Um, we built a school. We we had to close a school that was built in 1885 that was um put together by our town benefactor, but it wasn't servicing kids. And I remember there was our thousand people who wrote a petition saying you cannot build a new school and shut down this elementary school. And it won by like 64 votes. But to this day, people love that new elementary school. And had we listened to the noise from the outside, wellrespected noise, but nonetheless not for the greater good of the future of kids, we would have stopped progress for our kids. What message are we sending that you just can't fail anymore? And I think it's good to fail. I think failing is positive and you learn so much more about yourself as a human being when you lose a heartbreaker or something doesn't go your way.
Um, we do menu development. We have inventory control. Uh, for us at Iola, that was a big deal. Um, we assist you with any state audits. We do tremendous staff training. Uh, and we run your program for you. We market it. We, um, try to increase your participation as much as we can. So, Uh Byron, why don't you talk about menus here a little bit? Sure. So, uh here's some choices that we have. Uh just some examples. Uh a fresh market lunch. We try to do a signature item. We do some kidfriendly items as well. So, you would see roasted turkey, meatloaf, spaghetti, pizza, cheeseburger, spicy chicken sandwich. Um we do a grab and go where the uh kids can come in. Sometimes kids like to stay in front of the waiting line so we have easy access where they can go get a clear box with the three compartment three compartment box with the lunch already in there with the fresh fruit and vegetables compliant meal so you can grab it and they can go and get out there quick and socialize with their friends right uh so on that items we have items like Italian sub sandwich chicken Caesar salad roasted veggie pa crispy chicken wrap and of course we in some situations we offer either a salad bar, uh, which I understand you guys do a salad bar here now, or we can do a, um, their own personal salad, chef salad, taco salad.
And to me, that's mind-blowing because what uh Gary Bner built here um is really remarkable. And we've had a lot of success here. And there's schools that don't have very much success at all that have facilities that make ours look really poor. Um so I have, if you guys want to look, I have a couple pictures, and they're not exact copies by any means, but of stuff that we're thinking about. And there's two of them here. Two different ideas. And I don't know what we'd end up going with if we do end up being able to go forward with it. But a couple different options and they're really rough because I did it myself and I don't have much talent. You said you have three courts. We have three courts right now. Correct. And we really want to add three more because if we add three more, we'd be able to host um regionals because right now we got to travel.
That's down just a little bit from first quarter, but state statewide PE most school districts are running between 75 and 80% daily attendance. So, we are significantly above. And our grade level with the highest daily attendance has been third grade. Um, 94% of third graders come to school every day since we returned from break in January. And our senior class right now has the lowest. That's 89%. Um, not atypical for this time of year with seniors. They're still doing pretty good though, sitting at 89%. That's really impressive. So, some of you have inquired about announcements coming out of DC. You've asked, you know, what does it mean with um what we're hearing about US DOE and the things that um I want to tell you about. The feds have shared with us that they're committed to keeping funding levels at least the same for title one and special ed going into next year.
And then like what Evan was saying, just copy the ones that from the other one back in. I'm trying to see which ones are missing. I need my two screens. Why don't we uh if you guys don't mind if somebody could just go into the title of the short one and then just put like a new like either edit the title or just put revised today's date and that way everybody knows like revisions that started on 414 is the one to be on so there's no confusion. I was just going to put draft in there in big old letters. Cool. But I can put the date too. I'll put either way draft 414. Sounds good. as long as I'm just waiting for like two people to be working on a random presentation, then we get there. So, yeah, whatever works for you guys is good with me.
It may not apply. Yeah. may have been in another section because usually our attorney said usually there's a cap on the amount and there's no cap in here. So, uh if our cost per pupil is 15,000 and we we get 5,000 from the state, then they're going to pay us 10,000 for every student that's in there. So, there's no cap uh based on this agreement. And that's where the our attorney said in the in most agreements there's a cap that protects the tiff. Then are we getting um funds for students that are on uh government assistance? Yeah. And the one change we made was uh students that are in the district like maybe half the year. So we're going to bill them for prrated prrated. So if they're here for 100 days out of 180, we're going to bill them for 100 days out of 180.
And uh, the role I'll be playing here will be make sure that as a partner in the firm that I'm bringing the resources to the team to make sure that you're successful, but I'll also be playing a heavy role in the community engagement process and through the master planning process. I'm Allison Andrews. Um, I've been primarily focused on preK12 education for my entire uh, tenure at Wald. Um, as the educational programmer, my responsibility is really to make sure that our planning and design um, processes are in alignment with your programmatic and educational goals. Um, I really enjoy this part of what I do day-to-day just because it allows me to really engage with a broad group of stakeholders and bring their vo their voices to the forefront of of what we're doing each and every other day. Um, so that way kind of the the outcomes of every process is in an alignment with who you are.
We have a heater in quadrant one needs a fan motor they got taken care of. Um so we've got a lot of things we've tried to take care of. And I also, if you look at the back of what I gave you, uh, the last three or four pages, well, there's about three pages in which I've put down what our go bond um pieces are and which pieces have been completed. That was part of our past bonds. [Music] Um, I will tell you I'd be happy to sit down with any of you and if you want to change I just kind of stuck stuff in here that as that I thought you would prioritize in that particular order. If you guys decide you want a different prioritiz prioritization of the of these projects, you just got to let me know. We can switch some of these between 23 bond, 24 bond, 25 bond, etc.
What are you doing in the fall? I'm going to IU Bloomington to stud study at this Kelly School of Business. you know how incredibly difficult it is to get in there. [Laughter] We're very proud of you. That's that's incredible. Um I'm I'm really interested to hearing from the two of you. What are you going to do in the fall? Um I'm also going to I Bloomington, but I'm going to study biology. Congratulations. Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you. Yes. I'm going to Huntington University to study environmental sciences and marketing and play baseball as well. Oh, good. So, we can just go down the street and watch you play baseball then. Pretty much. Oh, pretty much. Well, that's pretty awesome. Mr. Park, uh I said today to my team in the central office, um if you don't if you don't continue to come to schoolboard meetings, we're not going to know what to do.
So, um, years ago they would do the light up Loganport parade and some staff recognition. Now, when, um, our students are on the committee, they're doing things like selling smils. Do we know what smils are? Smelly pencils. Um, it's it's a big hit. For a dollar, you you get you you get a pencil and and they'll a lot of times leave them in their little case so they keep the smell longer. I don't know. And never use it. So, it's a thing. Um, with that money from the Smils, they that goes towards um pens for kids and um our students get to also go bowling on that day along with um staff members. Um something new this year that um our student council did was prepare birthday kits for Felix's closet. So, getting all the pieces together, you know, the the cake, the the cake mix, the icing, the pan, all the goodies, putting it together, wrapping it up, and having it ready for families who you would need that from Felix's closet.
And then lastly on the next slide there are also honors plus seals. And so in addition to the seals that were listed on the previous slide, students who um meet some of these additional conditions particularly around work-based learning experiences can actually earn the honors plus seal in enrollment, employment or enlistment. Good evening. We're bringing to you several recommendations and these recommendations are really at the 30,000 foot view. Um there'll be many uh changes and recommendations that happen at the building level and then some that will come through our curricular advisory council as well. But these are the big picture recommendations that we'll be seeking board approval for. On the left hand side of this slide, you can see our current reality and then we've matched that to the recommendation that we're seeking. And so the first one is currently our default diploma, if you will, is the core 40 with a preference toward an academic honors diploma.
We know that kids could do better if, you know, fill in the blank. So how do we balance all of that? And I find that often um the conflict does center around, you know, what we need for our kids and advocating for our kids and how do we successfully manage that with all of the different people that we know are here for such good reasons, you know, for the outcomes of our students, you know. So how do we um work with those people so that they understand and give them an opportunity to sort of look at the big picture as well and have those hard and difficult conversations. So you know collaboration is key, positive rapport is key, education is key, what people need to understand and learn and know about. Um but then ultimately as well somebody has to make those hard decisions as well right at some point in time.
And I just don't know if society is not allowing us to grow and fail and struggle and know that, you know, I knew I wasn't good enough to play basketball in high school. I experienced it. I loved it and I stayed on the team, but um I don't, you know, maybe I'm being I'm I'm a dinosaur talking, you know, as an older person, but I don't think so. I think deep down people know. And I think that um false expectations, false hopes, too much too soon, and the inability to allow people to fail. And then it's the person in the crowd who sees the kid not play, who starts yelling at the coach, or the person in the crowd who sees the bad call who says, "My kid isn't going to go further because of this." And no, whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
So, we kind of switch those around a little bit to keep it fresh, right? Um, daily choices. Uh, so one of the things that kids really like, especially when we first bring it in, is um the adult station. We have tea, water, and lemonade available for high school students, or they can go pour their own tea, water, or lemonade. Doesn't cost them anything extra. Some kids don't like milk and that's okay. They can get the tea, water, lemonade instead of milk if it's so cheap or they can have both. Um, some other examples, fast food, not fast food, but some quick things like pancake sausage on a stick. Uh, strawberry banana smoothie with muffin, but we can even do uh flavored ice coffees at the high school. Some high school kids like that. Uh, fruit and yogurt parfets, cheeseburgers, etc. Here's some of our breakfast options.
We got to go to Conway Springs here in a couple months. So, that's a little bit of a drive, but we'd be able to host regionals. Um, we'd be able to host some bigger tennis meets cuz nowadays, most of your meets, there's not many quads going on. Cuz right now, we can only host three other schools here. So, that makes it to where we're kind of limited in that area. And your program's had some good success, right? Yeah. Yeah. We over the years, uh, B1 state three times, I believe, and we took second on the guys side last year. We've had all kinds of people uh meddled top 12 over the years. This guy was a pretty good tennis player back in the day. Um but like I said, those are really rough sketches, but it at least gives you somewhat of an idea of what we're thinking if we're able to go through with this.
Um we're expecting reductions in title two which is our professional development money. Um we're redu expecting some possible reductions in title three which pays for English language learners. Title four which pays for technology and school counselors and things like that. We don't use title four for that. We roll all our title four into title one to support reading and math interventions. Um we're also hearing about some potential reductions to the national school lunch program. That's the one that would hurt us the most. Um they're talking about changing eligibility requirements for community eligibility provision, which is what we have where all our students can eat for free breakfast and free lunch. If they change that and we go back to what we did for the 2019 2020 school year, which was collect free and reduced lunch applications, then we will have roughly 40% of our student population who will need to pay full price for lunch.
All right. Um, so let I mean, Hilda can update all the little logistical things about committee members and purpose and and I assume timeline as well too, right? In fairness to Hilda though, that's not her job. I feel like I'm happy to do it. He'll he'll just there just to but unless he'll dig your if you're flailing your arms right now and I want to help far be it for me to tell you not to. I mean I mean it should only take like 30 seconds to put that stuff in there. No. Yeah. Okay. I mean Well, I'm saying we could do it right now in the meeting. Okay. Um so All right. Yeah. I was like Okay. So, for the the policies reviewed so far, that stuff uh uh if if if we could all go and take a couple in there and uh uh add uh what uh some of the things that we have on there and put some bullet points in there about what we have taken from our list.
So So there's no questions there. So we did add that language. That was really about the only thing that we uh changed just to make sure it was clear. What about section C where it says they don't have to pay us if they don't have the money. So they don't they would have to pay us the following year. They have to catch it up. uh his way payment is no interest. Can they keep rolling it over? It says payments to the district will not occur until there are sufficient funds. There are sufficient funds in the tiff. Yeah. So what if there's never sufficient funds to make the payments? I mean then that would be a problem. Our attorney felt like that would be that in this situation that u there's a year if there's no money in the tiff and the next year they catch it up.
And I'm Matt Burton. I'm a mechanical engineer with Wol. I've been working uh with Wol for 23 years primarily with school districts. Uh, and during that time, my role has kind of evolved from uh designing and drafting uh buildings and schools to now helping school districts plan and implement those projects. Uh, it's it's a role that I'm still currently with Grace Lake, Crystal Lake, Flossmore, a couple couple school districts along the way. Um, as Dan mentioned, part of that role is also to make sure that we've got the full breadth of that team available when we need it. Um, we've got tonight our planning team because that's where we are as a district. Uh, we're not ready to start implementing projects yet. We need to figure out what we want to do first. Um, so the rest of the people we've got listed there, that's on our implementation side, our project managers and our project team, as well as our outouse consultants we got listed.
Um, to get it to a point where you feel comfortable. How much we have left on the on the our last bond issuance? 23. You have 500 and some thousand left because we've got like four or five projects done that haven't cost much money. Um, $37,000 is what you've spent so far. And I've got some in here that we have already issu we've already decided we're going to do this year and I'm going to let Paul talk about one of them here in a minute. We're going to replace that phone system in all buildings because we're and he's afraid that if it goes down we're we're in deep trouble because it'll it'll take the whole system with it. Uh we're also going to replace the school entry fob system this summer. Actually, he's gonna try out get it started on what? In May on the which one?