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at the latest on Thursday and doing so has pushed a whole lot of approvals and work up in the up in the time frame um just to get them ready for that Thursday morning and so um the answer to your question is yes but um it will cause a lot of things to not be approved on the normal cite that they are that they that they would be otherwise maybe better with the four weeks between board meetings that we're going to have you know that we started with this year the delay from January's board meeting got pushed back a week so we had one fewer week in there but when we start getting four weeks um you know it it could be possible but it it was a lot of work and thank Mrs Chrisman for and everyone else who gets the all of the content that comes to you um to to us in time to have it reviewed and to you by Thursday morning I have a motion and a second any more I have additional questions my bad uh line item uh where is it I is that the standard Cadence now for buses I noticed we got three general education buses to looks like four specialty buses is that what the G is that should that be the I think we pulled that one out though it's okay we're on my bad I'm sorry okay well I'll I'll hold the question okay you're good okay uh Mr mcken is here also He's our transportation director so he he can answer additional questions that that you may have um the answer is no for the most part to your question so um it does follow our bus replacement plan yes um you may recall we have a goal of having no buses older than 12 years old so that follows with that U what Mr mcken and his team have done have entered produced um as scheduled they you know this has been a plan for for a while now of replacing those activity buses that you see here on your um which is not our typical Gaines but was planned um he can give you more detail but those activity buses um typically there're 14 passenger white buses which you'll approve tonight are actually uh two different types of activity buses um but they they run for girls golf they run for students that are under kimy vento that we're transporting between counties um he has a team that that runs students to Indianapolis every day for um specialy schools um and they are um they're a need of replacement so um if that answers your question right we have a motion in a second for seven a through H and J and K uh all those in favor please say I I all those opposed please say nay motion carries 70 and I would make a motion that we approve item 7i approval of bus purchases second thank you Mr Nan and Mr Glick I will abstain from the vote all those in oh any further comments or questions on 7 I I already took my out turn so it worked we're got okay okay great um all those in favor of approving item 7even I please say I I all is opposed please say a motion carries 6 Z evening uh the five Human Resources recommendations this evening consist of one appointment three resignations and one leave of absence I request that you please approve the Personnel recommendations as presented I move that we approve line items A8 Alpha through Bravo this time sorry Mr Glick do have a second Mr major any questions or comments if we are going to date a and b there are no additional Human Resources recommendations for this evening all those in favor of approving Human Resources recommendations A and B as presented please say I I I all those opposed say n motion carries s z thank you okay board input and review uh Mr major we'll start with you again yeah I would like to uh just congratulate Mrs udy the East girls wrestling Southside spell Bowl team I think everybody will probably say the same thing there um the big one I wanted to talk about is I think we have a future Hall of Famer uh in in waiting here in Mrs Haynes uh Mrs Haynes was ultimately the leader of the robo Rodeo event that was held at East uh just a week or so ago and uh that that event had probably somewhere between 60 and 70 teams I can't remember the exact number um from what I had heard I'd overheard somebody say that it was the second largest uh robotics event in the state of Indiana uh they would have had probably the title for largest if they hadn't had four or five teams back out one of the other things I don't know Dr Phillips if you heard anything different but I think I even heard that it wasn't just the second largest in the state but it might have been second largest in the country so I don't I don't know where we stand with that but it was really a a a great event uh I was able to be there all day uh saw a lot of cool things happening that the kids were doing lots of different designs a lot of creativity uh throughout that I think we only had like four or five teams missed their their queue uh when you have 60 to 70 teams and they're going multiple rounds uh there were there were several hundred of events that occurred during that day so it was very well put on like to thank those at East uh from all of the administrators all the way down to the janitors that had to help uh clean up the mess at the end for putting on such a great welcoming event for not just Columbus but for those in the state that traveled here to participate so great event and I would encourage uh other others out there to volunteer for those events if you have the opportunity so thank you Mrs haes and all the volunteers Mr major I'm just going to jump bandwagon there uh two things I just got stopped um on Saturday by Mr Wolford Co coach Wolford at Central who said the at the event this Saturday the fifth team from Central qualified for state so that means every stem robotics team at Central has now qualified for the state event and then also um I want to because Nick and his team um presented tonight just add the fact that the technology U group and Mrs Haynes has told me the same they could not have done what they did without our Tech folks being a part of that throughout the district even not just with competitions but um you know throughout the course of the year so it's really become like you said the size and scope of how quickly this has grown it's become something that really takes a lot of resources and I'm I'm proud that we have those resources for our kids I'll just jump on the bandwagon too so kudos to to Mrs Hines and to uh Mrs Harden I thought it was a great event I got to volunteer upstairs and make robot circuits as part of a senior project at the mini St stem lab that day and it was really remarkable to see the number of students and then their younger siblings who were being exposed to to that those types of activities so great day great great day so and congratulations to Easton Southside this was a great meeting I Echo the comments of Mr major and Miss Lloyd in addition I'd like to point out some Honors that uh some of our students high school students uh have received in recent weeks the Indiana All State honor band has been announced and from Columbus North High School there are three members of that allate band Luke Hensley on trombone Santi Duna on tuba and Cameron shoot on percussion in addition the Indiana Jazz Educators Association has announced Its All State Jazz Ensemble with from Columbus North High School will include Grant Barker in the percussion section on drums so congratulations to those students and uh the U directors who make that possible the recognition is going um I wanted to this is near and dear to my heart the Columbus FFA novice and Senior teams which includes members from East North Central and Norths side um um place first place in parliamentary procedure um and they advaned to the state on February 8th for Robert's Rule of Order which again is near and dear to my heart this is not simple um and it's pretty amazing that these kiddos have mastered mastered this at the state level so look forward to them going forward um congratulations to um one of the things we approved for field trips tonight was a trip for the Columbus North cheerleader ERS to the National Finals in Florida so congratulations and best of luck to them um also this was in our Friday notes but um commendations and congratulations to six bcsc teachers that um qualified for 15,000 I think it's $15,000 Lily teacher creativity grants um Chad Russel and Amilia Shaw both from North High School Brett Finley from CSA Lincoln Christa Reen and arish Spurgeon from Northside Middle School and Mandy Keel from Southside Elementary and um last a story a book Buddy Story I do book buddies on Monday at Schmidt and and I always start off one of the nice things about doing Monday you can start off with a conversation was how was your weekend how was your day going well today one of my book buddies she said I am so excited because today is stem day and I get to go to this my stem class and she seed to tell me all the exciting things that they're doing in stem and um just confirmed to me that it's working our our focus on stem is getting to the kids and and she was just so excited about what they're doing uh I start this off with uh recalling item 7g which is the purple star schools um as a service member uh means a lot to me uh so for those of you who are in the room that may experience this or those who are going to watch this my phone is always available my email is always available if I don't know the answer I know somebody that might have the answer so use me as a resource to help with you finding your resources um next over the weekend was uh wrestling sectionals this weekend is wrestling regionals down in Jeffersonville north and east qualifi quite a few and we'll uh continue their efforts through the state tournament and uh girls basketball start sectionals I believe tomorrow so uh East North will be competing this week so that that's going to be good and then swimming as well so uh lot lot on the agenda athletically and uh lastly I had the pleasure of assisting in the Parkside steam event which is a stem night and probably had easily 75 kids show up and had four or five different stations all with little trinket uh uh experiments and stuff and everybody seemed to be pretty heavily engaged and having a lot of fun so that was pretty cool to to see that the downside about being at the end is you just start Crossing off all your things that you were going to talk about but it's okay I I want to Echo everything that we we discussed I also want to kind of give a special shout out to Mrs udy as we were looking through her file as part of the committee and not to share too much but the number of students that wrote on her behalf and the number of community members was overwhelming and um a lot of it also is she was also one of the key leads for the longest time I believe at Central for the DC trip which is memorable for many um going through so I just want to re-echo that congratulations it was not a very difficult decision to select the hardest part is just picking only one um and so that was definitely a great experience um and then the other thing was so I have two daughters that are also in book buddy so I thought I'd bring that up as a lot of the book buddy mentors are getting them ready for testing and getting them prepared one of mine's third grade and one second grade so both at that critical year um and so I just want to shout out and say thank you to all them I believe I saw Indiana jump to number six nationally for uh reading by the way so big shoes to fill this year we we were a big part of that I'm gonna say that Dr hack's not here but giving her credit for that and I'll just add uh thanks to Nancy Milpa and her team for the food for the reception this evening um if you uh before you leave go out through the kitchen and grab something on your way out if there's any leftovers left and then also welcome to Asher who's been helping with sound back here the last couple of meetings um and thanks to Nick and his team I don't know if you noticed but the big speakers aren't in the room anymore and so this is it's been a year and a half they've been trably talking about what might be best for this room so um new mounted cameras so when you watch this it's probably going to look a little differently and hopefully sound a little differently and then um just on a personal level you know she's gone already but uh could not be prouder to call Carla yudy a colleague and a friend she like um like Mr Manuel when I was a brand new administrator as an assistant principal at Central Middle School she treated me with kindness and Grace which I needed a lot of at the time so congratulations Carla and her family hey uh next meetings we have an executive session um this Saturday at 8:00 a.m.

for OverWatch D we're both on the varsity team so you'll be seeing both of us tomorrow both us against hobbert Harbert I don't know hbert I think it's I think it's HT hbert sounds like a Harry Potter character Harold Potter Harold I can't R in the pot a [Music] n [Music] is [Music] n [Music] oh [Music]

Wednesday February 5th the select board be held at 700 p.m. Tuesday February 11th zoning board of appeals at 7 p.m. and Thursday February 13th the planning board at 7:15 p.m. also coming up we have some Town manager coffee hours do you want to chat about ashlin's latest happenings join Town manager Michael Herbert for coffee and conversation every third Wednesday day of the month at 10: a.m. at the Ashen Community Center for upcoming dates we have March 19th April 16th and May 21st the osrp public forums will be held on February 7th and 15th at 7 p.m. as Ashley updates its open space and Recreation plan residents are invited to share their thoughts on shaping the town's open spaces for the next seven years attend either session in person at the community center or online via Zoom RSVP by February 7th at the link provided on the town's website supporting the Ashland food pantry the Ashland food pantry plays a crucial role in supporting residents facing food insecurity but they need your help donations of frequently requested items can make a big difference for families in need if you or someone you know is experiencing food insecurity don't hesitate to reach out the ashin food pantry is here to help so call 508532754 n or email human services at Ashlin mass.com for assistance every contribution counts so let's come together to support our community lastly some happenings at the ashin public library there's always something exciting happening at the Ashen Public Library so here are just some of the events coming up that you won't want to miss for adult events we have maang Night on Wednesday February 5th at 6 p.m.

org and if you click on the issues tab you can go and line up side by side Danberry versus other districts and they'll they really break out into a bar chart what's Federal what's State what's local you know and then they'll you know there's a whole different ways they'll chop that data but you can go in there and get lost for hours i' I've spent a lot of time in that website great site if I can find it real quick I'll send it to you Kevin but um thank you so and and just so I know too so you said that the 181 was our ask last year which obviously we did not get but then we had that supplemental that kind of came in um but had we got that 181 last year it would have been a 7.2% increase which would be sort of in line with other districts that's a and and surrounding towns are any anywhere between like three six eight they one next doors around close to 11 A lot of people are because of the the healthare the rise in healthare costs and then special education costs that are going up but yeah we would totally be in the ballpark of a normal pretty typical ask I think we're just in a place where we need it's like that onetime catchup to get back on track as we lost ground for about 10 years so well yeah I guess I guess yeah you said 36 so like we're the high end of that but to me like I guess my question was we're opening a new building so like it should be on the high definitely definitely okay because to me that actually that's why I sound L I'm like wait if we're opening a new building how could we possibly be like sort of what if we're on the high end of in line than that but but even even still though even with the building we would have only had a seven seven point right right like it would have been phenomenal ask right considering we're opening a new building so it's really just kind of puts it into perspective that it's high but it's really not compared to what our needs are and what you know it could be okay hi I have a question a friend asked me she's um watching but not able to ask um so the question is have there been any preliminary discussions with the city regarding the budget yeah so we so Mike and I went over um last week and we had our first discussions yes any feedback from the discussion well you know it's a it's a big ask it's a big ask and certainly folks were prepared I think we're preparing for you know the academy but you know when when you put a comprehensive budget together I think I think the big the big driers obviously the academy but you know we have 17 other schools and um you know 9,000 other kids um outside of our 12,000 that that needs support and uh cumulatively building by building department by by Department the things add up pretty quickly um even though there some of some places it's just incremental but but um what we're experiencing is really no different than what other districts are experiencing but because of our scale and sort of where we started um it just puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage in terms of you know the ask yeah yeah I really appreciate all that you've been doing that fight for all the extracurricular and your focus on um raising be more competitive salaries because I'm sure you know it's really frustrating to lose teacher after teacher the great when they become great then so I appreciate that that your focus is there yeah I appreciate that the amount of effort and work that goes into hiring recruiting hiring onboarding training um mentoring supporting with very the very few people that we have only to lose them a year later yeah is devastating it's frustrating as a family when you when you get great teachers then you lose them it's frustrating yes that's all but thank you thank you and I think I dropped the right link in the chat there for uh this the Connecticut school Finance projecta does workshops all over the state free workshops like just hop into a zoom and you will learn a tremendous amount about how Connecticut Works she's great and she actually she'd even meet oneon-one with anybody she'll talk to anybody she's very very good yes yep any other questions okay well certainly this won't be our first run with uh talking to parents and doing some Community conversations around around the budget and um you know certainly um touch base again as the budget story develops over the course of the next couple of months so actually I I just thought of one another quick one um so with the survey that went out so being that like you know improving arts and and sports and whatnot how did you factor that in for the budget I'm assuming that you did the survey to factor it in but we well so in our regular budget that's a preservation of those items right so like what we have now we're not losing um and also to you know on the grant side of things last year we did put a little bit of infusion into some of the different categories so for for instance you know Tim will tell you we we um try to support the music programs a little bit more um we've got a little little tiny not a lot of money you know $55,000 in for you know Theater Arts programs and things like that so they can get some of the things that they need um but you know we had heard from if you remember the city we were at City Hall we had kids coming in talking about anything from you know broken tubas and not having the equipment needed to be competitive at these at these you know large large stage events and it's pretty heartbreaking when you got kids that put in the amount of time and effort after school every single day hours and hours and hours a week uh to not have the basic equipment they need to be competitive with with schools that um quite frankly that danber could be you know beating everywhere that they go with with our size our number and the commitment that we have on the on in some of our programs so um they just needed a little extra boost and so we gave them a little bit and we're going to keep an eye on them um because you know in when we have tight budgets these are the kinds of things the first things that go um so you know it doesn't take too much to really support these programs um it just takes really paying attention and dedicating funds and when we look for Grants um finding some little niches to to to Sock some money away so that they can keep up with things like uniforms and and um instruments and repair excuse me a little bit of Transportation things like that we've been supporting our robotics program the last couple of years we did that with the robotics program they're they are they're killing it they're going all over the all over the place with their program it's blown up so you we make sure that the kids have the parts that they need the the tools that they need to work on the robots and that the teacher has the right materials uh and access in terms of getting kids to tournaments so it's just as important as as sports right we take care of our Athletics absolutely that's what I was going to just say I I you know I love this and it's not just damber it's not dber thing like the sport you know the Arts tends to get get you know out everywhere and and you know it's like CU even I've got nieces and nephews in New Jersey and same thing there they have to do their own fundraising they have to do you know all it's like why yeah I mean we're trying to help it's important to our kids it's important to our staff it's important to parents so we're doing our best and we'll continue to do that as long as we can I I just wanted to add on to that I think it's really super important that our kids don't come to school to be compliant but they come to school to be excited and that's how we get them excited the Arts the sports everything extra that's what makes them excited to show up field trips I yeah the field trips I mean we got it like I know personally from me being a kid that's what made me excited to show up so totally agree agreed Dr Casmir are you able to send us the or or have P send us the copy of the packet so far normally we would I'll send that right over okay thank you you're you're welcome anybody have any other questions I'll stop [Laughter] asking Cher Cooper did you have something uh thank you Tim I just enjoyed the present ation again and I thank the superintendent and uh our finance director uh doing an excellent job working together and getting the information out to par so they will understand the budget and hopefully we'll support our budget so again I I I I just enjoy the presentation thank you thank you and again I can't overemphasize enough how much work went into developing the budget you know that it's it wasn't just the the ask here it's the behind the scenes preparation um having come off of multiple Finance directors um having come off a massive funding Cliff which um you know if you're in the finance world and you have to suddenly find a way to move and shift you know $20 million worth of stuff it really blows up all of your lines and and your back end and it can create wreak havoc and so uh Mike has been doing a a fantastic job of um doing some post Esser cleanup um and also making things uh you know bucketing and categorizing things so that it makes my job easier in terms of being able to um go into our budget with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer um which I think is a huge difference I yeah well I agree I thought it was very comprehensive very yeah very well put together actually I was just happen to think too like even for next year like that one slide probably you could even you know trickle that down to like a classroom what's a typical you know danur classroom versus a normal classroom look like you know in terms of what they are provided um you know sports team you know to a sports team band you evand we lost Athletics at the middle school many years ago I was the I was the basketball coach assistant basketball coach over there when we had Sports at the middle school yes so um those got lost in budget cuts quite a while back and uh we just put implemented through a grant um some intramural programming to get to start to build that back in that culture of staying after and competing and uh having another adult check in on you and hold you accountable and make sure you're going to class and all of that so we're hoping to at some point bring bring Middle School athletics back motivate kids to want to be successful so so that they can participate in these things yeah cool all right Welles anybody have anything else or anything outside of the budget that they would like to bring up well there was hold on I'll be the guy that ask for homework at the end don't cause trouble sorry um I'm stuck on the the process piece of this so um yeah so the budget has been adopted by your proposed budget's been adopted by the Board of Education next step is it goes to the city council um after this we'll have opportunities for public hearing But ultimately each city council member has the opportunity to vote on the mayor's proposed budget which would be inclusive of this and the city's budget so um okay I just wanted to make sure I understood before I emailed my city council yes yeah so our budget went over the board's budget already has been sent over to the mayor uh for his review and he reviews that in line with all of his other departments and then they they do their work from there and I um I I believe um you know what we can send out is the actual timeline right now we've been given Target weeks um that's going to happen I we I I'll go back and see if they actually gave us the actual date uh that they're presenting wholesale but uh we'll get we'll try to get that out okay yeah what I'm what I'm really inquiring about is where the leverage points are um you know what is the typical um what's the probability that the mayor's proposed budget will be a red penned version of the one that you were proposed versus does it go to the city council as is and get voted on um and in that respect so that would determine whether the leverage point is with the mayor or with this with the individual councilmen we so we receive Kevin we receive an allocation and then from that point um we we go back with the red line and have to figure out where we would have to go to you know stay within the allocation so we'd go back to the drawing board and revise the the budget our budget our ask for the for the following year so um yeah we we will receive an allocation I understand thank you thank you of course and typically Kevin the the part of where the public can speak is usually over spring break I will say this they they they chose the week I think before that I'll go back and get the date uh to their credit that was a a complaint that I had for 10 15 years that the uh the vote was always on April break and that was just never sat well uh with me um and they listened last year and I I believe there's a genuine um you know will to make sure that the process is is done the way it's supposed to be yeah yeah no I I all the players right now that we're you know are there's a lot of Goodwill there and and well- intended uh people that are trying to do the best so um we just need you know we need a little time to catch up to where we should be and and hopefully we'll get a really good uh result this year to make a big step in that direction that was a very hard ask when you would go to council chambers over the break and see 30 people there when you know it could have been 500 right right because of break yeah yeah agreed yeah all right anybody anything else Kevin you're done uh for now yeah thank you thank you so much thanks Kevin all right well we're good all right all right well thank you everybody for coming so I guess um if nobody has anything else then we'll take a motion to adjourn any motion Dr casmiro if you can just hang just one second after i' appreciate it but um all right so I guess thank you everybody for coming then um we will see you what's up what I say our next meeting was March 3r so a month from today

good afternoon welcome to the senate committee on education today is Monday February 3rd 2025 this is our 3:00 p.m. agenda and we are in hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed Live on YouTube you will find links to viewing options for all Senate meetings on the live and On Demand video page of the legislator's website this Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event will include the 3:00 p.m. agenda for this committee on education in the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this hearing due to Major difficulties the committee will convene to discuss any outstanding business on Wednesday February 5th 2025 at 300 p.m.

good evening everyone good evening good evening thank thank you all for coming and all the people watching virtually thank you for signing up um a quick run through of the agenda just uh brief introductions and then of course Dr Phil he talks he gives us amazing talk he's been with us before and um then we'll have a quick break Dr Windam goes after that and then um our current executive board members Valerie and um Vicky will be talking about uh advocacy in real life kind of um suggest suggesting of um with suggestions and how can be better Advocate and learn from the prepandemic founding members which that's why we appeal to all of you to come and meet with us and then at the end we'll have know kind of Open Session questions and answers and all that so thank you so much for coming um we um first of all I the slides were a little backwards I didn't change them in the last minute so I'm Rahul Rahul sarar the current president of the oral Advocates and I have an amazing committee to work with and this committee put together this event and we've been working on it since August the idea came up and then we tried uh like a alumni Union didn't quite work but um Todd singer vice president he is dealing with a family uh lost in the family and he couldn't attend uh Vicky maanta Vicki then we have uh Brad Brad um is our Treasurer he was here to drop off a check and um course in in keeping in um with his role Valerie dier member at large and uh amazing person uh and also aka the mother of Daniel rer for those of you who are in the band drum Master Daniel rer yeah amazing yeah um and then we have executive committee members uh at at large basically we have um bookie bookie has been with us for a couple of years and she the reason she is in Brackets is because she's on sabatical for about six months she's got a course going on uh Laval um he's not with us today and then Dr Angie Ridgeway uh yep and um predecessor amazing uh President we needed two people to fill a role remember last year we had a co-presidents uh and of course the Avon School Corporation Representatives on our board Scott Windam superintendent and Sheila Sheila Sheila Glass and uh she does an amazing job talking to our class about finance and so on and so forth so um and we have many um acsc community members I know who have signed up virtually thank you all I mean without you all we wouldn't be here without uh you know in this nice room that they generously allow us to use and um and they do an amazing job don't they with the teachers staff uh admin uh administrative officials and above all the students right they are doing an amazing they do amazing things right Al together so can we have a big round of applause for the Avon com Corporation for which we are working towards their um you know success okay uh oh before I go now so that was um the committee now who are all of you we had a total of about uh 70 people sign up um virtually we had um 21 people virtually 46 in person okay so I I kind of broke it down by class year and um those of you who were pre pandemic um you didn't you weren't uh uh familiar with the class concept because we didn't have that it was primarily advocacy and uh Dr hornman Who is also uh attending virtually was uh The orial Advocates was her idea when she was uh had just taken on the role as 20 uh in 2012 as a superintendent she was coming off a failed referendum uh it was it was terrible right so then she had this idea how do I get the community involved and that's why we are all here and um if uh I was thinking about this if you were to give a little prize for the most the class with the most attendees then probably a class of 2025 which is current class would be the winners however here's the thing I think the award we don't have one sorry but maybe next time we'll go to the prepandemic class the founding members and um it's amazing we have uh we had 12 people sign up nine in person three virtually and that's amazing considering that you have been um we had some who just recently left our executive board but I mean uh many of you haven't even seen I've heard about I've heard your names and all that so if I could have you all stand please all who are with the yeah so um Dr hornman obviously was the person who came oh please please keep keep sing sorry sorry um Carrie uh um christe sorry Christy kry you do an amazing job with the pantry and of course with Barbara doll alongside you guys do an amazing job and uh anyone of you who are familiar with the merily my pantry we were um my family my wife Amy and I will attest to the fact that we were also beneficiaries because we had a tough patch so thank you for everything you do um Sarah parent school on the school board and uh Jennifer Jennifer Mills recently just uh last year I think you had uh other like a job and other things so uh Dena Dina okay she was on here Stephanie bod and thank you uh Amy M marahas oh sorry I did I M yeah sorry I I knew I would watch that one uh Barbara doll of course Rosie blanket ship and Scott Scott CL so thank you so much without you guys all the work that you did to found form the organization we wouldn't be here secondly we all and the whiter Community owes you a deep debt of gratitude why anyone referendum the 2018 referendum I have heard stories I wasn't around but it was absolutely amazing what you guys did and you know we are so grateful to all of you that's why I wanted you all to come just to give you a round of applause everyone please thank you so much thank you very much we'll need your help because we have an upcoming referendum so we will need your help so all right um then we have just a quick statistics uh 2025 would have been the well the uh in terms of people signed up total 17 2024 uh 7 2023 4 2022 3 uh excuse my voice I just got from back from India and if you're familiar with the pollution in India it's been I've been struggling with that so plus emotions so um acsd we talked about PTO we have three um two P members here are we uh yeah okay there they are um as you will hear later on we have some plans to extend our reach to schools and that's why they have both been very generous in uh their time to come here spend time with us we that's something we'll talk about um icpe uh Kathy Kathy FAS Rose icpe president is watching us virtually and thank you we are trying to align with uh like-minded organizations so she said she would would come obviously to hear Dr Phil but uh yeah thank you all thank you all for the amazing stuff you have done thank you for coming it's two hours and that's a lot of time I know you you could have done better things for for guests who may have not been uh familiar with the oral Advocates we essentially are basically accentuating what the mission of Avon Community School Corporation is uh mission and vision kind of the same thing um we have the uh U the the what is it the horn or uh the the mic or loud speaker because that's what we are doing we're trying to convey all the good stuff that the Avan Community Schools have done and um guiding principles basically five fundamental principles community in today's day and age uh the Zeitgeist of the times the spirit of the times is disunity Us Versus Them social media divisions and all that but we really believe that education transcends all of that and we really try to uh make sure we are respectful to all opinions and correct them wherever there are misconceptions uh we communicate with the officials and um we have a lot more coming up Jennifer and Sarah you both were um very instrumental in communicating with officials along with others uh truth and trans transparency inclusive membership we do not have any exclusions as long as your principles are aligned with the school corporation and public education we are all for it um quick history 2012 the idea came up with Dr hornman oral Advocates was formed in 2015 this is the 10th year we are entering the second decade um now before the pandemic we had 56 members 61 perspective this is based on the database we have currently we have 103 additional members in the class format Dr Windam after the pandemic he said how do we reinvigorate The Advocates and started the he had another idea which was knowledge we have to disseminate knowledge to our community which is where he came up with the brilliant idea of having six in-class uh sessions and visits to the schools meeting with legisl legislators amazing stuff so we've had as you can see the first group was 14 members Drew to uh by five in 2023 then 32 and 38 and uh it's an amazing people who hear about it are um and and join they hear some amazing stuff okay uh the why the why why do we do this why do I do this well Scott Dr Windham would uh in in the classes we would go through there was a lot of information coming uh we would he would talk about what um Public Schools the the disparity in the standards and regulations that public schools are held to versus charter schools and private schools this is not a hallucination the slide I have up there is not a AI hallucination this is from our Indiana code website and here's a language a nonpublic school now this is about esas a non-public eligible school is not an agent of the state of government uh federal government and therefore the treasur of the state state board Department Etc may not in any way regulate the educational program of a non-public school including regulation of curriculum content religious instruction activities classroom this is in our Indiana code and an accredited non-public school that is an Esa participating entity May provide for the educational needs of student without government controls ladies and gentlemen fellow taxpayers I have a problem with that my tax dollars going to an unaccountable school and entity and that is not acceptable and I'm sure it is not acceptable to all of you here and everyone watching with that I will hand it over to Angie who will introduce Dr Phil DS who you've been dying to here so I'll stop talking and Dr Phil DS thank you and welcome back uh Dr DS I think it was 1819 when you were here before and I was president of the Avon orial Advocates at that time that was a big year we had eight programs that year was it was a busy year but we are delighted to have you back it was uh such a great talk and I know even more imperative today in the um uh funding climate of Indiana schools so Dr down started his career in education in 1989 at Fort Wayne Community Schools teaching social studies and language arts he then um moved on and with a a stop in between and became the assistant and then the superintendent of schools for Southwest Allen County from 2010 to 2021 after his retirement from public education but not yet retired he is now assistant professor at the Frank school of education at try University and his um impactful scholarship and study work is around the impact of Indiana's Choice scholarship program and its impact on the funding of public schools thank you again so much for being here my pleasure I I've got a mic so thank thank you all for coming um my uh my history with Avon is always finishing right behind you in the band contest I got to put that out there for Maggie right off the G right off the uh the GGO um so to really understand how this works I I apologize but I I'm going to back up and kind of just go how go through how funding Works in Indiana Indiana has a siloed system of funding it is possible to mix some funds in that Silo but it is very very difficult and I'll kind of lay this out so that you can see directly how the voucher program figures into uh impact school funding understand that what you're going to feel is kind of like this right now um but I promise I I I will not go too much into depth I'll try to make sure that it all makes sense um or I can just push the button yeah there we go maybe I'm just too far away so okay uh think about uh think about this in the revenue is taxes we're talking taxes right so you pay property taxes here you also pay income tax sales tax you pay federal taxes as well each of those goes off and comes back with services for you and as far as we're concerned with the schools you have property tax that pays for stuff unless you have a referendum in which case it can pay for stuff or people and you have your income taxes that go off to the state your sales taxes and those come back to you as people and it's separate unless you're the superintendent you're paid out of property taxes it's about five years ago right they changed that so and then there's federal taxes that factor in this as well but it's a pretty small amount and we'll get to that in a bit but we're going to start with property taxes just so you can understand that this is your biggest bang for your buck because you pay it here based on where your house is and the services that are being provided and they stay here so these this is a list of some taxing entities that could be levying a tax on you and then in return providing you service services so with school districts it's obviously the stuff again some of you I believe live in the town of Avon you would have Avon taxing you school districts have two funds that use property taxes there's an operations fund and there's a Debt Service fund anytime you accumulate debt it's paid out a Debt Service state law says that we have to pay that first and then operations comes after that if you have a referendum and you do that is also out of your property tax taxes with an exception we'll get to in a minute that makes it interesting think my battery is low so you've heard of the property tax caps in the late a Indiana passed property tax caps where they capped the amount of tax you could pay on your Homestead at 1% of the assessed valuation all right other residential agricultural lands Tech a little higher the line but what we're going to talk about are are your homes so here are two tax bills one in Allen County and one in Avon we'll take a look at Allen County here first all of you have one of these if you own a house and if you look on it down here at the bottom you can see a list of the different agencies that are levying attacks on this property and the top the bill is $453 now if you go up to the top you'll see the assessed valuation which is it says number two right there and you can come down there's a homestead exemption deductions there's some exemptions and it gets down to the bottom and it says the property tax liability is 3,916 you come down over the big bar you can see there's a $700 charge on top of that that's the referendum if you pass a referendum you agree to pay beyond your 1% cap now that Bill is not capped so it's added onto the bill it gets there it's under the 1% so that person pays all of it notice though that what they pay the $3,913 is less than what the taxing entities are asking for and that is not uncommon that's when you hear people talk about uh uh a circuit breaker or a tax cap loss that's what they're talking about those people ask for that money in their budget but you aren't paying whatever that difference is okay now we go back let's take a look at an Avon one again same sort of structure you can see there's a Corporation total in there uh the school they're asking for $3,000 from this home there's a referendum of uh it looks like $430 on it maximum bill is 392 everybody was asking for five you guys have more cap loss than for wi Community Schools which is the other tax bill does that make sense Scott the life you're living so here's the impact of the tax caps all of those entities have to manage their losses okay and they all watch each other are you raising your tax rat are you raising your tax did yours go down I can raise mine there's all of this infighting and washing now on the taxing side of this rather than on the homeowner side the impact of all of this this is a lot to digest and I'm going to go fast don't worry it's not that important in the big picture but the new system makes it very easy to know the maximum bill you would pay you take your AV you figure 1% you know what the most you're going to pay and then if there's a referendum you can add that on if you want all right but it's difficult for Avon to know what tax rate they should be asking for because they don't know how much they're not going to get so and additionally that dgf you see that that's the department of local governing governance Finance they get to approve or not approve your tax rate and they use an old formula from 1972 called The Five-Year growth quotient thanks to Governor Otis Bowen um this taking you back um to determine what that what your rate can be it can't go up too much um and so now that's why there's now there's this compete between the entities for this loss right and what's happened as a result of it is you see an increase in the amount of General obligation bonds the issuing of debt that gets paid through Debt Service to try to offset loss in mostly operations that tends to be where this hits transportation is another part of that that can get hit um and it's also changed who fights over property o over property taxes and why in the old days when a city wanted to Annex the taxpayers would go nuts because they didn't want to pay more taxes under the new system taxpayers go I'm capped I'm probably already at the cap maybe I'm not so it's changed that and here's my example of this foreign Community Schools five years ago I think uh wanted to Annex ground just north of Fort Wayne in What's Perry Township part of Northwest Allen County Schools Carol high school they finished behind us in the ban contest so the um the city went to Annex it taxpayers were like we're already capped we don't it's not GNA who cares it was a big deal though in Perry Township because Perry Township had a volunteer fire department that was funded through taxes and these coming into the city would no longer be paying that tax to them they would be part of the city part of the city Fire Department the loss of that Revenue was going to basically put the Perry Township Fire Department out of existence and all the schools in Northwest Allen that were in Perry Township were not getting annexed so there would have been no fire coverage for the school and they couldn't have raised more money because the dgf has a growth it was it was this huge crisis and eventually everybody settled down the city did not Annex it but it gives you an example of how it used to be taxpayers would throw up but it it's changed now the new fight for taxpayers is the new bullet point here is over assessed valuation since covid there's been an increase in the value of property which means your 1% goes up and that's what you hear the complaining about in Indianapolis about property tax um relief now could be argued that if you go and look at your tax bill and compare it it's how much money is that really and is it a big deal de that's the big question and there are some people who think it is now the referendum again to go over this again it can be for stuff people or safety it's voted on by the taxpayers that will pay it you pay it even if you're at the cap and it's for a fixed project like a building with usually a 30-year kind of a mortgage payoff thing or if it's an education fund or safety with people it's an eight-year referendum which needs to be renewed eight years later which is two years from now yeah so you guys have one coming up the thing to remember about this this is the one where you get the big bang for your buck it stays here whatever it is you raise we'll stay here we'll get used here looking across the country just as a just as a point to make here Indiana is one of the lowest property taxed states in the country you may surprise you to see California on there I have firsthand notice or knowledge of this my son lives in California and owns a house here's how California is also capped at 1% that's 1% of the evaluation of your house when you buy it and then it stays there so somebody buys a house sits on it for 20 years and sells the house it's a surprise tax bill for the next for the next purchaser but uh so anyway anyway but that's that's if you take a look Illinois look at Illinois talk to anybody you know who lives in the neille area about their property tax bill and it's three four times what we pay it's crazy but their funding school funding is very much tied to that as ours used to be back in the day so where does the money for schools come from back in the day it was a hybrid this is up until about 2009 and 10 that was property tax and state taxes coming together to fund schools when they capped the property taxes they knew there would not be enough property tax to fund the schools so they raised the income tax and and the sales tax and that generated the revenue to fund the people in the state taxes so we're going to start talking about state and federal taxes now and as we get into this it's important to remember we're no longer talking about just Avon we're talking Statewide and big numbers are small and small numbers add up remember after covid when there was the big story that the state had budgeted $5 million for Afterschool tutoring right my God that sounds like a huge number surely we'll be able to fix everything Until you realize there's a million kids so it's five bucks a kid that's not going to be a lot of tutoring so always keep that in mind when you're thinking about State numbers is that there are a little over a million students we're talking about so if you go to the state budget website they have the budgets going way back and in Indiana we do two-year budgets you elect a representative to go for two years to the state house the first year they write a budget and pass a bunch of laws the second year they fix problems with the budget and the laws they pass the first year and the senators get elected to do that twice in a four-year cycle is how that works all the budgets then show up here on this web page you go to here's last year's budget bunch of lines third one fourth down as past you click on that link and it opens that as p and it opens up this page that has all the data you would ever want including spreadsheets Galore if you're into that sort of thing this is a great place to go and play around um so with that you can find out where all the money is coming from and where it all goes so this here is a py graph of the two years we're finishing up the second so the the one on the right is the Year we're in right now 24 25 and you can see three distinct colors the yellow color is broken up down here the red is broken up there and the blue broken up on the far side yellow is federal so let's take a look at this this is the money we get from the federal government red is Health and Human Services there are categories in the budget and they consistently use the same color all the way through this so as you can see blue that's education so we're looking for blue what we get from the feds is all the titles Title One title two title three those sorts of things and special ed all right that's it that's what comes through and it's about2 billion a year so it's a sizable amount of money Title One you guys know what title one is that's how with poverty title two is Staff Development there's there's things like that but it's primarily special education and title one so we come back we go to the red section this is what's called dedicated funds the state will occasionally pass laws that raise revenue for specific or dedicated purposes big yellow is the most famous recent one the gas tax for transportation remember that was a like five years ago that was a big deal deal that so when they pass that law it creates that tax that tax comes in and it must go to that purpose you'll notice blue that is Lottery and license plates and that money goes into the teacher retirement account not a lot of money coming out of this which brings us to the main event the general fund this is where uh the rubber hits the road really as far as the budget is concerned the feds and the dedicated stuff is all lined up and has to be what it has to be this is where the legislators have discretion okay and you can see that each of the categories obviously blue is the biggest one blue is the biggest one so where does the general fund come from the bright red at the bottom is sales tax thank you Amazon um the brown above it that is your individual income tax the green is corporate income tax the little purple line is gaming and then other revenues and then the last little orange thing says unforeseen revenues and that's basically leftover money from the last year so as you can see the general fund is primarily sales tax and income tax now here are the different categories um construction distributions General government and it goes all the way across to the fiscal year and the size of the general fund right there education's here the yellow is a line item inside education that I've pulled out and it's the tuition support line item that's the line that pays all the people in all the schools in the state of Indiana all right that is the biggest expense that the state has so let's look at this the rate of change from January of 2010 to October of 2024 the CPI rate or the rate of inflation was 45.

e good hello can everyone hear me okay in the back yes good okay good evening I have 6:30 we're going to go ahead and get started for those that are able if you wouldn't mind standing for the Pledge of Allegiance please really enjoyed all the little voices helping us with that tonight that was very special okay I have all board me members in attendance so I'll call the meeting to order Dr Phillips thank you Miss Welden we like to start each meeting by reminding ourselves of our mission vision and core beliefs and so I'll read those aloud to all of our guests tonight for a packed house the vision of bcse is to be the choice to learn work and play and our mission is to develop expert Learners by partnering with our community to invest in people our core beliefs are that we all can rise to the challenge of of high expectations that learning is most effective when we have Choice flexibility and see relevance that we Thrive when our social physical and psychological needs are met that our community and School District are stronger when we partner with one another that we flourish because of the diversity and variability in our community and last but certainly not least that our democracy and Democratic institutions are strengthened by civic-minded citizens you Dr Phillips we have quite a few recognitions tonight this is very exciting I believe we'll start with the 2025 education Hall of Fame War Mr Schultz yeah to kick off all the festivities and appreciate the full house uh we wanted to present the 2025 education Hall of Fame award uh for those of you that aren't aware this award's purpose is to recognize outstanding and extraordinary contributions to bcsc by a bcsc teacher staff member or administrator um just to walk through the overall process uh applications were given uh by November 1st a committee reviewed these um and we really appreciate all the applications that were provided to us um and today the award goes out um and I want to thank the committee members that are here um if any of them are uh Brett Finley uh principal over at CSA Lincoln Toby Haron the parent the parent representative uh Janice Montgomery and loose Elena Michelle and if any okay I didn't see any of them but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss them um and I I want to make and want to appreciate uh Miss Carla yudi is the recipient and welcome Blake Manuel to introduce her uh for this award [Applause] all right thank you Mr Schultz and the board before I hand it off to Mrs udy I just wanted to I'm just introduce myself my name is Blake Manuel and I'm an assistant principal at Columbus East High School but 12 years ago in 2013 I had probably my favorite title of being Mrs Udi's student teacher um and and so from that not being from Columbus and and coming to a central Middle School to um experience what teaching was like um I had a firsthand experience of just seeing uh Mrs Udi work and interact with the students and be um a pillar for a school and I got to see that firsthand and I got to see that over the next few years um as a staff member at Central as a teacher and then later as assistant principal um just continuously seeing uh Carla not just um interact with the different student teachers that she had or the different staffs but really just make an impact on all the students that she had um the running joke amongst everybody with her team and Mindy and all the students is that um calling her dinosaur and all that stuff but that's but they say that um endearingly and it's it's it's kind of a running joke too um that uh she's always the first person in the parking lot and she's always the last one to leave and after 42 years um as working at Central Middle School it's I'm just an honor to call her a friend and a mentor um and I cannot think of a better person deserving of the 2025 education Hall of Fame award and so before I hand it off um I just wanted to read some things that are going to be remembered on the plaque that she'll have in a plaque that'll be at Central Middle School and so these are some of the things that um your your peers your friends your daughters um wrote in their recommendation for you and so um first it's Beacon of influence an honest faithful and loyal exhibits empathy and compassion leadership beyond the classroom student teacher mentor ignites curiosity and critical thinking skills among her students four Decades of dedicated service to bcsc as an educator passion for World cultures US history and current events and then a quote that I'll be on here is her extraordinary commitment mentorship and educational philosophy have left an enduring mark on bcse so with that congratulations Mrs yudy [Applause] [Laughter] well thank you bcsc for giving me such an honor um I used to joke with people about you know after teaching here for so long I would hope I'd at least have a plaque on a bathroom stall or something and I never my wall streams would have thought of this um but I want to thank everyone who uh helped with the recognition process I know there's people that wrote letters and I've got to see the letters and it's very touching um as well as my children that uh that participated in that effort um I have sincerely loved being a part of this Corporation for my 40 41 years this year um I love Middle School um I think part of that is because perhaps I have a little bit of a middle school personality I think that goes a long way um sense of humor also obviously very important um but I have truly loved all the time that I've spent with like over 5,000 students hundreds of students athletes when I coached in my first 10 years which seems like a lifetime ago um and then of course all of the teachers and so many of teachers that have come tonight I can think of stories with everybody uh stories with children and then also funny stories that that we've shared um uh we do a lot of teasing at the middle school level because humor is important and that's sometimes that's what gets us through a day when it's a tough day um but my team that I'm working with now currently has been also an inspiration for me to continue to be the best that I can be as well and we have different Generations represented from someone that's my children's age up to dinosaur age um so they've been a real inspiration for me as well I was really touched that Mrs Hagen is here um Willis Hagen her husband who was deceased um hired me and I remember so many stories from Willis hang or what I used to call him Willie um I could remember the the day that I had my interview and I was so nervous I drove a a gremlin it had no air I was coming from Ball State um no air conditioning so I had to roll the window down but I had puffy hair and I'd spent a lot of time on that hair and uh so I wanted the window down I sat straight at my seat so I wouldn't have sweat on my back I got down there and hour and a half before my interview and there was some seating outside so I parked and I sat outside later to find out that Willie and Mr cell were sitting across at the Olympia watching me the whole time so I'm glad I didn't embarrass myself um but uh Willie and I shared a lot of good stories and uh I truly I truly do miss him um I don't know I I know I could tell you a lot more stories and uh I could also write a book on what you can get a middle school child to do for a Jolly Rancher that might be in the works maybe when I retire but I do want to thank everyone for coming out and and supporting me tonight um and feel a lot of love I really appreciate that thank you so much [Applause] than [Applause] pleas okay next I believe we have Southside spell Bowl champions Mr Beck Meer Miss Duo I didn't say that right I can tell Jack's G to be mad at me Z front and center all right uh Dr Phillips thank you for having us members of the school board it's a pleasure to be here um giving us the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of these Southside Mustangs um we talk about personal best and each of these individuals did their personal best and then combined that together to uh do their personal best for their team and so we appreciate all of the efforts I couldn't be more proud of Mrs Doo our spell longtime spell ball coach who's not allowed to retire and then all the many members of of the team so we appreciate them very much and I'd like to introduce them uh and have her say a few words all right um standing in front of you are 13 amazing fifth and sixth graders um they had tough shoes to fill because last year we were state champs as well um and we only had one student return um the rest moved on to Central which I think you guys celebrated a little while ago um but they they worked hard so our season started in August um we had 50 try out these 1 made the team um they they hit the road running um we had 21 tests from August to November we had 12 practices um I threw in crossword puzzles I threw in extra credit um extra credit you'll see on our shirts um one of our words was cumulo Nimbus and I have a black golden doodle named Nimbus so that's how he um became our mascot for the year um so the night of the event is actually um hosted at Southside we had 14 teams compete six were in the green class eight in the blue class which is um the class that we compete in um we won our area tournament and then out of 104 teams um in the blue class throughout the dist or throughout the state we had the best um score so very proud of them and and yes personal best is is what you would hear out of my voice or out of my mouth and and that's exactly what they did so I will let them take the mic and introduce themselves um I'm yoshika garia I'm in sixth grade and I was one of the spell members I'm Dia Rami and I'm in fifth grade I was one of the spell bow team members I'm stavia fresh and I in grade I'm Risha ragavan I am in sixth grade I'm rant Sharma and I'm in sixth grade and part of the spell bow Team I'm rashan jagi and I'm part of I'm in fifth grade and I'm part of the spell bow Team I'm subu subaya and I was part of the spell bow Team and I'm in sixth grade my name is swasti tande I'm in fifth grade and I was part of the spell bow Team my name is sonana Manata and I'm in sixth grade and I was part of the spell bow Team my name is Victoria Q andl is part of the spellow team and I'm in sixth grade my name is Bella Zang and I'm in fifth grade and I was part of the spell ball team my name is mishita pal I'm in fifth grade and I was part of the spell ball team my name is verica pru I'm in sixth grade and I was also part of the spell bow Team con [Laughter] sh very cool congratulations way to go it's amaz up here the [Laughter] okay Mr Miller all right thank you Dr Phillips and the school board for recognizing this uh amazing accomplishment by the girls wrestling team winning the state championship in the first year um I'd like to thank coach olds and his staff uh they did an amazing job obviously when you're starting a new program from scratch you're going to have um a wide range of uh skill levels and we had some girls who are wrestling in our club program um for the last few years and we had a few girls who have never wrestled before um and Coach olds and the staff did an amazing job working with each individual wrestler and helping them to get better every every week um I told Coach olds I wouldn't steal too much of his Thunder talking about um the team but kind of one quick story that really shows you what type of Team This was um a few weeks ago on a Friday when we had some uh bad weather um the girls team were wrestling in moresville for the Regional Championship uh they had a tough week the week before in sectional didn't win sectional um but really did a great job in Regional we had a lot of Champions and that really um pushed us to a a state championship that next week um and the next day that Saturday after wrestling a long hard Regional uh bad weather coming back getting home late a lot of the team came to Franklin to support our boys team in the team State duels and that truly shows you what type of team this this this is um they support each other they support others in the school and they truly embody what it means to be a Columbus CE Olympian uh I'll turn it over to coach [Laughter] OLS I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight and showing support for these state champions uh before we meet them I have some people I have to thank um coach noblet for helping with everything that happened this year wouldn't be possible without him um I need to thank my wife Emily and my son Braden uh they've sacrificed uh a lot their sacrifices allowed me to coach these young ladies um and they gave up their time and gave their unwavering support for me and the team uh next I'd like to thank the parents of these athletes uh without their commitment to the goal long hour in the gym miles driven this would never have been possible uh I also want to thank the athletic department the school and the fans they showed up to make sure uh this was a special year and I just hope we represented them well now I want to thank this year's State participants and then say a few words about the team uh so step forward when I say your name first up Tina caditz [Laughter] Madison Mount matd schwartzen truber Seventh Place finisher Eden [Applause] Knight fourth place finisher Madison Sher third place finisher Grace McMahon State runner up Sage plumber and state champion Monica [Applause] McMahon one more time for all the state qualifiers um I was asked a question after we won how did a group of girls with very little experience come together to win a State title over the next few weeks I had time to think about that question and what I came up with was six universal truths that we all learned together as a team number one big Su success starts with Big Dreams without dreams you can't create a path to success number two believe believe in what you're doing believe in in yourself believe in your teammates if you believe you can't achieve number three consistency without consistency dreams are just dreams make a consistent effort every day to get better don't focus on the early wins and losses but grow every day to be the best version of yourself number four dedication every person in the room dedicates themselves to getting better and making their teammates better success isn't built in a day a week or a month but small daily gains are the key to reaching your goals number five accept failures as inevitable use failures to find Improvement and take your abilities to the next level and finally be passionate about what you're doing passion will push you forward when things get hard and lead you to your dreams there will NE there will never be another first time ihsaa team state champion these girls have earned everything they've achieved nothing was handed to them I hope they never will forget they'll always be Champions thank you [Laughter] congratulations that's awesome taking picture [Laughter] come on we got to do our F [Laughter] go board members I don't want to make I'm the only one doing it what the [Music] heck hey can I say you ladies even had tough handshakes I very much appreciate that and I can't help it I have to uh add just a a quick comment uh about um Miss McMahon Monica's speech I told so these poor kids I I've been going to the state championship for the boys for a lot lot of years um just because I'm a a fan I don't have any wrestling background but I love the sport and these poor kids when they win a state championship um what happens is the guy from TV sticks a microphone right in front of them as soon as they're finished they have a short break and then ask starts asking them questions in these poor kids for the most part very unprepared and you can tell and plus they're worked up because they just won a state championship um and and that happened to Monica and she I I've told so many people this now they're tired of me talking about but um she gave the best speech that I've ever heard any state champion give following um following her uh her win as a individual state champion um and did her family proud and her School proud and her community proud if you haven't seen it try to find it on Instagram or or whatever social media app you are on because it is it is a tremendous Testament to the um the whole team but also the way that coach olds prepares them the way that her family prepared her and I have to tell you also I felt so sorry for her sister who was getting ready to have her picture taken because she was on the podium for the previous weight class and when she talked about her sister and what Mentor her oh she just she just lost it and then so she was all prepared for a picture but then by the time the picture came she was a you know um you know kind of kind of uh you could tell she had been crying but um tremendous tremendous achievement there and um I don't think U very many of us get to say our community has the very first state champion ihsaa history so congratulations to all of you hi we are going to move on to Schoolboard member reports uh Mr major can I start at your end please yeah the the Redevelopment committee commission met uh last week and we had a lot of stuff going on swor in a new commission member uh former mayor Jim linup um talked about parking garage we talked about new uh owner for the Orange Leaf location new owner for the or leaser lesser for the subway uh location the downtown entrance Plaza the Hamilton Center chillers and the Arcadia Drive uh Department of Public Works projects uh Health Trust also met last week had a great conversation um talked a lot about how we finished up last year and what risk looks like this year uh we're probably going to have another meeting sometime this month next month to talk about some things that uh will help lead into managing the risk for this year so we're doing everything we can to keep cost down as much as possible uh but acknowledge that cost is increased so we're just trying to figure out the best way to make everything great for for uh all of the users of our insurance so uh I connected with uh Mrs Sarah Dunlap to talk about Cyd and get our first meeting on the book so I'm really excited to talk about the work that they're doing and learn how I can hopefully help and create a positive impact reviewing their current initiatives and projects and what their goals are for the year um also communicated with DD about the foundation and reviewing what their current Works have been and uh hopefully we'll be able to assist in that capacity as well it's just din no meetings nothing to report this evening thank you um so I did not have any meetings I did participate um in a closeout session for our um exit conference for a financial audit um I want to thank Mr brener and Paula beus for doing such a fantastic job with the audit um there were no major findings I think there's always opportunities for improvement they dig deep um I thought the things they found were valid and and we'll get better from those so just want to thank the team for putting in putting in the time with that um I didn't have any meetings but I do have a isba legislative update um there are hundreds of bills I'm just GNA throw out three of them here um House Bill 101 is the budget it's pretty early but I'm I'm sure that will have some impact on what we do here when it comes out um House Bill 102 is a lot of educational um has a lot of educational impacts and one I'll throw out there is that it would remove under its current um version it would remove the requirement that the state Secretary of Education has an advanced degree or experience in education and um House Bill 1544 if this went through this could have local impact for us it allows a it would allow a 25% tax credit for donations to a public school foundation and more to come Mr Glick a couple weeks ago we had the superintendent advisory Council luncheon with a whole number ranging from all levels of Staff uh and one thing that stuck out to me was Jen moral who's she's a counselor at CSA new tech uh there's not much to really report other than what she said kind of stuck out with me and where she led I was hoping that's where she was going uh they had their open house for eighth graders and they did something different this year they had the seniors lead it and the students lead it and uh that's exactly I was hoping to go she would go with that and uh and making their job easier as staff by letting the students do it sounds like they uh created more work for themselves because the they had a massive number of increased applications so they're going to have to do a little bit of nagling there to figure out how they're going to do it but that's exactly what we need to see empowering our students to step up and help with enrollment thank you Mr Schultz no meetings on the ccic I believe it comes up in the next couple weeks and then we just covered Hall of Fame so we're all good thank you all right cabinet Ember fors I'm color blind so to me it was green um thank you for participating in today's audit I would love to take credit for all the work that went into it but it was the two-year audit for 22 to midyear 24 so Dr Phillips and Paula they did a great job setting it up for me um and it it was a good audit and we're very proud of it um looking at our financial report for 2024 um revenues for the year were very strong in the education fund we were up five and a half or five and a quarter percent over 2023 the largest part of that increase was due to to the interest income that we discussed last meeting with our investments as well as our basic Grant was higher than we had anticipated because we had good ADM numbers in the operations fund revenues were up about 7% um that was again interest income and also our local income tax in in um Revenue was higher than we had anticipated for the year and the referendum fund we were up 2 and a half% in Revenue over 2023 um property tax revenues were again a little bit higher than we had anticipated strong years we had 96 million in Revenue in the education fund 36 million in operations and just over 10 million in the referendum fund our education fund expenditures our salaries were up just over 7 and a half% over 2023 the biggest part of that is the um salary rate increase that was uh as part of the CBA that was done as well as the additional Staffing due to the cohorts at north and east and benefits were up about four and a half% which ties into the salary increases and our other expenses were up about uh almost 20% a big but the dollarwise it's not as much as the other increases show due to um some under $10,000 Tech Supply purchases as well as some testing material purchases that we had and then the transferred operation ations we had discussed at the last meeting as well um for the year we expended 96 m700 th000 in the education fund budget um when you take out the transfer to operations which isn't a part of the approved budgeting through the state's eyes um salaries and benefits were 95% of those expenditures operations fund expenditures salaries were up about 95% that is again due to salary increases as well as the fact that we are nearly fully staffed across the board within operations uh we have an operations team meeting last week and as Dr Boseman went around the table talking to each of his team leads um nearly every one of them said fully staffed fully staffed going to be fully staffed after we fill these positions on Friday so it's a great thing the salary increases that the board has put into place over the last few years has really tied into that um benefits were up just a little over uh 2% and our other expenditures were pretty much flat for the year um expenditures in the operations fund overall 35,1 126,000 um just over 4% increase over 2023 referendum fund expenditures salaries uh for our teachers were up 3.8% support staff 2.3% benefits 4% Safety and Security increase of 40% a big part of that was some bus purchases that we had had in 2024 and our stem Labs were up about 12% over the previous year total expenditure within this budget was 9.2 million um 9.25 4 million of the 9255 we had budgeted so our fund cash balances when we look at our reserves we look at them in a couple different ways that Dr Phillips has told you about before but I'm going to follow up because I'm new at this with you guys so within uh the education fund we receive funding from the state on a monthly basis so we like to have a reserve of about two payrolls that fits that month time period in case there's a delay in the expenditures um for 2024 we ended the year with about 5.9 million in reserves our our two month our two- pay period would be about 5 a half million so as you saw during the budget process we did intend to bring that down just a little bit for 2025 so we have anticipated um spending more than we bring in as a way to bring down those reserves to not be over reserved in that area in the operations fund and the referendum fund those are basically property tax revenue funds so we get those payments twice a year so we look to have more of a six-month Reserve level in the operations fund we have a balance of 15.6 million um a 50 a six-month balance would be about 17 million so we're still building that up just a little bit to get to that six-month Reserve in the referendum fund we are at 4.1 million half uh six months would be a little over four and a half million so we're still building that up just a little bit health and dental trust we have a balance of 5.6 million which is an increase of 4.3 million we look at this fund um if we have a a reserve level of 30% of the next year's expected expenditures we then put that extra money towards um hsas for our employees we're not quite at that level yet so that balance is still strong and good and in debt service we're at 2.8 million any questions then on financial report questions from the team okay next is our property tax rate um as part of the budget process uh our advertised rate was 1.01 78 for 2025 when it was all said and done it came in at n or 9981 which is a slight reduction over 2024's rate and as you can see 2122 those were the effects of the referendum Dr Phillips staff and board at that that time was assuring to the public that we would keep it below 101 and try and reduce that um another thing we've been able to do even with the Envision 2030 projects and the bonding that we're doing we were able to remain net neutral for the year so we're really proud of that and uh State average for 24 was A1 five um we won't have the state average for 2025 for another month or so and when I get that I will bring that information back to you any questions on the tax rate the only question I have regarding property tax rate is is there a way to present how that compares to the assessed value increase over over the last couple years because that's that's the biggest issue like our our tax rate is neutral but the sess value is what is hitting everybody and certain people don't understand that so maybe compare those numbers to to bring some light to that could do that um what we can control is uh the tax rate I'm not saying that you have control over that that's the county assessor tracking yeah thank you yeah yeah don't mean to throw her under the bus but yes we can provide that information for you this is a little bit off topic but at the beginning you talked about the uh State Board of accounts and the two-year audit uh what was the time frame that they cover covered with their two-year audit July 2022 to June 30th of 2024 okay and then how long are they down here when they do that work um it's changed over the years um they now um sub it out to auditing firms Crow did our audit this year um we began meeting Paula and our staff we began meeting with them november-ish late October early November um back and forth uh they have a website where we can upload a lot of our information they have access to Gateway uh the state site to pull a lot of our information down um and then in January uh they present us early January they presented us with a preliminary report we were able to respond and then today was the final hearing thank you and last but not least our extra curric I can't say the word our ECA account um these are funds that each school has for their extracurricular activities there I did it um starting in 21 or 22 we were able to start investing These funds um that fourth column is the amount we have invested currently um at Raymond James uh that total that 947 th000 is not included in the December 24 balance but if you add the two together you can get what each school has um for the year or for the six-month period July 1 to December 31 we were up about uh $400,000 again strong fall where there's a lot of fundraisers that happen and then in the Sports World North and East all of their competitions against each other happen pre- Christmas so we have really great attendance really great revenues from those Sports at that time second semester we'll see uh these uh balances drop a little bit so when we come back to you in July with this report you'll see a little bit smaller number as those monies are spent so being new it may be a silly question but who has the authority to spend these funds at each school and how does that process happen he's new to um okay Miss Lloyd so step in on the the school side of how these this function so each building also has a treasure and so there's a um a certified sorry a classified position and so any expenditure is approved by both the principal and the treasurer at the building level and there's a whole section of State Board of accounts guidelines for extracurricular account accounting and so at the January meeting one of the approvals from the board was actually a a bond to ensure each of the building treasurers as well these can be used for academics Athletics and any teacher can submit a request this is these are almost 100% um clubs or extracurricular programming so you know the all Athletic program is the bulk of most of the money that's up there but if um yeah if there's a club that's going to do a field trip they probably already have a sub account in there they do a fundraiser money goes in you all approve those fundraisers every meeting and then they expend the dollars thank you and within that our staff does audit this monthly at the end of each month we do a Reconciliation of the funds thank you very much thank you good evening uh we are going to give our annual technology update tonight uh can't thank you for your time and your support to help us have the technology department that we have so with me tonight is Brian trivet he is the lead over our operations breny cummer is over uh the education and I'm the technology director we have a fantastic team uh that's listed up there including Asher who's helping out with sound tonight but uh really fantastic group that we've we've been able to work with for quite a while now so by the numbers um this slide is an annual slide but we we have a lot so we have over a 100,000 assets that does include devices but also um monitors to the microphones that you're speaking into tonight I have over 14,000 user accounts um and two million square feet of Wi-Fi coverage that we have to kind of update and 100 plus systems so those are software systems some we host some we don't um also include some digital ulum pieces as well but we also have a lot of vendors that we work with and maintain those relationships from year to year so finances it's a it's a very large investment that we've been lucky enough to have in our department we spend about this past year 3.5 million in annual technology needs over a million goes directly to new student devices every first Fifth and ninth grader gets a new device and we'll stay with them over the course of four years and seniors get to take their device home after graduation another big piece of our finances is Grants uh we've had almost three million since 2019 that includes funding from federal and state that helps fund internet hotspots cyber security software family engagement Ai and a lot more our state is really strong in terms of their edtech use and support which we've been been able to take advantage of so Dr Phillips asked me to uh like what did it look like before we started so Dr Phillips and I started here uh the same year and I found a strategic plan from 2001 to 2003 which was the year before we came and this is just the Stark difference of what it was like when we started teaching here so from 17 to 28 staff members a $1.8 million budget to 3.5 some of the most shock ones are software there's only 13 District programs um that cost the 181,000 and now it's well over a million and we have a lot of software programs and then the devices were all in Labs um we had around 2,000 computers and now again we have a lot of devices around 20,000 Chromebooks laptops and iPads all right so every year we try to cover an aspect of what we do and we've especially the last year and a half has had a lot of questions about cyber security and safety and student safety so we thought it'd be a good opportunity to talk to everybody about that so our technology and I actually talked to a group about this and they were concerned that students were on devices all the time and that is not the case so we follow and support our udl instructional framework and that framework is all about having student choice and options and that is how we view technology is as a tool to help students learn and we have a very diverse population over 60 different languages about 133% uh in the El ml group 10% qualify for special education and a device can help you know read aloud can help translate it is one of the most accessible ways to give content to students uh we also make sure that they have a device the devices follow the students all the way through so as they're first grader it'll follow them to second grader and so on up and over the summer we'll move all of the sixth grade devices into the middle schools and then as ninth graders they get a new one so uh there's no reason that they should you know kind of use somebody else's tool because everybody has their own device we also work hard to make sure the device fits their needs so there's large screen Chromebooks there are touchscreen Chromebooks regular Chromebooks um iPads laptops uh depending on what best matches students need and we work with uh teachers on that the other big piece uh when we went Ono one and had a stud a learning management system we adopted a digital citizenship uh kind of platform which is Common Sense Media as a parent it's great you can go there and look at ratings on apps that your kids may have or movies but it also has a lot of great content for our teachers so our department has helped create advisory lessons for the high schools have made other lessons available in canvas that all of our teachers can use uh on a day-to-day basis and if we get questions from parents we usually are referring them back to articles uh that this platform provides which has been really helpful so getting into student safety we do have a firewall that helps protect uh at least anything any Bad actors from coming in we also have a Content filter that works anywhere so it doesn't matter if they're at school or at home uh and it also sends a report to principles of suspicious searches so there's this long list including uh words in different languages that our El ml Department helped put together to alert our principles if there's something that they need to be worried about and we also have a program called bark that monitors all all of our Google accounts and if there's anything in there self harm threats violence then it will alert our principles immediately um so that we can at least be aware of those situations and that has been a helpful tool again for us to help make sure our students are safe over the years all right Brian thanks Nick uh so we've had a lot of support I was putting up little too close we have had a lot of support as far as security uh practices and what's that you're all the I'm all the wayle is this okay right [Music] here okay I'm gonna try to talk and not blow everybody's ears out we good okay all right so we have had a lot of support when it's come to uh cyber security across the district um we've talked with other technology groups and other across the state we feel like we have really a leading of the pack mentality when it comes to our practices and procedures and I want to kind of dive into why we think that and what we are doing to kind of stay in the front of a lot of our peers across the state so we operate under a kind of what we're seeing here is a pyramid but the base of that pyramid is made up by what we know as the CIS or Center for in Internet Security framework there's about 150 or so metrics that we measure against our practices our procedures and try to see what we can do to make things better or maybe we're doing things already pretty well but we meet monthly and we go to the people spot now where we have a cyber security task force we discuss the framework what things that we're doing well what things we need improve on maybe what's coming down the pike that we need to maybe address here pretty soon um and we have a lot of support from teams locally from other groups nationally that we can bounce ideas off and get some thoughts and feedbacks on our practices and our procedures our third level there we have infrastructure Nick alluded to that a little bit earlier but for infrastructure we have a lot of great Technologies in place um with our firewalls are monitoring we have backups in case something happens we have air gaped backups that we can use to restore things if needed there's inpoint protection on all of our devices uh we do yearly pen tests which is we engage the third party to basically try to break into our Network and then give us a report on what they've done so that we can go through and mitigate and resolve those things before someone maliciously tries to break into our Network as well as doing regular updates for all of our devices and that top level there is kind of what we put into practice our two- Factor authentication just another level for our staff to protect their data their students data other staff's data we do self- fishing so we send fake emails like a bad actor might but if someone clicks on it we give them some educational prompts to say maybe need to look at this next time or maybe think about a little bit different this way we have tabletop exercises where we simulate something happening just mental exercises but then we mark down and document what we could do in the future if this type of thing happens we have complex passwords again more complexity more security and we limit the admin access on all of our devices so anybody that used to be able to install whatever they wanted whenever not even it can we sit there on our accounts and install something directly on our desktops so a little bit more secure across the board for all of that so there's a few things we try to do that are a little bit more fun I mean Iber security can be kind of a drag and sometimes boring but you can see here we've started the first time ever a fishing tournament it started today so there are of these self- fishing emails that are going out across the district um we're going to have building level winners we're going to have District level winners and we'll promote and show off those individuals for their attention to detail and then their success in that but you can also see our little Fishbowl it's a traveling trophy that buildings get every quarter when we do these fishing uh drills whoever whichever building has the lowest uh percentage of people that click on those messages they get a bowl full of candy get the bragging rights for the next quarter and they get share that with all the employees in their building we have you can see Nick's face they're taking a good picture of all of us this is one of our cyber security uh tabletop exercises where we're talking through what might happened in some sort of an incident and then in the opposite Corners there we have various security throughout the year trainings and also we celebrate cyber security month and do contests and just raise awareness across the district on best security practices and what everybody can do to keep BCS see safe I think part of that is being proactive so we've met and talked to a lot of districts who have put these into place after an attack and we just try to be as proactive as we can to prevent attacks as much as we can what questions can we answer about security or uh technology will the board be participating in this fishing tournament you are more than welcome to participate if you want you will get those emails regardless of want them or not no you did answer my one question of whether it was like I'm hoping that we're not getting fishing into the network so this the self self- diagnosed fishing is all right that's where my question was going so thank you sorry I'm full of questions tonight can you talk just a little bit more about bark and how this may not be a question for you but maybe counselors when a that flag goes up if a student has search something I mean we have a lot of mental health issues and so if a student is genuinely trying to look something up to maybe help themselves and it gets flagged what does that what unfolds next so there's there's a couple things depending on the severity of it but the principles are alerted first um so especially at the high school level and the cohorts that whole team will work on it I've seen my wife go through that process the middle schools would work with their counselors and then same on down to Elementary um there's not as many in elementary but we have had a few uh also tied into that is our Wellness team with Jana Norman um and Julie Miller so they're alerted as well uh as well as myself kind of being the system administrator of that so well you know it's not a uh kind of constant alert it's it's ones that you have to pay attention to to make sure that uh we're keeping our students safe um and making sure that you know the right help can be there thank you I I don't think I've ever asked about this but typing class When's the earliest age group that would take a typing class good question um that I'm not sure of the answer of uh the only reason why I ask is the two most important classes I ever took were typing and speech we use that we use those every day and it might get rid of some of the LOLs that we see when our kids text us if they knew how to actually use a phone right we've we've had a typing program as a system um but in terms of How It's integrated in the curriculum and when they start using that or if they're still using that uh I'm not aware but we can we can get back to you on that one more real quick too um my daughter graduated last year and has her Chromebook still at home but she doesn't use it for college because it wasn't capable of doing some of the college stuff there's going to be some kids that will want the Chromebook and some kids that don't is there a benefit to us to take the Chromebooks back and recycle them or donate those to other schools that might have use for them um rather than sitting at home collecting dust yes um potentially so with the fourth grade devices and the eighth grade devices will take the best of those and you know some are used for testing or some are used for loners uh try to use those until we can anymore but we have certainly had different groups reach out um if we have devices and we usually try to satisfy those that does take board approval for or the removal of those or disposal of them so you know kind of every once in a while you'll see that as an approval item um and we do try to do that we don't we don't try to hold them I guess um in anticipation of that but we've we've certainly done that in the past and I think the what I'm thinking like locally you know the kids for the most part that are in schools do have a Chromebook available to them but place like a s Susi might be a good place to you know make a donation and then you know they're they're going to make a couple bucks off of them but somebody's gonna get something like that really cheap so yeah and I like Ivy Tech was asking us um if we could actually think about starting the program of seniors taking them home laptops were a little trickier so when we moved to Chromebooks for high school it allowed us to do that because they had several students coming without them so uh you know we definitely try to engage with our community in that so um this is about technology in general I to me I think one of the biggest challenges in technology is how it disturbs us when we're no no that is um is that it's always changing um and I I know I've seen you do a lot of creative things but my question is what what's the big challenge you face in terms of training and in service for teachers on the Ever Changing technology and and what do you do to meet that challenge so that's a great question I I think we are extremely conservative in what we adopt as the district and we're thoughtful about it so I could go you know kind of yearby year of like virtual reality was a big thing that a lot of schools invested in and then it's kind of come and gone so having Educators and teachers we have a group of teachers that we work with called Tech Titans that represent every building that we get feedback on so like the adoption process we're very thoughtful about that and practical I feel um keeping up is really difficult especially now that everything uh is just in the cloud and they update like I just saw a Google update on a form that I've never seen before and it's like oh a new interface um so we have to work hard to update training offer all the time we try to be creative with it um but it does take a lot of energy and we have a lot of people that we you know kind of try to keep up to date as we can being involved in our organizations kind of helps us weed through some of that as well which is extremely beneficial we'll hear from vendors or hear from other school districts of what they're trying um we're very rarely the first to jump in because of that practicality and not you know we have a large district and trying to scale things is is difficult so we yeah I I don't know if I answered your question completely but it it is at least strategic on our point of trying to adopt what we can and support it and train for it thank you I had one question we use we get a little application happy sometimes in my day job and sometimes when you put in a new app you think oh my gosh I can't believe I did that and sometimes it did exactly what you wanted it to and then there's those few moments where you're like that was really handy I am pleasantly surprised with how impactful positively impactful that was for us what would that application be for for you and your department what's one you've put in place that you're really proud of I think and again it kind of started with a pilot but parent square has been life-changing for us they got rid of so many other outside communication tools that we were supporting or halfway supporting and having that one constant communication tool along with Josh and his work has been really kind of that most recent kind of revolutionary type of tech that has helped everyone say before that was probably a one learning management system that helped us do e-learning helped us prepare for the pandemic as best we could with one to one but that that next one for me has been parent Square thank you appreciate uh now we are on to public comments so um anyone who wishes to come to a school board meeting and participate through public comments there's a blue sheet that's always at the front of the the um house when you walk in the door can sign up um it it helps us if you kind of jot down what you want to speak about and then we do have some um some rules uh we ask that you do not say any particular names or a specific role within the school corporation we want to make sure that our comments are um fair to people uh you do have three minutes there's a timer here that'll keep you on track and and we'll remind you when the buzzer goes off um and then if it's a topic where you feel like someone before you has spoken and said the same thing you can always pass um and just say I agree with with so and so um and tonight we have one speaker and it is Mr Cole Bennett Cole you still there good evening everyone my name is Cole Bennett I live on the North side of Columbus and I'm here to speak once again to the issue of uh safety within our schools and since your last regularly scheduled meeting on January 22nd a shooting occurred at anach high school in Nashville Tennessee one student was killed and another was wounded these events are not outliers according to a CNN report done this month 83 school shooting events took place in 2024 across the US that's about seven per month like almost all school shootings today the news quickly moves ahead to the next headline similarly to how bcsc made a statement regarding recent changes to immigration enforcement I would like to see the same being applied to school violence we as a community cannot be desensitized to these events kids are growing up in a violent world but kids should not have to ask questions like are we safe in school the worst part is that since Sandy Hook in 2012 the number of school shootings across the US have increased by over six times I've come to these school board meetings over the last last year and I've seen the increase in funding for school safety and that is very much appreciated I'd like to request that information on that money and how it's being used be shared with the community thank you for all you do thank you Mr Bennett next we have request for approval thank you Miss won so we have several approvals in front of you this evening under old business we have the minutes of the regular school board meeting uh from January 133 the board work session on January 27th and the executive session of the board on also on January 27th request approval of old business item 6A as presented request approval I move that we approve item 6A minutes from the regular school board meeting the board work session and the executive session Mr nelan and Mr major Mr mcgyver I was not able to attend on January 27th so should I abstain from the approval okay yep okay I will do that okay I have a motion and a second to approve minutes from January 13th and 27th um board meetings all those in favor please say I all those opposed say n motion carries 60 thank you um under new business evening we have our routine items of supplemental contracts field trips and professional leaves school fundraisers and the claims and payroll from the January pre- runs the docket for February 3rd and two payrolls January 10th and January 24th of 2025 we also have item 7e which is an additional agreement uh last time we covered one of these it was actually listed under the additional approvals for HR and you have the details of that additional agreement in your packet board members have access to that in your packet uh item 7f is the policy package number three and represents the nine I believe it's nine uh policies that were presented at first reading in Janu uary um excluding it's nine out of 10 the 10th being um I believe that's policy D 27 175 thank you 175 on board uh and staff Communications and so item 7f reflects all of the policies that were read in January with the exception of that uh one that was discussed at during the board work session item 7g is a purple star school resolution uh for our secondary schools board has previously um passed this uh resolution for our elementary schools This is Indiana Department of Education Program um that uh schools can go through a certain process uh which includes the board passing a resolution in support uh to become a purple star School uh which honors essentially honors the veterans um who have served um both in the past and are serving now so I believe we're getting close to having all of our schools designated as purple star schools also a reappointment of Dr Laura hack to the baramu county library board uh approval of bus purchases this is uh an annual event now that we have to order our buses in February to receive them by the next uh school year I'm saying as in next as in 2627 so in order to get those in the summer those have to be ordered in February uh item 7j is a a change to the guaranteed ma maximum price contract for uh Schmid Elementary School uh to reflect the addition of the bus uh sorry bus lot relocation and item 7K is uh change to the district calendar I brought this up at the last meeting and since then we've discussed it with principles uh cic's and all kinds of different groups um to determine whether or not that would be disruptive to the community and didn't receive any um any feedback to the contrary so item 7K would move the snow makeup day from April the 17th sorry it would move the professional development day from April the 17th 2025 to May 22nd of 2025 so the student instructional in inperson instructional day will be April 17th that was scheduled to be a professional development day but at the request of many of our teachers and our uh Columbus Educators Association leadership uh the having an instructional day on April 27th was a much more meaningful use of our time than moving it to the May 22nd the the day before the last day of school so that's the uh request for approval there if if approved we'll put out a new printed uh calendar and update our website U and and uh promote that in the public I also want to point out during the board meeting publicly um to members of the community that might have already scheduled something on that April 17th date um if they were going to be out of town since students were not scheduled to be in session on that day um work with your teachers and the principal and as long as the work is made up for that day if a student has to miss with parent permission has to miss for something that was arranged beforehand that can be made as a non absence for those students so some a student has perfect attendance up to that date or they can still as long as they get all the work done and turn it in with a certain number of days they still uh get credit that last one was that I don't remember seeing that in the board packet maybe I overlooked it was it was it listed in there just as an approval item there was no attachment or anything like that so I request approval of items 7A through 7K as presented I would like to uh pull M 7j out for discussion just to make sure that I fully understand what that is because when I read the packet it is not very clear and I don't know if everybody saw what you sent me I I believe you three saw it but I just want to make sure that we fully understand what that is did you request to vote on that separately or just discuss the item in more depth fly discussion just just just so fully understand what it is so I think normally we do a motion and then we'll discuss after a motion has been made if we're if we're okay with that well I don't I don't think you need to the motion would be to approve 7A through K and then discussion would just happen normally right so Mrs Welden I did get a question from one of the board members before the meeting uh on item I related to the bus approvals as a reminder I don't believe anyone has a technical conflict but we have had board members pull that out so they can abstain uh because our specs normally include commum engines and with some of our connections on that we have pulled those in the past okay okay would anyone like to make a motion excluding item I um excluding I yes okay so so I would move that we approve um items 7 a through H and J and K as presented Mr Nan do have a second thank you Mr major and and then um I think we want to discuss item J so um Mr Glick do you want to share your questions for discussion yeah so the graphic that you sent me which is item l22 as subcribing the packet uh um I don't know if Jason or Logan received it Whitney I don't know if you reive it or not um I have it pulled up if you want me to share it with you but it's basically I want to make sure I'm clear I know what exactly the project entails because there's I I saw the layout that was in the packet but I don't know exactly where this million dollars is going to be put so wasn't clear to me either because is it I know what the parking lot looks like now and based off this I it says bus lot sure yeah so um so yes it's the purpose of that is to separate um pedestrian pedestrians and vehicular traffic from buses so at Schmid currently if you're familiar there's uh staff parking to the Northern end of Schmidt and the buses pull in between the uh that parking lot and the building and unload students and there's a lot of um pedestrians that walk across the bus lot quite frankly to get to and from the building um so this was this was originally intended as part of the project when we put this out to bid with all the other bid categories um a little over a year ago we chose at the time not to approve uh bid Package 2 mainly because um we wanted to we we did the same thing with Parkside um mainly because we wanted to make sure that the budget um was safe quite frankly um and we didn't have any surprises when we came through and started construction so now now that we feel comfortable budget wise uh we rebid the project it came back in right about the same pricing we had previously actually had a couple more biders this round um so we're awarding it the budget has not grown overall it just wasn't awarded the first time this big category wasn't awarded the first time time that we um that we issued when the board approved the other big categories um and the design hasn't changed in that last year it was just a safeguard for for budgeting purposes so but to answer your question a little more specifically the so the cars um and the buses are two separate Lots um in the new design so the buses would come off 27th Street um into the bus lot and then Right Turn Only onto um Home Avenue to go southbound um and it just it just separates those buses from from car parking and also that bus lot can be um used as event parking for basketball games or something if it needed to be as well so and then the the road along the South Boundary that goes around the field yep um are we expanding that a plan yes correct so it'll be uh the width will be doubled so that's a car line now to get um car pressure off of the adjoining side streets that was done many many years ago um but car lines have grown at our schools at all of our schools so um the plan is actually um with your approval that will be done this summer in the summer of 25 to um double the capacity in the car line basically to get them off the the city streets and the bus lot to North to the north be done in the summer of 26 yeah I just want to make sure the graphic wasn't entirely clear and the packet didn't have this graphic in it at all and some of the wording is completely eligible so appreciate your ask absolutely I I live on that street and so I'm in the middle of the the heart of the congestion every morning so St B's Norths side North Schmid so on and so forth and I will say that is one of the most hectic areas I would say in Columbus from 7:30 to 8:15 I also pass the car line that goes all the way down California Chestnut wraps around onto 25th Street and lines up in front of Greeks and the snow conb place and I can't imagine being a parent sitting in that line I also watch kids Dart across that bus lot every single morning in the dark um um parents drop off on the street or they they park at my house or my neighbor's house and they walk their their kid runs across there and so I think it's a great I think it's a great investment I think it's a huge safety concern so yeah I think I think the only call out I have and I I wasn't aware of the drawing so I apologize um is I think whenever we're doing scope changes like we need to have some clear standard work like here's the scope of the ask here's the original budget here's the new budget cuz like even when I'm looking in here guaranteed maximum price goes up 1.1 million but then the sentence at the end says we're within budget but it doesn't tell me what the budget was and so I think when we look at like because we're going to have a lot of these right there's there's change amendments there's expectations across all the facilities I think we just need to make sure you we have like when we get the memorandums clear scope of work budget change of contract and then I think whenever we supplement stuff to other board members just be good to go ahead and disperse to all at that point to the point about to the point about money I think it is a good point right I mean I think I saw a note in there that it said that we had saved we made improvements and saved well if we've offset it then we're still spending the same amount of money so I don't it makes it easier to approve but if we said our our original budget was 17 million and we're going to spend 18 million now now it's where do we come up with the million dollarars and so for me me that's where it was it was just a little bit of uncertainty there and I I appreciate you showing me and confirming I understand what that is now better and it makes sense because if you're going to tear stuff out of the parking lot and you're going to replace that and build that bus lot it just wasn't really easy to tell like the before and after on on what was sent previously so from a from a need to spend the money I can see it now it's if we've made improvements or if we have an original budget I looked at uh I looked at the original budget from the Invision 2030 and what was in the packet from November of 2023 didn't have Schmid on it so that's where for me it was like I can't I can't compare because I didn't I probably could have found it if I'd have gone through every single board packet but it was more of a do can we get here today and ask a question too so do we know what the original Schmidt uh estimates were that were voted on the total budget for Schmid that was approved through um through bonding was 20.4 okay and so you're still even with this what it's roughly 17 and a half so uh so you're two and a half under uh that does not include soft cost for Architects um which is about 1.3 and a half or so you're one point two under yeah okay that's easier yeah thanks thanks for your question so um I appreciate the questions that realizing now in hindsight the you hadn't seen much of the Schmidt content since we you had approved it almost a year ago so moving forward I'll I'll um include two things um in your approval one any visual of scope of work that can be of help um to your point Mr Glick and then also a summary of a just review of of to budget and where we are on on the project that's that's before you so thanks and and one thing too just for transparency for everybody else too one of the things I mentioned to Dr Boseman was um we've talked about this in the past this board packet comes out on a Thursday night most of us have a job and we're working on Friday you get to look at it at some point over the weekend which leaves you about this much time to ask questions and get answers um so and and then if you do get an answer sometimes you don't have the ability to digest it quickly because you're working on Monday so one thing I would ask again um because I asked this about a year ago is can we work to try and get the board packets available to board members in the public one week in advance of a meeting so that we have the ability to come in and get these questions asked so that the meetings aren't as clunky trying to get questions that could easily be answered in a five minute uh conversation versus uh trying to do stuff over a weekend when it's really hard to contact people or respect their weekend time okay you want me respond that so just just so you know Mrs um Chrisman since uh since we switched to board docs we have I believe every time gotten the board pack it out to the public and the board members by 9:00 am or or 10: am.

um so that will be board members only and then um actually right after that there's an isba training session that all of us are going to participate in so that will be that will be good for us um new and old board members I think we'll all learn something there and then we have our regular board meeting um on March 3rd uh in this room at 6:30 p.m. okay so nothing else I'll call meeting adjourn thank you

[Music] welcome to week 10 of the ihn regular season uh this will be the first competitive week of the spring split today the bluon Cyber ERS will be facing off against 26 other uh schools totaling 69 players throughout the the state of Indiana and the game of tetrio and this Swiss style bracket the players will attempt to win best um best of five 1 V one matches yes that's a thing that they'll be doing yes very cool very cool uh we should be introducing the player soon I believe so yeah I think it's just all right currently in 12th Place in this split Alex AKA Gil oh wait he's not up ah there he is I wasn't looking at the camera but here is here is Alex currently in 12th Place in the split AKA gaale leis Maro who was currently oh he's not in the thing that oh wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait waiting waiting for Maro that that's Jordan okay I guess I gotta go Jordan next Jordan aka strixe X1 oh no Jordan who was currently oh now it's Baro okay I'm very confused I'm having an anur trying to read this okay B [Music] C the entire [Music] stream okay I think we're restarting um back this might be take two uh just in case we are restarting uh sorry for being repetitive if we are not like restarting from the top uh welcome to week 10 of the ihn regular season uh this will be the first competitive week of the spring split today the Bluffin cyber Tigers will be facing off against players from 26 other schools totaling 69 players um in the entire I guess split um throughout the state of Indiana in the game of tetrio in the Swiss style bracket or where players will attempt to win best of Five One V one matches just notice it says this is the first competitive week now this is the 10th yeah in oopsy doodle whatever who cares it's the I think I think I think it's week 10 of overall but the first week of the spring Split For No it's it's like the fourth week of the spring split whatever anyway let's introduce the characters the characters I don't think I should call them that I don't think that's what they're supposed to be called anyway currently in ninth place in this split EMT AKA Lego Master also we're going we're going yell for yell Owen AKA oh [ __ ] is currently ranked 20th in the split okay once he shows up yeah there he is currently in 12th Place in the split Alex AKA Gil Lis okay Baro AKA X dark ninja is currently raided fourth in this split up next currently ranked third in this split Jordan aka sty X1 okay uh next Hunter AKA lazy Soul s is ranked second in the split second place in the state and currently ranked eighth in the split the last on the roster clay AKA Firestorm I might have won that we we got we got to we got you might have won we got to bring that to HR yes way way better yell for y than cull but yeah you might have won is this a Canon event for the first round for the Cyber cybertiger Cinematic Universe dropping oh my goodness us oh we're back hi are we're going back to the Canon event and the CCU also known as the Cyber tiger Cinematic Universe no I I don't think they've started yet no one started yet actually I think I think we're just like waiting yeah we kind of did intros early usually we have a match ongoing while we're doing the intros yeah which yep we have we have match with Owen oh I think every I think it's uh starting now I yes we begin okay they were quick okay dang oh wait I think that might have been I don't know if that was an actual game I don't know what oh and oh practice match okay oh okay they're practice matches all right all right I was really confused cuz we just we had Clay win a match as well but I guess that as a a quad yeah qule yeah and then he could no no he couldn't he couldn't do a te- spin quad right there he does have another t-pin setup does he get it yep he will go for it all he has to do is just get the tpce gets the tpce gets the te- spin double right there big miss m drop but it's okay finished he he does get the t-pin Finish mhm going up 1 oh here we go oh yeah reminder your cyber tiger is on the left side of the screen Alex is on the left side of the screen his opponent Raven King is on the right I wonder if he'll use the opener that I taught him today we teaching people openers I I did teach him an opener I'm not even on the team let's see he's just 9 by one second right now going getting the double quad back to back combo one if he gets a combo of five and then he breaks the com it'll send an additional five lines off of whatever broke the combo gets another quad back to back number two oh he does break the combo it will set I think one line he does have SP set oh raving does not get it he gets the quad though he's got to get himself into a position where he can actually deal some big damage right here yep right here this is going to me opportunity quad quad let's see how oh it actually didn't send Alex uh that far up but he does have to down St just to get all the way back down yeah he's got he's got to get that opening that garbage opening oh with the PE unfortunate one one one to one yeah in case you don't know what back to backs are if you do either a t-pin double t- spin triple or a quad line clear if you get any if you get any type of spin it'll count towards your back toback oh okay yeah back Tob backs are basically strings of those big attacks and the more your back to back is the more it'll send Yeah the more damage it deals it'll even just be like if even if you get like a back toback two and then you get like a quad your quad will then sit in five lines yeah that's why double quad is like very like deadly in very low ranks when people don't really know how to down stack because nine lines if you can't clear it out to then get um like the Line open for yourself to do quads then you're just in a really bad position yes you want to get the the back Tob backs racked up as soon as possible the double quads are very yummy for that yes yes that's a weird part of my vocabulary I call things yummy he does get the another m on the tpce meanwhile off screen unfortunately Jordan is going to take a loss to stalo off screen that is good I I have a parlay If he if he loses three 0 I win $15 so he hopefully he doesn't sell my parlay oh do you yes I do joo's in it uh Alex is in it and Silas is in it oh well we didn't get to see the match so we don't know the score yeah I was about to ask why is why are you referring to that is good our cyber tiger lost yeah I I Get Money but you're winning yeah I I'm I'm winning money it it'd be good for us um for for the Cyber Tigers I I I told him I mean I might I don't I might give him a little bit of money if he loses because it's like you know I'm I'm praying on his downfall I'm being a bad friend but I need money I'm broke yes oh that's what that's what you're talking about with that $10 in the hallway okay now now it's 15 oh very nice now I get it now I get it see oh t- spin set up see he just needs a t block it's about time yep there is he gets it oh okay it's two two all right Clay is also two2 against uh brma master I I cannot pronounce his name that is Brian Bri Oh I thought it was something else okay yeah Gail Lewis and Raven King route for the left side that is your cyber tiger t-pin setup it's looking like y yep let's see all he needs yep he has a t- spin boom no back toback score because he had to get a single uh yep okay he's going for another t-pin yep gets the t- spin does he get the set he goes for another setup he's got it ready he'll get the single he'll get the single though will he get another oh oh he he kind of he he could have gotten it but he won uh just more garbage to down stack as well let's see triple single single nice combo it's going to open up that hole yep quad and then I think he could had this T spin he could have had a te- spin yeah see stacking up again getting the quad yep quad that's nice will he build up or will he just try he's going to go for the another t- spin setup yep Raven King's got to waste some time down stacking double let's see how oh this will definitely get him really high up in the board he's waiting for a quad but only be a triple whenever he gets it so Alex can easily clear out that garbage yeah he's got a both Fighters have place for game unfortunately yes yeah an unfortunate string of Mis drops there yeah yeah if he if he didn't miss place he definitely could have won at least one of the games yeah that one was just jockeying for position to try to get into a spot where see will ow get the T spin set up he does have it let he can see he cannot see it unfortunately I believe we had to I saw on the side I believe Owen in um round three actually hit an all clear what very early on he did yeah I I think I saw out of the corner of my eye I saw Owen hitting an all clear so he does have that in his bag yeah yes he's got it I'm not going to finish the lyrics of the song I didn't even I didn't even know what I didn't know like the reference that you were making I'm not even going to lie that that song Venus about something probably a Venus what what are you looking at me for I'm not you have no proof oh okay I oh Canon events going on Baro versus e back to back number one he's got that hole in his get thein oh breaks breaks the um back to back yep getting another quad spiking emit up yep setting up for another T spin yep let's see it is he does get it you see t- spins a lot high level very yummy very now I Go Again saying yummy let's see o finish off with the t-pin double very nice all right going into round three Baro looking the same open that he did last time I mean it worked last time oh that's what oh yep he's he's just stacking High I've seen this yep yep double quad goes up gets another setup let's do just clear that hole yep he's a t block there it is t- Spin and then yep just just down seconding a lot Owen does get the quad let's see how much Ro we sent oh four line still do sent B does have the t- spin double set up it's going to be a bit before he gets the T block there it is though he does get it and then martello just you know some short efficient down stacking the triple single in the quad yep sting big garbage it is not enough but emt's been doing a nice job he's actually doing a really good job EMT he has a line in there looking for aay Quad he needs to get to that piece though will he yep oh he he wasn't going to drop the JPS he down he does have the oh he did have a t- sp he has another one though big damage coming through yep he is defending very very well yeah emt's been staying alive in this he's been dropping quad so he's staying alive better than I would yes he survived the beginning Onslaught now Baro has to get setups to actually get back to that point where he can deal that big damage he was dealing at the start of the match oh that is game you know what I found out today you can spin the opce like like the 2 by two you can spin that how does that work I have no clue I want to learn how to do it though it's just a square I don't yeah I don't know how you spin it also I found out that if you would do the ice bin which it's like really insanely hard to set up but if you get a quad with that it sends 10 lines which is half the board oh so I think that that's probably the most damaging thing in the game probably but like no one does it because how do you I spin yeah I seen someone where it's like it went like boop boop boop I mean kind of difficult showing it with just your hands boop boop but like I I get it kind of oh meanwhile Owen picks up his win very nice 32 that was a very close one that went to last round got a couple last Rounders yeah pretty good uh first round for our cyber Tigers I don't know if we have any more matches I don't think we do uh break I believe yep okay that is round one Owen listens to Metallica while playing Tetris okay I guess uh but yeah that is the end of round one we will see you pretty soon for round two when it begins so it's it's the J block where I can't the block where oh SP piece that's me yeah [Music] a [Music] f [Music] a [Music] for [Music] a [Music] oh he's closing the door we are back for round two and we are going straight into this round with a Canon event ladies and gentlemen I also won my parlay and everyone he's gonna need his parlay also I got my parlay I'm making $15 because Jordan got cooked very nice which unfortunate I mean I mean I guess I guess nice it's it's good for me bad for bad for the team yes how sad how sad here we are we got Baro on the left side of Jaden oh we're making this joke again this guy's still in the league it's Jaden didn't get cooked by B got Lego Master versus clay and Clay does pick up oh already second round Victory mean offc screen Bara picking up a victory over me you're getting off screen I got off screen how you're getting off screen un fort on Fort un Fort unfort I thought you were referring to fortnite no that game with me going it yeah and on the left side of your screen green Clay on the right root for your respective spawn it's I probably could have worded that differently but it just seemed right to say I don't know fre I don't know I get a little bit quirky here in the in the getk room the commentators T tend to 10 to they do get a bit quirk I I I can hear Colin yelling at me for stuttering the commentators tend to get a bit quirky during the evening yes there we go yes that's the thing that they do yes am un all my my God very he's actually a chef put him in the kitchen we got Hunter versus Yeet stroke not to get confused Deathstroke the I I forget I think he's DC I don't know where he's from but theoretically e stroke should have been powered up because Jay Uso the guy who said ye won the Royal Rumble but no the 3 0 from Hunter and is that already it we went fast yeah no we're like speed running Hunter's 20 next next Canon event next Canon event people there's more Canon event we we got to substitute Canon events because beyond the spiderverse is getting delayed again oh man yeah it keeps getting delayed because the voice actor's weird I've only watched the first one but I I've heard it's pretty good and I main Penny Parker and Marvel Rivals so like I appreciate that yeah Marvel Rivals which I'm Diamond W I don't play it a lot but I want to get out of bronze because I'm better than bronze and it just starts youing bronze no matter what yeah so I just want to get out of bronze because it's embarrassing to be in brze yeah you got to get at least gold for the The Limited Time season skin uh which is what anyway he it's an invisible woman skin say the thing it's Canon event Canon event there we go I think we have to say it so we can do the transition we said it we said it like three times yeah we we said it before we started talking about Marvel Rivals anyway we got Alex Gail Lewis on the left and we got Owen on the right let's see Alex going for the open right onut him he does mess it up whatever you still got a te- spin set up if you BL right yeah oh go for it very nice oh Alex has the setting where the screen doesn't shake that's awesome yeah I can't play like that I it's like I have like a stroke if I do that the shake yeah yeah because it's like if I'm playing like high levels and like I do the opener and and it's just like a lot of just boom boom boom boom boom mhm I get it it's flashy but like please don't I don't want to have an epileptic seizure in the middle of my ranked match yes weirdly I had to like get used to it again after I like turned it off I had to get used to the screen not freaking out I had to get used to the screen not bringing the bo I was going to make I was I was going to do that with a te spin you stole my joke oh I apologize you can still do it well no not anym what did I accidentally say it during a te- spin yeah you said like right as he as he as he tees spun oh perfect I wasn't actually paying attention to the game that I'm commentating get a load of this guy get a load in this guy what you can't say that on stream I just did okay I couldn't resist it iiz 9 by one St let see going for the double quad boom boom double quad boom wait like what we bringing bringing the that was actually very unintentional trust chat we're bringing the brain rod we're bring we bring the brain rot skib ity like gritty right foot I'm walking with that heater oh my goodness meanwhile we are putting up the worst commentary job in human history meanwhile Alex is currently up 20 on Owen yep let's see here let's see the opening seconds of t-pin single coming through from Alex yep all right yeah they're just up stacking right now yeah ow and delivering some small combos looking to S te spin set up bit of garbage there it is into a double teasp double into a double double double no basketball the double double yeah oh yeah I remember I used to play a this like old uh Nintendo game on my Wii called double dribble I remember absolutely nothing from it but I remember it's a basketball game with like NES Graphics M cool probably better than 2K still probably better than 2K I think they had a really like crappy version of the like national anthem because you know it's game yeah like very like low quality yeah with the worst singer they could possibly hire they just got like some random programmer out of their seat to go sing The Star Spangled Banner real quick we'll pay you double that's get paid double he got the bag he got he got double he got paid double like the double dribble like the name of the game like Alex getting the te- spin double to finish off the now never mind what is he doing let hell oh my goodness put him in the marketing class the marketing class he would fit right in with the silic where's my there's my hair don't put him in the marketing class though that class is so boring I know I I took principles and was exactly anyway that was the Canon EV I think that I think that's just round two I think I think round two they did uh do they bring the boom no Mr Linda world does not bring the boom we're taking questions from the Press right now from the press in the center of the room does not bring the boom I I must confirm yeah that is going to be uh Alex getting the three Victory anyway okay uh shout out to one of our sponsors really quick Adam Wells huge shout out to our local internet provider Adams Wells internet Telecom and TV they're directly responsible for our Esports players being able to compete because they're incredibly fast and reliable fiber internet speed um if you are in the market for um Internet TV or phone service please check out adamswells.com that's adamswells.com yes it is another one of our sponsors the Moose special thanks to oopsy yet special thanks to The Moose for sponsoring this event as well check out the garage here in town on Main Street it's a cafe slame room/ music venue for the Youth of Blu and to thank out what to thank out to to thank you the Moose SL garage for sponsoring us you're very cool are we getting oh Baro is on it now we have we have one more sponsorship though importance yeah well we should also probably save the sponsor though okay to can we go to Boro screen oh after the game Banger gameplay yeah uh this is like Tradition now oh they're eating pizza I want more I'm hungry in case you don't know emt's Dad brings in pizza and water for everyone he's very cool very today I learned that Papa John's pizza is good they don't put enough pepperonis on their pepperoni pizza I don't know I just I just eat cheese cuz I'm a plain guy like that I don't really uh I never really ate that much pizza because I just thought it was like greasy and sloppy but Papa John's is actually more like it's it's clean yeah it's cleaner you know it's not just I'm I'm chugging a bottle of Grease yeah it's very nice it's more bready if that makes sense there's just I I can't really taste the sauce when I eat it though this is turned from Tetris comitting to Pizza critic yes as I choke on water y as I choke on water die he does get it Jordan Beats the level yes sir he beat the level okay wait maybe if I drink more water the water will stop choking him yeah the W the waddle I think it worked I'm a genius wait wait wait wait wait oh oh oh and this is just incredible gameplay right here riveting riveting gameplay he got tired of w he set the level wait no he he got the bubble that he was stuck on though he got the balloon but now he's going to be stuck on different ones yep now he's stuck on like five others the loop oh wait a oh oh wait oh oh oh okay top right top right top right top right oh it's like it's like the DVD screen saver oh he got it he got it very nice green question mark green fortnite green fortnite oh he has to Green it again oh he has to put more power into it oh wa to not be red oh it was a yellow oh red that's not even red that's that was like lit no color it was the white one yep wait oh oh oh oh tipping nope wait wait wait no okay oh they can't hit this guy okay just drops the ball wait wait wait wait wait oh it goes in oh but now it's actually got to hit the bottom wait wait wait no he can't he has to wait now because like he oh he's he's going to look at me very disappointed I sad he nothing but a broke boy boy boy boy I think he's nothing but a broke fiend f f fi he can't hit his shot though oh my goodness he can't hit this shot oh my go oh just chomping on Pizza is he actively chomping I forgot I mean they probably are I I had to I had to like stop like eating like I got banned from eating like you got banned yeah because it's like one time I was eating and they could like hear my saliva glands like activating as I as I ate like so they could like hear the saliva coming out of my mouth like were you eating during a shout casting I was eating no like I was like just eating like around the Esports room unless it's like a Tetris day like I like people like can't hear me eat on a mic because it's like they can like hear my saliva glands like activating like the micel picked it up I can't eat quietly how do how you're supposed to yeah how are you supposed like all of a sudden you can't not have your mouth make sounds that's if I chose slower yeah if I choose slower then like I'm going to lose the flavor then I won't eat it MH no you'll gain flavor that's only in some foods though like it's it's very rare I don't know I just kind of eat all food the same so I don't really know what you guys are talking about Jordan getting absolutely cooked by this level oh my goodness why is the fail off center developer what are you doing H the developer of this Flash game where you bounce a ball what is he doing he needs to put more effort in for real ski buddy ski buddy I'm I'm ski buddy buddy I'm skiing who what did what did that do no that is for his safety I'm sorry we're having a discussion with the guy on the stream that is for his safety that is for my safety it is for his safety yeah it is it is when will around three be starting no clue we're just we're just uh we're just waiting it took a bit for round two to start we we got to eat an entire Pizza in the time that it took yeah this intermission bark bark we don't act like this actually in these Sports this is a bit we put on for shout casting because we're bored exactly we act worse yeah actually we swear mhm on everyone's soul but mine mhm for real what is this some block blast oh my goodness he's in the Among Us character what that level looks like an Among Us character that he's on Jordan yeah I don't see it you don't see it I'm trying I I don't see it now he doesn't have the backpack I like I see the legs like I see TR with like the legs but like I don't I don't see like the like nose and the nose or the the yeah I don't I always think that's like a nose it looks like a nose oh are we actually we're checking up on round match ups for round three I'm currently attempting a bottle flip he's currently attempting the bottle B also do that I didn't do it I hit it no no oh he hit it I hit it I hit it he did it I actually hit it okay no oh I just realiz it wasn't even on me yeah no okay a he did it yep you think we're going to be doing that in nursing homes when we're all old Jen shny watch this oh oh you can't oh CL stalo that's the guy who made me win my parlay oh yes sir yeah we got Clay on the left stalo on the right St going for stpc yeah stalo is a very big deal in this league very powerful creature creature is a crazy violation of words getting another I couldn't I didn't even know you can do that like you blink and then you're dead exactly that's how high level Tetris works yeah it's like meanwhile we also have Alex and Opie oh my goodness Opie is one of the other top contenders in the basically the other one yeah they're both massive massive you know what else is massive you know what else is massive there you go good job I'm afraid of what I've started because now I have everyone in the room saying low taper fade cuz I said it once yeah it's your fault it is I know now I have to live with it yeah unfortunate uhoh oh my goodness but he he is uh stking down see up quad single clay doing a very God a very good job ye stroke oh my goodness it's ye stroke I was going to say something that I will not say it what say it no comment you know what I just said earlier yeah that's about the load that's you oh I just realized he was Oh I thought the match just started oh well it ended y got this match just started yeah yeah we're currently in round one of Lego Master on the left in Aquamarine on oh I just yeah they Alex got off screen oh how sad meanwhile I don't think Owen has even started his match up yes oh Owen I don't know I thought you were talking about EMT yeah EMT on the left route for him unless you have a parlay on aquamore we got to start doing that we start having parlays the bets yeah there we go oh meile oh I'm surpris I saw I'm surprised he's just not going for the quad I I know he's waiting for the double quad but I mean still yep boom boom there it is the double quad now it's just down stacking yeah boom boom Oh the seven combos going to oh my goodness gets it 20 very ni getting some Pats from his dad his pops his PS py oh Owen's screen is stuck ah oh it's oh probably like what's actually being like shown for his screen not his camera okay okay so maybe he's playing we don't know yeah probably yeah let's see if EMT can close out aquamarine here in round three Jordan already 20 against Raven King I just saw the match start and he's already up 20 all that's happen happening off screen Alex is down 02 to Opie yeah that that's just to be expected with like anyone facing Opie it's just like she's so insane at the game yeah Opie is wild speak you're going to see it right now oh Alex does do the opener oh he he does he doesn't student he doesn't get the um other thing he didn't uh Slide the SPs correctly Op with a quick quad another quick quad and a t-s spin that might be oh he should have placed a tpce yeah he got to survived a tiny bit longer right there that speed and efficiency from Opie yeah that's what just high ranking is like are you fast and like can you efficiently and quickly set up like you know te- spins and everything else cuz meta the meta's changed actually since like a year ago which I mean to be Tetris meta there there's meta for stacking yeah H which is like weird cuz it's like the way it it's because back toback got added meanwhile Jordan did just win oh yeah I guess that I guess that would change something yeah and like the actual like system of getting back to backs to you know there's a victory for EMT very nice very nice yeah I believe Owen is playing off screen but we're having technical diffic difficulty two for two two for oh my I'm two for something I don't know what I don't know we we're not counting we're not C Hunter hasn't gone yet soon yeah we I guess we just got to wait on those last few matches here we go we don't have to wait any longer there's a tpin double immedately yeah Brian master master master of Brian is he just a master in general or is he a master of Brian is he the best Brian is he the best Brian around we will see Owen is ow and one ow 0 one Owen oh here we go we got a hunter on the left side of your screen as usual oh getting the t- SP oh does miss the setup went too fast messed it up y it sucks when you do it with something like t- spins nice seven combo yeah see going for the S yeah he's getting an S spin right there the Mini S spin I don't know how you get like an actual like s spin I know I know you get like a mini t- spin I don't know how you get a mini S spin though I just kind of mash it to kind of like finagle it into the hole and it either works or it doesn't 90% of the time it doesn't and then the other 10% of the time since I'm mashing so much I don't even know that I've hit it Hunter does pick up a game against briesta very nice doing some sort of special opener oh my goodness setting up the tpin Double T triple you can go into a triple after that apparently he got an ice I just got a mini ice spin oh big quad double with the back toback score exactly Jeepers they they can't see don't know that you're doing that I'm like I don't I don't know like what I'm even doing I don't know like what that's called I don't know doing something with your throat you know what else you can do with your I'm sorry he's not yeah you've made some type of joke like that every stream I have never punished baby yeah it's a miracle honestly and as we as we talk we should be commentating but we're we're not uh Hunter does finish his game and this actually the first I've seen in a while of him um like actually having his camera oh but his camera is blurry you used to just be able to see his forehead oh it just focused yep yay we had congratulations to Hunter on that last round Victory Owen is currently 02 in the match that we can't see because technical difficulties aura yes I just got AA did I just nonchalantly flipped my bottle and got AA see look look at the chalant Blue Jay trying to do it oh my Aura is crazy literal chills literal chills oh my goodness we're so skibbidy actually that means bad we're not skibbidy yeah we have Lord Aura like in Marvel Rivals exactly I hate we have slow walking in Marvel Rivals Aura I did that in a comp match I did that my game to Diamond we won I don't know how to do that cuz I'm on keyboard in outro whatever youall got wait there's only oh I forgot they they changed that they only three yeah it's only three rounds oh I forgot I when I did it last year there was like there's like five rounds I was here until like 7:30 oh it's not oh I just realized we have another sponsor I thought okay oh yeah we missed a final sponsor do you have a favorite nonprofit that can do some that can use an a awesome you go I'm not do you have a favorite nonprofit that can use an awesome fundraising idea I know you do Janet auction is an online inperson auction platform that can help your non host a great Charity Auction find out more at auction.io that's auction.io yeah that didn't go but it went straight to me thank you for joining us this evening tomorrow we'll be back at 500 p.m.

[Music] hello clockers my name is hi silver and I'm very excited to bring you another segment of WCA news blog today I'll be giving a quick update on the latest Ashlin happenings as highlighted in the town manager's newsletter first off the priority project update traffic calming speed signs speeding has been a major concern in Ashland and town officials are taking action with support from the select board arpa funds have been used to install 10 new speed r our feedback signs in key locations including Chestnut Street and Myrtle Street these signs remind drivers to slow down and collect data to improve Traffic Safety officials urge all residents to be mindful of their speeds to keep ashlin's Road safe some news you need to know congratulations to firefighter Connor McBride ashlin's newest firefighter Connor McBride has graduated from the Massachusetts firefighting Academy's intensive 50-day training this rigorous program prepares firefighters for a range of emergencies Beyond just fires including hazardous material incidents and rescues congratulations Connor and welcome to the team Ashland's Boston marathon runners 15 dedicated Ashlin residents are set to run the 2025 Boston Marathon each raising $3,000 for the baa grant program to support local initiatives you can support them by donating through the town's website this week's Community shout out goes to Ed idus and the The Bagel table this week's Community shout out goes to Ed idus who is the co co-owner of the bagel table a cherished spot in downtown Ashland since 2018 for the past seven years Ed and his team have served up delicious Bagels sandwiches and coffee while creating a welcoming space for friends local organizations and town events The Bagel table isn't just a cafe it's a community hub from hosting nonprofit meetings to supporting the annual Holiday Stroll Ed has always been eager to give back and bring people together his dedications shines through in the friendly staff the inviting atmosphere and his commitment to ashin so next time you're in town stop by The Bagel table grab a bite and support this fantastic local business thank you Ed and the entire Bagel table team Ashlin is lucky to have you some local meetings programs and events for upcoming meetings stay informed about what's happening in Ashland Town meetings are held at Town Hall in the select boardroom or remotely and can be viewed on waca TV agendas are posted at least 48 hours in advance so be sure to check the town website here are some upcoming meetings Tuesday February 4th the Board of Health will be held at 7:00 p.m.

the terrarium workshop with the Ashlin Garden Club Saturday February 8th at 10 a.m. and a discussion with the library director which will be Saturday February 8th at 1 p.m. for children's events we have little Picasso's Art Club Tuesday February 4th at 4:30 p.m. clock toown rockers on Friday February 7th at 10:30 a.m. and Ashen stem Club Saturday February 8th at 11:00 a.m. no matter your age there is something for everyone at the asham public library so stop by get involved and enjoy a big thank you to our town manager Michael Herbert and the town staff for putting together this newsletter and thanks to everyone for tuning in this is Hal silver with waca with

all right good evening everybody thank you for joining uh our Citywide PTO uh meeting this month sorry we did not meet last month some stuff came up for a lot of people and it just was quiet anyway so we we uh we skipped in the winter um if you can real quick just drop your name in the chat as usual just so we have a log as to who is here um other than that I sent out the meeting minutes earlier today hopefully you guys had a chance to review them from our that would have been our December meeting um if anybody took a look at them I'm asking for a motion to approve those minutes please I see I see you waving Cheryl right thank you Cheryl so that's a motion I got a second anybody second second who that was is that Maggie yes all perfect thank you all right so motions approved for that um treasury report um so I'm still acting treasur um for anybody that does not know we have a vacancy at the treasurer position so if anybody is interested in joining our Citywide board please please please we are still looking um as of right now we have $571 73 in the account we did get charged our Zoom our Zoom bill which was $170 for the year that was on January 9th and and as of this year so far the school year we have received dues from AIS King Street milridge Shelter Rock Broadview Westside and DHS so anybody who's on this call I don't think there's anybody here that's not in that group um but if you have not paid your dues they're $25 um covers the year and I sent out period if I can resend it if you need just send an email to Citywide for an invoice for that just for your financial records chy I'm sorry who was after Shelter Rock for dues paid yeah Shelter Rock Broadview cool wests side and DHS sorry is taking minutes tonight for uh Jess is double dipping so she's she's holding down the fort while her husband's away um all right so that brings us to school reports um anybody has a report they'd like to give real quick I ask that you go ahead unmute and give us an update as to what's going on in your school hi all right how you doing good um so we have the Scholastic Book Fair coming up um my favorite person dance on Friday read aloud for second grade on Thursday um we have uh you know we're going to have an end of year event of of course and um some things happening in the spring but nothing's been really pinned down yet awesome cool cool thank you good things at a all right um so everyone can hear me right yep okay uh so for PTO for penr we got this week um tomorrow we have our meeting for the month then Friday we have our school store um not that it's PTO related but Thursday for the 100 days they're doing 80 seed clothing or attire for the 100 days of school then we have um coming up in March we have our anti-bullying presentation by the hat tricks and then we have our family game uh attendant attend the one of the Hat Tricks games okay very nice yeah sorry about that um uh we have our hatrick game then we have um coming in up in April the Monday before April we have a planetarium inhouse field trip for all of our students so we have I'm new to this um but we've had parents say that this is one of the greatest things ever so we got that coming in for our kids um and we got Valentine's we're going to do a little Valentine's treat for the kids on the on the 14th and that's what we got going on so far for p awesome thank you thank you you can I go for wests side absolutely okay so for West Side um on Friday had a kindness night where kind work and did stations for our students and families about kindness um students actually created a shirt that is Westside choose kindness that we're selling and the proceeds from it we are our teacher on in the you're pole are next Wednesday the twentine day we are the teach tree a bag of like candy and water um we have our fund on February 22nd and then for this week's PTO we have the Career Academy toing at our school awesome thank you hi there Melissa from King Street um our school uh worked with spice City on their opening night so we had our families go out to support them so it was a great little fundraiser for us they're a great um company to work with um and we had our trpy fundraiser that helps us with our um fifth grade uh end of year stuff so we allocate that stuff um our fifth graders are going to have their tall and small this week or um sorry this month coming up so our fifth grade parents are working really hard on that and then um we have Buffalo Wild Wings as well this month so we thought good for the Super Bowl get some wings in there um um and they they're actually great they go like all day they go from 12 till 10 at night so if anyone's looking for something um that's a good one get breakfast lunch and munchies at at night um and then our kindergarten first and second is doing an 80s for our 100th day and our third grade is still doing their old person because they love it so much so um that's what we've got going on very thank you thank you I can go DHS this is Gina um we have our meeting next Monday and we have some guidance counselors coming out to do a schoolo g presentation and we're I think we're do a college night at the meeting also so that's our meeting next Monday we are starting to plan teacher appreciation we're not sure if we're going to do breakfast or lunch um and May um and we're trying to decide how we're going to support our our um our seniors typically we do like a cup and we stuff it with like random things that they end up trashing so we're trying to do something that they won't they'll appreciate more so we're looking into possibly contributing to their field chip we're going to contribute to their prom um so we're trying to figure out how to best use our funds that support the most number of kids um and that's that's basically what we're working on right now cool thank you I'll go for Shelter Rock all right um last month right before winter break we were able to do holiday cookies so we were able to give every student in the school a chocolate chip cookie before they went on break to kind of do with their holiday movie and stuff we also just did our hattick fundraiser a couple weeks ago uh we're currently working on our yearbook cover contest so February is where all the teachers get to vote on which uh illustration they like the best from the students and coming up we also have our carnations for Valentine's Day and we will be hosting a bake sale at our school's talent show in March a all right is there anyone else I thought I saw somebody here from Broadview but maybe I didn't maybe I didn't all right anybody else one's going twice sh all right okay so then I guess um at this point um I don't I don't have anything other than vacancies Tim do we have anything no no okay um so then I guess we will turn it over to Dr casmiro for a budget presentation about the school budget hi good evening good evening um I'd like to introduce um Mr Michael Weaver Mike is our CFO our new CFO for the for D Republic schools and so if he had to had a chance to meet him um he's been doing a phenomenal job in his first stent as a school CFO although he's had many stints before that uh in a different uh in different Arenas um but he's done a great job for us so far this year and helped us really pull our budget together and and help us um do some projections that are that are greatly needed so um he is with me tonight and as I told uh Tim he's going to keep me honest with my numbers if I go off of course okay um so I wanted to just um briefly talk a little bit about the last time that we were together uh we talked about um doing a little bit of a poll with the parents to understand their budget priorities so that we would have that in mind as we're building the budget but also um you know should we need to uh make adjustments to the budget we understand what the what the parent priorities are so just kind of very briefly before I get into the full presentation I'll just pull up um a slide which shows our survey results and we had about 600 or so let give one second 600 or so parents respond and they selected their top three priorities um and the top three were supporting Sports the Arts and extra curcular activities um increasing safety measures in making class size is smaller so really not a shock that the the top three were those um they seem to be perennial favorites when we do ask this question um the fourth one down uh was upgrading school facilities creating new programs for students and enhancing technology class and resources um so these were sort of uh in the middle here um of equal weight and then of course the big priorities are supporting Sports Arts extracurricular activities uh and increasing safety measures in the district so uh we take uh the parental polls very seriously we also um did some polling for staff that we're taking a look at now internally to see what their budget priorities are um class sizes was was one um the the poll is still out there but um making sure that we have adequate Staffing and supports for kids um and uh safety and facilities are were at the top of those as well and resources I'm GNA zoom out of there for a second and I'll pull up another presentation which is our our budget second there all right does that look okay on your end everyone yep okay good okay so we were um very lucky that our board passed our uh the first superintendent budget unanimously it is now the board's budget uh we met and did a workshop on um January 21st and the Board of Education cast our budget um on that that following Wednesday and uh we spent time digging into our district priorities the major drivers and unpacking some of the bigger needs that um that we've been facing in the last couple years last year and this year as well um that that we came to the board with in terms of our budget meeing uh moving forward so um if you take a look these are our strategic plan of District priorities um these are our buckets if you will of focus uh and where we put a lot of our efforts and then therefore also uh alignment with our budgets so teaching and learning um providing good quality staff development um really important the talent acquisition this is playing uh true ever more so this year than than before with Recruitment and Retention uh improving School climate and that deals with the teaching and learning environment also safety and the emotional growth and Civic responsibilities of um students families um Etc so that making sure that our schools uh are good places to go to school and also good places to be if you are working there um meaningful collaboration so engagement with families um and all stakeholders and then resource allocation using our um using our our budgeted uh our fiscal resources in a financially responsible manner so the budget process this year was a opportunity for a fresh start this was um Mike Weaver's first budget build and my first budget build from the ground up um we put a few things in that were a little bit different this year um there is a lot of effort and attention um put into to meeting with every single department and every single School leader so that we really had an understanding of their needs um I think in the last couple of years um you know because we've had financial difficulties um we've just sort of rolled forward if you had it last year you're lucky to keep it and that was sort of the plan that we used so this year was a real fine tooth comb to make sure that every single uh School leader and Department leader had an opportunity to really discuss uh what was happening in their building but also the the needs not so much wants we're not quite the place where we could list out all the wants but the things that we really need to be a high functioning School District um we spent a lot of time looking at operational efficiencies um prioritizing critical need areas we've had several hot spots this year um over the course of the year as a result of the um the reductions from the prior year and in many cases we realized that we were functioning below optimal levels which was actually costing us a little bit of money time and frustration which was wearing on a lot of our climate and culture this year and we'll talk a little bit more about that further in um understanding reasonable year-to-year growth that we need to catch up for a decade of underfunding so um while the ask this year was large it really is just an accumulation of what we've needed all along that has come to a head um similar to the way it did similar to the way that it was last year um and then with the way that we're positioning the budget this year um creating budgets by location uh which is a little bit different than how we've did it in the past there creates a greater sense of transparency on how each department each school um each bucket if you will um how they are spending uh their money and and comparing U the budgets to actuals and then using that as a solid basis for next year's budgeting um and so while that seat May basic there were some pieces missing in in our ability to to um to do accurate projections and so I think uh with Mike's expertise in the way that he built the budget and the way that we're moving forward um on the back end of things it'll allow us to do have cleaner more transparent projections for the future which allows us to articulate our need and engage in Greater dialogue uh with the city so here's our district profiles for those who are on the call um most are familiar with this we have two Early Childhood centers 13 elementary schools three middle schools one very large high school soon to be two sites and two alternative programs our multilangual learner number is at 38% so not only are we the highest number across the state but we are the highest percentage wise in the state so we have the most amount of multilingual Learners in the state of Connecticut we are at the top of that list um similarly our numbers are on the rise for economic Ally disadvantaged and students with disabilities has also increased just a tad to um just a little over 15% we were hovering around 14 so we've have some some driving needs here driving needs here and this has been a constant uh driving needs with our multi-lingual Learners uh and the services that they need to be successful our enrollment no surprise that were seem to be on the uptick this is a little bit of an off year because of the kindergarten age and the cut off so we're down about 200 or so plus students um so we're looking to see how this affects us this year when students come back to reenroll for the 25 26 school year we think will be around this number but that is uh yet to be seen and students are just starting to enroll now again just a quick chart of our multilingual Learners as you can see in 2425 we've topped the chart at 4541 um with this uh projection holding true we anticipate being at 4,630 give or take and with special education we are at 1756 this year and projected to be close to 1,800 um some of those projections are made based on students that we know that will be coming into the district so key issues for our budget um we're at the basic level meeting contractual obligations and cost of living recruiting and retaining staff restoring the eliminated positions from the 2425 budget um and not all of them but uh at least about half of them or so that we need back um moving arpa positions back into the general fund so the city was um did a great job of um getting us securing us about $7.5 million to use for a onetime funds for the for the school system if you recall um city of danber received about 12 million and 7.5 of that came directly to us and then the remaining funds um most of it indirectly also uh came back to the school districts in terms of capital uh improvements um as everybody knows we are in the process of opening up DHS West which we're very excited about but to open up that campus it needs to be fully staffed and so supporting the enrollment needs for the high school and and the operational staff needed to operate another satellite campus is is included in here and it's a major driver for the for the budget for next year um transportation as you can imagine uh when moving an additional 1400 kids uh separating them out to another campus creates uh Transportation needs moving across the city in different ways affecting our tier Transportation plan um so we are approximating almost needing 28 or so buses um it could be less we're working on some of that now uh to run across the district for the transportation um ensuring Safety and Security as this is one of the of our parents primary concerns uh it is for us as well so there are some in um increases around the security components um and some of this also has to do with our staffing model um as I mentioned before our sped numbers are on the Rise um and so to are the tuitions our out estate tuitions and out of District placements uh for the most part the FED um special education is a very hot topic IC at the state level there's a lot of legislation uh being posed around this because it is such a a rapidly growing cost uh for districts and there's not a lot of controls placed around that and so that's something that um many districts are hoping we get some relief from down the road but right now it's very much a part of our budget for next year so I want to talk a little bit about remaining competitive so uh Danberry you know couple few of our contracts are competitive from a salary standpoint um however because we have our enrollment is the way it has been and our staffing levels have not kept up in a way that they needed to the conditions in Danberry teaching in Danberry the conditions of working here if you're an administrator if you're a teacher are a little bit more challenging than they are in some of our surrounding districts in addition to that our surrounding districts and districts in our County are raising the rate of pay at a faster rate than Danbury has been so while we've been working hard to keep up with those contracts we are competing um with surrounding districts and in our County for the same people but at a lower rate and so this is causing um us to have a very difficult time attracting and an even harder time retaining one of the greatest examples of this and it's something that again is a driver in this budget uh relates to our par Educators our par Educators work with um special needs students they work with students who need academic intervention they work with students who may need one-on-one support they need they work um in a variety of capacities uh supporting the needs of students in working in classrooms um teachers cannot do their jobs without them administrators cannot do their jobs without them they are absolutely essential um some of our uh parent Educators service our multilingual learning Learners and in many cases when we cannot find an a bilingual teacher our par educators are are helping us to fill some of those language service needs by providing native language support in the classroom so between students needing Intervention which is a mandate which uh students needing their second language learner Services mandate and special education services which is iip driven um all of the parent Educators and the work that they do is super critical iCal to the functioning our school district um so you're saying well what's what's the problem with the par Educators well right now I believe the starting salary for our par Educators is around $16 an hour and if you go to surrounding districts they're in the 20s some are even higher than that um so it makes it very difficult for us to attract people to come to our district uh and to retain them uh for the future and so we have about between around 40 to 50 opening right now um with our par Educators we spend a lot of time trying to fill those holes and making sure that we're meeting all of our obligations so it's a very serious situation when we can't fill those positions um so much so that we legally we still have to fill certain positions we have to go and use agencies to backfill these positions the agencies come at a very high premium um making it not a cost-effective solution to to supporting this this issue um so one of our big drivers is going to be to um right siize our par educator uh our par educator contract to ensure that we remain competitive um safety Advocates we have a similar situation with safety Advocates and uh right now I I don't remember how many we're at now because it changes daily we're also using an agency to staff a good number of our safety Advocates because we cannot attract or retain SA advocates for the same reason so we do have an ask in there around uh supporting uh supporting the benefits and contracts uh in there as well so that we make our contracts more attractive um so as I mentioned before urban districts face greater challenges so class size learner profiles having less support in the classroom make teaching in Danbury a little bit more challenging um than our than our neighbors than teaching in our neighborhood schools I'm sorry our neighbors uh you know surrounding in the greater Danberry area so uh we need to make sure that in order to fill persistent vacancies in order to remain competitive and also to make sure that our kids are getting the very best teachers um that we can afford we need to take a good look at some of our contracts and make sure that we're staying competitive we found out very quickly this year um how badly the losing 68 positions in our budget last year has affected us um we are all feeling the effects of not having that staff across the buildings the schools and all the Departments um we talked a lot about how the operational inefficiency that is happening this year actually can cost money down the road so um we have several key positions um when we talk about the driver that is called the restore driver where we're looking to restore 29 of the 68 positions that we lost last year back into this budget to bring us a little bit closer uh than where we were this year so this has been a very challenging year Staffing wise um you know the other thing that we talked about is our ability to staff certain positions so when you cannot have enough staff in a classroom sometimes in certain cases um which means we're not able to support certain students here in District which results in outplacement um outplacement uh tuitions which are extremely expensive and so again not having the right staff and not being able to maintain staff creates a a bigger costlier condition down the road in addition and someday it's almost its own presentation but when you have for example um really good intervention systems and students are um receiving really robust intervention it prevents special education costs down the road and there's a lot of research behind that um but again that's like a whole another layer of of presentation but there's a lot of research on the cost of prevention as I mentioned we're looking to restore eliminated positions we lost 68 last year in the budget um while that was not highly publicized um because they were not physical losses we only had two physical uh two staff members who physically lost their job because we could not find them another opening in the district but we lost 68 positions out of of our budget that included teachers coaches support staff counselors media Specialists operation staff and administrators um and so our inability to attract and retrain current staff does cause instructional operational challenges um and we've had a big issue this year with morale in the building as a result of that so I've listened and heard to many of our our uh staff members and our administrators across the district and this is a great concern uh which is why that was played such a prominent role budget for next year I'd like to give everybody uh a second to take a look at this slide this is an example of how Danberry Compares very basically to a school that is very similar it's one student different difference this is a Danbury Elementary School this is one of our real schools uh not to be named and this is a Norwalk elementary school of 465 in Danberry our staffing model looks like this one princip principal one assistant principal and that's only if you're at the larger School the rest of our elementary schools do not have assistant principles uh one secretary one student support specialist one srbi par professional one social worker and a point8 psychologist if you were to go over to Norwalk one principal one assistant principal one dean of students that are that are certified admins not serving as a teacher one principal secretary one administrative assistant in addition to that secretary one and a half reading Improvement teachers or Specialists two math Improvement teachers or Specialists two literacy coaches assigned to the school one math coach assigned to the school one gifted and talented teacher Four srbi PA professionals those are people delivering explicit intervention in small groups kindergarten pair of Professionals in every classroom those are extra hands in the classroom and one social worker one school counselor and a halftime school psychologist off of that one school so this is the this is the difference with what we're doing in danburry compared to typical school we compare ourselves often to Norwalk because we are very close in size and demographics and so this is a stark contrast and so again while our budget um this year is a large ask we're only trying to get to the place where we reach minimum levels of the support that we need to be successful um we had some questions around how we are spending our arpa funds that the district that the city allocated to us so um we had we were allocated $7 A5 million dollar so last year given our funding cliff and our budget um we offset this year technology needs the replacement technology and infrastructure student and teacher devices so those are our refreshment Cycles since we're one one: one excuse me um supplement for our DHS West Campus to help us make our transition supplemental for AIS magnet school for some of the tuition dollars that have been lost as a result of some tuition changes uh and then this is the staff um at that DHS needed this year to meet their enrollment needs so this had to be offset in onetime funding which also needs to to be recouped um as far as the existing staff we had our media specialist if you paid attention to the budget last year you know that the media Specialists and the instructional coaches were on the elimination block and um the one-time funding allowed us to hold on to them for this year um so there's $2.2 million there and then we had some uh money set aside for student supplies and also the fees incurred for the audit um that we had to we had several audits over the maybe the last two years and we needed outside support um for those audits because we did not have the Staffing internally to keep up with those so here's just a visual depiction of the big buckets of our budget drivers okay so on the right hand side the contractual increases are about 4,000 4 million 500 restoration of positions eliminated from the last year's budget is about 3 two um all other new positions which I'll go over uh in this budget um 1.1 million some of those are sped and multilanguage learner and also uh positions that are needed um departmentally um the competitive par Staffing model 4.9 million that includes not just the increasing of the salary to to attract and retain but also to add some pair of professionals at the elementary level in our uh K and one class CL K1 and two where our most vulnerable Learners are um who need intervention early on to prevent um uh problems down the road um special education increases in costs are 2.8 multilanguage learner needs are 1.1 benefits for positions above 4.4 and I'm sorry we had an increase was it 19% increase 19 19% increase in the cost of our Healthcare uh and then it improvements in security 233 3,000 normally that would be much higher um but we offset that in the arpa funds this year so normally that number would be a lot bigger and then just a accumulation of other incremental um increases across many smaller categories uh that total 1.8 and we have those coming up here so I'll try to move along a little bit more quickly um our total budget request for this school year for next year 25 26 was 4,946 th000 it's an increase of almost $34.5 million which is a 21 and a half% increase uh this is just a a slide depiction going moving left to right it's another way to visualize the as broken down by buckets and category Types on the left and then the drivers going across the top in blue so that you can see where those uh those buckets and drivers kind of meet up on the right is the total increase and at the bottom is the total budget just another way to look at the budget visually that some people prefer to look at it this way um I'll try to move through these slides because this was part of the budget Workshop so we spent time in detail we don't have this as much time tonight but you can see uh these are the staff associated with theem of Danberry and basically you know everything from custodians to safety Advocates uh refu removal Transportation natural gas electric uh the teachers that are needed to go over there uh the nurses the uh secretaries the the school resource officer all of those are are needed in a building just like they are um that we have at DB high school but at a little bit of a smaller scale um the projected enrollment for next year is about 800 students the building is ready for 1,400 um but we're going to staff it for 800 to do two things one U reduce some of the cost of Staffing in the first year that we there um but also to to allow our 12th graders to remain on campus uh where their they'll finish out their time so that was a little bit of a win-win strategy heading into next year so U our contractual obligations and increases so when you roll up and adjust for um the different contracts that we have across all salaries and groups it's about $4.5 million um the Restorations of our instructional coaches backfilling of the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning which is my former job for which um I'm currently doing and that's also broken up amongst some other folks on my team as well um that needs to be filled to provide adequate uh support um and to also uh make sure that we're pursuing grants to make sure that we're pursuing um Innovation and we continue on the path that that we are on it's a very important job um our 13 media Specialists two Elementary assistant principles uh one security coordinator very important um three administrative supports in offices that do not have them and um because of the budget cuts last year and were desperately needed that um are important and our three SC up coaches that were eliminated and are being housed in Grants this year that will be coming back online next year uh new positions non Academy sped or MLL so uh with the number of staff that we're going to be hiring next year um and through this budget um and also with the high rate of turnover and the number of persistent vacancies that we're experiencing we are going to invest in a a recruiter um additionally um an HR benefit specialist we have over a $30 million uh benefits uh outfit here and we have one person no secretary no support so the that's the operational efficiency component that we were talking about earlier um that we need to be able to make sure that we're able to um to conduct business in the way that we need to and service not just the students but our staff as well um senior accountant uh this was sorely needed we've been through multiple audits at this point we're paying top dollar for agency support and this is a position that we should have in here anyways in our finance department um for student support special specialist to support our largest elementary schools three teachers uh this is a number elementary teachers this is the number that fluctuates uh from the time that we project the budget in starting in November December um the number of teachers that we need can change at the time that we put put the budget together we had about three set aside the number can go up to three four five six seven depending on enrollment and shifts um and so we keep a close eye on that but we have three as a placeholder in here for now um and uh our AIS uh Magnet School needs uh some recruiting we are losing some of our tuition dollars and reimbursements from the state because our numbers are not quite where they need to be um so we going to put a little bit of money behind um our recruitment uh of students in surrounding towns so that uh we can hopefully regain that money multiple times over uh in the form of tuition and grants and then those are the benefits for those positions um as I already mentioned before this is the uh par educator driver so an increase in the par educator salary floor and increasing the number of par Educators and the associated benefits special education we we are in need of um at least two more special education teachers a social worker a language speech and language pathologist those are the benefits uh related to those there's an increase in some of our contractual services that we engage in um out of District to ions are up $1.6 million so we've incurred a lot last year so this is the projection heading into this year uh next year I should say sped sped supplies and equipment and then increase in transportation costs and runs um as far as our multilangual Learners we have a variety of uh support that they're going to need uh bilingual teachers par Educators uh we need more leadership department head as we're growing and um school aison we lost those last year and it's position that every single principal is dying to get back because they helped support the home to School connections um they also helped us to um reduce our chronic absenteeism numbers very important and then these are associated benefits Health dental life workman's comp and then we had a a little bit of an offset with unemployment compensation it in security this is a number that normally is quite large we moved some of this to Grants and then the majority of it will be spent this year using um using arpa funds onetime funds and then a list of other if you will building repairs and maintenance Transportation adjustments uh we have an increase in the number of homeless students in the district um some whenever our transportation goes up um it also goes up we pay for the non pubs as well um so that number has going up a little bit and then alarms and infrastructure utility staff development and some small miscellaneous very small dollar amounts that add up 299,000 if you look proportionately across the increases for the 34.4 6 you can see where the preponderance of money uh is where the drivers are so the cies represent 29% new positions around 3% benefits at 133% sped at 8.1 the competitive par Staffing model at 14 contractual incre increases around 13 and Restorations around 10 and in our total budget of 194 464 again it's 21% increase over 5.2% is dedic dedicated to the academy if we had our full budget last year at 181 um all positions which we needed um the increase over the original 181 would have only been about 7.2% uh which would be in the ball Park of surrounding districts um and school systems similar to ours so with that I will take a few Q&A from the from the group and I will stop sharing for a few I know that was a lot I think my only question is um is there a way to see this whole budget like if I tomorrow when we talk about it with my school or you know I could talk to the principal see if there's anything that we could do is there a way to like get this budget to share with her absolutely so the budget will be available I think I believe Ken this is will have a recording for for to share correct at the end of this thank you so much and Cara this is Mike a version of this presentation is on our website currently that's right thank you anyone else hello hi hi I just want to say thank you for such a thorough presentation and making the um information so accessible to all of us I'm I really think that this is a very clear perspective on where we are as a district and and I appreciate your Clarity and Leadership um my question is pretty simple um how what what do you recommend is the best way for us um as parents to help um with this process right well um just by being present tonight that's a great start being able to articulate you know the why um sometimes when you know in town you know we recognize a 21% increase you know could have a serious effect on on folks um and while we may not get all of that we that we need I think it's important to keep dialogue open um between and amongst the parents about about the why um staying active in the PTO coming to all of things like this where we're having dialogue where our board members can hear um what your concerns are um you know our board uh board meetings are sometimes they're really well attended and sometimes not so much um but I know that our board appreciates hearing from parents particularly on these issues it allows them and me um to know where to press on these budget issues and and where to where to be more vocal um and it also allows us to um you know when it comes time to make decisions hard decisions we kind of know what where the parents stand on these things of course um our budget is gets presented um to City Hall in April and there's a couple of open sessions that will come up and certainly if you're a taxpayer and uh you want to start to talk about that and uh you know bring your friends that's always certainly welcome the more that we can educate uh people from a point of transparency understanding and having the details um I think the the greater chance we have of kind of building that Coalition of understanding about you know why the budget is as high as it is and why we need to kind of keep keep at it you know the fear um you know I have is you know there's a it's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation when you present a budget this big um and this high and this you know with all the numbers and all the details um but I think it's really important that parents know what they're getting and what they're not getting uh for their tax dollars and I think um you know I think it's important that City hears from our parents in a positive way um I do feel good that there's an open dialogue and that the city has an open ear towards this and there's a a commitment to improving our school system I know our uh many of the folks who are in the highest levels of offices there have children in our school system as well uh which is also very helpful so um you know I think that there's a good will there but I think the more that they hear from parents um and people who are directly affected and their children are directly affected by the services we're able to provide or not to provide uh the better thanks for your support so I'll jump in um that one slide that you posted there the side by side with us in and Norwalk a typical school to me was a very powerful slide that was um not something I've seen before in any budget presentation and a little terrifying quite frankly um but okay so just like random question teacher pay scales probably vary dep I mean a first year teacher is not making what a 25e teacher so when you budget how does that work how does that factor in like are you budgeting like an average are you budgeting like you know yeah so in the last it's a great question so um maybe about 10 years ago we used to budget you know like $70,000 all in you know 50,000 starting salary and then 20,000 in budget in a in a benefits um but we've been hiring our actuals in terms of our hiring have been much higher because the competition for staff is is much greater um there was a time when if you were a a a teacher and you were teaching for 10 or 15 years and you tried to move to another District um you'd have a really hard time because nobody wanted to pay top step for a teacher with experience to come into their District everybody was looking for that first year teacher um the game has completely changed and the we are now constantly looking at staff members with 10 12 13 years experience um particularly if they are in math or science or they're bilingual teacher or they have a very skilled position like a coach um we are paying upwards of you know I think we budget in now for was it 85 that we budget all in um because this we're just hiring at at that rate anyway so um it was a false sense to say you know budget at that lower number because we're like I said we have a lot of persistent vacancies on top of this and the stem math uh areas chemistry bio very hard to fill because of certification um so we really do need to do something to attract um greater otherwise our you know the kids are the ones who pay pay the price you know we have high places where we have a lot of substitute teachers coming and going because we've got vacancies and people leave it's very disruptive to students academics particularly at the secondary level could be detrimental um and then just car say do we have like a grant writer like a like is that like a designated position or is that like a like a like a bucket list something that we'd love right yes um I would love to get a grant writer at some point um but that's what an assistant superintendent I I did all the grants but I'm still doing all the grants uh I say all the grants but a good number of Grants our assistant superintendent Kelly trus has quite a few grants um in her area in special education and for homelessness and for uh many things and me does a lot of Grants uh for families she's very prolific grant grant writer um but but there's about three of us who who do those and uh it's extraordinarily timec consuming and if and there's ability to pursue more if you have the room to do that um but again that assisted soup I did a lot of of that work in that role and I'm still doing it and if we want to get better at some things we're going to have to backfill some of these positions that are key that's that operational efficiency piece um we talk about some point when you cut below the belt and it's just it's not working we could rework the high school uh writing curriculum to teach them to write yeah we can try it Chrissy I'm willing to try anything at this point well thank you I appreciate it okay sure I have a quick question um along those same lines about the grants because I know that um possibly it had come through for King Street to have the walls put up in the schools as part of the gr I don't know if you know any information about that some of our parents have been asking yeah I think where that is and where where we're moving and what's going on with that because walls would be wonderful to help a lot of our kids of course so so um as I mentioned before um when the city received an extra allocation of 12 million they started to to put that towards some of the priorities on a capital Improvement list they Ellsworth Avenue School I believe was part of that there's a leaky roof um there was a few other projects in there that were super important the next project that's on the list that there's a lot of attention on right now is the King Street project and I know um our city leaders and our delegates are working hard to secure something through legislative funding um and so they're asking they you know reached out to us and asked us lots of questions to help them uh with some things that they're trying to work on to get that project underway so I do know that they're working on it I know that it's a very important project not just to us but to them as well they recognize the need so that's it's on the list and it's high up there thank you you're welcome just have one other quick question if that's all right sure I noticed that um the questions the conversation naturally went towards grants which makes me think about um the revenue side of the budget um you know we spent a lot of time talking about the expenditures and certainly there's a lot to talk about there and and I think uh my personal opinion is everything you're asking for is um reasonable and probably not enough definitely not enough um is there a way for us I I think that's a Big Driver for a lot of parents in the community as well to understand where do the revenues come from for the school district I know in the past there's been quite a bit of conversation about how much of the school district's budgets financed specifically from tax levy versus grants versus um you know other you know other opportunities that they have there as well so where can we find information about that to help support uh your proposal sure so we have uh when the we're in the process of developing what we call the budget book the big budget book and that's what goes over to the city where it's kind of the complete package of everything um you know for example our largest grant that we receive is the alliance Grant and so that's a $30 million Grant that's going to go up about $5 million next year but it's packed with staff and so some of that increase which would be I don't know if you'd call it Revenue but but some of that increase will will get eaten up with contractual obligations just with the amount of staff that we have in the grant so we'll have some a little bit of of room in there and some relief um but we won't really you know until we kind of get the whole landscape we'll know what um what tolerance our grants can have as well as anything in in the general fund so um I would say we have 30 million 3560 million probably about $60 million of of what we do comes from about grants but we but um that's all going to be laid out in a in a larger package um what we have out there right now is kind of the the big presentation that we that we have this book here will turn into you know probably like a two-inch binder with all of that information we could certainly get that out to everybody to take a look at that'll be posted on the website as well that slide with Norwalk was as Chrissy mentioned like extremely compelling and it makes me wonder um what does the revenue side of their budget look like relative to danur how much of that is is funded through uh through the tax base um versus through grants versus through others and then how do their mill rate compare as well that might be a question better asked to the city council um but um I'm just trying to uh you know get as much information as possible no it's a great question it's a great question and and Kevin too I'll just jump in um I don't know if you've ever heard of Erica Haynes with the school uh Connecticut school Finance she has like a lot of information too on that that actually Compares us to other districts um and yeah definitely I think there's some for improvement there too so Chrissy I was just going to going to mention that too it's school state St finance.

at the latest on Thursday and doing so has pushed a whole lot of approvals and work up in the up in the time frame um just to get them ready for that Thursday morning and so um the answer to your question is yes but um it will cause a lot of things to not be approved on the normal cite that they are that they that they would be otherwise maybe better with the four weeks between board meetings that we're going to have you know that we started with this year the delay from January's board meeting got pushed back a week so we had one fewer week in there but when we start getting four weeks um you know it it could be possible but it it was a lot of work and thank Mrs Chrisman for and everyone else who gets the all of the content that comes to you um to to us in time to have it reviewed and to you by Thursday morning I have a motion and a second any more I have additional questions my bad uh line item uh where is it I is that the standard Cadence now for buses I noticed we got three general education buses to looks like four specialty buses is that what the G is that should that be the I think we pulled that one out though it's okay we're on my bad I'm sorry okay well I'll I'll hold the question okay you're good okay uh Mr mcken is here also He's our transportation director so he he can answer additional questions that that you may have um the answer is no for the most part to your question so um it does follow our bus replacement plan yes um you may recall we have a goal of having no buses older than 12 years old so that follows with that U what Mr mcken and his team have done have entered produced um as scheduled they you know this has been a plan for for a while now of replacing those activity buses that you see here on your um which is not our typical Gaines but was planned um he can give you more detail but those activity buses um typically there're 14 passenger white buses which you'll approve tonight are actually uh two different types of activity buses um but they they run for girls golf they run for students that are under kimy vento that we're transporting between counties um he has a team that that runs students to Indianapolis every day for um specialy schools um and they are um they're a need of replacement so um if that answers your question right we have a motion in a second for seven a through H and J and K uh all those in favor please say I I all those opposed please say nay motion carries 70 and I would make a motion that we approve item 7i approval of bus purchases second thank you Mr Nan and Mr Glick I will abstain from the vote all those in oh any further comments or questions on 7 I I already took my out turn so it worked we're got okay okay great um all those in favor of approving item 7even I please say I I all is opposed please say a motion carries 6 Z evening uh the five Human Resources recommendations this evening consist of one appointment three resignations and one leave of absence I request that you please approve the Personnel recommendations as presented I move that we approve line items A8 Alpha through Bravo this time sorry Mr Glick do have a second Mr major any questions or comments if we are going to date a and b there are no additional Human Resources recommendations for this evening all those in favor of approving Human Resources recommendations A and B as presented please say I I I all those opposed say n motion carries s z thank you okay board input and review uh Mr major we'll start with you again yeah I would like to uh just congratulate Mrs udy the East girls wrestling Southside spell Bowl team I think everybody will probably say the same thing there um the big one I wanted to talk about is I think we have a future Hall of Famer uh in in waiting here in Mrs Haynes uh Mrs Haynes was ultimately the leader of the robo Rodeo event that was held at East uh just a week or so ago and uh that that event had probably somewhere between 60 and 70 teams I can't remember the exact number um from what I had heard I'd overheard somebody say that it was the second largest uh robotics event in the state of Indiana uh they would have had probably the title for largest if they hadn't had four or five teams back out one of the other things I don't know Dr Phillips if you heard anything different but I think I even heard that it wasn't just the second largest in the state but it might have been second largest in the country so I don't I don't know where we stand with that but it was really a a a great event uh I was able to be there all day uh saw a lot of cool things happening that the kids were doing lots of different designs a lot of creativity uh throughout that I think we only had like four or five teams missed their their queue uh when you have 60 to 70 teams and they're going multiple rounds uh there were there were several hundred of events that occurred during that day so it was very well put on like to thank those at East uh from all of the administrators all the way down to the janitors that had to help uh clean up the mess at the end for putting on such a great welcoming event for not just Columbus but for those in the state that traveled here to participate so great event and I would encourage uh other others out there to volunteer for those events if you have the opportunity so thank you Mrs haes and all the volunteers Mr major I'm just going to jump bandwagon there uh two things I just got stopped um on Saturday by Mr Wolford Co coach Wolford at Central who said the at the event this Saturday the fifth team from Central qualified for state so that means every stem robotics team at Central has now qualified for the state event and then also um I want to because Nick and his team um presented tonight just add the fact that the technology U group and Mrs Haynes has told me the same they could not have done what they did without our Tech folks being a part of that throughout the district even not just with competitions but um you know throughout the course of the year so it's really become like you said the size and scope of how quickly this has grown it's become something that really takes a lot of resources and I'm I'm proud that we have those resources for our kids I'll just jump on the bandwagon too so kudos to to Mrs Hines and to uh Mrs Harden I thought it was a great event I got to volunteer upstairs and make robot circuits as part of a senior project at the mini St stem lab that day and it was really remarkable to see the number of students and then their younger siblings who were being exposed to to that those types of activities so great day great great day so and congratulations to Easton Southside this was a great meeting I Echo the comments of Mr major and Miss Lloyd in addition I'd like to point out some Honors that uh some of our students high school students uh have received in recent weeks the Indiana All State honor band has been announced and from Columbus North High School there are three members of that allate band Luke Hensley on trombone Santi Duna on tuba and Cameron shoot on percussion in addition the Indiana Jazz Educators Association has announced Its All State Jazz Ensemble with from Columbus North High School will include Grant Barker in the percussion section on drums so congratulations to those students and uh the U directors who make that possible the recognition is going um I wanted to this is near and dear to my heart the Columbus FFA novice and Senior teams which includes members from East North Central and Norths side um um place first place in parliamentary procedure um and they advaned to the state on February 8th for Robert's Rule of Order which again is near and dear to my heart this is not simple um and it's pretty amazing that these kiddos have mastered mastered this at the state level so look forward to them going forward um congratulations to um one of the things we approved for field trips tonight was a trip for the Columbus North cheerleader ERS to the National Finals in Florida so congratulations and best of luck to them um also this was in our Friday notes but um commendations and congratulations to six bcsc teachers that um qualified for 15,000 I think it's $15,000 Lily teacher creativity grants um Chad Russel and Amilia Shaw both from North High School Brett Finley from CSA Lincoln Christa Reen and arish Spurgeon from Northside Middle School and Mandy Keel from Southside Elementary and um last a story a book Buddy Story I do book buddies on Monday at Schmidt and and I always start off one of the nice things about doing Monday you can start off with a conversation was how was your weekend how was your day going well today one of my book buddies she said I am so excited because today is stem day and I get to go to this my stem class and she seed to tell me all the exciting things that they're doing in stem and um just confirmed to me that it's working our our focus on stem is getting to the kids and and she was just so excited about what they're doing uh I start this off with uh recalling item 7g which is the purple star schools um as a service member uh means a lot to me uh so for those of you who are in the room that may experience this or those who are going to watch this my phone is always available my email is always available if I don't know the answer I know somebody that might have the answer so use me as a resource to help with you finding your resources um next over the weekend was uh wrestling sectionals this weekend is wrestling regionals down in Jeffersonville north and east qualifi quite a few and we'll uh continue their efforts through the state tournament and uh girls basketball start sectionals I believe tomorrow so uh East North will be competing this week so that that's going to be good and then swimming as well so uh lot lot on the agenda athletically and uh lastly I had the pleasure of assisting in the Parkside steam event which is a stem night and probably had easily 75 kids show up and had four or five different stations all with little trinket uh uh experiments and stuff and everybody seemed to be pretty heavily engaged and having a lot of fun so that was pretty cool to to see that the downside about being at the end is you just start Crossing off all your things that you were going to talk about but it's okay I I want to Echo everything that we we discussed I also want to kind of give a special shout out to Mrs udy as we were looking through her file as part of the committee and not to share too much but the number of students that wrote on her behalf and the number of community members was overwhelming and um a lot of it also is she was also one of the key leads for the longest time I believe at Central for the DC trip which is memorable for many um going through so I just want to re-echo that congratulations it was not a very difficult decision to select the hardest part is just picking only one um and so that was definitely a great experience um and then the other thing was so I have two daughters that are also in book buddy so I thought I'd bring that up as a lot of the book buddy mentors are getting them ready for testing and getting them prepared one of mine's third grade and one second grade so both at that critical year um and so I just want to shout out and say thank you to all them I believe I saw Indiana jump to number six nationally for uh reading by the way so big shoes to fill this year we we were a big part of that I'm gonna say that Dr hack's not here but giving her credit for that and I'll just add uh thanks to Nancy Milpa and her team for the food for the reception this evening um if you uh before you leave go out through the kitchen and grab something on your way out if there's any leftovers left and then also welcome to Asher who's been helping with sound back here the last couple of meetings um and thanks to Nick and his team I don't know if you noticed but the big speakers aren't in the room anymore and so this is it's been a year and a half they've been trably talking about what might be best for this room so um new mounted cameras so when you watch this it's probably going to look a little differently and hopefully sound a little differently and then um just on a personal level you know she's gone already but uh could not be prouder to call Carla yudy a colleague and a friend she like um like Mr Manuel when I was a brand new administrator as an assistant principal at Central Middle School she treated me with kindness and Grace which I needed a lot of at the time so congratulations Carla and her family hey uh next meetings we have an executive session um this Saturday at 8:00 a.m.

Wednesday February 5th the select board be held at 700 p.m. Tuesday February 11th zoning board of appeals at 7 p.m. and Thursday February 13th the planning board at 7:15 p.m. also coming up we have some Town manager coffee hours do you want to chat about ashlin's latest happenings join Town manager Michael Herbert for coffee and conversation every third Wednesday day of the month at 10: a.m. at the Ashen Community Center for upcoming dates we have March 19th April 16th and May 21st the osrp public forums will be held on February 7th and 15th at 7 p.m. as Ashley updates its open space and Recreation plan residents are invited to share their thoughts on shaping the town's open spaces for the next seven years attend either session in person at the community center or online via Zoom RSVP by February 7th at the link provided on the town's website supporting the Ashland food pantry the Ashland food pantry plays a crucial role in supporting residents facing food insecurity but they need your help donations of frequently requested items can make a big difference for families in need if you or someone you know is experiencing food insecurity don't hesitate to reach out the ashin food pantry is here to help so call 508532754 n or email human services at Ashlin mass.com for assistance every contribution counts so let's come together to support our community lastly some happenings at the ashin public library there's always something exciting happening at the Ashen Public Library so here are just some of the events coming up that you won't want to miss for adult events we have maang Night on Wednesday February 5th at 6 p.m.

1268 right um additionally we've got Group B weights so those are special education kiddos gifted free and reduced um various weight applied to those kiddos as well so that's the difference between ADM and weighted student count I just wanted to point that out cu those numbers aren't going to be the same um so with that um we do have an increase in our M Revenue control limit of about $2.7 million um which is great news so the third um row there is during uh when we proposed and then adopted the budget in order to balance ml budget we did take $2 million of District additional assistance out of the capital column in our budget and put it into M with the increase of our weighted student count and consequently our Revenue control limit going up we do not have to make that transfer anymore so it has been removed um from revision one um our override is based on those um previous ADM numbers as Jackie mentioned so the 15% did go up a little bit for our m&o override um additionally budget balance carry forward um those numbers are estimated at proposal and adoption and then finalized with our AFR that we submit in October so we had $3.9 6 million more in budget balance carry for than we proposed um and adopted with the original budget so all of that kind of together um got us an increase in budget limit for M of$ 5.57 million which is great okay oh back to me now we'll talk about the revised um unrestricted capital budget capacity so same grid here uh it's just District additional assistance rather than M so that first row uh you'll see the fy2 24 Revis number two versus adopted which was an estimation uh and then 25 revised one so the 39 the $390,000 difference we made a judgment call during there during proposal and adoption um we in we increased our um formula by $390,000 uh when the budget sheets came out it was on a different line so you'll see it on line three the $390,000 so it does wash um it's not a decrease necessarily and then the daa to M as Lauren mentioned um that transfer is no longer uh and then the budget balance carry forward we adopt in July and we still have uh um the fiscal year ends June 30 but we still have July and August to pay bills and then we wrap up that work and do the AFR um that's due October 15th and with that increases our budget balance carry forward because of purchase orders that were not spent or um projects that weren't finished so that increased our uh budget balance carry forward by 3.4 million and then interest earned this is exciting we can earn interest on Capital last year 420,000 versus um estimated million but it's actually 1.17 million and this particular issue is is very important to us we we created a strategy where all of the revenue we we received from the state and the local um taxpayer first goes into unrestricted Capital so that we're maximizing that interest earnings because as you know in ml we do not receive we receive interest but we can't spend it in unrestricted Capital we receive interest and we can spend it it absolutely increases our budget capacity so that's why we're doing this so it's part of our strategy to make sure that we're maximizing resources great thank you for that so from adopted to revised one an increase of 5.58 million any questions before we move on it's awesome to see an increase instead of a decrease okay some notes on other funds um M and unrestricted Capital are the big ones but um as we kind of go through the year and you see the monthly reports you'll notice some other kind of categories that we talk about so that's what we want to talk about right now um instructional Improvement fund classroom site fund state and federal grants CTE specifically fund 596 and then nutrition services and Community Schools um we wanted to point out the three that are circled here um state and federal grants from adopted to revised did increase by 8 almost 8.7 million um majority of that is because of the completion reports that were done and submitted and then approved by ad um remaining funds that were not spent in previous projects are able to be carried forward with some exceptions of course um but that's the majority of that 8.6 million in state and federal grants and then nutrition services and Community Schools um increased because of that budget balance carry forward estimation so at adopted uh we were pretty conservative in what we thought we might carry forward those funds um and we ended up carrying forward more than we expected which is um always good news so um those are the the big ones that we want to hit on and again you'll see these um in the monthly reports and the quarterly report that we're going to talk about next so thank you one question on that sorry if you mentioned so under state and federal grants yeah can you talk just about the process why and from the revise number two to adopted did you drop 10 million so that is going to be due to that same carry forward thing so carry forward process for the grants so most of our grants end 6:30 um and then we have 90 days to submit the completion report to ad with that process um whatever money that we don't spend is then carried forward into the new Grant term or the new project we don't like to necessarily anticipate that carry forward at adoption because none of it is guaranteed until we get that um completion report process all the way through ad so we like to be um we like to hold that back and then when we revise we include all of those numbers hope that answers your question funds too oh that's the other thing yeah so in FY 2024 we had Sesser 3 funds still um about 12 9 10 9 10 million um in Esser funds um and those have since been been spent um so that's another big piece as well I wanted to point out too before we go further into the average teacher salary we are not obligated to present to you a revised budget at this point in time um we're only required to revise the budget if we have overstated our budget um and we have to do that by December 15th but fortunately we're adding but we we believe philosophically that we should make sure that you guys are up to date throughout the year so you know how much money we do have available and that when we're doing our projections for next year we're St starting from the base that you already know about versus and as as you can see our budget across the board has increased substantially and so that you all should be aware of that so I just wanted to share that yeah and we like revising the budget we do it's fun right so next we'll talk about uh FY 2025 average teacher salary so this grid was from the adopted budget and this is because again in July we we don't know who's filling the seats yet uh this is straight just a straight data so fy4 67052 was the average salary of all teachers um we added the 2% that was awarded by you all for the compensation increase moving into 25 that brings us to 68 393 and that is just data now we use the revised budget average teacher salary uh we use the October data after everybody's kind of in their seats and the dust has settled a little bit um and with that we can see that it has decreased over over the um adoption uh because uh of attrition um teachers are retiring and we're hiring in newer teachers uh so even though the 2% was awarded um the the increase on this grid is 7% uh this also includes the 67 520 for the current year includes $750 of pay for performance the $1,200 appreciation stien that you awarded and an average of about $1,600 in additional stiens that they are eligible to earn for extra various duties and then if I could add so um since we awarded a 2% but what we actually realized was 7 so that difference is all going to fall to um budget balance forward when we complete this current year and then we're preparing for next year so I wanted you to know that we have two turnover savings here that we will be able to use as ongoing money that will help us balance the budget for the um 25 26 school year so keep that in mind that's it's it's worth about a million dollars of ongoing money that we will definitely assign to ongoing uh against ongoing expense okay just to give you an idea [Music] and just as a reminder this is an action item 7.01 and we do require your signatures on the actual budget document so stay in your seats uh and that concludes our presentation are there any questions okay I've got um a question um it Al it all looks very positive right money where we more money than than we thought money where we thought we wouldn't have money so that the I don't say the pessimist in me but are there any areas of concern that we as a board should be aware of or areas of concern that you as uh the uh accounting folks are are concerned about something that maybe I don't know it just seems like everything's so positive and I'm just kind of like okay when's the other shoe going to fall is there are there any areas of concern that we are we should be we should be uh aware of yes yes maybe not in our budget but we're always concerned this time of year when the legislature rolls through because we just working off of a of when we calculate for the following year and we budget we working off the governor's budget and we know it's [Music] it's it's a wish list more than anything but then it has to go all the way through the state legislature so we don't know where it going to come out at the end so when you hear these folks talk about next year we're always going to probably plan for the worst and hope for the best I guess is the best way to put it that's why when we're looking at projections for uh student loss when we're looking at possible salary increases we will be on the conservative side and contracts will be going out you know I think it's March 24th is is that around because remember state law says now they can't go out until March 15th but we're on spring break and so we have to wait until they actually come back um we don't know if there'll be any increases on that we've done this in years past saying based on what the legislature does will determine what we can give for an increase and that's unsettling for all employees but it's also probably the best way to utilize the information we have and not overextend ourselves so as Jackie and Lauren said coming back we're not revising a budget that um we overshot our dreams I guess the best way to put it so when it comes to budget that's always my major concern this time of year um but in terms of the current budget I don't see anything but these folks might well and I I will say that right now the news is very good with our revised budget and all the money that we just shared with you is in our pocket so right now we know this is what we have and we can anticipate that we'll have probably comparable to that same budget balance carry forward of around $20 million so for us that's good news because that gives us even more more flexibility going into the next year versus having to reduce $10 million now and then like oh my gosh and then if the legislature doesn't come through oh my gosh what are we going to do so at least it sets us up in as in as great of a positive way as it possibly can as we move into the unknown and then we'll just share the unknowns with you as we go through the next few months thank you does anybody have any other questions for well I have one thought about you're saying and that is just that our timeline is that we're working on our budget we're adopting our budget before the legislature makes those final decisions and so it's just I mean conservative assumptions I these three have always done a wonderful job of um being very accurate in their uh predictions of what will happen and and so you know it's it's it's just the way our timeline works is that we're going to get our budget together and then we're going to find out how much money we get from the legislature so it's a little a little backwards I would say well thank you very much for your presentation are we moving into 2.02 yes sir all right 2.02 fiscal year 2025 monthly financial report thank you and second quarter Financial year-to date ending December 31st 2024 did it kick you out okay good see see she they they have to verify her security too it's not just me yes sometimes they your right so um the through December 31st not only represents the end of a month but also represents the end of the quarter we made a commitment a couple of years ago that we would also give you information about Revenue as well as expenditures and comparing them to the prior year at the same time so we're adding a few slides to this presentation that represent that quarterly um look back uh for for our financial information so as always with the monthly report we share the grids so you you notice these are for those of you that are new you notied on the board agenda item you have two items one is the presentation and the other is actually the report so the report always includes all of the categories of funds whether we're going to talk about them or not here in the board meeting whereas generally we only include the specific grids on the presentation that we're going to say something about for tonight because this is the first time that we've presented to all of you as a new board we went ahead and put all of the grids into the presentation but we're not going to to talk about them all we're only going to talk about the one that we have the ones that we have yellow highlights on so I just wanted to give you a heads up on that so you will you will expect to see changes every month where we think there was something notable that changed month over month that we thought we should share with you so just wanted to give you an idea of how we're going to move forward so today we're sharing the district operating funds which we always share with you uh the Federal grant funds the state Grant funds as well as the bond funds um fund 630 and then the first quarter I mean the second quarter we made an error we made an error sorry about that the second quarter Financial so that's your to date December 31st we'll share the year-over-year comparisons of revenues and then the year-over-year expend uh expend expenditure comparisons thank you for putting that out so this is the district operating funds and you can see from M and unrestricted Capital you see the pending budget revision number one which is really what you're going to approve tonight it's still pending though until you actually approve it so we'll change that to Revis number one for the next monthly report but we always share maintenance operations and unrestricted Capital because those two uh funds change every month as our schools are spending down their discretionary allocations Etc but you can see that all of the available balances for both M and unrestricted Capital have increased because of course our revised budget has increased the one new one that we've highlighted is e- rates so every few years we do receive reimbursement from rate that's for something that's not our annual or regular connectivity costs associated with the Internet or with phones or something like that so every few years we actually go out and spend money on stuff so it's considered like Category 2 so um uh technology Services last year completed the network refresh so that's equipment and additional cabling and stuff and so we just received a $2.2 million reimbursement for those expenditures that occurred out of bond it's great news for us because it gives us some flexibility we have a lot of discretion on spending our e- rate monies and So speaking with technology services with John Castellano we are um considering a proposal on how we would be spending that additional money over the next couple of years so I just wanted to share that and then this is just the details of some of the stuff that I already shared with you so we generally do that we give you the grid then we give you a note page so um this is the federal grants just wanted to share the sr3 as you you can see um it's totally spent um and we only noted it because we did complete the completion report by the deadline which was December 31st and we actually have received the reimbursement of over $9 million um to date so we're just wanted to point that out and then the the other Federal projects so a note about this we were awarded H sort of informally I guess an additional $40,000 Grant associated with um nursing equipment and uh we received notification on Friday that we probably will not receive any of those money so we didn't change it though we decided to leave it in there and that of course we'll have to revise that down for the final budget revision which must be r no later than May 15th okay and then State Grant funds um so there isn't anything highlighted on there so then uh and then the Enterprise funds there's nothing to share here uh but the other funds just wanted to share the employee benefit trust funds I shared this a little bit with you on Friday which is one of our other areas of concern to answer your question uh Mr Thompson the fact that we've had a couple of bad years in terms of of our employee benefit Trust claims um so you can um we're highlighting that just so that we can give you a heads up that we are expecting to draw down fund balance in the current year by somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million we are deliberating we had a meeting today with the employee benefit trust committee they will be meeting again next week and making a recommendation to the formal trust board on the 13th of February and then that will come to you for final determination of what the premium rate will be going into next year as well as the impact on the district's budget okay so school-based funds again we're not going to share anything there and the only reason that we're sharing a little bit on the bond fund is that in December and this was before the three new board members took their seats but in December we did approve a purchase um of Transportation Vehicles so statute was changed two years ago I think allowing School districts to buy a yellow bus that's smaller that doesn't require a CDL bus driver so um our uh director of Transportation Mr Trace tolby he wanted to take advantage of that it's actually much easier to find drivers that do not have a CDL and so he's been he's already purchased a couple and he he's purchasing three more and so we expect to have those added to The Fleets by the end of this year so that they can be utilized next year giving us again a little bit more flexibility Transportation what's the difference in capacity oh my gosh it has it's um they're 10 10 passenger buses versus 54 or 68 or 80 so they're quite a bit smaller yeah they're on the they're on the side of our size of our activity buses which generally hold 12 um generally we're using them for smaller smaller runs though for special education Etc so thank you for that and then that's it for the monthly Financial are there any questions before I move on to the second quarter financial report okay if you could go back to page three there's a line item fund number advertisement could you talk about that and the difference between the adopted budget and the revision and what what are we using what what do we attribute the increase in in those funds from do you guys know what the increas is from I'm assuming it's budget balance carry forward but it is when we adopted we used an estimated number so when we brought in the revision as Lauren and I talked about um the 27 is inclusive of what was left over last year um and possibly some new Revenue I don't not sure it was interest an interest yeah there was interest earned in that fund last year um and so that's most of honestly most of the the difference we were estimating based off of um what we anticipate um year toe but we had a a sizable interest earnings in that fund last year so and what sort of things is the money in that fund used for so I can give you the example so we had a meeting in cabinet and we all deliberated over this and um um Miss maai she Don she said hey I could really use some resources to continue our efforts to Market our schools and try to make sure that we're increasing enrollment and so that's why you see that uh $20,000 encumbrance it's actually all in in her budget right now thank you okay back to the second the second quarter Financial so again year-to date revenues again just wanted to make sure that we're sharing we never share revenues except when we share the quarterly report and the revenue story is always very interesting interesting in the state of Arizona because the state with withholds a significant amount of money from us until the end of the year in which we call it the $30 million rollover um they use that as a budget balancing measure oh my gosh 2015 16 something earlier 2012 yeah so this is born out by looking at the operating Revenue by source so you can see if you look at December 31st 2023 versus December 31st 2024 the revenue picture looks very much the same year-over-year but but note that um to date we have received a toal total of 151 million in the current year which is only 47% of what is expected so why is that oh my gosh we're half we should already have half of our Revenue well that's the reason is because of the fact of that that rollover so for Gilbert public schools that rollover is there are two pots the rollover is worth about $34 million to us so we get that on January 2nd I mean July 2nd I mean July 2nd right after the fiscal year is over so that's really the story on the revenue and this just shows it by the sources um one thing that you wouldn't necessarily expect is that we do have Federal monies into in our um maintenance in our operating funds uh that's the other one one thing I wanted to clarify we're not talking about all of our funds districtwide we're only talking about the operating funds so that's that first grid that we share with you every month um but we do have federal funds that go into operating funds which means we have a great deal of flexibility over those monies so those two funds are eate I just shared about the extra $2.2 million and then also Medicaid so we receive Medicaid reimbursement from our special education services that we provide to special education students when they are U Medicare Medicaid eligible okay so um this is the operating Revenue by fund you can see as you would expect that M would be the largest amount but note that year-over-year a year ago we had most most of it in M whereas in the current year we have more of it in unrestricted capital and M splitting that so that again is that same strategy I shared with you earlier every revenue or cash amount of money that we get we're putting it into the unrestricted Capital fund so that interest that's earned on that cash we will be able to increase budget capacity accordingly so that's the big difference between the two years there and then that just shows it by fund and then finally the year-to date expenditures so you can see again that our expenditures look very very comparable to how they looked um a year ago note the expended encumbered a year ago was 338 and this year the expended encumbered is 358 so that's primarily due to salary increases um as well as in unrestricted Capital so you can see and then the benefits the benefits have increased a little bit there was a slight increase in um in the uh Arizona State Retirement contribution um just a slight increase because a year ago we had a year ago was when we uh prefunding pre fund yeah so it looks looks about the same but you you should expect to see salary increases because you did award a pay increase going into 2025 okay and that's all we have for today and we're here to answer any questions you might have I have to ask question I have to ask this question I don't want to get too deep in the weed so if you say Jill that's too complicated um okay we can earn interest on our unrestricted Capital funds if we earn interest on our maintenance and operation funds we can ever spend that is it does it just sit there if we earn interest on that money or so we're definitely earning interest on it and um a couple of things I'll say about that so if you recall we had the Quasar judgment that hit us because of cash the Quasar issue is a cash issue because we had the cash we did not have to increase our our tax levy to our taxpayer we had excess cash and we used that excess cash to pay that that judgment so that's how we can spend it if those types of things occur in the future um but no generally we do earn interest and yes it just sits there there okay that which is craziness yes I was going to say the legislature needs to address that but I'm glad it was there when we needed it so we didn't have to uh seems like that would be an easy thing for them to fix to and they they allowed the charter schools to spend it so it seems only fair that we should be able to spend any interest earnings so well I I personally feel they don't really understand how public schools are funded very well that's my bias okay can I just real quick I just wanted to thank you for all your work and I I think the lack of questions just speaks to the preparation and the great job you're doing and so appreciate all the work thank you thank you very much well done all right thank you very much moving on to 2.03 secondary grading practices feedback planning and communication Dr McCord thank you president Thompson governing board members we're bringing up a team I'll let Dr Cox introduce all of our friends and and the subject matter Dr Cox is the director of secondary CIA now she the running joke is that she actually thinks she's a CIA but she's not culum instruction and assessment and um does a fantastic job but they're going to talk talk to you today about secondary grading practices the feedback planning and communication and where we're at today and we'll list at those same things from you guys Dr Cox thank you good evening Dr mcord president Thompson and governing board members uh the CIA does have a nice ring to it I get more interest when I uh introduce myself that way so um I would like to introduce the team that we have here this evening so I'll just kind of go down this is Shannon haigi she is an an English teacher in department chair at Highland High School and then we have Shannon Carter who is an instructional coach for mosqu junior high school and recent math instructor and then we have Mr Tyler Dumis who is our principal at campy high school so we are really excited uh the four of us also were members of the grading committee that we have reconvened for the third time in the last four years um to continue the work and so we're going to spend this evening going over the history uh we recognize with three new board members we were just excited to kind of share some of the work we've done with the the new team and then um really the the core purpose of this presentation is to really get into what this year's committee has done and um what steps we've identified to take action on to just continuously improve our practices here in Gilbert Public Schools so getting us started uh when I talk about the historical context uh just put a little bit bit of context up there but this work does go back probably even further but um for my knowledge 2018 2019 I know that there was a lot of work going on in regard to mindset and best practices and um what I would consider um the traditional conversations annually around grading that happen in the classrooms and so as we were having that conversation and mindset work um obviously we led into that next year 2020 2021 um which was an interesting year uh with covid and during that year we learned a lot and um it uncovered a lot of things that we may have thought some of our best practices were in place and when uh teachers were expected to teach in grade digitally and students it really uh forced us to look at things through a different lens and uncover some things that were happening uh that we probably wouldn't have noticed um prior to that just because it kind of put it right in front of us so that led to um we were seeing different data points and evidence of things we recognized that we needed to do something about it and take action so in 201122 uh we created our first secondary um grading committee actually at that time it was a K12 committee uh but our elementaries um handle things a little bit differently and uh when we looked at that from a K12 standpoint that was when we created our Gilbert public school's grading beliefs and practices uh handbook and um um prior to that in probably 2017 18 we had started the work with our instructional framework and um we realized that a lot of the things we were pushing out to teachers were maybe in silos and that was around the time that we realized we needed to look at everything our evaluation our teaching and learning Maps our instructional framework they needed to be aligned and so grading is a part of that we wanted to make sure our grading practices aligned to everything else so that teachers um can operate at their classroom more efficiently and um that the training all is aligned so that they don't feel like they're getting hit with different tasks that don't um work together so then into 2223 we recognized that it okay so we created this handbook now what and so the 2223 year we really worked with our secondary schools um every school was in a different place so there was a lot of training a lot of focus on building up our administrators and our leaders to make sure that we all understood and that we were leading the training and then we really trusted our campuses from 22 and 23 into 23 and 24 to evaluate where they felt they were at with the different practices and meet the needs of their teachers because all of our campuses are very unique and where they're at and um that continued on for uh the last 3 years and so each year um we have continuously developed the teacher training and in 2223 what we learned after a year of trying to implement was that the handbook was a great guide but it didn't really include what to do how to do it and we needed to really hone in on what that training looked like so you'll notice that um we then created an appendix guide and I will make reference as I'm going through each of you this evening were provided with a folder in there when I mentioned the handbook that is included and then the separate appendix and resource guide that was created after we learned that we needed to have better training that's been included um and that was through the lens of having a common vision and then creating consistent and common training to make sure that all of our schools and teachers were having the same understanding so when we started with rolling it out we wanted our schools to identify where they felt they were at and um after a couple of years of that we went from teacher understanding and then we wanted to make sure our plc's were consistent and on the same page so if you had two nth grade English teachers they were on the same page so if a if a student switched from one class to the next they're not vastly changing the way that their grades are being reported so then into uh this school year the change that occurred was that we went from just plc's being consistent to wanting our campuses to be on the same page because the same thing is true if you have your English Department doing one thing and your math department is doing a different thing so again we have spent the last 3 to four years really ID identifying that this work can't be done overnight so we had to start on building the teacher knowledge admin knowledge then it turned into that consistency development so this year uh a few a few of our schools have gone schoolwide um a few of our schools are at the place where they are really trying to get departmental and so this was the year that we recognized we're probably one more year from having that districtwide consistency cuz that is our end goal and where we want to be because what we found is that every time we think we've created consistency what happened this year is that then we have some schools that maybe schoolwide have the consistency but then we get phone calls because we're like well what are they doing over at Campo or how come this campus is doing it this way we want our students to have it that way and so we recognize we're at a point where um we needed to kind of go districtwide with some of those bigger um best practices so we reconvened the grading committee again for the third time which is this school year and um one thing that we did differently this time around is we invited uh just about 20 parents into being a part of that committee there was more parent representation than there actually was faculty um representation which was interesting cuz we learned a lot from it so we're going to go into that in just a moment um it seems when you look at the trajectory of the historical context that I'm sharing um we really started from like a leadership best practices research like let's learn what we can and we knew we spend a lot of time with our admin because they're leading this work on the campuses and then after that we realized we needed to do more with teachers what has really surfaced as the theme this year and um we're proud of what we're going to be sharing with everybody this evening is really the um need to make sure that we include our parents in our community as a stakeholder in that so we've done a good job of mainstreaming that with admin teachers and now we're to the point where we really need to make sure all of our students and our families understand this and are a part of that conversation as well because all of everything that we do is for our community and our students so uh you'll notice I did put at the bottom there next school year because it is our goal that we will be rolling out everything you're going to hear tonight um as districtwide uh required um consistent pieces so some of these slides uh I already shared a little bit about so I'm going to go through some of them a little bit more quickly um because I did talk about them you're welcome to ask questions as we go and then each of the uh members with me this evening are going to kind of share from their perspective just so you can kind of hear like from a teacher perspective an admin how it's gone for them uh with um moving forward with these pieces so the grading committee this year I talked about what that looks like but to go back to the beginning of the grading committee I just listed out again we started big picture what do we believe in um what are the responsibilities of the different groups what's the responsibility of the building principal our admin our teachers um and then that goes into what do we believe a grade represents so in Gilbert Public Schools we have really four commitments and I don't need to read them verbatim uh but really the idea is to make sure that our grading practices are consistent so that again if the student is going from one teacher to another or from one school to another we can all speak the same language because I truly and firmly believe that that will help with communication to our um parents and students none of this should be a secret our students should know what's expected and what the learning expectations are um and the grades should be aligned to Student Learning not Behavior Uh another one up there is that uh we the biggest piece is talking about communication grades are a piece of communication and they are feedback so are our grades um communicating feedback and how students are doing and so that is an expectation that we have that we want our grades to communicate to students and Families how their students are doing and where their proficiency levels are with the class and then um that leads to what the grading practices that were outlined with our committee work um again retests and redos these are topics these five practices are research-based and best practices there's others these are the ones that are um committee four years ago um recognized that we have to put in to place consistent measures on a campus when it comes to these topics that's all that this means so when you look at some of the pieces up there you'll notice that some of what I'm going to share with you tonight when we say districtwide that doesn't necessarily include all of these things we're not prescribing and um uh outlining what a teacher does with every single step we're going to share with you what we are creating consistently at the district level and then in some of these areas we are outlining and helping schools come up with for their school what do some of these practices look like in um making sure that teachers have the training to understand how to adhere to different pieces so when it comes to homework making sure that they understand um how to use that in the classroom and use it as a a guiding piece in the learning and not kind of like a check off uh we we want to make sure that again we're giving feedback on things that we're um entering into the grade book so that leads me into I know I mentioned the grading handbook and the append document I'm going to turn things over um and let Shannon just share with you a little bit about how the handbook and the appendix tools have been used uh when it comes from a teacher perspective hi um thanks for having me tonight I don't know if you wanted to hit on this or just I'll put that on there okay um so this has been really helpful in what Christa was talking about with just consistency so as the English department chair at Highland um I have had between 27 and 22 teachers um in my department and as you can imagine getting 22 people to do the same thing at the same time is difficult so it's really helpful to have the grading beliefs and practices to kind of fall back to um one of the questions that we consistently say within our plc's and within my department is is that supported by our beliefs right so we always come back to what do we believe a grade should be and is what we're doing and what we're saying what we're grading how we're grading it um how we're giving it to students is it supported by that um and that's kind of our like grounding question um in addition we have if you look through this um like the recommended and not recommended side um what I have found especially with new teachers coming in who um maybe didn't go to school to become a teacher haven't um done a lot of practice with grading right and even even I would say in getting my degree in education there isn't necessarily a class you take in grading um you take some assessment classes um but there isn't a lot of Education surrounding within a program grading philosophy and so having this to kind of talk through grading with teachers is really really helpful because what our default is for many teachers myself included when I first started teaching was well how did I get graded I'll just do that right and because we fall back to what we're used to and not necessarily the best practice so this has been really helpful in driving those conversations with our new teachers about um what's recommended what's not recommended and why and getting them to understand that and then getting them on the same page uh with the rest of the department or within their PLC um and you'll see that it goes through all the different categories that were on the last uh page or the last slide there um in the appendix um and this came out right at the right time uh like Christa said we started getting a lot of questions right about like but what about this and what about this and what does the research say and so this came out and we were able to put together like an FAQ so this is in the hands of all the teachers as well both veteran and new teachers and so you can go to this and go okay well I want to I know I need to give a retest but like how long do I give a kid to do a retest right if they need to retake something from August um and it's May should I do that what does that mean right and so they can kind of come to this first and get some help here and then if they need it they have their PLC leads they have their Department chairs instructional coaches admin to further explore those questions with in addition there is research in here there's some things cited from um different places that help them explain like what the research is behind that um philosophy or that FAQ um you'll see like the formative and summative assessment page kind of helps new teachers understand like where those things cross over um and just helping them continue with having um solid pedagogy for teaching their classrooms because we can talk about instruction um and we can talk about assessment but grading is like that third piece that is is just as important um for our students this is going to create consistency like uh Christa was talking about um one of the things that I I know is frustrating for parents and for students is okay well in this class these are the rules and in this class this is the this is how this gets graded and in this class I'm not allowed to do like a retake you know things like that and um so getting the consistency for our plc's for me and at Highland in our English Department making sure that 9th 10th 11th and 12th at least within that grade level all n9th grade English teachers are are doing the same thing in terms of grading um and their policy surrounding grading and then 10th grade 11th grade and 12th grade all of that is in everybody's syllabus that is something that I check as a department chair to make sure that it is there and also goes to Administration they check off on that as well and then at parent night one of the things that I've done over the last um five 5 years at Highland is making sure that I have um that information in my slideshow for parents that night of like here's kind of the Baseline of how grading Works in my classroom what I did for my department is I shared that slide out so that they could just take it and use it um with their parents but I was um clear about like make sure that you go through this stuff because parents need to have an understanding and so that's kind of where we are now is is continuing that communication with parents and making sure that um there is an understanding for both parents and students surrounding the grading um uh beliefs and philosophies that we're we have and moving to more of a comprehensive consistency so it's not just like okay well this department is doing it but what about our other departments kind of helping get everybody on the same page so sing into a lot of the things that uh Mrs Howe just shared um we talking the beliefs and the practices and how teachers do the grading but that leads into the grade reporting which is actually what is an infant campus and it's what's associated to a student's transcript so for our secondary schools all of what we just shared we do use achievement letter grades and so they're numerical and this helps when it comes to scholarships and college admittance like this is just what we have used um for the reporting in Gilbert public schools for forever so um when we talk about those consistencies and kind of some of the shifts that have to happen it really comes down to and I shared with you all and I want to be transparent that these are drafts we have one more uh working committee meeting that's going to be next week but we were excited to share these with you as a draft and if there's any feedback that you guys have we thought it would be a great opportunity to get that but you'll see on the presentation the two things that came out of the committee and moving toward consistency it is not all the intrical little pieces that are in this handbook it is simply this one pager for junior high High School which you guys can look at those are the pieces that we feel as a district that we do need to have consistency everything else can happen at the school level department PLC level and the second piece to that is the syllabus what we have found through this work is um and I did also include the template of where we're moving toward with the syllabus in the folder for you guys to see some of the areas the committee outlined what these different topics and categories are on here and this again a very driven these one pagers by parent and Community feedback of what they would love and what would make their jobs as parents easier if they just had a quick snapshot as opposed to all these packets of paper so um then that led in when we got into the syllabus conversation you can't fit everything on a one-page document so the syllabus is almost like the expansion where you can refer to handbooks and policies and like the written explanation of some of those pieces so they are going to go hand inand um but the more that we kind of went down the rabbit hole of what issues and concerns we've run into when parents reach out um and maybe have some frustrations it comes back to in full transparency the lack of communication which these are all forms of communication so teach your syllabus similar to what Shannon had shared um often times when you're a new teacher you maybe have a department shair that gives you a copy or you remember what your syllabus looked like in college and you kind of copy it and I'll be honest that historically it's like you have that and then you push it out and you think it's great and you maybe don't get feedback on it and then you forget about it until summertime and then it's the first week back when you have two days to prep your classroom and your principal is like oh we want to see the syllabus we want to get and you just kind of copy and paste the same thing and so what we have found when we're dealing with um uh topics when they come up is often times we look back at the syllabus and there's something in there that's like from 10 years ago and the teachers are like oh yeah we didn't realize that was still in there we didn't and it's not it's not ill intent it's not that anybody meant to do it it's just there's a lot that goes into a syllabus and it's almost like this growing document that teachers um they they put a lot there there's a lot of time put into it and they're trying to put all the rules and practices so we want to help teachers and take that away from them and help with creating it so when you see this template of the syllabus that looks like this one um each teacher in the spring we're going to roll it out a little earlier this year but in the future it'll probably uh be right toward the end of the school year they will get a Google form they will get to put in their bio they'll get to put in their teacher information and then they press submit on the Google form and it's going to generate the rest of the stuff that we want common and consistent for the district so for example if we're talking um absences or if we're talking the configurations if we know that it is the same across the board why are we having teachers draft that in a syllabus when every teacher's voice and their terminology could be different and so we're almost setting teachers up for that push back by not just giving them the same consistent verbage so we have a student handbook we have a course description book um even down to the course description when you look at teachers syllabi they often are creating their version of what the description should be really it should just be copy and pasted from our course description book because that's what's approved by the governing board so any of those pieces that we know we've created and worked on it will autogenerate into the syllabus and then the teacher gets a pdf version that they can attach to their Google classroom and then it will generate a signature page to go home to parents so again when we say we're open to that feedback again the committee has driven what you'll see here but we're not finalizing it for another week or so to make sure that um we have time to get that feedback so when you look at the um configurations part uh I did put a screenshot in the slideshow but I just want to kind of verbally say it for the junior high it will be 60% assessment which is the summative and 40% the assignment which is the formative and at the junior high any class that is a high school class which tends to be math algebra and geometry and World Language if they're high school level they would then stick to the high school configurations which are listed on the high school document so all of our schools when it comes to those categories and percentages will be consistent moving forward and then um again I mean I know everybody can kind of read through it so I don't want to kind of go through it uh word by word but um with that I want to that's just kind of what the committee LED but I do want to turn things over to Mr Dumis to kind of just share uh from a principal and um a site administrator lens how some of these things have gone um and how he has rolled these things out to his campus because a few of our schools this year started the year with this as kind of a practice and so Mr Dumis has spent the year already doing this and so we're trying to learn from those few principles to get ahead of those things for next year year when we go districtwide so Mr dumes if if we could pause real quick I just have one question so what's the philosophy behind um Junior High not having any portion of their grade attributed to the final a final exam yeah just curious um right now we do not have District final exams at our junior high level okay so since they are campus and teacher created and there's not consistency we didn't feel that uh it was an appropriate time to add that in uh we do have a few departments at our junior high level math is one of them that have been uh begging for those final exams and if we get to a point where we push those out districtwide we would consider changing these configurations to match so for those those teachers that those Junior High teachers that do give their students final exams do those just have no bearing on their grade or do those fall into the assessment block they would fall into the assessment block okay thank you but currently they probably fall all over the place correct correct okay um thank you for having me tonight I wanted to kind of come in and just say straight off that this is a been a process for us to get to we started rolling things out in the fall we've I have had personally and I know that we've had as a group number of conversations several conversations with parents with students with staff as to the direction that we're heading and I'm actually really happy with where we've landed uh We've been implementing this since the second quarter with the 50410 as a campus uh and it has quelled many of the concerns that we had from when we started and and I'll take you back to the the differences so in my math department at the start of the school year we were 80% uh we were 80% uh Summit of assessment 15% uh formative assessment and 5% final uh in our English classes were more like 50410 or like it set up here our social studies was in wanting to be in that 6 40 and including it uh we get into science and they were six or they were 70 uh 255 so there was just a variety of different numbers just from that without looking at the definitions without looking at the the way to define what happens in each of these categories and what come out of all of our conversations in particular with our parents is they didn't know some of these school terms they really didn't understand what we meant when we said summative informative and that was a very fair piece of feedback so moving on to the assessment and the assignment and then providing parents with a list of some some example or sample items that could fall into those categories not Exclusive by any means and then coming back in and through so we could start to Define what it looked like and communication is 100% where we were uh as we worked our way through it uh and parents appreciated the one pager that we came up with and it made sense and much of the concerns that we had at that time um were related to two things and one was the fact that we were doing also at the same time that we were doing some grading adjustments and and working on uh getting ourselves more aligned as a school we're also working with an instructional model that had a different way for us to deliver instruction and they bled into each other a little bit so some of those terms got a little bit confusing over time our students have responded well our teachers responded phenomenally and our parents and and my site counsel in particular been very very very supportive so we're in a good spot the data that we've collected and we've analyzed it looks very very good there isn't a change in the number of uh students that are being successful at A and B's we had a as our campus alone had a 1.98% failure rate which I would like to get rid of the 1.98 but that is lower than it has been over time uh we're seeing changes in instruction for all groups of our students uh and changes in results so I've been very happy with that the challenge has just been what we didn't know really that that for me um I I like to barbecue so I thought about this on the way over and it's kind of like now people are getting to know what it's like when the sausage is made we're getting to dive in and understand exactly how ugly that can be sometimes and we don't really want to know we just want to know that it tastes good and we don't get sick from it sometimes that's how it is until we do and then we want to dive back into it because I I understand and parents were very honest I want my kid to have this this grade because of the impact it has down the road with my scholarships or my opportunities and that's very understandable um but at the same time when that doesn't happen and we don't have some kind of structures and standards and expectations that we can have as a as a school uh that are similar we are going to run into the same problem when you know that sausage isn't going to taste so good so we have to work our way backwards in in that and and set things up so that we have a way to communicate um and it just continued to be set up and I would say that as a campus we were further further along than most of the other campuses we've been putting things in place already as a whole uh we have a syab template that we use we had all the departments on board with their specific grading but you can still see the variances that we had uh and then we had variances even in between our plc's or our different groups between Algebra 1 they're just different processes kids won't know and parents don't know how to go about making up tests or replacing scores that needs to be consistent and parents shouldn't have to fight uh to look for it and try to try to make sure that they ensure it the phone calls that we get and the and the frustrations we've had in the past is a lack of knowledge as well and trying to figure out what that process looks like because we will know where that syllabus is on the first day but we're not going to know where it is come February 4th so those are all things that we just had to work our way through um I feel good about where we're at right now I don't think that we're done and I think that uh we have work to do with our staff I think we have work to do with our with our students U the feedback I've received from our student leaders so far has been I get it now we're seeing a higher level of Engagement with the work that we're doing uh and we're beyond the higher level of Engagement students aren't thinking of what they need to do to re just turn something in they're looking at what they need to do to make sure that they're learning and that's the that that's what the feedback has been from our staff as well that they appreciate that aspect of of the work we've done thank you so that that's a perfect segue into what came out of really yes this year's committee but over the last four years that our secondary schools have been going in this direction because we've learned a lot along the way and it really breaks down into two categories uh communication and training and professional development and you'll notice that um on the training and professional development side uh we we recognize that to Mr dumas's point that each of our schools they're still in different places like I mentioned that we started that way but at some point if we want to be able to kind of Monitor and inspect and help we have to have some consistency or else it's like way too much to try to figure out where everybody is at to support them where they're at so we believe that moving in this direction will help us to be able to quickly identify those Pockets that do need support and help and then we can provide more personalized professional development training um our instructional coaches they're asking for this we didn't have that position before so now if our coaches know X Y and Z they can just go right and work with the teachers um immediately we recognize that the training extends even to our parents so working with um and under the communication plan I tried to include the pieces that are for our parents and students but some of the feedback that we got was um even parents not really knowing or understanding how to use infinite campus or wanting to have training on how to access their students Google classrooms cuz we had teachers in the room that would share what they did and we would have parents that were like well not all of our teachers do it that way or um we really haven't ever been shown how to do that and so that was really good feedback for us um and we've already worked with uh different teams uh to maybe put together some some like screen recorded videos to help and um are going to provide that to each of our principles to do as site Council presentations with the expectation that it kind of trickles down in addition to a whole list of things that we want to share with our PR department to get into Shane or Dr McCord's um newsletters that go out each month um so I mean you can read the list up there but these are these are all pieces that we know we can improve and they all come back to training and communication every problem or issue or concern or lack of understanding has come back to these two things so I listed them up there but I would like to kind of remove myself from it and um I'm going to lean on Mrs Carter just for a moment um and then really all three of them to just share when it came to the committee work how they got feedback um how it this work has impacted where they're at in their campus perspective it's easy for me as in a director position to share with you like theoretically and all of these great documents that we've created but I feel like these three are in the field and they're dealing with these things at the site and in the classroom level so um if Shannon if I can put you on the spot to share like a little bit of how you collected feedback and what your journey has been yeah so um over at MOS Jr so after our first committee meeting in December we um got the one pager and at our time similar to Campo Verde we had Greenfield Jr who was also kind of piloting what this looked like so we went off a Greenfield Junior's one pager and I broke it down basically into a Google form for my staff and I laid out the big ideas and just kind of got their feedback on if they would buy into this or if this was something that was totally outlandish that they were like no we we don't want this and so of my staff the majority that came back were super positive I'd say about 75% were like I can get on board with this this looks good um the other percentage was they had feedback was more of the things that we um talked about that would be in the syllabus that it was things like um what about students with special needs that might need accommodations for turning in late work uh what about chronic absences so it wasn't so much the grading practice side it was more of a what is the site going to do to make sure that those things are fair across every subject and so that was the feedback that we got there um the biggest thing too is I really appreciate it under the assessment and the assignment categories there's a lot of things that teachers do that are marked and um on my site teachers didn't have any other things that they wanted to add to it they said that they felt like that definitely takes care of everything that they work on and um you have your little departments like you know PE has feedback that they might look different than the other core subjects and that's understandable but I think it just comes down to everybody being aware of this especially before we leave for summer so that when the training does get implemented right before we come back um when the instructional coaches maybe have um that kind of plan of what that's going to look like um we can already address those questions that they had and so I was really pleased with the feedback that the staff gave and they were very um happy with um how things were laying out yeah um so for us in the English Department at Highland I'm obviously I'm not working schoolwide on this so I can only give you the lens of my department but um we we've kind of been moving in this direction for about four years um because we had a grading committee going on our campus about 5 years ago and then we were testing out some different things in our department specifically and what I can say is that um what I did once we got the grading um beliefs and practices like in our hands the first thing I did um on my department shair day we get like two hours that we're allowed to like meet with our department when we come back to school and I train them so I put together my own PD um for my department in helping them understand the different pieces of this I gave them um all of the research that I could find I um I got a book I put it in the Teachers Lounge and said like this is my copy feel free to take it um and so um you know it's it's kind of like what they say like if you build it they will come right and so like just having it out there for them and in an accessible way they ran with that um I think the the one of the books that we have on grading has gone around our department a few times um and then that inspires conversations um for people to come in and talk to me be like I read this here's what I got out of it here's what I'm going to try um the 50401 percentages that you're seeing here actually is is fairly close to what our department did um all the way across um like you were saying there were there's some tweaks here and there within the PLC so it's that we're going to be able to have some consistency for parents so that it's not well in nth grade it was this and 10th grade it was this and 11th grade it was this it's just going to be the same but the these uh percentages are really really close um the other thing that I did with my department like I said is providing them some language for talking to parents um because I think that a lot of times that's uh what both the parents and the teachers need right is the teachers need to know like how do I explain this to a parent and then parents need to have that in um in a language that they understand too and so providing them with my syllabus and saying here's how it is you can copy and paste this section right out of it and put into your syllabus so we have some consistency there and then the paren ey information I think has also been really really helpful um I also will say that um in doing this we have seen um a really exciting uh uh increase in our data so um for The English Department one of the things that just came out we just examined this data is that the proficiency levels of uh our students on a final exam in 9 10 and 11 12th grade English are almost identical within a couple percentage points of the grade they earned in the class um and that's huge that's a new trend that yeah all of this work that is new um so that is amazing and that was shared out in a um department chair meeting on my campus from my Administration looking at that and looking at what the other proficiency scales are in comparison to from the final exam to letter grades for other departments caused other departments to come to me and so other department chairs now are going okay what did you do in your department because we need that data too and so that has opened up some communication and me being able to just work on one one-onone with some other teacher leaders and helping them figure out some things that have worked in my department and things that haven't worked then I'm like don't do this cuz I said that and it wasn't it didn't help you know um and so that's helping us move along as well thank you I have a question real quick so in regards to the trend of the final exam grade being within a few percentage points of the overall grade what's the what's the significance of that so what that communicates um our final exam is going to show what the skill levels are for that semester for that grade level right it's it's assessing them on the standards and skills that they should know for that semester so um when you're talking about a proficiency scale it's going to show like the student is proficient in the standards and skills for 10th grade they're approaching proficiency or they have um not met proficiency at all or they have like a Mastery level of proficiency and what we saw is that the letter grade and the proficiency we matching so a student who is proficient is not getting a failing grade um or a student who maybe um is showing Mastery level proficiency probably should have a around an A in that class because that's about like the uh parallel we're seeing that those numbers are matching up and I mean she did share there it's within a percentage point which is statistically appropriate uh what we don't want to see and what we unfortunately have seen um historically and I think happens everywhere this is not a Gilbert Public Schools thing is if a student is showing that they are passing their final exams and even State assessments say they're highly proficient and they're getting an F in the classroom it just warrants the question of why like what's going on and it can happen the other way around there could be a student getting an a in a classroom and maybe they're minimally proficient on everything so then we get parent calls in the summer when they get their test scores they're like my students gotten an a all year long and they're minimally proficient on the test what's going on and so we have to do better and when there is a closer alignment it's showing that the grade again is communicating the feedback that hey this is where you're at in learning um so it is really neat when you see that alignment um happen and I I know Mr Dumis that's something that you have seen some of that correlation as well I don't know if you were going to hit on that but maybe you can share just another example in addition to anything else for this slide so I'm a little bit of a data person sometimes um so I did a comparison between the uh the final score and then I did grade distribution so looking at how that went for every core subject for all of our high schools so I just pulled all the data and did it myself cuz I just needed to see um what that looked like in the areas that what what I've seen is a bump from from I would say the bottom up from the minimally proficient into the partially and the partially into the other Prof uh to to the proficient level and then a bump all the way up where that hasn't happened I can tell a story as to why that didn't take place or if it there are a couple of instances where I didn't see the growth that I thought I did and now I've got to go dive into what's going on there then again we're asking the question why so I did that for all of those and then I also looked at year-over-year finals data to try to see any trends that went along with that along with looking at grade distribution from all schools um I did it for the 4 and A2 9 13 and A2 uh and semester to look and compare how we did and because as an educator and as a leader if there was something that this was doing that was going to hurt kids we just i' just spun on it and we' have been going 180 uh it didn't show that at all our students are not only being successful uh they are we're we're pushing from an area that students that typically get a little bit ignored and they're having more success it's like built-in interventions for us um so that that's kind of the the comparisons that I go into but I kind of wanted to share the stakeholder piece for me uh what I would say I needed to do what we had to do we put this in a little faster than I would have liked to um and then when we came back we trained our teachers on it our teachers went and delivered it to our students our students then went home and delivered it to their parents and you can imagine that I had had a few myths to dispel um and I spent the first quarter which I think was the longest of my 32 years in education uh trying to work through those myths I believe I made four or five videos uh to kind of talking about this sending it out to the community every parent that called they had either a phone call back from me or when invited to come in for a meeting um my site Council amazingly blossomed to about 30 people um people were coming in and having conversations but we talked through it I guaranteed them and I showed them the data that show that I just talked about uh as data points over time uh that that was a lot to do to get us to the point um that we are as a campus and with our parents but I also went out and met with every leadership group of students uh I met with a variety of students any students that had questions I went to them um I was presenting to 40 I pulled uh all of our leadership teams our student council our link crew our radiate pulled them all into the auditorium and met with them talked to them across the board uh to answer questions to see what what they had concerns with um feedback from them and a very open door policy so they can come and and talk to me any time the concern was just what I didn't know and what I didn't understand and some of the language once that settled they're settled in and don't seem to be having any any kind of adverse issues right this at this point in time at least that's the feedback that I'm getting from them and then from my site counsel which is back to a more manageable number now um but it was good and it was good to hear back from them because what happened was that listening drove change so where we started isn't where We've Ended up and I think that being uh willing to listen to parents willing to listen to students willing to listen to staff and and legitimize the concerns that that they felt uh gave us a product that I think is good for us to move forward was so so with that I will just share um what Mr Dumis just was hitting on our parent group by the end of our third evening and we spent a lot of hours uh our parents when we showed the one pager that we ended up finalizing and that's in front of you um they were we asked is there anything on here we thought maybe there'd be like some and they were like no that is perfect they're very receptive to it they're excited about it and the quote that a parent had said that has stuck with me is um we didn't even know some of that stuff and if we would have just known we would have known how to better support and guide our students it would have eliminated some of those frustrations and then they go to admin and then they've got to include the te like there's all this runaround and by the time they like maybe did understand it you're two three weeks past something and it it is it still relevant and so uh the parents truly feel that having something like this in front of them where they know what the expectations are for the grading upfront is all they are asking for and so even with the fact that we had some schools that chose to do this at the start of the year the feedback that we got to from them and then also others were if we would have had it a little ahead of time it would have been nice so that's one of the reasons that we want to choose to push this out in the fourth quarter so that all of our families see it now and it does I mean the beginning of the year it's a lot for parents students a lot of information so we do have a plan to kick off that communication pretty short here so um that concludes the presentation that we have but we were really excited to share and um want to answer questions so please let us know um what we can answer for you all well thank you so much that's a tremendous amount of work over several years and so I think this is so great and I think that it really sets us up for student achievement and academic Excellence which you know our main focuses I I think philosophically that's fantastic appreciate you kind of taking the arrows on the implementation side and hopefully other schools can learn from that because I think that's the key and like you said that is um we can have like a a beautiful uh document and philosophy but it's it's how it's implemented um and so I do still have some questions on on that I guess as far as so so a few things so like when we go through and we have like the recommendations uh in in one of these presentations where there's like recommended not recommended so are these guiding principles and recommendations or these rules and and policies and and who's who's deciding that yeah so they are not rules and policies uh they truly are recommendations in um alignment to our beliefs and so um our administrators have been trained and have been put in a place to help guide their teachers to understand those pieces um some of them there are campus-wide decisions so I know some principles like they it makes their job easier if they do have a consistent practice but at the district level we don't we didn't feel it was necessary to to do that so depending on which practice there's five of them depending on which of those five um they they kind of take on a little bit of different direction and I will say each culture of each campus um changes some of that as well so truly uh guiding practices when it comes to that so is that campus to campus is it Department to department is it teacher to teacher like within Highland English Department if a teacher you meet and go over all these scen and the teacher's like yeah I don't want to do any of that and they they can do their own thing so I guess where I like academic freedom like what who decides bottom line like in a classroom what the policy is so we started it kind of goes back to the trajectory of where we've come from so it did start where it was kind of just putting it in the hands of teachers and hoping that they would all magically it would go great um and then we found with the lack of consistency that we did need to go PLC this year currently we have asked that those decisions be at the at least department and or campus so there are some of our schools right now I would say it's probably 50/50 that are departmental and they feel really good in supporting where the department chooses to be there are other campus that that feel their leadership is that they want that schoolwide we have asked them especially with going to a common syllabus because it's more to manage that way on our leaders um and some of it is like nuances so it's like let's get everybody together and see if we can agree kind of similar to what we did from the district lens um we are guiding the campuses to move toward a campus-wide decision on those practices uh just because again it it becomes a lot and if you allow for seven I mean our campuses have multiple departments so say you have seven different practices are you going to be able to Monitor and support that so we're we're to the point where we are going to that campus-wide um but right now I would say it's about 50/50 departmental and uh campus wide and then absolutely so what I did was I the recommended not recommended I changed that verbiage on our our stuff to say aligned and unaligned so that just became where we went but it takes time to get your staff there we started when I came back to Campo started having conversations to get ourselves to that point we will as a school I I kind of think that this is overarching in a way and then the the details is where we get caught up in it by department and every department is going to be a little different so our departments will have guiding documents that will say in this department This Is How We Do retake and redo this is how we go about dealing with missing assignments the parent feedback that came out of that was very very positive that they like the idea that they can just go look so that would be attached to what the syllabus is as well so it will be an expectation schoolwide but how a English teacher does a makeup of a paper is going to look a lot lot different than maybe how a chemistry teacher makes up a lab so we have to have some variance within there but but but it's a great point because it is going to be a little bit different but we have to have a standard that we do schoolwide so yeah if I I guess I should have led with this is this is the issue I've heard the most about since becoming a board member by the the the most number of parents was was concerned about about this and so you kind of touched on a little bit and I guess if if we feel really great about these uh principles and everything the work the committee's done and and I do and I I think you guys do and should be proud why not make it a district policy is that like too heavy-handed or or what's what's the reason to not make it a district policy and to let I think I think you have to the Buy in I think that when you go we have to go slow to go fast and when you say to everybody okay this is the way you're going to do it now you're going to have Kickback and if you work slowly and get people to buy in that they see that this is a better way I think you'll have more consistency and they they'll do it more happily that that may be true that that's not what happened this year though like that's not what happened and I will say that um one of the things that we have learned is that we have slightly shifted some of these documents year-over-year based on feedback that we get from all of our stakeholder groups and I think for the better um so we actually discussed in our committee that we are going to attach the one pager the syllabus and our grading uh all of the practices to course description books so that this is stuff that we continue the practice of reviewing it annually um there has been feedback that was given for example changing the terminology over and tweaking it and so we we don't if we don't have a process where we annually can maybe tweak some things or change up what we believe in um we'll lose sight of it and so now moving forward in November it will come to the board as a part of the coursebook process and the feedback we actually got from parents and teachers was could we even include this stuff in the coursebook so it's all together and I think that's great um I think right now uh when I share that it has been a journey even getting to the point where we are making these configurations consistent um these are I am a person I go like 110 mes an hour all the time and so when we first started this work I actually was like let's do that now I I think I probably would have been run out like we we really weren't at a place where um it was and that's kind of how I feel with some of these pieces right now I feel we are leaning on and trusting our teachers and because the training we have to do a better job of making sure that that training is there to build up and Foster our teachers uh and as professionals like they have a lot that they like this is one teacher who has made a huge impact on one campus and so to tap into that teacher leadership and we think it will be more authentic and then in a year's time if we feel like there's maybe uh two areas that we're like o we see the evidence is actually supporting that our grades are better aligned when we do it this way then we would maybe add some of those things more at the district level to the consistency page that we already have um but right now because we have so many different ways we're trying to hone in on what those practices are and within each of the ones that we do give the district autonom or the campus autonomy to there are if I'm being honest um multiple ways to do some of those things and so until we have evidence and data to maybe show why one way isn't working I don't know that we're at a place that I want to take that autonomy away from the campus teachers and and I know you're I know you're very aware of of of everything I think for me and and I think that teacher Buy in is super important and I think teachers should have input and teachers should have time to come to hopefully a consensus and there'll be some disagreement I think the the problem is from what I've heard and and kind of gathered is that there's not been alignment with amongst teachers there's not been alignment with the teacher and the principal um at certain campuses yet things were implemented and so I think when you have that misalignment but you go ahead and imple like I feel like the alignment should come first and then the implementation um and so I just knowing that this was implemented at a at a small number of campuses this year right and um you know I'm aware of one campus where there's um a lot of issues but I'm sure there was at at several um I'm just worried about implementing a districtwide and and minimizing those issues at every campus well and we we we learn so much as we go through so when I shared that several years ago uh we were excited to give the campuses and the teachers the autonomy to go about this at their own pace and choose which practices they wanted to phase in if I if I were to be honest like I that almost caused more pushback because the campuses and the parents did talk and then it looked like well why are we being expected to do it this way and we're not so again the reporting part of it and like what goes into the grade book and how we do it that is the part that I think we are able to manage and uh Monitor and again it's something we can take off teachers plates so all of this will be pushed out through Infinite Campus with our um technology department and then teachers will no longer have to set up their own grade book so even like there's human error when when we have individuals do that so we really were looking at like what can we do to save teachers time to take off their plate in times that like maybe there's some human error that happens inadvertently um and then we recognize that we could make decision to even push more districtwide but if the if the training and the understanding is not there then it's not authentic and so we really want to our focus is to take that approach of like we need to do a better job of the training so uh we have a leadership team that is made up of teaching and learning uh our other assistant superintendant and we just this last week threw it all out there and our entire PD plan next year we outlined like what are our three top priorities and because we do get a lot about the grading grading was the number one um topic on that so it will be interwoven into everything that we do uh which next year that'll be the first time that we are going about it the way that I'm describing so uh we have a lot of work to do we are really excited about where we've been and where we've come but we still have so much work to to be done so yeah you should be EXC I mean these documents are I mean they're amazing this is what Gober public school should be about so I think it's great um just if just one last because I think for for most most parents and most students they're they're not going to look at these documents right like their question is can I turn in homework late can I retake a quiz can I retake a test and so is there there's not there's there's not specifics about that is that is that still going to be different class to class or Department to Department um it will be consistent at the campus level and that will be in the syllabus so I know I just gave the template but these will expand to hit on all of those pieces that you just hit okay but it will be campus consistent correct Okay and like the principles are all bought into that and yes we did a whole activity with principles um a couple weeks ago uh based on how a committee meeting went with parents to just be real with the principles to say hey we wanted to make sure they were aware of what's going on and Mr Dumis actually is going to be running a leadership series for all of our secondary administrators um since he has kind of of led the way and has a lot of historical experience with this and so he's going to be taking that on that means well I found out today but um congratulations but yeah thank you um but at the same time I I think some of the things that were a little missteps were things that like I said as Educators these some of these terms some of the things that we assume um that led to some of the miscommunication was things that we'd been doing but parents didn't know I mean they're not going to they're going to look at the grade and they're going to look they're not going to see that we've been labeling formative and summative in the in the Gradebook and we've been making some of these changes that's all very understandable but at the same time um I think that we've learned so much that I think that our experiences can really help our peers at our other schools make this a lot smoother the ones that go through the wall first get the bloodiest and and the grayest air I hear you so I I do have a couple questions I I haven't heard as much about that this year because I think this is also something that students have to grow into and get used to because it's more I think our previous grading was more carrot and sticks and this is more you need to do this or you need to be engaged in this you need you they have to have a desire to do it so I want to I want to ask a few questions about things that have been that I've heard um and one was you know what if what if students don't finish work what what if they don't turn things in in that 50% how how do we handle that so we get students on the page of you got to get your work done and you got to do your best want me to answer that sure yes so the 50% and you're talking about the 50% F yes okay so that's a variance across campuses we were all allowed that we don't do that at Campo so under zero is a zero in our grade book okay um but on the other side and this this is a bad it sounds like a bad word it's really not it's a academic intervention but we started calling this is another thing we learned we started calling academic referral but it was a referral for assistance from the teacher to administrators and to teacher leaders that this student isn't engaging in their learning they're getting behind in their learning they're not coming in for help how do we start start there and then that administrator will take that referral maybe just a simple conversation with the student and then we see how they progress next so it's an intervention step for us if that student and we find out that there's something going on at home or there's a situation where they maybe they need some support outside from a behavioral health standpoint we can connect them with the right people on our campus so the academic referral allows I should we we'll rephrase it but it's working on our campus right now because we don't really share it out with students but we just say we're going to get you some academic support so that then comes in we're able to provide some some one-on-one support for that student and then get them on the radar and then check in with your other teachers to see if this is similar behavior in other classes so that's the that's the starting point and that wasn't where we started that was a byproduct of some of the concerns that came out of of what teachers were sharing with us and concerns that they had so okay thank you and so the this another question I had was um I have had some complaints that students don't they're like oh I if I don't do well on the test I can take it again so they don't really study and prepare for the test they take it and they don't do well but then they never come back having prepared to take it again they just it's it's water under the bridge and they move on so how do we address that issue so in in this case this is where we're getting different from we're going from grading to instructional model and instructional practice so on our campus we give an assessment they take it the first time we look at the score then we intervene and we work with building up whatever skills or deficits they have um students technically if they were doing really well and they got a 98% they could elect to go into some kind of enrichment activity we're not there to where we're really good with that that's not a skill set that we developed but that will come out of our professional development for next year so they take the first assessment we look at where they're at then they have some time to remediate and then they take a second so that is built in and it's done within classroom time um that's what we're starting to find that's why I believe we have the numbers at at the students that typically wouldn't opt in to retaking are kind of forced into the retake and they're forced into their own intervention so that's how we've done it on on our campus that would probably look different on different campuses but yes um I do think that that's a concern that every every campus is going to have to figure out how they're going to I mean I think really it's part of the student has to learn that yes I need to prepare I need to study before I take a test um and and if they've done the work they should be pretty well prepared but it doesn't hurt to to have a little review um my other question is um of course we've moved a far uh distance in what we tried to do so so what is the um how are we going to keep this going and helping students and teachers to be on this page of grading as we you know we are going to have turnover we have older teachers retiring and newer teachers coming in and so we do have and I'll defer to these ladies but we have included this is now a session when we onboard any new teacher into our district this is a part of their um onboarding so that every new teacher receives this but then again at the campus level that professional development and working with our pgd department again the all of our departments work together to make sure that we're meeting the needs based on what struggles or training that teacher needs that's kind of big picture but um the two as an instructional coach and even teacher you guys can add to that being an instructional coach I think not having this position before when all this was rolled out it gives me the flexibility to meet with teachers if they come on on fall break like they missed maybe the July PDS um having a hub that those teachers can then go back to look at those presentations but I would definitely say it would become the role of the instructional coach on that campus to be that person that then reaches out I know I meet with a lot of my teachers that are just new to the profession but also just new to your campus they come on they later um they don't have the background that we have so that just falls on then my responsibilities when working with those new teachers for sure okay okay I appreciate those answers thank than you I do think it's something where students are going to have to grow families are going to have to grow and we're going to have to really communicate to help them understand that you know this is a different kind of learning we're we're really focused on you learning and doing my turn um I have a couple questions too a couple of them kind of piggyback off what Jill just said have you received any um feedback or anything from parents Andor students about about the no zero policy because I know I've heard that um depending so I guess I should ask this first is 50% like the absolute lowest that students can get not necessarily so um when you when you look at that part of the grading beliefs it it is one suggestion uh that you can use a 50% when you think of like a rubric that makes each letter grade the same calculation so then they're each 10% so some campuses have chosen to change that setting in Infinite Campus whereas other campuses are focusing on like more of the Learning Cycle where it's embedded in and they do give zeros um and we have a lot of teachers that are I would consider it um uh or research set proficiency based grading so they grade everything off of a rubric so still zero to 100 but if they're using a rubric to grade it it helps to categorize kind of where they're at on like a proficiency scale right so I guess the question I have then is what happens if you have a student who say has earned a 26 did the work turned in everything and then the student who didn't do the work now you have nothing to give them and they get a 50% I guess that's where the confusion is cuz I've just heard that it's like okay well this kid put in the time and the effort but he got a way lower grade than the student who didn't do anything and I would say not necessar I mean I I think that it's a perception that that's what's happening but I actually I'm going to for to Shannon because she as a classroom teacher does use the 50% and I think her valid like real lived experience will help to kind of just share that from like a true teacher perspective so do you want to share yeah um okay so um the 50% Baseline like Christa said is just waiting the categories of the letter grade the same um in order to not like make a grade so um unrecoverable right so that's part of in the chart that you're looking at there's a video that's a screenshot from that video of that research that's done that shows if we're averaging a grade um and a student consistently is getting an 85 and 85 and 85 and 85 and then suddenly misses something for whatever reason that might be they were absent they were out sick with the flu you know something happened they just bombed a test whatever and they get a zero and how that disproportionately affects the grade right um so that's where that is coming from if a teacher is doing 50% um like for for my class for example where the floor is a 50% that that is the floor so there it every every grade that I give there there isn't any there isn't a 26% that doesn't exist right um and that comes from proficiency scale so that's that's doing all the math for like um multiple choice tests for example for like our our district cuas right um those are on proficient skills and um you can think of like the example I always use when I'm coaching my department in this is the act right and the ACT is a is a proficiency scale if you get a 36 on the ACT it doesn't mean you got every question right right that's even though that's 100% um and then the proficiency scale like for the AP exam right is um they they use a proficiency scale so a 50% is actually what you get for pass that's what passing is um and and so just understanding like the difference between um proficiency scale and then traditional grading reporting that is something that I realized right away in implementing these policies that my teachers needed a lot more education on so that is something that I focused on as a department share um just because I have a lot of knowledge in it um this is uh something that I've done other districts I've been in they they implemented this as well and so I had the some of the background knowledge already and so I've been working with teachers consistently to just educate them on the different types of grading and scales and the math that goes along with that for understanding that so I do think what chrisa said like if if that's happening where a teacher is giving a 50% because somebody didn't turn something in and then somebody else is getting a 26% on the same assignment that they did turned in that's a Mis that's a misconception okay yeah um so but then the question is if they are able to do something over and over and over again then that it the floor of 50% may not necessarily be necessary because if they got a zero and you say you can redo the assignment then they should be able to earn x amount of points so if you have the rules of assignments can be turned in as many times as needed or whatever the allotment is cuz it says right like regardless of how slowly they get there so I guess that's determined based on campus and syllabus um it's still just I don't know it was just very confusing because it I have had the experience where it has has been a little bit where it me it it messes with things it doesn't necessarily keep it even Keel so I was just curious as to why you know if you're allowed to turn things over turn things in many times over and it doesn't really you know doesn't matter then why bother with the 50% floor when if to me it sends the signal to students well I get 50% whether I put in the effort or not yeah if I can jump in here I I I think I agree so there's two two schools of thought one is a 26 is an F no credit and a 50 is f no credit so whatever your floor is if it's if a student's doing doing some work and getting a 26 or no work in getting a 50 they're still both failing right but I do agree that that this um that this grading method which includes retests and allowing students to turn in missing missing work missing work late work things like that kind of makes the the the the 50% floor obsolete there's no there's to me it doesn't really seem like there's a purpose in having both because like like uh like you said said if they can redo it then it's not going to be a zero it's going to be whatever the teacher the teacher allows and then um and then I I also understand the the perspective of you know it it it doesn't make it it makes it easier for a student that wants to to turn on the gas towards the end of the semester to catch up maybe they they had an epiphany and they're like oh man I need to get my life together I need to catch up and now I only have to catch up from a 50 from a 50 instead of a zero um I get that but then also our our teachers do have the the flexibility to offer those students whatever work they want to and grade those grade that work however they want to so it's it's yeah I see some some philosophical issues with 50% being the floor and when in when in when combined with with the the beliefs that we're trying to that we're trying to get all campuses to adopt so I am I anyway so I'm going to say that I agree with what both of you saying there not a there's not a difference and I think it's how we're going about getting there but we allow zeros but I also so when we started this I knew that my staff would probably really I they did and I knew that they would push back on the 50% off um so we went a different route and I said you're going to have to get to the point that now we're doing retakes now we're having extra opportunities so we did that in said very few times will you see a zero in the Gradebook because kids have multiple opportunities to do it the other part that we do have to worry about our teachers is and what I've found over the last couple years is that teachers were H having until the end of the semester to make up work and that's taxing on teachers so we do need some deadlines we do need to set some deadlines so we've moved this year through this process to when the unit is completed that's a last opportunity for you to make up that work so it just we just need some deadlines and and and they're I mean they're hard but if there's an situation they're soft so I don't think you're wrong I think that the way that they're doing it um at Highland and In Pockets at different places on different campuses it's not wrong necessarily it's just that philosophically to get my campus to move as fast as I wanted them to move we had to make this other aspect of what you're describing be prominent and be something that we all agreed upon and that's where our staff went right but if the goal is consistency across the board if there's 50% over here and zero is over there and your students are having a harder time being able to hit the gas and make up the difference and your students aren't doesn't that kind of kill the consistency coal I I would agree that it would if if we were in a situation where teachers weren't actively going back and we do test replacement too so we're looking at um how we did on that final unit exam and did I get a 40 or a 30 on an assessment that was covered the same standards down the road then we'll go back and replace that because that covered that standard and and at some point in time we ended up getting to that point so you know not everybody finishes the race at the same time we want to get to that end when that unit is completed whatever that final grade is can go back on our campus and replace grades so um there's just there is just a lot of intricacies I think that that's a conversation for us going back to Dr robison's question when there are some pieces that when I say where our different campuses in their culture are at I will say even with that there are some campuses where Campo it was very much like we're ready to like enforce the Learning Cycle and test retakes and they had uh Bank of extra tests and they were good we also have campuses that are more stressed about the test retake and have not had issues with the 50% because in their world they don't have extra tests and they're like well who's going to create these extra tests for us to do it so that's where with some of these pieces with having the recommendation and not and really trying to support to some extent where some of our campuses are it there when I say that there's different ways to get to some of those things from my perspective I care more about um being within those parameters of the best practices and again when we revisit in a year or maybe in two years from now maybe we get to a point where once we have some of those more tests created and um we are uh doing some work groups with teachers um um even our common uned assessments that we're creating there's a lot of work being created right now that we may be having a totally different conversation um in the future but for right now depending on where some of our campuses are some of them again are very passionate it's funny because I didn't even plan this but um Shannon would voice one way and Dumis would feel different and that just shows the differences with the different campuses um and and I think at the end of the day it is about like the grade reflecting the learning and the proficiency and truly depending on which um Avenue you take there are a few ways to get there what I think matters most in our for our stakeholders and our community is making sure that it's clearly communicated and that our practices aren't penalizing and hurting students and if we can get to where a whole campus is doing something um consistently and in the best interest of our students um then I think that that's a win and then I think we just continue to have that conversation so right now I still think there's work to be done to even get to where we're um adhering to the things that you even outlined as you were kind of debriefing on that page yeah no I I I definitely think you guys you know are on the right track in a lot of ways I love the fact that um I was talking with curriculum instruction the other day and just aligning things for teachers and having that one pager and having those guidelines so that everybody kind of knows parents know like putting all of the stakehold holders on the same page I think is fantastic so that's you know it's awesome so I was just noticing some nuances that I wanted to to ask that's and I I do appreciate it I wrote that down and I think too uh we did share with the parents uh that are very passionate I uh joked that if they well I wasn't joking but I shared with them that if they wanted to bring a friend to the last meeting and they brought friends to the last meeting so uh one of the things that we are going to continue moving forward is the committee work we are at a point where we do want to include parents and stakeholders in that ongoing and I'm going to kind of piggyback off to something Mr Duma said earlier we truly are proud and some of us have been involved in this work for years um I feel we have made more progress and have made this more meaningful and I'm personally more proud of it and I feel like that is because of the parent and Community feedback that we had at the table and my my only regret up to this point is maybe not including them sooner so moving forward we plan to have them in and I we have a a running agenda and I'm going to add some of the things that you shared on to that to just see uh where we're at so thank you for that feedback yeah I think I think just what you said I think that this um I mean these one page documents are so great and I think it is it just it's not just clarifying it's like substance and I think it really does focus on learning which is the overarching goal but clarifies on grades which are important as well so I think it's great that IT addresses both those things um I I think you know this but I'll just state it like you you can't overc communicate about this and so I I think to all stakeholders I think if just overc communicate and I think I expect more out of our high schoolers than our Junior highers I I don't think you know a couple days after curriculum night for parents we should tell the seventh grade students about a grading policy change but not tell parents so I think for our like seventh graders like and for our high school we should be communicating to parents as well um but I think if we can just really overc communicate over the next months before next school year I would agree so yeah like a chance I have question kind of kind of going back to to these forms so are these going to be you said like it's per campus per Department that may you know may want to use these recommendations so will this this be communicated to everyone and then the Departments or the campuses will decide whether they Implement those direct so everything that's on the one page and specifically the categories and percentages that will be pushed out and mandated districtwide to everybody so our Tech team is actually putting that into Infinite Campus so that people can't bypass it and change it like and the intention was to save teachers time and to eliminate the errors that just happened uh but also to be fully transparent it is for accountability uh as well and we all need that in all areas so it helps us to Monitor and track that to make sure that our what we're saying is actually accurately in there okay so I hope that helps anything else from anyone okay well thank you very much we know this was a real uh a real labor of love um and and pain and sweat and tears I'm sure they'll be presenting this tomorrow also to the parent Council teacher Council support staff counsil as well so great well good well thank you very much um if we have any questions as board members uh followup questions who should we reach out to myself please Dr Cox okay all right thank you again thank you thank you thank you for all your work well done guys thank you uh I don't believe so nope all right that with that uh we will adjourn our work study and we will now move into our brief board business meeting uh which I will call to order and we'll ask um Miss Wilson to uh for roll call Mr Chad Thompson here Mrs Shaina Murray here Dr Blake Robinson here miss Jill humph here Mr Jesse Brainard here Mr President all board members are present you have a quorum thank you very much uh agenda item number five Proclamation National School counseling week turn it over to Dr McCord thank you Mr President govering board members it is National School counseling week and um we really want to thank all of our counselors for all the hard work uh that they put in each and every day I think a lot of times um they think people just assume they're there just to change a schedule and they do so much more than that and we appreciate them and uh just want to read this Proclamation for them whereas school counselors are employed in public and private schools to help students reach their full potential and whereas school counselors are actively committed to helping students explore their abilities strengths interest and talents as these traits relate to Career awareness and development and whereas school counselors help families Focus on ways to further their academic career and social and their emotional development of their child and whereas school counselors work with teachers and other Educators to help students explore their potential and set forth their realistic goals for themselves and whereas school counselors seek to identify and utilize Community Resources that can enhance and complement comprehensive School counseling programs and help students become productive members of society and whereas comprehensive School counseling programs are are considered an integral part of our educational process that enables all students to achieve success in school therefore I Shane McCord superintendent Gilbert Public Schools do Proclaim uh February 3rd through the 7th 2025 as National School counseling week again thank you to all of our school counselors thank you very much I feel like we should have after you made that Proclamation we should like cheer or something like that thank you yeah our school yeah let's do it again we'll reset uh yeah we'd like to thank all of our school counselors they uh help our students a tremendous amount uh moving on to consent agenda item number six I'm sorry agenda item number six our consent agenda is there a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda items as they are outlined on our uh as they are agend presented on our agenda so moved thank you Miss Hum is there a second second thank you Dr Robinson all those in favor of approving tonight's consent consent agenda items as outlined uh please say I I any opposed nay none okay then that passes thank you uh agenda item number seven uh fiscal year 2025 revised rised budget number one is there a motion to approve the fiscal year 2025 revised budget number one so moved thank you Mr brard is there a second second thank you Miss Humphries is there any discussion regarding the revised budget number one I I do want to say that um I really appreciate the attention that um we get so many reports and such detailed reports and we're on top of things and and I'm really grateful for that thank you Miss Humphries I think we all Echo that those sentiments uh any other any any other discussion on this agenda item okay and call for a vote all those in favor of approving the fiscal year 2025 revised budget number one say I I any opposed say nay and that passes 5 to zero great and last but not least adjournment is there a motion to adjourn our meeting tonight so moved thank you Dr Robinson is there a second second thank you Miss Murray all those in favor of adjournment please say I I me opposed all right thank you very much everyone e

practice 7:30 wait 8:30 to 2:30 school and then from 2:30 to 3:00 to 5:30 practice again and then sometimes after that they go and cheer for another one of the teams from me the sideline the the the uh the Baseline they've been at the pool cheering they've been at the golf course cheering um they truly support the what we do as as a community as a blackhaw community and they are uh they make me uh very proud they make our school very proud they make our community very proud the whole time they're doing this they maintain a 3.5 team GPA so I am so very proud of this group of young ladies and I want to introduce you to the 2024 2025 AIA division one small group show cheer champions [Applause] are you ready for a picture or are you going to say more couple more things okay so after tonight again the the selfless nature of these ladies they're going to leave here because they just finished practice they came here they're going to leave here they're going to go back they're going to cheer for a basketball game they're going to get up tomorrow they're going to go through school they're get on flight they're going to go to Orlando and they're going to compete at the Nationals in both show cheer and game day cheer which they qualified for earlier this year so it uh just uh just just life as they know it and um and again so very proud of [Applause] them Mr stangle should be up here [Applause] your steps your steps they've got quite the reputation and I mean a good one so let's go with our points of Pride let's start with chaperel Elementary principal Chris Hansen and assistant principal Terry [Applause] pepper thank you all right good evening Madame President members of the board and cabinet my name is Christine Hansen and I am the proud principal of Chael Elementary School my name is Terry pepper I'm the principal over chel oh thank you thank you it is our extreme pleasure to be here this evening to recognize four very special people in what we call the Shark Tank uh we often say one team one dream and we could not do what we do without every single person in that shark tank so let me kick it off please with our certified staff of the month Mr Robert olette all right Mr O uh Mr O is currently a sixth grade special education teacher um on our campus he's been at cherel for quite some time um he's also our edte lead he facilitates professional learning for our staff he is our purple star school point of contact he's a highly decorated uh veteran himself which we're very proud of uh but what is so special about Mr O is he lives by the saying C need fill Andy which we say at chapparel um and whenever we give him a little shout out I will always hear my teachers in the audience say that's our Superman he's our Superman and Mr O you absolutely are because he sees a need he feels a need whether it's literally ding digging trenches in the courtyard to make sure our sidewalks don't get flooded or hanging in a bird feeder to help a student find her genius you name it he's done it I could be up here for a very long time so Mr O please just know we appreciate you and thank you so much for representing our Shar tank you get to stand up here uh Mr O who did you bring with you this evening I brought my wife Marty and my oldest son [Applause] Ben all right um I have the honor of introducing our classified points of Pride recipient this year and that is Miss Betty Sanchez so come on up [Applause] Betty so Betty is a Pera in our crosscat program she services and and supports um some of our students with the highest needs um she shows up every day she's been on our campus for years she shows up every day with her patients um and just you can feel the love um emanating from her for her students for her colleagues and just our chapero campus so um we love seeing her every day big smile we don't hold it against her she's a Dodgers fan um too much but um we just really appreciate all she does and we couldn't do without her so thank you Betty Miss Betty who did you bring with you this evening I brought my husband Lis and my daughter Biana thank you all right next we would like to honor our points of Pride student Miss Delila palifox come on up [Applause] Delila Mr Lila is currently a fifth grade student in the the Shark Tank and we are so very proud of her she serves on our student Lighthouse team and it has been so much fun to watch her find her Voice this year uh habitate for those of you who who know the habits um a quick just a quick example um and Delila certainly leads by example I had asked her and another student to help us prepare for a video um that we were going to use in a presentation and and I gave them late notice right before we went on October break I called called them back after break and was ready to go through kind of what we needed from them well Delila and her friend already had a plan they had it all laid out they were ready to go I said well let me see what you got and they they nailed it they nailed it um so to watch her speak in front of actually I believe it was um Mr Armstrong and our and our superintendent a group that that we were hosting so I was so proud of you and it's been so much fun to watch you find your voice and continue to lead and be that light that inspires others all [Applause] right Delila who did you bring this evening I brought my family with um my mom my older brother and my dad job [Music] [Applause] girl thanks Mr all right and last but not least um we'd like to recognize our volunteer uh points of Pride um and that is Miss Rita Baldwin [Applause] so miss Rita is the grandmother of a couple of our sharks in the tank um and over the past couple years she has really um embedded herself in our PTO um she uh comes around campus and just brings her smile and positive energy she's willing to show up um and support um anytime anywhere any need um that there is um she brings us little treats and things like that which is always appreciated but um we just really appreciate um her passion for our students in our campus um and appreciate all that you do Miss Rita so thank you all right and she's got a crew with her so Rita who did you bring I have my granddaughters Briana and Nora my son John my daughter Anna and my son-in-law [Applause] Rob job [Applause] congratul than you yes thank you chaperel and next we have power Ranch Elementary with principal Michelle McNab and assistant principal Nicole [Applause] McCulla thank you for having us here Madame President board and cabinet we're happy to be here to recognize some amazing people at Power Ranch I want to start by recognizing our certified staff member Mr William [Applause] cesolini so he's known as Mr C at Power Ranch um and he's been a remarkable addition to our staff this year he's dedicated to inclusion and his positive attitude have significantly impacted our students behavior and fostered a respectful environment Mr C's efforts have made Power Ranch a better place through his service in the able classroom and our best buddies program and just helping students understand each other out and about on campus we are incredibly fortunate to have you on our team thank you Mr [Applause] C next up we'd like to recognize our classified staff staff member Mrs Heather paa [Applause] so Heather is a joyful warm and accepting member of our Panther family and she is incredibly loved by all she's creative enthusiastic and it shines through in everything that she does um Mrs P's dedication and joyful Spirit make our school a better place for both students and staff and I can't imagine her being anywhere else we appreciate you thank you [Applause] I apologize I'm new at this Mr C who did you bring with you tonight I brought my mom we I we live together and I take care of her and so I'm glad she came today my family wasn't able to come today due to prior engagements but they are here in [Applause] spirit our student that I'd like to recognize was unable to be here this evening but I do want to honor Kai Gallagher he's an exceptional student and human on our campus intelligent hardworking an incredible artist and he consistently always works to lift others up when so much in our world tries to tear our kids down so thank you Kai wherever you're at this evening thank you for shine being a shining example of kindness respect and hard work we're so proud to know you and have you at Power Ranch thank you Kai [Applause] and last but not least is our volunteer Miss Ally [Applause] Ratliff so I am honored to recognize Ali Ratliff for her outstanding cont contributions to our school community at Power Ranch Miss Ratliff takes immense pride in her role on the PTO board ensuring staff and students receive the support they need her passion and drive and unwavering focus on student well-being make her an indispensable part of our community and we are truly grateful for everything she does thank you Ally and who did you bring with you I have my handsome husband Greg and my oldest son Nash and my sweet friend Jackie here tonight thank you all good job sh e president Wade we have some exciting events coming up in the month of February beginning with next Tuesday um our business partner breakfast will be held at the power ranch Barn we're looking forward to having you guys and very many people in our community join us on that same day and the evening we have a parent event it's a virtual event dangers of Snapchat Wednesday February 12th we will celebrate Johnny's New Year at cornado Elementary this year it's different than what we've done for I don't know how many years board member Schultz you might you might know better than I do a long time so we're excited because it's going to be I say it's going to be more like a carnival atmosphere and so Coronado has stepped up to host and we look forward to you guys joining us if possible we also have preschool open houses ky's preschool openhouse is February 19th San's is February 27th and one of our most favorite events of the whole entire year is our best buddies carnal at Higley High School so if it works for your schedules Community to come join us um you will leave with the biggest smile on your face and your heart full that concludes upcoming events thank you so much Miss Richards next on the agenda are the requests to speak can you please play the video I think we we value input from our constituents this time on our agenda has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board those that wish to speak should have filled out speaker cards which are due prior to the start of our meeting members of the board may not discuss comment or take action on matters raised that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-4 31.0 1i action taken as a result of public comment will be be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date also we ask that audience members practice proper public meeting decorum refraining from either negative or positive responses including clapping or verbal outbursts to ensure fairness to All Points of View those that refuse to follow these rules may be asked to leave in accordance with policy bedh public particip ation at board meetings if considered necessary the governing board president shall set a time limit on the length of the comment period in order to ensure that each individual has an opportunity to address the board the president may also set a time limit for individual speakers thank you for your cooperation up first we have Stephanie Giddings I'm going to take that that Stephanie was unable to make it so we'll move on to the next one Christina Shope can you hear me now sorry about that members of the school board governing board and cabinet thank you for allowing me to speak today about the importance of maintaining the highly gifted think program the exceptional program is designed for students who qualify in all three areas of giftedness providing them with the exceptional education they need to they need to thrive excuse me cutting the think program would worsen could worsen our District's already declining student population as families May seek out other districts that offer similar specialized programs husd must remain competitive with surrounding school districts to attract and retain our talented students neighboring neighboring districts require highly gifted students to attend separate schools which can be challenging for families with multiple children by keeping the think program at Bridges Elementary husd offers a unique Advantage it allows families like mine to have all their children attend the same school regardless of their gifted status this simplifies Logistics and fosters a sense of community and belonging it's also important to recognize that gifted students should not have to wait until third grade to receive Services these students have unique needs that deserve to me met early the district must ensure these students have the resources and opportunities to reach their full potential gifted students are entitled to support just like those receiving sped speech and disability services in conclusion maintaining the think program is not just about providing an excellent education for our gifted students it's about supporting our families enhancing our District's appeal and ensuring that husd continues to be where every student can succeed let's work together to keep this invaluable program in place for the benefit of our children and our community thank you next we have Maryanne I know that the board is looking at to at moving the meetings back to 5:00 pm 5:00 pm.

so I'm assuming that's incorrect and I was going to look at the sign and I forgot so do you know what time it is Mick I'm 6m I will let you know just saw that I'm not going I was GNA say is there a place because I was looking today and there seems to be multiple old places to look at online for different events going on in col is there a current place where people can go so I know from the district lens um once the information is shared with Seth and and the superintendent's office it's pushed through um all of our social media Pages um and then also I know that individuals and I because I get them mi's team Marita sends it via parents Square as well so I don't know I mean you could talk about school based but District based as yeah I I know I think we're in the works of getting a new website platform and the old one I tried to be trained on last year and it it's a lot so I did a because there's a new one from 24 that has bricks on it that's that has like placeholders but no descriptions on the calendar oh I don't know about that one but um I was just curious I was looking today to be what time and I was like you really supposed to look you get the parents we do not I don't I get parents Square for middle school high school my students no so I know we're supposed to be getting it you should be we we'll double check we'll double check that okay would be great um I just wanted to note uh that some policies were updated we had a joint meeting with the region in ammer and several of our policies were updated at that time um we've decided to try to meet jointly when we have to do approvals of policies and a couple of other things so that it doesn't have to happen three different times at three different meetings so so far that's worked really well I think we did get rid of the one specific P yes yes thank you okay thank you for mentioning that um and I then I just wanted to say that we have the budget hearing which I believe is the 25th 20 I think 24 the 24 thank you okay and I just wanted to check Dr Z that that's going to be like a special meeting yes and that means that we can take qu I mean the people who come can ask us questions at that point in time is that correct right yeah yeah okay it'll be about um I think it's supposed to be half of the time um the ammer chair sent me the the write up on it and so we have to present and do our presentation and then public comment for about equal to okay so then that's then I have to reach out to the region and Mar will decide what that public comment time would be okay great thank you um all right that's my update um Mickey oh no do wether Rie have any updates um continue to the APA negotiations of continues to negotiate our meeting last week was postponed our meeting was not available and we have tomorrow okay but things are going really well good oh wait I can give you the real update so we have one of the things we have decided in our meeting is to have a joint statement that we write as an update at the end of every at the end we write together at the end of every meeting so our statement is good evening the negotiation team for the apaa 2025 2028 contract which includes apaa members District administration and school committee recently had a productive meeting we began by having every member of the team and the ground rules following this we identified and discussed various interests many of which both are left these interest were categorized into three phases one easy clean up phase two process or procedures and three economic issues our next meeting is scheduled for January 29th is one I got postponed during which we will finalize all interest for discussion after this point know interest will be introduced and we can will continue to work towards alignment instes thank you okay so we'll move on to the principal update Mickey okay um so I kind of have it in different categories students first uh the PTO has been running a readathon and it has blown away expectations um the students are so into it it's really fun and um the PG member who's really taken it and run with it has been more than amazing um to kind of coordinate with this monthlong readathon um we have a couple author visits uh one the PTO set up one I set up um so I can tell you more about the one I set up um the author is coming I coordinated with the library and the Council on Aging and they're the author's going to come and do two different readings lower grades and upper grades the book is called mending small things and it's about community and an elderly person um mending a stuffed animal for a younger person and so the Council on Aging is g to be coming and mending stuffed animals that the kids bring in and the librarian is so excited because she was she's gonna have a stuffed animal sleep over at the library so the public libraries and just in case you're wondering kids are not sleeping over at the library um but the stuff animals will and she's going to be posting on Instagram and whatever all social media the seff animals having their sleepover super cute um so I'm excited about that and then in between the two readings the author is going to do a like a lunch group with the older students on like a writing Workshop so the PTO um is helping to sponsor that and also um you know it was it's great that we're able to bring in the Council on Aging and the LI the public library because we've always been trying to do more community events um and then there's a bunch of things coming up like a walk ride stroll to school is coming up in the in the couple months from now but in preparation for for that the um Mass Department of Transportation is coming out and working with the PE teacher to do some bike safety some crossw pedestrian safety um and then mcats are coming so we're preparing for that did a little fighting with the computer yesterday trying to upload stuff um and luckily the kids it's not on their radar quite yet but they put it on their own radar in you know out of recess they talk about it unfortunately it's start getting stressed out about it um the school council met recently we sent out a parent survey um parent and um uh and a student survey and we divided the student survey in by younger and old to really get a sense of how students are feeling what they might need more of um and that was it was really helpful to start the conversations around that and the goal is to um create new school Improvement goals um so we're gonna we're working on that and you mentioned the Multicultural night and then the grant which is social justice um we're meeting a meeting with the staff in a couple weeks to think about how we want to use that because we have um done a lot of work on social justice and have a framework from which we've been working and um so that the next step would be how do we want to continue our work around that and money um and then the final thing is our Safety Committee has um met a few times we've met with the fire chief and the police chief and the safety protocols have been updated a little bit for the state and the police chief um and I are working on dates for them to come in and do a 4-Hour training so we have to kind split it up among days um but it's been really um I don't love having the safety meetings because you think of worst case scenarios but it's been really good to have them and in the past I I think our our planning around it hasn't been as deep as it should be should be um and so I'm hoping plan planned for the worst case and never have it so we're having lots of meetings around that and we had some tabletop um exercises which was a recommendation from the police and fire chief um with the staff and we went through you know different scenarios in different places of the building so don't want to think about it but have you okay and then next time we meet I'll give you some more updates on um the student academic growth the preliminary results um are looking really good um especially in math um so that's exciting I think the new curriculum is proving to be um very effective and accessible so that's really exciting so I can bring that next time okay any questions all right then we'll move on to mrct good afternoon um first off I like to just remind everyone that we're having our four towns meeting on Saturday um and so definitely I know that pum feeds into the it's really CRI difficult to just hear what's happening um I released a grim data um which CA a little tiic for some schools and and just so we ended up updating it that we were clear on the fact that there are multiple ways that we report um and that's a part of the findings that we have in terms of why schools may not have um any data in in the system I believe that we have about two cases that were in pelum um one case of bullying confirmed status um two are listed in the Raw data and it may be a duplicate and then one case is currently in progress so um we are working diligently um we had a couple PRS complaints that came in around this situation and we've been looking at our buling protocol um we did find the team and looking at I did find where there was some language that D requires that are that are intervention protocol did not in in include um but then we've been working also on what is the investigation protocol so there's a bullying um prevention plan but we need to kind of outline what the investigator is supposed to do and put that together so we have the tools we know need to talk about how to use the tools um so that first report um went out but we have some work to to continue to do um we also started our portrait of a graduate work so thank you Margaret for showing up from representing P um and so it was a really great two days of deep talk deep deep conversation diving into data and we agreed that we are actually going to take an additional step so what we're going to do next is host focus groups um and have like elementary teachers come in and different individuals come in to kind of get that buy in and roll up together so we're working with um Dr leand to kind of do that um and then for me I'm doing some opportunities I realized that um a lot of a part in building relationships in the first six or seven months of my leadership has really been at the central office or School leader level and so I'm actually hosting um some sessions at the different schools kind of more of a get to know you um and I believe hel is our first school up and it is on Thursday so um yes it is right th yes Thursday at 2:30 to 4: p.m um so I'll be here I'll be available I'll reach out my team and I reach out to Nikki to see where's a good place for me to centralize and and be and it's really so that individuals will get to know the real do z um also that Thursday we have our budget meeting um to start diving into the final pen budget so that we're ready for our budget book to be posted it has to be posted I believe seven days ahead of the meeting so um we have our budget meeting that same Thursday 11:45 a.m.

e their spot e look all right we'll go ahead and get started um like to welcome everybody to tonight's work study it's Tuesday February 4th I'm going to call this meeting to order and uh we will jump right into agenda item number two uh fiscal year 2025 revised budget number one presentation Dr McCord thank you Mr President governing board members we will also probably throw in just segue right into Maybe I'm Wrong 2.02 FY 2025 monthly financial report and second qual financials blah blah blah blah right that sound right yes sir cuz I've got Lauren and Jackie captured roll well Miss Betts uh go ahead and introduce Our Guest thank you U president Thompson Dr McCord board members I'm very happy to turn this present ation over to Miss Jackie Matman our Director of Finance as well as Lauren toska who most of the time is our budget manager but to date she's been doing lots of different things um however they're the ones who worked on the revised budget and so I will just be providing support tonight so with that I'm going to hand it over to M Matman great thank you Miss bets so we are presenting the fiscal 2025 revised budget number one we are not required to revise the budet budg at this time however uh after the final recalculation of fy4 we find it beneficial to um capture some of those new numbers so we'll share that exciting uh information with you now so tonight's report will include student student counts and ADM FY 2025 revised M and unrestricted Capital budgets we'll talk a little bit about other funds and finally average teacher salary so this is their ADM comparison FY 24 to fy2 Revis number one uh that top that top row is the inperson attendance so FY 24 revised number two was 30672 this the second column um as we work through the adopted budget the proposed and the adopted we're working from estimations only so because that work is done in July so we estimated uh 20 a TW sorry 1,200 student loss for the adop opted budget so that brought us down to 29707 uh now after the final recalculation of the fy4 um we are back up to 3,65 so there's an increase of 358 which is really um something to celebrate also uh Arizona online uh last year they were counted separately this year in fy2 they are counted as part of their uh brick and mortar schools this is a graphical representation of our ADM comparison year-over-year um you'll notice that we go back to FY 2019 as that was kind of our first quote unquote or last sorry normal year uh preco so you can see the um the differences year-over-year and again we're at 3,65 today okay all right a little bit about m&o um there's a lot happening here so bear with me um so similar setup as the previous um table we've got FY 2024 Revis number two all the way over to this revision I did want to point out that that um farri column is the difference between adopted and revise number one so when you're checking my math that's the math that we should be checking um so we did student count from adopted to Revis number one you'll see that we did increase um our weighted student count by 487 now this is different than ADM so average daily membership is a straight count whereas this is weighted so um just as a little bit of background all of our students are weighted based on different things so our K8 students have a weight of 1.158 whereas our 9 through 12 students have a weight of 1.