Um, additionally, the Dartmouth High School Theater Company is presenting High School Musical on May 1st through May 3rd. Uh, tickets are available for purchase online, and I would highly recommend coming. It's going to be a great show. Um, also, our BIT department is hosting a career fair tomorrow, Tuesday, April 15th. This is a great opportunity for students to explore internship options and potential summer employment. Um, this is for underassmen, juniors, um, sophomores, and freshmen. Um, also student council's spring bulb fundraiser is still open. Uh, purchasing information has been posted on parent square and 50% of all proceeds uh go to the student council um that supports giving back to DHS and the Dartmouth community. Uh we have raised um a good amount of money so far and this money also goes towards student council being able to attend a leadership conference um every March. Um, so it's it's a very important cause and um if you're interested in buying flowers, I definitely recommend it.
Number two, we don't want to have to deal with the complaints if we were to have the life wise program. In my opinion, these comments do not reflect complete and thoroughly vetted understanding or appreciation of the positive social and emotional impact observed in students participating in a release time religious instruction program. It should be noted that USD 244 may be exposed to liability in the way it is handled the agenda request and ignored the submitted policy change. This could be viewed as an adverse or non-inclusive action toward a religious belief, which is a violation of the first amendment to the constitution. I received a mailer two weekends ago touting the needs for a new elementary school for our community. The flyer contained the following statement. Today's classrooms require additional support to meet the diverse needs of students, needs that have evolved significant significantly since the building was constructed.
No, she said that there were I think four, five, six. Um whenever Okay. I can't It's down to like around six, I believe. Um but but there's still no openings at this time. We're still working to um get the playground finished with the fencing and everything. And then we're still in the process. Um we found out that we need to put in the restroom. So, we've got the bids for that and we're going to get that underway and then um we'll be able to open up that other room. We're hoping to have it open September is our hope. Anyway, um we did meet, our site council did meet and we're going to work together with the calendar events so we get all of that a little more firmed up. And then um we did go ahead and reschedule our parent dance to next year. They just it's hard to get everything together with everything that was going on with all the miss days.
And I just want to point out because Cindy Daniels um really kind of stresses this point, this notion of one pride. Um this is us, but this is the middle school. This is transportation providing a way for kids to get home in the afternoon. This this is everybody kind of pulling their weight to to do good things for kids. And the vast majority of these sponsors are not paid. They do it because they love kids. And I think that's kind of the motivating factor. Nope. Um obviously specials. Um we we have library every week. We promote reading. And in fact, we're gonna um have more open hours for library next um next year. And we're also going to introduce something. I'm gonna give it a go. I don't know if it's going to work or not. Stop everything and read. Stop, drop, and read. Um where kids are going to be kind of carrying books all the time.
So, yeah. So, probably what Hilda has is the same. So, she could just share it. And the only place that I see if there was hate speech included, the only place it makes sense in this listing of policies would be in JICK, um, which is harassment, intimidation, and bullying. So I don't know if that if that language is integrated there or if there was an intent to create a separate hate speech gotcha component. Okay. Um, do you guys want to see the one that went last year? I I mean, I guess it could be helpful. I I Yeah, I think if we have the copy of the one for community council and this is the one we're And if we're prepping the one for community council, then that's probably the better one to be working off of. I suspect I suspect it's this one. It just has more slides that we deleted, right?
I do have the Fox Lake Public Library coming in next month to kind of wrap up the school year as well. I did ask the students for some feedback recently. The first question are what things do you like best about the library? Um to summarize it was the books, the readaloud, checking out, reading with friends, um and the dictionary. What are some things that they would change about the library? A lot of them said more time or more books, and I had quite a few that said I wouldn't change anything. So, what did you learn in the library this year? They learned how to uh sort books in ABC order, find new books that they haven't read yet, and just how the library is organized overall. Lastly, I asked them what their favorite book was. Um, a lot of them had a hard time with this.
It's made up of administration, board representatives, site committee representatives, community committee representatives, the architect, and the CM. And that task force is charged with filtering all the input from the site committees and from the community to ultimately formulate a recommendation up to the district administration to the board. So stakeholder engagement could take on u many different uh activities and and ways to engage community and teacher groups, students uh as well. And you know, for example, working through um some of the community forums. There could be opportunities there to update the community on the current state of the facilities. What are some of those challenges and pain points that you're having today? Um, as well as then having some visioning sessions where we're thinking about the future and we're we're putting your current facilities and the state they are aside and we're thinking about what do students and teachers need to support student outcomes as they move in from elementary to middle school to high school, college and career and workforce beyond and starting to identify what those gaps are with your current facilities.
Can we go back one slide real quick? So, realistically, this as far as this the way this is most likely going to look, it's going to be more a lot more even than this trajectory going down. We're going to be taking on taking on in the years to come, we'll be taking on more more debt to keep that as even as possible. That's a great question. You're absolutely correct, President Herzog. The intended purpose here is to give the school board the authority or opportunity to come back as early as 2026. And if you have additional capital needs, like a lot of schools do, that 660,000 is not going to be enough to tackle all those. Give yourself the flexibility to come back as early as 2026 and target additional capital needs. I know it's impossible to see into the future, but uh can you give me an idea where you feel interest rates will be over the next two to three years.
And uh basically what that means is we would like this fall um after the heat of the summer um to begin the process of putting nutrients back into the soil. And um one of the first things we're going to do is use a non-invasive uh rye uh kind of like a a winter weed essentially that's um that's a that's a non-invasive and uh for to sequester soil as well as uh to start putting th those nitrates back in in to in preparation for some of the things that you'll see here. And so, um, it would be nice if all of us just ran out there tonight and it looked like some of these things. That would just be like the most beautiful thing. Be like, "Oh, it's done." Um, but, um, you know, these seniors, they'll probably have to come back from college, honestly, to to see some of the fruits of their labor.
And we have many teachers that are now working toward their e lure. I think we have 14 at Landis right now, but there are more that are working towards that. Our bilingual EL support growth. When I was in the classroom over 14 years ago, before the great influx of our EL population, we didn't have specialized EL services like we have now. We just were in the general ed classroom doing the best that we could with what we knew, which wasn't a whole lot at that time. SCUP was relatively new, but we were dabbling in that, but we just tried our good old teacher skills to reach the kids the best that we could reach them. So, I'm going to invite our two EL teachers to come up and briefly share some of what they're doing at Landis to meet the needs of our EL students to help with academic success and growth.
So thank you for the work that you do. Thank you. And one last thing, Mr. Schumacher, um since you have the mic and you're on the record, what is the sharing place's greatest need for help right now? you know, the greatest need and we were able to talk a little bit at the faith meeting a few weeks ago is uh people. Do you know when we had uh maybe 15 years ago, our biggest problem was we didn't never had enough food. Now we don't have enough people and especially people that can lift more than 10 or 15 pounds. I have to tell you there's sometimes this uh the frozen pork and so on that comes. So there is another opportunity to work with each other and get the word out together to people and I think uh that would be great. You know I I I like to put uh a positive on everything if possible.
How will you handle the balance of respecting longtime employees of the district's experience and familiarity with how things have always been done with new ideas, changes, and perspectives? and that's not an uncommon occurrence. And so I think when I look at that and I think about it, I think a lot of times what happens is if you're a longtime employee and it doesn't matter where you are, right, it could be at the Berlin Boilstead Regional School District or it, you know, could be working at IBM or wherever. Um, you want to feel that you're valued. You want to feel that the work that you've done has meaning and means something to people. You want to feel that in the case of, you know, we're working with children and that's what matters. It's not widgets. It's not producing, you know, computers or something like that. We're working with children.
Um, also our afterp prom committee is hosting two upcoming fundraisers on April 29th. There's a dine in or takeout from Caskin Pig and 20% of the bill will be donated to supporting um after prom. And the other fundraiser is going to be held on Saturday, May 10th. Uh it will be a wicked sing along here at the high school and information for both events can be found on parent square. Um the annual 13th uh prek 12 through 12 art show is being held on Thursday, May 8th uh from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Dartmouth High School. Uh each school in the district uh is having their students art showcased. Um so it's a really great opportunity to come and see what the students um from every grade level have been up to and have been creating in their art classes. Um, and lastly, once we return from April break, uh, the seniors will have 22 days left of school, um, and we have several, um, very, um, fun events that are planned, um, for after April break, uh, that we are all very excited for.
My interpretation of this statement is that these needs include behavior challenges within the classroom. Lifewise Academy focuses on character development and is a great complement to the wildat way. Schools with the Lifewise Academy program experienced better attendance, fewer inschool suspensions, and fewer out of school suspensions. This is objective evidence of improved student behavior for a participating school. Why would we not want that here, especially when it comes with a 0 price tag for the school district? Additionally, we believe that if sustained within the school district, a release time religious instruction program would have a positive impact on the current 7% Burlington High School dropout rate. Our request tonight is that the superintendent and the board reconsider our communitydriven request for for a release time policy for education from from the Bible. It is requested that board members engage, possibly creating an advisory committee working with the Burlington Lifeway Steering Committee, other community members and staff as necessary to perform the following.
I did want to share with you um our first graders and Mrs. Davalo's music class and they got to take some recycled products and make really cool instruments out of them. And I was in there like four or five times throughout the whole project and it was really cool to watch them. They were having a lot of fun um trying to get the different ones. I showed you the one with the drum and they they got that to work. They could actually play the drum with it. So, I thought that was a lot of fun. My enrollment, as you can see, is up to 84. I added a fifth a six a sixth grader. I added uh two kindergarteners and I lost two first graders and I added a first grader. Yeah. So, I kind of bounced around a little bit there. So, but we're up to 84.
And we're just going to randomly come over the PA, stop, and everyone stop and read for five or 10 minutes. And then I don't know how it's going to work, but we'll see what happens if kids in the bathroom. We'll figure that out. um right now computers I think um I go back to a study from 2018 that showed that the number one impediment to students performing well on state given tests was their inability to navigate the test technology. And so um even more so than not knowing the material. And so we've been focusing obviously on typing, obviously on on computer bias and proficiency and and good management therein, but we've also been focusing on how to take the test here in the LA. And they're like, whoa, there's a second page you have to scroll to. Yes. Yes, there is. Um and then um one of the other factors from that same study which was done by the federal department of education in 2018 showed that one of the greatest motivators of student success beyond technology and beyond the actual curriculum is physical activity and schools with consistent PE programs had higher test scores and and we are we are blessed to have a full-time PE teacher and I just want to comment on my favorite week of the year is the unit with what coach Krug calls bounce ball there in the middle.
I recall the community council presentation possibly being shorter than the board presentation, but maybe that's just me. That's my recollection as well. Katie, I just sent you guys the one that was a community council. Excuse me. Yeah. No, this is the same one. Uh the only thing that looks uh that looks deleted is that it goes through each policy individually. And I just looked the board meeting and it's the same exact PowerPoint. Yep. So I guess we have some options here. Um we can follow the same approach and just have the introductory slides that we have the the timeline and the committee members and all that stuff and just essentially go over the policies like we did from last year and give like a couple of little bullet points, highlights and things uh for that. Um, and essentially keep the bulk of it the same.
They said they can't remember all those books, but I did highlight most of them in uh the presentation. I did highlight also the Everybody Needs a Rock. I read this one recently prior to AR and it turned out to be a favorite. It's a really old book. Um a book from my childhood, but a lot of them said that was ended up being their favorite. These are our student library helpers that won the PBIS raffle through March. I've had a few after this um that are not included, but they have helped with sorting books, reshelving books, dusting shelves, labeling books, stamping books. And then a huge shout out to my parent volunteers. Mrs. Cocho comes almost every day. If she's not there, I wonder if she's okay. Um Mrs. Ringamman joins her often as well, and then Mrs. Klein has popped in a few times as well to help out.
and that starts to inform the road mapap or that master plan for for the future there. Um, so you know, a few of these kind of fun interactive uh type of forums and workshops where we're printing large scale site concepts out onto the the gym floor. I remember this one here, we had three different concepts. we were just kind of pulling and doing overlays at a really large scale, walking around uh with different groups in the community, recording all the different feedback and the comments and you know eventually kind of summarizing those as we prepare a report out. Um but also with teacher groups um in that lower right corner, red dot, green dot voting where we're looking at um inspirational images and images of successful learning environments and talking about what's what they like, what they don't like. Really kind of getting them to voice um you know their concerns and their frustrations about maybe spaces they're in now and looking at them in completely different lens.
It's a really good question. Can't say with certainty. So what I would I think at this point what we've heard most recently and what a lot of banks a lot of economists depends upon which day you ask about. So I've been relying upon some Bloomberg data based upon when you see 70% rate reduction projected to occur probability to occur that typically means that rates are going to get cut during that FOMC meeting. So standing here today you've heard any rate cuts from either two to five in 2025 where uh city bank was the one who was projecting five rate cuts. If I had to make an assumption today, two to three is probably the most recent and reliable assumption to use at this point. But again, the economy and the metrics change daily, but I would say two or three at this point in 2025.