see on this on the second page it it has the schedule listed there with basically advertising would begin right away and applications would be due February 6th yeah we didn't provide a full revised schedule but the brochure itself has some dates listed on the on the second page questions on the brochure all right really well done you know I thought a given and is our timing are we in tandem with most of the districts for you know as far as like timing in the search and I know there's some thought that we might be a little bit on you know running a little behind how are where we're a little behind yeah we've seen quite a few openings coming you know soliciting in our emails is why we like to push to have them yeah absolutely for us to get it posted for you all yeah I just have one question um I just want to the the in terms of what we did last time versus this time um has anything changed in the qualifications or the selection criteria are they the same as we used last time are they have they been edited do we know that so I I can tell you that what Mr hardy prepared was there was an attempt to be informed based on the survey so the survey closed January 5th I know that Mr hardy was um going to aggregate that data and attempt to change some of the selection criteria based on based on the results of of those surveys okay and are the qualifications the same yep you might think I'm not personally the only thing I'm not sure of is the minimum 10 years in education including central office and or admin experience and teaching that would be the only one but I mean yeah the licensee or the the at least Masters I seem to recall I don't know if I'm right about this but we had a we had a specific requirement about central office experience I don't have a problem with casting a wider net because I think we'd rather have more people apply than fewer people apply um but one of the ways that we you know have dealt with this in our churches is we have sort of minimum qualifications and preferred qualifications and so if we have changed that I don't know if we have um I don't wonder whether we might you know word it in some way to suggest that or we can keep it like this I don't know I just want to make sure we're being sort of consistent in filling out the survey if I recall correctly not that it was that long ago but there's a lot going on in life right um there were questions related to what we'd like to see and I I personally would like us to have Mr hardy here next time and hopefully he can have the you know the results of the survey so that we can take that into consideration because if we decide on this and say XYZ what's what's here and then we have the survey coming it's like we wasted everybody's time for doing that survey so um I would like to see us bring that into our our our decision making as far as how we would approve this that would be my personal I can just share that we did invite Mr hardy tonight yes he had a meeting that was concluding about six o'clock more than an hour away from here he didn't he I you know I I tried to let him know that we try and move this to later in the agenda and uh it was he didn't get back to me on whether he'd be able to make it so and where is where he's coming from is no he's not around the corner right so I mean I'll just like just reading this over if it's okay like you know it does look like we're at least like says a minimum of 10 years in education including central office and or administrative experience and teaching so it's allowing you know it's not mandating that necessarily but I think in the past search we've mandated certain number of years in central office experience that's why I'm asking yeah I would first and I don't know this is just me I think it would be helpful a district this size and what we're what we're willing to to compensate the leader of the Dartmouth Public Schools I think we should have some kind of preferred qualifications versus minimum qualifications okay that makes sense Mr Nunes but um I just pulled up the old ad thank you so the old ad read master's degree required Advanced degree preferred minimum of 15 years in education including teaching experience in five years central office and or administrative experience that seems more comprehensive also licensed obviously or eligible license eligible that sounds good okay so if so if we if 10 years in education if we made that including at least five in central office I'm just right so I would say a wider net I don't I don't think we wanna you know say to people they're not going to apply and in fact we know there's a lot of research that when you add qualifications women candidates of color are much more likely to say well I have 9.2 years therefore I won't apply that's right and sorry the men say well that's close enough it rounds up right so I would prefer to have a cast a broader net in keeping minimums where they are at the same point in time to be fair I think it's accurate to say we would prefer someone who has more experience in central office so I don't have a problem with it written how it is but perhaps per the bullet above we might say minimum 10 years including this you know three years central office experience preferred I don't know I'm not I don't necessarily need five but I wouldn't like to say don't apply if you don't have that because I want us to cast a broad net that would be my opinion I would agree with that okay so could we say something like minimum of 10 years in education including Center office creating experience we might say I don't know if we want to say five you know five-year central office and or administrative or three-year central office preferred right again I don't want to make people not apply but I agree with you if we prefer that I think we should stay in the middle of the Marriott yeah exactly because that's the that's the time you'll get the one good one right if you know what I'm saying so I mean could we include something like three years central office experience preferred Jim I mean I'd be happy to relay whatever whatever you'd like this to look like I mean this is your right yeah you know your higher I'm good whatever you'd like it to look like related Mr hardy yeah yeah have him change it and have him change it get get it okay so three years preferred yeah yeah so get it get it back to us so that we can I mean I if he makes that change and we get the copy back are we good to go so that he can get this out yeah that I was just gonna say that I you know while I do want I'm interested to see the survey and I wanted to inform our hiring process I am hesitant to hold off on telling him to go ahead with this given the timeline and give him when our next meeting is like we need to I agree right yeah so I'm fine with with you know having it go with that modification but I do want to see the survey results I just don't know that we can edit this for that because the guy that can can do that but what I'm saying is if he makes that change yes I am a yes we get it back I would agree to that he emails it back to us so that we can go yay and then he can send that week yes yes beautiful yes yes good okay I will do so tomorrow perfect great okay thank you sir so that'll take care of that so he's gonna move he's moved up the whole uh we have a semi-finalists yeah okay all right that's good yeah no no I got you okay so the next thing uh I don't know if everybody brought um go ahead no no no no oh it's the capital Improvement no I still oh still good uh on the search committee Dr Jenkins had asked back in November for uh what the makeup of the 2015 committee was and Ms Gunther was kind enough to send that to us I don't know if everybody still has it handy type of type of deal uh too Central to school committee one curriculum director three principles a high school middle and elementary three teachers a union designee slash teacher two parents and a retired PTO member for a total of 15 members so I'm just looking for your feedback on that what you think I mean I'm one who is you know not looking to have I just don't want it to become almost and I don't is a crowd control type of situation every you know that that type of deal so Chris you had your hand up I did um I was on the uh the previous search committee for Dr Gifford I I think that functioned well yeah you was you and Mr goth yes it was me and Mr Garth um overall I think that search committee functioned extremely well I think we got a lot accomplished in um you know not too many meetings obviously it's a very big time commitment but in in speaking with the the task at hand um I think it's uh having 15 people on the committee such as here um you know I I would be comfortable with that as I look through this um you know the my only thing is uh at this point in time our our curriculum directors are a really central office administrators um so we have two Central administrators one curriculum director um so I don't know if we you know if we want to look at that that would be the only the only thing that I would look at yep okay um yeah and I had uh I had question marks next to those two also so yeah so go ahead I'm sorry oh no that's okay so so I guess my next question would be um what is the committee um thinking about as far as um a chairperson can I before we get into that can I have a can I have a question about the makeup sure the only thing I I might suggest is I'm looking at Mr Shea and I know he had some Child Care responsibilities and I don't know about the new middle school or could we do I would be happy to have the high school and middle school principles but like with the elementary it's like one of three right and you pick your poison you draw you know before you draw your straws right whereas the high school and the middle school like they have to um so could we make that or designee right maybe it might be I don't know if the high school and middle school principal have already been asked if they're willing to do this but I have not heard from maybe we should ask I have not heard from the high school I have heard from the Middle School someone from the Middle School admin that has stated they would like to be on type of deal and I said okay I would I would get back to them okay that type of deal all right I'm fine with that I just want to make sure that we all have commitments outside of oh yeah our work and it's asking a lot so that they have the opportunity to to appoint someone else to represent their Administration yeah I mean because I'm sure the need arise if if you if you think about it this is going to be probably about uh A month's worth of heavy lifting it's not the deal Kathleen um I I just I I believe we did this last time I was one of the parent um at the time I was not on the committee and I was a parent representative and of course you know I had a special ed lens on and that sort of thing and I believe our one of our teachers had a special ed I would just like to see that incorporated into the makeup somehow I mean we've got some other transitions I don't know if that's essential admin or if it's I'm thinking teacher someone with that that expertise to bring to the table in terms of you know deliberation on on the related service provider a related server yeah yeah good idea a related you know yeah just opening it up to being mindful of that one consideration foreign so that being said what I would like to do and I'll get back to the other question in a minute what I would like to do is just you know throw it out there and have anyone who is interested I mean again you know the two Central you know I I can I can live with with this what we have the type of deal but uh somewhere between excuse me for a second here while I pull up a wonderful calendar foreign if somewhere between now when say the 19th or 20th of January who's ever interested just sent uh Miss Gunther a quick note or an email and she just forwards those to me and I'll bring you that list on the 23rd and we can hash it out then can is there any reason why she can't share that with the entire committee prior to the meeting nothing wrong no I don't have an issue with that it's just it's easier I think to think about as they yeah that's right on the spot that's fine Council uh Mary yeah so just uh just to follow up just thinking about Kathleen thinking about the fact that we too have our two Central administrators who are also our curriculum directors we have that and again just to point that out would it make sense to swap out that curriculum director as love related service provider or an option just at least like how to put that in our you know a special somewhere yeah someone someone within that yeah exactly like just because we still have we'll have two people from central office regardless okay all right so instead of the instead of the separate curriculum director because that'll be like yeah true Central make it a make a curriculum I'm sorry my fault oh no it's not well meaning would you would you call it special education or whatever the line yeah relate thank you or that you know yeah no that's fine okay so I would also propose that perhaps instead of a retired administrator maybe we want to keep that I don't know but we don't have anyone representing our janitorial staff or you know our building sort of Staff our secretarial staff our food services staff um if we could I would prefer to have someone representing um those staff than a than a retired administrator I don't want to increase the size but I think there's a whole set of other employees that work in this in this um this District to have a stake in who the superintendent is and I think they should have a seat at the table so maybe we could change that retired administrator slot to not what someone a district employee who doesn't fit the teacher and who doesn't fit the support services that you have other other District employees yeah but I'm thinking like a secretary or a custodial staff or Services worker um maybe even a teaching assistant right um any one of those I think they have important voices and perspectives to bring and so I think they should have a seat at the table yeah that's fine that's good that's fine okay all right and as far as the chair I have asked Mr christopholi who is the director of phys ed and Athletics on health to uh to chair the committee and he has accepted Chris with all due respect Mr chair I would just like to try to understand while they respect you and the years that you put in here I'd like to understand what Authority you had to make that offer the chair the chair of the the chair of the school committee is no different than any other member of the school committee the power lies with the committee not with one individual person and it is my opinion in my Pro in my belief that as the chair you're responsible for the running of the meeting solely you're not responsible to make decisions on behalf of the full entire committee well go ahead Dr Jenkins I agree um I don't think this is the way this committee has operated we've made decisions together as a group we don't always agree but we hash it out at the table in open meeting together and I'm disappointed that the committee was not consulted about this I'll take I'll take the blame for that and that's fine uh I had had a a brief discussion with Mr Kiley oh after Dr Jenkins announced that you know she was retiring and well we were going to have to go um not retiring Dr Gifford is retiring sorry about that I lost my train of thought I apologize the uh I had that I had a brief conversation with Mr Kylie and asked him about it and uh never came never came to a conclusion and then when this committee uh at its last meeting decided and I'm good with that to appoint Mr Kiley the interim superintendent uh with everything that he's going to have on his plate between now and and June 30th I didn't think it was a wise decision to go that way and I told him I told him that and he was appreciative of it Jim if I'm out of balance police say so uh so then I started to think about who else we possibly could get type of deal and I was thinking as we are thinking with this right now type of deal of just moving this process along and being able to take and be one step ahead of other committees and other communities and that type of deal and that's when I came up with Mr christopholi because I have sat with Mr christopholi on a couple of other committees for administrative appointments and such and uh he uh I was very impressed and he did a very excellent job with them type of deal so that's why I went with him if I've stepped on toes and I've overstepped then I humbly apologize but I don't apologize for appointing Mr christopholi without respect Mr church has appointed a search committee chair you have asked someone and that person agreed but to Mr Oliver's point the chair does not speak for the committee the committee appoints so the committee has to make a motion and the committee has to vote so it's my opinion as of now we do not yet have a search committee chair with all due respect to Mr crucifully I like him very much I also respect him but this is not a decision that is made without consulting the full committee that's fine good I mean I agree with that I I think Andrew is quite you know insightful and organized and just a great great guy um and I think he would be understanding to the fact of this conversation I personally would like to see perhaps um again it could be him he's great but perhaps we come back next meeting with anyone interested in for our consideration of a certain and then we as a committee vote on that um that's fine I'm good with that that's that's fine I'll let Mr christopholino in the morning type of deal and you know anybody that is interested to let us know and we'll vote on it at the next meeting that's fine Mary yeah can I just ask a question about like you know just procedural excuse me um Christopher Lee as we look at these categories will we consider him because we're kind of like saying if if we go you know Dan we have to make that vote and everything in and and I'm agreement and like procedure would he be considered Central Administration would he can be against like where would we consider him I mean that was just when I'm looking at our categories we have Central Administration school committee members special education principals teachers union designation parents and another employee where would he fit like again excellent choice and I don't think he should be ruled out because I think you know again it's just that we have these you know we want to make sure we're not ruling out tremendously qualify members of our community who would be also excellent assets so because I'm looking at that I just don't know where he would is he he's not quite Central administrator or is he Central Administration and then with that I I just don't know he's under that okay I mean I just didn't know like for that you look at the budgets all right all right okay thank you so we'll tackle that Chris so you know I guess I'm having a hard time and I I thank you I appreciate your Insight oh I missed the chair but it just it frustrates me to the highest extent when I find out from internal staff members in schools that Mr christopholi is leading the the search committee because he had and once again no do no disrespect I like Andy a lot he's a great guy I highly respect him um but I'm it's coming back to me hey I hear Andy's uh heading the search committee at the very least Mr chair why wouldn't you have shared that information with us and if you made the offer to him why wouldn't you have shared that information with us I'm having a hard time swallowing that and again as I just said I will apologize it was my fault I should have and I did it okay I don't have an answer I didn't give you I I didn't do it okay period Shannon so I'm gonna follow up I feel like decisions are being made outside of open meeting for this committee and that is not how we have ever operated on my time in this committee this committee has disagreed vehemently on lots of issues but we always come to the table and work together because that's what we do and I I just have a bad taste in my mouth when when we as a committee are not involved in decisions and this is not the first time in this search process already that I have felt that decisions have been made that haven't been brought for before this committee and I would just like some assurances that these sorts of things will not happen again when there are decisions to be made if we cannot wait then we need to call an emergency meeting and make the decision collectively because that is who we are and that is the committee that I want to be be a part of I don't have to agree with the four of you on everything but I think we have to agree that we all participate in all of these decisions yeah thank you fine I'm good at this time I feel the process has been compromised in this committee owes it to the community staff parents and especially our students for a full transparent search process for our next superintendent of schools this has nothing to do with Mr hardy or masc it's completely internal and it therefore I'd like to make a motion that we table the superintendent search at this time I'm gonna second Mr Oliver's motion for the purposes of discussion I don't know how I feel about it okay but I think we need to have a discussion of it I agree we need to have a discussion about it okay hang on okay hang on one second here so we got a motion by Mr Oliver to table correct and we have a second by Dr Jenkins I'm going to ask a question to Mr Oliver okay before we get into the discussion and maybe that's what Dr Jenkins is looking at I don't know I'm not a mind reader how long do you want to table this for until which time that this committee is satisfied with the process superintendent process the hiring process Kathleen could you just let um and could you expound on that in terms of like setting I don't want to speak for you I just wanna hear you out because uh right now the scale let me pull up the sky right now this it's scheduled to be posted when what are you looking for I'm sorry the schedule it's scheduled to refer us the applications open when applications are due February 9th sixth sixth close yeah due February 6th so for discussion purposes of today is Monday if this brochure went out let's say Thursday or Friday just you know so you're looking at uh uh what's Friday the 13th you know Friday the 13th yeah yeah phobia the 13th so then they've got 20 they've got what three weeks is the motion still on the we're on the table we're on the table Yeah and two three can I okay I just want to clarify like so in addition I I agree we we make a great you know conversation excuse me we make decisions as a group and and absolutely this was an overstep you know and I wanted to share and he's he's admitted that I guess my concern is we know that we're on a strict timetable and we want the best superintendent possible for our students and I'm really concerned about our timeline and I'm not saying that we should skip procedures or anything like that and so I I want to know if there's like more than something else that I'm missing in addition to this and I you know I think John's like you know said that you know this was an overstep and you know again and and I agree with the public comment that was another issue that I I felt keenly but I do want to make sure that we don't lose the opportunity to get the best possible person and I you know I was in Connecticut yesterday I heard like Bridgeport is looking like I just I am like mindful of the fact that you know there's a limited pool and I just don't want to push this off so that we lose the opportunity because we're having infighting like I again so I just want to understand is there more to them other than just you know Mr christopholi who again I think we all acknowledge like respect it was procedural but I just want to know is there something else that we're missing that I'm missing here that I haven't understood so that you guys are aware of sure I guess simply in the simplest sense I'm just looking for for guarantees moving forward that this committee will operate in full transparency that's what I'm looking for Shannon I I will also say that I felt when we started the discussion about interim superintendent that it was already decided that we were going to look externally and we were in a point that's how the discussion started the discussion about the interim did not start with do we want to appoint someone externally it's what are the steps to appoint someone externally and so I don't I share your concerns I don't want to delay the superintendent search but to agree with Mr Oliver I need assurances that if things come up the decisions need to be made that we make them an open meeting if it's an emergency we can call an emergency meeting that that we will attend and and we will be informed about this is the one of the most important responsibilities of the school committee and every single person at this table should have equal voice in executing that Authority no I agree I just you know is there any but I guess is there any so from moving forward are we okay you're gonna how do we make that guarantee other than like we're like agreeing that we're gonna do that that's really what we're looking for a verbal commitment right like that we're gonna do this absolutely yes I guess I would say if if if this happens again I will be making the motion okay we'll be seconding it okay I don't want to get started and have people apply and have to do that agreed no I agree we need that's how we need to move forward okay second yeah I will withdraw my motion I'm okay with okay he would draw your second yes okay uh new business FY 2428 Capital Improvement hey Kylie thank you Mr noon so you all received uh our draft five-year Capital Improvement plan in your packet so I just before we you know get into the specifics and and talk about each of the proposals I think that it's important to note that you know this High School is 21 years old now it's our baby the high school still 21 years old if you if you take this out of the mix the rest of our school our schools are seven average 72 years old so you know we've we've had some discussions in the past about big picture and where we need to go um we can't push it down the road forever um it may not be that this year isn't the you know isn't the time to push it but we do have to be cognizant of the fact that um that our schools are you know continuing to age I'd stack up our schools with anybody's that are this age I think that that wouldn't be possible without really excellent high quality routine and preventative maintenance maintenance staffs that you know have done a fantastic job keeping up the buildings and all the funding that we've received from the town that you know that's helped us helped us get to this point but we need a lot more funding so I think you know in this Capital Improvement plan indicates that doesn't have a new school proposed in year one um in the capital Improvement plan and I don't think it should but I do think that you know having um this building be 21 years old we do have to have an eye out for spacing out what's going to need to be done in the future and you really you know want 10 years between these projects because they're so so expensive that you really want to you know have some strategy moving forward um and obviously we're well past the 10-year Mark here uh for a new building but I I do think that you know it makes a lot of sense to take a look at a building like the middle school which was rated a rated in the rated our worst building by the msba when they came down in 2016 and did the review it was not the recommendation of our facilities master plan that that we did several years ago but I do think that it merits another look so can I ask a question yeah so the middle school I agree right I think it's a building most in need of replacement but we just got money for the roof right so how much how much six years ago right but we committed to 20 years use or 10 years of use 20 years of use and so if we don't if we renovate that building we're okay but if we build a new Middle School we're on the hook for giving some of that money back yes okay and renovating that building it's not possible sir right no there's no chance that that's the answer we have new roofs on all the buildings except for the high school right so um that's a problem we've and correct me if I'm wrong I mean if we built a new middle school and then for discussion purposes oh no that's not going to work either I was gonna say I forgot about quinnin Potter not Quinn uh the Mello and Potter you can move them into the middle you know make a be a huge Elementary School don't get me wrong but that would have leave it but now you get the roofs if it's not time frame wise you don't have the roofs that way never mind I I took care of that idea sure yeah I think those those other schools um would be superior to the Middle School in my in my humble opinion um I think that you know Potter and Demello and Quinn are um are in much better condition than that Middle School Chris did you have a question I did you said Potter Demello and Quinn are in much better condition than the Middle School yes okay I I think I would agree with you on that my concern with the with the elementary schools is space and not having not having a fully conducive 21st Century Learning environment and having having the room for our related service providers doubling up on office spaces not having be not having the room would it make sense and quite honestly part of these questions is me saying let's let's put a placeholder in here far far some kind of renovation I agree they don't need to be torn down they have brand new roofs they have brand new um do they have Windows or is that on here Potter and the mouse of the Quinn windows we redid we finished that in right when I started like 2011.
the same configuration with closing McLaughlin building and having those students attend Wilson [Music] because the savings of 815. it's five hundred thousand dollars now I can say those numbers are right today which is a problem but I can't say that one way or the other but I can tell you that those numbers haven't changed that much now logistically are there other reasons to go in to that absolutely there are other reasons why we should consider Closing one building to the other other than financial those are also things that we haven't discussed thoroughly I've looked at a bunch of stuff I know all about that road the crazy thing is back when I was in high school there were kids driving that road and it wasn't a problem when they drove it every day um he got accidents everywhere along the fire department here we have accidents left and right over by the plant and there is multi-kids that drive that road there's kids that are on that road for 23 minutes 21 miles my butt my on a bus and there is accidents on every Road you can't change that we've been told many many times many many years from the state coming back to the same scenario we can't run to high schools between Junior High and you never know if you're closing a building how many kids are going to stay how many kids can go because I guarantee you you guys didn't realize how many people would be believing when you close the bush of the building and I guarantee you that we didn't save there is some other schools that travel the distance I know Ransom and Zine are 26.9 miles apart uh I believe from Wilson to Claflin is 26 27 miles there is kids that are on a bus from this end of the district that are on a bus for an hour some or more and some are young some are older so we can't say hey I don't want my kid foreign because our district is spread apart and it has been thought of for the last three to four years since bush has been closed that we've got to keep on moving on uh we can't stand still and there is some hard decisions whether it's closing a building or moving us or trying a different scenario I I do agree that that as a school board we definitely canceled I I agree with that I think that we always need to be looking at these things that sort of job look at these numbers um because again I just don't feel like we've done that I think we've looked at we need to close Wilson and we've not impaired those numbers okay and to be fair I don't know if there's anybody on this board including Roger or I who's asked our current superintendent for those members what those numbers look like which is a failure on all seven days all right but because of that that failure we have not looked at every option we don't know what the consequences of this is and we don't know if there's a better option you guys can sit here at these tables and think it is a better option because it's not your school and it may be it may be the best option I don't know that we've not looked at those numbers but that reason to be the better options cannot be in any circumstance because it's not my school it cannot be because it's that school I don't know if that's the case for an and I don't and I'm not certainly putting those words in your mouth I'm just saying it cannot be that it cannot be that barrager and I and it can't do that for the five of you we have to have good and sound reasons and we have to look at every option well this is the first time we've had a discussion and that's that's what we should have been doing for 10 months so I appreciate the input of all the public because without that difficult to make decisions and it takes a lot to get up and talk into public forum and I I understand that Tyson from both ends and I think Dalton said it best we need more students we had more students we wouldn't be and to address what Chad asked about going south or in our situation of going north which was talked about last summer and fall the silver our community at Wilson they go east and west and I'm including silver in that because of the sale barn mainly don't we go to Ellsworth Russell Hayes Salina I think the majority of people here go the great bad lie and touch so it's not anything against it's becoming that unfortunately but and initially it's an east west of the north south and I'm not sold on the road being horrible either actually it's not a bad road but accidents do happen you can't disagree with anything that's been said at high on either side but the point that I keep coming back to we've been talking about this for 10 months and this is the first time we've had a discussion openly and that's Troublesome and I blame myself and the board for not pushing out harder and we do need numbers and they should be provided not at the 11th Hour and I don't mean General know that I mean specific numbers broken down in the spreadsheet how many teachers and what's the utilities books that you can help the whole nine yards the decision still may be the same but then there's no no question look at them if the numbers are in front of you that's where it supports they don't have much to argue but until that happens it leaves doubt that decisions are made not in public so we've had vote four votes to close to go through this process we're still here and all those were made without discussion in open form that's what's trouble so what we are doing tonight is a positive thing don't like it obviously but our situation we're vested but if that's the decision and it can be supported notice as well to make plans and I understand that and I wouldn't want this to drag on a whole lot longer is very stressful for everyone involved but the discussion tonight is the best thing that we've done yet another thought sorry I did I did want to talk about the numbers a little bit that we did get on Wednesday um I I don't know the exact breakdown of those those numbers I don't know um exactly what goes into each line item I know generally just from being on the board and working with school Finance um but I do have to say that I believe that the numbers are fair and accurate in general uh there was a question how things are divided between the elementary school and the high school whether it be in one building um the things that are definitive that went to one side or the other of course are tagged that way um and things that are separated between the two buildings and that's how we reported into the state um so I am comfortable with those numbers are accurate um but I agree with Roger that we need to specifically look at those numbers and know what line items to go into them um so we can take a look at those numbers specifically as where can we save money and what is saving us and knowing the cost per pupil in a building does not tell us how much we're going to be safe there are a thousand other factors that go I think that we need to look at those numbers when we on our agenda we had three options that fraudger on your bill Mr Lowry um suggested that we can say those three options were to table this forever and keep keeping on keeping on and figure out how it works the other option was to label it with specific instructions to look at these numbers specifically look at other options look at what this will do to the district and then the third one was of course to approve the resolution positive as much as I would like the first one I don't think it's viable Josh said we've got to keep looking we've got to keep doing things as a board to make sure that this District exists and losing any portion of students is not the way to do that so I don't think that the third option is so for that I would like to make a motion that we table this to take the time to look at the numbers to find look at the different options and make sure that as a board we are doing what's right for the district and right questions foreign motion on the table is there a second we have a motion by Brad it's a table that I just the decision and a second timer sorry all those in favor actually sorry we will do this by roll home Josh no I don't know Brad yes dad Allison amazing sales I would like to continue the discussion foreign [Music] August 6th of 2021 we did have numbers of savings with from philosophy scheduling and sharing teachers which I realized was before four electrons at that time and those were firms to Clark but then we did also have numbers from March 25th of 2022 from this uh some options for Mr park with additional numbers and those numbers are not always discussed in open Forum because sometimes they are sensitive information information but it did discuss blessing we don't have a salary spelled out for us but that was emailed on Friday notice so you should have had that doctor so these are new discussions about competition foreign between buildings I infect myself when through the ledgers and wrote down building bills yeah it's electricity and water for an entire year just to see it wouldn't equal love to do so I mean that's all information that we have every month I'd like to make a comment on the bus saying I haven't really talked to the super General but I for one advocate for busing for everybody even the entire news um I don't know sorry that but unless I was a senior in high school let me drive okay every day and the coach wouldn't let me ride that bike plus you drive me home for football I'm a art advocate for busing if anybody wants to bring that in because I've been asked multiple times and I will I don't know anybody else thinks but I'll advocate for us an entire history I just forgot earlier um foreign [Music] questions I can wait um just to follow through with what was started in April and then to improve the following resolution whereas Kansas long KSA 721431 authorizes the Board of Education as any Unified School District close any school building by majority vote of the board and whereas Unified School District number 112 Ellsworth County Kansas Highway Publishers notice of how the public hearing on the fourth day of January 2023 to hear and consider testimony and evidence on the proposed building closure closure and whereas the board of education has Unified School District number 112 in Ellsworth County Kansas has found and determined the proposing a Wilson attendance building grades 7 through 12 would improve the school system of the Unified School District by the Board of Education of Unified School District number 112 Ellsworth County Kansas and meeting locally assembled this ninth day of January 2023 about the Wilson tennis building grades 7 through 12 shall be closed at the end of the 2022 2023 school year there is a motion on the table there is a second by Josh is there any further in this session here again we will move to our votes gosh yes [Music] forever no Chad foreign presentations and substitute teachers to protect the privacy and individuals to be discuss with Mr Larry and Mr Sherman president to open the session in this room at yeah at 8 50.
I don't I don't know if it's even necessary to re-look at it but just the spirit of why we were doing it can we look at it and see what makes sense now yeah um and and because all it is is a purchase department is centralizing the purchasing to make sure that we're you know that we're realizing the efficiency so I would say based on the spirit of what Lori is saying does that make sense and because again I'm not telling you all to do that I'm just saying uh it's a consideration because I don't know the amount of work that it would go into or if that would even be worth the work because it would it cost us more in time than not but I think that it's a worthy but I do know this for sure that if we don't consider it then all of the efforts that we're putting in to realize the efficiencies I believe will be lost no there's there's um markets there's markets there's um uh.com markets where you can put out your invoices to the vendors that you're paying and you say Hey you give me a seven percent uh we'll give you um we'll pay you early if you give us a seven percent you know reduction on what we pay you um and that annualizes out pretty good I don't know if we have a big enough this is 85 percent of our power yeah I mean 85 percent of our uh expenditures goes to um salaries you know so if you look at that it's a pretty small pool that we're talking about here um but I mean it's something I don't know if it might not even be worth the uh infrastructure spending you know on the I.T side but uh you know there's there's like there's opportunities out there for things like that and I don't even and since we don't have a reserve we might not be able to even do it it's just I'm thinking out loud here and I probably shouldn't be your friend but there's to go along without all the ideas that you guys are talking about you know when we talk about going to RFP the other thing that will eventually come to the board with and that's one thing I need to work with my team on is we are members of purchasing cooperatives so instead of going to RFP we can leverage a Cooperative what does that mean mean legally how does that meet the RFP so there's some information I can share with the board but I'd like to get through this first and then and start going through this and then eventually looking at okay how many rfps what type of what type of materials are we looking at purchasing and can we go the through Source well or by board or some of these other there's a a group out there called compare co-ops which you can say hey I'm looking for paper since we're talking about that or looking for paper you can put it in there and it'll tell you the four different co-ops that are selling paper at this cost and and you can lock into that cost it's as if you as a district wrote the RFP so there's some uh purchasing cooperatives that have really become big in the last three four years that I think we could leverage a little bit better as well so that'll be a part of this evolving conversation this is where having the discussion with the budget manager is probably yeah and with the holistic Viewpoint as well you know obviously um the other thing that it might be it might be some things might be best for um depending on the vendor correct and the purpose the other thing that I was hoping we could and I don't know if this is the appropriate place but it there's a reason that I'm suggesting it and I've been thinking about it for a long time when we experienced a lot of growth we started just kind of putting people in random places throughout the community and one of the reasons that sometimes I feel like we have some inefficiencies is because we don't have all our Administration Under One Roof and I was very shocked to hear how much we spend in other buildings specifically Mason Square but I can we just see like a portfolio of the District of all the buildings that we're paying for and you know my my dream someday I've shared this with Dr sparlin is um you know to have everybody Under One Roof obviously we have a lot more priorities but I do think there are efficiencies gained I think from a cultural perspective and from a financial perspective but I think we should also see what our um our our portfolio of real estate looks like and um the money that's going out for that as well and I don't know if we can um just append that to the end of this uh document it would just be really helpful for us to see and the parts of real estate that we own that are kind of not doing anything for us like the land we own for the third High School um the land with it has um right on Route 71.
second in second your emotion thank you thank you okay um all this approves dad all right oh there's a post okay thank you for that catch Mr major okay Mr MacGyver we'll move recommendations for public disclosures of conflict of interest would you mind explaining that for the for the team so included in everyone's package this evening or conflict of interest disclosures for the cabinet members generally any board members that may have a potential conflict of interest or an apparent conflict or any senior leadership are encouraged to complete those forms even if it is not a situation where it would actually be a conflict if it could appear that it may be a conflict the best practice is to complete those forms so you have several of those from the members of the cabinet who could have an apparent conflict although in reality I don't think any of those would really be a true Conflict for us but those forms are in there and being submitted to the board this evening did you Mr MacGyver okay so a recommendation Miss wildin is for you to approve those public the board to approve those public disclosures do I have a motion to approve the public disclosures as provided to us in our packets tonight I move to approve item number six as provided by Mr McIver thank you Mr Graham do I have a second thank you Mr major all those in favor say aye aye aye well there's a post you know Mr MacGyver thank you next item Dr Roberts thank you Miss Wilden on these next items I'm going to ask for a b and c to be considered together as consent agenda items that we have as regular business items every Meeting those would be the minutes of the regular school board meeting our last one on December the 12th supplemental contracts that were in your packet variety of reasons that people have done a few extra things for us are getting paid for that and then our claims and payroll reports you see that claims for January 9th dated today are about eight hundred ninety thousand dollars and then the pre-run of expenditures from December 1st through December 31st about 21.5 million dollars and then from a payroll standpoint checks that the check dates are December 16th and December 30th cover work done from November 21st through December 18th a little over 6.7 million dollars so a lot of expenditures there asking for those so a through C is my recommendation to to approve that miss little okay thank you Dr Roberts do we have any questions on a3c do you do that first or do I ask for a motion first Mr MacGyver motion first massive okay do I have a motion to approve items a through C is presented I I move that we approve items seven a through C is written okay thank you do I have a second thank you do I have any questions uh clarification Mr Phillips on item seven see I've noted you've signed off in several places like at the end of the claims at the end of the payroll you've reviewed all these and these are all in order that's correct Mr I will point out that the large claim amount for December is due to the semi-annual debt payments July's sorry June and approved in July is the same way thank you any other questions nope all right all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion approved and then 70.
yeah right yeah because that's right around Cahill came down with the check so high school was like I'd like to see I don't see there we have the land I believe I already had a conversation with you that we have the land to expand at both the Demello and Potter locations and even Quinn if we needed to although I don't know if that's necessary or not but but I think it's I I think the time is now rather than later to at least get this as a placeholder to at least renovate and upgrade those those buildings expand them what that looks like I have no idea but I think we need to get some kind of placeholder so the town can start saying hey at least seeing it on paper I don't know we could we could add something to the request that relates to planning towards something well you know it's not something in that direction I mean that's what you really have to do right right down the road a while our plan and I I was a big part of this plan so I'll take some of the blame I think was less than um less than what we would have hoped to get out of the the facilities master plan that was in you know ultimately produced Shannon so I feel like again to that old facilities master plan that's Gathering dust on a shelf somewhere um I feel like I don't want to commit to the planning money until we have a sense that the town is ready to commit to the building because I don't want to throw another I mean how many you know fifty hundred thousand dollars to a plan that's going to go nowhere like we need to have a commitment to a building in concept I don't know but we need to be closer to where we were and I think that's what part of the problem was is we did that plan but the town wasn't ready to and so until we're ready to do that it's not worth spending 50 or 100 000 and I mean I think that's what it costs right then Kathleen but I think like putting it there though is part of the of of the planning well I want the building on there yeah the plan yeah not a plan 200 million dollars to tell that story you know people know people in town know this the buildings are old but they don't realize what that means in education and upkeep and all of that like that labor they don't they don't get it until we maybe utilize our our you know the The Avenues we have through DCTV through having it as part of our budget which is just you know um I just think it's important to have it there whether it's oh I will do anymore I just don't want to plan there I want the building there yeah the plan is just we're going to do another plan and nothing's going to happen so put the building in the in there and we can have a heart attack right for the sky like I did when I saw the last plans yeah I had a heart attack actually I think Mr Nunes wasn't at that meeting because you had had a literal heart attack yeah and we were glad you didn't come because those numbers would have made it worse yeah exactly thank you I was not at the first one because that's when I had my surgery correct but we had a general and when I say General we had a a meeting with just those people uh a couple after I right at not long after I got home I remember going to that and going I'm glad I was you know my arteries got cleared you know exactly yeah but it's not a small number no it's I mean Durfee just Durfee and again I realize that's a little bit bigger than I we would need don't get me wrong but that's 250 million dollars yeah right so and that project was bid out before some of the economic difficulties that was been in 15 just before it was being put together in 15 just right now yeah I don't know 400 oh maybe yeah I don't know what it cost us to do more than three anyway that's for sure oh yeah so you know a project like the middle school would be um hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars yes for sure um so what what is everyone's thoughts on this do we do we look at the elementary schools do we look at this is because this is five years right we're voting on a five-year Capital Improvement plan I'd like to see a building I like to see funding approved in five years yeah I I agree in again this is only a draft when do you need this for CIP I mean if we beat this up tonight and we beat this up on the 23rd that's beginning of February is good when it's fine okay does that answer your question Chris but somebody else had a question I'm sorry I I don't really have a question I'm just think this timeline here but then I just giving you know our new leadership right being part of the vision of of how we move forward as well and so how we what we put here for now is that going to to change and improve based on who we have in our new leadership and we're looking five years down the road yeah it could be edited next year right right across a coin and put it in one year right that type of deal it gives us an idea I'm thinking like redistrict I mean I don't want any it's like that's a lot so it's a lot but but there are a lot of components to this it is Shannon to Mr Oliver's question do we want to put you know Mr Kylie said Middle School Mr Oliver said Elementary School um I think that was my question at that meeting from that plan um and I don't wonder whether do we have an electronic version of the plan can we recirculate it to the committee as we think about an answer to your question because my gut says looking at that middle school middle school but I do remember that the professionals said not Middle School yeah so it might be helpful for us as we think about that to read that report and we're on the hook for the roof yeah you have a projection of I know it's early but of incoming Elementary classes over the next five years that like do we think do we sense of the population and again I know it's you know not entirely transparent but do we have a sense of the population of elementary students is going to increase or like stabilize from like you know is there anything we can draw out district-wide it's quite stable right now with maybe a slight decreases in certain spots so certain schools so and helpful I mean I got the sense of course again elementary schools are you know been pretty desperate for space rather than moving folks around is that you know and I know they're carving out some unique because they're always trying to carve out unique places within especially de melon and Potter but you know to Chris's point but one more question has the or when or has The Debt Service been paid for the high school just this year this past year okay so let's let's look at another one we ended up my memory is any good from town meeting we ended up we're getting money in fiscal this fiscal in fiscal 23.
to review the one position that's the reason I wouldn't have the exact location either one of the position okay there's a motion on the table by Josh from the second time so all those in favor thank you we are back in Open Session move to prove the resignation of Megan Cook personal science effective today and also to improve the resignation of Indiana Metro excuse their educator independent of their Art School leader okay photos in favor as your name [Music] I'm sorry okay sorry I'll make a motion to move to improve Pamela and Decker as I think he did both of them moved to approve Pamela Decker as substitute teacher [Music] classes the administrative report s yes our bank statements equal what we have in our activity account prior to Christmas break I took eight kids out to eat earning 100 points it would take McKenna Adeline hamburger Chloe cook Ashton Roble Kenny zinc Zoe Schneider Auto bowener and will root we'll have our local spelling bee this Wednesday in our gymnasium our fourth through sixth graders participate in that and then we'll take the top 10 to the Ellsworth County Spelling Bee in February within service on the 16th and we're planning to meet with our building level teams to look at data and start looking at the next year next five-year cycle of our keysa process on the 19th our first grade we'll go to the Claflin Community Center and then we also have talked about legion about bringing our kids down to the legion as well so we'll make a visit to both those places on the 19th on the 24th the Great Van Wetland presentation pertaining to Kansas State they'll come out and work with our students that day on the sixth I'll have a psych council meeting here at seven o'clock and then on the eighth we have our ovt visit and then the Kansas Learning Center for Health will come out and present three programs for our kids and that's all funded through the Dane Hansen Foundation Pre-K kindergarten and first will be Dental second and third respiratory system and the fourth nutrition and then we're already February 9th teacher conferences already and then the 10th will have an end service any questions right now I have five parents trying to recruit more thank you a Reconciliation Report in bank statement all matched Before Christmas our leadership class sponsored The Giving Tree our students provided a toy and a game or a game and a gift of clothing for 29 elementary students here in Hollywood so a total of 58 gifts we've had our winter royalty last Friday it went great uh the 16th is an in-service work day for our teachers we'll meet with our building leadership uh Team first with our district leadership team meeting second and we'll be working on Kisa accreditation and planning for our next cycle our accreditation visit is February the 8th our boys and girls will be playing in the Saint John midwinter classic next week on the 25th of January we're planning to take our eighth graders to Larned for reality uh what that is is a personal finance day they teach them they give them a a budget what they want to do when they grow up and how much money they'll make and if they're married and how many kids are going to have and so they have to have a budget they go around and pay rent and but get a vehicle and buy groceries and pay bills and all that stuff and they have to come out on the plus that's that's the hope and there'll also be six breakout sessions for them to attend that's in Larned our Junior High basketball will have the tournament on January 28th 30th and February 2nd and that'll be the end of their season already that will be in Lacrosse High School CPL Scholars Bowl on January 30th in this city and in our Hall of Fame inductions will be held on February 10th at halftime of the Varsity Boys game I believe that is Gary Bittner and Denise uh Gary Bitner and Denise kinky are the Hall of Fame recipients this year I believe that's correct and then we're gonna we're also gonna do Betty Dorman she didn't wasn't able to attend last year so we're going to do her this year any questions thank you okay I'm going to talk a little bit about January 16th our in-service so we will complete our final work with our OBT which is outside visitation team uh they will be doing our fifth year for accreditation after their report it goes to the army of the state accreditation Review Committee they make a recommendation to the State Board of Education accreditation partial accreditation no accreditation okay I will tell you that there's been about 30 40 percent of the districts receiving conditional accreditation this year so that process is coming up on the 16th we will conduct our building leadership team meetings and then our district leadership team meetings we've had several meetings to input the data and information in so that we and start the report and they'll be on site on February the 8th the district office and the district leadership team will present we're going to finalize that schedule on the 16th also I would like to review a couple items that I included in here the singular security report and I have to commend our tech people we'll reduce our vulnerable Wireless sites and emails to zero to December the January which is a big deal because cyber security is getting to be a very large problem with people fishing emails and they can click on it they able to come in and access it either Ransom your information or change your information so very pleased about that uh again thank people have done a great job to prepare us in that site by Central Plains childhood network was established when we asked for tax credits to fund day cares in our district we received 175 000 worth of tax credits uh the tax credits are 70 percent for adult any donation even 70 tax credit now it is for the fiscal year 2023.
thank you old trober and all that um I think it's really important to understand that and we also have to still maintain you know that we have to pay taxes on and maintain buildings so um can we have like an overview of that so I don't think we pay taxes yeah we don't pay taxes generally an asset for uh for a governmental unit is pretty much a liability because you have to maintain it well but I mean on on the buildings that we are we don't own we don't I mean the leases that we have the I mean it all has it it all extrapolates out to whatever we want to call it whatever uh wherever we want to put it on our our spreadsheet but it all has a financial impact on our bottom line Jen one of the uh plans that Dr petsky had referred to earlier you know in regards to it will address a lot of what you're what you're what you're talking about you know um because you know I totally agree with you to have the all the administration Under One Roof uh is is great in many respects in many respects and at one time uh a few years ago I had accomplished that and it brought him out all Under One Roof and then we have a three-phase plan that we started a couple a few years ago that we just weren't able to continue with so that's part of the plan that we're working on now because it brings them all back it brings the whole Administration back Under One Roof IT addresses a growth for the pathways program IT addresses growth for the Early Childhood Program at Brokaw and as well as the uh some other areas of the school district and consolidate some of those areas like we have that property on 71.
yeah thank you so then the next item I have for you is the appointment of Dr Roy good as our school physician Dr good has served in that role for a number of years usually just accumulates accumulates a few hours at a time but we do need to consult with them in a few items from time to time so I asked for the appointment of Dr good as our school physician do I have a motion to approve the appointment of Dr good as our school physician so move thank you Mr Bryant do I have a second thank you Mr major I'd just like to point out that I'm not going to vote on this one Dr good and I both work for the same Corporation thank you for abstaining Mr Stenner all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed okay Mission approved thank you Miss Woodland and lastly for me it's just a recommendation that we appoint Mr Mike McIver who is currently our school attorney to continue in that role for 2023.
okay and the building is our the last debt payment was made in 22 is just the way the funding and The Debt Service worked out that's correct so okay thank you okay so continue okay so now we'll talk about some of the some of the uh smaller dollar items and requests compared to that one um so flooring replacement at several schools we've been working on this for a number of years made great Headway at replacing old acbm asbestos containing material floors um we need to continue this project we need to attempt to wrap it up this will not wrap it up but it will make a lot of progress um so we've requested three hundred thousand dollars to um continue that project that would be at multiple buildings we are most of the way done with Demello and Potter Quinn has a long way to go and Quinn would be our initial Target with most of this funding so that's one request Roofing repairs so we had some discussion regarding the mass School building authority and their po their sort of postponement of their accelerated repair plan um they so where at least a year out from them reconsidering or reopening their accelerated repair plan in the meantime which then means you apply you go through a process you design you construct so you're a couple of years out once you get approved so the reality is that this this roof here has to survive for a significant amount of years ahead and to do that we've requested 225 thousand dollars to sort of keep doing repairs um we have definitely some needs we have some buckets have some problems here for sure technology infrastructure security and improvements so this article would replace 102 switches fiber Network components 425 Wi-Fi access points the the current backbone that we have of our infrastructure was mostly in place from 2013 to 15.
in 2022 we had donations of 149 thousand dollars and we used up a hundred four thousand three hundred dollars in tax credits we have 70 700 past credits remaining for the 2023 here we put some we had some donors we've seen a picture of the paper we said thank you to everyone that's donated appreciate all those people we'll continue to look for sources of income uh representative way Master called me and talked to me a little bit Friday yeah Friday and talk about the improved money thank you and I think that our projects are probably close enough that we might qualify we want to keep expanding that to all of our sites so that we have daycare in all of our sites so that we can give parents and opportunities to meet students or kids in our districts like a lot of history for daycare okay hopefully it'll stay in our district for school uh this is kind of appropriate January is important appreciation month it's pretty tough on you guys conversations appreciate you I want to thank the board for their dedication to students as we go through this year coming up okay thank you very much for everything you do that's all I have the flower the flowers are for you the one sitting in front of you from the PTM from the PTO okay thank you very much [Music] thank you PTO we appreciate that and it's very nice for you to think of us and recognize what appreciation month you thank you administrators um are there any board member reports okay items for the next month some items that will be on next month's agenda ksab policy updates Administration contracts investor three you know so this is I just might make a comment since we changed the resolution for locations what you have there's now obsolete so we're going to have the meeting in Claflin at the district office depending on if there's a crowd then we'll move it to the high school for the February so we'll have to find out about that we have to get that appears back before it has the ability to change place and time of any meeting dissipated so at this time I would entertain a movie theater where we can measure second grade um foreign
okay what do you do with that if you're selling what's that property worth what can we do with that where can we reinvest that into the school district the Mason Square you know that you mentioned there what's that property worth if we took the you know the people that are housed there and got them all Under One Roof it's another building facility that we don't have to maintain and then we can reallocate those resources to the plan as well so we're getting close to bringing that back and uh it's a good plan and we look forward to having more conversation on it and I feel like my we got into this was because we were Outsourcing money and spending double to Outsource what we could be paying our people so that was another reason we got into this and it's the same thing it's like I talked to you one day about why we don't have a turf field and all these other places and Yorkville just announced it we spend so much money to have our fields we can't use them but if we were to say we want to put Turf in you know there would be an uproar and I understand it but we have to start having an in putting a narrative around how expensive we are functioning by not looking to the Future and so we need to see these things they need to be in plain sight even if it's just putting it in board docs every week and somebody asks a question about it it's what I always say are the efficiencies that end up costing us money way more yeah yeah um there's one thing too just on a side note I would love sometime to see see on the very end of this list at the very very very bottom it says Village of Oswego water I would I would love to see sometime the projections on that and how that's going to affect us in the future when it comes to our budget because I got a bad bad feeling about where that's going I was gonna say I think Dr pesky you've started that conversation already haven't you yeah yeah so so Friday update I just got the information the day for you about the cost so I'm like didn't Jared read the update yeah for Lake Michigan water yeah yeah bad feeling on where the price of that's going yeah so all right so we said we were going to help each other with the deliverables for the administration so you got them all somebody they're on the way somebody's got yeah okay this is this is great it's great for the community it's great to um information out there all right the next item is 8.4 it's an informational item regarding a bus lease agreements for activity buses at the high school so this uh this goes back to a conversation that we had at the beginning of the year with the transportation challenges that we've had we've had After School athletics um be a real challenge we've had to since uh uh rent out the coach buses to take teams and whatnot because we didn't have the the ability uh with just two activity buses at each High School to get a full team where they needed to go and so then the conversation turned into well can we get more activity buses and we have been nosed to the grindstone trying to dig up activity buses and uh the bus company shared with me in a normal year the uh car manufacturer Chevy and Ford usually give about 3 000 chassis for their Vans to be able to convert to activity buses but with the procurement issues and things due to covid they reduced that number from three thousand dollars or three thousand units per year like 150 units it was way low so activity buses have been hard to find um we uh back in in the fall we asked uh two of our bus companies local bus companies to get us on a waiting list for when the next buses would become available and we're happy to say that those activity buses will be available beginning of next year so we can we can take possession of these this is just an information item um but things have changed a little bit since this went to the board um what happened is uh our other second company came to us with the same buses and uh very similar buses and uh uh they are less so we went back to this company to say that you know did you sharpen your pencil and are we getting the best deal so we got a little bidding war going and so today for information we're telling the board we have the opportunity to get four buses four activity buses um but we are going to when we bring it to action it could either be this company that you see tonight or it could be a second company who has the same buses but less money or this company for less money so that's a good thing uh the way Mike has orchestrated this we have four buses two at each High School currently on a lease this would be four additional buses so each High School would have four buses but if we do get our transportation staff up to par and we're able to go back to Athletics through large buses and through uh more drivers then we'll have two leases and one of them we can just let it run out not renew and go back to the four buses two at each high school so this gives us some options um and I I was happy with the way that Mike orchestrated this one rather than waiting and adding this onto our existing lease so any questions on that two questions so if that's the case so that as that does that double the number of drivers needed in order to do that each bus uh each bus can take up to 14 uh students so uh some of the sports they can just take one bus or two buses uh some of the larger Sports they would need to take all four and I know the high schools have talked to us about using off-season coaches to be the drivers for the on-season coaches so they've got some ideas about getting them and I've asked Mike to share with me the number of miles that the activity buses are driving to make sure that the the buses we do have out there in field are getting used and they are they are got it when are they getting fixed because one of your buses over at OHS is having a yeah and those buses are due next year to be for new buses in place of these older buses and the other is what is what are the implications of us not doing this not doing this um it we would be uh we would be utilizing the coach buses the kind of the luxury buses which are costing us about twenty four hundred dollars round trip as opposed to a regular school bus which costs us about six hundred dollars round trip and these activity buses would uh they're about twenty thousand dollars per year for five years so it's uh it's it's not a bad deal and right now on this it you'll see the proposals here are twenty thousand dollars per year per bus and uh the new proposals that we're looking at are about fifteen to sixteen thousand dollars so we save about four or five thousand dollars per year per bus wow okay and have we attempted to go after any grants regarding uh green buses yeah we have taken a look at that and that's going to stay on our radar we're watching some surrounding districts Especially since one of the companies that does the battery powered buses just built the shop down in is it like Peoria or something or um fairly close so they're looking to get into surrounding districts the problem is um tooling for those new buses there's an expense to that and then the cost benefit right now it cost us more money even with the rebates to change to the electric or the propane fueled buses but we'll keep an eye on those costs and when we reach a break-even point we will look at growing our inventory to more of a green um we did have one District that used them uh south of us Joliet uh come wintertime none of their none of their electric buses would start it was too cold for the batteries to kick them over so we had problems with gelling diesel but we just added some additives to our gas got them fired up and they were sitting there with dead buses so can I as part of that conversation when we had it originally we talked about returning some of our currently leased buses that are just sitting in the fleet where we went with that yeah that'll come up on the next agenda item with the buses uh but real quick I did ask Mike about that one and we're using GPS to track all of our buses and we're at the kind of industry Norm of we have about eight to ten percent of our buses that are are not used um uh and uh but that's those buses are then used when we have a bus breakdown we have that eight to ten percent inventory to put out there and to use in place of the buses that are breaking down if we have a bus that gets stuck we need to send another bus to go uh relief so we're we are utilizing all the buses that we we have so and and we expect to after this contract negotiation we expect to get back up to our staffing levels so we can uncondense the routes spread them out a little bit more and then have those extra buses um have those buses the eight to ten percent um be uh be used for drivers on those new routes can I ask my best questions that I never got to because I didn't know we were combining the board comments with I thought you were just asking about this I didn't know that was our board comment also yeah okay um because I I did come in here tonight very much concerned about bus routes so I'm sorry it doesn't necessarily have to do with your but I'm not leaving here without talking about the bus routes today um uh how do we know the changes we're making are actually working what's our feedback on all those the changes that we've made um I know did we did we do a trial run uh yes yes yes and yes so we'll be following up with the uh you know with with the drivers we're monitoring the radios uh we'll be following up with the principles to gain feedback from them in regards to the looking at the number of parent phone calls and uh it's things such as that and monitoring the buses uh drop off and pickups in the morning and I'm sure there'll be some tweaks that will need to be made to the plan that went forward today but um from all indications it was better and hopefully over the next few days as those drivers become more familiar with those routes and kids as well as the steps it'll become better again they you know we're trying to fix an issue without like I said earlier having that key variable is the right number of drivers to do what we're trying to do the the one concern and listen I again I I do want to reiterate what you said I'm very appreciative I don't want to sound not appreciate things but concerns yeah I'll go with concerns that's a good word concerns yeah concerns that I fielded or again Junior High and I I just it it gets at me right that like that seems to be where um I don't know how we end up doing this to our junior high students and and they're a very diverse group um and I'm talking about size right um so if you're you can you can fit three junior high students on a seat and get away with it fabulously in one row and then the next row good luck to you right and um and so I I fielded a lot of concerns today about Junior High um and so I I don't know if you could attest to that if that was you know Jared any of those concerns you know if you could uh funnel those to doctor and so he can work with uh Mr direman in regards to that because and that's what we need to hear we need need to hear the concerns from the concerns and the issues from the new implementation from you know I mean it started today so we can again continue to tweak it to make it as good as we can with what we're dealing with and the supervision piece right so I want to make sure that we're not just dropping off and they're not supervised I don't want that either no nobody wants that okay thank you all right item uh 8.5 is information in regards to uh bus lease agreements regular size buses yeah so these are 29 regular size but or actually not regular size these are these are seven pass a smaller specs uh here at this time we had the 71 passenger buses that we renewed with the board and this is now uh 29 uh smaller buses that we use for special education uh that we are renewing the leases for so these buses go back the end of The Five-Year lease is up and we get new buses to replace those because the entire fleet is on a rotation correct the entire fleet is on a rotation yep any questions regarding this I think some of the questions and dialogue we just had answered some of this most of them the only question I have is uh will we have drivers for these I don't wanna I don't want to spend money if we don't have drivers for the buses yeah we do we currently these would be taking the place of buses that drivers are currently driving the buses those old buses go back and they get their new buses so do we have across the entire fleet is it just five buses that have lifts say that again yeah it says on the on here it says the five buses or the two sections at the bottom those are the the ones that have a lift in our total Fleet do we only have five buses yeah that's the the three uh 24 plus three means you could do 24 students um or you could add three uh three more to the number that bus can carry but we take out the seats and they they take the wheelchairs so those those last five buses have wheelchair lifts I I don't think I don't think that answered the question that you asked um I think I think to answer your question uh Eugene is that out of the out of the buses that are on the rotation for weaving these are the number of buses that have you know so out of the other four rotations there are all multiple buses that have who have sounded as well because I was I'm like we only have five buses yeah sense but do we have to do all of them right now uh yeah because they're on a they're on a lease uh after a five-year term so we we leased them for those five years uh we could have gotten a little bit cheaper price for going more than five years the problem is then we're also responsible for the maintenance on that so we give the buses up before we need to start paying for the maintenance and upgrades on those buses and uh we we trade them in so these buses will be on the market for other districts to lease or buy and we'll have buses that we won't have to worry about breaking down the question Mike it's again you know is it half a dozen of one sixth of another I guess is this smart is is this a smart way to do it I mean we might not take out the maintenance but then one of those buses don't have maintenance and then we just keep being on a Perpetual Leasing Yeah in our experience this is the most efficient way to do our bus fleet so yeah so how many on on how many buses in a fleet is it about 30 average about 30 in a fleet no when he when he uses the word Fleet he means all the buses that we all together correct so so 29 in this rotation 27 last year so yeah 27 29 and then I'll have to find out for Mike with the next three that's okay I just wanted to kind of figure out okay yeah thanks very good okay item 8.6 is the uh 2324 school calendar which is an annual information item around this time uh the calendar committee which is a standing committee outlined in the oea collective bargaining agreement met on a couple different occasions to finalize what's being presented to you today is information uh the calendar that's being presented is very similar to this year's calendar uh the first day of students is Wednesday August 16th and the last day is Friday May 24th which is prior to Memorial Day and uh one change that was made was to move up parent-teacher conferences from the second week in November to the fourth week in October so that formal communication with parents could happen earlier this item is for information this evening and if you have any questions we'd be happy to happy to answer them I have to um have we considered or talked about um the week of Thanksgiving we did not going to school there's just not a ton of impactful instruction that I've experienced lots of yeah there is at the high schools yeah yeah that has been that has been a topic of conversation uh but the uh for the two you know it it's a it's a different it's another break in the year but the teachers uh felt exactly like what Ellie just said that we do yeah very or no okay and then while it's not relating to the calendar dates has a committee been formed to discuss start times uh so uh yes but there uh we do not have membership from the oea they're working on that right now but we do have a date uh in January that we're working on that I think by tomorrow I will have a finalized list of names thank you and you'll let us know where where yes where this what the status of that is because it has been one of the things that I've heard the most about from our community this year especially Middle School is there is our county-wide Institute the same as Kane County -wide yes this year okay that is uh that's our last informational item we can move on to uh 9.1 bills for payment okay bills for payment can I have a motion please I make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of three million 943 498.70 sense as presented second Mr Cerrone yes Mr Gatewood aye Miss Johnson aye Mr pluger aye Ms Swanson aye Mrs Doyle I Miss Hamilton aye motion classes 7-0 action item 9.2 approval of updated intergovernmental agreement on resource officers can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the updated intergovernmental agreement on high school student resource officers as presented second but I have a couple things on this before we vote yeah me too uh number one uh who wrote the agreement do we know who's who wrote the agreement yeah thank you uh and the second piece is I I wanted to thank you for getting back to me um as far as what sros um what sros SRO pay looks like as far as uh costs from districts around us what we're paying as far as price pretty comparable to other districts however percentage-wise there are districts that are not necessarily paying 100 percent and of course there are some outliers too uh and then there's some I know that are difficult to find right and you know I know like for instance here Joliet is saying maybe they're not paying but there's but they're paying something we just don't know what because they're some kind of special assignment rate and and then there's Yorkville who apparently they're they're not paying um so thank you Yorkville for that example um and then Naperville is only Naperville 203 is only paying it looks like 50 percent however fifty percent of that salary it's pretty comparable to what we're paying so uh you have to figure that piece as well it is also interesting that some of these only pay the salary only some of them pay a little bit more so there are some West Aurora looks like that's 50 but then there's some pieces about um nine-month benefits and some pieces about clothing and and so forth there's a lot of stipulations on the West Aurora one so um it's not necessarily uh and also the it's interesting the Joliet police department in the Plainfield one is on special assignment so that's interesting so it's not necessarily um hey you just you just pay whatever but I appreciate your due diligence on this and I just wanted to pass that along so thank you very much for the investigative uh work on that um Jared thanks for saying that because Dr Kincaid and Mr Bell spent quite a quite amount of a large amount of time to find that information out it was an easily accessible right and you know and one of the pieces I I want to say that you know first of all I want to first of all thank um thank our law enforcement and in all of our communities um I mean they provide a service that is um immeasurable um but one of the reasons I bring this up right is because um one of one of the places that um you know when we talk about holding a levy in property taxes one of those the places that they go um is to is to benefit um is to benefit their their pension and so forth when you're talking about um level and so I'm happy to help them I'm happy to to be a part of helping people that we honor and that we want to uh that serve our community and so forth um the only thing I ask in return though is an honest conversation as as as a whole um and that's why I wanted to bring this up um and part of that conversation also by the way is um there are there are officers in other communities that are that are getting paid more um as well so keep that in mind as well so thank you I appreciate your your hard work here I can't stress that enough I have one comment um I appreciated exhibit a and how it went into the goals and objective of the SRO program uh and the and the national standards and practices uh from the National Association of school resource officers I just wanted to I know when we had this discussion uh prior to now voting we had quite a bit of discussion in regards to the role of the SR sros and when and how they are engaged by staff and I think you know based on all of the goals and objectives that are listed here in regards to you know making sure there's positive engagement healthy attitudes for students toward the staff have lost toward law enforcement et cetera et cetera I think that's very important however we did talk about the standards of when we should engage them versus uh just having School staff engage the students and so I just and as well as the training the cross functional training from the sros based on the standards that we have within the district and so I think that you know sros are could be great inside of the schools but I just want to make sure that they're great when used properly and so I just wanted to stress the the exhibits a b and c that are listed and and and to understand how we're using them in our schools to promote the objectives of the sros in the district and so nothing to necessarily be said but just to make sure that we're utilizing them Harper thank you Miss Doyle Miss Swanson all right Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood aye Miss Johnson aye Mr Plover aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.3 approval of intergovernmental agreement of sharing Services can I have a motion please please I make a motion to approve the shared services of intergovernmental agreement as presented second I have a question on this one too same question who wrote the agreement on this one yeah this one was written law and it was why we gave it gave it to a lot of reviews Miss simulton aye Ms Swanson aye Mr ploger aye Ms Doyle Miss Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.1 one approval of personnel report 9.4 I make a motion to approve the Personnel report as discussed in closed session second Miss simulton aye Mr pluger aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms Doyle hi Miss Swanson aye motion passes 7-0 foreign can I have a motion 10.1 can I have a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to return to close
okay do I have a motion to approve the appointment of Mr MacGyver as our school attorney Mr Bryant do you have a second a second thank you Mr Grimes any questions I will not vote I will abstain here as well from the past relationship with Mr McIver okay thank you Mr major all those in favor say aye aye all those are posed all right thank you and last but not least Mrs Blake Dr Blake I request approval of the HR recommendations as presented this evening thank you do I have a motion to approve the HR recommendations I move that we approve the HR recommendations thank you Mr nellon do you have a second second thank you Mr major all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed you right after Blake thank you I would like to recognize in the audience this evening we do have Keith Burton he will be the new band director at Columbus North High School and also Dietrich Morrison Jones he will be the assistant band director at Columbus North High School so for both of them here this evening I at least want to recognize and congratulate both of them very nice okay um I think at this time I'm looking questionly yes at this time we'll move to any open board input for review I like to start in an order okay so Mr Bryant can I ask that you go first bam never back here our clapped wooden all together I'm done Mr Right Mr major yeah I wrote something up real quick and this is just kind of I wanted to do a real quick thank you to some people for putting me here today so and it just made kind of a a public comment about how I feel I hope I will represent the public so I first want to thank my family for their behind the scenes support throughout last year's campaign season I'd like to thank everyone who trusted me last year with their vote in November I'll do my best to include parents as much as possible in the process moving forward parents with the largest stakeholder in education to their children we need to improve the relationship between the parents and the board the administration and the teachers I will try to be as transparent as possible so the public can understand better why things are being done and decided the way they are I'll be open to discussion with public to better understand their perspectives I will work with the hope that this board will be more willing to have agreeing with parents to provide excellent education opportunities for their children and providing our staff teams with challenging and rewarding careers and I want to again thank you for the opportunity to serve talk Mr Stenner uh also like Mr major looking forward to the work in front of us the vision and Mission that we've established and welcome to the uh three new board members myself kind of knew as I've just been reelected so looking forward to the work Mr Grimes uh yeah thanks uh first of all Mr Phillips for all the good uh financial information that was provided uh complete with a little mini history lesson there and again welcome and congratulations to the three new board members and one incumbent it's good to have you on board and look forward to uh really look forward to working with you and particularly excited to start the new year and uh really pretty anxious to see how this legislative session works out for for K-12 education yeah similar to Mr major I want to thank everyone for the support and look forward to the work that we have for the next for the next school board I would ask that this board as we look at committees going into this next session that we look at one focused around educational benchmarking to where the board can look and seek not only the positive structures that we have within the system but also other systems such as Dr Roberts and I have talked about typical new County and others where we can visit and see what best practices we can bring here and also I like the board to consider going forward how do we want to see public comment I think that's a good Tea Leaf going out to the public of how we should change and so looking at how we can modify that to be better engagement with the public um I would like to thank our new president for first a smooth first meeting at least as far as I could tell it was smooth also on a personal note I want to congratulate Keith Burton my son was one of his my youngest son was one of his musicians and I saw him work not only to build good musicians but to build leaders and build character so I'm I'm looking forward to him operating his new position um on another personal note a few days ago there was a article in the news about a teacher being shot by a six-year-old in Newport News Virginia sorry many many years ago I started my first teaching career my first teaching job was at Menchville High School in Newport News about two miles from that school and I know we can we can never promise to keep all of our staff and students safe but but I want to thank our resource officers and our Deans and our Administration for for doing the best they can to keep our students safe people often ask me I'll have kids changed over the years and in many ways kids haven't changed but the world they live in has changed and the stresses they live under has changed and um finally I I don't know what fits into this I think this is kind of an open-ended thing but in last Thursday Janet where's my had an article in the Republic about a drop in graduation rates which didn't surprise any of us but I would um really value a presentation with some details on that at some point um with some breakdowns into subgroups and and also part of the article should referred to igrad and I would be interested in seeing how aggrad fits into that and just some some details on what what has happened with graduation what we're going to be doing sometime when that fits in for our work Janelle okay thank you we survived guys first board meeting of the Year lots of new members lots of formalities tonight this is not the norm so thank you to everybody who who stuck with it and helped us prepare for the evening I think I think we're going to be a great team I'm looking forward to to the Year may I add something Miss will again so so thank you again welcome new board members uh welcome back Mr Center to your position congratulations officers and look forward to working with you all closely and as I listen to the comments appreciate all of those as as we reflect on things I just remind each of you board members that Miss Wilton be sending out now a list of those committees with some short descriptions about what those committees are maybe some of the time requirements those kinds of things so look at those see your interests and get those back to miss wielton additionally we have been talking about the potential of of that public comment piece and getting stakeholder feedback and input and how how do we do that and continue to to conduct business but also have a way to get as much information back gospel so maybe some formation of a subcommittee it could be a possibility to something like that and as we look at graduation rates those kinds of things how do we how do we take a look at that I see Amy back in in the back here Mrs London is the uh co-chair of our Corporation continuous Improvement Council and and that the job of that Council that meets regularly is to really Drive our strategic plan and certainly an important outcome of our strategic plan is is graduation of our kids and so so would ask for that group to have the ability to to jump into that as well with this dialogue and appreciate Mr now on that that question or request about getting some additional information back to you so appreciate all the feedback for this evening and we'll work to continue to make improvements as we as we are able okay so with that I'll remind everyone our next board meeting is on January 23rd at 6 30 p.m right here in this in this building and with that I think if I could add one more comment to that I apologize we're trying to just make sure everybody is as clear with with the changes and so forth tonight with our meetings tonight we did it differently and that we we just did the business meetings again and and left off the locations because we're having a lot of conversation about about that so the meetings will will continue to be here until uh we we look at something different but there has been you know requests at least some some questions about having them at different places or at least certain ones in different places so as we look at Opportunity maybe topic those kinds of things see how we might move those around so just a reminder the meeting dates approved so far did not add locations they will stay here until an announcement differently so next one again administration building this room okay I'm gonna look one more time okay okay everyone have a nice evening thank you
so in the tech world that's you know it's all there um getting up there pretty old total cost of the project would be about seven hundred thousand dollars we'd receive a significant uh significant funds from e-rate that would help us complete this project so we've asked for 395 000.