Uh so, we enjoy having you and on behalf and publicly saying this to you. Seriously, congratulations on teacher of the year at the high school. So, so richly deserved. You are an incredible educator. These kids will never forget you. They never will. So, thank you, guys. Awesome. How about a nice round of applause for our [Applause] kids? Okay. Uh Mr. uh Brimberry, you got the second one, I guess. Also, I'll I'll pitch hit for Mr. Brimberry. Uh next, what we're going to do is uh we're going to talk about new high school diploma requirements um that we got. Um so, well, Dr. Deets, uh, thank you for coming. Um, and he's going to discuss with all of you board about the new requirements for the, uh, high school diploma. So, Russ, we'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you. And appreciate the opportunity to come and just share.
They wouldn't have that at home. Um, they also planted grass seed in the fall. We have an issue of like some muddy area along one of our sidewalks that um the students come off the bus in the morning, they don't always use the sidewalk and they kind of want to use the grass. And so that's killed our grass. So they were tending to growing um this grass. They would go out every day and water it. They were truly taking care of it. It was a joint effort with the students and obvious obviously um Joe as well. Um and then a cereal drive huge. We know that cereal is big um for our our families that are in need of food. Um it's a big ticket item at at the Felix's Closet. So we did a serial drive and also from the serial drive there was winners that were their names were drawn out of a hat and those winners who brought the um cereal they got to do pies in the face with admin and our SRO officer Ferris.
And so we're recommending for the future that the default diploma be the 42 credit readiness honors seal in either enrollment, employment, or enlistment. So really seeking to get that readiness seal uh honor seal for our students. On the next line, um you can you can see that um we do currently require two fine arts credits to earn the academic honors diploma. And so, you know, our district is very committed to the arts. And so, we're recommending that we continue um that requirement in two of the 12 personalized electives be fine arts credit for the enrollment honors and honors plus seals. And that's currently equivalent to the academic honors diploma requirement. The last big picture recommendation that we're bringing um currently our principles can grant PE waiverss for students based on participation in particular activities. So for example, if a students in marching band, show choir, dance, or on an athletic team, they can receive their PE credit.
you know, as the superintendent, as the executive director, I make that decision. You know, if it's going to be this or this or how we're going to distribute things, and it really needs to be in the best interest of what we're doing for kids. We really need to go back and take a look at our strategic plan. What did we say that we were going to do this year? How are we achieving those outcomes and those initiatives? Where are we at? Are we measuring it properly? what do we need to bolster this initiative and do we need to shift funds or do we need to shift people or you know what the conflict is. Um if we go back to your question with regards to new initiatives um how do we keep peace with the teachers? Are we giving them properly what they need in order to do their jobs functionally?
Let it happen and learn from it. So, I think it's been great with the chef coming in. I know a lot of you got to meet him um last Wednesday and I'm sure you all noticed he is extremely high energy. He's the same when he's teaching a class. So, if you can picture him standing in front of a class of people, he's that same energy. It was hilarious. We were we were laughing the whole time, but learning a lot. Um he's not only teaching us the lesson, it's like any little side things that come in, he's like, "Oh, let me show you that. Let me show you this." um my salad um prep person was there the day of the training. He took her off to the side and he was showing her better ways to cut onions so she's not crying every time and and and better ways to peel the cucumbers so you don't lose quite as much and all things like that.
uh biscuits and gravy, western uh bacon sandwich and breakfast burritos, French toast sticks, waffles, oatmeal bar, cereal. Uh so a wide variety of things that are available for your people. We have a corporate chef uh Chef Rick uh who helps develop our meetings. He uh sometimes comes out to help us open new district. Uh he is a very very talented person and he's got a great system around working with Right. One of the other things, so go back just one more time, Jack. One of the things that is uh that Rick does that I find pretty amazing and helpful for learning is he'll do videos that are are emailed out to kitchen managers and staff so that they can see how to make a product. People learn differently. Nobody knows better than you guys do, right? Especially these days, videos are an awesome way to learn.
Uh this one with all the blue quartz on it. Yep. Do we got enough space here to put bleachers? Yes, that's we 100% do that. My father-in-law uh was the coach at Smoky Valley for a lot of years and uh he actually is the one that added on to their courts and they added on four new courts, but right here uh is where we'd be thinking about adding bleachers on each side and we I don't have it on there, but we put a little concrete slab there kind of similar to what we have out here if you drive by and put something there. And because I think that's the other big thing. I mean, if we're going to improve them, we need to have the availability for people to come and watch instead of always standing and Yes. Uh and and so I I was just looking at them if the availability to add the bleachers still were there.
What happened during that time? Um, during the Obama administration, lunches were about $2.65. That's about how much it cost to serve a school lunch. And if a student was full pay and they didn't have money in their lunch account, we could provide them an alternate lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich if they were allergic, cheese sandwich, an apple or, you know, piece of fruit and a milk. During the Obama administration, it was changed that we had to give them an equivalent meal. And what happened was the 2019 2020 school year, we had um fourth quarter, you might remember that's the quarter nobody came back to school because of COVID. So from fourth quarter of 2020 until now, all of our students have eaten free breakfast and free lunch. It's pretty ingrained in our community. In 2019, fall of 2019, when full pay students were require we required to give them an equivalent meal if they didn't have money in their lunch account.
I think that'll be helpful. I don't I can't I can't see what everyone's looking at so I might be off base. Can I make a suggestion um on the like completed policies where we were kind of like updating like going to send to the lawyer going can we make like an extra column and then just put like what slide you're going to make for what policy or have you guys already divvied up the policies because I might just be behind the um Well, I was thinking we could like do that now. divvy up the policies and then who whatever slide you have put your name in the comments and say I'm doing this one that way. Okay, cool. That way everybody would know in the comments that who's working on which slide and updating from there. Okay, perfect. Will you uh I'm happy to still do some too.
I I guess that would be a problem if there was never any money in the tiff. But um because it says like if there are insufficient funds in the tiff district to make full payments to the districts and any particular partial payment shall be made to the extent possible and the unpaid balances owed to the school district will be carried over for one or more years for payment as additional. Yeah, there's no way to get interest on that. I mean it seems like it should be pretty standard if they're not paying us to Uh, I can check on that for sure. Do they have any other tiff districts currently? Not that I'm aware of. Uh, not with us. They don't. Uh, I don't know if Fox Lake's got the same agreement with another uh, school district. Um, because you depend on how they manage the TIFF funds.
Um, we've worked with them for literally decades and we've worked with Ime and Ericson for about that same amount of time. We're currently working on uh projects with them currently. Um so really it's it's about uh bringing those resources to the team and I and I talk about we because I'm actually a part of the community as well. Uh my son Grayson is a first grader. I missed my first uh first grade class at Country Trails. So this is incredibly important to me personally to make sure that we're successful. Just a little bit about more about W as a firm. Um we're currently ranked number nine in the country as a K12 educational design firm and uh really what's f what's allowed us to grow to that level is uh our attention to customer service. We feel like we do that better than everybody else.
The FOB system. Uh in June. June. Perfect. Um there's several things in here that we're going to try to get done this summer. Uh you can see the list. There's what 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 about 16 different things um that we may be able to finish out the 2023 bond with just over the summer. Um, I put some stuff in there for the 23 24 GO bonds, general obligation bonds. Um, a lot of those are things that are going to have to be done when kids aren't in in here. Things like, uh, you got a drain underneath the library at the grade school. It's leaking. I think it's been leaking for years. They they try to go in and drill it out and collapsed. And it collapses again. come back from summer and it's so I mean there's there's a lot of things and you're going to notice that a lot of the work on here is HVAC work.
Um, this will be a highle view, um, of something that we could spend a lot of time on, but I think I would be remiss if I didn't say uh, in light of students like that, we don't have to worry about these new requirements. We just have to be aware of them. students are going to take care of it as long as we give them the the opportunities to succeed and excel. So, um with that said, in December, just this past December, December of 2024, uh the state of Indiana did pass new diploma requirements. um you'll see a lot of similarities and some synergy from previous uh elements that you know to be true about diploma requirements, but there certainly are some nuanced differences that we want you as board members to be aware of. Um I would also want to express deep deep appreciation for the high school team that has just really uh dug into this process and understood what these requirements are.
So that was fun. Um and then and then of course they and you guys have probably seen the downtown the fall scarecrows that um that are put up, you know, every year and our students create one. Um sometimes they're redone a couple of times until it's it's ready to go, but they do always put a scarecrow out every year. So these are some of the things that um service learning for our students. So it has definitely evolved over the years. Um, another thing that um that we have done um differently over the years is PBIS and that is a positive behavioral interventions and supports system. And so many years ago, 14 years ago, um so Rita McLaclin, she kind of led the charge at Landis was going out um and observing other other corporations that were already using PBIS. brought it back and since then it started out with PBIS being more of a on paper handing out tokens some like um I think Franklin has some sort of cash that they had at one time um of course it was like printed out on paper and to now where it's all electronic for us and so we can do rewards and um consequences all through our electronic system so our teachers have access to doing things like a major and a minor referral and it'll come up on admin's um computer and we know you know where we need to go and if it's a major whether we need to go there very quickly or a minor where it's something we can deal with as soon as we have time.
We're recommending to continue that practice and even expand it. And so an example of an expansion might be a student who um participates on the speech and debate team, being able to earn the communications credit. So continuing that practice of looking at demonstrated mastery of those standards in other ways. We also have recommendations for the middle school. Um and the first one is to enroll all eighth grade students in the required computer science and prepare preparing for college and career courses. So these are two courses that are required for graduation. Uh the recommendation is to use one of the electives at the middle school level for students to complete those requirements in 8th grade. Now recognizing that that takes one of the students electives, we're recommending that we explore the possibility of combining for dual language students combining Spanish language arts and English language arts into one bilingual space uh to allow dual language students to have two electives.
So really taking a look at that and considering you know what is in the best interest overall with the district. And if I took that another step further and I started thinking about the community as well. We have two communities as well as our district community. Um you really have to apply very similar logic and strategic planning and building relationships and report with your select man and your finance committee and your capital committee. You need to visit your seniors because you need them to also understand, you know, this is our strategic plan. This is why we're doing what we do. This is why we're asking for what we're asking for. You know, here's the results we're hoping for. Here's the standards that the state is requiring of us. And here is the portrait of a graduate that we want to see for our students. So really without that level of understanding um people are just going to kind of fall back and you know we've all heard it you know schools get the biggest chunk of the budget.
So he's he's been great. It's been phenomenal. It's not just learning the lesson that's right there. You're learning a lot of techniques which is really nice. Um, and I love the idea of, you know, branching out and bringing in new things, but yet keeping it to things that the kids like, which is why we started with that um, Asian fusion because I've noticed since I first started, you guys kind of like Asian. Anytime we do kind of an Asian themed type of thing, we have a a lot of people coming over to the mainline. So, it's kind of that that nice branch of learning a better, healthier way of doing something that you guys already like. So what you don't hear in that is um the amazing questions and the research our students do ahead of time. I kind of just whispered to Andrew because I remember someone asking a question I thought it was him and it was um when Dr.
[Music] Uh breakfast makes the difference. I can I can tell you in my area and here in Kansas about 80% of our districts uh do a second chance breakfast and I know you guys do that here which is awesome. We will continue to do that. Here's some of our signage of some of the things that we would decorate and put put in your kitchen to kind of lighten up the experience for your students. Fresh fruit and vegetable bar. This is one of our signature items. You guys have some in here. We'll probably bring in some more to do. Uh the black cans with the tongs, the red spoodles with colors very important to us and presentation very important to us. So that's what uh that's what we do there. So Jack talked about us being able to buy food uh cheaper. You guys are buying food for 800 cans.
Yes. And um if you look at the ones with the all blue quartz, something that we do on that one, it makes it it's pretty it's somewhat basic, but they make things to where they're about 6 foot long and you put them at the end of each quart to where balls stay on those courts a heck of a lot easier. If you go to a lot of newer courts, they have that. The ones that have some orange on it, those would all be separate courts. But, um there's some issues with that one as well that we'd have to get wrinkled out. a little bit. So, this one right here, the ones with uh these are all three separate courts. So, there would be fencing in between each of these to where it's all eats own separate thing. This one right here that we have out there, they're just three in one big line to where there's nothing in between them at all.
Our students ran out $30,000 in debt by Christmas time. We can't use money from our lunch account to pay that. That's against federal law because that's kind of like providing a free lunch to a kid that doesn't qualify. We have to use district money. Right now, our school lunches are running about $4.15 per lunch. Um, price increases right everywhere, groceries. So, we anticipate that if we lose our community eligibility provision, it's highly likely our students will acrew a lot of debt. One of the and our projection would be between 150 and 150,000 a year in debt that we would have to take out from our budget. So, one of the things, um, if the community eligibility provision is removed, then we're going to work hard with our lobbyist to see if we can get the equivalent lunch provision rolled back and that we can give something like an alternate lunch instead because that would we would incur a significant amount of debt.