Um and we're still unpacking everything that she's gone through. Um she she's watched her friends struggle with mental health. Some of those friends told her that self harm wasn't the answer and some of those friends are no longer present because of self harm. I've watched the school try to work with me and try to do the right thing only by making it worse. We sat down with a meeting with an SRO who wasn't trained in mental health and my daughter went in wanting to help and she left defeated. And I mean that she left furthering that ideation in her head that her friend's death was her fault because of the comments that SRO made. My daughter has been in an acute mental health facility twice and she's there right now. How can we help? How can we change policies? How can we teach these kids it's okay to share and not portray their friends, which is how she feels, right?
Article one here town reports. We have three reports tonight. First is a report from the comprehensive plan committee. And please feel free to turn the microphone around so you don't feel like you're facing or take it down. That's fine, too. Take it down and turn around. You said you just pull it up. Pull forward. I see. And then turn around you. Yeah, just whatever you're more comfortable doing. Okay. Thank you all. Um I'm Rajes Shri Kosh and I've lived in Ashlin since 2006 and I've served on several committees and community groups. Currently I'm one of the two co-chairs of the comprehensive plan steering committee. The other is Stacy Grant. She's right here and she'll talk about it in a little bit. This committee comprises 29 representatives from town committees, two members from the select board, two members from the planning board, and representatives from six precincts.
Um, I just want to extend a very big thank you to the principles and the secretaries and the local coordinators in the buildings and the judges and everybody that um makes this possible because without you um I know I I certainly couldn't do this. So, um, without further ado, here we are at this moment to introduce Brookfield's 18th annual poster cont uh, contest winners. Dr. Burril, can you help me please? Um, they're all in order. So, we are going to start with our first grade first place winner, Hadley Scalo. [Applause] first grade. Second place, Carter Harding. [Applause] I told you I was going to call you up here. First grade, third place, Jeffrey Zuo. [Applause] Second grade first place, Isabella Yun. I don't know if Isabella is here tonight, so we'll make sure we get that to her. Second grade, second place is Bin Clarkson.
Can you please come up? [Applause] [Music] Um you want to say something? Absolutely. Absolutely. I just wanted to say thank you to our school and all the teachers that pushed us to continue and as far as to going to this conference. Marina also wanted me to say she wasn't here today. She said that this really impacted her because she's going to the UVA and it really shows like ethics does take you a long way and it does show how good a person can be. And I wanted to thank Dr. Sulttero for pushing us all to go. We're We only went because we were student council and we the leaders, but we ended up making it worth it. So, thank you so much. And yeah, Martinez, she's not here, right? It's for $1,000 for her to take to uh to the university. Um, this next person needs no introduction.
So the last slide I have just kind of looking forward. So looking tonight obviously we're presenting the revised budget number one that will kind of conclude the budget conversations for this fiscal year. Uh but then on June 9th through 11th I need to my schedule forgot which day I can come down. We'll look at the proposed budget for 26. And at that time we'll present some options for the board for compensation uh proposals for 26. And then in July 7th or 9th, we'll officially adopt that budget for the upcoming school year.
She's 12. Um, I have a lot more, but time's up. Um, so I have a friend with me, Alexa Boyd, and I think she's gonna pick up where I left off. Alexa, so my name is Alexa Boyd, 1187 North County Road, Andre Spel. Um, I'm part of the Mental Health Matters Initiative, but I'm also a native here to um, Jennings County. I despite everything on. I still take deep pride in this county. Um I'm also a recent college graduate in the psychology field. So um I've experienced a little bit of the gaps um in the school support in terms of mental health. It can be a hard thing to talk about with the younger generations and just the youth in general. So um I'm interested in helping to fill those gaps. I know I'm young and I'm not any part of the school system, but I'm here to kind of propose a few ideas.
I represent precinct 5. Together, we form the comprehensive plan steering committee. We meet every third Thursday of a month. U the meetings are hybrid and it's open to the public. Our agenda minutes are all available on the town website. Our role as co-chairs has been to enhance the committee's effectiveness through developing agenda, coordinate between members and meetings between town officials and consultants, moderate discussions, and encourage follow through of action items. An unsaid part of our role is also to ensure that everyone on the committee is heard and seen. The comprehensive plan was named envision Ashland by residents of Ashland and it is a forwardfacing plan and will provide a roadmap for the future growth, preservation and change. Our consultants are our technical professionals. They are our partners in the plan. Jamelson provide us with directions for broad and intentional outreach. They designed what's called the POP.
Okay. Okay. Third grade first place. [Music] [Applause] That's okay. That's okay. I feel the love. Third grade. Second place is Miles Com. [Applause] got a lot of talent in this [Applause] room. Okay, fourth grade first place local and regional regional honorable mention Lean Elasis. [Applause] Congratulations [Applause] Fourth grade second place is Jamil [Applause] Palano. Fourth grade, third place, Ella Valentina Cruz Pinto. Congratulations, sweetheart. Great job. Fifth grade first place, Arafa Faizal. [Applause] Fifth grade, second place, Hannah Mlan. [Applause] Fifth grade, third place, Lucas [Applause] Vivaldi. Sixth grade, second place, Natalie Freeman. Natalie is with us this evening. Sixth grade, third place, Angelina [Applause] Lynn. Good job. Congratulations. Seventh grade first place local and second place regional winner, Amber Jiang. Congratulations. We see you a lot. Keep keep sending those entries in. Seventh grade second place, Khloe [Applause] Vassel. Seventh grade. Third place, Kyle Young. Eighth grade, first place, Cassandra Terrell.
Number 56. I believe he set the second season record. 50. I'm sorry. I'm comparing him to Lawrence Taylor at the New York Giants. So, I believe he set the uh one of the top records as far as most rushes over 50 or 60 yards, touchdown runs, but also he also was in the top 10 for number of tackles in a season. And so, this is presented to student ethics video contest certificate of award. first place out of around 200 high school students in about southern Arizona. Let's give it up for number 58. Uh uh I just want to thank you guys. Uh thank you for always being my biggest hype man. Uh yeah. Uh thank you. I just appreciate being a part of this guys. Thank you. And uh Mr. President, that concludes um superintendent report. Okay. And next up we have the award. Yes, Mr.
With that, that's any questions. I don't have any surprises coming up like last year when we paid back the grants. No, I mean, kudos to Miss Cotay. She's been absolutely crushing it with the grants. Um, let's see. A number of uh reimbursement requests come in. Um, we have until June 15th to do some of our completion reports. So, I know that's on your radar and we're in much much better position this year. So, I do not foresee any unforeseen. That's that's the saying that yeah in regards to grants there's there's no upcoming or or for foreseen expenses that we do is in non-compliance here. Yeah. I noticed on our regular agenda that we have several undisturbances over I'm all for it. Right. that we have several teachers that we're doing onetime payouts to that's all been taken in consideration on the budget and yeah yeah and so if you the presentation you see the budget balance carried forward a lot of those payouts are onetime payouts like like you mentioned so those payouts would not be coming from the annual obligation of the budget but because a carried towards such a large contingency uh you have the capacity to absorb those and without any shock to this to the budget or it's not a something that's going to upend what what auto has been doing or what has been practicing.
So, first is a summer wellness event that shares resources and support. Um it'll be kind of like a vigil as well for those that we've lost to suicide and those that have struggled with mental health themselves to come forward and share their stories. Um all of this is in partnership with the mental health matters initiative in Bartholomew County trying to um get some more outreach into the surrounding counties. Um, regarding support within the school system, I proposed a couple ideas. Um, walk-in or scheduled mental health support options within the school regardless of income or Medicaid status. I don't know how all of that works, the legality of it. So, it's just having those discussions and partnering with different um affiliations within the um community and also from certified peers or mental health professionals, having youth ambassadors and same age support. with demonstrated ability because sometimes kids don't want to talk to adults.
We all like acronyms. public engagement and outreach plan. They developed a website where they regularly update the phases of the plan. The first phase was all about familiarizing with Ashland. Phase two of Envision Ashland aimed to determine the community community's aspiration for the town's future. They implemented three engagement tools through the winter and spring of 2024 to understand the community members hope what community members hope Ashlin will look and feel like in 10 years. As part of PR, community members were trained in tools such as meeting in a box to generate community conversation and a web-based crowd map platform to collect placebased suggestions. Members of the committee reached out to residents for their inputs. We showed up in every town event, athletic fields, coffee shops, dragonfly festival, farmers market, committees, boards. We even entered homes of people. We were everywhere. And we were glad about that because we surpassed our engagement goals as a deliverable aggregated community engagement summary was developed and shared with the residents.
Eighth grade, second place, Zion Bal. Eighth grade, third place, Emily Tzano. Congratulations. Ninth grade, first place, Noel [Applause] Lejava. Ninth grade, second place, Jayen [Applause] Oando. Good job, Ninth grade third place, Luca [Applause] Dalaku. 10th grade first place local and third place regional winner, Britty Cower. 12th grade first place local and first place regional winner Alvina Balal. And congratulations to Alvina because she's a 12th grader. So we won't be seeing any of her artwork anymore. We will certainly miss that. And now for our grand prize regional winner, sixth grade first place local and regional winner and regional grand prize winner Mukajji. [Applause] So this is just a picture from the ceremony last week that we got to take with um with a which was really u pretty special. So I just want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for being a part of this for coming out tonight and celebrating with us.
President, members of the board. This is always, I believe, our favorite part. Um our student of the month awards for our preK to second grade students is and as you can tell, whenever we recognize our primary students, we always have a a standing room. We always have a big crowd. And so I'm going to go ahead and start it off by calling up prek teacher who in her last prek award before she becomes our new assistant business manager. [Music] [Applause] Miss Hopkins, Mr. Mr. Mr. Dr. M, thank you for coming down here. Fellow teachers, guests, and parents. In preK, one of her frequent conversation topics is animals. All the children enjoy animals and many of them like to pretend they are animals. Please explain my voice. We often have dogs and cats come to school greeting teachers and classmates with barks or meows. But in prek we also have one unicorn.
Again, it's because of that conservative nature and carrying forward that large contingency you're able to absorb and and move forward with some of these time expenses and continue your operations as as normal. So, before seeing anything plus or minus happening on the state level that's going to affect us financially? Yeah, from the state level um we're anticipating a decrease in some of the federal funds. Um yeah, it goes without saying. Um but from the much of the state is local controlled, right? So it's local controlled by the formula. So um the biggest kicker is your student enrollment. So your student enrollment I'm not foreseeing any large declines. look at Mercy like I think your your kinder well it's pretty pretty um steady and so um your all schools is locally funded and so as long as your student count is the same um the formula is the state still has obligated to fund the district by the $5,13 per student and so um I know Dr.
I've been there myself when I was in middle school and started struggling myself with mental health. I was kind of scared to seek that adult support because I didn't really know how to go about it. So, if we have selected peers that go through training, high schoolers, whatever the case may be, that could help as well. Um, and growing partnership with the Boys and Girls Club to provide pro-social activities closer to the school. um we can start to plan for a better next school year now and hopefully we'll be able to utilize some of the resources here in our community and surrounding communities. So, thank you. Next, um again, it's a little bit difficult to read the handwriting. Is there Mur McCur? Can you just your name? Jedi McCory. Jedi, thank you. Sorry, I difficult to read. Jedi, I'm just looking at it from a um moral and values aspect.
Last summer, JMG facilitated a workshop with the steering committee to draft the vision, core themes, and goals. Throughout the workshop, community members along with committee members had the opportunity to receive and give feedback. These sessions were critical and allowed us to reflect on Ashland's collective priorities regarding demographics, e economic conditions, open spaces, municipal facilities, land zoning, and so on. Once the vision, core themes, and goals were drafted, surveys were sent out to the public for additional output. In December 24, technical working sessions brought together residents with technical expertise along with town officials, department managers, and local board and committee members to determine a list of preliminary strategies. The strategies are tactical actions that we would look to do to meet our larger goals. Thank you, Rajri. As she mentioned, I'm Stacy Grant Lewis. I'm also the co-chair of the steering committee. Um, she spoke about what we've done so far and I'm here to just chat about what we're doing currently and in the future.
I want to congratulate all of the students that um put their artwork in to be judged in this contest. Um you are all so talented and I really hope that we see you next year. So, thank you for your time. And I also it's important it's important to thank Mrs. Garling. Um for those who don't know who Mrs. Garling is, uh very valued staff member. I think Mrs. This is year 26 for you in the district. Is that that correct? And she's only 26 years old. Thank you. And it's her 15th year uh running the H poster contest for us here in district. So I couldn't thank her enough and the board. I know. Thanks her so much for all the work she does on behalf of the superintendent's office and the board of education. So Mrs. Gramling, in the spirit of executive uh administrative assistance day last week for all of our secretaries, we thank you as well.
Unicorns are rare and magical creature. Unicorns are Jade's favorite animal, which is correct because we think Jade is a unicorn among students. She has a rare test for life and grasp of identity. Jade 100% knows who she is and is not afraid to be herself in any situation or in front of anyone. Every day, her inner unicorn sparkle shows itself in tus. Jade always come to school in her signature tutu. Each day a different color. She looks like a princess, but make no mistake. She can run and play with the best of them. Jade is strong and not afraid to get dirty. She stands up for herself if a situation calls for it, but she never hurts anyone. She uses her words to make herself understood loud and clear. Jade's independence is one of the things that makes her such a rare special uniform. She's very responsible with self-care, eating, cleaning up after center time, and helping around the classroom.
Sera we've kept staffing relatively all the same and so you are as the district very staple in that sense and so yeah I don't foresee any unforeseen so I know mommy's trying to get me something I don't know where you got that attitude about I think I think you do a great job I'm not very happy with you what happened right no I uh yeah if there was something that was up it's just the federal funding I think we're participating in the increase. So, but like like most of your funding is local controlled. maintain your current operations as they are. That there's talk of doing away with the free lunch on the federal level of that too. I know that directly doesn't impact anybody because that's from somewhere else. But do we have if they cancel it and we give that to all of our students if they cancel it does the district have the ability not with that amount of money you would have to research or potentially price for food.