So you really could look at this as seven diploma options for any incoming uh freshman student. So I should have should have mentioned this at the beginning. This starts with the class of 2029. So this will be current eighth graders next year's freshman. So they literally will have a menu of options on what best suits um their post high school um agenda. Again, seven options, a standard diploma and then an honors seal or honors plus seal in any of those three areas. Um, be a lot of options to consider. Eighth grade parents received this information as we did a meeting with them this past winter. So, they've been exposed to the information and have a basic level of understanding with this. Um, you'll also notice as we dig in, and I won't go into granular detail tonight, but there are a lot of experiences that will be pushed beyond the walls of the classroom and beyond the walls of the high school here.
Thank you. Show Tammy here. If you get to finish Yeah, they sent somebody in his place which is his dad. Follow up. Any other comments? Oh. Uh, Patty, thank you. Uh, this, I guess, is your official last presentation. Yes. To our board. We appreciate your years of dedication and service. You've done a wonderful job for this corporation. So, thank you. It's been my pleasure, my honor. All right, moving on. For those of you who stuck around, last month we had the the uh first preliminary determination hearing, and we are now getting ready for the second hearing. Uh the next thing on our agenda is the board to hold a project and preliminary hearing and the proposed project. If you're interested in speaking at the hearing, please make sure you have signed the sign-in sheet that Tammyy's got. Uh and it should include your name, your and your address.
Absolutely. Did you miss Dun? I have several questions. First of all, thank you. This is a brand new world that we are embarking on with this diploma for sure as I have been navigating it myself. I just I do have a few questions. I think the the first question is is that I appreciate how we are on slide eight talking about the default diploma should be the 42 credit readiness honor seal in enrollment um employment or enlistment. How are we going to communicate to families and to students this so that we don't My fear is is that we're going to go back to tracking students into from the time they're in 8th grade tracking them into a path. And so how are we going to communicate this? is how are we going to ensure that we are providing students an option if they want to switch from for example enlistment to enrollment that we are giving them all of those opportunities and that communication will begin in 8th grade just like we do now but I'll just give you an example of a recommendation that came out of our math department um the recommendation and this would be enacted at the building level is that all students for their math sequence take algebra and geometry even though that isn't required by the new diploma, but it keeps them on track for the enrollment uh seal if that's the direction that they want to go or they can easily switch in their junior year to an employment seal or an enlistment seal.
The seniors have been fighting for a center for 10 years. the police are looking to bring in two more police officers because they don't have anybody during certain times of the night. Um all of those different aspects in the balancing of it all. Taking a look at um what a bond is. understanding that in when you're building or when you're adding to your HVAC or your roofing and you know what are all the different pieces that you need to know in order to formulate a strategic plan for your town, a 10-year plan really you're looking at um for a town because of the tax base and all of that. Um so that was terrific. the aspect of that then sitting at the table as school committee member um of a regional school committee was really balancing. So my town was smaller that I lived in.
It's really not a ton. It's super simple, but I think it's really fun and effective. Thank you. How do you make the decision to uh of the topics that you're going to have on the podcast? Well, I would say it really just it starts as a conversation. It's like I remember one time Mr. was actually walking through the room when we were uh discussing what we might do the next week and uh we were talking about, you know, all the things that were going on in the sports world and different changes on the national level, state level. And we were like, what if we brought in uh the director of the MIA because he was a former um uh superintendent of Be Haven, so we knew he was a local guy. And Mr. Sheay was walking through and he was like, "Oh, I'll I'll contact him.
That that sounds a little scary. It's not quite as scary as what you might think is in reality five one-year contracts. Okay. So, because the board has to renew every year, okay, about this time is when renewals are coming out. And the fixed price is a little uh iffy too. It we can only raise your price by CPI, consumer price index. So the state of Kansas pulls the consumer price index food away from home category in February and it's a percentage. So we can only raise your rates by that percentage. This year it was 3.7% was what the percentage was and then so that is raises your rates on student lunch and student breakfast. Okay. So that's kind of how that works. Okay. One of the things that boards usually want to know about is what happens to employees. And there are really three options here.
I'd like the green light to see what we can do for now. That makes sense. So, I can go talk to people about it and not have to say, "Well, I don't know if we'll be able to do it or not." But because if I get the green light, then I should be able to go and talk to people and see if we can gain a little bit of headway and steam. So the the orangest red one can we get three individual courts like the blue one or does it have to be offset for the spacing? Can you can we get you you were say talking about these are three individual courts. Could we get it three individual courts side by side? And the reason why I'm saying that is because that allows more spacing. Yes. In between instead of staggered here. Yeah, you definitely could.
I know there a lot of I'll call them you know nationwide myths about what US DOE does and doesn't do but truthfully US DOE has little to no impact on our daily lives whatsoever. So what would happen if we encouraged parents to start bringing their children's lunch? Um, well, it's would depend, I guess, whether they thought they could afford to pack it or not. And and people know if if they know we have to give their kid a lunch anyway, what incentive do you have to send your kids lunch? I'm just being honest about it. I understand because we did have that experience before. So, we're basing it on our prior experience to to make some projections based on cost and our current. Um, yeah, this is this is definitely this is definitely something that as as we I'm like I imp really close eye on this and if I if there are things that I think we can mobilize our public to help with um then I'll be sure and let our board members know as well.
That one we did last year. Uh oh, sorry. Yeah, that says in that one we did last year. Um and then uh the last one is restraint and secl. Well, not the last one. Restraint and seclusion, JLDB. And then uh the last one says nearly ready for the lawyer JB National origin protections. And that's it. What was what was that last one? So sorry. Uh JB, National Origin Protections. Oh yeah, I think that one you can put in there for sure. And that's really as far as the as far as the completed policies checklist got. Okay. Okay. And then um what I as you were talking I was thinking too we might we might want to put um or if it's okay with everybody I think maybe putting in a slide that's talk that talks about like the com like the common forms that are being agreed upon for the district um would be a good one to put because there's a lot that's not going to be in the governing board policy necessarily but that came out of this committee and I can add that stuff on there if that's okay with everybody.
We just want to be made whole and this is their way of making us whole is if we have kids going here, they're giving us our cost per pupil for those kids in the tiff. If you are going to take it back to them, can you ask them how after the terms of the agreement how those property values are going to be assessed if it's at the current I can't remember what that's called. Yeah, I got you. Like new builds today is they're locked in. Did you just get this? Has Grant reviewed this yet or is this are we the first? We're the first. Yeah. And we I literally got it uh last week and they asked to have it approved by the end of the month and I said I can sneak it into this board agenda. Um and then Grant's got a board meeting late in two weeks.
The second step is really focused on communication, collaboration, and engagement with your community and make sure that they have a voice in the process. Uh, we know that community outreach is really important to have a successful own have ownership in a solution moving forward. So, we we are emphatic about starting with the facts. You can't have a solid network and a solid communication at a master planning level if you don't have a a basis of facts. They're defensible. They give that uh that educational planning committee the backbone to make solid decisions. So, we're going to talk about some of the process of gaining that information. So, the first tool that we wanted to touch on is an educational alignment assessment. Um really this process is about assessing how your facilities today are either enhancing or potentially creating limitations to the way in which you can deliver education to your students.
Our next idea was to go to do the section that runs in front of the locker room and over to the gate into the track and football. Um that was kind of the next section they thought, but you know, grand scheme of the thing, it goes through there and then it goes all the way around the practice football field and then the entire north side down to the end of the base or basically to meet up with the baseball. We may have to look to see what that costs. Yeah. before we do um baseball softball dugouts painted. I know there's some interest in lighting that's out there that some folks don't like the lighting that exists. Well, um are you talking about parking lighting or the I think the entrance lighting and the parking lot baseball field blanks horrible because it doesn't exist. Yeah. No other football field.
Things like work-based learning opportunities, things like internships, things like externships. Um, we really will need to lean on more than ever before partners in our greater Huntington community. um because our students will need some of those hours to achieve either an honors seal or an honors plus seal level. Plus, it will be an option for students to move through these diploma requirements, not quickly, but quicker than previously. And so, we want to enrich that experience by giving them great work-based options, internships, and things that will enrich their high school experience. Couple of other notes as it relates to honors seal and honors plus seal. First and foremost, Huntington North High School is going to take the posture that we will use the default as the honors seal for our students. We want to give them the honors seal as the default because should they fall just a little bit short, they'll still be positioned extremely well to earn a standard diploma.
After presentation by the administration, it advisers. There'll be an opportunity for the public to make comments about this project. At the hearing, we will ask that each person limit their comments to three minutes and that the topic be limited to the proposed project under consideration. Uh the notice of this preliminary determination hearing has was published as legally required. The first preliminary determination hearing was held on March 10th, 2025. At this time, I'll ask Mr. Brad to explain the purpose of this hearing. Thank you, Mr. McCord. Pursuant to Indiana Code 20-26-7-37, before a school corporation may spend more than a million dollars to build, repair, or alter a school building, it will be financed by a lease or bonds, it must hold a public hearing at which explanations of the potential value of the project to the school corporation and community are given. Similarly, pursuant to Indiana code 61.123.1, a school corporation must hold two public hearings and adopt a resolution to preliminarily determine to issue bonds or enter a lease for a project which has a total project cost in excess of a non-controlled project.
So, it just gives more options for students by keeping them in that traditional math sequence for an extra year. That is wonderful. And how do we plan on communicating to our families who have an English or who have a preferred language other than English? because this is it. US schools are challenging to begin with, right? Let alone um adding all of these complexities. So, what is the plan to communicate to our families whose preferred language is not English? Yeah. And we'll translate all of our materials just like we have with our current materials and be able to provide through our district family liaison direct one-on-one support if families need that. Is there a plan? because I I would think that we might want to engage with families in a broader scope. Could we potentially think about family engagement evenings or something of that nature? Awesome.
We didn't have um a lot of business. So it was really on the backs of the people living there. You know they um when the taxes went up it was really they property taxes. There's no sales tax in New Hampshire. So it's all goes to property taxes. So it's a little bit different structure. Whereas the other town was small in itself, it had a whole lot of business in it. So they could afford or ask or look for a larger increase of renovating the vocational center or you know whatever it is that they wanted. So it was really working on that balance with my fellow school committee members from the other town as well as the members on that town as to understand that the different places were all in and you know bringing in what our towns needed as well to really come to some um general consensus with regard to what we're going to ask for for the budget and what that was going to look like for each town.
We'll see what he says." And um that's that's how that one went. But most of the time it's usually a conversation like, "Do you think that we could get this person to come do a podcast?" And then we kind of just reach out and it's usually how it goes. Very cool. Great. Thank you. Anyone else? No, I'm just super impressed. I uh I don't really have a question because I don't know enough about it to formulate something meaningful, but uh really impressed with just your engagement and all of your work. And I love how Mikey the collaboration between like that media side and that whatever podcast side but and writing side um it's just a beautiful thing and I'm sure it'll come in handy whether you move into a field that you're utilizing those skills just having them really will add to your um what you have to offer the world which is pretty amazing.
First, I should say the director has to be an employee of the food service management company. And that's not our rule. That's KSD's rule. Okay? So, keep that in mind. That has to be the first one. So, then the board can decide, okay, we want the food service management company to have all the employees. You can make that decision. and you mark that box in the RFP or you can say other than the director everybody else is going to be a district employee make keep the w you determine wages and keep your benefits and you pay for those and all that that stays the same or there's a third option and it's called the transition model. We actually created this with Dale Dennis a few it's been more than a few years ago about 8 years ago now um where the board then can decide how you will transition employees.
Um the only thing is it would take more uh seat or take more fencing. So you'd have a little bit more of a price there. But in the grand scheme of things, that'd be pretty minor. I just threw a couple things the other just to try to Okay. Give a little bit to look at. So what are some of your thoughts for um fundraising? Um there is or how they did it at Smoky Valley is my father-in-law went around and basically said if you donate a quartz they would name it after you or basically and I don't know if that would be something that we'd be interested in doing here. So for example if the Hurley family I think it'd have to be close to $100,000 between however many Hurlies want to donate get that amount of money then you'd have Hurly family courts. It'd all be Gary Bner courts.
So that that's a biggie. Um finally, Mrs. Bessie's prepared a list of activities that you may attend. It's on your table. This is such a busy time of year. is actually stapled paper. So, make sure you take it with you. But I wanted to point out, Ed talked about a little bit, a really super fun thing that we have coming up. On May 5th at Del Rio, we have a banquet to honor all of the millionword readers in the district and it's sort of a picnic style thing. It is so fun. So, if you want to attend that, you can let Becky know. You can email Cheyenne to RSVP. We've got a band concert on May 6th. This is what that week looks like, right? We've got the millionear challenge banquet on Monday. We've got concert on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we have senior awards in the East Gym.