okay i'd like to call the meeting order with the pledge of allegiance [Music] well good evening and welcome to the august regular meeting of the greencastle school board first item on the agenda is adjustments to the agenda mr gibney yep so i do have a couple of items this month under new business 8h we received several late arriving donations to help support us in our response to covet 19 so we'd like to be able to accept those funds tonight so that we can spend them barry allison's children's trust to redpath elementary a thousand dollars hendricks power to gcse 500 and then park county remc to uh gcse 500 okay if i just ask you to repeat all those for we're going to approve it sounds good okay can i get a motion to adjust the agenda i have a motion in a second any comments or anything hearing that all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is public comments regarding agenda items do we have any public comments regarding the exit items okay hearing none move on next under the uh the agenda is recognitions mr gibbon yeah so uh as a new part of our board meeting adding recognitions to the start of each board meeting in september we'll start recognizing students of the month but recognition is also time for our building principles and administrators to highlight staff members that have gone above beyond highlight accomplishments of teams or just to share really positive stories from their schools so any of our administrators present have recognitions to share if you could come forward the microphone please chicago first i like to talk anyway so um so some of the pictures that were up uh on the screen just recognizing um that our team building day that we have done every year for the last four or five years we still managed to carry that off flawlessly thanks to mrs landry um she put together um just a whole variety of activities all around the building and outside where the kids were still socially distanced and they had a great time and you can even see most of them wear their mask even when they're outside um the kids are having no problem at all and so that's been great we haven't had any issues there i would also recognize shannon green and myrna sherman in our library for putting a traveling library together we're not having kids come into the library weekly to check out books so they have set it up and there was some pictures up on the screen about that so they're setting up little tables outside of each pod and setting out books and the kids come out and they can still look at a book they have the rule of if you touch it you check it out so so they are still getting to check books out from our library um we also received a thousand dollars from mary allison um i just don't have the letter over to yet because i forgot to print it so i will be coming soon um and then lastly i would recognize not just the tz virtual teachers but all of the virtual teachers in green castle they are doing some amazing things and they've come up with some up against a few bumps here and there and they are working through them and providing for our virtual students at tz there's a little over say 59 is where we're at right now so they've just been going above and beyond to get that all set up and running for us so thank you thank you good evening we want to recognize that the middle school our after school program that has really done some awesome things they've gotten a fridge for our life skills class picnic tables and put gravel in so that we our teachers can go outside and have some classes they also have some great programs that they're doing they've ordered books for our school they have also they're consulting with a group that's coming in and doing career exploration with students and they're working with depauw and they're help they're having kids make memorable um memorial items with the covid experience and the putnam county um uh library is gonna get capsules for the kids so they can put them in there and then they're gonna display them in the museum so that was really cool that that what they're doing also with us with our virtual kids we have 90 plus students now our office team and our virtual teachers are working really hard to make sure all those kids get serviced and get the help that they need throughout the day and then also in the evenings thank you i wanted to share a report on our tk program that you approved last month so one of the first things that we did to help with our transitional kindergarten was we did not place our kindergarten students in classrooms and superintendent gibney found out that we had a child at transfer say that she went to the school with an owl so we realized we will have to work on that a little bit for next school year is letting you know at least that you are a red path or dear meadow kiddo the identification process that we used was spot on and jamie whittaker currently is our kindergarten teacher and so the curriculum that she has that she is really using at that intense precise moment of what those students need is really fulfilling them and giving them that extra foundation for them to grow um again with the virtual teachers um before right before school started i had a teacher say i think i want to do this and she did it and she's been phenomenal and i am so impressed with the leadership from dr french and superintendent gibboney for giving these virtual teachers the time to come together really work through and strategize and these families the grace that they have shown us has been amazing i feel like every time we figure out something another hiccup pops up and you know we'll say we're so sorry like that's okay we're figuring this out together so i just want to say thank you so much for believing in us and giving us this opportunity thank you dear meadow highlights simply got a good school opening uh much more it went much more smoothly than i anticipated and that's really due to just the planning that our staff has done and it's also nice to be supported kyle at transportation on those days that we get rid path kids showing up at dear meadow or vice versa or somebody's unsure on the transportation home as they get to transfer knowing that our kids are going to be taken care of similar to tz and red path we're also having our media specialist and assistant we're going room to room as far as a set of kids going to our media center to check out books for getting books in kids hands i do want to recognize one of my teachers joe gooch a title 1 teacher who's been a long time classroom teacher as well but filling in at second grade for me as we have one of our second grade teachers who's had to isolate us she takes her daughter to college so just kind of an all hands on deck and it's been a great opening and we're appreciative of our parents because we've changed our arrival our drop off and our pickup procedures uh as as necessary and we've even had to flex those a little bit over the past two weeks for example the first day of school granted we had more pickups at the end of the day than normal because it is the first couple days of school but pick up the first day of school took 30 minutes as a long 30 minutes and uh today it took eight and a half so that's just uh because i'm smart enough to listen to my staff because they have good ideas thanks mike okay thank you all okay next item on the agenda is going to look a little different this evening we are going to use a consent agenda to approve uh fairly routine items on the agenda minutes financial stuff personnel reports we get all the same information from everyone but we'll just be making one vote at the end of all that to approve everything so the first item on the consent agenda is meeting minutes does anyone have any comments about last month's meeting minutes okay next item would be allowance of claims this is romer hello everyone hello okay in your packet you'll see three payrolls this month fridays that we had payrolls in july so the first one you're going to see is going to be july 3rd with a total payroll of 372 729.78 along with that payroll came your prepays and those again would be for your payroll taxes retirement etc total on that prepays for july 3rd 109 40.
hmm okay rosa whenever you're ready okay good evening everyone today is monday august 24th and i call the special meeting of the brookfield board of education to order um tonight we have all of our board members present so we can actually go right to the first item on our agenda which is um 2021 covid cost impossible motion regarding a re-prioritization of our existing budget items so um ken i'll just hand it over to you or john whoever you'd prefer to walk us through the material i'll just do a quick introduction rosa so ken has a memo that he can share he sent it to everybody but he can share his screen um where eric whoever they have set and ready to go if they're sharing while i'm talking um we have um some uh curricular tools and equipment that we um as we moved into the hybrid model realize are critically important for us to have um a robust in-person and um remote learning model uh in addition to that we have um some savings and what we wanted to show is uh ken is showing in this uh memo and he will walk us through it is the uh opportunities we have for the reprioritizing of um items that we want to purchase as well as savings that are in that we know are in the budget and so this is a budget neutral transfer that ken is requesting um so we could move forward on the items that are on the list um and also demonstrate the savings that we're closely monitoring uh throughout our new operating budget this uh this year so ken is there anything else we can share about this memo i can show the worksheet which gives a little more detail in uh itemizing the cost of the specific items we're asking for sure sure and the so that's the memo for the request the spreadsheet is um what we started to talk about last week and it's quite detailed there's a number of different sections in the spreadsheet if you had a chance to look at it you may have noticed that and it will overlap with um item four as well on the uh board agenda tonight but certainly uh appropriate for the conversation so ken uh please want me to walk through the whole worksheet or is just the items we want to talk about i think i think for now just the items right okay just the items right now but i just wanted to preface it that there's a lot of information on there and we're certainly happy to walk through everything tonight but yes ken please highlight highlight and walk us through so these are the items we're talking about uh the exception that you do not see on the um on the memo is the news ela because we're using the title two grant money to get that but we wanted to be transparent and show everything that we were getting for the remote learning so eric can probably talk to the document cameras better than i can so eric you want to start us off with document cameras and we'll talk a little bit about that and then we i can walk into uh some of the other items sure um uh and i i will uh talk to the document cameras and dr ruby may have a uh a comment or two to back up on uh as well we we've been working on this together so the idea of the document cameras um was a multi-purpose um lack of a better way to put a kind of a hybrid solution um that can be used for years to come so basically what a document camera is um its main purpose is to act like if anybody remembers i keep forgetting the name of those um the the big things with the lamp and you had the clear sheet of paper um they were there they were there when i was in school too overhead projector is oh my gosh i keep forgetting the name uh um so uh anyway uh these are basically what those replaced um they are um cameras that sit on a base with an arm that comes up and um you put a piece of paper um something 3d some kind of item you put down on the desk and then it projects it out on a big screen they come in handy when you have big presentation stations um they can come in handy when staff are trying to when teachers are trying to share something on a zoom classroom they can share their screen use the document camera put up put a textbook put a workbook down there one of the coolest things about a document camera though is that most of the ones if you buy the right ones they actually come with an arm that swivel um and that arm can actually swivel up and be used as a webcam with a built-in microphone that webcam can uh we can put a long usb cable on it um and that um document camera can be kind of moved a little easier and a little more frequently than taking and picking up a laptop and moving it around to show yourself on the screen um you know and and so this is kind of the the gap in realizing between um you know simple desktop webcams and that 2500 per classroom solution that we talked about uh back in july um uh you know the the idea of document cameras has become extremely popular across districts in connecticut and in the country so um i i won't i won't uh i won't say that availability is not an issue we we will have to find um items in you know in stock if that comes down to it um but the district does have a number of them already we we actually have staff that ask for them all already so this number is actually not to outfit every single classroom um it's to supplement um for what we don't have um we actually have about 25 of them we have all but uh for center school for example we have uh one for every teacher except for the two new teachers that um are starting with us this year um we have about 25 or so at huckleberry um and we have um you know uh probably a close to uh um if i remember my uh documentation correctly about a dozen or so for each at wisconsin and the high school that could be used um you know and in looking at this um you know we've talked about the term kind of um you know a permanent solution for a temporary um problem um you know we wanted to also look for something that isn't exactly that um and we actually have requests for document cameras every year um and when we do return to a 100 in person model um these document cameras can continue to be used um they can be used for our students that choose to do 100 remote they can be used when all 20 students are back in every single classroom uh you know five days a week um teachers can use them to present up into the front of the classroom um and they can be used in all specialties grades um you know arts any anything any program in the district they could they could find use in um so it was it was important to find something that not only will give better quality and instruction but could be used for years to come um and that's kind of where the tech side of it maureen i don't know if you have anything you want to put in on the uh instruction side uh no i just want to make comment that you know we looked at the initial solution of 2500 which is you know having the cameras and then we spent eric and i spent a lot of time looking at websites looking at what different districts are doing eric talking to um tech directors myself talking to assistant superintendents and curriculum people and this for all the reasons that eric has shared just seems to be a really wise decision that provides flexibility in the use of the document camera for now for multiple purposes and then for years to come so it's not something that's going to be obsolete what about the webcams that we already received are those sort of redundant or what are we going to do with them those webcams are you know just to be sure are you speaking about the the original that were asked by the board of finance um as part of the first 90 days so those were actually for support staff um those were purchased for nurses secretaries um you know basically anybody who who really sits at a desk all day in the offices um and we gave them yeah we gave them laptops obviously to work from home but we need those laptops back um we need them for staff we may need them for students um and and um you know so as we hold virtual staff meetings you know where appropriate um you know that that we do need our support staff to be able to to um jump in and they have desktop computers with no camera and no microphone so i have a question and comment so i think it's really an investment for the district we want to you know deliver that message that's really important also how many document cameras is that for 45 000 how many are we getting for that number um yes so that number is based on 150 document cameras at up to 300 um and a piece um they have a huge range um they can go anywhere from um a hundred dollars which are hard to find right now um all the way up to eight to nine hundred dollars um you know so um in in all in the vast amount of dr rubio and my research um in communication um you know we found based on what's available and what we might be able to realistically get the sweet spot seems to be right around that 300 mark yeah professionally for me i mean there isn't a day that goes by that i don't use it it's really so critical well that's good to have that endorsement because thank you you're in the school and you know so we would not be requesting these if it wasn't um an absolute necessity all right so i think bob had to stand up sorry i had a question um the uh so eric have we actually been able to test out the visual quality in a zoom meeting uh yes um that we're gonna be doing more later this week um with with dr ruby but um i've had i i put um stephen clark our tech at um center school has been working with mrs diamond um and they've kind of taken the lead um they started to do some testing um so i kind of had uh steve take the lead on on doing some testing he actually messaged me back this morning um and i said that has told me that he has had um some really nice success with it both video and audio quality um we do want to next though we were speaking in an empty classroom um you know so we might try to grab some staff and and socially distance and put us in the um in a classroom because when you fill up a classroom obviously we know when you fill with people um that can change the sound um you know the video quality is not our concern based on where they stand um it really comes down to the audio quality and we want to make sure we position these things in the right spot um for our staff but yes we actually have been doing some testing um uh in in with with a couple of we have about two or three different models of these cameras and um so we've tried one um and we're gonna go try another one this week at huckleberry okay and would it i'm just picturing our screen here this would show up like ken's document does it's in the display part part of the screen that it would show up correct so the document camera is obviously dependent um uh is dependent right back to the cam um back to the computer um you know so basically these are um just more flexible desktop webcams where they have that arm that comes up so you could you can present so um you know a staff member would take the document camera set it up and then do a screen share just just like ken's doing okay yep yep okay all right thanks everybody um just moving on to some of the other items that are uh important to us let's talk a little bit about lexia uh lexi is a digital platform that engages our students in um differentiated literacy instructions pre-k to five the program provides systematic and personalized instruction in all areas of reading the program also helps assess students as they use it and it allows teachers to assign specific lessons to students to target target their identified needs it can be used by individuals and for small group instruction we used lexia this past spring and have data that demonstrates significant gains for our students so we're really happy with the product additionally we supported students this summer who made gains again given the transition between in-class and remote learning and the hybrid model and some of the other unknowns about the year it's important um that that we move forward with it with a a consistent learning opportunity such as alexia uh that that provides the valid and reliable data data excuse me um and when students are not present um you know in the classroom it's very difficult to uh assess because a lot of the assessment we do um is is in person with the in-person tools so um it really is important for our students and um we're excited about moving forward with the galexia pre-k to five um so so that is one uh opportunity there and again it fits fits with any of our models that we have over three models going forward so is that the cost for a year subscription um i believe that is a one year right right yes yeah i'm sorry we'd be planning probably to continue that you know even after it's it's a it's possible however we feel that with the unknowns that we have um in this year and i'm just going to backtrack a little bit we were using lexia and district for a very few number of students who had lexia on ieps there was also a small grant for 10 subscriptions at um center school that were being used for students who qualified for that type of instruction when the virus took over the world lexia and a number of other companies were very very sharp in their in their marketing tools and so they offered these products to school districts in support of school districts during coped free of charge and they did that it was a very smart marketing tool because it got their product in the hands of teachers and teachers could see how um how powerful some of these tools were so while we have a very strong uh curriculum and we have very strong curricular tools those tools were not designed to be used in a remote uh hybrid flexing in and out of different models type of uh curriculum setting so what we're looking for this in this year and i can't predict for future years is the fact that it allows for more seamless transition and and less interruption to students who are um in need of extra support whether it be enrichment or remediation and to build on one of the things that dr burrell said while the program is k5 it is remedia it has remedial uses in grades above five so this particular summer we had students in who made really nice uh gains i'm sure everybody in this room has heard how some kids who didn't do well in classrooms did better in remote learning some kids who did you know who didn't do uh who did really well in the classroom didn't do well in remote learning there's all types of learners but we had um and if dean were here he could speak to this at more length but we had some students who really at kind wisconsin connected with lexia and since we had the free um subscription through uh the end of july july 31st we provided them with support through the summer and they continued to um to build on that breakthrough opportunity that they had in the spring so we think that this is appropriate for the upcoming year but i wouldn't i i don't know that it would be a forever thing um i really we wouldn't we would really review the data and see what's appropriate and what's best for students okay fair enough thanks dr ruby you're welcome similarly uh with ixl math it is also a digital platform we also used it this spring we also had some really nice games for students and it provides personalized learning and math aligned to our connecticut standards the plans are accompanied by built-in diagnostics and analytics that also provide remediation and acceleration opportunities for all students and um so similarly uh to what dr ruby just explained about lexia the ixl uh software will help us in math um moving in and out of uh remote hybrid or or uh you know full in person um so it's it's similar but it's it's the math end of things so um uh i think the questions you may have asked i know rosie you just asked it's a similar i think response uh going forward uh analyzing how it works for us um looking at what the future holds depending on how we do with the virus as as a nation and as a world and you know what what the future looks like as we go through our budget process uh this winter and spring so and i would add to that that ixl is not something that's new to the district we um in the past have had pockets of subscriptions in the district at different places and eric and i spent two years analyzing the data from ixl and we stopped the subscriptions because in the um 100 in school format with all of the other tools that we had um we found that the usage was not um worth the expense at that time because when we went through the usage data by classroom and by student um there were some students that were just using it you know like it was candy i mean like just like all the time they were on it but that the number of those students was so small and the gains that they were making um wasn't powerful enough for the expense that we had now come the free version that they gave to us last year during spring and the situation that we were in we found in reviewing the data that the usage data was significantly different because of the circumstances so based on on the usage data and what students did when they used ixl it um and parents um when we stopped the ixl usage because of the the data that we reviewed we had parents that weren't happy the parents of the kids that used it all the time um and the teachers whose kids used it all the time remember these as a small number of people were not happy now we're happy because we saw that it was actually being used and for this i'll call it let's hope let's hope that this is a bridge year this is bridging us back to being healthy and able to be in school and make whatever adjustments we need to make so i would say as as dr will said the same thing um the the outlook is the same as lexia we will examine the data we will look at the situation that we uh that we're facing as we go into the um the school year after this and then make decisions um and report out on it uh i just want to make a quick comment about ixl math although i i really do like the program and that i think it has a lot of great things to offer and i think a good teacher will do this but i think that it's it's a very frustrating program for students because when they get something wrong they go down like a lot of levels so we can take you know a student an hour or even two hours to complete you know one concept or standard but i think there were years where my kids had some teachers that say you know do it for 30 minutes and stop or you know get to 75 75 proficiency and stop you know i think it's how it's kind of it's used the message is how it's used is important yes and this and because of the situation that we're enjoying because you make great points it's very different than how it was used um i think probably in how you're describing it because it wasn't used as a curricular tool it was just like it was there and teachers would say you could use it and so there wasn't a consistent message and i i can't speak to this but it doesn't appear from the data that we've reviewed that there was a real um intentional use of the tool it was for kids who wanted to use it or not wanted to use it and there wasn't um it wasn't i'll just call it teachers hands-on um so i think that what we saw last year for a larger number of kids was that it was being used in a very different way and that's what our intention is for this year right so i think you made a good point though the message is really important um and also a good thing to look at is if for higher level students you know if someone's in sixth grade they can do seventh or eighth grade level work exactly so that's great thanks for bringing that up that's a good part about it the the other um opportunity that that we have in here that we're pretty excited about is a software program called talking points and talking points is a translation service which supports students excuse me and families it translates documents translation of educational materials um two-way translated communication uh and many other uses and as you saw at the beginning of the meeting i we we invited uh mrs holly uh to talk a little bit about talking points and how it's used with our english uh language learner students and how it's really helped us as an organization and help the families so maybe kevin you could share a little bit about talking points and the importance of the program of course good evening everybody and if the board doesn't mind i you know me i have a little presentation to share to make it a little more palpable is that all right with everybody um yes all right so i'm gonna share my screen it'll be really quick let's um can everyone see the presentation yes great okay um so um as dr brill stated uh i'm gonna talk about talking points the uh app that um as it states here and this actually this is a presentation that was shared with staff when you know um i'm sure everyone remembers uh school districts across the country we're all being bombarded with it take this free thing there's there's this free app there's this free resource and um eric conklin and i we we took a look at talking points and we said hey you know what this free resource that's being offered during covid um this could be a solution for simplifying and eliminating communication barriers with our non-english speaking families but also just facilitating communication in general with families and you know since the goal of ours is always increasing uh family engagement parental engagement we thought that this was a great tool so i um shared this presentation with teachers to you know ease the anxiety and offer them a possible solution for communication barriers and pretty much what this is is um it's a parent teacher messaging app what it says here with translation teachers compose messages in english using the web or mobile app and talking points as dr burl says translates it and sends the messages in the parents home languages which is great because last count we had 17 different languages and this messaging app offers over a hundred different languages and each of our language needs is met with this app and how it works uh pretty much the staff members sign up for free online but however we're asking for because it's free for individual teachers but we're asking for a district license where we could do a lot here and they could do it online or their mobile device our teachers uh prefer to go online none of their personal information is shared with the families but it's very easy then we add the contacts every teacher does that from their class roster and perhaps eric you could go into more detail later than i can but we worked with our data specialist denise walsh and she found a solution as to how to connect this to power school to facilitate sending of the messages to families in their home languages and also in english and then they could begin sending messages to families and what's really cool about this is the teacher could tell whether the parent read it or whether the parent didn't get it and there's also a data tool in here that lets you know and actually we found out many update outdated numbers uh because of this app so that was great and we were able to contact families and get updated information to make sure that they were getting uh all the communication necessary during this time and pretty much like they they're all about parental engagement uh family engagement and actually this is great because it goes uh very well with the new flexibilities and the teacher evaluation plan as one of the student learning objective goals of teachers can be family engagement so this app could be something that potentially facilitates that and these are just some examples of how our teachers actually used it with whole class announcements reminders what students are learning in class as well as positive behavior messages so it was great that teachers were given these examples because it's actually how they used it and then also here um you know there's little parent engagement suggestions to not overwhelm families with messages so you could here there's a suggestion where teachers could send routine messages two to three times a week set a limit that won't overwhelm families and also setting parameters as to when you would be checking messages um and then here are just some examples of how to get parents engaged and this presentation also shares anecdotes from real life teachers so uh we got buy-in when teachers not only saw these anecdotes but also started using the technology themselves and i have to tell you and you know being completely transparent i've never received so many messages from our educators particularly during the summer to advocate for this app how awesome it was and how much it increased communication and family involvement during a very stressful time for everybody and it was very refreshing and this is just some of the statistics from talking points that you know really helped us get on board with this because we saw how it's impacting other districts across the us and we really wanted to bring this resource to our district and then finally these are just some more anecdotes that the company shared with us but like i said the um i've received so many emails from teachers saying you know just asking please please please can we put this in our budget it's awesome not only for non-english speaking families but also for english-speaking families they prefer so much to receive a text and they just get it right away and they respond immediately and that's it thank you kevin well i really appreciate you being here with us eric please adam yeah thanks kevin yeah before before we go to questions i did want to add two two points that i thought um you know um would be uh would be interesting one is um rosa to your your point before about looking for you know software to the future um this is one piece that that i i would like to propose that we talked about past this year um it has benefits for literally everything um you know in the district and that's what actually leads me to the other point i wanted to share is um kevin and i actually sat down and talked about this um this program many times before the pandemic um we were actually looking for initially for a solution for our school office staffs to handle registration um they were really struggling with struggling with language barriers and that's where actually the look of talking points um came up we had a demo uh we realized this can be used for way more than operations and in fact it was really meant for for you know parent-teacher communication so um this is something that can be used in and out of the classroom in the district um even even up to this up to the tso level um you know when when parents want to talk to administration and what's so great about this is that it's not like google translate it actually picks up language nuances because there's actually people behind this translation software um that vet the messages and also we received very positive feedback from our non-english speaking family saying that the translation was right on or there were very very few errors but they understood everything so my question was gonna be yeah yep that's good yeah having used google translate i was going to say that is a big difference from google translate so kevin what happens when the um tell us what happens when the parents um respond in their um in their own language in an email sure so when they respond in their own language it gets translated back to english to whether it's the registrar or the teacher so that's a key a key thing so it puts parents at um at ease they don't have to be um embarrassed or and or in any way off put by the fact that they are not um writers in english they can comprehend in their own language when they get the translated message and they can respond in their own language and know that the receiver at the school end is going to be able to read it in english so quite question on the cost um you you said during the presentation that it was free for teachers to use but that you like the school-wide license what do we get in the license that we don't get with the free version well it's that um where we could connect it to uh powerschool and we have uh more control over our student data and as we know student data privacy laws you know when something's free we have we don't have as much control and that was just per teacher and that was also during the covid time this is a presentation that um i presented well we're still living in it but you know uh free apps during that time quickly became now you have to pay for them so um during that time it was free and it is free for individual teachers as well but it's up to just x amount of students so with a district license you could have whole class sets on there um like i said you have more control over student data privacy and it syncs right to our power school so we have pretty much district-wide control over our student data and then the second thing is i heard dr ruby say the email was being translated back and when i heard your presentation it sounded more like it was text messaging does it connect into email as well well it's just through um instead of email it's through text messages but they could be used no but it could be used on the computer as an email-like message i got that i just i just wanted to try it with clear that's all it's both web-based and there's on top of the test machine there is also a mobile app for iphone and android too yes yeah yeah is this something that students would be using too like i know a lot of teachers now use remind for classes like would this sort of take the place of her mind and then a student then and teachers could do over my like tests coming tomorrow etc or is it more just parents and teachers communicating this is just parents and teachers communicating this is for uh family engagement uh purposes okay i guess my only question is uh you know you guys came across this program did you come across any other programs like it or i mean can you speak to maybe the decision process on this talking points and actually uh the question actually would go with also the alexa and the math program like how many programs are like these things i mean you know with the math one that thirty thousand bucks twenty five thousand for alexa is what's the what's the shopping around process if you can take me through that um sure um you know i can speak to talking points i i unless unless anybody else um has uh come in unless you can speak i've never seen um a competitor that can do what talking points can do um as well as it can do um you know our direct kind of competition to what we were looking at was google translate um you know that that we bring up um you know one of the benefits to to these software is uh you know fortunately and unfortunately these these these places all gave their software software away for free as dr ruby um alluded to before and and that was a way to kind of promote their software right so talking points gave their software for free um until the end of june um you know so we actually got to use it for uh when did we sign up caminad the middle of april i think two and a half months we got to use it for um yeah and eric you and i did a lot of research too we were looking for a school messenger-like app but to uh you know create a greater communication equity for everyone regardless of language yeah and and i mean no in no purchasing process do we um you know just jump on the first one that we see um this is the only one uh there was a specific criteria there's one language in our district chemin and i forget it was um it was a form of arabic i believe um or mandarin that's very unique and most translation programs do not have it and this one does um if i'm trip if i'm jogging your memory kevin i forget what the language was um you know so that was another selling point as well um you know this is also um a non-for-profit company um that um um you know really focuses on translation for for family engagement um but we did do um you know we looked at the option of google translate which we we've just talked about you know as as free um we've looked at our existing platform school messenger um they only have english and spanish um we've looked at um um availability and some of the other software that we purchased like just classlink um which is our single sign-on solution offer translation services for the apps and programs and they don't um you know so we've looked at existing software and then other companies out there and um i i just have not been able to see anything for talking points that that can do what this this brand can do yeah and it's for less common languages in this area at least we're talking about like gujarati urdu tamil we just haven't found other software that supports these unique languages in our area and i can speak to lexia and ixl um i can tell you that we didn't spend a lot of time um this year looking at lexia and ixl because we've looked at lexia and ixl and other similar products in the past as i explained that we've we've used them before and both of these are front runners in the field of digital um software for supporting reading and math and they have the uh what in my opinion particularly with lexia has the strongest research and evidence-based um database for um what they what it can do and for what the student outcomes are and the other thing is um we have teachers that are trained already and that there's training um in these packages so it's uh you have to look at the the entire picture you know what what the software does um what it does how user-friendly it is for students how user-friendly it is for the teachers what the research basis is how long it's been out there how many revisions they've done over the years to keep up with alignment to national and state standards and a variety of other factors so there really wouldn't be anything besides lexia or ixl in the area of uh digital platforms reading a map that we would um be comfortable with yeah i'm just putting on my board of finance hat on like they're going to want to know did we vet other options so they sound like it sounds like i like i love hearing evidence based that you got me there like that's yeah those are great points that are nice to be included so thank you thank you thank you everybody and then the last one on here that's that's interesting and i'll let dr ruby share a little bit about this one uh news ela where we're going to be utilizing our title 2 grant to pay for that but very interesting and i think it's exciting so maureen would you share a little bit about new zealand so new zla we've also used in district before um but because we were in school we weren't we didn't have a district-wide um subscription to it we were using it mostly at wisconsin in the situation that we find ourselves in we need to be able to put text and i'm going to say literally figuratively in the hands of students and because we don't have everybody in the classroom all the time and because there's an uneasiness with um and sanitation that's required with um with actual books and texts this is a digital platform that has advanced significantly over the past 20 years and it provides access to texts in english language arts social studies science and in sel across the grade levels from grade 2 through grade 12 however it is able to be used in kindergarten in grade one by teachers because you know students really aren't reading independently at high levels in k and one and um we really are obligated to ensure that all of our students have access to text that they need number one for their daily reading instruction and text sets so that they can be doing research and seeing different perspectives on a singular topic whether they're studying characters or they're studying an author or they're in social studies and they're studying uh content there to be able to see different perspectives and to look at whatever it is they're studying from a variety of viewpoints the other um thing that is available in nozella well we want all kids to be working with um challenging grade level text we want all kids to be able to read so there will be times where um we a teacher would be studying it's teaching about a topic and there's a wide variety of reading levels in the class and the um if teacher selects the articles or the the text that he or she wants to be using in their instruction the they can um the the program will produce the same text but at different reading levels so that all students have access to the same content so i mean i could go on i know you don't want me to but this is something that's going to provide equity of access without any fear of where kids are or um whether or not parents or teachers are comfortable passing out papers and books isn't this one of the subscriptions that was proposed for this school year's budget but we had to remove it uh yes um whiskenier wanted to include this in their budget and because we needed to cut things it was one of the things that got cut um because at the time we didn't know that we weren't going to be able to be handling um books in the same way that we um that we typically do so because of that change now the title ii grant can be used for this yeah well because there was there was not a dire need in the in the fall um because we could we could make do with our the books that we had in the classrooms and whatnot now with remote learning with sometimes being 100 remote with some with the children being 50 hybrid and with the unfortunate possibility that you know um if in if the um infection incidence increases that we would be in remote we need to be first of all we need to serve the children that we have obviously in this in the context that we have them in and we need to be prepared to transition quite um quickly without interruption we didn't have that issue in um october and then when we decided to cut that from um the whiskaner budget um we needed to cut you know we needed to cut something and that was one of the things that went but the teachers particularly at wisconsin about that because even in not a pandemic situation they did use it but they had other things that they could use at the time in addition i don't know if that answers your question rosa yeah so so these are you know this is within our own bud operating budget as part of the um item number three on the agenda tonight and then you can see in there we also have um the significant amount of hand sanitizer and dispensers that we needed to purchase and then the use of some movers as well to supplement our custodial team um so again this is not just clear up for me sorry i hope this isn't me cutting in and out but um the hand sanitizer and the movers why was that not in like the original tranche that we did uh yeah i could turn that over to ken on that one excuse me i think in the very beginning when we were putting the proposal together first of all we weren't uh we couldn't find hand sanitizer at the time and i don't think we were aware that it would be such a big requirement uh this is over 300 gallons and 150 uh touchless dispensers which we were fortunate enough to find recently but but in the evolution of the reopening plan from the state it became uh extremely um it was more required than anticipated in terms of how much sanitizer we would need so you know it wasn't just supplementing a little bit it was a significant outlet um the movers has evolved and ken again could talk back in terms of uh working on you know existing staffing uh leaves within our um custodial team um quarantines injuries things that happen um and also um timelines that we need to meet in terms of moving desks and helping set up classrooms and so i don't know ken if there's anything else to add but i mean that was a reason we had to get the motors and we just they're very very helpful to the principals they helped them set up all the classrooms they uh moved uh excess desks and excess furniture out of the classroom so we could achieve the social distancing uh we took some desks from wisconier to use over at center school so we had them do that so things that were beyond our capacity especially like dr bill said being short-handed with with so many people out for various reasons and the urgency to get the work done and so so that is um a detailed a review of um mr post's request to um transfer we go back to your memo ken yes we can there you go so so this has the document cameras the lexia the hand sanitizer and movers the ela was done under the grant where uh what about was there where's the other items yes the talking points oh they're all they're all on one line actually sorry bob they're on one line there it's only going in one account okay and the and and talk about the savings that we're booking here that were on the under run side sure professional development is their balance of the amanda aarons which we would need to do in person and we can't uh transportation is the uh extra runs we would have to do for uh st joe's uh for days when they're in session we're not or when we have half days and they don't that kind of thing the special education extended school year program with uh mostly most of that is transportation about fifty thousand dollars in transportation that we did not have to do we didn't have to pay for a nurse to be on site and then the balance is uh some of the savings we're going to achieve through the special education life skills program change is that all the savings on that program or is that just some of it that's just some of it just just the balance we need to to make this transfer so how much more savings are we expecting roughly roughly another 50 000.
can i get a motion motion steven's second second of course i i need to abstain from five point one five point five yes we're doing both um does anyone else need to save us yeah wait we're not doing that last week's meetings we're doing both yeah from the 10th okay okay [Applause] yes thank you yes yes um next six personnel resolutions district in high school um 6.1 to 6.3 can i get a motion motion second second or any questions fingers crossed that sports happens yes yes yes martinez yes stevens yes skipping yes yes yes okay number seven personnel resolutions middle and elementary 7.1 to 7.4 can i get a motion i personally would like to thank ms viscovi for many many years of service to the babylon school district it will be sad to see her go um i know a little boy that's already mad yeah my son and my son so she did a great job and i wish her well and whatever that next part chapter of her life yes yes all right education resolutions district in high school 8.1 to the new 8.14 can i get a motion okay mr battle there a second second question i had a question on 8.4 the high school manual uh the student expectation manual we were working on the policy for the discipline and i didn't think that we were totally finished with it yeah i had the same question are we going to continue with that could that still be tweaked um or is that now this is [Music] the last thing we saw but i didn't think it was fine all right so this could be amended that's right i just want to know that thank you i have a question for you with those that are cpr trained are we looking at getting more teachers we have a large number of teachers that's the lower grades um once we have the ability to train we do all that house um yes so we um are going to be using the type learning platform kyt and [Music] do you have the actual time begin day start like beginning start time for each level yeah what time to continue so what time they start the start times haven't changed right accurate just student um um for pre-k through six they arrive they can start arriving at 8 10 and they will be dismissed at 12 30 okay middle school doors open to students at eight and they will be dismissed at 12 25 high school students will arrive um they probably open the doors at seven at the high school and um they'll be leaving here at 1205 the students get here at seven the door's open go through their screenings but first class starts at 7 30.
uh submissions from across the united states one jumped out at me it was from a ten-year-old fourth grader in california druviv asani is her name and her poem was entitled the silence i am the sound of children crying i am what makes you tremble and shiver in your bed late at night i am the blackness you see when you close your eyes i am the wolf hunting you down in a dark forest i am the majestic yet treacherous mountains high up with the clouds i am the rose you want to pluck but can't because my thorns are sharp like knives i'm the moonlight that shines at night i'm the nightmares you run from i'm the blizzard that will wipe you out on the waves pulling you under i am the north star shining bright in the dark blue sky above i'm as sweet as sugar with the ones i love i am bitter like a million lemons with the ones who have hurt me or my loved ones i am the silence growing louder in your ears i am me i am who i am meant to be i am who i want to be i am me i drew viva thank you mr stetter for sharing that if you're able would you stand with me and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands a nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all of our board members are in attendance tonight so we have a quorum i'll call this meeting to order as a reminder to the rest of my colleagues on the board we have our mission vision and high expectation objectives posted behind us those continue to be uh guiding stars for uh the work and and the thinking and decisions that we make this evening um dr roberts we have a couple of presentations uh tonight and i think we're starting with miss heine of the 2020 bcsc teacher of the year award that is correct mr colwell this is the first time for this particular award so ms heine help us out here thank you mr caldwell dr roberts board members of the board this is an exciting evening we are recognizing our first district teacher of the year so this is quite quite an evening for for all of the candidates let me remind you a little bit of where we've been we started this process in january we thought we we felt like we needed this process and to recognize the teacher of the year because we have so many excellent outstanding teachers and we wanted to recognize them and for them to be able to participate in the state teacher of the year the state teacher of the year award program so we started that process in january we recognized all of the building winners in march at our board meeting that was an exciting night we had lots of people in attendance and a big celebration from that evening there were 18 building nominees we um collected portfolios for those that wanted to participate in the next phase and mindy mindy summers language arts english language arts teacher from central middle school is our award winner for this year so i want to talk a little bit about mindy first i have to start out by reading um her student engagement there were several pieces of this portfolio excuse me portfolio that they had to complete they had to have three letters of support they had to have a student engagement piece they had to have the school criteria a piece tied to their school criteria so i'm going to read to you her student engagement piece because i just found it fascinating you can tell she's a language arts teacher i'm going to start with that we are all but tiny ripples and together we can make a magnificent wave my cms classroom is a gorgeous blend of diverse individuals who all vary in skills and abilities values attitudes backgrounds and personality traits learning to treasure our diversity and our special role in the world is imperative to the optimal growth of our world learning community a unit that defines me as an educator would be the global read aloud a mall unbound by aisha said in some amal a young pakistani girl has a life and dreams that are threatened by societal norms with the weight of gender roles and social class upon her amal perseveres we started our unit discovering our place in the world we looked at reading as mirrors windows and sliding glass doors a mirror reflects traits of ourselves a window gives us a glimpse of other worlds that are real imaginary familiar or strange and a sliding glass door allows us to step inside and become a part of these worlds we slid the door open to a mall's world we did not take this journey alone we connected through google hangouts with a class in canada discussing tough topics such as poverty rights of children and gender roles in families we also connected with classrooms in new jersey and wisconsin by sending original art pieces and postcards reflecting how amal inspired her us with her strength and courage after seeing the world through the eyes of another i hope my little ripples come together as a colossal weight that was extraordinary great unit we had like like i said we asked for three letters of support she had one from a former student and the former student writes when i think of mrs summers i remember her energy first she possesses an unlimited amount of it which when coupled with her genuine passion for teaching allows her to set a classroom a light with excitement she talked a lot about the role you play in the extracurriculars at central middle school how you give so much of your time mrs summers is a teacher who did not only influence my middle school years but has left an indelible mark on my entire life as a parent a parent was another letter that says as a parent of one of her former students i can share that my son truly loved her class and the way she pushed him to go beyond his comfort zone my son's strengths are in math and science and he did not have a passion for reading and writing but mindy brought out a love of learning that he still carries with him today so i want to recognize mindy summers as bcsc's teacher of the year we have a plaque we have a continual plaque that we will place upstairs has mindy's name on it and she has a plaque for her as teacher of the year for bcsc you're welcome mindy we'd really like to hear from you i just want to say that i am absolutely humbled and blessed um if i had every single person here that i need to thank for this award then this room would be full to the brand this community has been amazing to me has been my family for this my 21st year in the corporation and i will say this that the world now more than ever needs education and i am so happy to be on the front lines and i appreciate this so much [Laughter] well she's doing that i'd like to recognize the members of the committee blake manuel darren sprong who's here this evening susan scott jolynne bodkins and dr shed represented the board thank you besides [Laughter] congratulations wendy congratulations so thanks to miss heine and the team for uh the work in getting this going and miss heine referenced the teacher of the years teacher of the year teachers plural of the year award ceremony back in march i think that was our last school board meeting in a normal normal environment so you're now much later able to celebrate mindy's again congratulations man it's terrific thank you dr roberts we have one other presentation i think dr roberts uh uh we want to recognize one of our uh middle school sros yes if we could have officer greg ross come forward please officer ross mr ross just to stand right there for just a moment we'll let everybody remind everybody of what happened last week most people i think in the community are aware we've been doing a lot with covet 19 over the last several months but then something else kind of popped up last week the things that happen within our schools and and uh officer ross doing the great job that he was doing had a chance to recognize that so last wednesday i believe uh august the what have been the 19th wednesday august the 19th uh around lunch time officer ross just doing his normal duties checking things out making sure the building is safe saw something suspicious in the parking lot out in front of central middle school between central and csa lincoln approached an individual and after some dialogues a little conversation and so forth ended up having to uh take care of the situation unfortunately uh we did find the person had two firearms on him fortunately officer ross was paying close attention to the circumstances and situations and intervene on behalf of our students and staff members we are blessed to have the partnerships we have in this community with our school resource officers from both the bartholomew county sheriff's department and the city of columbus police department so thank you to them we have a reminder of five officers that are available to our school corporation officer ross being one of those and it's the officer quizzenberry behind him who helps us kind of manage this this group that we have throughout the school corporation so officer ross congratulations and thank you very much on behalf of the community thank you all for that thank you so much okay [Laughter] thank you greg thank you again officer ross and officer quisenberry appreciate your service to our school corporation all right those two presentations behind us let's move ahead on the agenda we come to the section for public comments uh we have nine individuals who have signed to speak tonight i'll call you up and please when you come up uh just give us your your name and your address we ask that uh as miss chrisman who keeps our minutes uh we'll have that for the public record um ask that that if if someone has already said what you want to say it's okay to defer if you want to but we are always happy to listen as well and and refrain from using the names of individual students or staff members as possible please limit your remarks to three minutes each um first we have this evening uh miss barb wills the podium's up here barb sorry it's a circuitous path there okay thanks good evening my name is barb wills and i live at 5700 west state road 46. this has really been a crazy year and even in the best of circumstances there is no way everyone will be pleased this year is rife with an additional challenges covid federal and state governments hinting to outright threatening reduced funding to districts that do not open in person knowing that there are risks to in-person classes and very different risks to having only online learning available i believe you our board have worked hard extremely hard to try to offer both trying your best to appease as many as possible with the options available to us students and caregivers have made the choices that worked best within their households one in five of my bcsc students chose bridge i will let her speak to her experiences on that so far i will say it has not been ideal and that it's been more than a little stressful for her my other four are attending in with my children and my spouse we made this decision based largely on information that was presented at the july 20 board meeting i was encouraged by masks being required and the covet indicators with clearly noted numbers for minimal moderate and substantial spread in several categories but i apparently erroneously believe that we would also be given the numbers regarding how many covet cases in each building i thought we would have some sort of chart with each school the number of positive cases and ideally the number of contacts that were quarantined due to potential exposure to learn the first week of school that there was not a plan to release this information was a huge disappointment i realized bcsc put out a statement at the end of last week with this information i believe this is a huge step in the right direction i am however concerned that in the future this information will be released sporadically and perhaps not in easy to find locations in researching my comments for tonight i looked on bcscschools.org the tasks for site and our local newspaper website i eventually found this information on the republic site not in the original article but in a follow-up article in the thursday article flat rock stated that they would update their information on their website by school every friday i would like to see bcsc commit to updating the numbers of positive cases and contract case contract traced individuals on our bcsc schools org site once a week additionally i left the july 20 board meeting under the impression that if we were in substantial spread we would be closing in whole or in part according to the charts that were shown at the july 20 meeting affected areas would be closed for 24 hours before being cleaned and reopened after cleaning when deemed safe to do so were the buildings with the positive individuals closed for 24 hours and then cleaned before reopening we spent the first part of our the first two weeks of school in substantial spread for per capita positive rate and the first week in the red for hospitalizations please understand i am not saying that we should close i am simply asking for clear guidance on the criteria the board will use to determine if we are staying open as it seems that two categories of red were considered safe to stay open while the indicators are clear it is not clear to me how bcsc is determining whether to stay open or transition to e-learning do we need to have all the indicators in the red or is there a certain amount of time that we will continue person in-person classes while the indicators are in the highest categories i would love to see clear definition on this matter thank you thank you miss wills becky wills i believe you sort of just got introduced right becky good evening my name is becky wills i live at 57 west state road 46.
second payroll in july was july 17th with a total payroll of 367 640. and 88 cents along with that payroll were the prepays and once again payroll taxes etc you'll see an additional amount of sixty dollars and eight cents that was some um uh updated turf we needed to do that was grant related it was not caught until after the payroll was posted so i had to make an adjustment on that so total prepays for the july 17 payroll 107 544.
okay that's a lot yeah okay and so these don't all line up against line items then because the special education's from multiple line items correct correct and are all the others lined up against line items or are they lined up um yes category one might item for the other one okay um [Music] so okay so i will go ahead and move that the following budget transfer items uh for the 2020 2021 operating budget according to the memo from can post be executed be approved approved second thanks bob is there any other discussion or questions on any of these items okay thank you everyone yep so all in favor aye aye okay uh next yes it's uh it's just one input for everybody i suggested that ken that we need to be more aggressive in doing budget transfers like this this year and you know sometimes we batch them up and we approve them all at once but i think as we go we need to be able to look the board of finance and the board of selectmen in the eye and say when we can we the things we can solve with our own money we're solving with our own money and a budget transfer document helps with that a lot and our formal approval helps with that a lot and i think we need to stand up and look those other our partners here um in the eye and say where we can we are so i just wanted to pass that on to everybody so i've asked ken every time we have one of these make it a budget transfer right so we'll get more of these as we go along i'm sure okay uh the next item is a discussion of desks and desk shields and other coveted related purchases in preparation for the district moving forward with the 100 in person learning um and request an appropriation from the board of selectmen uh for that cost so there's another the rest of the sheet we can go through yes so so rosa just very briefly so the the desks uh the student desks that we need um as you can see almost 35 000 there and this the remainder the second half of the desk shields um for sixty one thousand dollars for a total of ninety six thousand what we've been talking about for the last couple of months and uh getting us ready for what we hope is um uh in-person learning hopefully the the local trends uh transmission data uh remains positive and we can uh open up in hybrid and then eventually be back to full time we'd love to see that that is the ultimate uh goal um so that's specifically what ken is highlighted here in gray as you can see on the sheet um but there's also a whole story with everything else that's going on um in in the budget uh savings and spends and so forth so however the board would like to either ask questions or talk about it um we could just start with the motion i suppose there's any questions about the desk in the shields i don't know if there's any questions left i mean we need them so so is this the same a subset of the numbers we presented to the board of selectmen on the board of finance uh a number of weeks ago it's just the we're asking for approval to proceed correct it would be like a new numbers it would be the um they're adjusted but they're not new numbers in the sense that the the we talked about 100 model in the 80 model and needing those bob um we always needed the shields to get started in hybrid but we didn't need desks but to go 100 to socially distance the students and have them safely in the classrooms we need additional small desks across the district so this is more shields and the desks that we needed correct i've got a backup here guys guys i'm going to ask my question again i'm going to back up when we presented i want to say in the beginning of august we presented a full picture right that we said here's the hybrid here's the fall here i think we're just that really focused in on hybrid and fall in those number and we told them at the time and i want to rem if i remember ken the total of that for those cases were um i want to say 500 remind me the numbers um hi do you want me to uh pull up that other worksheet bob please i just got to get it in context because this was the problem at the last board of finance discussion they felt like we weren't showing them the full picture and i think we need to show the full picture here and also there yeah this spreadsheet so you you the if i remember the left-hand side is the picture for full and the right-hand side is the picture for hybrid correct yeah we had an 80 and then we had the hybrid uh oh the 80 and then the hybrid okay and then remote we had as well which had really very little cost um and in the hi when we if you go down to the bottom the total dollar amount for the hybrid opening was 535 130 and the total amount for in for the 80 is 664.
if we're running a half-day schedule like the first few days of school for half days so we just they don't it's not a half day or a half day right so we need to do our thing every time just you know the board is making this decision um not the box um we know that we built a full day schedule for the kiddies um we had that full day schedule ready to go um however you know talking with the association to talk to the teachers we do realize that there's a lot of anxiety with the teachers and a lot of concerns especially about eating in the classrooms breakfast and lunch and you know not knowing um conditions for the transmission of coving because they seem to be changing all the time that it's out of uh an abundance of parks that we're going through this half day to eliminate um the kids from eating in schools so everything will be grab and go so we will have for breakfast and lunch as a grab and go we will start that the breakfast part probably the day before school starts for kids to come and get a breakfast and then when they're in school when they leave they're going to grab their breakfast the next day and their lunch with that day so we'll work that out get some more information out as soon as possible um and again this is something that we're going to do we spoke to the association association is amenable to having a conversation sometime in october about seeing how well this is working and seeing if we need to do any modifications or anything like that at a later time to this schedule [Music] oh child care um we understand that we are cutting two hours after the school day um we are going to get some information out regarding child care um and issues regarding child care um so we're gonna work with our providers and potentially indifferent people as well to see what we can do for child care but we will get more information out about child care um as soon as as soon as we can as soon as we can get it all together and get a cohesive message out um that makes sense and gives parents and provides parents with clear direction on what to do and what they need to do i i just want to say i really like the remediation time being lengthened i i am a small group teacher and that's what i do and online that was like individual and small group i feel is the most productive last year for me so i think if used properly which teachers do you know we are all very creative it really will help with this weird situation we find ourselves in [Music] so did we get yeah um yes on 8 1 to 8 13 no on 8 14.
i am currently a junior at north high school last year as a sophomore i was taught as with everyone else online for the last nine weeks of school given the circumstances i was impressed with the teachers flexibility and the quality of education they maintained online this semester i decided to do the bridge program i'm surprised and disappointed that this administration has not taken the time during summer to further improve online learning and additional resources rather they have placed the burden squarely on the shoulders of teachers guidance counselors and support staff my teachers do not have time for questions by both in-person and online students and i often do not get answers for multiple hours one teacher at east has 250 in-person students and 35 online students if this teacher takes an average of five minutes to answer or guide each student a day this would equate to 1425 minutes or 23.75 hours each day this would give her 15 minutes left in her entire day even though we were on block scheduling so she may not see every student every day there are questions about ongoing or upcoming assignments and those who generally need help in the class the quality of education students are receiving is in a sharp decline which could have been prevented if the administration had used their time wisely over the summer now we are here and the system is not working it's not the system you all sat here and promised us a few weeks ago it is not a system beneficial to students or teachers or even parents rectify this by sending everyone online where teachers can have the same guidelines for each student and not be completely overwhelmed trying to perform the perfect balancing act obviously this would also be safer because the metrics you gave us at the beginning of the year are in the red but i'm sure that will be covered by someone else thank you thank you becky austin hover good afternoon i'm austin hover 8204 saxon court um i don't come with a big list of fancy words or uh hydra high education but i do come with two kids that do attend bcsc i've had a couple conversations with other parents that have children as well and i can only speak for my end but we're requiring these kids to wear masks during the school day to help minimalize the risk of exposure but has as i've spoken with my children they eat lunch and they take these straight off their my face to put food in their mouth to eat lunch and then they gotta put it right back on so during that period of eating lunch they're at full full strength to to get this airborne virus or be subject to being in contact with other children that are you know two feet away from them and unfortunately i've been on the receiving end of what i call a pink slip a distant plenary action because of not wearing a mask now i have an 11 and a 10 year old their attention spans are 11 and a 10 year old it's very hard for them to wear these eight hours a day i have been working since the start of corona and i haven't stopped i've been in several different states i've never contracted it i'm lucky i've been on the front lines up in indianapolis helping the military with disposing of medical equipment and i haven't had a symptom nobody that i've been in contact with during this eight months has had any symptoms or contraction not saying that i'm not a positive carrier but for me it's hard to sit back and watch my children be subject to things that i see grown adults not doing like myself and be reprimanded for that and the other thing is e-learning i work 60 hours a week my wife works 50 hours a week we we can't teach our children the subjects that teachers go to school for in college and specialize in we attempted to do the learning when it first came out in the beginning of the year um i'll be the first one to tell you i don't know how to navigate that system i was not taught there was nothing sent home that teaches you there's nothing you're subject to a ten-year-old child i'm trying to describe to you how to navigate through there you reach out to the teachers and they've got 30 other students that are in their class where their p their parents are reaching out with the same questions for me i don't see that working i i want my children in school i want them to learn i want them to be successful and i do not see that happening on a computer i just don't um i'm a hands-on person i can teach them the things that will help them get along in life but i can't teach them things that i don't understand myself and that's why we pay taxes and we come here to to talk to the school board for our concerns that's what i have for you thank you mr holbrook just for one point clarity are your two children in school at bc yesterday okay they are in class they attend elementary okay thank you thank you um i'm going to just because you pulled your mat here and i want to make sure we don't have people we have anything besides this guy i want to make sure that this this mic gets cleaned off thank you kelly appreciate that if you want to leave that here i can help you you might just leave it up there now that we're done front door we have next up teresa levins i am dr teresa levins i'm a family physician here in town thank you mr caldwell and dr roberts for letting me speak i have i would like to commend you on your ability to get school started these last two weeks have been hectic they've been hard but i appreciate the fact that you have done what the pediatricians wanted and what the family docs wanted which is to get the kids back in school and i appreciate the fact that it's been as safe as it can be but i have some concerns and i just want to voice those to you i have a daughter who is at the high school she's a sophomore and when i pick her up after school i've noticed that the kids are leaving the school and the masks are completely off they're walking in mass to the buses they're getting on the buses and they don't have their masks on i was surprised my daughter had her mask on yay for my daughter but i was really surprised at the number of kids who didn't have their masks on i'm also concerned about the spacing in the classrooms she tells me that she's in a classroom of 35 chairs there are 32 students in there not counting the bridge students and she says the desks are very very close and they're in that classroom for 88 minutes so it's very difficult to suggest that the social distancing is happening in the classroom the other thing is she tells me that they're supposed to be wiping down the common surfaces every every class that's not happening in most of her classes so i just want to make sure that you guys are know what's happening inside the school i know that you see the best when they see you walk through the halls they know how to behave they're students they're teachers they're administrators but i think what's really happening that the parents are seeing can be very concerning to them and i want and i wanted to make sure that you knew that i also have a concern about what's going to happen with these bridge students you know it's been two weeks are they all coming back to school next week and are they going to have room in their classrooms because again she's in full classrooms in all of her classes and i have to imagine that sophomore classes have bridge students in them so just some things i would really like to have you comment about if you can thank you thank you dr levins amy london good evening my name is amy london i live at 50 45 somerset lane i am here representing the columbus educators association as their president on behalf of cea i would like to thank you for starting to share the number of coveted cases in our school corporation our community spoke very loudly this last week and he listened and i appreciate that i also want to thank you for all the collaboration with cea that you've had while i've been president of the columbus educators association i know some of the board members of us that participated in that and we really appreciate that a few months ago we did a lot of collaborating together to work on a proposal to ask our community to invest in us through a referendum in exchange for the votes from our community the corporation would invest in us and students we ask that they believe the corporation would be would put the well-being of its staff and safety of its students first as well as be transparent in july when the board adopted a reopening plan safety of all involved was considered and at the front of our minds it still is the biggest concern in our community in the last few days cea conducted a survey of 314 teachers participated and the survey was related to how they feel it's going since we've completed two weeks of school so i want to share on their behalf what they have told us while most while almost half of them agreed students are wearing face masks social distancing is still a concern 249 teachers have said they have desks in their classroom that are three feet or less apart as an instructor 203 of them said they are unable to stay three feet away from their students during the day due to the physical makeup of their classroom in common areas especially at the high schools students are not able to socially distance due to the amount of students in the area and the space 23 percent of the teachers or 75 said they had been able to witness students social distancing our high schools simply have too many students in them each day to practice social distancing as outlined in our plan we that you voted on in july our community is concerned about social distancing also at recess as well as teachers the safety and mental well-being of teachers has to be considered right now there is a large number of teachers who are teaching in person and in bridge special ed teachers across their corporation are teaching in bridge in person and in cvp there are not enough hours in the day to prepare the lessons and instruct students at the level of excellence the level of varsity excellence exhibited by bcsc teachers in this current format ca would like to see specific metrics shared with the community in regards to when and if we would need to go to e-learning the uncertainty of what to look for if this step was needed is causing unneeded stress while we know there are things that are going well and there are some teachers who are having great success in their classrooms with little stress at this time cea asks that our administration and school board work with us and our community to find solutions to these concerns while we have 476 members as of today and cea we realize this only represents around 70 percent of our bcsc teachers so we would also encourage the board and administration to work with the format to gain feedback from all teachers in our corporation and ca is more than happy to help with that if needed thank you for your time we appreciate it and we appreciate you being here in your service thank you amy tracy kaiser 2771 bluebell court east dr roberts mr caldwell ladies and gentlemen of the school board i'm here to speak tonight on behalf of the show your work transparency now group which gathered today in a public display of concern we're here to ask the school board and administration at bcsc to commit to transparency in the covid19 metric reporting and decision making your decisions affect the health and the lives of the entire bcsc community never before have we so desperately needed to know we can trust you transparency builds that trust and secrecy destroys it within the past week you revealed data on case counts by building we thank you for that our community deserves this information and we hope you continue to share it regularly however during the july 20th school board meeting dr roberts presented and the majority of the school board approved a plan that included a set of metrics that were to be used to determine the status of bcsc schools but bcsc has refused repeated requests to share exactly how the metrics inform decision making and what will trigger a change to school status instead bcsc makes vague references to the information behind the information and significant qualifying information some of your own key indicators such as per capita positive rate have indicated significant spread for 14 days in a row as of today sometimes more than doubling your threshold for red yet no action has been taken and no concern displayed many parents who trusted their children for in-person learning did so because we trusted the plan we trusted you to abide by that plan and make tough decisions based on data not according to personal wishes interpretation or gut feeling it is not impossible to commit to a defined objective data-driven e-learning threshold other school corporations including marion county and brown county have defined and published thresholds in the absence of clear decision-making criteria from bcsc and the trust that transparency brings parents are left in the dark when parents expressed their concern on your recent public post a week ago bcsc hid our public comments from vue for more than two hours despite that attempt to silence us we know that we are not the only ones concerned the teachers in this school district who are on the front lines yet do not have a seat at this table or a voice in this room are concerned too we support them in their petition for information we ask you now dr roberts and the bcsc board to provide all of us the transparency that fosters trust we ask that you uphold your obligation to this district to provide clear insight into the conditions in our schools and the specific metrics and triggers being used to just to drive decision making thank you miss kaiser ross thomas good evening i'm ross thomas 2246 franklin street um first off i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all tonight i really share in some of the concerns that have been put forth today particularly about um what seems to be a vague definition of substantial spread and what would trigger reevaluation i get the position that you are in and i understand that that politicians have have threatened the school system with with perhaps cutting funding if if students are not in school and and nobody wants to scare them off i understand the practicality of that but but the reality is these are numbers and statistics and in the long run the best thing to do is to be straightforward not vague you don't gain anything from that in the long run um as was said you have a lack of trust and we don't need that we all want to trust that everybody's doing the right thing and i think you are so it's simple enough to simply say look this is how it is and these are the numbers that we're going to use and i would hope that you would see that in the long run i'd rather see you fighting to keep that funding that that a politician is threatening to take away than trying to weasel around and have it the other way again i don't think you're doing that but if you're not straightforward that's the impression that people get and you just don't want to do that you really don't what i wanted to to ask about is we know that there are protocols in place at all of the facilities and i haven't been able to see how those protocols are being enforced whether they're being enforced internally whether it's being self-reported from each facility as to whether protocols are being followed i'm not sure whether there's a mechanism in place for teachers and staff who have concerns to to bring those to the administration and bring those to the board perhaps anonymously rather than having a teacher with concerns have to go to the person in charge at the school and say i think you're screwing up i would hope that those things are in place i would hope that there is a way for teachers and staff who say that we know how this is supposed to be working but but in this particular school it's it's not working in this way or another and there ought to be a way to report that i'm not sure that there is maybe there is i just haven't heard it and i would also hope that there is something more than simply self-reporting and it's more than just a phone call say hey how are things going over there all things are fine okay i would hope that that there is some way that that is being monitored i have concerns i i have a daughter in elementary school i certainly uh when i heard that well at recess no one wears masks at recess it's kind of fair game and everybody lines up to go outside and everybody lines up to go back in that seemed like a concern to me and i would imagine that it's a concern to some of the teachers and staff and i would hope that those kinds of things are are being evaluated and i hope again that there is some protocol in place to continue to make sure that the rules are being followed because if they're not you know my sons who are in high school i ask them every day hey are people wearing their masks well yeah for the most part for the most part well what happens when somebody doesn't wear their mask well i don't know that's a problem if if there isn't uh something in place to say listen if you're not wearing your mask there's going to be a consequence well there's no consequence for him a couple days later there's no consequence for him no consequence for her there just ought to be a protocol in place to make sure that that's happening and those are my concerns and again you may be addressing those i simply haven't heard it that's the last thing i would say just tell the truth just be straightforward with everybody um and we'll all be better off thanks thank you mr thomas leah jackman whitener so my name is leah jackman whitener my address is 60 54 meadow ridge in columbus i'm a community member i have two bcsc graduates and no current students so i am your average community member who cares about education and who went to the red for red rally because i care about teachers and i care about education i'm real concerned about public trust and especially some things that have happened this week the shift to having the task force manage the numbers makes sense but the way it was rolled out eroded public trust there were a lot of concerns others have mentioned the need for clear a clear understanding about whether the thresholds that were mentioned in july are still actually going to be valid or if decisions are going to be made based on those or not i really want to think about the communication that's happening i trust that administration teachers staff parents and kids are doing their best and i've heard from lots of teachers this week most of whom are really actually very thrilled and they tell like their voices are like the kids are doing great the kids are keeping their masks on like it seems like it's much less hassle about that stuff than they had prepared for but the teachers are struggling there's no way to distance even three feet apart in many many most of the rooms kids are switching back and forth between bridge and in person on a very frequent basis a person might get four roster changes a day or more a teacher might now if i'm a parent i think well this is great you know you can just like what what the week looks like what the numbers look like i could make a decision but apparently like for the teachers this is just a huge incredibly difficult situation especially when they're have maybe 35 kids in the room or you know x number of kids in the room and x number of kids that they're supposed to be monitoring online via zoom or whatever during the class and they can't as becky mentioned respond to those people's questions it's i thought they were going to be bridge teachers and in-law and on pers in person teachers but that they weren't going to be doing both but it sounds like most people in the high school levels are doing both that's complicated and as a community member it's only because i have a lot of teacher friends that i know that i would have just gone with oh this is what i heard the plan was the community needs accurate and complete information and the teachers need to be able to have open honest communication with the board with the administration to be able to make the to be able to make sure everyone has the information that's needed i know there's a long-standing policy where teachers are discouraged from speaking to board members or at board meetings and i am concerned about this because it feels like to me that the public ends up blaming teachers for problems that the teachers can't speak out about publicly we've muzzled our teachers and said you can't share your concerns and there's going to be some repercussions if you do well that just ends up with there's the board and then oh are the teachers bad because they're not saying what's wrong and then public distrust i think it's a huge problem we've got to shift the communication pattern to make it better i believe if if the communication were more open and teachers and staff voices were heard then we could deal with the the the true problem of safety during the pandemic and rebuild the public trust thank you thank you miss checkman while you amanda reed hello my name is amanda reed i live at 3355 grove parkway here in columbus um i'm impressed with our district uh generally i'll be very candid here in that when we had the opportunity to relocate from illinois to indiana we chose columbus because of this school district it was the first thing i researched as a mother and a parent i looked at the diversity of the schools the test scores parents feedback and we knew we wanted to be here it is disheartening to have enrolled my children in the bridge program and to see huge inequities across the elementary schools and how our students are experiencing bridge so i'm a person of data i'm a social scientist so i actually collected information from one of our online elementary school facebook groups for parents and what i found was huge inequities that our children are experiencing on a daily basis my own daughter sitting in the back there was told in her only interaction with her elementary school teacher that she was not the priority there are children in the classroom you will need to be self-service they are my first priority my six-year-old who is on an iep because he has reading comprehension issues has yet to actually interact with his teacher we are more than 10 days in takes 24 hours to get a response and i'm not blaming the teachers they are overburdened they are not properly resourced and my main concern is how did this slip past the administration how did we not know that there's actually one of the schools here where since august 14th children have less than 15 minutes of any interaction with their teacher or classroom any interaction i sat in between calls at work today consoling another parent who when she provided feedback to our administrators was shamed and was told she should be more grateful for the stress that the teachers are under and when i own myself reached out and provided feedback early on just about general concerns about the quality because we had such a great experience in the spring with e-learning we really did i was told i could change schools that's heartbreaking we love this community i love this school district my daughter has thrived her self-esteem has gone through the roof what does it do to a nine-year-old girl's self-esteem when you tell her she's not a priority or to a six-year-old self-esteem when he sees it demonstrated every single day that he is not a priority these are inequities and we can't do that to our kids i'm fortunate i have a good sense of agency i'm happy to reach out to our administrators i am happy to try to help solution there's got to be best practices that can be extracted from across the district and proper oversight and governance from an administrative level to make sure these kids aren't falling between the cracks you guys did it in the spring it was great we had really positive experiences yes we were all overwhelmed but it was great and my kids felt like they were still a part of this community and they were a part of the school and just changing schools doesn't feel like collaboration it doesn't feel like solutioning it doesn't really feel like you're a part of any community it feels like my kids are expendable and i'm not the only one who feels this way and i know that the teachers are trying but we have to support them we have to help them we have to provide them with the resources in the governance so they can make it work they didn't become teachers because they want kids to feel expendable they became teachers because they care about our kids so how are we in the community going to provide better oversight to this and position them to be successful so i don't have to move my kids so other people don't have to move their kids and so other kids don't fall behind thank you miss reed thank you board members there will be an opportunity to to speak to any of these points uh that you have later this evening if you'd like um unless you want to do that right now i will make that available to you what's your wish would you rather address this later on in the evening after we've had a chance to hear some of dr roberts's report's latest updates okay i'm seeing head nods and more than anything all right thank you thank you all of you all nine of you spoke thank you for stepping up and and sharing with us what your experiences are it's it's greatly appreciated we have always uh limited but whatever access we have but we don't know your stories unless you tell them so that's appreciated that's all of the public comments that were listed this evening let's move on to our next section on the agenda board commendations board members anything that you want to bring forward from accomplishments this week hearing none school board member reports all right i know we had a couple of districts and facilities meeting we did yes so there was a district again facilities committee meeting first week of school so that thursday i do not have a report up here um mr dr bozeman went through the presentation that he shared with you at the last meeting so with that group just made sure that publicly they had the chance to see the same information that was that was shared with you so it was all the summer projects that have been completed and or are still ongoing thank you dr roberts dr roberts are there any cabinet reports for this evening i don't believe anything specifically no thank you well let's move on then to item 4 on our agenda update on the reopening plan dr roberts i'll just run through uh some information some number of specific numbers here for you and then we can get to any questions or concerns that you have as a board and in response to any comments that you heard so first of all from an enrollment standpoint we always try to give you enrollment information this time of year we are up a little bit but we never get too optimistic with that number because things change a lot in the first month month and a half of school year whether it's our school corporation or other school corporations at this point we're showing a number of eleven thousand four hundred forty four at least currently enrolled in power school our traditional uh student enrollment in person i'm not sure we can call anything traditional right now things do look different than they would have looked on march 11 which was our last student day uh prior to spring break and then we were out of course the rest of the spring and just now getting back at it but there are 8 242 students enrolled in person which is 72 of our student population the bridge program which has been referred to here a couple of times this evening 2657 individuals that's 23.2 percent of our school population or student population and then the columbus virtual pathway where cvp is 545 individuals or 4.8 percent a reminder that the bridge program is something that was developed just this year because of trying to give additional options to parents as they look to start the school year the columbus virtual pathway was an online pathway that already existed this is actually the beginning of year three for that particular remote option uh the most students we'd ever had in that was i believe 79 about 80.
your third and final payroll for july 31st 2020 with a total payroll of 358 217.42 along with that payroll came prepaid once again all payroll um tax related in retirement once again you'll see an additional 10.58 again turf related an adjustment that needed to be made again that was grant related for a total prepay for the july 31st payroll 117 and 59 cents i know the prepays this month were kind of scattered you have three full pages and the reason why that happened was because uh first national bank was changing their system so they gave us two sets of statements this month long story short i just went ahead and did the pre-pays by bank is what i did it just made things a lot easier so you'll see at the top of your packet bank number two total pre-pays for bank number two was one million nine hundred forty eight thousand six hundred forty dollars and eighty cents as you look through there you'll see some you know bigger numbers on there and once again july is the month that we make our bond lease payments i think we talked briefly about that last month that your the prepays would probably be a little bit more this month if you want to move on to the next prepay packet you'll see that it says bank number 10 at the top and these are the physical checks that that i have to send out every month total pre-pays for the month july on bank 10 was 225 573.63 again the main expense on bank 10 is again the trust payment for health insurance and you'll also see a third where it says for one cent to the trust it's because when kelly entered it she put 94 cents instead of 95 cents so i had to make that correction so you'll see one cent on a prepay all by itself next in your packet you're going to see regular claims for the month of august dated today august 24th was there any questions about the claims this month that i can answer for you before i finish up on that pending any questions you can come back to me if you need to our total regular claims dated today august 24th is 439 860.
and the total amount for full is 709 those are numbers we showed them correct yes okay so my question is when we went and asked them for our first tranche of funding it was like 200 and something thousand if i remember that you had asked for and it was a subset of that 5 30. right it was the first 90 days right so my question is is this ask we're making a subset of the full that we had already presented to them or is it a or is it new numbers is it a subset of this chart yes it is a subset of this chart okay that was my question because that part of the issue john to go back to your point the more we talk about it is new the more we'll confuse them right this is all part of what we talked to you about before release it's the student desks and then the second half of the desk shields now we haven't gotten to the second release of the of the other money because they funded us through the end of october already and is that just that the stuff that wasn't in gray on the other chart yes yes the ones that you didn't highlight yet that's right okay yeah that'll be coming so um we were thinking that in october assuming we have a uh you know we're successful in running the hybrid and it looks like we're really going to be able to reopen full in november sometime in october uh we would go back to the board of finance and say okay you know we need the second 90 days for the lunch monitors and gloves and other things like that i'll go scroll over to the right for a second so um to the hybrid column um so we asked them in that first request we asked for fifty five thousand dollars worth for these items and the desks we didn't ask for anything correct correct correct so now are we asking for at the eighty percent or at the 100 percent so if you go there's two columns now to the left of this so the 55 are we asking for the dir are we asking for for to get to the 98 or asking to get to the 122.
[Applause] 14. yes martinez yes morris yes yes yes yes for day one it's 8 13 i'm staying from 8 14. yes education resolutions middle and elementary school uh 9.1 to 9.4 and i get yes yes all right uh number 10 special services resolutions 10.1 to 10.5 motion motion [Music] uh yes finance resolutions eleven point one to eleven point three can i get a motion function miss stephen second is mars any questions i just have to think from check three six six seven six just out of curiosity finance wise how much extra will we pay for all of this coded safety measures just ballpark and i think that's what scary thing is is as we go along you know we haven't gotten 10 flex you know there's going to be more cost for athletics today about transportation um the guidance we got today um from from the state health department is basically 11 kids on a bus with a massive social distance that succeed which is contradictory to what we had been told before i would need probably full size buses just to bring a football team to a football game that's not the coaches right so you know you're looking at the added transportation costs that we don't have there um oh we're talking about again we haven't got guidance from the nhsia but are we talking spectators and those spectators right now pros and colleges are talking no spectators but high schools we help spectators no spectators if we're talking spectators then are we talking to six foot social distancing are we talking about their capacity limits to outside are you going to have somebody standing at the just like tonight you know having a police officer standing at the at the door counting how many people are coming in to make sure we don't go over 25 or even beat that up at the football field you're going to do that for soccer games now we're going to be in for an extra soccer games then we're talking about sanitizing things um right now you can't even use the locker room so we even got into the discussion about you know um one of one of the safety protocols for whether it's soccer or any any athletic uh competition thunderstorm comes along the first thing you have to do is you to sequester everybody into the field house right well now you can't we're going to put those kids there's a thunderstorm that comes along and we're outside in the lightning so now we have another issue how do we resolve that issue who sanitizes the police you know it can go down a litany of things that are that have ping-pong around in our head as we slowly discussed you know the possibility of doing athletics you factor in and again i've seen this all the time but you the football obviously is is the biggest one but you can factor in soccer you can factor in all your sports okay like you move martian all the practice scare every day we're gonna if that's gonna be your responsibility kids what are you gonna do when the kid doesn't march the stuff they come to school are they not practicing that day if they didn't say the times they're equipped with the shame guards they please they're they're football here they got practice that day and how do you release that well that's you get into a whole number you're getting into a whole nother realm so thank you for trying no we're going to try we're going to try so well we're going to try and we're going to try and figure it out we're going to try and be logical about it like you know we talked about football you know come back to you know i i don't know about everybody else but i go back to my podcast where you have to bring your equipment home every day so rearranging our boys is that they're practicing six o'clock in the morning so they can practice the home shower they come to school right so they again there's there's a lot of things you can can't do we're gonna be creative obviously we're gonna try and make sure everybody is safe and healthy um you know and we're gonna do the best we can with what we have so but that's where we're at all right all righty any other matters okay yes um they are now 4 30 on sometimes are they virtual right now yes absolutely i mean i might be able to substitute on occasion but i've tried to help with another committee at 4 30 and then reality sudden so yeah i used to be able to flex and go through for more universities thank you seeing nothing else open to the public for anything hello lauren paxton president of association i just want to thank you all for doing the next best thing going virtual is probably the safest thing to do right now but going half day is the next best thing we don't have the lunches in the room we don't have students with masks off and this is the next best thing and like you were saying it actually this half day schedule gives us more time to hone in on the students that need that extra catch-up time from the spring so i just want to say thank you for doing the next best thing [Applause] no one else okay um i just wanted to know is there going to be a policy for the students type of like style of masks that they're going to have to wear is there going to be a policy for the type of mask students are allowed to wear right now right now it's cloth okay thank you you're welcome we did buy some clear ones for when [Music] should we just make a comment about like that we're only allowed to have 25 people in the meeting yes just because there are people waiting to come in that we don't want them to think that by law you're only allowed to have 25 people inside for this board of education meeting and that includes us yeah so if anyone if you know in the future you could just do it from home and make sure you get your questions there are no questions online at this point so i'm going to make a potion to adjourn all right best of luck at the start of your unusual 2024 here
and you can see that that's a marked difference from anything that we have done in the past so in trying to to provide options we had a lot of people take advantage of those to put those numbers into perspective 2657 is bigger than any school building we have by a lot and if we look at that from a k-12 perspective since it is a k-12 program 2657 would be bigger than most school corporations in the state of indiana so it is quite an interesting uh challenge in terms of the allocation of resources to that and or the columbus virtual pathway but but obviously popular choices in terms of people taking advantage of them in terms of the breakdown a little bit further if we look at traditional um the elementary population 70. 70.4 percent of our students in elementary uh chose to be in the buildings 73.8 percent of secondary students in the buildings combining the remote options almost 30 percent 29.6 percent of our elementary students chose a remote option so approaching a third and secondary was a little over a fourth 26.2 percent of our secondary students choosing a remote option in terms of a couple of things that have been addressed mass compliance is a metric measure that we had indicated or stated back on july 20th when we introduced our reopening plan that we would follow so in a snapshot of time over the last week specifically so last week we did not task our principals that first week with trying to get this information as they were trying to just get school started after several months last year we did have them take snapshots of time and compose that by building when we average those by building we are looking at about 97 mass compliance in those two buildings but again that is a snapshot in time so uh we'll do that again this this week update that number but that is as of friday the last friday which would have been august the 21st from a physical distancing compliance standpoint that is not a metric that we had indicated and this is a moving target as well in terms of when are you looking is it during the passing periods is it uh at lunch time um is it any other common times or is it in the classroom and we are finding that we have challenges in terms of the classroom specifically with trying to maintain a six foot distance to begin with that's what's referenced initially in our plan but we do then also indicate three to six feet as being acceptable and that was based upon the recommendation recommendations of the american academy of pediatrics but he's trying to reach that three foot piece we are seeing that elementary school is about two-thirds of the classrooms so that would be averaging across the school buildings percent of classrooms so not lunchtime or hallways or anything like that we're looking at classrooms specifically 64.2 percent the secondary certainly has some challenges there but when we combine the middle school and high schools by percentage of classrooms we have a much better number about 91 percent in terms of the classroom student-to-teacher is at least again trying to get a feel for physical distancing those numbers do not look bad in trying to accomplish physical distancing but elementary is 21.41 and secondary 18.5 to 1 but we know that there are outliers in all of those cases numbers that stretch beyond those ratios but that is a snapshot of at least the average classroom student-teacher ratio in those buildings and when i say they're not bad again when you're trying to do physical distancing and trying to get three to six feet or six feet of separation any students around 20 is going to begin to challenge that because in a thousand foot square foot a thousand square foot classroom which is a typical classroom in the united states and in our school corporation the if a person actually had six feet of a circle around them of six feet you're approaching 113 square feet per person and so 113 square feet times a few students quickly gets you a thousand square feet so therein lies a challenge in terms of getting physical distancing between students um and again just a snapshot of what we have physical distancing in the classroom by percentage and then the ratios per building i would add just in terms of when we go back to the numbers there and it would appear that if you have 72 percent of your students physically in the building that would alleviate your physical distancing challenges or at least help address that but because of the number of teachers we also need to help with bridge and or the columbus virtual pathway and in some cases the buildings that had a large majority of their students come back then that begins to impact some of these percentages here so for example the 64.2 percent in elementary we have some elementary school buildings that are looking at maybe a third or so of their classrooms being what they they believe is a physical distancing number or percentage uh and in those buildings basically they have had a high percentage of their students come back an example would be rock creek elementary school if we look at the ranges of elementary schools in our school corporation south side has about 55 percent of its typical students in the building that makes it a little bit easier to find at least additional classrooms to move students to or other spaces if we have a staff member to help split those kids out rock creek has about 88 percent of its students back in and when you take the 12 percent of students that chose online learning they are spread out among grades k-6 and so it doesn't necessarily alleviate numbers in those grades or in those classrooms easily so we have just differences in in the buildings and what percent of students chose to come back into a building versus not and and how easy or difficult that might make it for that building to try to accomplish physical distancing and our secondary schools i gave the range of our elementary schools at our element the elementary range is basically 55 to 88 percent of students coming back into the buildings so pretty wide range and then 70 as you saw was the average in in terms of back in the buildings for elementary schools the secondary level i'll just hit that slide again the secondary level which was about 74 that's kind of where they were 75 to 81 percent of the students were coming back into that building uh into our secondary schools so the range a little tighter with secondary schools than it was with elementary schools but again just creating some some challenges um with physical distancing a few things to throw out we we acknowledge uh if you would have asked me on july 20th and we do try to get smarter each day that can be debated sometimes in terms of whether we've accomplished that or not but if you would have asked me on july 20th the most difficult things for us to accomplish uh getting students efficiently into the school buildings with doing temperature screenings would have been probably top on my list regardless of the number of students we were going to have come back into the building at that time that was an unknown we believed we would have a quarter or more coming back into our buildings and trying to screen them whether it be on the school bus or coming into a you know columbus north high school with a couple of thousand students we recognize that would be a challenge our our building principals our staff members teachers support staff anybody involved in that has actually made the physicals the temperature screening part uh a pretty good process we are getting close to the time of what it would typically take to get into the building without doing temperature screens so they're becoming efficient and effective at that physical distancing has become the most challenging one we have work to do as acknowledged there weeks one and two we've tried to determine the student numbers for the bcsc pathways i've shown that slide a few times in terms of what it looks like now for traditional versus bridge versus columbus virtual pathway and so this week next week we we understand most of these but going back and reviewing those school buildings i cited an example whether it be at the elementary school rock creek or smith or schmidt buildings that had large numbers of kids come back as just an fyi schmidt is now our largest school building when it comes to students in the building and so they had a high percentage of students remain in that building and so that challenges then the number of students in any given classroom and the number of teachers that are in there with that classroom ratio so whether it's school buildings it's departments do we have a department because of uh perhaps having to have a teacher transition into another role uh whether it be medically or or other reason and so they're helping out with enrollment we might have an english department for example which is the case at columbus east that has challenges with student numbers as we have have had to allocate resources differently there and then we have specific classrooms whether it's a department like english or school building what what specific classrooms do we have in different buildings that are that are having challenges with physical distancing and make sure we're addressing those barriers and then at the end of the week next friday september 4th providing updated information publicly regarding that physical distancing what improvements have we've been able to make over this week and just to qualify weeks three and four weeks one and two we've completed weeks three and four this week and next to see what resources reallocation of resources opportunities we have now that things have begun to settle in with numbers to address those continued needs from a physical distancing standpoint so there's a couple of extra pieces of information there um as we look forward to to this week and next in terms of the metrics that is today's snapshot that's the most up-to-date uh piece of information that we have that again is available on the covet 19 community task forces website i will take responsibility for that shift that was mentioned in one of the public comments in that we have been meeting regularly with our local medical professionals to understand the data and and not just take a red number and with that automatically make the decision to transition into e-learning we i'll get into the whipsaw effect here in just a second in terms of when you make a decision to go e-learning then when you make the decision to stop e-learning we have laid out a three-week plan that probably most of the audience have had a chance to see and that's what we we're committing to so we're not whip-sawing back and forth but this data again on on the kova 19 task force they are updating it by five o'clock five o'clock p.m every monday and thursday they're committed to that that is the same uh frequency at which we internally committed to at the meeting on july 20th when we approved the metrics uh in a board conversation you asked about having these uh this information published or made available on maybe a daily basis at that point in time we talked through that and said it's probably manageable a couple of times a week maybe every monday and then we settle on mondays and thursdays through again just the dialogue at that time the school corporation was getting data from all of these sources trying to grab the raw numbers and put that into a spreadsheet make sure and save the pdf and then come up with a public statement and get that information out and then manage the social media sites and that was referenced as well and so as we've managed those social media sites and had conversations with our covet task force and a reminder to the community the communities coveted 19 task force was a group that began meeting on february 28th to address the spread of covet 19 within our community two weeks later on friday march 13th that same group met and in conversation with local medical officials advised us advise our school corporation to close coming out of spring break and so we took that advice the covet 19 task force scheduled a meeting a press conference on that afternoon and allowed me to speak as well as many others about the potential spread of coven 19 at that time and we made the decision to call off school and so we have maintained contact we are part of that group since the beginning of it the inception of it on february 28th and so as we got into the school year and we were regularly trying to keep up with the data and post that it seemed appropriate to me uh to request of that covet 19 task force that that they assume the data and keep that up to date and we would still have a place to for the entire community to view this data is not being manufactured manipulated created by bcsc it is community data that we are getting from columbus regional health the bartholomew county health department and the indiana state department of health and so they agreed to do that and and there was a lapse from that friday that it first went out and we pointed people to the site to the monday in terms of getting the data in a format that would look like ours and so this is basically the same pdf that we were using before i believe it is still a pdf on the covet 19 task force site and so it can be saved and emailed and shared and whatever the case might be so this is the data if we look at the data and we try to understand that it is i guess easy for somebody to indicate that one red one day or one red three days or one red seven days should should take us to a place we had on july 20th when introducing this information did not indicate that there was a certain number of reds or a certain number of days of reds or anything we indicated that this would lead us to the conversation to consider e-learning and i can indicate that that happened last week we were having all kinds of conversations about the data that we had what was the information behind that why were we having a per capita increase why are we having hospitalization increases and what is a challenging piece from a school corporation's standpoint and we talk about information behind the information is if there is a nursing home that has an increased number of cases that's contributing to that it is difficult for bcsc to be the one talking about nursing homes that increases or a child care or daycare having an increase or a church having a situation where there's been an increased number of cases or there's another nursing home and a county a few counties away that's contributed to the hospitalizations it's it's really difficult again for the school corporation to be saying those kinds of things what we are doing is tracking the information that is community data it is community spread not bcsc and trying to understand that data as much as is possible which makes it then precise difficult to respond to the give us a precise answer as to when this is going to tip the scales and go to e-learning to give you an example i'm up at 4 o'clock in the morning to drive the roads for a snow day trying to pay attention to what's going on and i understand the head shake this is not a snow day and i completely agree because what this is a snow day is a one day situation we make the decision to close school for that one day we move on to the next day this is a decision to close school for three weeks at a minimum and then and then redo it again and so whether it's a on a snow day and trying to understand that it's snowed four inches and and many people will call me on a snow day and say it snowed four inches we can't go to school but when we check the situation whether it's an icy snow or a rainy snow or the trucks have been out all night or they're still parked in the garage or the temperature is going to be exit 7 o'clock a.m or whatever the case might be there are many factors that we're trying to decide to see if we can safely have school or not similarly if we're trying to understand community spread and i will acknowledge this is the first time in my life that i've tried to understand community spread of a virus and so as we process that information and try to understand that information and consult with local medical professionals we consulted with on march 13th to close school we're still consulting with those same individuals to understand the numbers that we have here and so to look at that in time last monday would have been monday august the 17th we still are in the red in terms of substantial spread or indicating substantial spread based upon the numbers we gave because we have not been provided numbers by the federal government we have not been provided numbers by the state of indiana we provided numbers here locally and so as we look at the numbers we gave and tracked that they are decreasing and so in that week period of time we had serious conversations about do we pull the trigger and go to e-learning we paid attention to the numbers and and had conversations with local medical professionals and saw that we were beginning to have a decrease and so we have a per capita decrease happening at this moment the positive test rate has started to decrease with the number that we see going down to 9.8 percent and getting into the green we have um the the yeah the test rate overall the increasing decreasing piece uh will likely go green with that based upon the trend information that's provided there the test turnaround time which many people will look at and say that probably doesn't contribute to substantial spread or not right but it is a number that helps us as a community if we have faster turnaround time we know our positive cases more quickly and it does contribute then to knowing that number tomorrow versus three days from now and allows us to to do things like quarantine students or staff members or whatever the case might be based upon that information but then you'll see the hospitalization so as we've looked at all this other information got into the yellow as we finished last week and thought that was a good thing that now hospitalizations have bounced up to a 15 and a 19.
and 98 excuse me 96 cents and i believe that mr gimmicky is going to request approval on these i guess we do it all at one time is that what we're doing okay great would you like me to go ahead and move on to the fun report mr white okay okay so the fund report this month you'll see that an education fund as of july 31st 2020 balance and education five hundred thirty nine thousand two eighty seven eighty six in operations fund you'll see a balance of one million six hundred sixty one thousand two hundred eleven dollars and fifty two cents balance on all funds five million seven hundred seventy nine thousand forty three ninety two after your fund report in your packet you're going to see a depository statement and bank balances for july you have the balances for each bank you'll have your less outstanding checks for each bank if you look at the balance july 2020 for depository statement and bank balance that amount balances with our fund report did anyone have any questions on anything i can answer for you okay that's all we have tonight thank you next item in the consent agenda is personal report part one yeah so under certified this month we have a retirement of barbara jesse a special services teacher at greencastle high school we have a couple of resignations first from cairo heritage jedel resignation is business socialized teacher at green castle high school resignation of kirsten kaufman as fifth grade teacher at tz i have several um classified resignations this month as well uh rod nodley resignation head custodian at tz deneen earl's resignation as instructional assistant at tz christine stokes attendance secretary at tz jamie burke berkelmeyer resignation is ia green castle middle school danette williams resignation cafeteria assistant at green castle middle school we have several pertaining to uh resignations pertaining to our 21st century community learning center instructor position at greencastle middle school those people are anna salcedo madeline smith emma houston leah buyers christy den sophia mosley ephraim hale and danette williams i apologize in advance if there are mispronunciations of names um a couple of bus driver resignations lindsey fenwick ryan harris randy stewart and then long-term substitute teacher jennifer hebert we have no resignations from pca and that is personnel part one for this month next on the consent agenda would be personal report part two mr giving okay several items pertaining to certified staff for this month um approving intermittent fmla lead for art art as an art teacher at green castle middle school amy robinson hire as a fifth grade teacher at tz julia stevens approved transfer secondary second grade teacher at rid path to third grade teacher at tz beva miller approve fmla a second grade teacher at dear meadows stacy allen hire as a long-term substitute for stacey allen grace timberman approve a couple of 21st century community learning center instructor positions at greencastle middle school courtney smith and sharon pitcock items for classified staff hire as a media assistant greencastle high school katherine burke hire as study hall instructional assistant in green castle high school michelle bowler higher as second grade excuse me second shift custodian greencastle high school isaiah long hire as nurse assistant at greencastle high school christina jones hire as cafeteria assistant at greencastle middle school mary kristach approved transfer as cafeteria assistant at ridpath to instructional assistant greencastle middle school kathy sibbett hire as in school suspension instructional assistant at greencastle middle school rachel crosby hi and then we have several hires as 21st century community learning center instructors at greencastle middles middle school excuse me keegan lammers anna salcedo sophia mosley leah vyers connie pierce hire troy brown as head custodian at tz higher as new nade at tz kathy lewis hire as nurse assistant at tz dear meadow and rid path sarah booher hires neonated deer meadow kathy brown hire his new native deer meadow bailey stulte hire his media assistant at rid path primary stacey wheeler approved transfer transfer as instructional assistant tz to instructional assistant at redpath wanda hutchinson hires new dated red path joy fortune approve unpaid leave at transportation center megan tesmer and transfer a short route bus driver to long route bus driver at transportation angela garl several substitutes this month hire a substitute teacher esta bolton brianna schaefer and then as a long-term substitute teacher amanda marshall several eca hires tom hamilton hires assistant head football coach at greencastle middle school caleb camacho hires assistant football coach at greencastle middle school amanda hernandez hires cheer coach at green castle middle school hires a several hires as assistant excuse me one hires assistant football coach at green castle high school nathan aker a couple of volunteer assistant boys soccer coaches at green castle high school jacob foss and simon foss approve as volunteer assistant volleyball coach at green castle high school mackenzie woodall approved as volunteer assistant volleyball coach at green castle high school macy clark and a compensation adjustment for belinda short who previously was the iss supervisor and switched over to the attendance secretary position at greencastle middle school and that's all i have for personnel part two uh this this month and uh unless there are any questions i recommend approval of the consent agenda at this time i yeah i guess i have a question for two here it looks like in going through it we were the resignations of personnel were part one and the tires in part two under classified two of the ones we did just resigned from 21st century community learning instructors that was that was hired yeah because it's uh they resigned effective at the end of the last school year okay and so we're rehiring them for this school year okay so they're not technically leaving okay gotcha that's what i figured okay did i get a motion to a roof the consent agenda okay we have a motion in a second on any discussion all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda are is the report section and first would be assistant superintendents report dr french to remind me of my notes um so we've been talking the last few months about how to get our kids here and the plan for what school would look like logistically and we finally have them here and so now we're focused on the plan and being prepared for if we have to close down again so that we can operate as effectively as if the students were here and so that's kind of what i'm going to discuss with you tonight our plan our draft anyway of our at-home learning and this will only apply to our on-campus students so virtual students or students that are enrolled in our virtual program nothing changes for them if we have a shutdown and move to at-home learning they will continue within their program and they don't have to miss a beat so these changes only apply to our on-campus students so corey if you could move to the next slide and the next one so we want to make sure and you've heard me say this before but in the springtime our e-learning was really emergency learning so it was that on the spot how do we get through and connect with our kids and our focus was really maintaining the skills that we had built um and just keeping track of our kids and so going forward we understand that there could be an ebb and flow of the at-home learning that it might not just be a one-time thing it might be kind of a revolving door with our staff and kids that may have to um force us to close so we'll have to be very adaptive and we understand that we're going to have to move forward in our curriculum and keep going and so those expectations are going to be set higher and so with putting out this guidebook for families and for kids um it's our effort to let them know that expectation will be higher than it was in the spring so we can't use the same grading scale that we did um we have to hold kids accountable and we if they're not there and so it we have to put up these expectations and front load those and so our main expectation is that students will participate every day in online activities i know we've talked about our internet divide and how we can provide those solutions and i know we're working on long-term solutions as a county we've also set up partnerships with our local library and with our daycare centers we have hot spots in front of all of our buildings so students have places to go to at least upload and download their work on a regular basis even though that's not an ideal solution it is a solution and it's all that we can provide right now and so that's how we're gonna encourage that communications and families so a daily educational activity those time requirements that the doe provides as five hours for elementary and six hours of instruction for secondary are still remain intact so that does not mean they have to be in front of a screen that's reading writing thinking any type of engagement and educational activity so setting that up front also so kids will have daily opportunities to connect with their teachers through canvas through google meets those can be live sessions those can be pre-recorded we are asking that parents will do our attendance differently if parents will have to call in for their students if their student is ill or can't get on and participate that day students will have to our parents will have to notify their um their child's building their principal our office staff the teachers will be available in the same way chat phone google phone numbers so they can receive texts and and phone calls from parents that are stuck and trying to assist kids they're going to have flexible hours so they can adjust their these wouldn't be additional hours into their contract but just a flexible hour so maybe a teacher logs on later in the afternoon so they can be available to work into the late afternoon and evening as some of our high school students prefer to do and then again just we have to provide assessments we have to keep due dates and things like that so work will be complete counted incomplete or zero if nothing's turned in so um we will have those expectations going forward thank you corey so um also we want to make sure that parents understand that all of the same supports that students have opportunity to take place when they're on campus they'll have those opportunities if we have our mandated shutdown learning too so the libraries our ell teachers are counseling speech any of the things that the kids have resources on campus they will still have those during the school day so those counselors and all of our staff will be reaching out to make connections with the kids that are on their caseload working with families making sure they're having those regular connections and meeting their needs whatever their specific learning needs are we are all also setting up a tutoring system and we're currently working that out right now and we'll have that um up and going for our virtual students and our on-campus students um and this will continue when we move to at-home learning or if we move to at-home learning and so tutoring can be provided virtually if it's safe and allowable we will set it up so that it can come to on campus our ice our high school and middle school is also talking about doing some creative things with an internet cafe so if students want to come in and receive tutoring or just have a place to work where they can socially distance but get that help and support then we're going to try to do things that like that as long as they're allowable and safe just one more the tech support and would be the same tech support that we currently have set up now as a system for our virtual students students that need tech support would hit their their teachers up first and then if they can't solve the problem they'll be rerouted to e-learning and if a device needs repaired it can be brought to the central office and returned the next business day so i feel like we have a very solid plan this is a plan that addresses k to 12 consistencies there will be a lot of more specific details that will come from each building that will be more individualized to that level to meet those kids needs but we're trying to develop a guide that parents can um just that will help them prepare and be able to better plan so that it's a k-12 wide consistent guide so any questions over that again this is just draft form we're still getting feedback from our staff currently okay yes right right right and we would ask everybody to stay in whatever current program they're they're in anything else okay thank you next on the agenda is the superintendent report distributivity yep so just a couple of items this month just want to look forward to uh completion of uh we're almost almost completed with regards to a couple of our projects that took place over the summer the middle school gym floor is down it's installed it looks really really nice middle school gym has been painted the new bleachers have been installed i'm still waiting on some parts for those for those to be fully complete new wall padding was also installed today so we're going to have a really nice gym facility for our middle school students to use for quite some time we fixed the ac in the auxiliary gym that had been out down for about 10 years i think but that's been really great because we've had to rely heavily on some additional space for lunches for study hall and to just allow kids to spread out or if we have to combine classes so just to update on a few of those projects i would obviously like to thank all of our staff many of you who are here right now we're just a good opening to the start of school under the conditions that we're operating on i feel like for the most part things have gone really well we understand that the situation's fluid and we are prepared to adjust accordingly as needed but it's been a collective effort i think everybody saw on the first day we wore our green castle united stronger together shirts because you know we really are a family here at gcse and we want to show that pride to our parents and community with that as well and then i just have one item that i'd like to share because it does benefit um green castle specific students i think there's an article in the banner today where we had 18 students receive a thousand dollar scholarship from dollars for scholars if you've noticed you've seen some signs around for the annual farm to fork dinner this year due to covent 19 um it's taking place in a drive-through style format however it's still a great opportunity to get a nice meal from myers market but then also to benefit a good cause so september 19 2020 at six o'clock at the putnam county fairgrounds if you have it if you want additional information i can share that to you but i definitely wanted to share that for our partners that's all i have under superintendent's report for this month okay thank you next item on the agenda is old business and we have no old business so the next item would be new business and under new business we have you know an approval request for a reimbursement resolution district yeah so in your board packets as a reimbursement resolution essentially i shared last month that i'm working to engage a group to do a facility assessment a building study of our facilities help determine estimates of cost and help us prioritize and sort our project of sort for a potential future project and this reimbursement resolution allows us to do just that to potentially reimburse ourselves later on if we're spinning out of a rainy day this allows us the authority to reimburse the district from potential bond proceeds okay can i get a motion to approve the reimbursement resolution you have emotion in a second any discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for a resolution for fifth third bank yeah so this resolution um allows us to update our fifth third fifth third account make some changes to who's listed on the count it also requires a signature of the board president so it's my recommendation that we update this resolution so we can update our bank account okay we have a motion and a second to any discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for permission to advertise the 2021 budget the cpf plan and the bus replacement plan yes so this is probably my most exciting time of year i'm sure you are all fascinated to hear a lot about the budget as well um but in your packets is a copy of the presentation that corey is showing shown above so as is customary as we go through go through budget season i just like to share a little bit about kind of about how it works and a lot of factors um that play into it so if you remember correctly a couple of years ago there was legislation through the general assembly that made some adjustments to some of her funds so currently here at greencastle we are left with the education fund which is the former general fund we have the operations fund which is a conglomeration of the old capital projects fund plan the transportation fund the bus replacement fund we have our debt service fund and that's obviously used to pay pay back our lease rental payments and pay back on some of the geo bonds that we've issued here and then pension bond that is used to pay back some of our liabilities from retirement severance debt that was issued quite a few years ago um next slide slide please i just thought it might be good to share kind of their their overall use as well as their primary source of revenue so we know that the education fund is funded through our state tuition support was which is directly reflective of our adm so our student enrollment and education fund is used for instructional purposes primarily for teachers salaries and benefits our operations fund or just that they're helped to help pay for the operations within our school district so myself and my office as well as our transportation department custodial staff help pay for building maintenance and grounds and things of that nature and our operations fund is we receive revenue through our local property taxes debt service i mentioned is to repay debt local property taxes is the source and then obviously the same thing with the pension fund to repay our debt and we receive our revenue from local property taxes so a little bit more on the education fund so the next two slides and i won't read through all those items but you can see 20 different numbers and this is what is this is one of the most difficult things in developing our budget is we have to essentially work around 20 different variables um on multiple different count days throughout the year to make a prediction on the amount of revenue we're going to receive and the most recent thing that you've probably seen in the news is you've heard governor holcomb talk you know about potentially moving our september count day to later in december um that doesn't guarantee anything for our school districts as far as funding because you know i think we we have shared and dr mccormick has shared that during this crisis and during this pandemic schools should be funded at 100 well none of the legislature and the governor himself they haven't taken any action to make that possible all they'd have done is talk about it so in order to make that entirely possible because our account today could very well be our account in december or our account in december could be much worse it's the only thing to fully protect our funding that we receive from our tuition through tuition support through our student account is for the general assembly to convene and take action and pass law so i think that's that's important important to mention so all those different variables go into helping determine the tuition support payment that we receive monthly from the department of education and so that that bottom number is based on an an estimate that we submitted to the doe based on 1727 students so when we're looking at our revenue forecasts we always want to be conservative and that helps protect you in case there's there's in case there's a shortfall because if you over project your revenue and then you overspend then you're really going to dig yourself out of deep pulse so um tuition support is broken up into the basic grant so basic grant is strictly off of our belly button account so our per student count honors designation grant so that's based on the amount of students who receive academic honors and there are other variables that play into that as well special education grant and so there are multiple different categories with regards to our special education account and they're funded at different levels for each and then also our cte grant so that's based on participation itself and it's also based on participation in um in different courses so one of the things big changes is the department of workforce development now sets those caps for a lot of those classes based on reimbursement or how much money schools receive and they set higher values to some categories than than to others so that is also a big piece of how we receive our funding so if you go to the funding comparison slide just as an example fy20 that would have been so another challenge in in budgeting is we receive our revenue based on a fiscal year so july through june but then we budget based on a calendar year so when you look at this funding that's all based on a fiscal year so the fiscal year that just ended is on the left fy 20 and then um the scenario i described would be fy21 and that's on the right hand side so just to kind of show you a little bit of a comparison uh comparison with that because they've increased our funding slightly but due to our decline in student enrollment that has resolved in a shortfall so next slide so everything that we're doing we're every decision we make in the present has an impact on our on the future so we can never lose sight of the big picture we have to look at whether enrollment's increasing declining that's something that we have to forecast throughout the year because we would have to be proactive with our spending and our revenue forecast so we don't end up into uh into a big pickle down the road um something i just like to mention is you know flexibility can at times create danger so you know temptation in one year to spend on one particular area for this year because the funds are there this year and we were able to complete that project and then the next year the funds aren't there and we haven't adjusted our spending habits then that can cause a dangerous situation so thinking of it like the multi credit cards syndrome you know you spend your money you transfer the balance well you know that the balance is still there it might be not be charged and charge any interest but you have to have to pay it off so you have to be careful with the expenditures so moving on to the next slide um and to be honest this is obviously totally a new process here for me because the county council approves our budget so within our budget calendar we have to include for some additional meetings and dates um kelly and myself have been working hard collaborating together and will represent the school district at some of these different meetings so i just wanted to highlight those dates for you upcoming so at future meetings we'll have our at our september regular board meeting we'll have our public hearings and uh and so forth um before adopting uh in october with the council um the next slide i just wanted to show just a kind of a trend with our average daily membership our enrollment um just so you can kind of see and this is you know i caution you because this kind of mirrors a lot of school districts around the state as you can see a slow decline in our enrollment trend and that slow decline in the enrollment trend also obviously impacts our revenue so in in working with the budget you know we begin building this uh 18 months in advance so we're we're building an 18-month plan for uh revenue or forecasting revenue and then we're also building an 18-month spending plan so within this we have to make several assumptions um given our situation um with declining enrollment and um based on our fund balances our cash balances um you know we're not in a in a in a dire situation um at the moment but if we're not careful um we will be because we don't have um a heavy cash cash reserve so when uh kelly shared our fund balances earlier as a rule of thumb a healthy cash balance or to have as a reserve would be roughly 10 to 15 percent of your average monthly expenditure for each fund so for instance i think she was talking one of the balances that she mentioned you know was the education fund and i think it was under six hundred thousand dollars so right now there's not enough reserve right there if for instance the general assembly or in the doe withheld a monthly payment we would obviously have to dip into a rainy day or we'd have to we'd have to borrow money the same thing could be said with our operations fund or any of our debt funds if we don't have the money there and we have to make those payments then we're going to have to borrow and anytime you have to borrow it's it's it's not not a good situation so the good thing is is we have time we have a plan and we are going to it's going to take time but we will dig ourselves out of the situation we were in to be in a more more effective better situation later on but with that you know we're not going to create any new certified positions or these are assumptions for 21 21 budget there will be no new certified positions we'll pay for five certified positions from the rainy day fund uh good assumptions utilities are increased by 10 each year our property and casualty insurance you know those things never really seem to go down it will increase by 10 percent each year our adm was 1727 students at 63 less than fall of 19 but not quite as it wasn't it'd be less from falling from the spring virtual students will be funded 100 so again right now we don't know if they're going to be funded at 100 or 85 85 and then also that the general assembly will propose no cuts to education funding uh in uh in 21 or even the end of this year so all of those things go into play again a lot of different variables factoring into that the next slide is the education fund and you can see that we've built an 18-month plan based on revenue estimates and then we've also developed an 18-month spending plan based on that revenue we don't collect a levy based on a tax rate for education fund again that comes strictly from the doe and from the state the next slide the debt service fund you can see the revenue 3 million 181 973 expenditures of 5 million 153 401 approval to advertise a 2020 levy of 3 million 316 742 or avatar and to advertise a 20 excuse me that's a 2021 rate i apologize 20 21 rate and a 2021 levy of um just over 86 cents so something else to that's important to to mention with this is our property tax funds we we determined the levies and rates based on 85 of our assessed value so in working with the dlgf department local government finance in order to make sure that you collect what you can collect and and to protect your levies and rates that we don't want to budget with a hundred percent of our assessed value so the actual rate and actual or excuse me the actual rate in order to connect collect that levy will be potentially much less because our actual assessed value was just north of 450 million last year we built this on i think it was 383 383 million dollars pension debt fund like that service fund same way revenues for 18 months 440 757 expenditures for 18 months so we make an annual pension uh pension bond payment um we do not um we so in order to pay back our pension bond um we actually neutralize our local income tax to do that we don't collect any uh we don't charge a rate to collect a levy the next one our operations fund 18 month revenue six uh six million eight hundred forty thousand five hundred and twenty three dollars expenditures uh ten million forty thousand five hundred and twenty three dollars uh request approval to advertise a levy of 3.8 billion dollars with a rate uh just just over 99 cents and then for rainy day um 18 month revenue of 2 million 000 132 dollars and 18 month expenditures of a million 444 487 and we do not collect property tax dollars to fund rainy rain today so these are leftover funds or unspent appropriations at the end of the year and we can transfer make transfers to rainy rainy day that is something that's becoming increasingly difficult with with how schools receive funding so just some things to consider again all the information used to build the budget 18 months in advance our final budget is determined by the rates approved by the dlgf so they can come in here and they can cut us because for instance in operations there's a max levy so there's a maximum amount that we are able to collect and they're not going to let you collect a penny more the actual funding generated by adm and so those that's our tuition support money to receive received from the doe any miscellaneous revenue sources such as excise fit tax commercial vehicle excise tax and obviously our property tax funds federal sources any additional state money or transfers and then obviously the operating balance in each fund i included a rate and levy history um slide in your presentation so again you can see that column on the left-hand side um you can see we built you know for instance in 21 we built it off an av of 383 million so the left-hand left-handed side column that's our advertised and so that's based on a conservative a b and then on the far right hand side you can actually see the certified amount based on the dlgf and an actual assessed valuation because we know if av goes up tax rate comes down so i don't want anyone to be alarmed you know by if that if that looks higher because on the next page uh requesting permission to advertise total rate and levy the total rate is a dollar 85.82 with a levy of seven million one hundred and sixteen thousand seven hundred and forty two dollars so in actuality we know that um our rate for this year was a dollar three six five zero so we know that that amount is going to be less once once av comes back as actual so in addition to request and advertise though our actual rate and levy or excuse me our total rate and levy we're also requesting permission to advertise the cpf and bus replacement plans that's a lot of information i'd be more than happy to answer any questions tonight or i on another day if need be there's a lot of good information thank you for that so anyone have any questions to ask the digest itself yeah okay can i get a motion then to approve permission to advertise the 2021 budget cpf plan and bus replacement plan okay we have a motion and a second any discussion hearing none all in favor next item on the agenda is an approval request for the revised 2020-2021 school calendar yeah so um at the end of july we essentially sought permission to delay the starter school by a week however we needed more time to determine where we could add those days back in we do have to add five instructional days back into the school calendar to meet that 180 days of student instruction so i worked with the administrators and mrs hamilton and the gcta to come up with a plan to do that and essentially what we are doing or in this calendar proposal we are turning we'd like to turn three of the snow makeup days um in february march and april into at-home learning days so those will still be days um where students won't come to school or families already have plans to travel however they'll be at home learning days and we will work with teachers and families to make sure that those assignments are posted and those students have enough time to complete those assignments and then the other two days that we captured would be by having students student or excuse me teachers return on the 4th of january and students on the 5th of january as opposed to the 6th and the 7th so we have to have those 180 days we didn't want to move grad or excuse me add them on to the end of the school year and have to move graduation um this really was kind of we saw as the best format in order to add those days back so it's my recommendation that the board approved the revised academic calendar makes total sense to me okay i get emotional proof okay we have a motion and a second to see any discussion hearing note all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for the crisis plan revisions for 2021.
i i envisioned asking for 100 because our plan is for 100 reopening i think we probably anticipate that the students who are enrolled in remote only will probably stay in remote only and and while that is um a logical assumption i think our survey data right now we're somewhere just over of the kids coming back for hybrid um one thing that's really important to remember and i have to thank dr ruby for reminding me of this in our communications is to to let the public know and the parents know that the remote option while legitimate is a still from the state department of education is still considered a temporary option so i think this i think the logical person uh common sense would tell us it probably will be temporary but last for the year this the 2021 year but one never knows and so we want to be prepared for all students um to come back should obviously the health data and everything else align in that regard so we want to make sure we have proper functions well the desk shields is the difference between asking for 43 000 of additional purchases versus asking for uh 67 000 so that's a big difference because with if i remember you had 55 000 in the first trunks right yeah they turned out to be more expensive than we originally thought they were going to be oh so there is new numbers here yes you told me there wasn't one that's what i'm trying to if i subtract the 122 492 from the full plan and 55 304 from the hybrid i should get the number that's on the spreadsheet from tonight 61 to 12 and i'm not getting that so so the numbers are have been updated i did not i did not update the cost numbers in the hybrid we estimated it where they were going to cost us 62 a piece they actually are costing us 68.70 so so the number on the other sheet is the quantity that we need times 68.70 so we've already how are we funding the overrun and cost in the first case that has not been determined yet we had some overs and some unders bob so far but we don't know what the full costs are yet and the numbers on tonight's spreadsheet are based on the actual enrollment that we expect to have correct based on the parent responses no they're they're based on 100 [Music] okay so you got two questions here so first of all you have to start with what we showed them before right we you know when you have to show us kind of where we started before and we're all getting lost in the numbers a little bit and it's okay we're uh that we're working our way through it tonight but tomorrow night it will be you know they'll throw us out of the office right if we throw them numbers that are confusing so we have to fix that between now and tomorrow um so let's stay on the face shield so the face shields where the difference is the only difference is cost the quantities are the same correct okay so um and we are in fact our real experiences that were spending 68.70 per correct okay um and your comment earlier is that there's under runs that's on other line items is that your point yes um so for face shields um i guess the i'm sorry desk shields not face shields desk shields the question for this board is do we want to shoot for the hundred percent back in enrollment or do we want to go get to the 80 percent or 80 83 or whatever the number is what do we want to go ask to go purchase it's a big difference in cost and then i'll work ken with you on how we can bridge it so the chart is not confusing to the board of finance that'll be great bob thank you yeah i just we may have to do it tonight though well i mean i go back i go back to what john was saying before i mean it's logical to to think that there might be less students than 100 any number less than 100 but not being paired is a more dangerous risk so you know i'd be in favor of of getting what we need for 100 of the students yeah i i think that makes sense too because i think we have to think that we could be living in this situation next year too it's not necessarily like a one-year and done scenario so i didn't want to have to go there jen but i was just listening to some information this afternoon and it's possible it could lead into through the next summer and into the fall next year until we have everything squared away in terms of the vaccine and everything else we're not we're not out of the woods by any stretch okay anybody else on buying at the 100 level versus the 80 level i guess we're going for the hundreds let me join micah sorry i was muted uh yeah yeah i i mean i feel like there's no if you start at 80 then there's no room to go down so i i feel like even if we had to or wanted to so let's go for the heart okay um and then the desks let me just go up to the desks is there a difference in the pricing on the desks ken well we haven't purchased any yet and when the purchasing agent was sourcing them these are the prices he had and are they different or the same than we had before they're the same all right so let me make sure i'm clear so on the go over to the hybrid side we had asked and been approved for uh zero right so the number on your other chart is what was what it was thirty four thousand eight ninety five which was 100 and is that time can you scroll over the 100 i just want to make sure i see 34 895 over there on this chart yes i mean yeah that's a scroll left thirty four eight ninety five i got that number and that's all we're asking for correct so this is the second branch of what we told them before yes now what i could do if if you think it would make it more clear i could take a version of this document and in the full reopening just identify what's needed in addition to what we already got would that be helpful do you think um [Music] no i think you put it in a cover sheet we'll we'll figure out the cover sheet how to tell the story i think the biggest thing you're gonna have to do is update the right hand column to be an updated version so that all the cost experiences you're not ending up showing in apples and bananas so okay that makes sense and uh and so you want them after when we're done after this call you and i can just kind of go through it make sure we're delivering to the other board something that's clear to them right if everybody on the board is okay me working with ken on us it's more about putting the pieces together so that you tell a story i think apparently um now why do we have to order now for november i guess that would be the second question that is the logical question what are the lead times and why is that the same they're gonna i know i'm reacting to you're only here three weeks ago right and we made the decision to order for the hybrid and uh now here we are i haven't even left august yet and we're asking for a tranche for the net for the next opening which is now two and a half months away um why is there why why can't we wait this decision until september when we see a little bit more i think we're we're concerned about lead times that when jerry was looking into it before it was four to six weeks was that on the desks of the shield that was on the uh i'm sorry the shields are the longer they time actually they were more like eight weeks so for example bob the shields are due september 1st we ordered those probably around july 10th i think so you know there's definitely some lead time and with frankly all of the school systems in the world thinking the same thing ordering more single desks ordering desk shields ordering technology there is supply chain issues and so while a vendor may tell us four to six weeks it may take longer than that and we don't want to chance it yeah we want to make sure we have plenty of time okay we're going to get them anyway we might get them as early as we can and be ready okay okay uh bob do you want to make a motion for this one i'm going back to um i would uh make a motion that the board approves uh taking forward a request to the board of selectmen and the board of finance for a total amount of ninety six thousand one hundred and seven dollars for student tests and student desk shields um uh for a potential full reopening in the beginning of november uh i'm not finished yet um uh that this request has already is part of the amount already communicated to the board of selectmen and board of finance at our previous meeting i will second that all right any other questions on this item okay so all in favor aye all right okay i think that was everyone thank you okay our last item for tonight is a discussion on an increase for unaffiliated salaries adding an additional 0.25 to match the secretaries and the nurses from the 2 approved at our special meeting in june on the 11th um so we we had discussed at that meeting that um depending on how the we had approved a two percent increase for all unaffiliateds um just pending uh what the secretaries and nurses unit unions ended up coming in at so does anybody have any questions about this process and how this came to be okay all right um well then i will go ahead and move that we increase unaffiliated salaries adding an additional 0.25 percent to match secretaries and nurses from the 2.0 approved at our special meeting on june 11th 2020.
and so trying to understand the information behind that as all other numbers are going down so we have refrained from saying that x number of reds for x number of days uh is going to to send us to a closed situation because there is a lot of information that we are trying to gather to understand this this data and to make a decision based upon that so we'll continue that we have weekly meetings if not more based upon what the data is telling us with our local medical professionals the teachers association does have an individual that has sat in on those meetings all summer whether it be with dr nibalski the bartholomew county health department and or additional doctors that we involve from columbus regional health that also sit on the task force so the task force and bcsc has been intertwined since february 28th it is who we rely on to help give us information they are not making the decision at the end of the day based on the information we have bcsc would make the switch to go to e-learning if that is the determination based upon the metrics and the information we have so i wanted to make sure and get the most recent data and again this was not created by us it was posted by the the task force it's online now i made sure to check by 5 o'clock that we had the most up-to-date information they were providing to the community and so that that is it as to what we have at this moment in time additionally what we've looked at is internal information on july 20th we said nothing about an internal number but we became a little smarter and realized that internal spread and what what's happening with our kids and how they are impacting each other is going to be an important determinant i mean in this particular situation we could have no reds in the community and and still might have to close our schools down because of what's happening internally and so as we've also looked at that data all we see is our rolling seven-day per capita rate is 4.4 that number has been questioned because it's people say well it's because you're using 13 000 use the number of people in our building then then if we do that we'll have a different number and it won't necessarily be a larger number because positive cases are reported to us based on our enrolled students and our staff members whether they are in our building or not and so we could have a bridge student as a positive case not even in our building that's still going to count as a positive test case for us we could have a staff member who is not in our building they're doing e-learning they're doing columbus virtual pathway for example have a positive test case we know that and we have to work through that in terms of some personnel things that's going to count as a piece of our data but they're not in the building so we are using 13 000 about 11 000 students and actually be 11 444 so that that per capita rate would change and go down um and about 2 000 staff members as far as the number we're dividing by to get to that point at the end of friday um so this is going through friday august the 21st we had nine positive cases in our buildings of those nine twos and this is since august 10th so tracking since the start of school in august the 10th two of those positive cases had actually been in a school building resulting in us having to identify closed contacts because of them and then isolating or quarantining those students and so two in-school building cases accounting for nine internal close contacts quarantines we do have 138 people that have been or are being quarantined i guess if they started on monday the 10th they probably came back today or are coming back tomorrow so we're about through two weeks right now others are still on quarantine and those are coming from external exposure meaning there's a positive case maybe in the child's household there's a there's a a party on a weekend and and kids were exposed to a positive case that come from some other school or some other place some wedding that that maybe it was identified there was a positive case and we have kids or staff members who were at that wedding and have been identified as close contacts and are in these numbers so we are reporting numbers that are not only what's happening inside bcsc but also what's happening outside bcsc which does lead me to a statement that keeping the doors open for person instruction is really hard and and without question without any apology i will state that it is my desire to have our students here they do it does need to be in a safe and secure situation environment if we have improvements to make we need to make them but it is my desire to have in-person instruction offered for the families in this community that choose to take advantage of that everyone in our school corporation is working as hard as they ever have in this particular job there are things that they are are having to do that i would not have believed they were having going to have to do as we got through the end of last school year and into this one um that effort is this entire community needs to be thanking uh those individuals and appreciate the effort that they are they are putting forth just to try to make sure that we have in-person instruction if we would make a decision to go to e-learning right now it would be easier for this school corporation every single person in it in terms of the job that we would have to do it would be an easier thing for us to do to go to e-learning but we are trying to keep an option available for our parents to still be able to send their kids to here which leads me to that second bullet point it's not about just what happens internally or within our school buildings it is what happens in this community so it's not about the compliance rate just of our kids and face masks it's about the compliance rate of everybody in this community it's not just about whether or not one of our kids or staff members stays quarantined or stays home because they're sick or stays home because they have kids in their house that are sick or at least around somebody that has some symptoms that might be coveted 19 related it's true of everybody in the community and so if we look at trying to maintain an in-person option the actions taken outside of our buildings are equally important maybe not more so because there's a heck of a lot more people outside of them than there are inside it's just as important as the actions that are taken inside so that's very quickly school board members data that i have available to you it was referenced in one of the comments that there is building data i've also shared that with you in the last few days data that was shared by the republic and and we can certainly commit to providing that information uh weekly uh that is that is not an issue the indiana state department of health of health is going to begin reporting that data i believe in september um maybe even on a daily basis so it is information that is going to be uh readily widely and readily available i don't again don't know exactly how to start but i think late september uh from the indiana state department of health by my building and i think my students and staff members so that is at least what i have before at this moment i have some other data in case there's some question that pops up and we need to try to dig into but would leave it open to questions comments at this point in time thank you dr roberts board members what questions do you have kat mr halfwire yes thank you for the information i appreciate all the uh people that spoke this evening is our mic on nick um i guess you know i've had several phone calls as well and i appreciate people reaching out to us and and kind of sharing their thoughts and and just their own experience just because some of the folks said you know unless we have kids or you know obviously we're not really allowed in the buildings but to be able to hear from the kids what's going on in the classroom and stuff and it does it is a little concerning and i know it's difficult that we only have x amount of teachers but we also only have x amount of dollars to pay our teachers as well and to overwhelm our teachers in doing both classroom and bridge and you know and especially everyone knows my you know my heart's pretty close to the our special ed uh teachers and staff that work so hard and everything and just to be able to walk through a lot of these avenues um you know are we going to this week start looking at the clock you know really what the classroom sites are you know i was at the dentist this week and i had one my hygienist mentioned that her daughter heard that there were nine kids or nine people at columbus north high school with covid and her girls were a junior and you know and i said well would probably make a difference if they were freshmen because then they wouldn't be in your girls junior classes however i know going to north and my kids being at north you know the hallways i mean during passing period you you need to know where you're going or you'll get run over um so you know then it it really kind of struck me that you know as a parent we do do alerts on different things just like with our officer you know catching the guy in the parking lot you know can we set up um some sort of alert to you know either the parents of that building if there are you know a positive case um i did hear and i haven't tracked it for sure but i did hear that edinburgh will do like a text message or something to parents without disclosing anything of you know just you know i'll just use an example lincoln elementary had three children in third grade that tested positive um the the you know the classroom is cleaned contact tracing is going on all as well but we will you know reach out if your kid was exposed or whatever but is that something that we can do because i know the numbers uh that you shared you know this last week with the number of you know uh exposures or the cova positive testing that helps but i also think that we need to go a step further as far as with the transparency of when we have those positive cases whether it's at north because then what i found out was that that wasn't the case and we all know how rumors are if we don't get information then rumor becomes the reality and and stuff so i just think sharing that information up front um just doing an alert to you know those those building parents or even you know the corporation that way people can start paying attention as well because you are spot on when you said that it's not only our kids our kids and faculty and everybody in the schools could do well but it's everybody outside of that how many times we go to the store and we see people with no mask on and they have to police themselves and everything so so i guess it's kind of just really a statement or a question can we do the alerts as far as when we have a positive in a school to kind of that way we're sharing because i know kids will go home and tell their mom and dads and you know if it's not true then that's one thing but if it is true then we need to notify the parents dr roberts you want to respond to that i guess i would i would wonder and i think about this as my child who had covered 19 if i'd won an e-alert going out to the entire community indicating that a positive test case is now in my child's building i was i remember ryan white and the the challenges of of having a disease and and the way people treat treated that person it was a very interesting situation um covet 19 is something that it's not hiv aids right but but certainly is something that people are paying close attention to and maybe behaving differently than toward a set of students either because they think that individual is positive or the people around that individual were positive and or then what people should be doing in terms of school i've seen that already and so i'm very anxious about information that begins to get too close to a student or staff member and identifies them as having covet 19.
yeah so i i can't share um specifics about our plan because that's obviously a protected document to help us deal with an emergency situation but we like to have the have the board approve our updated plan each year we're required by law to certify to the doe within 60 days from the start of each school year that we have reviewed it and it has been updated and our school safety team led by atlanta good pastor has has worked hard has updated that document and it's ready for board approval and all the changes that came to us okay got good emotional proof okay we have a motion to the second discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion dale passes you uh next item on the agenda is an approval request for the 2020 2021 hendrix regional health contract yep so this is essentially a rollover of our existing arrangement with hendricks regional health to provide athletic training services for our green castle athletes and the partnership has worked out well and it has helped to keep our student athletes safe and i believe her name is alyssa has really worked extra hard this school year and making sure everyone's safe and complying with additional protocols so i recommend the board approve this updated contract agreement okay we have a motion and a second any discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for a spec changing a special services short route to a special services bus long route yeah so um we are fighting the fighting the daily grind um with staffing and mr clearwaters has done a great job of making sure that we have drivers and have enough drivers um we're continuing to find new drivers so if anybody out there knows anybody wants to drive a school bus please send them our way if there are any teachers interested but due to a lack of bus drivers just we just need to convert a short route to a special services bus long route and so it's my recommendation that we do just that okay i got an emotional approach okay we have a motion and a second to the discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes last item on the agenda is an approval request for some donations and you added a few on the list so i'm going to let you read those all first thank you and we'll approve them all together sounds good we had a water bottle filling uh station water fountain uh donated from an uh some anonymous donor for the high school we have a donation of 250 from edwards royal comfort to greencastle high school athletics we have a donation of 1 1999 from greencastle football parents club to greencastle high school athletics we have two donations from the mary allison children's trust in the amount of one thousand dollars each to deer meadow primary and to also also to rid path primary and then it was on friday of last week received two additional donations um one in the amount of five hundred dollars from hendricks power to greencastle community schools and also five hundred dollars from park county rm's remc to greencastle community schools so we would like the board to accept those donations so that any of those funds could be put to good use and certainly would like to thank our community partners for thinking of our kids and our schools get a motion to approve the donations well i have a motion can i get a second okay promotion in a second um any discussion okay hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes last item on the agenda next to the last i don't want you i guess is other business does anyone have any other business thank you yeah they did a really nice job with the football game good deer anybody else so okay hearing no other business can i get a motion to adjourn [Music] thank you for coming yes thank you you
welcome okay any other discussion okay all in favor all right okay the motion's unanimous thank you okay um i think that is it for tonight so um thanks everybody and uh without objection the meeting is adjourned thank you thanks everyone everyone have a good night and can you call me at my home office all right thanks bye everyone everybody thank you goodnight everyone thank you take care
we we do have ferpa the family education rights and privacy act we also have the medical hipaa piece that we have to at least be very careful with the amount of information we release to not get too close to easily identifying that student and unfortunately even with the information we're releasing now it it it's not too hard to figure out who has coveted 19 because it's not just the individual that we're not allowing to come here it's everybody who probably sat around him or her whether it's in the classroom or on the bus or at lunch or or the recessed cohort or whatever the case might be so the adults in the building the other kids in the building quickly are able to go home and indicate that johnny's the one that has coven 19 and that that's the way that is even when we're just sharing with that amount of people and and so adding to that uh by being more transparent it adds to the possibility of it being more easily identifiable for that individual that just worries me right and i appreciate that because you know i know with hipaa you know just saying that you have a case in the school in a certain school you know that's not really violating the hipaa but on the other hand you're right you know but you know i i too just i don't know it's it's that double-edged sword as you spoke to and i just think we have to find a better way of maybe being a little more transparent because you know i know i heard some things um you know like i said you know different people having the covet and everything and um it just if we have to share information or people will seek that information somewhere right wrong or indifferent and it will instill the panic in our community and with teachers and stuff and i don't think we need you know we really need to do that i think everybody has walked around the covid and understand that you know it is a virus and all the things that go along with it um and you know we just i don't know i i don't know what the answer is and maybe that's where our you know our medical folks or somebody but i just i just feel so compelled that we we need to be a little more transparent in that aspect somehow protecting you know all that's involved so if it's something that we can kind of start looking at because the information that the republic shared and stuff i think that's very helpful just you know just even getting those numbers out there because you're right if we have 40 people in bartholomew county that tested positive and then we showed that we only had two in our schools so to speak then you know then you know that that's the outside we can't control that so thank you you stay healthwire and i think most of the other board members would agree that that timely information shared school specific would be helpful i would i would caution being careful about using our e-alert system because i think it has it carries with it a gravity right now of this is an extreme situation and and not that that culvert 19 incident is not extreme but i think it's going to be more frequent more likely to be more frequent and i wouldn't want to lessen that impact so i think dr roberts if you and your team can take that challenge of what's because i think i think it's also appropriate to have a separate but equally extraordinary approach to informing uh the appropriate people in the community you know the as you as you noted if it's a taylorsville event it's a taylorsville school community if it's a rock creek event it's a rock creek school community right so i think if we can do something like that and have the ability that may be a tall task in the time that it's given to do it but right that's appropriate board members other questions i actually have some comments and thank you julie i'm sorry did somebody else talk okay hearing things oh my gosh um so first of all i want to thank everybody who came up to speak today and express your opinions i appreciate your everything that you said um there are a few things just a couple things first of all thank you um also thank you miss dwyer for bringing up the transparency and and if we can't figure out a way to possibly share the share the numbers that you did i think it was last week and about the number of cases in a and also you know the face mask and the social distance because i know on the codewood website it's more of a community sharing so maybe there's a way that we can share those just internal bcsc numbers possibly on our website or in some other way with the reporting of right now the information you're sharing on the covet cases i think it said some buildings you had separated so i think that's good information put that somewhere it doesn't have to be the e-alert i guess but whatever form format that should take i think that's a really good idea and um there's i feel like i'm talking really loud i don't think okay okay thank you there are a couple things um from the beginning i've been a little concerned about and it's still concerning it's the social distancing and so i hope we continue to work on that and i know we will but it really make bothers me to hear that there are 30 children in a class um that's just to me unacceptable um and i i just don't know if that's true i mean first of all i hope that's i hope that's a rumor or maybe it's not but if there are 30 children in a class i know what those classrooms look like in a lot of the schools when you really need to split those up or do something that's just too many and then also if there's if there are teachers teaching traditional um bridge and cvp i think if especially our special ed teachers then is that actually happening or um so that needs to be looked at i think that's a that's a burden i mean that is a huge job and i know everybody all the teachers who whatever teachers are here tonight you have you all work so hard and we appreciate your work but that is really a lot to ask and i don't know if there's some way we can relieve that i don't know teacher's aides or teacher assistants can help out with that so i'm so i'm a little concerned about that so hopefully we can keep working on that and hey we're only two weeks in so you know we've worked out a few bugs we have a lot we have a lot more bugs and glitches to work out especially with the social distancing and um yeah i think the sanitizing somebody mentioned that i can't remember who it was i understand that's going fairly well though i've not heard too much about that some negatives about that but are the rooms being cleaned like after every class or should they be or how's that working does anybody know let's go i don't know who to ask you know so maybe those are those are little things or maybe they're things we don't know and it's different for every building but dr bozeman is not able to be here uh julie but i will i will get a okay a beta report from but um you know i know the work and i know that the work that the administration and the principals and the counselors and the teachers are putting in to make some choices give students some choices give some parents some choices and dr roberts you're right if we just went to e-learning it would you know really be easy but we want to try to i know there are many parents who want their children to go to school and they get that's their best experience is to go to school so it's a very difficult decision but um i just wanted to mention that let's see i think those were the main things i wanted to bring up and just if i could if we could get some information on the social distancing and i know that's a work in progress on the transparency and then the other things that i discussed then i would really appreciate that information also if if if i if we could get that um i think that's it thank you yeah thank you dr bill's thanks mr persinger yeah um i wanted to speak on the uh comment that mr thomas made about the enforcement of protocols uh we've you know been discussing this return to school plan since you know well since march honestly but you know has voted on everything since you know this summer and we've been planning and putting all these actions into place but has there been any policies or anything put forth of actual enforcement of the mass mandate social distancing mandates anything like that because there is i don't remember seeing any of it yeah yeah james there has not been any specific policy rewritten in terms of enforcement of those two things they would fall under other expected behaviors so as behaviors are rolled out at the beginning of the year including what side of the hallway to walk walk on or or to use the proper stairwell now at columbus east as an example that says these are for down and these are for up same with wearing a face covering then or um maintaining physical distancing that if students are not being compliant or being insubordinate then it would fall in in that as it would for any other behavior that's expected so there's there's not been an addition or or a rewrite of policy regarding those two specific things wouldn't it be easy to make that an addition to you know say the dress code policy i mean i'm pretty sure we have pretty standard forms of discipline or correction behavior for somebody that would wear a swastika to school sure yeah so i don't see why it'd be any different if they're going to walk around and if they had a swastika on their face covering it probably would be exactly the same yeah so yeah so but i'm just saying that you know a requirement of not wearing something or you know girls have to wear uh shirts that are you know not bare midriff so right we could easily add a you have to wear a mask when on school property except for you know eating lunch or whatever or socially distancing okay i see recovery so uh in in terms of it being handled like the dress code it would there be a similar situation uh but it is not worded that way so if the question is could that be ordered or or or it has not been could it be done yes we could look at looking at adding language to something like the dress code policy or somewhere else if need be in order to make sure that that was that that progression of discipline was followed um without wouldn't have further conversation discussion but that could be a possibility so to clarify then dr roberts what direction have you given school principals about how to deal with the student who is not wearing a mask is first like any other expectation let's let's mold the behavior and make sure that we are getting students to understand the expectations we've laid forth or put forth and then follow that but as an educational institution we have not indicated to them the very first time that happens to come down in a way that results in immediate discipline but coach train uh we are seeing that students are complying again for the most part i don't know that we've had and bill or laura i would guess i would turn to you any disciplinary incidents i should take back we we had a gentleman indicated that maybe we had a disciplinary incident so there are things that are happening once we've gotten to a point and i don't know the exact uh situation there to get to that but there is discipline eventually being administered based upon the circumstances but the guidance has been work through your progression and so as you would coach any other behavior that you were rolling out at the beginning of the year during the pbis stuff and how we should behave at this event this situation in the hallways and the bathrooms in the classrooms like clothes to wear et cetera then you handle it in that way so there's not been an additional here's how you handle all these other things with mass though be more difficult or even more lenient you you need to to coach it up be positive but move through the discipline chain at the secondary level i can probably speak easier too in terms of what that looks like from detention to in school suspension to eventually out of school suspension and worse if somebody would continue to be compliant at the elementary school i'm not sure they're jumping to detention that quickly but uh there is that same progression of discipline okay i do feel that you know mass compliance should carry with it a bit more sense of urgency than you know a dress code or you know what side of the hallway to walk on yeah i think that's right i mean i think you know starting third week of school should be pretty clear if you're gonna be in the building i agree that's clear by now yes i agree the interesting thing is is like there's rarely anything that's one size fits all right and so we have students that that wearing a mask is a very interesting uh thing for them whether there's a sensitivity issue there's a medical issue or there's even maybe some challenges from from home or and whether there's support there and so working through those in the first couple of weeks i think has been the case we have some students who we are scaffolding the approach to wearing and maybe having them wear a face shield uh first face shields are not something that we necessarily approve of as a face covering but it seems to be something that maybe a kid will wear first and then we can move them toward a face covering or another child that we're getting face coverings on it at bits of time and working through that and increasing that amount of time as each day goes by so there is there are progressions happening too in terms of face covering but but i agree there is a sense of urgency there in two weeks in the expectation should be clear by now mr persinger anything else um well the only other question i have back on the chart of the metrics uh the indicators the hospitalizations i understand obviously what causes those numbers to you know go from 15 to 17 but what would cause them to go from 16 to 13.
from 16 to 13. yeah is that just new hospitalizations per day or is that the current total amount of that is that is the number of people hospitalized that day so it is it's a running total so if we had you know that that 15th of august to the 16th of august it would have been three discharges of people who had coven 19 really who who had a diagnosis of coven 19 in the hospital yeah that's all or one new one and four discharges correct yeah whatever whatever that's the total number each day yeah okay what about death excuse me death i i i i've not been tracking those it's not been a i mean i actually i do know most of them at the time it's not been on me it's not our metrics i even think that would be an important piece of information though to you know have on here yes we went from 16 to 13 but it's not all great news three people didn't suddenly get better two of them died you know that's yeah i mean the running death rate in the country is something that all metrics you know nationwide have been tracking yeah you know news outlets you know national health associations local health department does publish the number of more the mortality rate as well in the county so that would be that would be the only source of it in our county would be that well we're getting our information from the health department right right yeah so they would have that i mean that would be something that'd be worth you know in the sense of transparency being honest about this is why the number of hospitalizations went from here to here instead of trying to make it look all good i mean you know it's not good if you know the number goes down because people pass away yeah and indeed i i i don't disagree that was not the case here but in terms of three deaths being the responsible for going from 16 to 13.
with 175 000 in the country thus far i'm sure that we're going to have we have unfortunately our own number right right well since you're on that that the hospitalization's james the 15 and 19 i've i have checked into that since we are back to read in those numbers and it dropped down and actually we had a seven a few days ago thought that that had dropped further then as this is lagging data so we we as much as we want to be on august the 24th you can already see that the date is listed as august the 23rd uh so that's as up to date as we we feel we can be right now and that was as of noon today and the numbers get published uh still some pending things with rates but that hospitalization typically as the increase in per capita number would go up and we saw 15th 16th of august 21 22 if enough of those are serious enough it could result in hospitalizations there's going to be a lag time of five six seven days though the 15 19 could be a a reflection of august 15th august 16th in terms of the numbers of people that are actually now hospitalized comparatively so the the hospitalizations tend to reflect six seven days ago versus what they might today even though the number represents today again dr roberts my understanding was the hospitalization was uh was an important metric just because of our local healthcare community's ability to uh to handle the caseload is that that's correct and when when recommended as far as a number to use for red here it was more of the the hospital's ability to continue to provide care versus that representing community spread right um so there's there's a combination of things being looked at there when we look at hospitalization okay and rich might have more information about that than anybody else sitting here if he cares to add board members what other comments or questions you have mr health wire i and you may have already answered this and i was trying to to take this all in because i know we talked about the threshold or what i call the trigger points um and it's hard to identify those but let's say an elementary school ends up with you know 50 of the people humans in the building that end up with a positive case or we had to quarantine you know would that be something that we would like maybe just shut that one school down and do the sanitizing and everything basically probably quarantine everybody because maybe it's sporadic through all classrooms the cafeteria and music and art and all this um so would there be a way that we could say that you know maybe particularly if you know what what would that number just knowing how many kids or people are in that building if we hit a certain number because we know then it would take out the majority of the population in that school yeah so so first it would probably be a lot smaller number than 50 that would close that school building down just in terms of uh once once you have a a few positive cases now you have many potential people having to be quarantined including staff members and so we'd have a combination of trying to stop spread because of number of people and we'd also have a situation where we even if we wanted to stay open might not be able to because of the allocation of resources or who was left there the state department of health and kelly correct me if i'm wrong once you get to two positive cases in a classroom they're they're looking at sending that entire classroom home so we start off with from a close contact standpoint the individuals within six feet for 15 minutes or more and and work through that but when there's a second case in the classroom the the isdh is saying we probably had spread in that classroom and so because of that we at least look to shut that classroom down which then there's there's a potential domino effect of the wing of the building or the building and so it goes pretty quickly so that's that's how we would approach that and yes if anything is shut down then definitely we would be cleaning those spaces okay thank you dr roberts i've got a few questions but i think i see mr bryant leaning and let me let me let him go first mine is not so much on the covert and what we're doing in school mine is when are we going to strange a policy where the teachers can't come up and speak to a board member about a concern that they have we need to get that taken care of yeah and we've been talking about it for the last two three years and we really need to get it changed so that's all i have to say at 31-12 yes i guess i would ask did mrs london violate policy by speaking tonight no because i think she spoke on behalf of the cea as an educator speaking for a group of educators i don't believe she did but by the way pat i i think you or any one of us can bring that to this to this board uh hey here's the here's what i'd like to change on the policy i did go look our policy is just about copied verbatim on every school board in the state because again it's not something that one of our um brilliant or not so brilliant minds thought up it's it came from neola and and the wording i i looked i went on monroe county's website uh uh their school corporation it's it's the exact same wording so i think there are two challenges one is is the policy itself flawed and the second one is is is the understanding of that policy flawed in other words there's nothing that says that you nor i can talk cannot talk to an educator about education and what it does say is i shouldn't talk to teacher a about a problem they're having with specifically teacher b in a school or in our principal b in a school or outside of that that normal because it does it does threaten to go around what you hope is a process that's inside to to resolve issues and and uh i i get it there are times when um uh the the system is not just working for you you need to to be able to say i gotta go over somebody's head you do that reluctantly i've been in that situation in my working life you do it reluctantly because you know the blowback can be ugly but you do that when you think it's appropriate to do that and we need to make sure that we're thoughtful about listening and and trying to do it but i'm more than open for us to to consider rewriting that policy as it's written today to improve it okay but what we have right now with our teachers there's a lot of them that will not come up and speak about things that they're concerned about for education not a fellow teacher you know we as board members should be able to say hey you take that to your principal or you take it to your rep you take that to the superintendent you know we at least i hope i am uh smart enough to say you know hey that i can't do anything about but when you talk about education i mean there was a young lady that was here that said she chose this school corporation now and that was for a reason yes because we're better than monroe county brown county and any other yes that's the way i look at it so therefore i just think we need to get into that policy and change it so the teachers can come up and say hey this is what i feel about education not about my principal not about my fellow teacher or anything like that okay let's commit to take a look at that and and revisiting it because that's this is not the first time we've all wrestled with that as well as several of our our employees so let's do that dr shad mr stenner any other questions for i don't have questions okay dr roberts i do have a couple of questions um one of the comments tonight um highlighted the the difficulty of teaching online and in person both i was under the impression as we went into the school year that only lincoln had decided to do that uh both uh teachers teaching online and in person simultaneously and that some of the middle schools and high schools were going to teach both online and in person but not simultaneously which i understood are we in a much more prevalent status of teachers teaching both at the same time now i don't know how to state that in terms of prevalent because i don't know what the comparison was you know for what you have well in the elementary level laura help me out here the lincoln indeed is is a a school building that is um doing both my wife is a second grade teacher lincoln and has i think 18 students who are in class and nine who are online the middle schools and high schools have ended up in a similar model middle schools probably in particular the high school it's based upon the class and what the students have and as as we have attempted to make options as widely available as possible for our parents including an a la carte situation in some cases that if you have if you want to be in bridge but you have a class that is is is required to have some in-person instruction a career in technical education course it's required for credit in that course to have over 50 instruction in the classroom a dual credit course similarly then we have individuals that are that are doing both and and because of that strain of numbers in both cases it has resulted in a large number i i don't have a a number for you jeff but a large number of individuals who are doing both in our discussions with the teachers association before june and july as as amy indicated we've been talking about these things for for a long time it was not our desire to have that be the case as we've had more and more people taking advantage of the electronic option it evolved into a model that looked more and more like that and what we had have indicated is that if in the circumstances of situations we can get that corrected we need to so continue to look at that in cases where we have to look at a stipend or some additional opportunity to recognize the time that might be required after school to to find that out or to figure that out now that is done in two ways one you go to contract language that currently exists and see if you can find a way to do it there or you have to come up with something new and and that's that's there's a little bit of a challenge in there there may be an mou possibility or something like that but contract language is negotiated so that's a and so it doesn't happen you know within a within a few hours so short answer is we have many teachers that are doing both is it more than just lincoln now in the elementary level i'm going to defer to dr hack rock creek might be into you have circumstances where for example uh there might be nine students kindergarten that um wanted the bridge option the teachers at that school and let's just say it's richards the teachers at that school said we want to just take those kindergartners and wrap them up into our own work and so those kindergarten teachers may say we're teaching physically in the classroom but those nine were providing packets those nine were checking in with and that that was their choice to do that we've had some other situations departmentalization at our elementaries where for example a teacher may be teaching fifth grade and their partner is physically there they're online and the teacher says i'm gonna do that i'm gonna teach online with your fifth graders while you go teach my fifth graders physically so so we do have some partnerships happening there um across the district i would say at the elementary it's few but there are those situations where that's happening absolutely so laura when when uh when a teacher has let's take jim's better half's example 18 and 9 that she's teaching at the same time is her delivery of the bridge comparable to the delivery of uh education on the bridge for a teacher that is dedicated to the bridge a teacher that maybe has 40 or 50 but they are they are full-time full bridge they're there they're online they're back and forth with the kids all day i mean is that is that delivery common yes absolutely because our teachers at the elementary have plc time they actually plan together they actually talk about their content they actually talk about delivery and then they have chosen we we did not do this at the district level we've said uh how do you want to massage this bridge option for your students lincoln did an entirely different program in a different sort of look but fifth grade let's just say at parkside may say hey these are our kids you teach bridge for this period i want to teach it for this period traditionally i'll be here traditionally you'll be there and then we'll switch our students as need be so so we are seeing that happen again few few fewer than most but it does happen in our elementaries and our kindergarten is just a different beast because those kindergarten teachers want to love all their kids and they don't want to release them to a bridge teacher they just say let me have my let's just say 21 and i'll have three in bridge but i'll keep i'll keep up with them i'll keep working with them i'll create those packets for them i'll be connected with the families i'll communicate with the families i don't want to send those three to another building or another site or to another teacher i want i want them myself okay yeah but i think jeff as dr hacks going through that we have to acknowledge that if we have a teacher coming into a building spending all day on bridge that's their job i mean that has become their alternate assignment it's going to look different um than than the teacher who is splitting splitting time between the in-person instruction and in that online i think so and i and you know i know a double-edged sword isn't is an overused metaphor but but but i think we have to recognize that in that desire to be flexible and listen to our teachers and let give them some leeway it will reduce the the standardization it will reduce the the leveling of how we deliver that right i mean it throws more variables in and and uh i don't have an answer for that i mean i i think i think it is you're just going to have to recognize that how do we standardize then uh so that so that i'm confident that the content one bridge student gets who's got a dedicated bridge teacher is comparable to the the content bridge student who's um one of nine in a class of 27 where two-thirds of their classmates are right there face-to-face with the teacher yeah because i i do believe you know i heard i heard the critique that um maybe maybe the the bridge students sometimes get the gets the short end of the stick right i think that happens to some kids in some class when there's 25 of you and you're all in the classroom right that i mean there are just some that that shout down the other students and and demand a lot of okay i was one of those right demanding a lot of the teachers time right so so yeah i get that and so i know some of that is just the nature of the beast but but but this it's exacerbated here with with uh well the key difference between that and what's happening on the bridge program would be while you're in the classroom getting shot down you can still sit there and listen to the teacher yeah bridge student can't well they can no they can if the if the bridge teacher's teaching both right they are they can be online and access to what's going on in the classroom i believe not necessarily not necessarily no so so just using my wife as an example she she is not doesn't have those students in her classroom 100 of the time there are there are times that they might be avail present in that instruction or whatever but not it's not and again the system is a little bit helpful james thanks i was under impression that they kind of did the full day with their classmates just online they're not no and again being mindful that we're two weeks into this pathway and so we are truly truly um trying to trying to work through some of these options with teachers and and helping them design their lessons so that they are engaging so that they are building relationships these very first two weeks and that that was our get go and that was our our mission to our teachers was build that relationship because we know that that is critical right now and then again working towards mastery working towards proficiency all of our students are still in indiana standards so that's a beautiful thing um all of our teachers again are having that plc plc time to talk about what are we working on this week as a group how are your students doing what do we need to think about instructionally um and then we're giving that charge to those online teachers to think about their instruction and how to meet the needs of the students in an online setting because it is tough um it is tough to engage with the child who typically you could go sit hip to hip with now you're getting feedback and giving feedback in a totally different environment right so teachers are doing things that they've never done before we offer pd every thursday for one hour to our bridge teachers just to have that opportunity to work with them we've had three of those actually now two on the thursdays but then one prior to so our our teachers are learning with us and we're hearing them um we've given them opportunities to give us feedback it it's that's one of the positives that we did here are the collaborative spirit the collaborative spirit between our bridge teachers and our traditional teachers still in our buildings okay thanks laura dr roberts you also said that the student-teacher ratio in the elementary schools right now was about 21.4 to 1.