Um however I want to be crystal clear that this plan does not solve all of the problems for the schools, right? It solves one problem. I think despite this plan, we are still going to be among the least funded school systems in the entire state. Despite this plan, we our teacher to student ratio, our teachers assistant to student ratio, our administrator to student ratio is still going to be higher than the state average in the wrong direction. And in every measurable category, despite this plan, the Dartmouth public school system is among the least funded school systems in the state. That doesn't change with this plan. So, while I'm appreciative of the plan that's in place that that um and and hopeful that it will will be passed at the town meeting level, um there's still a lot of work to do to get the schools what they need uh to do the job that we've asked them to do, which is to educate our children.
I'm also proud to report that under my advisory of Family Career and Community Leaders of America, FCCLA, Burlington High School had its first district level star event competitor in many years, who then went on to qualify for the state contest, took second place in state in her event, and qualified for national conference in July 2025. FCCLA also hosted eight hospitality rooms this year to fund raise for those expenses, producing delicious meals for tournament workers, coaches, referees, administrators, and more. As an educator, I pride myself on a positive classroom environment. I found the teaching techniques and a deep knowledge and passion for my content. In spring 2025, by teacher evaluation, I scored effective or highly effective in 38 out of the 43 scoring criteria. In only my second year ever teaching CTE, on February 21st, 2025, I received a job offer from the Emporia School District, USD 253, I met with Mrs.
The 25th, we're going to have a in the building screening for three and four year olds. This is the first time we've had this. Um this is coordinated through the um CKCIE, the special education co-op. And um so we'll be screening, hearing, seeing, talking. And this is the first time we've had, like I said, in our building. And we've already scheduled one again for next fall to try and get kiddos screened early um get them in on speech or whatever delays they may need to to to have them ready for school. The 30th, our April 30th, the William Ellen White field trip for third through sixth graders. Miranda Stillwell always sponsors this and pays for it. just challenge the third that should be fourth through sixth graders um to read um the way so many William Allen White books and they reward him for a trip to the alley in Salina and that same day sixth grade after we'd already planned the William Allen White one sixth grade then got invited to the Ellsworth safety program which we've been going over to every year.
Sure. Knock yourself out. So, let's just kind of go through some of these highlights just so you kind of are are aware because I know a lot of what the board does um is drudgery and and is is not all that exciting necessarily and sometimes and again you are all welcome at any time, but it's not necessarily um um something that you see the fruits of your efforts and labors every day. So, let's kind of look at some of those fruits. Um oh, act one, act two, pack three, four. There we go. the other back. The other back. There we go. Forward one. There we are. Um, we're an A-rated school this year and I I hope we achieve that again. Um, I cannot take any credit for that whatsoever. The credit goes to those folks right there. That is our picture from this year.
Did we did we cover all this stuff? I mean, obviously, we continue the committee's work. Did we align student policy changes to the staff policy? I think that's part of the work, right? And then uh create a policy specifically regarding hate speech. Did we do that? I don't remember doing that. Um that that was last year. We didn't do that this year. Right. Do we should we put something in there to explain why or why not? No, we did create the I thought we did. Did we not? Jay, your mic's not on. I I believe we did it last year, but I would need to double check. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think it was something Alan and Adriana worked on. Remember which mommy it was? I now I'm trying to remember if they like wrote a new one or if they added it in. I do remember we had like a lot of conversation about it because there was some concern that like um technology would be an issue or first amendment stuff would be an issue and I just don't remember where we landed because I don't remember I mean this year anyway I don't remember talking about that.
Down at the bottom again in summary um you can see that our number of texts published before 2009 has decreased and there's an increase in those texts published within the last five years. So this is again just another visual. That purple pin is where we currently are. Our average age is 2007. And to reach that emerging goal, that emerging goal would put our average collection at 2015. So I'm hoping in the next couple years I can continue to build that collection and make it newer. Once we hit that 2015 year, we can kind of re-evaluate and make new goals to keep increasing our collection and our our publication date. These are some skills that were taught in the library this year that have not been taught previously. Uh this book, Stacy's Extraordinary Words, she just learns to love words and shows um determination in a spelling bee, actually.
Troy will speak next. But so more important than what we've done is what we could do with you. And we understand that part of this process, a critical part of this process in supporting your goals is to reestablish trust with your community as Jim mentioned earlier. And we think that we can do that best through a process of master planning and referendum support. So typically we split this up into five steps. Uh it starts at the beginning with research, getting to know you, to know your district, to know the stakeholders that you serve and the students and staff that work in your schools every day. And it ends with a decision that everybody can support. But the part in the middle is the important part, those three steps in the middle. That's the community engagement part. And that's the part where we will meet with all of your different stakeholders, again, staff, students, administrators, community members to determine what their needs and desires are and how they feel that your facilities can best serve your community.
Look at the project parameters. You heard Mr. Janeski state that we are targeting max parameters. So we're giving authority but like not the obligation issue bonds. So you heard a lot of uh chatter right now through the Indiana General Assembly. So this does not obligate us to move forward at any point in time, but gives us the authority to move forward and give that flexibility to issue bonds as the board sees fit. So we'll continue to monitor the end of the general assembly as it relates to the financial planning as part of this project. Then Edgar will wrap it up with how the debt could be structured with the outstanding debt as of today and how these bonds could be structured to avoid any type of tax rate increase to taxpayers in the debt service fund. So with that said, Mr. Thank you, Brock. Good evening.
So uh yellow will become ours, purple's already ours and that's it. Any questions about that? So, I know you said uh um about you can't put anything, you know, trees or anything like that there, but uh what are the restrictions in that 20 foot? You know, there we can put all kinds of things, but if the city needs to get into to repair the line, they can they can knock down, tear down, move, whatever to repair the the utility line. I think statistically the chance of that needing to be done is slim and none. But we you can't run that run that chance. What is the width of that strip? 20 foot. No. Oh, the whole the whole thing. Aaron, do you know what's the how wide? It's 66 feet. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right. Become 66 mentally thinking, you know, if it's 40 foot and here you just got 20 foot that you you know, running a chance.
Now granted, this is third graders that are doing this as early as third grade. And then our math problems, they're no longer just simple computation, but they're higher order, deeper thinking um multiplestep uh problems. So this year, we're hoping for improvement in the iLearn test because supposedly it's going to be shorter. And so I'm hoping it's a quantity of questions or quality of questions over quantity. So then back in 2012, we began I read for third grade, which was a big step. So we had never done anything like that before. So then in 2024, 12 years later, we offered it to our second graders. And that year, we were not sure how things were going to go, but we had 52 out of 166 of our second graders pass. This year, we had 61 out of 162 second graders pass. So they are definitely rising to the challenge as the adults are too in teaching.
Yeah. Would my mom was a volunteer with Meals on Wheels years and years ago. Do you coordinate your efforts with Meals on Wheels? Do you know there's what a good question. Do you know what's what's happening? I'm not you even sure if I told Roger about it, but it will be now. What what what's happening is, you know, the wheel the local Wheels on Meals program was located over at the the retirement community here on uh on Sunnyside Roadside. Yes. Right. And when they switched ownership, they kind of said, "You are not really able to do it at our place anymore." And so they are repackaging their food that comes from the hospitals right over there and and deliver it to their clients. Okay. So kind of an interesting thing. I think we put a little they I think they brought a little uh oven type thing.
Have ongoing meetings with everybody. Um certainly I would apply that same to the select board, finance committee, capital committee. Um again, you've got a lot going on in both towns and how do we balance all that? Um, so the only way to do that is really having that rapport and getting to know people and understand what what is the culture of the town and what is the culture of the town politics in Berlin, which could be very different than Boilstead, and what their needs are and how does that apply to the culture that we have here in the school district as well, you know, and even with your separate elementary schools, although we're still one school district, you still have very unique cultures um and identities within those elementary schools as well. So really teasing all of that out and being able to immerse myself in that and understand, you know, who the people are and what their needs are in that sense.
So, thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Christine Pankowski. I have two children at Dartmouth Dlo. Both of my children went to Kushman for kindergarten. My daughter was in 2122 and my son was a few years later in 23 to 24. They had very different experiences. Why, you might ask? How did it change so much in two years? What happened? The answer is simple. It's a reduction of teachers. The reduction of teachers has a domino effect. larger classes, behavior problems, poor communication, loss of trust, decrease in teacher morale, and ineffective learning. As mentioned at previous meetings, the budget is a reflection of our community's values. We are doing our young people a disservice by allowing this consistent reduction of staff. I know it was mentioned at the last meeting that these are teachers who are retiring, but I also know that it was mentioned that these are teachers who are retiring and they are not being replaced.
Grover the afternoon of February 24th, addressed concerns about those five remaining scoring criteria that rated lower than effective, and ultimately I declined that offer because I love this district. I do. uh the joy my job brings me and the excellent excellent exc excellent services and education that my daughter is receiving at Burlington Elementary Special Education PreK program. I cannot understate how I have loved every single day of working at Burlington High School, my colleagues, my students, and the BES staff who have so greatly impacted life of my daughter. Thank you. Best regards, Brianna. Thank you so much for letting me read that. Next, we have preparing a statement. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm sorry. I'm just here representing uh the Burlington Lifewise Academy Steering Committee and over 150 community members who have signed a petition requesting that USD 244 develop a policy for release time religious instruction and we have some representatives here tonight from that petition.
So they're going to have some of those kids that might have both trips are going to have to pick and choose which one they want to do. Ally we'll see how tough that may be. May 2nd is career day. Uh Mrs. Robinson is inviting individuals from our community to come in and share their careers with our K through sixth grade students. That'll be in the morning. And then our sixth grade will go over to Clara Barton Hospital in the afternoon, which is another awesome experience for them um to see the different things in the hospital and and stuff over there. May 8th, our K through2 art show and music program. And the 9th, quite a few trips there. PreK4 to Great Banzoo. We have a fourth field trip to Ellsworth. And then our fifth graders go down to the Hollywood Depot and they get some history.
Um, I know I was there. I can't remember exactly where I Oh, I'm in the upper right. There we go. I can't Yeah. Um, with my orange bow tie. Um, not a huge fan of orange. That's why Mr. Robbitai is wearing orange. Um, but my wife made me wear an orange bow tie for that picture. Um, but the A-rating school is based on several factors if you don't know. One is overall student growth based on the um, state testing. Um, and then not only um, overall student growth, but um, regular education versus special ed versus EL and and the gaps being closed therein. So that according to the Department of Education, I love when they say things like this that are so logistically measurable, so that kids are ready for success. Um, again, if we're focusing on character, I think that our kids are. Um, and if you ever get the opportunity, those folks up on that picture and then they're there on the bottom.
Do these are you guys talk remember talking? Oh no, this was all last year. And then the last one says determine guidance on the law enforcement contact involvement outside of the mandatory reporting requirements. I mean we did that mostly last year. I don't know that that's something we definitely did this year except for we just kind of reaffirmed what we had already put in some policies in this one or in the ones we worked on this year. But I think that was mostly stuff we did last year. Oh, okay. So that I guess I mean I guess I'm confused. If we did the policy on hate speech last year, why would it be a recommendation from last year in the PowerPoint at the governing board? Because we didn't vote on it as a board until this year. Yeah. Because the board didn't didn't take action on the policies at that time.
So, we have some students learning ABC orders, specifically how to find those books on the shelves using author's last name. The middle picture is students going on a scavenger hunt using the Dewey Decimal System. you can see the new signage on the signs um so they can find books based on topic as well and then just using a dictionary and some of those word skills um that have not been previously taught. Um one of the activities we did more towards the beginning of the year was this global readaloud. Um fourth grade read a book named Too Small Ta and we focused on using some of those key words from the story to help with summarizing. In second and third grade, we read a collection of books by Min Lee. One of them was drawn together. And in that story, the grandson and the grandfather do not speak the same language, and they cannot communicate, but they build a relationship through art.
We think that a good master plan is made up of three different components that it focuses on. Number one is the infrastructure. That's the obvious part, right? the buildings that serve your students and your community. But the second part is educational adequacy, how they do that. And Michael will touch on that again in a couple of minutes. And the third part of that master plan is again that critical piece of district and community engagement. Making sure that your community feels heard and that they feel like what you're planning on doing supports what they envision for the community in which they live. So, we like to think of all of these items up on the screen here as the prime ingredients that go into making a high quality learning environment. Um, and we're always bringing these into the conversations with teachers, with the community, both understanding what's currently working well in their classrooms and learning environments today.
The first thing we will be going over is the current debt structure that I mean debt picture which is two slides one more please as you can see you currently have five securities outstanding in the year 2026 payments drop about 40,000 which allows us a little bit of capacity to issue this year for the visual learners in the next slide you can see the same information in a bar graph. You can see that small drop in payments from 2025 and 2026 that continue to 2027. As bonds fall off, you need to replace those with new bonds. As you may remember, the state limits the amount of general obligation bonds you can issue. And that is calculated by dividing the 2025 certified net assess value of 413 million divided by 3 multiplied by two. Then you subtract the outstanding general obligation debt. That gives us approximately about $46,000 to work with as of the day.