001Because work sessions are public We're recording We will just Jump right in I don't Anticipate this taking an hour and a half. I don't necessarily know that it will take an hour But this is information that we think is important to share with With you some of that I'm going to move through pretty quickly because we have talked about it before so We've talked about before community engagement meetings. Shane did a great job of this at our last board meeting. So just wanted to share that we did give information about this at our presentation to the RDC. We've shared this. How much will we need to cut? $3 million, $3.8 million, $1.1 million over the next three years. As of April 8th, we have made $3.3 million in cuts moving forward for the next school
002year. The one thing that I want to point out about these just a little bit more is the ones that have asterisks next to them, we really don't feel that we can make any more cuts in those areas. We have maxed those cuts out. So next steps, I want to talk about communication with legislators as well as looking at potential transportation adjustments for 27-28. So when we think about communication with legislators one of the things that we did I think pretty well this year was with those community engagement groups is Asking them to reach out to legislators. I think one of the areas that may have been untapped is sending an email to legislators or a letter to legislators on behalf of the school board So I'm getting ready here once we have confirmation from
003the town about what they're going to do I'm going to send a letter to our legislators letting them know that this is what we were doing These are still the requests we have and moving forward from there but I do wonder if once a month if we send a letter to our the people who represent Brownsburg not just always a here's what we need from you but also a here are the great things that are happening in our schools that we want you to be aware of it to me it's not always just a give I think it is you know give us give us give us I think it is a sharing of here are the amazing things that are happening in our schools that we would like you to be aware of so
004that is something I would like to consider moving forward maybe even starting as early as June as having that be something that we might do Basically being sent out to them I think so. Yeah, I Have in the past the only big communications that I've done with them is to send a copy of our state of the schools to all of our legislators with a handwritten note I've not heard back from any of them when I've done that but i still think it's important for them to see the things that we are doing you know whether it's information about fine arts athletics whether it is about some of the recognitions that we do the commendations before board meetings i just think it's really important that they understand that we are more than just 3305 brownsburg
005community school corporation which is our district number i i think that they need to have a better understanding of who we are at our core so Any other thoughts of things that we could do to reach out to legislators or? They've already had community outreach significantly. I mean, you had people go and reach out to them in person at some of the sit-down breakfasts and everything else. And I think the group of people who've come to community engagement. My intention is for us to continue to ask them to advocate for us. And it might not be with big meetings. It might be that we do a meeting in the fall where we share information, but then to continue to ask for people to advocate, I think, is something good. They want to. It seems like
006the desire is to give us a task. That's helpful. I do think that the more times that... Bronsburg Community School Corporation shows up on the desk even if you're not reading in great detail It's top of mind then when my stations come up What good will do if even that so they just keep ignoring you forever if they really want to they could Right, but what I want to be able to say is we have communicated effectively and I think that You know, Shane and I met with, either as a group or individually, we met with all four who represent Brownsburg last fall. So I feel good about being able to say that we've done that. I will say Representative Cash continues to be in touch and ask questions and offer support when she can.
007I've asked her after the primaries if she would be willing to sit down and hear. Just some concerns that have been shared about the teacher appreciation grant and how that was done this year. And I don't think that the concerns that we're hearing are specific to just Brownsburg. I think that they're specific across the state. They changed the way they do that program. And I think that there were, I think the, I don't know that the intent was clearly understood and nor do I think that the teachers found it to be. a very encouraging or no it just yeah not at all i said i don't know anyone right so while it's great if you were the recipient you feel guilty because the person that taught across the that teaches across the hall from you
008that maybe you even sat down and filled this application out with Didn't receive it and so then you can't be excited and you feel guilty and then that person's up You know, it just didn't go well for anybody and that's not what the design of that It's an appreciation grant. So It's just interesting that they've taken that middle word completely out of it with this new process I think I do think it's important. I know you guys have sat down with the legislators and But I think if we're asking community members We also need to say We're we're asking you to do it, but we're doing it to Like not ask somebody to do something. You're not willing to do yourself. So I'm not sure how you guys feel about that Totally agree. I have
009told our We had a community member who is really advocating to have some of the legislators in But it was also for some of them, it was going to be they're up for election during this primary. And I felt that we needed to wait until after the primary. Not because of whether they're going to be elected or not, but because I just didn't want to be a campaign forum for them. And so I think once we're finished with the first week of May, then I'm going to reach out to see if any of them would like to come in to one of our work sessions. Keep the focus where it needs to be. And I know some of us who sent personal messages, but I think coming from the whole statement from the board is
010what you're looking to do. Yeah, I'm start thinking. Monthly ongoing not until this issue is resolved but correct in perpetuity. I think it's a really good idea I mean, I think we we want to share our message and I think we have good things that are happening one of the things that I really want to Spend a little bit of time with with them is the whole Ball State study about This is what is expected of our students based on that that research that says you know, free and reduced, we would expect this type of a pass rate. And yet ours is significantly more than what they would expect. I just think what we, you know, I don't want to say we have a good product here because our product is children and they're not
011a product. But I think what we're able to offer our families and our students is really good. And I think that that needs to be recognized as we're doing a lot with what we have. But as you go on throughout the year, too, there might be some things like the teacher that you can say, hey, we followed this. The new guidelines maybe didn't work as well as you thought. Here's my suggestions for next year. And then at least it's in their mind and they can think about it and chew on it. And maybe if they get to the point where they're trying to make some decisions in the future that they would think to, hey, they might have an opinion on this. Maybe we'll give them a call and see what they have to say.
012Yeah, or I remember Brownsburg sent us this mail on this. Yeah. So, yeah, but that would be what I would think. Then the next thing, wanting to talk a little bit about potential reductions in 27-28 for transportation. So not this upcoming school year. We think that this needs to be something that we give families enough time because this would be a change. But as we are looking at reducing, again, $3.8 million, this would be a good place for us to start that is spread across the district. So I'm going to let Shane go ahead and talk about this. I'm just going to jump into the next slide. Yeah, that's great. So kind of what we're talking. Well, you saw the list kind of run through what that means mix here if you have any questions
013As we dive in this is not really a time for us to you know, well we can talk about what three-tier routing is We don't have exactly what that plan would look like yet. That's something that we would put in place and really have Nick and his team start to work on. They already are. But right now we do what I consider two-tier busing. And so essentially is that we either have a secondary route and an elementary route. So you can go drive a secondary route, you drive kids off to middle school, you're going to head out, pick up some elementary kids, come back, and then that's your route. So we kind of have two tiers for busing. and which is one of the reasons why like our start time at the middle school and
014high school are somewhat close so Bell starts first bell for middle school 735 750 at the high school level so and again that's because we have enough drivers going out to split up high school and middle school to pick those kids up and come back they're not the exact same time because it's way too much on campus to go all the buses back at that all the same but then those folks go back out for elementary. That is nice because we can keep those times pretty consistent when starting, but it does require us to have more routes, more buses, more drivers. So a cost-saving measure for us would be a three-tier system, and essentially you have designated routes, each for elementary, middle school, and high school. And the bell, and that means that the bell
015schedule essentially has to be about an hour apart. And that's an example. That doesn't mean that's what we, that's an example where if you look at what we have right now, which is middle school, high school, elementary, you would have middle school at 7.15, high school at 8.15, elementary at 9.15. And essentially what that is doing is you're taking the drivers and they're going out and back three times. So it's the same bus, same route. You don't have as many going out at the same time. But you have enough time in between in order to make sure you get out and get back within that 60 minutes. One thing that Nick and I have talked about with this potential model. is to eliminate the number of routes, we'd actually have more opportunity to look at
016that 80 minute mark at our northern tier. So in order for us to get there and maybe get back from the hour, we'd have to split that up. We may not have as many full buses, but that's something that could be a give back to the community if this was a change, is that we would look at that northern tier and try to get them at about a 60 minute. We probably wouldn't adjust the overall time. We'd still say board policy asks for 80 minutes just to give us the flexibility, especially in the afternoons. um but we think that that could be one an issue that i know has been popular here in the board meeting that that could potentially be a solution we think that would offer us about 1.3 million dollars in savings
017i think that nick was at nine routes or how many routes i think it was about nine routes we feel like that we could eliminate for sure just from that going for the three-tier busing again this is nice because it does provide and 1.3 is a substantial number towards that 3.8 you know almost about a third of the way there. And it does spread that evenly really across PK through 12 because this would also look at maybe impacting the early childhood center as well since they do receive transportation. You know, Nick has a lot of retirements each year, so we do also think this would be through attrition, that we wouldn't have to go to bus drivers and say, sorry, you can no longer work here. Nick, you know, we have sub buses and drivers
018and things, so we really feel like this could be accomplished through attrition. But early start time, especially when you think about... At the secondary level, they say the later the better. We are bound a little bit by some constraints, especially with our Area 31 partnership. We can't move completely away from certain times, especially at the high school level, because we have to make sure that we get kids to and from Area 31. And then also, you talk about athletics is in there as well. But that would obviously be an issue starting earlier and later on both ends. And that would obviously have a major impact on all of our families. So again, and because of Area 31 schedule, the high school route would either need to be the middle or the last in order to
019make sure we could still get kids to and from so they could participate in Area 31. So what questions would you have on that? All right, so maybe I got this right. You said 715 would be middle school, high school, right? Middle school, 715. And then high school is 815. And elementary, 915. Maybe. Maybe. But the high school routing would need, at the very end of the day, for Area 31, would have to be? It would either be middle, like the middle. So the 715 option is not possible for the high school. Okay. The earliest option would not be possible. It has to be either the second or last. Yes. And same thing. 15 is early enough to get those area 31 kids there. Just like now, we have kids that have to get to
020the school earlier to catch the bus, so that would still be the case. And then they'd get back and be able to finish the day with us for the afternoon. Gotcha. So start times would be 9, 15, but like drop off would be like 9 o'clock-ish type thing. Is that that thought process? Yeah, we do about, yeah, roughly 15 minutes. Okay. Would it be better if we started on the hour versus a 15? So the question with that is if we do an 80-minute bus ride and we start at 7 o'clock, that first bus pickup is at 540 in the morning. Okay. So that's why we said 715. 715, so it would be like 6 o'clock-ish. Correct. Okay. That's where we would try to eliminate the 80 to 60. It's not a guarantee. And so
021we still would have a substantial amount of savings there. But again. It would be great if we could make this switch but not pick kids up earlier than what we already do. I'm just trying to think about people like you at least want the high school or somewhere in the middle in case they got to help with younger kids coming home. It's like the younger kids be last. I think that this is a situation where if we decide we're going to move to this, we need to get community feedback on this. This would be. sending out questionnaire from parents, figuring out a way to very clearly explain this, maybe offer some evening sessions that we could go through and explain this, and then allow feedback from the community on this. I don't think that this
022is something that we want to make a decision without. And this was, if I remember right, it was $800,000-ish in terms of savings? It's about 1.3. Oh, I'm sorry. And the assumption is that there will be challenges with this that we can't identify until we... So I would say one of the first things I would recommend that we would do would be to talk to Avon. Because Avon is a three-tier bus system. Now what's interesting about theirs is it's not necessarily elementary, middle school, high school specific. It is this elementary. These elementaries are part of tier one. Yeah, equal schools at each tier. Yeah, so an equal number, but... But of course they're not a campus community thing though either, right? They're spread out a little further. They are more spread out, yes. Is anybody
023doing it like this that we're compared to? Many people do three tier, but they don't keep all the elementaries on one tier. So they're doing it like Avon is? Correct. Decatur Central is doing the same thing. They just communicated it out, their changes. So they'll run like a high school and two elementaries, middle school or two and two elementaries, and then all elementaries to keep the number of buildings the same. So Decatur had to do a cost savings just like the rest of us? Oh, sure. All schools are. They've got a much higher cash balance than I'll say in a referendum, but yes. So if we went to, if we evened it out, would that save us more money because you have fewer buses? Potentially. My other question is, and I know a lot of
024our comparable schools have done this, is a lot of studies show that the high schoolers should go last and the elementary kids should go first. High schoolers tend to stay up late. Need to sleep in Elementary kids they wake up at the crack of dawn no matter what time they go to bed And so I would suggest that we consider those studies and our academics At this time if we're gonna make this change we might as well look at it at all Also cat and I were talking about the SAT scores at the high school and the potential applying our process that we use at the elementary and the junior high apply it to the high school and the only way to do that Kat says is this everyone has a study hall so that
025we can then say hey Johnny needs help here this is what we're gonna Johnny on and Susie needs help here this and so that would be another possibility to integrate that into this if we're gonna redo all the schedules maybe we can Kill several fish right birds with those one stone Yeah, no, I definitely think that that would be part of that community process Yes of putting all this on the table and having that conversation Maybe we give it our best shot and say here's what we'd like to do now. I understand you have the issue with High schoolers being there for the elementary kids, but you also have that same issue in the morning the question is and Nick could probably address this is what's it like to put a elementary kid out there
026at 6 a.m. in the morning. Yeah. Especially if we, with the next slide probably, is what we'll call the parent responsibility zone. One could call this a walking zone, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to walk. So we've kind of adjusted the name there, but that's really what we're saying is that we would look to go back to increase the Zone of which we will not be providing a bus. It was a half month. We would reduce it to a half mile everywhere would be Look at increasing it back to a mile for elementary and then extend that to one and a half miles for secondary Do you know how many? Roughly in a snapshot in time how many kids that would affect or do you I mean, I know that's a hard question
027You had the number of routes right number route, okay, which is how many Four. Four. So then if you think of the full route of 60 kids on a bus. Okay. So, you know. 240 kids. Four total. So nine, so four buses, it'd be nine routes. Oh, that's right. So it'd be equivalent to four buses. So it'd be like nine routes spread out K through 12. Would it not be one route for every elementary school? Because we have some elementary schools that do not have any walking or any parent responsibilities. For example, like Lincoln Elementary does not. So it would mainly affect Cardinal because you have Thornburg and Bursak Crossing, Delaware Trail. And we're going to show you some maps about that. So the restrictions here, it's a couple of adjustments from what we used
028to do. And number one is mile and one and a half mile-ish. So we have strict lines here that we would not cross 136, we would not cross 267. So even if you fell within that range like you probably would fall into that range from Brown Elementary if you had north But really we would keep it keep it south of 136. It's just not safe for kids The other thing is we used to go as a mile it would if you had two homes and the mile line was here you Did not receive transportation. You received the bus And so what we are looking at now is, when I say ish, is that what's the neighborhood that is about one mile or one and a half miles, and it would be that entire neighborhood, essentially,
029that would fall under the same zone. That way it's not just such a clear-cut line where, why am I no better or better than this person sitting next to me? So we would try to do that as a neighborhood. Is it going to be based off the boundary of the edge of the school or center of the school to, like, a walking path? Or is it just like a radius? It's really as the crow flies, right? So radius. And then it captures the neighborhoods that fall within the guidelines that we've established, and that's what we capture within that zone. are we taking into account sidewalks and walking paths and other things too because if they don't if they did not have a sidewalk that connected then you can't not include it okay good and then
030that one and one and a half how does that compare i know it used to be longer and then we shortened it it was a mile for everyone but now it's a half mile okay so when was that that was seven 19 i believe yeah we changed that okay right about why yeah I was probably the one that fought it the most. I'm going to be honest. I probably was the only one. So here are maps. I mean, again, the best map that we can provide here, but you can see this is Brown Elementary. The red outline would include the neighborhoods of which that would fall within the parent responsibility zone. So in Brown Elementary, you can see is the red little tag there. I'm not sure what the yellow tag is. Current bus stops
031that we added when we went to a half. That's right. Okay So we now have bus stops in there because those are the three that are affected That doesn't include all of the kids that will be walking just the kids who started walking seven years ago Utilize of us so you might have some kids that walk instead of walking to school the walk out to a bus stop, right? Okay, whatever reason But yeah, so those are the three bus stops that we added in 2019. Okay. The one to the north there, that goes to Brown Elementary, right? Yes, this is all Brown. Gosh, I've got to start looking at the labels. I'm sorry. And then this one. So then you go to Cardinal. So the school is over there. It's the red dot. Again, this
032is Cardinal and Delaware Trail, but this would just be the neighborhood that would walk to Cardinal specifically. So again, you can see this one has quite a few bus stops in it. What happens with registered sex offenders? How does that play into this? So we don't allow them to walk in front of their house. And so that's something that we check every 60 days. So we check for buses. What is our check for walkers? We also check for walkers, too, because if they have to cross in front of one, then we will have a bus stop on the other side, even if they are in a walking area. Okay. And you communicate that to parents? Yeah. And luckily, I mean, there is a way around so they do not have to walk around their house.
033Well, and there may be a restriction that they can't live within so much close to a school. Yeah. And because we are a campus setting, that helps us. Sure. Because most of our walking areas are within that. And you said that's monitored every 60 days. Okay. That's Cardinal. Go back, please. That section to the north there, it looks like it's cut out of Thornburg neighborhood, right? The north directly behind Delaware? Is that right? That red line? Yes, because that would be Hunter's Cove that goes to White Lake. Ah, okay. So that is actually the Cardinal around the red. That is the red attendance boundary for Cardinal. Okay. And then this is Crossroads, Delaware Trail. Can you talk about the red box at the bottom? It seems challenging. I don't see a sidewalk path, but I'm
034sure that I'm missing one. There is a sidewalk path, yeah. So you can do a couple of things. You can walk to the west and then walk through Bursak Crossing to Delaware Trail, or you can walk to the east and then go up Northfield Drive. And then go up to Bruins and then head up to Bruins. That looks like a very small number of children. Which would be my concern. There's a lot of them actually walk down the same road too. That is the apartment complex. So it's actually more than I would expect. Yeah. If I had to guess, like 20, under 20. So we don't have a full bus by any means. But they wouldn't be walking alone is what I'm thinking. Correct. They go right in front of the dog park and just
035on that side is usually where I see them. They usually go to the left. It would be nice if there was a sidewalk south of the dog park, but there is not. But yeah, there is a sidewalk to connect to Delaware. Okay, thank you. Eagle and then Reagan. As I said, Lincoln does not have walkers. And then Whitelick. Can you go back to Reagan for one second? Sure. So, but there are no homes, geography is not my strong suit, that is. If this is oriented correctly, south of, is it airport? Correct. So anybody south of airport would be bused to Lincoln, Reagan. No, they would be walking to Delaware Trail. Oh, gosh, okay. That makes sense. Okay, so this is Reagan. You say it's got Lincoln up there on it. Google Maps. I couldn't do
036anything. Okay, so that's interesting. So where is it? Reagan and Lincoln are connected. yes i i know yeah but where does the lincoln kids come from lincoln has no neighborhoods within a mile of their school really because they all walked to reagan so the the when we did the redistricting we were going to change you from a walker to a walker to go from reagan to lincoln and we the committee made the decision that we would not move kids just to move kids for that So the kids that go to Lincoln are 86th Street or something? They're all over. So they do lock up apartments on the southwest side, go up to Golf Course Westchase, that area. I'm trying to think of all the routes. Rosemont is Lincoln. Got it. But 86th Street, that is
037all Crossroads. So all of that area is Crossroads. now east of east of asa or east of 67 along 86th street so yeah white lick and and matt you can see here that cut out which was yeah there's a go get your underscored and then those are the new trail ends of town homes they're on 267 across from the cannons the bottom the bottom okay the bottom square and there is a sidewalk that goes all the way to thornburg and they can take thornburg up to hunter's cove and then walk and we have about 25 kids right now in trails in And then we do the same for the middle schools. And again, this is, you have to zoom out farther because it's a mile and a half. Right. So if you think about the
038red tag there, you can see that's east. So we are really at the southernmost portion of the district here. Does that mean Northfield? Northfield, yeah. What's the projected time for these kiddos to walk a mile and a half? Yeah. Well, I can tell you what it is for mine. I mean, from my house to Hardin Elementary is four and a half minutes to the front door, nine and a half minutes to Brownsville West Middle School, 18 minutes to the high school. So that's what we do. But you'd think they'd walk, what, a 15-minute mile roughly? So figure 22 and a half, if they're moseying, 25. And they do find shortcuts in places, too. Oh, sure. Sure. And then this is West Middle School, the high school. It's so interesting to see it drawn out that
039way. So really the high school is a combination of west and east. But whoever lives north of 136 has got it pretty good there, don't they? No, but it's a good safety. It is a good safety. Same thing, 267. You don't want anybody going across that either. Really, Brownsburg High School shows you almost the boundaries of the roads that we wouldn't want to cross with 267. Right, yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. That looks like a lot of work. Appreciate being able to see it that way. And they've got a wall with chart paper and post-its for every bus and what it all looks like. So they're doing a lot of work on their side for sure. And this will be implemented until not this upcoming year, but potentially the next year, right? That's correct.
040Okay. In order to get folks, what we'd see is if we made the announcement, give people about a year notice, then provide the time for some feedback on it. So schedules and things when we think about the three-tier busing. So if we do both of these and that's two million of the 3.8? Yes. Okay. That's a good start. Especially that doesn't impact any educational programs that or staffing that we were downstaffed in this year too. Do we anticipate any educational impact? For next year? If they're walking. I mean, I think with all of them, there's the question of late arrivals. I think when you have kids that are going to turn from bus riders into, not all of those kids are going to turn into walkers. Because mom and dad will take them. Mom and
041dad will take them. So then you have the risk of late pickups, which I would rather have a late pickup than a late arrival to school. Because then at least you're... I just wondered if you'd looked at any studies because it seems logical to me that actually they'd be more awake and alert if they actually have to get out and walk. They certainly would. 15 degrees, they would be alert. But that also, that is another consideration. And consider it will be, you know, would that impact our decisions on to our delays when it comes to wind chill, when it comes to the amount of snow that we receive and sidewalks and such. So that could certainly have an impact. Yeah, it's now the sidewalks aren't cleaned. When we reduced it to half a mile back
042in the day, I remember there was a significant amount of grants that were available at the time for people to promote walking. Do you find any of those out at this moment? One of the big things that you see out is the bike bus, bus bike. What's it called? It's one of those, isn't it? It's where... A group gets together and they ride their bikes in. Yeah. And you have an adult who starts it and... You could also do that walking as well. Yeah. And then have a group leader and then just go pick up kids and they all walk together. Right. Okay. And there's funding available for that sort of program? And wasn't there also something else for supplying your crosswalk guards with, like, gears and the little hand things as well? That is
043something that we do work in cooperation with the town of Brownsburg. Okay. So that would just be more that we would talk to them about. All right. They don't supply the police officers with direct traffic, do they, in the mornings to the high school? I thought that was us. That's us. That's our people. Now the town will provide us reimbursement for our staff who are out there like before they clock in clock out if we were a crossing guard. Yeah. Um, but we pay for any of the officers that are out and about that are directing traffic. Okay. Is that something that the townships could donate towards? Cause you were saying that it has to be a safety thing. Yeah. Um, no, because it is not what they would say with anything. I actually, that's
044a, I don't know. I know most of my questions have been about our police force, not the contracted police, so I'd have to explore that. I do think that we did find an avenue for townships to explore through McKinney-Vento, which is our students who experience homelessness. And again, if you were a student who experienced homelessness and you moved to your temporary housing is with a relative in Carmel, but your home district is Brownsburg. We still have to provide transportation to you to Brownsburg during that transition time. So oftentimes instead of sending a bus, that's where we utilize the car service. And Nick ran numbers. That is, for this year, was about $315,000 in transportation services just for the McKinney-Vento program. So we do think that that is an area attorneys have given us a little
045bit of a green checkmark on of an option for townships to be able to spend their money in the area of our students' experience in homelessness. But you were saying that the town pays for the crossing cards, and I'm wondering if that could be migrated to the townships. Townships. now it is dollars a day okay so it's it i'm with you it is not i'm not sure it's tens of dollars a day um it might be tens of dollars in a week so it is a very very small okay i'm sorry another random question prior to this part mckinney vento what's our further student right now i would probably have to say close to downtown indy so like on the west side so right now we are not going that far okay yeah but it
046could change tomorrow right you just what's the farthest you've done for brownsburg uh green castle we've had to do green castle we've had to do the east side of indianapolis um like east of geist reservoir okay before we used to have a bus that left here at four o'clock in the morning and we get pulled over about once a week because they thought that it was stolen so Yeah, Mark, Mark, you got done with that. But yeah, so the east side of Indianapolis was probably the farthest. Greencastle was about an hour. We've had to go down to Canby quite often. Went to Mooresville a handful of times. So right now, relatively close. Another option within transportation, again, is right now we provide transportation. If there is a fee, if you're a non-IEP student at our
047preschool, you can pay a transportation fee. What I will tell you is the fee that we charge does not cover the entire fee that would really what it would cost Nick and his crew to provide that transportation. But one option is that we can eliminate transportation period for kiddos at the early childhood center outside of those who have an IEP. and that's about three or four routes that we would save it's not fully funded and those routes would just essentially go back to the elementaries so we would utilize those drivers to help with the elementary level again this just cost savings but certainly would could have an impact of the number of peers who enroll at the early childhood center if we do not have the enrollment at the early childhood center then that means
048we would cut back on staff so that would be the staff impact the domino effect there if we're not providing transportation, how many kids then would not be able to attend the early childhood center and then we'd look at numbers and then that could impact. What's the normal start time for the early childhood center right now? Same as elementary. And then you have that midday. It's just half day. So they're usually, are they mostly picked up by parents anyway at this point or grandparents or is it still a lot of bus? We have six bus routes. Really? Yeah. For morning and afternoon. Currently the bus routes include both students with IEPs and the peers on the same buses. So you'd still be running some buses, just less full. Well, you'd be running less so we're
049looking at probably two to three buses. They would pick up more students on one bus then if you had. Yeah, we would just have less kids on, you know, because we transport more that do not have IEPs currently. And the bus route might get longer as you try to travel further distance to pick up kids to make it a little bit more full. Are there aides on those buses? Yeah. So you're saying you don't have a number up there, but it's just cost savings because they're paying something. What another option be for them to just to flip the whole? Good, it's a lot of mm-hmm We can't charge IEP students though that right, so it's great great. No, I'm not I'm asking if that's an option. I guess you know that's we have to provide
050that Do we have any idea what the full cost might be for student? What that would be different? Per student based on the distance that they but yes We could calculate kind of using the same ECA rate as far as how much of a bus would travel with that route And then kind of look at the number of kids that would travel but I don't make it like an average basic Yeah, I'm not even sure we're charging half So it's probably prohibitive to ask for an entire It would certainly be prohibited Now that's also It's not required service, but I will tell you that the amount of headaches that we do not have at the kindergarten level based on being able to get kids assimilated to school at that early childhood center, I know that
051the elementary principals would say certainly is impactful to them, not only just from a behavior standpoint, but the academic standpoint. Outside of the IEP kids, this is all kids, is that the service and the skills of those kids learned at that level, even just how to be in school, is certainly worthwhile. Don't we take more of a, we have a certain age, especially this one, more of a safety risk, not providing them with the busing on this particular area. I understand the whole elementary and up. But even one year below elementary, wouldn't it be less? I would say, I don't know that this is one of our top choices, but what we wanted to do was bring all of the transportation links to you. This is probably, in my mind, the lowest on the list.
052But for us to not have it here, we felt it would be remiss for us to not include it. And there's no walking zone for preschool. That's not a thing. We have families who want their children. I was worried about the busing, actually. Not because they're required to. Because they've chosen to. And then every year you hear us talk about ECA rate that we approve. Again, we have a calculation that we use and figure out internally based on the entire cost of the fleet. Goes on the entire year kind of the cost of maintenance wear and tear on buses All those things that we come out to a number per mile that we feel like it costs us to run a bus and then we also have and this is certainly accurate the dollar amount
053that it would cost us for the for the driver Prior to coming to you with that approval amount we kind of look to see what did we approve last year and what seems like an appropriate increase where might be 60 70 cents shy of what our actual number is we feel like that's too much to ask so we you know maybe we'll do that a quarter this year knowing that might do a quarter next year which is kind of how we have run that increase at the board board approval i think we do that in november is that right so something that we're considering at the eca level is charging the full amount and we could go back and adjust that again we typically like to give folks about a year's notice on this that
054way they have opportunity to impact fees they charge if it's you know performing arts and athletics you know they all get charged this rate field if you're going on a field trip Oftentimes the PSGs are covering that cost on behalf of the students. But again, it would be a higher fee that the PSGs would have to charge. So right now it's not a huge number, but when we look at the difference, so if we went with last year, the amount of trips and total mileage at the rate that we did charge versus the full amount, the difference there is about $25,000. And that $25,000 would just basically be right back into the pockets of our families that we would ask them from or our athletics performing arts groups. Okay. So it's $25,000 for ECA trips
055and $10,000 for school day field trip transportation. And that would be averaged amongst all the sports and extracurricular activities and stuff accordingly, or is it? per the base individual bus trip type thought process? It is charged per individual trip. And then that's billed then back to athletics, band, choir, orchestra, whomever is the specific. Yes. And then field trips go directly back to the school. Field trips, we do kind of have a... All right, this, for instance, this would be, this is what it costs to go this amount of mileage with this driver to this location. That is divided by the number of students that are in the class. And if we were going to charge the students, that's how we determine how much they would charge, is the total amount by the kids. Like I
056said, oftentimes the PSG picks it up. We would not, like athletes and our kids in performing arts are not probably charged. Per trip they are just assessed a fee at the beginning like the participation fee in athletics, which is $100 That money is really what the athletic department uses to help cover the cost of transportation So if it's going to be an increase in dollars for athletics and band and it's probably an increase in those fees that they're Assessing back to the kids. So I'm hearing is we need to have more home type activities as much as possible and stressing that. I will say we have seen that with our new facilities. We're not traveling out. We're staying home and hosting more of those things. So that has been helpful. It's not an option for
057everything. It's not an option for everything, but it's a nice thing to stress. And then this was one that, again, right now Alpha starts on... Let me ask you a question about sports just because when we have a situation like the swim team has to go. Because the pool is down or track and field is gonna have to go because track and field is down Is that taken into account it is we load that in the construction cost. Okay, perfect. Excellent. That's it's not their fault That's part of the budget. Love it. Okay construction And I think this is the last last transportation site. Yep, but right now I believe alpha Nikki after it starts on elementary ends at the high school so in that We would essentially say can you move it to full
058elementary. The reason, and Kat, you probably could better describe why we've done that. We've done that because our teachers do not get a prep during the course of the time students are there. So by having the time students are there just slightly shortened, it allows us to give prep period to our teachers before the school day begins. We believe we are going to do some things differently in Alpha, so we would be able to do those preps during the course of the school day. So that would be one reason for us to be able to do this. And then additionally, it saves us a bus route because when you're using high school one. and you don't have a partner or an elementary one and you don't have a partner to it it it throws off
059the the symmetry of the bus and causes an extra route so that is alpha so those are all of the transportation things that we've come up with at this point um moving on our timeline is really to provide 12 months of notice so we would like to be able to talk to people about this potentially as early as August of this year. We can certainly reverse the decision based on legislation if legislation comes through and we wouldn't have to make this move. We do believe it's important for us to take feedback from the community and provide information about, you know, this is what studies say about start times for kids and sleep for kids and those type of things. But we would want to be able to begin providing information to families as well as
060getting feedback from families. at the beginning of next semester and then finally i think one of the things that are is going to be very important to to all of us in the district as we look at next year is really how do we support our staff when we know that we have fewer staff members next year than we do this year we're going to do that by keeping school day meetings to a minimum analyze processes to make appropriate adjustment and expectations and responsibilities We know people are going to be doing more, so if there are things that we can take off people's plates, then we're going to do those. We're going to work with our PSG groups. I actually meet with our PSG presidents on Monday to ask them about additional volunteers. Can we
061get people who can make commitments to coming in to maybe support midday when we're needing help in the office? So things like that, we're going to ask them. And then certainly going to assess the effectiveness with the loss of positions and to determine long-term staffing. We are asked on a regular basis, if funding changes, will you bring all of these positions back? And our answer has been, we don't know if we're going to get funding back, so we don't want to answer that question. But I definitely think that we will need to evaluate. I don't think that this is a... Funding changes and we put everything back on the table. I think we need to be very cautious and very We need to pay very close attention to what we bring back if we bring
062things back Selective yes, because if you find out that whatever cut you made didn't really impact anything Why would you why would you be able to that because I think that there are gonna be other areas that that we're gonna end up Needing to bring things back so like for instance right now We know through attrition our number of elementary teachers is going to be less next year than it is this year Okay We also know that our number of special education teachers next year is going to be higher than the number of special ed teachers we had this year and so in some ways it's taking the amount of dollars that we have and using them in areas where we need we needed to shift dollars and do that so We started to have
063those conversations already. So that's where we are. That's what we have for you. Any questions? When we start implementing this, are you going to have some of the nice sessions kind of like what we're doing now about budgets? It'll be a monthly meeting, bi-monthly, stuff like that? What I think that we would probably do is we might just have some... what you call them, like a town hall meeting where we have, we're going to do the same presentation three or four times, but we'll do it at different locations and at different times so that people want to come in and learn about it. You're not going to hear anything different. And I think one of the things that we found to be effective is having our very good friend, Jason Starkweather, record them and then
064put them on the website for people to see. So that way if you can't come at the time, but you want to watch it at 3 o'clock in the morning, there it is available for you. an on-demand society we are we are but then i think it's going to be really important that we get feedback from the community um you know i think that there are certainly things that we could recommend here are some different scenarios and then ask for feedback on those i think that that would be because what we don't want to do is say what do you want it to have happen and then the number one choice is high school's first thing in the morning when we know that high school can't be first thing in the morning because of area
06531 right so yeah that's not it did you have an online survey or how would you that's what we would need to do yeah yeah so the people that even if they don't make the meetings they can still watch their feedback and give their feedback absolutely the only thing we opened up the community engagement meetings the entire community the only thing with this one is you probably limited to the school community because only the school families would be the one impacted by transportation so if i did my math sort of right So we're over $2 million. How much shortfall does that still leave us? We have some other ideas to share, but honestly some of those have to do with staffing. It's not eliminating staff. It's to look at doing some things different with staffing,
066and we are looking to do an executive session so we can talk through those. Okay. And so the timeline is that we would start having these conversations in August if the legislation requires? We're going to have to do them regardless of what legislation does. Okay. Because legislation we're not going to know until next spring. Right. So I think it is highly likely that we would make a recommendation to do this probably in June. So that we can hit the ground when we get back to school to start having those community meetings and then getting feedback from the community. So they would have one full calendar year to prepare. But we could plan all of this throughout the fall with the plan of rolling it out. But if the legislature comes through, gives us our waiver
067back, for example, or whatever. then we can scrap we we could but this might be another thing that we decide that this might be a better yeah this might be a better option bring something back that was eliminated keep this that means the following year we still have another 1.1 million that one is if there's anything on that list that is the potential of not happening that would be a they did push the lit dollars to 2029. But they could still eliminate it then, but I do think that is at least some conversation surrounding how do we allow the local units to keep that if they already have it. So that could be something that is taken care of for us. When would we know? It'll be the 2027 session because they would consider it
068a budgetary item. So that's the reason why they kind of pushed it aside. They extended it this year, but they wouldn't make that determination probably until next spring. So really a year from now, end of April or early May. And can you share what the plan is for the next community session? Is it a tentative session, or where are we at with that? Certainly. The next session was scheduled for this Wednesday. We have notified the group that we are not having that meeting, that we are tentative with that. I would believe our next communication with the community engagement group would be following the May 14th. Town Council, Joint Town Council, RDC Township, Brownsburg Community School Corporation meeting. So are you thinking like the Wednesday that's wanting it? If we might be able to not have
069a meeting, we might be able to share information via email. We could do video message or something, you know, anything there. So no meeting this week? We could do a commercial. Yeah. That would be fantastic. Great. What do you need from us right now? Right now, I don't think that we need anything. I do want to make sure that you are aware from Friday notes of the upcoming retirement parties and the upcoming Teacher of the Year Support Staff Member of the Year event. If you're able to attend those, we'd love to have you at those. And beyond that, I'm happy. Making sure that as you review this continue to reach out with any other questions you might have You guys see this sometimes we are this close to it So, you know you seeing it
070through a little bit different lens is important and think through maybe even Have questions that we didn't consider or perspectives that we don't really even have can see so I think continuing to look through this and see if there's anything else that you can think of from this perspective of transportation, because obviously the one thing that we would want to do is get to a spot where we're ready to ask for a motion and don't have everyone on the same page. So I think that's something that we want to make sure that you do as well, is keep us informed with any questions or concerns that you have. You know we do. I know we do. Important. We appreciate that. All right. Then finally, I just want to thank Nick for all of his behind-the-scenes
071work and for being here tonight. And then, of course, thanking Jason Starkweather behind the camera. And now I think we're finished. Okay, great. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you.