and we have 642 positive test cases 518 students 124 staff it's been interesting the number of students versus staff that ratio if you look back here to 453 61 we at the beginning of the school year around seven and a half seven to one students to staff and then that balanced out the second semester we came about four and a half to one students to staff and and then we were to start off with about four to one but uh you can see those the the the staff ratio just can the proportion of staff members also testing positive has increased tuesday january the 18th just call that date out specifically because that was 99 cases in one day if you think about that our biggest week and first semester of 100 112 cases and then a week of 115 through 121 which is just last week that was 262 cases 234 students and 28 staff members so as you as you know and see whether it's in your own businesses or entities in which you work or play the communities in which you we live and so forth we know the numbers are are higher and all those other numbers that i showed prior to our school demonstrated that too and we as always our microcosm of our society and our numbers reflect what's happening within the greater community so positive cases this is just a bar graph we've uh you've become accustomed to and so that goes back to the beginning of the school year and shows our positive cases for a week again that one blip there 11 27 to 12 3 right for thanksgiving and we almost approached that the first week of january and have easily eclipsed that the last two and then the students out just continues to to grow or increase too so you see the the students that we have out of the buildings i don't have a slide for it but um we'll mention go to the right direction here there we go um that from a staff standpoint as well and and i think that you are all uh aware and those who are on the board at that time can remember uh closing school for a period of time to go to e-learning and that was more about the operational abilities that we did or didn't have at that time versus a number of students out but we certainly tracked the student numbers there is guidance in terms of when ill kids 20 of students are out of the building because they are ill sick then the the health department gets involved in that conversation and so from a student spread or illness standpoint there are numbers in place throughout the state and counties that might trip something there um and it doesn't have to be that percentage i throw that one out in terms of a number that's recorded in and available for us to pay close attention to but it's a staff thing that we continue to monitor even more closely each day just in terms of how that's impacting our ability to keep the buses running classrooms open food food being provided buildings clean and ready to go for the next day and i have to credit every single staff member we have because staff members again might be ill have to be out they might be close contacts have to be out somebody that has to cover that there aren't many positions that we have in our world where you can just uh stay home sick or not and do that that job somebody has to fill in to do that job and so we have been able to to manage that in in one way or another from a teacher's standpoint if we think about classrooms for example all last week we were around 25 unfilled positions as we started the day so with the number of subs we might need we still might end up with about 25 that weren't covered our building administrators teachers assistants other other support staff classroom teachers sacrificing prep time to go and cover a class during their time whatever that has been our administrators have become creative and and have a great staff members to work with and through to get those classes covered as we then go through the day so when i fill out that number just remember that a number of of 25 or 20 and i think the number this morning when we started was um 17 unfilled jobs to start this morning and we have 18 school buildings so if that's evenly spread out among the buildings that it might be one or two you know in in a building that you have to have to try to fill the issue becomes when it's a a building that has of those 17 or 25 where that number is one building might have seven or six or whatever that larger number is we have to try to cover that and so that's where we have to try to allocate the human resources we have throughout the district to then focus on that building and try to cover if we can and help that building out so a lot of work from anybody who's in this room who works for us as well as anybody and everybody who's underemployed in one way or another for our school corporation we appreciate greatly the job that's being done i don't know that of anybody in our in our corporation that right now is is just following their job description for the day whatever the job description says uh they are doing that and then well beyond just to get things uh done and i see aj and dr bozeman of course here every morning they're trying to figure out um how many bus routes aren't covered today and how do we get that situation taken care of and how do we communicate to maybe a family the bus is going to be running a little bit late as we circle back pick you up and maybe deliver you to school but right now we are working that out and it is our goal it is our um very much driving us to keep our students in school because we know of the challenges that we face they face when they have to be at home now there will be reasons to to go to e-learning and other things and it might be something that trips us and goes to that whether it be continued spread or or operationally but our mission our goal what we're trying to accomplish is just to keep our students in school to the best of our ability again i just thank everybody who's been involved in that process the last thing i would mention on this update is that there is again changes in the works at the department of health level that we are analyzing and kelly's paying close attention to again surprised by this one a little bit that announcement that came out right after christmas about going from ten days to five days surprised us the most recent surprises is uh the the suggestion of of no club close contact tracing or if you do it there's a way of communicating that and so it just maybe looks different and so we are trying to understand from the department of health's standpoint what that means in terms of does it really mean no close contact tracing or we don't have to report it but we still have to quarantine for a certain number of days and all those kinds of things i think kelly became aware of of the information on thursday we thought that this thursday we would get kind of the detailed information and then in our superintendent notes from the department of education on friday here were some notes but but still not a lot there so we're waiting for further information but i think that's where way the way things are going as we try to work through the 19 in these numbers and keeping people in school how does it go with the quarantine's isolation periods so still being weighed considered and we will keep you informed and updated on that and i did try to send some information out to you just for to read and be aware of heading into this meeting of what was afoot at the state level so that's something that is on our mind and being carefully considered and weighed currently i'll take any questions that you might have okay so yes one has our has our internal um spread rate changed significantly during this most recent week it is not ms william thank you for asking that question i should have covered that so you know i reported to you first semester that last year it was less than one percent of our close contacts that we would see seeing that test later positive and then this year it did jump so we were seeing increased um spread but but five percent you know so 95 percent of our close contact still not uh later testing positive we're not seeing a large if any increase in that still the majority of of um close contacts are coming from the home the majority of the positive test cases seem to be coming from i say home from outside of the school building from into the community so that that seems to still be the case and i think the last one is there are several local schools that are closed i think saint b's open today but jennings county closed today is my understanding and so you know as we've made changes to our protocols we've tended to implement those across the whole district and and if you got into a situation where one school in particular was struggling operationally would the team consider different outcomes for different schools or or how does the how's the administration think through that yeah it's a good question again and always is a possibility yeah i'd never say never and in terms of something tripping us and and causing us to go that direction but our intent is to not to have to to do that you know and sometimes i'm asked about uh setting a number if we get to this number then um we were going to go to e-learning the problem with setting that number is then we stopped trying to solve the problem when we get to that or close to that number so and i don't even know what that number would be operationally in terms of saying this percent this number of people in this this building and we might get there but at this point with what we've seen what we've had which are our largest challenges in terms of a number of unfilled positions whether it be teaching or anything else i know dr bozeman had a situation here not too long ago where it seemed like most of his lead custodians uh were out at that time but somehow some way we picked that up and and got through that so we're trying to stay on the um let's do what we can and and there may be a situation where we simply can't cover but we prefer to do it by building versus by corporations so look at look at a wing a grade level a building first before we shut down the entire corporation with 11 500 students and impact every one of their parents in making that that determination thank you i was going to ask about the obviously the core of the day is is what happens in the classroom but we've got latch key programs we've got lots of extracurricular activities and all our buildings right what's been the impact in in those areas and and how are we able to tie any of these numbers if if any of them are tied to what's happening to our students trying to understand the question mr cena so with with our extracurricular stuff i care and whatnot what's the impact on those those programs and being able to and and students out of the building in other words do we look at extracurriculars the same way as the classroom when it comes to contact racing and is it still yeah you know the five percent number that you mentioned i see sure so yes everything is lumped together for us in terms of if there are students and identified as close contacts regardless of the setting so let me change that if we have five kids hanging out at kroger we don't necessarily look at it that way because that's not our setting that we're in our controlled environment but if it's our basketball team at one of our schools or or you know choir at one of our schools or or the eye care program or bright beginnings or any of those others those numbers are here those students out are here they are positive cases they are closed contacts we are counting those and they are they are part of the calculation about percent of close contacts then later testing testing positive now with that being said i don't have a breakdown for you then of the close contacts from basketball testing positive versus classroom testing possible i understand that and then kind of to follow up on ms wieldon's question how do the extracurriculars fit into that overall safety i mean like one building versus another or one program versus our core academic day so how does how does the extracurricular of that is it easier to stop an extracurricular activity or yes a latchkey program yes and our focus would be on keeping the academic years intact yes yeah so so an extracurricular event or any activity outside of the school day we are more apt to shut that down or stop it if there again is a reason than we are the school day because that's a chosen situation um they're gonna be another opportunity hopefully tomorrow or a few days to play that game or do that thing um and it's not impacting that full day of of time academically or again from our our parents situation and the care they have to then find for their for their child and i didn't mention it but the other piece in regards to just having school is we saw um over the last two years and and i think doctor said you said in the business advisory meeting the other day that talked about the mental health of our students and the data and statistics we have seen the dramatic change in numbers of services we are needing to provide after the last couple of years of of covert 19 our kids being home but we also have seen the the great inequities uh that exist academically when all of our students are home that they're just simply more resources in some places there and there are in the other whether that's things to to to use and do while in class or even the internet access or device that might be available although we provided the data devices uh the the the ability to just log in and participate so all of that information continues to drive us and not that we we didn't know that there were challenges with being at home before but we have now very concrete data of the need to try the best we can to manage the circumstances and i'm proud of the team that we have thus far for being able to to accomplish that yeah and i would just add real quick to ms williams point about the schools around us closing i i don't know of any that have closed because of the the number or percentage of kids that are out i don't if they have a number besides the 20 percent i cited earlier i don't know what it is it is they've gotten to a place they just have determined that school can't happen tomorrow because operationally we've gotten to that place and then they've made that decision the um i don't i don't i don't know that the word surprise means anything anymore but the sharp increase among our elementary students is i don't know what the adjective is but but that it is in many respects the reason the is is gives me pause yep yeah the blue bar is jumping um more significantly than the other increases yes yes since we've gone back to school yeah and that's both positive cases in in kids yeah i i do draw attention to just again our quarantine practices right now that although that's a heck of a lot of kids out you take the last two weeks and compare it to the you know weeks three four and five at the beginning of the year it's more but but um we had a heck of a lot less cases positive cases then so when you combine positive cases and close contacts then to positive cases in close contacts that are having to be out of school now it's much different different situation if we were using the exact same quarantine protocols now as we were on august the 12th or 21st for example that week of august 21st or the week of august 28th 1500 or more probably phil at least the updated quarantine protocols are helping us keep more kids in school with the number of cases that we're seeing and again don't believe that that's adding to our at least seeing the close contacts testing positive to your question earlier don't see that being a major impact all right thank you thanks for your questions okay an opportunity for board commendations i actually only foreshadowed that before if i could just make a comment here uh doctor said as board members give the accommodations we have changed this on the agenda uh actually a suggestion from dr biltz that like her last officer's meeting i think it was intended we talked about how often times at the beginning of meetings we have recognitions and we might have the columbus north cross country team who want to say championship and we have a presentation so forth and then we go through things and then later on we come back to board commendations we thought it might be good to kind of just tag along uh to the recognitions that we formally have at a board meeting with then the board commendations that sometimes are similar in terms of what we're celebrating and talking about so we have moved the board accommodations up on our agenda that will now be attached to the beginning of the meeting so just wanted to clarify that change and an agenda for you thank you you're welcome go ahead mr grant okay so yeah i guess it's probably no secret i you know i'm particularly fond of this portion of each board meeting and yeah i would applaud the the move in where it takes place now you know i think it's always positive you know it's always good to be as positive hopeful and optimistic as possible and i think coming right after the discussion of the misery and turmoil that is coveted i think is uh that's good so bear with me here i have a i have a few and just let me start by saying you know these are just a drop in the bucket of all the you know great things that are happening in bcsc and it would be impossible for any of us to to get through all but i i think it is you know extremely important to mention you know as many as we can as often as we can um first one uh i think that was the first slide we saw um the trio of girls from columbus east so recently five teams from both east and north participated in the local maverick challenge by through the chamber of commerce where students pitched their business plans for a chance at winning cash prizes and the columbus east team of sarah hawker smith sophia myers and morgan olsen who placed first with their idea of the hippie hot high excuse me highway hippie which allows plant lovers to take their plants with them on the go in a thermodynamic container which is equipped with a water alert system and custom decorations pretty cool and so they will represent bartholomew county at the maverick challenge regional competition february 19th so good luck to that trio of girls from east congratulations to columbus north girls cross country coach rick slooter who was recently selected by the u.s track and field coaches and and cross country coaches association as the 2021 girls high school cross country coach of the year for the state of indiana a wonderful program there and coach schluter obviously is keeping that ball rolling congratulations to another coach long time columbus north tennis coach kendall hamill been in north for 27 years and will be inducted into indiana high school tennis hall of fame on february 4th congratulations to coach hamill congratulations also to columbus north senior uh basketball player and unified track team member carson dibble who recently was awarded with a gifts of the game scholarship by the indiana basketball coaches association carson's one of only three winners from across the state and the scholarship is awarded based on the criteria of scholarship leadership extracurricular activities and i asked coach ferguson to share a couple comments about about carson um he says he's i am so excited for carson to receive this award he's the type of player and person who does not seek the limelight but continually does the little things behind the scenes to make the team successful he is a humble hard-working player who is beloved by his teammates and coaches for his team first attitude his selfless attitude continues off the court as well and then coach ferguson went on to mention his many community activities volunteer activities and concluded by saying carson is an outstanding student athlete and an excellent role model for young people in our community and then i'd also like to applaud a current csa central student who was in the republic front page not long ago ethan reynolds for his establishment of ethan's table two years ago to help those in need and as an elementary student at smith he inspired the school to start its own food pantry which is now called ethan's pantry and ethan's table which has grown considerably over the last two years all started with ethan taking 10 of his own money to buy food and give it to those in need and so you know particular uh you know it's great to see and hear kids being a great role model for others and doing what they can for their community and to help make the world a better place so thank you very much to carson and ethan and then lastly congratulations to the nine bcsc teachers three at each level from five different schools that were recently recognized in the republic's reader's choice contest that was launched in december so you know i'm sure those nine teachers it's always nice to be recognized for your efforts and and so congratulations to them and on top of that i would just like to say a big thank you [Music] to all the teachers in the corporation that continue to stay the course this last one and a half two years been very tough and continues to be incredibly challenging for a number of reasons you know in a time when a lot of teachers are retiring early leaving the profession after just a short time fewer going into the profession and arguably stress anxiety tension at all-time highs for teachers students staff members just a big thank you to them for all they've done and continue to do in these unprecedented challenging times thank you very much mr grimes are there others yes dr bills thank you dr shed i have a few commendations i had the opportunity to serve as an evaluator at columbus north high school for senior projects that was in december and a mid-year evaluation i wanted to create and i told i told the students and their parents i would give them a shout out at a board meeting so first of all i'd like to recognize lucia signorino she did an awesome job she showed us a mural that they had painted was on a garage near the people's trail up north by the airport i believe and so she did a really nice job carmen rice created a pet starter box for animal care services so people who adopt pets from care services get a starter box with all kinds of fun you know collars and toys for their for their new fur baby and then olivia steinkenig she created a jenga block kits for families and children who are provided services through love chapel so it's a a kit of just called them jenga kits with i think games and some other supplies in those kits so i wanted to yes give a commendation to those three amazing seniors i also wanted to give accommodation to csa new tech i also had the opportunity to run over there for their open house last week and the whole team to the students they had students manning some of the club booths and to the teachers who are helping i got a chance to walk around i learned a lot about the environmental science club and the students were just at the booths just telling people all about their clubs they were kind of in charge and it was a great show of leadership on the students part and so i also wanted to encourage everybody if you haven't and sherry encouraged me to do this earlier there are some great pictures in the hallway of csa lincoln but there's also a really cool chair project out there that from csa new tech they design different chairs so if you all haven't been back in the hallway to see those you need to go see those so shout out to lincoln and csa new time thank you all right thank you i'll offer just one and we recently learned of a certificate of recognition from the indiana department of workforce development for mcdowell our mcdowell education center so they were approached to be a part of operation allies to teach english to our afghan refugees who were stationed who were living at the time at camp atterbury so in just two to three weeks they put together an over five-week program for teaching english to those afghan refugees so recognition to megan schaff the director at mcdowell nikki nolting our coordinator of adult education and also mayra rodriguez and debbie pogue who were teachers in that program and they received that recognition from the indiana department of workforce development all right it is now our opportunity for public comments and i have two listed miss lindsey holden kaye he's coming here thank you lindsay holden k my address 7730 north 100 west columbus indiana i come to you tonight i saw i learned on the agenda one of the items was going to be the school bus stop arm camera initiative and in seeing that i felt compelled to come and speak in support of this initiative i come to you tonight as a bcsc parent i have two children who attend bcsc schools but perhaps more relevant to this issue i come to you as a prosecutor i spent my entirely well not my entire minus one year i've spent my entire legal career as a deputy prosecuting attorney first in marion county and then in bartholomew county and then this past year i switched into a judicial role and was a juvenile court magistrate for a year before stepping down to run for elected prosecutor so in my four years at the bartholomew county prosecutor's office i kind of by necessity became the resident expert on trying crashes that resulted in fatalities and i come to you because i don't think people realize how difficult these cases are to prosecute and why does this matter because the cameras they serve two functions from my perspective the first and perhaps the most important is the deterrence aspect right we don't have the resources to put a law enforcement officer behind every bus um in the school system and so the alternative to that is some sort of deterrent these cameras provide that deterrent when someone who is rushing to work and is running late knows that these cameras are back there i think they're far less likely to pass that stop arm so that's on the front end on the back end we have the holding people accountable when they do when they fail to be deterred right and that's i can't tell you how difficult these cases are to prosecute especially most of the ones i have prosecuted have dealt with intoxication and those are a little easier you prove someone is intoxicated and they cause a horrific crash when you take out that intoxication element these cases become very tough to prosecute we have to show that that new stop-arm law fairly new was violated we have to show that there's some element of criminal negligence which to the general public might seem easy but it's not easy to do and these stop arms will truly help us to take the guesswork out of that and again both deter when we can and hold people accountable when we can't i want to commend bcsc for the efforts you've made in this but i also want to note this is not solely a bcsc issue this is a community issue and as such other community leaders should be stepping to the plate to help with this because this initiative really affects all of us so thank you very much for your time i don't want to go over but i appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight thank you thank you miss holden kay i appreciate it mr eric grow i don't know what you're talking about policy manual tonight a subject subject titled matters regarding instructional materials step by step on how to have a specific library by the very little indications you have given you're using that by law of your justification really see inappropriate about this situation is that you know something happening is wrong you see something wrong it's at the very pain heart move and shape the world around you in the proper direction that is human purpose most sacred sense this is what gives us meaning in life this is the meaning underlying the same do what is right always do you're still accountable for your non-action now compare that to the opposing argument it would be inappropriate for you to act without a form because this procedure trumps your functional purpose has come to me i think we're really missing the big picture here the books are not the problem the books are the result of the problem i am trying to bring your attention to the fact that there's a serious breakdown in our school systems policies and procedures that allow this to happen if we remove books from your attention the problem still exists there are most definitely other inappropriates currently around libraries and more inappropriate books should be added [Music] justified murder or a famous school shooter's manifesto do you still feel your principle stance would it still be inappropriate for you to act to prevent our children's continued explosions or is it inappropriate that you know something is wrong you can't do something about it and you continue not to maybe you're happy with those products or at least okay with it let's talk about that if that's the case but so far the only response i've gotten back from you is that it would be inappropriate to use an address and this kind of goes back to my main thing which i've been talking about for months let's fix the communication so why is this appropriate to bring to this body you are a sole democratically elected representation directly into a government institution your peers voted you into this position for the characteristics you exhibit that you can represent the best of our community you represent a hero architect in that sense your community looks to you when there is trouble and you have the power and its position to do you have the means to make a difference and i just laid out an argument that undermines the current position i'm hitting for you guys and all i'm asking all i've ever been asking is having conversations i bring my truth to the table so you guys can focus on it unravel it i'm asking you to bring your truth to the table so we can do the same and then we can reconcile those two so we can find other truths and you know that's all i've been asking through all of this don't forget i always appreciate considering your responses even when it's not what i hope to hear but choosing not to respond is a responsibility so as always thank you for your year thank you mr grow all right school board member reports mr grimes the uh the school foundation met a couple of weeks ago the school foundation is ups you know a little bit disappointed to uh report that the virtual trivia scheduled for february 12 is canceled and we hope to get that back to a live event at some point once the misery and chaos and turmoil concludes at some point uh but so the school foundation's uh focus is turned now to sunday march 6th the harlem wizards at columbus north still need team members volunteers to man souvenir stands uh so anybody that would like to volunteer please let the new executive director nicole or angie emmett no if you're willing to volunteer and then the outgoing president of the board wanted me to share some statistics mr jamerson wanted me to share statistics about the impact that the foundation's relationship with donors choose has had since september of 2020 192 projects have been funded with the bulk of those projects impacting students in pre-k through fifth grade most of those projects have come from the categories of either applied learning and also literacy and language 57 different teachers have submitted projects and uh in in total nearly a hundred thousand dollars has been contributed to projects thus far with just about half of that coming from donors and the other half coming from the school foundation and so certainly the school foundation looks forward to uh you know a growing number of teachers in the corporation submitting projects proposals and uh look forward to uh you know uh as those you know projects continue to positively impact student learning in in bcsc and hopefully those numbers will grow as people become more familiar and you know word continues to spread awesome thank you are there others from the redevelopment committee i wanted to highlight there's a project 1821 trail expansion so the groundbreaking was in december the trail will go along first street from lafayette to water street i believe and then that will almost complete the full loop downtown there's another riverfront section that will be added in the future the the theme is common ground to go along with kind of our bicentennial celebration last year there's some really great art planned along there i think it's meant to be in construction this year with bricks and such with landscaping going into november i want to put in a little bit of a plug bricks are for sale so if you've ever walked downtown okay and you've seen those bricks and you thought i want one of those i missed my opportunity here is your opportunity they are a hundred dollars you can dedicate them to anyone they are great gifts okay that's my low plug if you go onto the redevelopment commission website you can find out how to do that i think the campaign is open from now until probably april or may okay and um i was also really excited to see stem work and how the redevelopment commission has worked with fifth dollars to help fund that i'd like to bring that feedback back to them that's really important work great yes miss day hoftwire the end of november the education hall of fame met and we have a 2022 education hall of fame new inductee and the reception will be february 7th here at the terrace room and it will the reception will start at 5 30.
i uh make a motion that we accept and say thank you yes thank you thank you okay any questions all in favor all right all opposed i know it's hard what are you doing tomorrow um yeah so we're doing the best we can just like with all the positions we could hire for almost every classification we're just continuing to push through we've put some additional advertisements in the paper or waving some background check piece yeah the one thing we the one thing that has been consistent is we have really great staff and we've seen a lot of people step up and step in when needed across the board just to help keep our schools and in-person instruction and open because we all know the students learn best with face-to-face instruction with the classroom teacher and so that's our push and that it hasn't been easy and you know it hasn't been possible without anyone in this room there's been tears shed but we continue to push forward and do do the best we can and really you know hopefully after we get through these next couple of weeks we'll start to see some things settle back down a little bit um and just again move back to focusing just on what we need to that's just the teaching and learning in the classroom not too much different than you know any other community or school district but we are face-to-face in-person construction that's what's most important okay next item on the agenda is adjournment so you want to make an emotion i'll make a motion i'll second that okay motion is second all in favor aye all opposed motion passes thank you everybody well now we need to switch gears and go have our little meeting of the annual board of finances so we'll call this meeting the business or to order new business is election of officers which typically we just mirror the officers of the regular board if that works for everyone i make a motion that we uh just near the officers the second thing okay all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next item is to review a review of green castle community school corporation investments mr gibney yeah so again this meeting is a meeting that we have to have every january in addition to our regular meeting and we don't have any true true investments but i did want to report on our interest that for all of our accounts in 2021 we earned just we earned 8 221 and 8 cents of which is receipted back into the education fund not back into which is received into the education fund so that's just for uh your information i think that we weren't invested in cryptocurrency we would have lost a lot of money based on today crypto crashed okay the next item on this end is review of dua b fiscal qualitative indicators yep so again this is a law that we have to cover this and the superintendent has to provide the board with the written written report each january and so the dueb is the distressed unit appeals board and they've developed these fiscal indicators for schools to essentially look at the financial condition of the district and we've seen in a couple of communities where there has been some intervention by the government like in gary i believe in muncie as well and so you don't want to end up on the naughty list and so i'm just going to give a very brief update of these and next slide cory just some profile information and again the public can find all of this information that's generally available just information about our community profile next slide just comparison of our average daily membership so that's our adm and obviously that's important because that's what our funding is determined on and you can see that you know really roughly since 1516 has been a steady decline which matches the statewide trend as well next slide um we have our funds year to year based on class excuse me based on the different classifications and you can see that in basically beginning in 2016 and continuing uh roughly until 2018 you can see several of our funds decline and you can see in 2019 those things start to not decline to start to grow back up and same thing in 2020 obviously this is behind right moving on to the next slide and to go along with that basically comparing just like i shared earlier comparing your revenue versus expenditures you can see deficit versus surplus and you can see an 18 below below the line below the chart that meant there was a big surplus or excuse me a big deficit surplus and this is for um this is for um yeah for that was for 2018 and that was for those same funds and then in 2019 and 2020 you can see that we ended in the black as opposed to the red this is all fun this is all funds from that previous thing next slide and then fund balances as percent of expenditures and this would be for our education fund our operation fund and you can see again relative to the revenue that we bring in versus expenditures you can see that the percentages were much higher in those same earlier years you kind of saw the decline and then in 19 and 20 you kind of start to see us creep back up because the goal is to have roughly 10 to 15 in reserve or three months worth of expenditures as a cash balance for each of the funds so that way you have some time to get through a difficult situation if you're not collecting all of your property tax settlements or you know you might have a significant decrease enrollment you can tend to weather the storm moving on to the next slide just revenue by type so federal dollars that we receive stimulus dollars that we receive such as esser funds just state tax revenue next slide is operating referendum revenue as a percent of total revenue i have to show you the slide but we don't have an operating referendum so that's why it's null there moving on to the next slide a lot of different reports or transparency portal so to speak our link there you know our form 9 in view any of our audit reports and then any of our reports in gateway that are related to budget debt things of that nature and so this is something that we have to provide the board with each january and we will continue to do that the next item i need is board member superintendent comments do you want to have any comments questions i guess we don't say it enough and so much thanks should be you guys out there teachers and principals and so forth that are keeping this thing above water yeah i certainly appreciate it and all you folks that are sitting in here making the figures come together thank you all thank you so much great i like the trend or training in the crack directly in the layman's way that's the way i i wouldn't thank you anyone else last item on the agenda is adjournment again a second okay emotion in a second all in favor all opposed motion passes now tony you
dr smith you're on your team this is outstanding work as a board we thank you we don't take this for granted and i just want the community to know just how proud it is for us to serve and then on yesterday to be able to see the work of these beautiful buildings it's really touching in a sense and i don't mean that to be cliche it's a touching moment uh invaders sit here in this seat and to be able to look through these action items and see the things that's being done from everybody that we get to look out and see so thank you security for keeping us safe so we thank you on behalf of the board and i think i can speak for a lot of families thank you for the work you guys are doing for us dr smith thank you mr president superintendent well said and well done and with that being said i don't have anything else for the good of the cause just to thank the board and our our team and i'll turn it back to you sir for our next meeting february 4th to be a work session we'll start at 5 30.
who got the closest all really just playing with numbers they had um eight cards dealt to them and they had to make two three-digit numbers it was just really kind of playing with numbers to get and if you listen to the the kiddos in that video they talk about how they figured out that they had to try to have um a group higher than 10 in their ones column so that they could sort of do that regrouping piece into the tens in the hundreds place and really i think one of the things that liz and i talk all the time about is just the discourse that kids are having around math that it's not um you know a traditional where we go and we learn an algorithm when we go and we do a worksheet with 50 problems of it right and then i see it in a real world problem and i don't really know how to apply it the other kind of theme that goes through all of this is that sort of real life application piece whether it's a frog on a number line hopping to see your friends or measuring water which you may need to do in one of the videos we didn't put in there was the discussion that the kids had at the beginning of that lesson and the teacher asked them you know where do you see all of these capacity measurements in your life and the kids were naming all these different um places in their homes that they that they use that they might see these measurements um it was hysterical one one little guy was like very anxious to tell us that in um his mom's wine fridge that they have wine and that's how they know they're recognizing also just that sort of application piece with that these are not just things that i do only in school in my math class but these are things that really do apply to our lives in some capacity way shape or form i really hope that these are the ones that come out more than ever though because um one of the you know it's one thing for liz and i talk about how we love hearing the kids talk about math and hearing seeing the kids explore math but we really wanted to hear from the kids what they love about math i think i've always said i wear multiple hats at the middle school and one of them is of that as a parent and my second grader tells me all the time that her best days are the days that they do double math because math is just so fun so we have some other kiddos here who i hope you can hear and tell you what they love about math melania what do you like about the math program this year and i like that you really get to express like different strategies because last year you couldn't really do that much strategies but this year fantastic and what do you like about games like the one you just played i like that it's really fun and you get a chance a good chance to win and it's really exciting because you never know what you're gonna get and there's different ways to win that she plays she talked about number corner she said so number corner replaced we used to have calendar math if you went to our classrooms and it was had a lot of really great components to it but i think what is the addition to this is that strategy-based piece where we're asking kids to really use different strategies you could kind of dial that get that when you were talking to the second graders like how did you know that they weren't going to be at the same number of red and yellow and blue columns and this is one of our fifth graders who i just i could talk to all day so i hope you can hear him so eloquent okay starting out math this year with bridges in upper corner i felt that i didn't understand it but usually i just wasn't using all my brain power so um i agree with sophia as reaching tables did help us and we were also learning how to add a subtract onto the number line and as maggie said um the the the number of seconds came alive it was as if um bob had 50 burgers and he had to divide them by 10.
we can probably go ahead and give that name kenwood mrs steph dwyer given that everybody has been informed correct sherry and while the reception will want to make sure that people know that we'll work on the reception we're not sure exactly how things as we went back to talking about events and stuff earlier we'll see how that plays out but making sure that people know about it and want to attend the meeting if we have thanks so who is uh you could do that you you do a great job of running that committee who is our uh educational family yeah okay linda that's right yeah dickley dr dukley so this this year's education hall of fame award winner is dr linda de clue uh who uh served many roles for us uh at bcsc her most recent one or the one that she was in when she retired was as assistant superintendent for human resource sources and with dr quick so congratulations to dr de clue i know she's very excited about receiving that award and we look forward to recognizing her at the next board meeting which again is on monday february the 7th and we will figure out whether or not we can have a reception for that so thanks for your work on that kathy thank you awesome do you have any sure i'll go okay the council for youth development hosts professional development opportunities for those folks that work with the youth in our community and coming up in february they have one that's focused on parental engagement and parental involvement i have a learned ceo and founder of the center for empowering education dr brian dinkins is going to come to columbus on the 16th and speak at the youth worker forum here about techniques and plans and ways to increase parental involvement in the development of our youth awesome all right well it seems like committees are cranking up again at the first of the year so i will be shorter the corporation cic met on wednesday we received a lot of great information there was information about our employee engagement survey highlights is an amazing participation rate for a survey 78 percent learning about our staff's perceptions of strengths of our school corporation as well as areas for improvement and there this will be a continuous effort in the school corporation in our efforts to always be better we heard i got to i got my preview of the stem presentation there was also a great conversation from the diversity council and equity works they're working on their mission and their strategic plan and one of the items that really stuck with me about what was shared is an effort to not think just about diversity because that just is an is and to work on inclusion that it's an integration of many different perspectives and persons and so i appreciated that there's conversation about focusing on that versus so if you think of diversity equity inclusion the equity and inclusion rather than just the is if you will those are my words we learned more about the professional development days that will be coming up and that we all approved being added into the calendar and an interesting and a wonderful part about all of that is that the building level cics will be a part of planning the training in the afternoon for all of the staff in their respective buildings that was that one and then on friday morning the business advisory council met and we got what i always love to listen to is the covet update we talked a little bit about our graduation rates the focus of the presentation was from counseling counts as was alluded to earlier by dr roberts some of the data that were shared are quite sobering there have been new references for counseling services just this fall semester that is there were 592 in all of 2021 so just to give you a context of the impact of all that's going on for our learners we heard presentations from partners in the community from family services and center stone talking about the issues that our learners are are facing and what are being brought before our counselors uh someone asked so what were the top ones um there's never just one but issues that were raised were anxious behavior depressive moods suicidal ideation i think one of the things that was sobering for me is the largest jump is among our elementary learners if they looked at the entire population with which they're working i find that sobering one of the issues that they are facing in addition to identifying the needs of our learners is having parents follow up because we do have to have parental approval to offer the services that are available i appreciated someone offered the high notes after listening to this presentation and it's really a shout out to our community and to the school corporation that from family services and centerstone's perspective it is relatively unique that we have the level of community services and support for mental health and for our learners that we do in this corporation and in this community and also that it is very positive that we have worked towards destigmatizing conversations about mental health issues so that was the high note from that presentation i will briefly mention third house our first one for this short session was this morning senator greg walker was there as well as representative ryan lauer from my perspective there were several from the school corporation that were in attendance two issues from a school corporation perspective that i picked up on was the there's any number of bills try wanting to know whether we should be having political party denotation on on ballots both senate senator walker actually has what he referred to as a compromise bill about that that it would be an issue that would be determined at the local level be it the local school board or a local referendum whether they wanted that among their candidates for school board representative lauer didn't have that on his top ten list of things that they need to be working on or that he has a passion about those are probably my words but he wasn't he didn't have a lot of energy behind this one and the other one was relative to the bills associated with library books and the a bill proposing that librarians and or others who would be sharing books that individuals would find what's the word i want to say not inappropriate i think it's a stronger word than that but inappropriate um senator walker's perspective on that was again that that should be a local issue rather than state legislation and doing a shout out to our own library that jason hatton our director of our library knows our community best and would be in the better position to be making decisions about what books are available and or distributed so it would because the bill would propose that it might be a felony for providing books to learners okay i'm done were there other things from third house people who were there those are only two that focus on case for me yes all right it's cabinet report time so next on our agenda is the technology department annual update and we have our tech team here all right good evening i am really excited to be here tonight as we haven't been able to bring our team for two years so it's been a while for them i'm sure they enjoy being here i wanted to thank you guys for all of your support and dr bozeman as well for your continued support for bcsc technology so tonight we're going to give you some updates and then talk about some specifics that we're working on so this is i believe one of the best teams in the state eva caglin down here is in charge of operations and she is in her 25th year in the district so she really holds us all together brian trivitt is in charge of overseeing 60 different systems including skyward powerschool and he is actually the during the pandemic he's the second person from bcsc to earn his certified education technology leader certification which was a huge accomplishment and then brenny is our instructional tech coordinator and she just received her master's in educational technology from arkansas so again fantastic team that's going to talk to you a little bit tonight our infrastructure and what we support is one of the largest in the county if you think about how many buildings we have how many how far and how much space that we have to support in all of the devices it is quite expansive some things that have changed or will change is that we received a close to a million dollar grant from the fcc to help fund devices this year and also that'll allow us to move kindergarten to one to one kindergarten technology use has increased with the new resource adoptions and just kind of the expanded e-learning initiative so we're very excited about that and then i think kind of how we continue to innovate to keep on the cutting edge is that we are all very collaborative inside bcsc we are probably part of about every committee one of us at least we lean on our vendors heavily who have really gotten us through this pandemic learn from them about what's coming and also just kind of the current status of orders at this point and then also our team is highly involved within within the county within the state and really nationally with peers that we're learning from all the time all right so the topic that dr bozeman asked us to talk about almost a year ago at this point is our training so why it's so important to us is really to maximize all of the investment that we make in technology so that any user in our district is able to effectively use technology and we always look at it through the lens of universal design for learning and we know that some some people are really good with tech and some people need some extra supports and that's why we put so much effort into training and we are extremely excited about the pd days that are coming up to have more time with our staff some of the unique tools that we're able to use are screen so there's just a ability to capture about any image on computers and do step by step and then we also invest in screen recording mechanisms and our teachers have access to this as well so we're able to make universally designed pd for all of our staff that's accessible really anytime all right so we're going to talk specifically each person is about their their areas here's brittney all right hello my name is brittany coomer and my focus is on the technology that we provide to teachers and i say teachers but honestly all of this professional development that's on the screen right now is open to anyone and it's really heavily attended also by those who are teachers but our teacher assistants media assistants all those different roles so like mr williams had said we try to implement universal design for learning in a lot of what we do and like our students we know that our teachers and our staff need options and how they get training so these are some of the different examples that we have provided over the pandemic before the pandemic and have learned that we want to continue to provide those while we're in this phase that we're still kind of in the pandemic as well so we like to provide different options like we have virtual workshops those are offered monthly we have self-paced technology challenges that i offer a few times during the year usually they have a focus we've done them on new tools we've adopted or ones that our teachers have requested a lot of these options are driven by teacher feedback any time that we design new pd we ask the teachers who attended for their input and we even now cert we even send out surveys to those who didn't attend in person to get some information on why couldn't you attend or what else would you like to see we have an exciting one on there on the virtual side as well that we got through a grant from the indiana department of education we have a fully virtual option now that's the opportunity for teachers to earn micro credentials in google and e-learning and universal design for learning and virtual environments we have blended options that include podcasts book studies again providing different choices to teachers and trying to keep things fresh and engaging we have also some opportunities here for in-person workshops as well because while we know that virtual is something that we've had to use we also like to provide that option for teachers to come and get some in-person training as well and some of those are working with teachers one-on-one giving them step-by-step instructions and tips but then also using some of our teacher technology leaders in buildings as well there's a committee that i work with i meet with them every grading period and usually sometimes in between then as well and there are teacher technology leaders our little fun name for them is tech titans it used to just be the instructional technology team but that was way too many words and difficult to say so we changed it to that and i meet with them to give them updates as it relates to instructional technology they're really good sounding board for us to also learn what other pd we want and then they take some of the information that i share and train teachers in their buildings as well so here are some different images that showcase some examples i just talked about some of our and that picture is pre-covered time so that's why everyone's kind of close together and not wearing a mask i wanted to make sure that i said that so we have some examples on there of newsletters that we send out some of the different um technology self-paced challenges there in the bottom left corner are workshops we offer those virtually over zoom but we also record every single session so that if a teacher couldn't attend live they can always go back and watch it and still get those professional development growth points for re-licensing and then we also have just some different of the other options on here which include podcast studies and then our credential pathway that we got through that grant from the state thank you bernie hi my name again is brian trivitt and i'm over administrative systems and we have kind of two ways that we break down our trainings and communications and we strive as we have new things come up or there's changes according to state rules and regulations that we stay on top of that so kind of the first part is maybe more of our sit and gets we have meetings that start the year for power school updates that also includes updates with the state you can see i've got a bunch of link initiative data exchange that's been a huge topic across the state and that's kind of the bear we've been wrestling with this year trying to make sure we stay on top of that as things change and sometimes they change week to week so as that's happening we have our monthly state report updates that's a group that we've kind of focused on with the administrative assistants at the buildings and the district level and kind of tell them as things come up as things change what's going on and how to kind of report data correctly and if there's something needed to do maybe we were told something that's changed we tell them these means hey we gotta stop this and redo it and and fix things for the state reporting another thing we've been doing is bi-weekly secondary counselors meetings so as students are coming up to graduation or their scheduling that has to be done we're meeting with the counselors at the high schools and middle schools on a bi-weekly basis just to make sure we're on the same path we all know what's going on and then if they have some stuff they can bounce ideas off each other that maybe it doesn't exactly need to be involved in but we're there with the conversation and they're getting some ideas out and that's just a great environment to be in to get some things out and so there's more gelling between the schools across our district so the other thing is as we've had some new systems come out we've had more individualized sessions or maybe small group sessions skyward true time is our digital time keeping and tracking software so we've had small group meetings we've had one-on-ones how do people approve time or submit time or time off and all that fun stuff we've also developed trainings to send out video wise and instruction sheets parent square is going to be a new communications tool that we have we've been working with groups kind of more one-on-one and small group in that instance we have a reoccurring meeting right now with the five schools that are going to be piling that here in the next few weeks and then power school online registration that is a what sounds like online registration that puts data directly into powerschool so parents can use that as opposed to writing it down a piece of paper give it to an admin assistant now they have to re-input that data so that is something as well that we will do one-on-one with people as they come into the district or a new school setting we'll walk them through that we answer questions and at the launch of that we did have kind of some small group two or three times that we went through step by step how to approve how to verify and how to send that data to powerschool and get everybody ready for what they need to do for the school year well in addition to focusing our training on particular groups or systems we do train everybody here at bcsc and we added to our tools this school year a knowledge base so we have the bcsc help juice knowledge base and this is a very powerful tool for us to create store and access help articles the help articles are very rich they have text pictures videos appealing to all learning styles it has a very powerful search engine that's easy to use it scales well for mobile devices so it has another support not just anytime anywhere access but every device it looks good on and this is available right now it is our goal to make it available to all users that would include students and parents in addition to the staff that have it available right now but we are continuing to add materials to make it more useful to them so that's been a real ad for the department and for our users this year so in addition to the knowledge base we do offer specialized trainings and that's usually when we make a an upgrade to a system or add a new system and many of you were here for the group wise to gmail so you experience that and that requires us to really offer trainings that really take in the wide variety of of technology comfort and knowledge that we see across the district with all of our staff so we really meet them where they are that may be in some cases one-on-one training small group training and it ranges all the way to self-help so those are always available here at bcsc and will continue to be available here at bcsc hi do you guys have any questions that we can answer for you yes mr standard i'm curious about a couple of like participation rates how many teachers i think we've got around 700 certified staff how many teachers take advantage of the opportunities for some of the training that you were talking about this corner i would say it varies on the type of training so our micro-credential pathway that's fairly new this year we've had over 125 credentials awarded now some people have gone out and gotten even more than one but we've had pretty good participation in that program because it's something new that's been fresh some of our other options are self-paced we did a challenge not that long ago when it was learned all these different google tools and teachers were having more and more chromebooks in the classroom and we had over 334 participation rate on that and that also included some of our support staff we had several tas and some of our parent engagement interpreters participate in that as well so it kind of varies i would say that if we look at our district workshops we have more teachers who are tuning in to the recorded session afterwards right now than the live session just because things are a little crazy but we always get people who attend who have positive comments and then ask can we do this topic next time and we build that into our schedule and then for mr trivit the parent system power school the parent square i'm sorry parent square and both parent square and power school what are the participation rates how do we measure is power school something that parents use it is um so the power school is really for the parents access they can see students grades and attendance and stuff like that so in every student's family do we have somebody that has the access or we can set it up but not everybody reaches out to get it usually they go to a school to get the credentials some schools distribute those to the students so i don't know exactly we create an account for every parent but i don't know exactly what the utilization is for parents accessing a parent portal through powerschool thank you i'm sorry my assumption would be that if we could increase that rate we could increase the some of the things that mr finley was talking about student efficacy and the belief that students and parents have that they can shape their own child's education yes and i will say that every school at open house has usually an area where you can sign up for this and it it almost doubled in participation since the beginning of the pandemic as parents were checking grades online and making sure that their students were keeping up so we did see a big uptick uh the past year and a half and they've got their phones right there with them they can go ahead and do everything that's needed right thank you awesome are there other questions impressive thank you very very much all right we're going to learn more about our school bus stop arm cameras good evening everyone thank you for hanging in there with us i i agree with nick they have the best tech team in the state and we're very fortunate to have them appreciate eve 25 years eve i listened to a newscast this morning of a bus driver that's retiring after 55 years so you're almost halfway there eva thank you for your service and keep up the good work i have aj mckean with me today our director of transportation and julie quinsenberry your school resource officer to give an overview of our our plans to deploy stop arm cameras on school buses i'm here at bcsc we do have a handful that are in place already i'd like to kind of talk that through with you here here in just a bit there's there's one particular day across the state of maine where the department asks for a they call it a count day to where each district reports how many stop violations they have and typically over the history of however many years they've done that more than 10 there's around 3 000 events per day and you can see them out there what that would equate to across the course of a of a school year there have been communities that have experienced tragedy with this we're not excluded from that as you well know and i have up there that this happens nearly every day in bcsc and it is it is every day a matter of fact i think of mr jensen i were in a conversation his office about three weeks ago and and uh there's a bus stopped right here on central avenue and i said bill watch this and there were four cars that went through that stop arm and it's difficult to watch we have very strong partnerships with the prosecutor's office here in bartholomew county and the sheriff's department and the local police cpd but as it was previous mentioned they're just not capacity we drive 8 000 miles a day with our school buses we have several hundred bus stops despite our strong partnerships with our law enforcement partners there it's just not feasible for for law enforcement to chase around our school buses morning afternoon to to catch those that are that are negating the law on this so we'll bring a an additional appropriation for funding of this project here soon to you mr phillips will help us with that as a cash draw down from our operations budget to help pay for this and we'll speak to this a little bit more but we we recognize that this is a problem but we think we have a solution to help at least with some of the enforcement and then also education to our community anytime we get a chance to speak to this topic we we do try to educate folks a little bit there for one reason or another there is a little bit of confusion it feels like at least to us the three examples i'll go through briefly here on the left is a simple two-lane road which is pretty straightforward the the vehicle coming towards the bus and following the bus are both required to stop when the stop arm is deployed the middle image there that's a four lane road that's one that we we see i mentioned central avenue here earlier and then us 31 is another hot spot that we have the blue car in that example may or may not realize that he or she is required to stop and they are so that's that's one that's a common a common violation that we see the example on the right that's a divided highway or divided you know four-lane road that has a meeting in between you may see that obviously on an interstate or divided four lane road also like in tipton lakes there are medians in between there so in that example the opposite traveling traffic on that example they are not required but a lot of our a lot of our trouble really comes from that that middle image here so aj's with us yes sir while this graphic is up i love the graphic can you talk about the students boarding the buses in these three scenarios where my students be coming from we and why it's important that the traffic stops sure yeah great great question so state law changed a couple of years ago after the rochester incident that anytime students board on the state highway they are required to load doorside which would be the door side on the right side of the bus here for the safety we have done that on state highways and bcsc for many years typically what we do now is unfortunately as much as we would like to if we were to board every student doorside throughout the entire district our students will be on buses for hours a day just because of routing and efficiencies so what we typically do now is if the driver or the department has identified that area as a troubled zone they will load door side and change the route in the middle example we would not have a child walk from in this case the left across three lanes of traffic to get to the bus we don't have bus bus routes set up that way in some cases on the example on the left hand side especially in city streets we do have that on occasion but we do try to load students on door side as much as possible as i said i'm going to introduce aj mckean our director of transportation he's going to talk about uh what we have in place already with our some of our buses and kind of whatever our planes are here moving ahead good evening i'm going to touch a little bit on that that slide that he had just up there a second ago one of the things when an incident happens with a fatality or whatnot when somebody runs a stop arm a lot of the uneducated responses are why is that bus not physically blocking the road well it is against the law for one for a bus has to be in the lane of travel with the stop arm extended and the lights on in order for it to be a legal bus stop if the if you think about it if a bus is blocking the road two-lane highway which people look at as a sitting sideways in the road if you're approaching that bus you may not be able to see the stop arms because the bus sitting at an angle not in that road has obstructed the view of you coming or in front of or behind that vehicle so instantly i've had many people when when stuff like that happens why isn't that why is the bus driver just physically blocking the road totally well it's against the law they have to physically stop as far to the right-hand side of the road in their lane of travel to to do appropriate bus stop so as we move forward we're wanting to install stop arm cameras on every routed bus we have found that with the 12 buses that we currently have in service that it is a viable tool for us to help slow down that process and hopefully with some help from other people in our community that we can get the people that are not paying attention while driving down the road to maybe pay a little bit more attention as i stated we have it on 12 buses um the the cameras on the buses are recording at all times this is attached to the internal recording system that records the interior of the bus as well when the ignition is on the bus all the cameras are running there is also a event marker inside the bus that the drivers all drivers are currently using to utilize if an incident happens inside the bus they can hit the button on the inside of the bus and it'll state to my office staff when they have to pull the video that an incident has happened this same system will work with stop arm cameras if they witness a vehicle run their stop on camera they could hit the button located on the left hand side it will mark the camera so when we pull the hard drive on the bus it will be easy to recognize the time that the event has taken place as you can see here the the far picture on the left if you can see the very top is actually a windshield mounted camera that's part of the upgrade that we will be doing as well the two on the side of the bus is a forward and rear-facing stop-arm cameras if you pass one of these buses you'll see little red lights glowing on the side of the bus that's that's what you're seeing is the the infrareds for the night vision for the stop arm cameras here are a few pictures of the availability of the pictures from the stop arm camera as you can tell you get several pictures coming and going we have blacked out obviously the plate but you can see in the picture in the middle here in that night vision you can actually still read the plate in the dark on the bus it also gives us the gps location of the incident and the time stamp and all the the bus information the bus number the time gps location is all recorded on this video as well so the the system what we're doing obviously is not just the stop arm cameras as i said it's the the dash camera where also part of the system is needing to upgrade the interior cameras from 720 pixel to 1080p that way our stop arm cameras on the outside can be the high quality cameras so it's it's a full upgrade from from front to back and exterior as well and the forward-facing camera is in addition to that we did have uh we are meeting with 24 7 we have entered into a maintenance agreement with them they will be the system installed on the bus which is what we currently have upgrading to the price of the system for the upgrade is around three hundred thousand dollars and like dr bozeman said a chat will be putting in requests for the funding here at a future day and i'd like to pass the mic on to officer q for her part so my process and this is pretty simple so the image that you just saw before on the 24 7 camera the image that you saw i get the version where the plate is not white out i get the version with the plate so i'll run it and then i issue the citation now i use the registered owner's information because according to indiana code the burden of proof is on the registered owner and so i mail that citation to the residence following that the prosecutor's office gets a copy of the citation that i issued which is very standard any citation that we issue that's what happens so it goes directly to them and then after that it's a standard standard process it for any other citation where the person that was issued the citation either pays it out or challenges it in this instance if it's challenged the only instance that we have encountered so far is the person said they didn't get the citation which would mean that their address was incorrect on the registration which is also a violation of indiana code that is that is on the owner of the vehicle so the process is fairly simple when it comes to getting that to law enforcement making sure that those instances are documented i'm going to be the contact for that at least initially especially as the expansion occurs so that those citations can be documented and we can communicate directly with the prosecutor's office to ensure i guess to better track what it is that happens with those happy to answer any questions you may have all right and yes dr bills uh thank you for this presentation um i was looking at the process again and maybe you mentioned this so the camera is running all the time on the bus right and how does okay so i think i missed the part where it says three still shots are taken how did i mean how is that marked like so so the cameras run full time they're on the same system as the interior cameras do what what the driver does is they just they just mark the tape so to speak so when they go in to have a sudden request with the video specialist in the office to pull it she can pull and say okay i know it's at 7 11 because that's what time it's it's indicated and then we actually have video we have full video of the car moving through the and we'll we'll take three um we'll create those three images from the video um send that to officer quisenberry for uh processing we'll retain the video for six months in case it needed to go to court or be challenged whatever but those images are pulled from from our side from the video so i guess when the driver is marking it that's not during while they're driving it's just aft like they remember it's at seven o'clock and they mark that later go mark it right when it happens they'll be at a stop obviously the air brake is pulled because they're loading children and then you know our drivers notice when somebody drops when they violate the stop arm and they get grumpy about it so so they'll just hit the button mark it right there and then when they come in the office they'll be pulled and just the button they hit then okay i just didn't wasn't sure what that meant thank you what's the volume of citations that you think you'll get if this if this moves forward versus today we anticipated that question and i don't have a good answer for you there there is a little bit we aj can answer this i'll speak a little bit he can he can tell you better than i can we oftentimes hear of drivers being frustrated with with stop arm violations sometimes we have to educate our drivers also a little bit on on what constitutes a violation versus the yellow you know morning lights and the red stop arms that come out i don't know if we have an estimate of how many we'll have we've that's a question the prosecutor's office has asked us as well and and we've kind of talked that through a little bit and said well for now and unless volume gets really heavy then officer quisenberry is going to handle filing this for those for us i hope not many i probably think several um you know per my example earlier with outside of mr johnson's office but we'll have to have to wait and see if you have anything yeah yeah the process of filing is quick it's the i think your question is the quantity of how many violations we expect to see and um yeah we're not exactly sure yet we'll and what's the fine what's the citation fine for an offense and then is there a is there a repeat offender escalation process what would that find the fine itself or the offense is relatively small however the court costs are not so it ends up being approximately 150 dollars that's for the first time the second time is a is a i believe it's a misdemeanor offense correct me if i'm wrong we had this conversation if it's a misdemeanor offense it goes up significantly so not just in fine but in possible jail time as well i think we should take this picture the two-lane multi-lane and just plaster it everywhere because i don't think people know they're supposed to stop i mean i'm not saying all people i don't think some people know they're supposed to stop if they're on the other side of the multi i've seen them do it i've seen them not stop with the bus i really think it's a matter of education too i really do i really think people don't know they're supposed to stop in that situation that's just my opinion because i've seen it we we agree let's plaster these everywhere yeah each each start of the school year i said we have great partnerships with with law enforcement and also the republican local newspapers they do publish this type of information when it's get back to school you know hey buses are out there be aware all that type of stuff so um but yes i agree that there is certainly some opportunity with the middle image there i had a question i think about the roll out of the program so the the newest buses i think there were 10 or 12 of the newest style that already have this equipment on them and adding equipment to the other buses in the fleet do we wait to roll the program out until all the buses are equipped or do we use the 12 sets of cameras that we have now to start the program we've we've actually started it for a few months now okay the image the images you've seen with the reports those have been filed and cited and those folks have paid so yes as as and there'll be a third party vendor that will install these as they finish the installation the bus will be active and off you go so we think probably what all 120 buses by the first of august is that what we're thinking so yeah the program is is in place it's just it's just moving from those factory installs we get them as our new 12 buses now into a retrofit of all the remaining buses over the next six or eight months great thank you all right thank you very much i appreciate the commitment to the safety of our students thank you in the community as they are sitting down here thank you for the presentation on that so there is a senate bill number 121 um that was introduced by senator niemeyer it has a hearing tomorrow that's attempting to add additional things to school bus stop arm violations and the enforcement of it and specifically it is going after i guess that's the right way to put it the registered owner of a vehicle so sometimes it may be somebody different driving the vehicle who goes through the stop arm but this bill would actually the registered owner of a vehicle used to pass a school bus stopped on a roadway or private road et cetera commits a class b infraction so it's not only in this case the person driving through it but also the owner there are some defenses for the owner if it was stolen or you know some other things in there but being used as a rental or or something like that but that that is being added um there was a question about the the the type of citation that can be issued it is a class a misdemeanor but if the offense is a level six the offense is a level six felony if it causes bodily injury to a person a level five felony if he causes the death of a person so it does rise to that so again just adding some things and i bring that up dr bozeman and i will be in indianapolis at the state house tomorrow to testify in support of the addition of items to that particular piece of legislation all right thank you for that i think that's a segue to you dr robert yes thank you so we will jump into the many items i have for your consideration and approval and start with the minutes of the regular school board meeting of january 10th so this is the tonight is the second meeting of january so we're going back to the first one and asking for your approval for those minutes supplemental contracts we have claims and payroll so we have claims dated just today because we had a lot of claims for you uh back on january um the 10th this total is approaching a million dollars still over 900 thousand dollars again no pre-run report we have that the first meeting of january we do have payroll uh about 2.8 million dollars is the january 14th payroll it covers the work dates of december 20th through january the 2nd just to note that this is a payroll that is only a three-day pay for nine-month staff because we came out of a break so they just not have did not have a lot of work days there but it is a normal payroll for our year-round and certified staff members we have the neola policies and we'll just hit those here in a second but volume 34 number one a number of those policies that i uh reviewed with you the last time we met we'd also like to acquire permission from you to receive food service bids so we'll put that out and and get bids for our food service items you were provided a lengthy construction manager as constructor contract we have a reappointment to the bartholomew county public library board we didn't have that in our packet the last time received that request for for it after our last board meeting so monte frazier who's at south side we'd just like to reappoint to that position and then we have a final 2021 education fund to operations fund transfer that happens this time of year as we conclude one budget year and get into the next in regards to the policies just bringing you up to speed again with those so one was public participation at board meeting it's been revised to make sure we have a clear process of approval for any person or group who wants to place an item on the board agenda there is is a way to go about that further the revision provides clear delineation between speaking as a part of the agenda or speaking about an agenda item under the terms per the requirement of public comments so just clarifying those pieces of information additionally we have employment of the superintendent and employment of administrators in addition to this superintendent these policies revised pursuant to a enrolled act from a year ago sca 55 and it's in regards to school referendums and making sure that you're not allowed to provide an incentive to administrators to get a result as a result of a favorable outcome of a referendum latchkey programs would provide policy 2262 just two new options in that these options are available when the corporation provides a school-aged child care or utilizes a non-profit or a for-profit organization so make sure it covers any of those entities or situations if we would have them policy 2370.03 is the indiana course access program it just gives information about our students requesting to use the course access program through the doe we also have the school performance internet dashboard policy policy 2603 is new that may change again just as it continues to go through various iterations but it was based upon house bill 1514 that was approved last year policies 31 20.08 41 20.08 and 8455 into the employment of personnel for extracurricular activities as well as coaching trainings and that adds specifically marching band leaders or a sponsor of an activity which is student has an increased risk of studying of sudden cardiac arrest to participate in the same training as our athletic coaches that is from ata 1040.
there'll be a work session on february 4th and we'll start at 5 30. any other than good for the cause again thank you for being here our guest tonight thank you for all your support if there's no other items we will take a motion to adjourn so moved
so it came alive almost so like maddie said like we didn't so we don't have to do 36 times 25 so i think i really understand math and i'm really going to fifth grader so i think right from the mouth of babes math comes alive and they are able to understand it and i love that he's talking about that sort of math on the number line that that thread that goes through right so we see these kids learning this in the first grade it goes all the way through to what they're doing in fifth grade and liz'll wrap up talking about our teachers and their love of mouth so this is from the same classroom that our friend in the last video was from and uh in in talking to teachers about the math program we know that whenever there's an implementation year there are struggles but many of our teachers are seeing the benefits already and what i love about what mrs aguiar has to say is that even though she's a fifth grade teacher teaching the first year of this program and there's a lot of backfilling involved she can still see the value the kids are really learning and kind of embracing it all which is just a thrill so i'm hoping you can hear her i don't think so just talk nice and loudly all right three two one so even in the five months that we've been working with the bridges program so far it's already really easy to see that the students are taking these hands-on inquiry-based lessons and they're learning math and they're learning self-confidence so they're really making strides with the program the structure of the program is such that there are certain elements that repeat such as workplaces problem strings investigations and that allows students to get comfortable with these certain formulas and these certain constructs and then they can really focus in on the math and see these same structures repeating throughout units it also enables them to improve their math work and to work on skills like creative problem solving collaboration communication and these are all things that are great for them in math and beyond i could already tell that with the alignment of the program as the years go on the students will become more and more familiar with the elements and again that will enable them to focus more on the math so for example this year workplaces are something that are new to everybody but next year when the fourth graders come up to fifth graders they'll already know the routines and the procedures surrounding workplaces and they'll be able to do it all that much better with the new content in math so based on the students engagement so far um and their their great participation i would say that this program is really being successful and helping them to become better young mathematicians thank you so i think the one last thing that liz and i need to say is we would be completely remiss if we didn't um give a huge shout out to jennifer fitton who is our math coach because i will say unequivocally that we would not be in the position to have these kinds of great conversations about how wonderful things are going without the support she's been able to give our staff so we've had a lot of after-school meetings um we've had a lot of common planning time that she has come in she has gone in she actually was teaching the number corner in that second grade lesson that you were listening to she's modeled lessons for teachers she's gone and supported them and really i think that sort of what do you need approach that she's taken with the teachers has helped them to find the success that they've needed so i would be uh like i would love to say that that's liz and i that has nothing to do with listening other than saying we hired a really great math coach um so we really are so grateful for that person um who has really really helped our staff so i'm gonna um end it there and go back to that screen because that was my one and only job at the end so i'll leave it there but uh turn it back over to you for any questions that you may have for us somebody have any questions or comments mr nunes yeah thank you thank you ladies very interesting and the only thing i i have to say in all citizens is i was absolutely thrilled watching the teachers get the student involvement and you know and i don't mean dragging it out of them but making it fun as if to say you know especially when they were doing the increments of 10 and she was going backwards and she stopped and they kept going type of deal and nope now we'll go back and start again type of deal and how they worked at it and you know the the student comment so my hat's off nice job oliver no i'll just you know say a lot of the same you know great job i love to see the you know there's nothing better especially in the year this year too of the pandemic seeing the students interact in the classrooms with each other with the teacher um you know for me that's that's just awesome in addition it seems as though you know we're a long overdue for a new math program and it looks like uh this program is uh looks like it's gonna be paying dividends and especially to see the um engagement there i think that's huge so it was a great presentation so i thank you both was amarillo yeah i just wonderful um i miss you um but um you know all of the things that this program seems to kind of touch upon in terms of just those good skills that can you can that that um you know can across all environments really that critical thinking that teamwork you know and it's um i can imagine how this pro bridges program is engaging even more students who might not have had you know that confidence to feel like they were a math person right um we didn't like numbers or didn't understand numbers that kind of approaching it in this way engaging and playing and working with and having that opportunity to you know under that so important to realize that we don't always all have to have the answer right away but you know there's so much value in doing and and and and uh learning how to figure things out on your on your own it's just wonderful so thank you this wonderful program i was uh bummed when you you know you stopped it we have i can listen to them now at home but again but uh yeah just hearing the little voices and and watching the that fun classroom um you know i want to i don't really want to be in first grade again but that did look like a lot of fun but i might want to volunteer if ever i had a day off but um great job thank you for bringing this to us ms wait um no i just love the videos they were so great thank you for that you know i know with some auditory issues but i you know just same thing like seeing their faces and i think you know the echovid they're not on computers you know and they're have manipulatives that are i love that that they're going back and they have you know just every it feels like that you know it's the merge of science and math and i just i love the physicality and again to see the teamwork and the excitement i just i feel like it's an infusion of what even just even culturally they needed you know from their social emotional needs like i just and then just um you know the real life applications i think these kids you know i felt like the other program again we saw kids coming through and um that really had improved numbers since you know and i think that was what we had been working on as a district and i was impressed but i think this even you know to echo what uh miss amaral said like takes it to that other level where you know you're really gonna have these kids who you know because it looks like they're feeling like they're playing games and i thought that was you know that's really exciting and you know and then taking the ownership and you know realizing that mistakes are part of the journey and all of those things i think we're uh it's it's really cute and i and i love demelo and i think you guys just do such a great job so totally biased but yeah thank you so evan you have anything you want to add i thought it was great i loved watching it yeah thank you you know and i'll just add i think you know it could be popular today to decry sort of the new math education and conceptual understanding but you know as someone who learned to love math and found my ways to conceptual understanding of math in spite of the instruction that i received it warms my heart to see kids starting right away because that conceptual understanding is so fundamental to future math and i know it can be unpopular because the homework comes home to us and we don't know how to do it because it doesn't resemble the way that we were taught math but i think we're going to have a generation of kids who have learned to enjoy math and who are engaged in it as opposed to seeing it as you know a subject to dread and so i'm really excited to see that focus on that conceptual math and developing that deep understanding as opposed to that rote memorization it's really great so thank you and i love when they do get to that algorithm piece right and they can unders they can explain it but they go oh my god this is so much more efficient and we can have those conversations about efficiency and why that works but they understand what they're doing right as opposed to like just carry the one or whatever you had no idea what you're doing right but they do in tamari to your point with the integration of science if you watch that other video with the kids doing water it's so sweet because at one point you hear one of the kids off camera say something about science and he goes well this kind of like is science it's so it's very sweet but they are definitely hands-on and enjoying it so thank you for this opportunity for us to kind of highlight i'm sorry that the sun was not great um but you are all welcome to come walk through any classroom you'd like at any time and see it in the flesh so thank you thank you very much have a good evening all right so the next item on our agenda correct me if i'm wrong is the proposed um calendar under old business uh does anybody have any comments or questions about the proposed school calendar i knew this last last meeting so yeah uh do we need to vote to so i will entertain a motion to approve the proposed school calendar okay so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral is there any further discussion on the calendar all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right that motion oh evan i forgot to ask you if you had any comments about the calendar i'm sorry no i don't have to put you over there because i look this way i'll remember that next time or next time just stand up and wave if i forget you i'm sorry all right so the next item under uh old business is the masc resolution regarding the department of alligator elementary and secondary education school district audits um i'm gonna hand this over to mr oliver you want to speak speak about this since you took the lead on this one sure absolutely and i i hope everyone has a chance to look it over i can read it i have a copy if people don't have it but i think everyone has it i sent it to kate late late this afternoon so great so i think it was uh back in december several meetings back where dr gifford was discussing uh the concerns amongst the educational community that uh deci is seems like they're going full full in with uh program review audits and different types of audits in all the school districts and that's simply because you know for a long time there they weren't i think they weren't doing it or that you know they weren't um they're working remotely but nonetheless uh they may have the time right now to um to conduct these audits across the state and um where we see it as a problem where dr gifford was saying with her association is that these audits are extremely time um a huge time commitment as well as a from a human capital commitment um and it pulls it pulls staff away for interviews um it put you know there's an in there's a number of hours that are involved in these things so uh if everyone remembers that we had a discussion amongst us and i said you know what why don't we look at i'll i'll take the lead on trying to uh put together a resolution on that we can send to our our state reps department of education maybe the governor's office and anyone else that you seem would seem fit this is what i came up with it's obviously open to criticism or anything you want to add take away but i'll read it out publicly whereas the dartmouth school committee understands the need for state oversight and audits through the department of elementary and secondary education and the benefits of program review audits whereas these audits are significant time and human capital commitment to the dartmouth public schools and other public school districts across the state and whereas school districts are already being pushed to their limits to ensure students are educated and there are four and there are faculty not quarantined and in place to support our students in schools during the global covert 19 pandemic therefore be it resolved that the dartmouth school committee is asking for a moratorium in these programs review audits until such time that faculty and staffing are at normal levels and time won't be taken away from the education of our students in the dartmouth public schools comments questions i'll make a motion to approve a second so i just have one sort of comment concern question and second to the last line right we have the norm i don't want to imply that we have non-normal numbers of faculty in our buildings right because we have teachers in our buildings do you know what i'm saying um so i know our substitute levels are low and so that's and we have some people out with covid but that seems to imply that they're they're not like i don't want to cause concern among the community that we're like not appropriately covering our classes i guess is what i'm saying um and so i don't know if we want to say you know until next year for two years i don't know i'm just raising the question as a item for discussion mr nunes well um could you right there where it says at uh could we say like could you put three pandemic pre-pandemic normal pre pre-pandomic wow i know what you mean pre-pandemic uh levels yeah okay i mean it's i mean i get what i get what mr oliver's getting at right we're stretched thin but at the same point in time i don't want to create the impression that we are not adequately covering our classrooms because we are it's hard but we are right yeah i mean students students are learning but i mean yes and i i think if you look in the contents of it this is also relating to school all 351 school districts in the commonwealth in vocational schools and and such right so there may be some that may not be at normal levels right so this is the this this is a catch 22.
we also have policy 3120.11 which is a public hearing before commencement of collective body we've been doing this they're just adding it to policy again it is now legislation policy 32 14 and 4214 get into staffed gifts and making sure when it's okay to kind of accept a gift there are holidays where that might be offered to staff members this policy about staff gifts was put into place to not have a gift being given to try to impact or influence a decision that's not the same as when a teacher might be given a gift for a holiday and so is trying to reflect those circumstances staff evaluations is based upon some changes where the spring of 2019 and 20 the statewide assessments could not be used to impact a certificated employees performance evaluation unless uh those would improve it so it's just making sure that that was delineated clearly school transfer options are uh just outlined a little more clearly clearly in 51 13.02 to make sure to follow both federal and state guidelines and if there is an unsafe school choice option where might a student go 5340.01 student concussions and sudden cardiac arrest is revision but is similar to what i several policies i mentioned earlier and specifically calls out or names band directors and others who might be in a situation where students are more at risk and they would need some training similar to what our coaches have been required to participate in graduation requirements that's revised where there will if if there's some situation where a student doesn't have the graduation plan in place the corporation's not going to have not going to withhold a diploma even though the graduation plan is a part of the department of education's requirements policy 5540 the schools and governmental agencies it's revised to again another indiana co-pro provision and gives criteria for when dcs may be granted permission to interview a student alone at school and so that was a policy from last year in the process to allow for that if it's necessary policy 6105 is authorization to accept and distribute electronic records and to use electronic signatures so just making sure we adhere to the state board of accounts ways of doing that 6114 is cost principles of spending federal funds a lot of federal funds being spent so making sure our policy aligns with the american rescue plan or esser funds that we have available to us in our spending policy 60 20 is budget preparation and this just gets into striking through certain areas that were still a policy that shouldn't be there anymore given changes in the number of budgets or funds that we now have 6230 gets into the budget hearing and make sure that if there is a referendum which we have that we make sure and enlist the estimate of expenditures in funds based upon those referendums we have been doing that chad's been doing a great job of being very transparent with our use of funds and we have that budget set as well as targets that are on our website policy 7300 is a disposition of real property so just provisions made when we have the sell or lease of unused or vacant property we also have 7310 disposition of surplus property in the process we go through when we have surplus items and for example the plan has to be posted to our website and available for public inspection uh property inventory is 7450 another revision where we are adding the federal threshold of five thousand dollars to differentiate between supplies materials and a capital expenditure these two policies 75 40.03 and .04 are student technology acceptable use and then staff technology acceptable use and they've been revised to include language reflecting state law requirements that specifically prohibit the sending receiving viewing or downloading of material is harmful to minors policy 8305 information security includes policy language the school work to protect our data from attack vectors and gets into all the efforts that nick and his team are doing to protect us against cyber security challenges policy 8600 is transportation revision there and it just gives us the opportunity if we choose to enter to fleet contracts with the contractor and gives other details about that process and i think that exhausts the policies that i have now had in front of you for several weeks and i think that exhausts my items let me check yes so we have then those items which are letters a through j under number three on the agenda for approval all right thank you for that summary so i opened for a motion to approve items three a through j as they're presented to us so moved thank you miss day hoftwire is there a second back in thank you miss wilden are there questions individuals have about any of the items we received a lot of information information overload on you this time yes it was any particular questions so the information was very thorough so thank you all all right i do have a question for dr bozeman i know this is our first time through the the process with a construction manager as constructor contract and i'm just uh looking i guess for some reassurance about we had council help us draft this or somebody reviewed it and made sure it you know the modifications from a standard aia contract are all appropriate yes no yes dr boseman is approaching modifications were made with the legal counsel's involvement and it is why it's it's tonight you're approving that versus maybe a board meeting or two ago it's just to make sure our first time through this we had all of that legal stuff perfected i guess and and that took some time to make sure it was ready for yes yes steve jones from mice miller uh worked with us for several weeks on um on revising that to make sure it was appropriate especially since it's our first time with the cmc process mr center and it'll get easier and quicker probably shorter thank you for that question i appreciate it all right if there are no more i'll ask for approval those who approve items three a through j as they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed all right thank you very much those have been approved unanimously dr roberts thank you dr pleak it's your turn good evening i request approval of the hr recommendations as presented thank you very much is there a motion to approve our human resources recommendations as we have them so moved thank you miss day off dwyer is there a second thank you dr bills any particular questions for dr pleek how many open spots do you have right now dr blake wow you're beating me by the way you're winning okay all right hearing no specific questions all of those who approve our human resources recommendations as they've been presented to us if you signify by saying i i any opposition all right there you go dr pleek thank you we have learned a lot tonight um so this is an opportunity for board import and review i'll turn to you mr grimes um oh gosh um yes lots and lots of information uh first off thanks to mr findlay mrs george from um lincoln for coming and sharing uh all the great stuff that's going on at lincoln it's it's quite obvious that uh you know it's it's a place where kids want to be and consequently learn so thank you for all the creative uh and conscientious work going on there thanks mrs hardin for sharing about all the exciting innovative stem things related things going on in the 11 elementaries and i think you know to hear about the future of stem in bcsc i think you know there's a lot of good things that go on in bcsc that a lot of community people just kind of take for granted because they know no different and and you know aren't exposed to what you know compare us to other corporations and i think that's just one of the things that um you know the innovative things going on here so very excellent uh thanks mr williams and the tech team for all they do behind the scenes to help keep bcsc going and all the training they provide to teachers that so positively impact student learning dr bozeman mr mckean officer quisenberry for all the work hugely important work in regards to school bus safety and the cameras good luck to all 11 elementary schools as the elementary basketball league's attorney starts tonight i believe fadria richards was the first game tonight that tournament wraps goes on for the next two weeks you know one of bcsc's wonderful program c4 open house at columbus north uh wednesday night five to eight and uh lastly um i would just say it's it's good that that everything is being done everything possible is being done to keep kids in session in person and i think you know the lincoln uh presentation really speaks to that that the real learning um takes place with with relationships between teachers and students and when kids aren't uh at school um that makes that uh incredibly challenging to establish those relationships so in spite of all uh the challenges that the last year and a half two years have created um you know it's great to to do whatever it takes to keep kids in school as much as possible thank you yes indeed dr bills so i agree with everything mr grimes said um i just want to thank our community members for speaking ms k and mr grow for speaking tonight and our hall of fame recipient mr clue all right mr huffman well they pretty well summed it up however i will just make a comment i think the fine for running a stop sign is way too low i was thinking like 500 bucks that gets somebody's attention so that's all i'm going to say all right miss wielding so i'll jump on the open house bandwagon i went to east because my daughter is probably going to go to east and i left there super excited about learning and she did too she's been staring through all the c4 opportunities we're gonna go there on wednesday um i didn't know we have a lab of hospital beds with little dummies in it that people do stuff too i guess and there was a dentist chair with little floating heads that have teeth in it that i'm assuming they pick things out like i had no idea and there's this powerhouse science teacher couple that they were using propane and fire and sand and it was it was remarkable like i left excited she left excited like you got people excited about learning that was that was really cool and that's from a person i came from a small town to mr grimes point small town great teachers great teachers i feel like i'm successful partly because of what they invest in me but i'm like my daughter's gonna kick my butt right she's gonna be way better than i am having access to all this so it's really neat thank you awesome thanks for sharing this is better i think we call them medical mannequins not dummies we don't like the word dummies it's the goner yeah i have been impressed with all the presenters and speakers that we've had this evening i thank them all for what they're doing day in and day out i thank them for caring about education here in bartholomew county in our part of the county um all right thank you very much it was a lot but i do appreciate that all the presentations reflect the priorities of our school corporation that it's learning that it's our individual learners it's our staff it's their health and safety and and there are so many who don't understand and appreciate what a cutting-edge school corporation we are i know way too many of them in the state of indiana and i do know that so i'm very proud and it's very exciting i hope everybody who is listening on our live stream that they're very proud and excited for the great that work that we're doing here and as dr robert said earlier just thank you everyone i know you're doing things that aren't in your job description it's that tiny little stuff that says other duties as assigned but that you're pitching in and taking care of our learners and being sure that we're in school that means a lot means a lot to each and every one of us and throughout the community so thank you very much dr roberts i'd just like to add one thing as we talk about some of the great things that are going on it is an opportunity for people to nominate for teachers of the year now we are starting that window so actually started today dr fleet so we have a window of time between now and february 25th that uh teacher of the year nominations can start coming in so information will be going out on social media through the school sites newsletters etc and a reminder we do select one teacher of the year for each building and then we end up with a teacher of the year for the school corporation and you've heard some of those names here in recent times for various things that those teachers of the year that have the opportunity to do so that process process has begun awesome awesome all right so we've mentioned it several times we have a great next meeting coming up along with a celebration and recognition of our hall of fame recipient dr linda de clue our meeting is february 7th the reception we hope is at 5 30.
yeah okay let's wait what if we said and again i'm just writing right now um until the current health crisis has passed and state adjustments to protect public health care are no longer in place in the public schools or something in that yeah i'm okay with that if you can you yes i did it quickly because i was just jotting down as we're talking so it says until the current health crisis has passed in state adjustments to protect public health um in the public school public health are no longer in place but we could adjust to say something about public schools or protect so where is that where are you putting so this is until such time that instead of and we would be getting rid of that faculty and staffing our normal levels and time will be taken away from the education of our students we would be replacing it with so you're going to get rid of faculty and staffing all the way i mean i basically think what we want to say is until the pandemic is over right correct right that's what we want to say in fancier words exactly miserable right well i just um again similarly but just a little bit more succinct until faculty and staffing are less vulnerable to the potential impact caused by and i didn't finish that sentence i just wanted to get that you know just that we're vulnerable to it every day at any moment although we are covered right i don't know i just thought that might be a little bit less i don't know um all right let's take a second to think about this nice job chris though yeah thank you right it's it's i mean it's excellent i think i guess what i would say is what we're really trying to say too is that we could be at normal staffing limits but dr gifford and mr kylie could be spending their whole day contract tracing right even though we're at norming we're at normal staffing levels right so what we want to say is until our faculty and staff are not wiped out by other pandemic duties right like or until we're back to normal and and so it's kind of there but i think we might want to say it until our superintendent and assistant superintendent and then the finance are doing the anomaly they're normal jobs right yeah um you know welcome back to this next week after edits it's up to you well i mean i think the other thing that we could do is we could just sort of approve it and empower mr oliver to make minor i mean it's not like this is like a bylaw that is going to bind future generations for 50 years um i might be comfortable to say if we mis if mr oliver which if you would mind making some minor edits to that and then we can just take your recommendations put them together and yeah i mean and basically i think we're all in agreement that what we want to say is until when like put these on hold until the pandemic's over yeah agree right right so i'm gonna get work and they show up back in the office right right all right so we have a motion on the table are you okay with us uh sort of adjusting or making an amendment to that motion how do you want to handle this mr knight if chris is going to bring it back how about if i would draw my motion okay until the next meeting okay that work but let me let let's withdraw you're going to withdraw your motion and let me suggest we do another motion i would like to entertain a motion to approve uh to approve to empower mr oliver to make amendments to the statement as presented and to send it along to uh our representatives and the governor and so on and so forth per our discussion would that work that'll that'll that's fine so i'll madam chair i will withdraw my uh motion okay i'll withdraw that for my first motion okay so mr nunes has withdrawn his motion so i will now entertain emotion as described mr miss gunther day that we empower mr oliver to make minor revisions per our discussion to the motion and send it off to our state reps the governor jesse all right so i have a motion by miss waite second by miss amarillo is there any further discussion karen none all in favor aye opposed all right so that carries unanimously all right so the next item under old businesses discussion of the dartmouth logo um both mr nunes and mr oliver requested that we put this on here and this is the point i will say that i fall on my sword we were sort of moving along as a committee the committee had plans to invite representatives from local tribes we had an email from mr ventura mr andrews and miss andrews i had spoken with some representatives of the american congress of i think the american indian i think it is called um and so we were going to have the committee was going to invite sort of native amer uh some native american representatives to come talk to the committee um then like work got crazy and then the pandemic kept happening and then we're in the holidays and so that hasn't happened because i haven't been able to connect with mr ventura he and i have been exchanging emails i asked for some dates he got back to me later and then those dates didn't work and then we so we went back and forth a few times um it is the intention of the of the diversity committee and i need to pick that up is to schedule that hearing with the sort of native american groups and then also to do a public comment and hearing so two separate sessions i think the semester has started i can get that moving along if the committee desires the other thing that we can talk about is whether or not we want to do those sessions jointly with the diversity committee those are open meetings that we have to post so we can post them that the school committee is going to be there as well if we wanted to do them together i think that was also the time when we were in transition from zoom meetings to in-person meetings and then also the transition from not being open to the public to being open to the public and so all that happening made it a little difficult to figure some things out kathleen you're going to add something yeah yeah i just wanted to add that while you're taking you know dying on that sword um i essentially was the vice chair of that committee and so i as well um just you know life and well you know a memorandum for please forgive us for dropping the ball here but um i was able to have some nice conversations with uh with uh mr ventura um although i think he was waiting for me to get back to him about something just you know covet quarantine and and all things considered um all of what you said is is accurate i think so i guess we kind of can ask mr oliver mr nunes both wanted to see on the agenda um interested to hear your thoughts but also um also the question i have would would we want to schedule it as a joint meeting or just as a meeting of the diversity committee if we're inviting some of our native american tribal neighbors to come so thoughts questions comments well what i would like to see madam chair to be perfectly honest with you is uh that this subject in in all seriousness uh just be put to bed tonight okay i mean i don't think there's uh in my personal opinion is uh to uh to to to drag this on this is something that's been going on for uh now on three years from the best part of my at least two and a half a lot closer to three years i mean i found some notes at home from uh october of 19.
the meeting starts at 6 30 we'll be here in the administration building terrace room with that thank you all very much and this meeting is adjourned you
so i mean personally i i would just like to see this committee uh reaffirmed the uh the dartmouth indian as its as its logo and if we need to uh have discussions with the wampanoag tribe and their representatives i'm good with that but i think that's what we need we need to do it at this point in time thank you mr oliver thank you madam chair so what was the last time dr gifford that you had any kind of conversations with chairwoman um charlotte andrews it was only that one time i don't remember if it was the beginning of this year yeah school year yeah i don't know the date but it was a couple of months ago when the committee had been meeting quite regularly and we had that conversation yeah so so i guess i i share some of the same sentiment as mr nunes as th this is something that's been going on for quite a while now um back and forth and where the school department is in this limbo um in the sports teams and everything else and i think the bottom line here is that the tribe has asked the ask the town the select board the school committee the town as a whole to engage in conversations with them um and i think it's important that we do that so i guess from from my point of view is i i'd just like to see us reaffirm the dartmouth indian along with continuing to engage the tribe in meaningful discussions but we need at some point in time we need to move on um and i just feel as though it's getting to be that time so i just want to add i'm going to add my thoughts i'm going to take prerogative of the chair now right um dartmouth is not part of the territory of the gay head aquina wampanoag and there's another federally recognized tribe in massachusetts that has stated their opposition to the use of native mascots the mash puapanoag who are actually territorial closer to us than the gayhead wampanoag additionally the bokassa wampanoag claim dartmouth is part of their ancestral and territorial lands i have had communication with council members at the bocas at wampanoag and they are opposed to the use of the indian so i cannot in good faith affirm the use of the indian mascot when i've had members of recognized tribes that have just as much claim to the use of our mascot as the gay head wampanoag and have told me that they are opposed to it i will also not i cannot as as as a member of this committee vote to have this decision without hearing from the community miss wait and then miss amarill so i guess one of my my thoughts on this is that we had committed to this committee that they were going to we were going to use the committee and that's why we appointed the committee to study this in depth and to invite all of those opinions so we can hear those and this committee would be for us to become in essence an expert committee that we can lean on so i really like to see that process be expedited and honored so until you know whether or not we decide if we want to sit in as a group you know on that next set of meetings you know i think that is a separate you know article for discussion but i want to honor the process because i think that's what we had said that we would do um i agree that we need to expedite it i think it's difficult again covet has thrown a wrench into everything but um i do want to honor that process because that's how we agreed to proceed so and again and understanding that it wasn't just about the the name the mascot but also about a host of other topics and diversity inclusion issues so i again that's kind of my where i'm coming from so i'm not ready to make a decision because i don't want to devalue our commitment to that committee that we set up so that's miss amarillo mary just uh the last part of your statement was what i was going to lead with in terms of you know the diversity and equity committee and inclusion committee what is about many more things that happened to be i can't remember from the notes but i think it was just the what came to a head or voted upon as far as like taking first but it is bigger than this topic and back in in 2019 where i made the mistake i think i was overwhelmed with a different set of issues back then but or misunderstood whatever it was but i would love to engage in i think dialogue and conversation is so important um and folks no matter what if folks weren't we if i didn't lead from a place of welcoming because i remember we had difficulty communicating and and who's going to take us seriously if we were approaching it from one way or bias on one one side or the other but i think it's really important that we we invite and we we welcome the opportunity to talk to um folks and to just dialogue more and and hear from the community i mean i i hear from the community um and i hear hear what what this is and uh i just think i want to engage in conversation about this more myself i think it's important that we have you know in the disability community it's like nothing without it you know nothing about us without us and who am i to say right but i i i want to hear from from everyone i don't feel prepared to one way or the other say no or yes vote nor yes tonight but i do want it i do want to proceed from a place of welcoming all opinions and all conversation and hearing directly from um you know our our native american um friends so that's important to me i think this is an opportunity to sort of get it right and be a little bit more thorough and well-rounded so that's my thought tonight all right any other discussion comments mr oliver i would just like to ask that we there's some kind of timeline set and you know when this committee was first put together i think part of it was my idea was the fact that it was going to be more than just the dartmouth indian it was going to be diversity right it was going to be all those different pieces to it and in the paper and all that we're hearing about is the dartmouth indian so we we need to really get through this we need to make a decision on it and then we need to move forward and put this behind us because this does come up every three or four years so this committee at some point in time needs to take a vote either yay and nay on how we're going to handle this situation um in the committee the diversity committee needs to move on and start let's start looking at other issues um because it's just it's pa long past due i understand that but i'm just gonna say it's been a rough year for all of us and you know i volunteered to chair that committee because it has to comply with open meeting law and so really miss amarillo and i were the only ones who can do that and i just have too much on my plate i have a full-time job i have kids that have issues i'm chairing the school committee chairing the diversity committee was one straw too many i'm gonna do the best i can but if we want a timeline then i need help what i'm saying is if we need a timeline i need help i can't manage it all so if someone would like to help me move the process along they're welcome to come and talk to me about how they can help me manage it it's just i think i think miss ambrose in the same boat it's been hard on all of us and it's it's just one too many are you looking to step down or as chair i just need help moving the process forward because i exchanged i would say five or six emails with mr ventura giving him dates this and that and he would say i want to talk first i don't have time to talk right now can you tell me what dates work and by the time we get back to each other those dates would have passed and so i'd ask for and it just i i can't manage the scheduling the posting the all of that i've got to do that for this i've got to do it for that i've got to reach out to all of the people who who want to be involved it's a lot i don't need to step down i need support but at some point madam chair you i completely respect and i understand where you're coming from but maybe we we tamper it down a little bit because there's there's like you just named a dozen moving pieces to this and as a committee why can't we look at making a recommendation to all right just set up a couple of dates up it's i understand what you're trying to do shannon i certainly appreciate it bringing in trying to be thoughtful from from all the sides i i i respect that but it's all time it's it's it's all it's time consumption it's time that not a lot of us have so tell us what you need do you just need help yeah i need help doing the the scheduling and the arranging and there are about three or four groups that we need to find a collective date for them to come and speak to the committee right it's not just the gehad wampanoag it's the mash p wampanoag it's the pokhacet wampanoag the american congress of the american indian would like to speak because they represent tribes in massachusetts as well so i've got four groups that i'm trying to coordinate and get a hold of and nail down dates for and that's tough particularly when sometimes people take a week and a half to respond to your emails why aren't we just talking to the two federally recognized tribes because the terror the none of their territory overlaps with the town of dartmouth the pokaset wampanoag are recognized by the state for a variety of state programs and the pokaset wampanoag claim dartmouth as part of their territorial rights i understand that but they're not fed i will i will not exclude the tribe for whom dartmouth is their native land and if we want to move forward with excluding the tribe that claims dartmouth as their native territory i think there's a problem i think we're not being inclusive i'm not going to start having this conversation now that's all i have miss amarillo no i was just um because i i know there was a lot of back and forth and and i'm i've been of no help um but it could it be something that we you know we're thinking of of of convening with tribal folks from variety and then on a separate occasion or on this i can't remember with the community in terms of like events okay would it be um i know like we've i know exactly i'm living it but would it be helpful if we were to just set a date us here now enough in advance that maybe one representative from each of those groups could make it would that be helpful i i i can be very organized but my life is chaos too and um you know there's a workforce crisis and i don't have help from my son it's either my husband or i it's my husband's birthday tonight happy birthday um but so um i don't know if it's for me if i have a date in advance i can make arrangements in time so that either myself or somebody can speak for me with uh would that be helpful would that with that fortunately you know if you're going to make the last meeting and we had the privilege of seeing you right so if you can't make it in person you could right right you know that that type of but i agree with you you know sit down figure out some dates okay far enough away but not too far away too far you know to be honest with you i would say you know sometime the beginning of march okay give everybody a chance type of deal and that because you know the city and start to try to figure out how you get we're going to be getting into february school vacation that type of deal so we get into the beginning of march there's enough time to look at this and say on a tuesday night and i'm just gonna and i don't know much dates so please don't somebody you know march 2nd is a tuesday night now i have no idea it's a wednesday you were close mister okay but you know my that was so much for us is that and that's when we're going to have that meeting to have a discussion you know invite everybody here's the date if you can make it fine if you can't sorry but senate representative senator representative you want to send a written statement it can be read into the record per se and we just move on all right do we want to go with march first no i won't be here you won't be here second week in march would be better how about march 8th works for me i think that seems we have a meeting the night before so we can do that the eighth as well march 8th works for me my march 8th works for me same okay so we'll set up with march 8th um i will work miss ganther if you could help me sort of manage some of this our guests that are coming and we'll post the agenda if if we can do that i will get the people who need to be there if you want me to reach out to anyone shannon yeah i will yeah be more than health happy too all right it'll be good i think to have parameters set up prior because it could go on all night so what we're doing on the 18th we are just asking sort of tribal members we had a presentation from a group before and i think they did about 15 minutes and then 15 minutes for q a i think if we've got three or four groups coming in telling them i don't think we use 15 minutes for q a but telling them a 10 to 15 minute presentation is is fine if they want to circulate materials in advance that's fine too that but i think we can sort of set with the same parameters that we we use i mean mr newness thank you i'm sorry i should have lost my hand i apologize uh if they've got information that they're going to be talking about if they can provide it ahead of time so if we've got it that would be help that would be helpful sure miss wait so then should we set the next date because i know we've talked about a whole you know different set of folks that we want to have come in for a public comment do we want to set that date now or do we want to wait until you know we've heard from this first group before i'm just thinking in terms again getting this process moving forward do we want to you know because then we could if we wait too long then we could hit april vacation you know again and it just becomes like one so we had two volunteers on the committee miss chamberlain and miss murphy who are willing to help set up some parameters for a public comment we had been waiting i think what happened is we waited for the decision about when these were because it's i'm not going to try to do a public comment meeting on zoom like just no no so we were waiting for that decision but then the idea was that we would set up two podiums so that we could go back and forth right so that would allow if you're one side in favor of the mascot one side oppose we could go back and forth and that would allow us to so if we want to set a date for that we can i i think we could enlist miss chamberlain and miss murphy to help arrange that since they volunteered to do that we could do it two weeks after that meeting that would put it on 3 22.
i'm sorry and what was the time for the 8th what are we saying for a time i cannot make it before 6 30. so 6 30 yeah um and i think we could do the same for if the 22nd works for people yep yep all right so i will work with ms genther and the the diversity committee and we'll move forward with making arrangements for that any further discussion on the issue who's amarillo i just want to say thank you to everyone that was really a great way to kind of wrap it in and and put a date to it and uh yeah it's actually our idea i do tend to come in you know in other capacities for like the let's just end this now and make that motion um but yeah i just want to thank everyone for for that see because it has been very difficult it's hard to sort of explain and and but everyone's living it and um you know i just we're just so much going on just like we're saying asking for grace during that moment your i can't even think of the word about us being audited two different ways that resolution um we just have to give each each one one another grace to just the understanding that we're all going through difficult stuff and we can only do our best so i appreciate the teamwork that just happened thanks ms ambrell all right moving on to new business school choice so dr gifford now you had some data i think to share with us about school choice yeah um between mr kylie and myself we just want to say that we support the going continuing with school choice as you see we have currently 123 students enrolled i did check with mr tebow again and he's in full support of continuing the program so the students have all done well and participate as active members of the community and um it's been a good program for us so i think mr kylie wanted to go over a little bit of the spending or what's been going on with that sure so so those students represent about six hundred thousand dollars in revenue um that is used for a variety of purposes i gave you some detail about that through the years it's it's supported the largest project that it supported is the one-to-one computing initiative we've been fortunate this year to have some other sources of funding for for one-to-one computing relating to the pandemic and everything so we haven't had to rely on on school choice monies for those uh as heavily but um but it's been there for that it's been there to support the stadium project which um i just i will mention in the superintendent's update later tonight um as well as a whole variety of initiatives uh k through k k through 12 that um you know have supported kids and activities that we think are valuable so we'd like to continue to do that any questions comments nice nest egg all right so i will entertain a motion to participate in school choice for the 2022-2023 school year second so i have a motion by miss wait a second by mr oliver is there any further discussion on the motion got to keep remembering sorry evan to look this way let's make sure yeah i have no comment on it okay good you guys have to let me know if you see evan over there going like this keep looking this way you just yell all right so hearing no further discussion uh all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right so that motion carries four two one thank you thank you uh next item on the agenda under new business is the annual report dr gifford i just want to say thank you to everyone in the leadership team all the directors etc principals admin that participated in getting the report to you and i do hope you have time to read it because it's very thorough and it does explain a lot of what has been going on which you know everything anyway but it just is a nice report so we'll take a vote on that uh would be much appreciated i'll entertain a motion to approve the 2021 annual report so moved all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second if i miss wait any discussion just a nice dress i just i i am so i i was i read through this actually a couple times i felt like i needed to do my due diligence because i've been feeling like such a slacker but all of the effort that was put forth i've highlighted in different colors i had one question which um it's not really a it's not a critical question it's just a question that i should probably know but under like the special ed circuit breaker money it says like i think well this year i don't know if it's this year not last year with like 37 students um it said something about 106 941 like special indicator funding um does that ring a bell i was just wondering what that was um mrs amaral was that in the um in the special ed section yes in front and i looked at it from and maybe what you're going to tell you're probably going to tell me i'm looking at the wrong thing here but um well it's fiscal year 22 so yeah it may be it's under the page well it's under like desi's um spreadsheet um on well it's yeah where am i right here special oh special indicator and oh and oh okay never mind maybe i answered my own question indicate well special indicator instruction and tuition but it was just not every district has anything you know a number in that line so i just was wondering but i guess it's just a tuition and it's none of my business i wouldn't say that i can't i can get you some more information about that mr nunes did you have a question or uh just just just the comment yeah i didn't print it out i i read through it type of deal and i agree with the superintendent nice you know hats off to uh the administrators and and everybody for in to mr kylie for the financial information and all the the general information that's in there and go back and look at you know even though there was a pandemic it's you know everything that went on and you know you moved you know fall sport you know became fall too and you know how our athletes did and you know then you get into the to the music and all the other sports and the different schools and what was going on you know between phys ed and you know classroom teaching you know we had a nice presentation tonight you know with the the developer school so you know there's a lot of work that goes into it and you know i applaud everybody for doing that thank you any other comments questions just thank you thank you all right so hearing no further discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right that motion carries unanimously uh dr gifford time for the superintendent okay just a couple of things um as we mentioned we're still continuing without audits until maybe jesse will say no but i don't think so i don't have much faith in that um so we've just been continuing to attend webinars on how to go about completing the audit and all of that the ell one was just last week um the tiered focus monitoring that so a number of folks have been attending those i told you last time that cushman school had been awarded another two thousand dollars from the feinstein group well now they have another five thousand their ticket was picked i guess they pick one from all the schools every week this foundation is incredible and also part of school receive five thousand dollars so we have a lot to be thankful for for the feinstein um organization uh we did start the well we've put out for the um i i told you that we got the fy 22 math acceleration academies grant i think i sent you that in an email for ninety two thousand five hundred dollars and we'll be running uh camps february and april vacations for four days and we've already posted for those folks that will be teaching and as well as supervising um and it will be uh six six elementary session uh people middle school would looking at two high school we don't think we'll get a lot of people kiddos that want to attend during vacation but we're trying and of course we'll have some special area teachers as well so those postings have gone out we've gotten a lot of interest from teachers so i was happy about that and as much as we were thinking we didn't want to do that because we didn't think we get enough people but we are so far and as evan mentioned tonight we were really happy with the ap computer science award i sent that to you with them and as you remember we started the work a couple years back with really enhancing the pathway for computer science and then we hired the teachers and really kind of honing in on what should be taught in that so we were happy about that and also um attendance has kind of been back to normal-ish i guess you know not as bad as it was a couple of weeks ago so we're happy about that and just an update on the covid at home testing program which you're aware of we i have to say at this time desi of course they probably have a lot of help unlike us that usually with implementing the new testing program we submitted it we were approved tests are supposed to be starting to be shipped this week we are we've received about a thousand people between students and faculty that have signed up that they would opt in they would want to participate and as we said the tests will go home it's a for two weeks at a time the schools i've met with them and they are working the logistics on how to be passed out to the students and staff and we're asking that folks commit to testing themselves on sundays to hopefully keep covered out of the schools and uh there's a jesse did a nice job with the spreadsheets that we're able to get the data from and also that folks would then um report in if they are positive that's the that's what we hope um so with that i know mr kylie wanted to give a few updates as well so i'll turn it over to him thank you dr gifford just quick update on the stadium storage project storage building project so that you had awarded that some time ago where we're in process definitely facing long lead times and which you know i think we would expect unfortunately but um it's going to be a long drawn out project where um in the process of trying to complete the design work for the rest of that project with the hope that we would bid it out this spring and see what happens i don't expect that it's going to be particularly favorable but it's important that we understand what the what the situation is and then try and determine okay can we move forward um with the rest of the project at this point in time or do we need to come up with some other strategy so um but that's all in the works but i have a meeting about that again tomorrow um the other thing i just wanted to mention was uh that at the next school committee meeting we'll be presenting um the budget for fy23 so uh we will we hope to um we definitely will prior to that time have a budget subcommittee meeting so i believe that dr jenkins and mrs amaral are the two members on the budget subcommittee so and i think mr nunes is the alternate yes so um so there's lots of support so uh so at some point prior to that february 14th meeting we'll we'll uh try and arrange for something and i'll just be in touch with you about that see if we can find a time that'll work and we'll invite a member of the finance committee to that meeting and you know have a little discussion about where we're heading for the 14th so miss wait yes i just had a question um and this goes back to when we had our presentation from the new bedford vocational folks we had talked about possibly doing a stabilization fund i think mr oliver had brought that up just to kind of give us some leeway when we're trying to deal with the fluctuations um from year to year i don't know if you weren't able to attend last that i listened to it yeah i think i watched it on youtube so i thought that was you know a good suggestion back on that yeah yeah i i can bring that up to um you know to the the folks at town hall that that stabilization fund it wouldn't be a it wouldn't have anything to do with dartmouth public schools it would be in relation to a town stabilization fund with a reserve for vocational you know education costs so that would be something that would have to be initiated really from the select board side of things or the finance committee i suppose but i will bring that up to them mr oliver thank you madam chair uh two things mr kylie one being help me help me remember here the uh we actually awarded the uh storage building yes we did so is that are we still moving forward with that or are we gonna with with that award yeah right now we are trying to procure the um the materials okay it's oh it takes a long time yeah i just thought there might have been some conversation about whether or not the um developer the contractor might have pulled was thinking about backing out nope nope they're they're on board met with them last wednesday been meeting with them weekly okay that's going to be with them this wednesday um they're they're on board that makes me feel just uh it's it's a test of uh patients yeah the supply chain is what it is but i just wasn't sure where we were at with the the contract metal buildings aren't the best thing to be ordering right now unfortunately and i i think metal itself is a is a problematic item sure agreed and just along those lines of facilities and construction and all that i had asked a couple before christmas and asking for the committee's uh pleasure on whether or not we could bring mr richard ferreira or rick ferreira at one of our next school committee meetings to recognize him for not only the work he's done for the diamond schools but you know for the police station and a lot of other buildings and facilities in town thank you for that reminder miss oliver i think we're all in agreement we'd like to do that other questions or comments mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair just just one mr kyle have you heard uh about a capital planning committee meeting i just mentioned to dr gifford today that we've yet to hear anything regarding that which is pretty far behind yeah schedule but um i know that on the town side of uh their operation they are attempting to give people more uh time to complete their different tasks be it the budget or the capital improvement submissions um but i i've yet to yet to hear about a meeting okay if you do i will keep you informed thank you sir appreciate that all right so the next item on the agenda is the report of the chair i just want to give you all an update i just sent right at the beginning of this meeting we're not going to discuss them tonight i just i don't like to give information via email because of open meeting law but i sent you three links to sample student advisory committee policies for your reference the policy is j-i-b-b if anyone wants to google it some school districts have it some don't i sent you examples from milton hull and north reading milton and hull are kind of generic restatements of the state law i also asked worcester she said well it's very clear that you have to elect by class and i was like it's not clear it's not in there so that's when i started googling um the one from north reading i would recommend that you read that has actual procedures like the i'm not i'm not entirely convinced that the procedures make sense because they say there's an election every year you elect one from the junior class one sophomore junior senior and then they have two year terms so i don't know why you would have an election every year if you had two year terms at the same point in time you've got a new sophomore class coming in every year and yeah yeah i guess that's how it works but so they have very detailed like these are the how the election works these are the members these are their functions and responsibilities so in terms of having detail that was the most detailed one that i i could find i shared those to you again it's policy j i b b and it's milton hall and north reading they're in your email the links to that if we can have a discussion of those when you've had the chance to read it but i just don't like to do communication between all of us via email so that's why i waited until now miss wait you have a question no i was just going to say that um i just want to make sure at our next meeting on the february 14th that we can talk about that like a little bit more detail and i'll try and touch base with mr tebow too and just see what his thoughts are and possibly like i can't sketch out a model just can you i think i've copied you on that email so that it's though so the links you won't have gotten it yet can you forward that email to mr tebow so he can look at those as well and also to evan i'll include evan on that can you forward it to me as well that would be great and yeah my intention was to just tell you i sent you that tell everyone what it was and then we can have them continue that discussion after everyone had a chance to look at them that's all i have for my report anyone else other matters may not have been anticipated mr nunes yeah just i just got two items uh madam chair uh of course the standard times is still talking about awards and we're you know our student athletes are still picking up awards will chase got defensive football player of the year which was uh great to see and also ongoing right at the moment through the 26th which is wednesday the students not only from dartmouth high school but all around uh being judged via zoom on decker so looking forward to seeing how that pans out i've got to get that done tomorrow excellent any other things to share all right so our next meeting is scheduled for uh february valentine's day at 6 30 very romantic at this point i will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session to discuss strategy relative to collective bargaining not to return to open meeting so moved all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss waite uh any discussion on the motion roll call please miss gentler shannon jenkins yes mary wait yes kathleen emerald yeah john nunes yes thank you everyone [Music] you
thank you good evening i'd like to call this meeting to order it's tuesday january 25th 2022 and this is our regular board meeting at 6pm i'd like to welcome everybody who's here and those who are joining us on live stream or recorded session we would like to begin tonight with a moment of silence and as part of this if we could remember an employee who passed away recently larry french as part of our moment of silence and then i will lead us in the pledge of allegiance if you could all please stand with me i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you miss wilson could you please do the roll call dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here miss sheila eugetti here ms jill humphries here mr bill parker here madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you we will move on to 2.01 the approval of the agenda do i have a motion i move to approve the agenda as presented thank you miss humphries is there a second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda as presented all in favor please vote by saying aye hi anya please please say nay all right that passes 5-0 we'll now move on to 3.01 with the superintendent's report with dr mccord thank you and good evening um i'd like to acknowledge a couple people in the room first is maddie trimmer here is she back there maddie maddie is one of our superintendent uh student senate members and she's here to check out how things work so thank you for being here please give her a hand and then we also have some folks from aspire which is um a group that is aspiring to be administrators and so they meet on a monthly basis with our administrative team to go through a lot of different things related to administration uh we have alistor tini where are you alice yay here we go liesel hafner there you are amanda patrick and shar cap she here yet she's on her way so we'll give her a future hand all right thank you guys for being here tonight we appreciate it uh welcome back we definitely hit the beginning of 2022 running the current cobin 19 surge has created challenges for our school district but our students staff and families have done all they can do to remain in school i'd like to thank all of our teachers support staff and school administrators for their ability to pivot at a moment's notice to help cover classes when we are short on substitutes you prove day in and day out that you care about children and it's greatly appreciated i'd also like to thank all of our substitutes we appreciate your willingness to step up in a time of need and give our students everything you can and again to everyone thank you very much last thursday we had our district spelling bee it was held at campo verde and all the students represented gps extremely well it was an exciting evening and we're so very proud of all of our participants there were well over 25 rounds held during the competition i'll read off the names of the students and what place they came in all eight of these students will represent gps in the regional spelling bee on tuesday february 8th at 10 a.m at the queen creek performing arts center in first place we have from augusta ranch sean fay in second place from south valley safarth rahaman in third place aryan rivera torres from playa del rey from quartz hill kate mesoruski and in fifth place ellie draves from greenfield elementary and sixth place adianaya from mesquite junior high and seventh ava gasparo from meridian and an eighth was mason smith from neely traditional academy again congratulations and good luck to all of our spellers at the regionals we have some national board certified teachers we'd like to recognize congratulations to our new two new national board certified teachers melissa wiltbank from desert ridge high and casey shafer from gilbert high school what a great honor and accomplishment thank you for sharing your expertise with the students of gilbert public schools mrs wood that concludes my report for this evening thank you dr recording congratulations to those that were honored tonight we we're proud of you we would like to now move to 4.01 request to speak to the governing board and we do have one person who's requested to speak so if we could listen to the admonition please the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy ke k-e-b and k-e-d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website thank you we have one speaker tonight amber mcafee and you'll have three minutes when you come up thank you amber mcafee it's a hard last name it's okay it's a really hard name um back again i am still just as upset as i was last month talking to this board about the actions of nsba i emailed each of you i've yet to receive a response from any of you and as a citizen and you are representing me as an elected body i'm deeply upset that there's no communication so i'm here to redress that tonight i'm also deeply upset that a member of this board testified at the legislature last week against bill 1011.
madison and i'm bradley with your morning announcements are you a senior that has not ordered their cap and gown yet see miss bada to get information on how the order your cu can be in the ceremony now to morgan with the weather i'm morgan with the weather today is a high of 20 and a low of 6. tomorrow is a high of 32 and a low of 24 with a 30 percent chance of snow and then on friday is a 25 high and a 9 low now back to your announcements start the year start the year by step stepping out of your comfort zone with the challenge that could earn you up to 200 the greensburg optimist club is hosting their annual speech contest february 22nd give a four to five minute speech on the topic of staying optimistic in challenging times application forms are in the office and all information can be found on the flyers hung up around the school for more information see mrs the office kolkemeyer shirt jewelry sunglasses shoes jacket sweater t-shirt please play modern before being taken a good one please follow greensburg safety on instagram to stay up to date in your community i'm morgan with the lunch and today is chili with beans cheese stick and cornbread now back to your announcements the decatur county parks and recreation department is accepting applications for summer employment for lifeguard pool cashier and concession positions for the allen memorial swimming pool contact theresa ko ko kova kitsch at the parks department for applications for earth details now to emily for today's sports there's a boys basketball game tonight at home versus lawrenceburg now back to your announcements have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat and instagram at gchsp
two um tuesday january 25th uh we're gonna start pleased with the pledge of allegiance and if you would please just stay standing after this [Music] um i just wanted to make note that we learned uh recently that um ms stuples the assistant principal here at tohonto lost her son unexpectedly on sunday his name was doug hutchins and he was 27 years old the school committee would like to extend the most heartfelt condolences during a painful time distressing time for our family and before the schools so could we have just a moment of silence and memory of doug and in care and supporting support institutes thank you i just want to explain the uh structure of tonight's meeting a little bit for anyone who may be live streaming in in particular um in fact we're live streaming so uh the first thing is just a reminder that your voice or image may be scene tonight um maybe broadcast and uh but tonight's meeting agenda is a little bit unusual because it was originally planned as the second meeting in january a three-hour governance workshop with ms dardeel president from the massachusetts association of school claims um but we had some business to carry over from january 11 and so um we uh put that business um after the workshop and ask for our videos we would condense the workshop make it a little shorter the workshop will run for approximately two hours and 15 minutes and then around 8 45 i'm guessing we will take up the business that's brought over from the january 11th meeting um let's see so during the business portion of the meeting we have a couple of um refiners to vote on and then we'll hear an update from superintendent zioni regarding our current testing protocols how they're working in light of the recent uh omicron surge here as well as a new testing option announced by commissioner riley from the department of ed on january 18th and the committee will vote on a related proposal from the superintendent and then also based on our january 11 discussion the committee anticipates voting on a motion to request information from commissioner riley regarding your evidence base for the state's current mass and vaccine requirements um so that work will that part of meeting will take place starting around 8 45 so if if you're live streaming uh you want to check come back at 8 45 for the business portion you may want to do that or you're welcome to stay for the governance workshop for the next couple of hours this week with dorothy presser all right so uh we will start the meeting with our public comments section and then go into the governance workshop i don't um so um jessica well let me just each in turn go ahead introduce yourselves and you have a public comment and make sure so i'm jessica alberti i'm a family nurse practitioner i work at the edward kennedy community health center i also have a third grader at bes and i grew up in boston and we live here again so dear superintendent missing principals and school committee members of the boys environment school community district i first want to alert everyone to the fact that there was a protest by parents outside of destiny this morning the guidelines they set forth are not sufficient to keep our students and staff safe i'm glad the guidelines are being reviewed by the school committee at this meeting i hope the school nurses will be present unfortunately so they can also give feedback immediately to the discussion so caitlyn jennelina is an epidemiologist that works at texas medical school that started a newsletter for medical students and now has a worldwide following that's been on many national news shows she takes data and boils it down so very easily to understand and utilize to sum up her most one of her most recent articles that i forwarded last week to the school committee that rabbit antigens have a delayed sensitivity to become positive meaning a rapid antigen will not be piled up until 48 hours after symptoms the pcr will catch the infection three days earlier but one has to wait for these results 24 to 48 72 hours if i have symptoms today my rapid antigen will be positive for two more days omicron is contagious until 10 days delta was 11.
are again at another wonderful board of education budget meeting um i guess i'll officially uh call to order and uh ms jaginski can i have a roll call please oh my god um carol you're not on mute but obviously your microphone's not working if you want to sign off and come back on that often resolves the issue in the interim i can call the role okay here mr martelly here miss ham here miss robersenberg here uh mr white here miss harrigan should just join i thought sure okay there we go uh mr paragini okay mr chair you have a quorum great uh before we begin um do you hear piano music okay well my son is playing piano upstairs i wasn't didn't realize i hear him playing piano just want to make sure he's not picking that up okay cool um all rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all quick draw on the pledge yeah we're having low production value this evening this is this one isn't going to win a grammy for best local production no or not uh emmy right excuse me uh doctor sullivan is certainly uh is there any audience comment from uh previous meetings or uh currently before we begin no sir okay um i guess i'll uh i'll turn the meeting over to mr maciana thank you mr grippo and good evening welcome back everyone so i do have um you know our second budget workshop is this evening the agenda is as you see on the lower portion of the screen here tonight's review will include instructional expense and part of instructional expenses special education services so we will have a presentation by ms robin ann carey who's our director of pupil personnel uh we'll do support services maintenance and operations including an overview of the capital budget and then you know we will conclude that would um complete the entire review of all the accounts at a high level this evening so i will jump right in um and i will stop if i see questions as we're going along but just to have some quick review the budget that was prepared you know is aligned with all the district goals including complex thinking and social emotional learning uh the the budget assumptions haven't changed the the two major items that are incorporated into the budget as we've discussed are a projected enrollment increase at the elementary level uh the need to fund the medical benefits accounts the um total budget request you've shown here the the 81 million 114 420 is the total request which is a 5.34 increase or 4 million 113 368 and you could see here that the the bulk that red pie chart section 2.24 million that's our employee benefits you know our largest portion of the budget increase which we did spend considerable discussion over on the at the meeting we had on the 18th last tuesday uh followed by 1479 for salaries for our employees so this is jumping right into extra instructional expense um as you can see on the lower portion of the screen i just need to move this out of the way 5.6 of our budget is dedicated to instructional expense it's about 4.56 million dollars over on the right side you'll see that of the total of 4.56 million is what we call special education tuition that's students that we cannot provide services for in the district that we place out of district 2.25 million is dedicated to that miss carrie when she presents will provide some some detail as to what that encompasses and why we do that the second largest portion of instructional expense is what we call pupil services this is primarily consulting type services that we offer to students who are identified and have special education needs then the remaining portion of instructional expense includes instructional supply textbooks new replacement equipment staff training items that we need for our library and testing and adult education supplies if we look at instructional expense this is a page right out of our budget book these are the line items over on the left that i just mentioned but if you look over to the far right you'll see that essentially what we've done with the exception of a modest increase for pupil services and a modest increase for tuition out placement we flatlined uh all these line items in the 2223 budget request now um i i do want to add a couple of pieces of information that i think are important first of all holding the line items flat um doesn't mean we aren't spending the funds that we need for education we believe we are the way we will manage this budget as we've done in prior years where we've had to flatline these particular accounts is that we you know work really hard to prioritize what we need when we need it if we need to make adjustments you know and use money from another account category we always have that option but you know we do believe that we have enough here that it will not hurt education of course if we if we had more we we might prioritize other things but i i believe that we can get by through this this budget year with what we've included here so the point that i i really want to emphasize is we will not let education suffer you know we believe that we can live within this budget request this this next year and again as dr solonet explained a significant reason why we we've um looked closely and reduced or flatlined our budget requests is that we do have a large amount of funds that we have to supplement into the medical benefits of contributions this year so with that i did want to jump into special education costs and then i i will be introducing uh miss kerry in a moment and then we will be coming back to those budget line items if there are specific questions that we need to address so what you see in front of you i will take a moment to explain this is the total special education costs by fiscal year um and so if you look at the first year that's shown over our next to the furthermost left column 2017 2018 the actual cost of special education when we take all costs into consideration that staffing both certified and non-certified the cost of benefits for those employees that serve our special education students items that we purchased the outplace tuition cost transportation costs in 1718 those costs were about 17.3 million that year our budget was 70 million 126 to 88.
1011 that bill it's by kelly townsend and it seeks to remove taxpayer dollars from being used by an organization with a partisan bias mainly that is going towards as arizona school boards association asba is deeply partisan anyone who says otherwise is lying i'm sorry it is true you can look at their track record of the past five to ten years of their bills that they support it is deeply partisan they work very hard to silence parents they have cut off and shut down bills that would give parents rights that's wrong what's really wrong is my tax dollars going towards an elected official who then takes those tax dollars and gives it to a lobby that wants to shut my voice down that's against america that's against what we stand for i should hope okay it is also national school choice week i'm grateful for choice gps has not always given me the best education for my children for the ones it does they are still enrolled in this district choice is a huge part of who we are as americans it is what has given us this wonderful land choice to live where we want to do what we want to speak and to fight for the things that we want i would hope that this body would respect the choice now back to choice school board members you have a right to give those dues to whatever body you want but you don't have the right to take the money from the hard working pockets to give to an organization that is going to then turn around and weaponize that money against the people that you took the money from i'm deeply opposed to that it is very very unfair to claim that you need the services of asba when there are other options asba can turn into a 501 c 4 they can fundraise elected officials have the ability to fundraise also there is the coalition of school board members that is a non-partisan option for school board members to get training i understand you don't want to lose a resource i get it none of us want to lose resources but not at the expense of the taxpayer not at the expense of the very people who have elected you hey please we i've been up here talking about masks i've been up here talking about closures i'm all about choice please do not choose to use funds and taxpayer dollars against the parents who have elected you miss humphries i believe you need to step down i believe you have violated the trust of this public and i believe that your actions in supporting asba make you unfit to serve on this board thank you president uh would may i respond to police sure first i our view is very different of what arizona school board association does and i'll just say that um we were not responsible for the letter that was sent by the nsba i did learn last week that the person who sent that letter was an interim director who has since been removed from his position the major thing that asba does is that they take the legislation passed by the legislature they turn it into policy and then they teach board members how to implement that policy in their districts that is their major um push there are other initiatives we are a large group so when you have 1100 school board members we don't always agree with each other but we try to maintain decorum and work through those differences of issues and come together to support kids um and i would just say as i did in my testimony at the senate that some people think that taxpayer money should not be used for lobbying my position is that if we don't allow taxpayers funds to be used towards lobbying at the state legislature who is there to speak on behalf of children parents and taxpayers it's only otherwise it's just private companies lobbying and i think that's a mistake i think that we need a voice with our own state legislature to talk about what bills should be passed and i am all about wanting and encouraging parent parent engagement and community engagement in our schools and i will speak about that later during the committee reports something i attended today so um sorry that we have a difference of opinion if you would like to make an appointment with mrs wilson i would be happy to sit down and talk with you at the district office thank you thank you for the request to speak and i also wanted to acknowledge that we had comments made given over the website that we have looked at and that are there in the public as well so thank you for those who have participated that way we appreciate that if we could move on to 5.01 well 5.5.0 is reports and 5.01 the monthly budget report december 2021 fy2022 dr mccord thank you madam president i'll turn this over to bonnie betz our assistant superintendent of business services good evening governing board members president wood um dr mccord can you guys hear me all right i have a wireless am i all right can you huh it's on am i good okay good okay good so um good evening again uh this is the uh status of our finances as of december 31st 2021 and uh next week a week from tonight we will be presenting the revised number two budget to you this presentation is referencing the pending revised number two that we've calculated and assumed we would be revising to and it's it's very close there will be some small adjustments made from this pending revised number two versus the uh final revised number two that we are requesting you to approve next week so just keep that in mind as we go through this report so we're going to go through the following specific reports operating funds federal funds state funds and other funds so again i i shared with you that the budgeted funds all are looking at the pending revised number two and the cash funds do reflect the annual financial report that you approved in october of 2021.
a new data came out showing that the five-day policy is not supported by evidence and at least more spread within the schools i've previously said that kids on days 6 to 10 according to need to eat separately from the rest of the children until their day 10 is complete in order to reduce spread i especially want to answer the question that was posted last school committee meeting why did destiny extend the masculine thing i've asked you to review the email that i sent you with this evidence and a really nice easy to understand uh that i asked out this evening um masks do work when worn over your nose there's a limitation however how long and how they are worn by children and adults the last chart i sent was from caitlin jenner that you're a local epidemiologist again and it showed that if someone was wearing an n95 and an infected person was wearing an n95 they would get 25 hours of protection in a perfect scenario if you look at the chart if one was wearing a surgical mask and someone was wearing a candy fine they'd have five hours perfection i sent my daughter into a fan and i hope that she can wear it the best she can throughout the day but at best she has five hours per fashion when the school day is six and this ignores lunch and snacks and water breaks and so this is why the entire class should be considered exposed and not the time-consuming tracing of three or six feet that cbc and jesse has laid out omicron is airborne it doesn't matter vaccinated and unvaccinated students need to be notified if there is a person in the same room as them i know that contact tracing has been eliminated in many districts but a known exposure should change your behavior and who you might expose contact tracing is indefinitely more difficult if you consult a seating chart and that is unnecessary and not supported by data i again remind you of the augmented reality from the new york times article that i showed in the spring and also dr zandi showed in the screen the virus is in the whole room by the end of the day i also heard that dustin's considered stopping the tests of state program and the pool testing program again sadly we don't participate in the pool testing and just have children test at home two times a week with home antigen tests i don't think this is sufficient even if all the parents truly did them at home i've had two close friends whose children had a negative rapid antigen in a hang and then a pile of pcr the next day who weren't notified for two more days one of their parents a co-worker of mine tested her son immediately with a rapid negative when he developed a fever the next day got a pcr and then waited 48 hours from his first symptoms tested again with an antigen flagged positive in a minute on that antigen test and then 24 hours later she had the phone call that he was indeed positive luckily they all stayed home suspecting it was such from school i again support the boylston merlin regional school district nurses in their plea for help and what they are requesting and the modifications to testing and quarantining policy please don't hesitate to ask me any questions especially in regards to policies made by destiny in regards to masks i think it would be embarrassment to the district if you wrote that letter to them i again asked you to review the email that i've sent emails previously sent to review the data so you understand where these policies come from thank you again for taking time to review the information before you make a decision thank you jessica okay i don't have quite the data that jessica does but my name is katrina and i have a child of bces third quarter and my approach is a little different than data including one doctor or another i'm going based on my child and how this has affected them and i didn't realize until today that there were hoops that we needed to jump through for this committee to ask jesse where is the evidence to keep our kids in mass desi is not made up of health officials and they're making health decisions for our children and for an entire population evidence should be provided well before we are allowed to mandate our kids to rename the masks that should be first not less there are multiple studies from doctors who say masks aren't very effective and we could go on and find them home and yes they're ones that say that we should wear kn and 95 nests everywhere well i don't think they should those aren't 100 effective unless they're properly fitted and are we just assuming that our children are walking contagious deadly viruses that can't be good for their mental health and i also asked where was everybody when flu was killing people i don't ever recall being notified of a positive flu case never mind extra precautions put in place to stop the spread of the flu spread the flu spreads up to six feet and through your nose and mouth and even on surfaces meanwhile classrooms were barely sanitized i couldn't be more frustrated that our kids are part of a i hope this works experiment while our states and schools while other states and schools are nascus and doing just fine my preschooler hasn't born a mask all year why is our class any different why is one state any different i think we all know it's politics with vaccine protection and our recent omicron surge a majority of our population in massachusetts is either vaccinated with natural immunity or just has natural immunity it seems foolish to continue with masks mass mandates they didn't seem to stop the recent surge some vaccinated and boosted and recently contracting coven wearing a mask after quarantine does not make sense to me it's only a sign of compliance and it gives false impression that we're protecting our community who is held liable for speech delays emotional physical issues is the superintendent going to be what about child suicide from all these restrictions and fears there are harmful effects i want evidence showing that there won't be harmful effects from covering my kid's face or i should have the right to not send my child in the mask tomorrow this is all being figured out at our child's expense and the finish line keeps getting moved up at a recent basketball game my rule following child unlike myself grabbed her chest looked pale and red at the same time and i thought for a minute i might have calm ambulance she couldn't breathe in the mess and she was too afraid to take it off at school she's told to eat in silence at snack break when it's indoors because of the recent omicrons book what evidence do you have to tell my child when her mask is off she needs to be silent and if not that she can't eat or any other child let's pretend for a second they're in a restaurant for their celebrity or a politician can they remove their mask then and it's okay how do i explain this to her other than tell her well those are the rules rules and mandates in history there were a lot of rules and mandates in history that were not right and they caused a lot of harm and some of them it was too late until we stopped them the updated data has shown that a majority of the coveted hospital cases and deaths had comorbidities i didn't i don't see mandating the way people live at home no cigarette bans no fast food bans no forced exercise and throughout all of this the data has remained the same that our kids have been fine yes some aren't some kids have risks but they always have for anything in their life we have come a long way with the virus in the beginning when things were unknown it made sense to protect everybody until we knew but now we know and it doesn't make sense as the data keeps changing why aren't we allowing people to make their own choices are you absolutely certain we aren't creating superbugs and suppressing our children's immune systems living this way are you absolutely certain we aren't creating anxieties and mental health issues for our children because if you're mandating an entire population and parents to force their children to do something you better be certain that it works and it's without harmful effects thank you [Music] we will take those thoughts into the business portion of the meeting later on closer to 8 45.
so about 24 of the 1718 budget was allocated and dedicated to provide for students that were identified as having special education needs and you could see down the lower part of that same column at that year we had 521 special education students which was about 12.3 of our total population and 33 219 was the average expenditure per student so now if we look all the way over to the right uh you'll see that there's a there's a couple of things that are worth noting but as far as in 2122 the percentage of total budget that was allocated for special ed didn't change much it's still in that 24.8 percent of total range of course the cost has increased because our budget has increased over that period of time but what i've circled at the lower portion of the screen is that the number of students increased you know pretty dramatically as compared to increases in per year so we went from 556 to 584 students and then we're projecting uh next year to go to 610 so there is an increase in the number of special education students that we are seeing and miss carrie will cover that in her presentation and you can see the percentage of students with individualized education plans you know has increased to 13.9 this year and we're estimating it will be about 14.6 in the 2223 budget year that we're we're presenting um so i'll pause there for some questions because robin i assume you're ready to load up your presentation so i'm gonna stop presenting um when we finish answering questions and so mr gripper i see that there's at least one question from mr white yes mr white go ahead oh thanks adam yeah i'm wondering about the um i'm not sure if robin will be speaking to this but uh sorry i got a pop-up window on here um i'm just wondering about the cause if we have an idea of the the reason that the number's going up is it better identification of students changing in law a change of laws nice picture then um yeah i will try to answer that okay okay okay no that's fine i was just making a note to myself because when i get to the part where i'm talking about some of the um what our numbers look like um so let me go ahead faith um thanks all right thanks you i raised my hand and you gave me permission um if i could and been i don't know if you have this number available um can you give us a cost per general ed student the the cost per general ed student if we look at 20 122 is about a little over 18 000 185 i can give you the exact number but it's i thought that was the average cost per student which included the special ed uh it does okay so the the per pupil expenditure that 18 000 um that we quote that the state provides is all students yeah but if we carve out and that's what this illustration is doing if we just look at special ed costs divided by special ed students it's higher than the per expenditure i understand so i guess i would like to know what the average cost for non-special ed student is as well i if we could see that and what you're budgeting what you anticipate the budgeted amount per student to be yeah i'd have to do some math on that faith but i'll write that down as a question thank you sam you had your hand up what other variables is well like title one money or uh you know idea money you know wherever i mean if you're looking for a true local cost versus just generic cost sam go ahead i'm going to wait until robin finishes she might answer this already in her presentation sure okay okay first i wanted to thank you for having me here tonight um to share some information with you i'm going to try and keep away from the special ed jargon but it's very difficult to do that so if i do mention something or use an acronym and you have questions about it please don't hesitate to ask me for some clarification okay there we go okay so some of you um who had come to our showcases last year when we focused on special education may remember this slide here showing our continuum of services when you look to the right hand side of the um of the slide and we're looking at the continuum we're looking at students that are fully included into the general ed classroom so special education services are pushed into the classroom supporting the students with the general curriculum and they're learning amongst their peers we consider this to be the least restrictive setting for students because they're in the same setting and getting the same type of instruction along with supplemental instruction and accommodations in order to be successful you'll also notice that i only i also included not just the classroom as the least restrictive setting but i also included the community because we do have students in our 18 to 22 year old programs that go out into the community as they learn their vocational skills and their transition skills and so they are amongst the um the uh their peers within the community in the community settings um as you move across the um the continuum towards the left um you're getting more specialized instruction you're spending less time in the general ed setting and more time in the specialized setting so you can see we have what we call resource support and typically resource support is provided in a small is in a smaller setting and what i mean by that is not that the classroom's smaller but that the groups of students are smaller and so we have smaller groups of students we have us we have a smaller adult to student ratio to provide those added supports and to provide that specialized instruction typically this is in the core subjects of reading writing and math as you move farther to the left and you're getting farther away from the general ed classroom we're now looking at more of a self-contained program and what that means is that our students are with for the majority of their day they're with disabled peers so their peers um that they're learning along with in that classroom setting are being serviced under an iep and have more intense needs um the smaller setting also you're going to get more specialized instruction and you're going to have more supports and you're going to have more um a smaller adult to student ratio and that's because their needs are much more um much more impactful so we provide services across this continuum and students at some points in their school career can move from one um setting to another setting depending on how their needs change and as they grow so here's what we were just talking about the number of students so you can see over time our our numbers have crept up slowly um typically the change from one year to another year has been pretty small um until you get to the very end of our chart here where we can kind of see more of a steeping um uh increase um this in this uh typically we do see some changes it's very fluid with our students and our student numbers the numbers that i um pulled from are our october 1st state um recording numbers so on october 1st when i pulled the numbers for this school year we were looking at 582 students being identified as students with disabilities and having an iep as of a week or so ago i pulled the number again just out of curiosity just by going into power school and we were up to 600 so even between october 1st and now we're seeing an increase we're steadily still seeing an increase on that um some of the reasons that i think that we're seeing that increase those numbers i did actually meet with our school psychologists and our school counselors last friday and i kind of pulled them because i wanted to get their impression they're in those ppts they're in those the decision making when deciding whether student qualifies or is eligible for special education services so i wanted to kind of hear from them about it one of the things that they did point out is that they are seeing that the impact of cobit so we went through a period of time where our students were remote totally remote in 2020.
so again this is what you've seen on the maintenance operations fund so looking at the upper maintenance operations fund you can see that we are anticipating a budget of very close to 286 million to to date we have expended and uncovered about 236 million leaving an available balance of about 50 million again as is monthly as stated monthly there are some purchases that are have not yet been encumbered some of them are our extra duty pays and those sorts of things so roughly about 15 million of that we can expect to be spent the classroom site fund please note that we do have the pay for performance encumbered in the year-to-date expended encumbered column so truly we expect at the end of the year that we will have close to 14 million dollars carried over in classroom site fund again a reminder classroom site fund in the past has been reported in three separate funds now due to statutory changes last spring we have one fund and all activity is coming out of that fund 10.