As I mentioned earlier, we have asked you to state your name and address, limit your comments on the proposed project for the financing and keep the comments to three minutes and avoid avoid being repetitive if you would please. Sign in chief. Okay, we do have three names on our signin sheet and um it's Nadia and I don't want to don't want to mispronounce your last name. Nadia. Could you say your last name for me, please? And I apologize. Gulava. Gulava. Well, hello everybody. Good evening. Um my name is Nadia Gulava. I'm HR director at the Royer Corporation where I proudly been employed and worked for eight years, past eight years, but most importantly, I've been a member of this community for much longer, for over 20 years and a great friend of Williams family. Uh we go way back. So, it is truly a special moment for me to be here, not only as a professional, but as a member of this community who is deep connected to this place.
Uh, we have um transportation, technology, etc. But the number, and it might be hard to read on the screen, uh, that that I really want to point to is that 48,787,000. That's what it's truly costing to run the National Public Schools. Because the budget we're asking for at town meeting is at 445. That is what the taxpayers are paying for. The remaining, you know, funds to pay for the school come from federal entitlement grants. They come from school choice. They come from fees that we charge families for transportation. Uh they come from state aid. Uh there so there are a lot of different things that come into this. There is a fear that things such as title one, title two, title three, title four, the ESSER, excuse me, the IDA EA money uh which is for special education and they fund a lot of salary positions.
Um and I think it's frankly insulting not to. Um so I hope that moving forward, you know, we can collaborate as a team, right? We're all on the same team and not make any quick decisions. I understand for next year like the way I see it, we've got two choices. Move ahead with the current plan or maintain status quo, but coming up with some third option doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now. It's April. We've usually run schedule scenarios by now. We can't do that because of the chaos that's happening. So, I just I hope that it can be settled and that all the stakeholders can be invited to the table for those conversations. Thank you for your time. I'm going to go take a breath now. [Applause] Anyone else in the room who would like to make public comment? Anyone on Zoom who'd like to make public comment, you could raise your hand, your digital hand.
It it makes it very challenging for our staff and our kids every day, but it's it's something we need to look at a little more in depth. Well, with clean eyes, we'll have that information by phone. Yes. So, so I'll be able to give you some updates with regards to the those questions with regards to the current infrastructure, replacement and maintenance practices, strategic planning for cost efficiency, um some potential external audits and oversightes, technology planning and external partnerships, and um some compliance and legal requirements that we have. Yeah, I guess I I know that's a challenge too with all this stuff. And I think one of the questions he had is, you know, um age of infrastructure. Yeah, that's part of the infrastructure. And um so I have some of it now, but I'm waiting for Matt to assign costs to each of those things.
Uh, we can just do everything in order. Okay. Um, all right. Nothing else. That is all for finance. Do we have any community meeting reports? I see our PTA representative is not here. Do you have anything like I will not do as good of a job as Lindsay? They just did their crispy cream fundraiser. They raised over 1300. They have their spring gala. Um, April 26th at Elicit. Um May 13th is the art show and ice cream social. Um the art teacher is working very hard. It's a pop art theme this year. She's got scavenger hunts. Um seems like lots of fun things. They're also doing a BOGO book fair for Scholastic, the same day as the um ice cream social. And then teacher appreciation week is the week of May 5th. Um so they are collecting donations. There's going to be a coffee truck one day.
And here's our simple onboarding process just so you kind of see what we share with the community. Um we try to keep it as simple as possible. We um this year we digitized everything. We onboard a brand new database that's specific for our mentoring and um all our applications go right into our database to try and simplify our process. So right now all our applications are online um you can sign up to be a mentor and also we have to sign up to sign up your child for a mentor as well. And um after the mentor signs up to be a mentor uh they get a link from our background check company and that um goes through their link so we don't have to get any personal information and we protect them from that. And then lastly we do a training with all our mentors.
But we continue to keep trying to fix everything at one time. I think the coaches both in language arts and math has helped me focus in on key pieces of the standards and really help me diagnose that with the teachers and using the data and I ready and also using the art core the the we call it help our students individually and I think one of the key pieces to all of this is the collaboration between the principal the coaches and the lead of language arts and the lead of math. Dr. Me and McKenzie have been crucial in getting their coaches to help me and help my staff. At this point, we've really changed the thought process of our staff on asking for help. Instead of bringing in the help, they're asking for the help. We haven't had that in the past. So, our professional learning communities have really expanded to teachers asking for the key pieces that they need to help their students go farther and get better.
We don't even know what what are they asking them in geometry that we need to do. So, I feel like that's kind of like a weakness in that already thing. Well, and also just I'm sorry I'm totally interrupting you. Depending on when they take the diagnostic and the way like a math textbook is laid out, geometry traditionally doesn't come until the end of the year. And so we take diagnostic number three last week. We still have weeks ahead of us. And so geometry probably hasn't even been touched yet. So we have to look at it. We only have this certain window. So you got a kid who's out for a week, that window's closed. You can't. So, I mean, I know there's ways cuz Miss that we could open that window for those kids to finish, but I don't know. Maybe our window needs to be here.
Thank you, Miss Walter Beak. Okay, time is up. Thank you for your comments, Mr. President. Madam President, could I add a little excess time? Could I yield my time to Miss Walterbe, please? Whatever time is. Go ahead. Thank you. Please don't expect us to do more and more each year with the same amount of resources or even less at times if you aren't willing to invest in us more and more each year.
[Applause] Hi, my name is Chloe. I'm also a senior and this is my fourth year doing cheer. Um I started cheer because my mom didn't pick between cheer and girl scouts but actually that doesn't matter. I have to do both anyways. But um I love this team. It's like basically my whole life. I just want to say thanks to the coaches and Al and Carol and parents and all the senior team members. I wouldn't be able to do anything without them. Imagine me on my own doing but it's very fun. I'm glad we ended with a big thank you. Yeah. I just want to say I'm super grateful for our booster club because without them last year none of this would have been possible because they bought majority of our mats with the help from the school and whenever we need anything we call them up and they said yeah you got it that easy and without them it wouldn't be possible.
So that's our real our real major concern to be honest. PCSO you said would is there either there depending on the situation or they have identified officers that that are to respond. They may not necessarily be there at the moment. They have other priorities during the day but they're in the area um and if there's any concerns and if we contact them then they're assigned to that area so they will come right away. So, it's not that they necessarily sit in the parking lot the whole day, but but they're available to us and they're assigned to that that particular voting center. Okay. All right. Any other questions? If no, I'll take a motion. I motion to approve the agreement with Panal County Elections Department as presented. Second. All in favor? I I motion carries five to zero. Okay. 8.3 discussion consideration of approval of the agreement with the cartwheel health services PC.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beckett. I move on 7B to consider and if deemed advisable and to adopt the resolution authorizing the insurance of a seal of school improvement bond for the district. Mr. Harmon. Thanks again, President Downey, members of the board, and Dr. Lopeman. Um, we were able to hear from Mr. Lavali and have some questions answered. If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them, but we're seeking approval for the resolution authorize our bond sale. Mr. Harmon, originally when we we had talked about this, we talked about doing three iterations of bond sales. So, can you share with the public because I kind of know why we're doing this, but I think it's important for them to hear why we've gone from uh a three to now selling twice. Yeah, I think what was in the uh voter information pamphlet was kind of an example of of what could happen.
So, thank you. Any other discussion items hearing? None. If we can take a vote, please. Julie Jetty, Katherine Potter, yes. Mindy Hartman, yes. Jason Jansen, yes. Darling, yes. Ann Sanucci, yes. Stacy Salt, yes. Hey, that motion is approved. Next up, we have 8.2, the approval of an emergency 3-month custodial services with citywide building maintenance. Mr. Shepard. So, it is it is our hope that this is really the final custodial uh issue that we have to uh discuss in the foreseeable future. Um, as the the board is aware, uh, we ended our our service with Alpha Building Maintenance in December after they left the contract due to their poor fiscal mismanagement. Um, we did enter into a uh what we thought was going to be a six-month emergency contract with with RJB, uh, the company that had been priv prior serving uh, Kerry School District 26.
So, I don't care if you want to keep it in, but that's just I think it's redundant or not maybe not. It doesn't hurt to be redundant, but I think that the language in it is from um um years ago and it was formulated by board members, not by press because we didn't we didn't I don't think we had press at that time. And um so that that's just my feeling on how how it was developed and I think it could be um I don't know just kind of an older policy. I understand I'm not like I'm not like married to keeping this in or anything but I do think that it is a very concise way of putting things. I don't disagree with any of it. And if you're I'm just trying to think as a a citizen who's going to go and look for information, this is this is going to be really easy to understand what we're doing instead of having to maybe pick out a sentence or here or two from four different sections of the policy manual.
In our K2, not only do they have the ELA curriculum maps, but what we asked them to more so center their attention on because it's hard to balance everything at once. So, we said, "Okay, K2, we know you have curriculum maps. However, you're also piloting the early literacy phonics. Some of our K2, half of our K2 are piloting UFly. The other half are pilot piloting benchmark phonics. We will receive their input on which one they think fits best in tandem with our reading curriculum because we need to still be able to do both of them, reading and the early phonics. We will select one for next year to be our tier one early literacy phonics curriculum. The other one will then be used as part of our tier 2 intervention support for students who need additional support specifically in phonics instruction across K8 as well because we know that not everybody is going to be teaching the ELA curriculum apps.
I am also um a proud mom of two MCS grads who currently um attend IU Bloomington and being here and seeing some familiar faces truly brings kind of wave of appreciation and I would like to take this moment and thank all of our MCS teachers um who played huge role in shaping my sons into well-rounded and driven young men they are today. As I mentioned above, um I represent Royer Corporation and Williams family as well and I am speaking tonight to voice our enthusiastic support for the child care investment planned by Madison Consolidated High School or schools. I want to begin by stating that our community is incredibly blessed to have Dr. Terresa Brown leading medicine schools. Her vision and energy are rare. She has surrounded herself with excellent staff. The child care programming that she was able to implement at the junior high in such a short period of time is miraculous.
So let I want to they fund them. there's concern that those funds could go away under the current um you know presidency in terms of what they're looking at in terms of the department of ed and the funding uh if if districts and and states don't fall in line with their beliefs. Uh I'm not quite concerned for FY26. I would be more concerned about FY27. Our numbers were about a million million two is what we rely on. And if those funds go away, we will have to figure out how to absorb that in our current operating budget because those are salaried positions. Those are teachers, those are educators. Uh Title One, for instance, you know, a math teacher who's helping our students progress because they're not at grade level or whatever it might be. Um it's an important thing to look at, but like I said, for this year, I think we're going to be okay.
You could put a note in the chat. I will look for you. I am not seeing any requests for public comment from Zoom. Thank you very much for sharing your views with us. Um we'll now hear the report of student representatives to the committee. So it is my understanding that this report is included in all of your meeting materials and it is posted to the public as well. So with that in mind, I will not be reading the report tonight. um I feel that it is only going to serve to distract and detract from a lot of the messages and stories we've heard from educators and from students today. And I think that that is the most important report that all of you could be hearing today. So what I will be doing is jumping to the final item which is student life where we are going to be highlighting Nate Woodard um who is a member of the city's human rights commission.
They're real. They're they're real solid costs. I mean, it's expensive. Yeah. I just like to make sure we're spending our money in the right way and or can we do something better so it it works during the day? Yep. Is there that in the week be in the weekly track? Is there another technology committee meeting um before the end of the year? No. Not it's not to say that couldn't have one, but there isn't one currently scheduled. I didn't know there was a technology committee. Yeah, because it's only getting worse as time goes on. We're just going to expand and we need to make sure we're moving where we need to be. Yep. Okay. And that's under case got that under control hopefully. Um and well, she got the paperwork. It's going to take It's going to take time to get Yeah. But we can reasonably look at it.
I think one of the days is maybe Cinco de Mayo theme. Um, yeah, they're busy. Maybe I don't know if I'm missing anything. All right, that's all. Um, yes. Yeah, I attended the March Bolton Scholarship Fund meeting. Um, I can report that in March we had 25 Bolton High School National Honor Society students participate in our phonathon. Um, their assistance is greatly appreciated. They managed to call every number on the list this year. And our scholarship application is now open through the BSEF website. Um, applications must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on May 4th. Um, I also wanted to note that this year because of a potential conflict of interest, my son is graduating and will likely apply for a scholarship. I've stepped down from the scholarship funds scholarship selection subcommittee and will not participate in any way in the deliberations or votes for this year's scholarship.