He is uh he's a solar guru, basically, but now he is uh kind of deals in all of our rebates, incentive programs. He helps with um a little bit of everything solar related. Appreciate you guys having us in and our family, thank you. Tonight. Um About a month and a half, 2 months ago, we were asked to look at some opportunities and solar is not only been an amazing opportunity for schools to offset a fixed cost, but there's an IRA tax credit that's available still before the end of June. That is a huge opportunity for the district to take advantage of some federal funds. funds. And so, >> It's a inflammation inflammation inflation reduction act. >> Inflation reduction act, exactly. And that is uh um the program's going to change, and so we as we discussed options, we mentioned that the end of June is kind of a a deadline to get um locked in to make sure that if if the district decided to move forward, that they would have that opportunity to put solar and receive potentially up to 40% of the installation cost back.
And so if people stand on the the top of the bleachers, they were kind of they were giving way a little >> uh for the proposed funding. Um I think I already know the answer, but uh does this attach to the referendum or any of the funds raised? >> No, this is coming from um already existing funds. Yeah. >> Any other questions for Dr. Finley? All right, I will entertain a motion. >> I move the board of school trustees approve the Lee Company for the AHS bleacher project as presented. >> Motion by Josh, seconded by Jennifer.
But it also depends, too, I would think, on the severity of the issue. To Logan's point, if we had somebody steal a million and a half, we probably want to learn that as quick as possible. And so, I think that's where for me uh two board members being able to be part of that up front is reasonable. Mm, if you [clears throat] Are we going around the table to get everybody's views? Is that right? Cuz they Are we through the just general commentary phase of the meeting? Okay. Go ahead, please. Um if I can, I'll kick us off since I jumped in. Uh I do appreciate that we have mention of internal audits, but not to beat a dead horse, I agree that just some sort of guidelines that says it's at the superintendent discretion as it's written today, but um a little more language around what might um lead to that would be interesting.
Obviously, we're competitive at it, which brings your name to it, but when we go work out, when we work out over Memorial Weekend, we work out with junior college teams. So, that gets your face out there. And it just the the things that you guys allow us to do and go judge has really just helped expand our network. And livestock judging isn't all about just the winning and being able to do things. Yeah. It's fun. It the the networking has been the best part for me. >> Before you leave, can you get a picture with >> Yep. If you guys leave your stuff right there because it's set up so nicely. If you guys want to gather around them, I'm happy to take pictures. >> Yeah. Just around there. Hold on. >> About a whole room for all these two smile. One, two, three, smile.
Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed the same. And that carries. Okay, it's time for my report. Um I'm excited to announce um you got a little bit of a flyer there. It's still not completely the way I would like it but it's pretty pretty close. About our new ambassador program. And this is going to start next school year. Um it's going to be a breakfast session. We'll um start at 7:45 a.m. with breakfast and networking and then we'll have a presentation. Um and then also we really want our people our our our ambassadors to get out and visit the school. Um the sessions are kind of there on the side. Admin 101, finance, strategic plans, support services, college and career connection, understanding school safety, curriculum and assessment, multi-tiered systems of support, which is our special education as well as our um high ability.
Gray and I was the Niola recommendation and it literally we've not met with our rep yet, but it just arrived. So, they're ready with their draft. I want to make sure it's compliant with Niola and then the last step gets to our legal counsel. The goal if Niola had actually got it sooner was to kind of talk about our policy tonight hit the communication scale so we can start saying this is what it'll be next year. So we're a little slowed down but I want to be compliant with Niola and the recommendations. But I will say once those are in place we are hopeful to bring that to you. We're hopeful to get that out on multitude of platforms and to parents and kids. And then I really mean this to our community and board. We will be compliant at Huntington Schools. We will be functional on how we deal with this.
Um but it tends to all come out in the wash. Thank you. >> I just want I just want to comment. I mean, I've been kind of involved watching coming attending um since this thing started and Mil was did a lot of that also. And it just to me it it's kind of indicative of our whole corporation because we have these meetings every month and we take tours and stuff and you just see us doing things that probably shouldn't be done in a town of this size. You know, we get stuff done. And even in this this in this program example where you know, you're saying to teachers, "Hey, would you come over to the academy? It's our first year, but you know, you might want to do that and maybe you'll slam the door behind you till you're old school and you know, so I mean to take that faith in our process and our kids and our faculty is just heart touching.
Didn't even see it happen. And that's that's just tremendous heads-up base running by Eva Vendetti. I looked down for half a second. Kyra does put one to the spot where she normally hits it opposite field a little liner, but that thing went foul and she's going to be up two and one right now after the foul ball down the right field line. On the positive side, you know, the Clockers are making a lot of contact. You know, we're not seeing uh, you know, strikeouts here. We're seeing a lot of contact being made and just a matter of getting that ball into the right place in the field to cause some damage and start to get some runs going. Kyra's up three and one right now after taking a low ball to Randall. She certainly would like to see a strike here and put a barrel on one.
So, the three different credits. Um, a lot of these are are earned through their um Allen County and their Flint Hills Technical College uh courses coursework that they take, which is often why they don't complete a pathway within our building is if they're taking those courses uh offsite, they're unable to take our courses, so they're not earning our our credits there. Um the uh another major piece of our technology plan is that we provide technology professional development as a district. Um we offer Allen County community uh classes uh to our staff. Uh we are hoping to offer four classes this summer. We're kind of waiting to get some enrollment reports back to make some decisions on that. Um in the past we've used uh some or we've earned some grants for uh technology training with our staff. Uh we do a lot of just in time training.
President, I move that the board go into executive session pursuit to the Kansas Open Meeting Act to discuss non-elected personnel for the topic of resignations, supplemental positions, certified staff, and classified staff to protect the privacy of an individuals to be discussed with Mr. Murphy present and returned in open session in this room. >> 655, please. >> 655. Second >> motion and a second. All those in favor say I. >> I. Any oppose? Same sign. We are back in open session. >> I move to approve the resignation of Kelly Felin as Wilson Elementary School first grade teacher at the end of the 2026 school year. >> I'll second. Motion by Alison, second by Josh. All those in favor say I. >> I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion passes. >> Are you I'll say >> y >> I move to approve the resignation of Shelley Sylvesta as Wilson Elementary School secretary at the end of the 2025 2026 school year.
We're staying at 12:30. >> And Mrs. Billy probably doesn't like it either. >> No comment. >> All right. Any additional questions for Miss Daniels? >> All right. Thank you. Item 6C1 is financial report ending April 30th. Mr. Livingston, >> president, members of the board, Superintendent Daniels Administration, guests, thanks for being here. Uh, a quick look at our April 30th financial position, a quick look at accounts, a quick look at cash balances. Our budget before this meeting was 19.3 million. budget after this meeting when we do a revision is a little higher 60,000 higher in our operating fund and and capital fund combined. So there was a little extra boost there 67,000 that we split between two funds. Um we have a quick quick look at these. If you look at the expense as as a percentage of the budget, the 16.4 million in our operation percent of the budget is 85% uh spent at the end of April.
Within the Dizert Instructional Protocol, one of the focal points is academic conversations because we know our kids are continually losing that the more they're in isolation with just technology. So, we will continue to focus on that and you see excellent examples in even kindergarten classes of students turning to each other and say saying, "I agree with you, but or I'm disagreeing with you." We will continue to put those things in with critical thinking. We have our document-based questions in social studies that present the two sides and students have to decide based on the facts what they believe is the answer and they're not graded on their opinion. We have essays to the point earlier. Any good teacher is going through giving kids feedback on each part of the process. You write a thesis statement, I'm going to give you feedback. You write the topic sentences, I'm going to give you feedback.
So, what we put together is um we looked at two high schools and the five intermediate schools and gave a couple options. And so, what I just wanted to kind of walk through was a few of the important aspects of of what this uh What you're seeing here is the first two uh high schools, and this would be roof-mounted installation at both locations. Now, these projects can be individual. So, I I want to start by saying that. We grouped them together for this uh part, but they are all potentially separate uh projects. All of which have unbelievable payback. And the payback comes from not only the huge energy savings because of as Rafael mentioned, the spikes that you're seeing in your utility costs, but also in the rebate money that's available and the um other IRA tax credit that's available along with the S Rex which if you're not familiar the S Rex stands for the solar renewable energy credit that is offered through ComEd because you are um continuing to pay utility bills um they are looking for ways to offset and so by you producing solar that helps them with the grid and so it's actually a renewable charge on everybody's bill even at home and this is one way of capturing something that everybody's been paying into for years and years and years and so um when we look at how this kind of breaks down the two high schools would be um considered large installations and what we mean by that is they're over um they're both over a megawatt DC and so the way solar works again power of the sun hits the solar panel there's a bunch of um energy energy transfers protons neutrons moving through and there's uh obviously some equipment inverters and things like that that transfer the equipment to AC which is the power that everybody uses uh to plug everything in and so when we talk about the size of the system we talk it about it in terms of DC which these two high schools would be a little over 2.2 megawatts with the AC almost uh 1.
Is there any discussion? All those in favor? That motion carries 5. All right. Next up is the Sycamore Elementary playground project. And look at that. Dr. Finley, you're up again. Thank you. When I first started, um, Mr. Rollinsson and Sheila always have a a top 10 list of projects that we need to get started and and things that are are in pretty immediate need of of change. And Sycore Playground was really at the top of the list. And we've been waiting to get through the school year. And you can see from the pictures the existing equipment that we have there. Every summer we have our insurance carrier um, hire a company to to ensure all of our playgrounds are safe. So they go around and inspect all the playgrounds and the last few years they continue to remove playground pieces from Sycamore. So at this point there's not really much left.
Are there controls or something that you're looking at to help make that decision um would be would be helpful. I don't necessarily feel like another committee is required. I'm not in favor of that, personally. I just feel like having a board member participate in the audits, we get finance reviews, we have access to you all. I agree with having that anything from the SBLA published to everybody is is reasonable. Um I just don't see the value in an extra committee as written today. Um so, that's my two points I'd like to make. I don't know who want You want to go next? I don't have a whole lot. I kind of want to echo Logan's remarks about not knowing all of the details about what has happened. Um Um for me, I think that would be helpful to know where it broke. And so, moving forward, how can we evaluate mistakes and errors and use that to improve the process?
Good job. >> Great job, guys. Thank you guys. >> Thank you. >> Impressive. >> All right. >> Okay. Thank you again for all the recognitions tonight. Uh we had several. Um uh it just goes to show there's a lot of great things in all different areas uh going on here this year. So um at this point um I am going to recess the uh regular meeting and we are going to open up the public hearing that we have tonight. U so at that point I want to start the public hearing now. Um I've got several things here to go through. Okay. So, uh the next item here is the preliminary hearing on the proposed project. Uh if you're interested in speaking at the hearing, please make sure that you have signed in on the signin sheet uh and include your name and address. After a presentation by the administration and its advisors, uh there will be an opportunity for the public to make comments about the project.
And then they'll attend the April school board meeting next year of where we'll actually have a graduation for our ambassadors. This is a program that I've wanted to start um to mainly get our community to know better of what happens behind the scenes at our school corporation. How do how are decisions made, um what kinds of things go into making those decisions and those kinds of things. So, we have you also have your packet the application. That's going to be an online application. We're going to put that on our website, but we just kind of wanted to share this with you. Some other school corporations across the state have done this, so this isn't a a originated idea for me, but it is something that I've wanted to do to really just get the community to connect with us and to get some people that are in our community that are our children um and our ambassadors.
And then our job is to educate children um in a multitude of areas. And so once the first two are in place, we go back to doing what we're paid to do here, which is we're going to work with kids. And this will be a change for some, but it won't be a big change for a lot. The watches will be a change. Uh a lot of kids have them. My kids had them. I mean, they're used to them. And so, the high school will be the the challenge for every district in the state. The K8 will be a modest change, but not a big one other than the watches. And what I've seen when legislation gets involved, um, be compliant, be functional, be reasonable, and then be consistent because kids can handle consistency, and then get back to teaching kids and taking care of what's important here.
Um, I remember the first year and I I think last year we had a I think most of the board was at the graduation and because I would we were pushing it so hard. The first year you really got to hear I mean there's less kids but there were some longer talks about how they got there and it was amazing just that you know that they that somebody cared. They had all kind of different life situations that that drove them that way. Um, and most of them broke your heart. But one of the things I remember most about that was, you know, the the obvious be surprised to get everybody male this year, but you know, the first year, I mean, there were like there's grandma and grandpa and the grandkids and brothers and sisters and the whole family was there and they're all most of them were in tears because in the impression because they don't know who we are.
Kyra takes ball four. Not something that she wants to do, but a walk there is just as good as a hit and I imagine you will see Larry Sasso get a courtesy runner for his catcher as he brings in senior tri-captain Taylor Kotch to come in and run for Caroline Kyra. Um, And the Mustangs come in and take a little conference with the coach. Now that we have two runners on on base trying to settle the team down, I'm sure. Um, you know, you'll get them back focused so that um, they prevent some runs being scored. Yeah, this is a good opportunity here for the Clockers to put something on the board. They're They're got their first two runners on, uh, first and second uh, with no outs. Number five hitter Lorelei Coletta who does have some power. Colette did hit her first fast pitch of the home run against Bellingham earlier in the year.