001class. [laughter] where he's at. Say the pledge with us 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. Good job. [cough and clears throat] >> All right, we'll go and spotlight school. >> Ready for us? >> We're ready. >> Good evening. I'm Amy Sutton. I'm the proud principal of JB Stevens. So, um, as many of you know, we did some restructuring at the elementary level last year and added fourth grade back into the elementary schools, which was a welcomed surprise for us and pleasant surprise for us because it just meant that we got to hang on to our third graders who we knew and loved for an additional year. One of the um district goals and
002also goals of the building leadership was to make sure that we offered as many opportunities in elementary that these students that going into fourth grade would also would have gotten at the intermediate level. Um so I would like to mention a couple of those successes that we've had. Um we do have our Cougar Juniorbots program going which is our robotics club that's led by Jen Stewart. She's doing a wonderful job leading them. Um we also have math bowl happening right now. So we've got a team composed of math bowl. They are preparing for their competition in April. Julie Moley and Heather Cookie are leading those programs. Um they're fourth grade teachers at JB. And behind me we have our student council which is the first student council that has been there since I've been there.
003Um they're led by my PE teacher Aaron Stevens. So this group of kids behind me meet in our conference room once a month to make some big decisions um for our school. We're really proud of them. So, um, at this time I am going to turn it over to Corey Gilman, our dean of students, who's been helping looking over these ECA programs to tell you a little bit more about it. >> Yeah, thank you. So, we were looking to really build our student leadership [clears throat] this year and we have got a great bunch of kiddos led by our fantastic very own Aaron Stevens who not only teacher of the year at JB Stevens this year, but also just a fantastic leader for our students as not only is she developing that leadership skills in
004her PE in the gym classroom all the time. We're seeing it in action in that conference room as these kiddos are taking charge. We're kind of building that within. It's really been fantastic to watch her kind of take our third and fourth graders and to get them to take that action, identifying those things to [cough] make those positive impacts in our school and have that ability to help them run with it. [cough] Just building that early, seeing those smiles on their faces and hearing what the kids think the teachers want has been a great thing moving forward. And I'm really excited to see the things that we continue to look forward for this year that you're going to hear a little bit about here in just a moment. And our third graders hopefully continuing on
005into next year and keeping this going strong. I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Stevens to kind of lead the way. [laughter] >> You guys stand come up here. I'm Aaron Stevens. Uh like they said, I am in charge of student council. Um come up close. >> Okay. Hello, sir. Um, I'm gonna have them introduce themselves real quick. Um, so starting with Charlie or David, we can go down the line. >> My name's David and my favorite food is French fries. >> My name's Kayen and my favorite food is pizza. >> My name My name is Callen and my favorite food is pizza. My name is Bailey and my chicken. >> My name is Charlie and my favorite food is pizza. >> My name is Kennedy and I don't really have >> My name
006is Lyla. >> My name is Katie. My name is Evelyn. >> All right. And we have some students that are going to speak about what student council is. What is the student council? A team that helps our school event better. The student council is a group of students who work together to make our school fun and friendly. We plan activities, listen to ideas, and help everyone feel included. The importance of the student council, planning activities, and listening to everyone. The student council is an essential because we create exciting activities, volunteer, and we ensure every student's voice is heard. By working together, we make our school a more fun place. Being a part of the council, teamwork, leadership, and having fun. Student council means working together with friends, developing leaders, leadership skills, and having fun while
007making a difference. We make our school amazing together. Fun events. PJ and Popcorn Day. Student Council presents Friday, January 23rd, PJ and Popcorn Day. Wear your P PJs for the for $1. Enjoy popcorn at lunch for five cents. Volunteering vet say and PTO movie night. Volunteering Valentine's Day dance >> school improvement project opt recycling for Riley Hospital assisting custodians upcoming project show literacy night field day unified champions teacher appreciation week and student gifts Thank you. Together we make our school awesome. >> And we'd like to give you a chance to ask our student council any questions you might have about any of those upcoming events that they kind of talked about or any of those projects that they kind of shared with us. Giving them that chance to show off those cool things that we
008really have been working hard for. >> I have a question. [clears throat] What event are you most excited about that's still to come? >> Um, appreciation. >> I heard it real loud so we can all hear. I heard it. >> Um, teacher appreciation week. >> Helping helping with field day. >> Helping with field day. >> I I know. I know. At our last student council meeting, I heard a lot of excited voices talking about unified champions, being able to cheer all of our friends at school on and support them in all the ways that we can. Right. >> Thank you so much. We really appreciate the opportunity to share the cool things we got going on here at JB Stevens. [applause] >> [snorts] >> JB families will meet out here by the big GC sign
009and get a picture. You're welcome to stay or you're welcome to go ahead and leave. Thank you so much. Love to see that confidence. >> Was there anybody asked to speak tonight? >> No request to speak this evening >> with the matters of the board. Uh routine matters. [snorts] Can I get a motion to approve the regular school board meeting for February 10th [clears throat] >> in the executive session? Sorry. >> Sorry. I got ahead. >> February 10th. >> Move that we approve the minutes from the regular meeting and executive session of February 9th. >> I'll second. >> That was good. >> Kids probably could have told us how to do this. >> I know, right? They need to come back. >> On to claims, Mr. Day. >> Uh, yes. including in your [clears throat]
010packet are regular claims, payroll claims, and a construction claim for the tennis project. I'm happy to answer any questions about any of the details. Otherwise, ask the board to approve the claim as presented. >> Yeah, I can make a motion to approve the claim docket as presented. >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. [clears throat] >> Thank you. [applause] >> I'm sorry. financial matters. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Moving on to the financial report. Included in your [clears throat] packet is the final January and January and nearly final February receipts and expenditures. You will also note that this is the um initial projection out [clears throat] for the rest of the year. Um we do have our February ADM. It was relatively stable though slightly down compared to the
011fall. We won't see a lot of change in state aid through the end of the year. Um, however, you know, we'll start our new financial year for state aid in July. Um, so that's the next time we'll see a big change there. Um, [clears throat] as we've talked about coming into last year in the budget, kind wrapping up last year and as we built this budget, um, I we've included some revenue enhancements and some cost savings into the [cough] fund. We've increased the transfer from the education fund. Um we are decreasing the cost of outsourced labor by utilizing it in a different manner. Um Mr. Maxon and I building grounds director have decided to work through [cough] 10% reduction in outside services. We're going to we're going to try to tackle some more of those
012items inhouse before we use an outside service. We're particularly in areas like summer painting, mowing, some of those things. um using workforce that we have or using less expensive workforce like college students who come work for us, right? Um folks like that. Um and we're really going to reduce the amount of summer projects we do. [cough] We over the [clears throat] last few years we've done a number of um classrooms in every building get new carpet and you know [clears throat] the hallways and a number of elementary schools. We're going to hold on those for a little bit. move those more to capital project borrowing type construction ideas. Um, however, um, when we talk about revenue, I have projected a 10% decrease in property tax collections. I think that's probably overly conservative. Um, but I
013I'd like to see what happens. We've not gotten we've gotten our our budget or we've gotten our 782 notice, but we don't necessarily get to see how those credits are applied [clears throat] quite yet. And that's always kind of been the tough thing on SEA1 when we start making those projections. Um, so you know, >> those property tax bills haven't even gone out yet. >> Those property tax bills haven't even gone out yet. So I haven't even able to look at mine to see if if how the credit showed up. Um, so being a little conservative there. Um, but I'd rather prepare for a lower number and be happy with a with better collections. >> I also like to interject. It's not uncommon for our February count to be a little lower. We do have
014some midyear graduates. Mr. Walpomb, do you remember that number of midyear graduates? We had I put you on the spot here. I know, but >> I'd put Mr. Graham on the spot. [laughter] >> Um, we were close to 15 to 20 this year. Have midyear grads. >> So again, when that ADM drops a little bit in February, that's a pretty normal gain. >> But and I would say that was probably the largest one of the larger portions of our decrease. Um, we actually gained students in K seven, K6, K7 this year. Um, it dipped a little bit to high school, but but a lot of that dip was due to those midyear graduates. Um, you'll notice that uh, you know, curricular resource expenditures go down. We don't have a large textbook adoption this coming year,
015but in that vein, um, we are looking at a potential Apple lease to replace our 712 devices. they've reached end of life as iPads. Um, and our goal is to do a little bit more research and and we can tap on Mr. Thompson here a little bit on the on what we're looking at, but we we have the ability, we think, to get a a high quality product um at a similar price to our current iPads that will be more usable for our 712 kids. >> More to come. I I I want to prep you now um because we were in that conversation with Apple right now about about the items. We're talking to our teachers and um I just want to prep you now because we if this does work out, we'll probably come
016back to you in April to execute an Apple lease um in order to get the product in before school starts. We we will probably issue the PO between now and then. And from a historical perspective, I believe the first year we went one to one was about 2016. And we started with MacBooks that have been cost about $1,000 a piece. After that first one run, we realized we really couldn't sustain that. So we moved to the iPads that cost us closer to $400, $450 by the time we put a case on that. The good thing about technology is it does continue to evolve a little bit. We think we may have some other solutions that might even be a little bit more hardy than that. So, we we do want to fully investigate that with
017our teachers. I know uh Mr. Thompson as well as uh Dr. Kerry will be spending some time with a core group, but we think we'll we'll probably want to move on that pretty quickly. >> Just want to give you a heads up so you weren't surprised next month. >> Appreciate that. Um overall I I think that the [clears throat] projections are are playing out in a way that that we are comfortable with and and expect. Um hopefully we won't get a lot of curve balls and if they are curve balls the curve balls that are positive. Uh put a just a quick update about our audits. Wrapping those up. Um have been very happy with the results. Um as always there's going to be a couple of items. some of them hanging from the last
018audit that we got cleaned up part of the way into this audit. We [snorts] did have an ECA audit that kind of popped up on us um from state board of accounts and we went through that with flying colors. That's really credit to the work at our building level and what they're doing. We've had lots of help from our business office and our our central office folks in the in the larger audit. Um, so we should get that wrapped up soon and [snorts] hopefully get a uh exit conference scheduled for the end of this week. Happy to answer any questions you have. Otherwise, there's no action needed. >> Any questions, comments? I want to back up. Um, did we find somebody from the planning commission or did >> we do not have a name for
019you at this time? >> Okay. I just want to backtrack. is on here. So, I just want to make sure. All right. Thanks. >> All right. On to instructional report. Instructor, [clears throat] Dr. K. [snorts] So, first item in the instruction report tonight is about summer school. Primarily talking about the high school. I know it might seem a little early, but we're already making those plans for for summer school. The state has shifted in the last few years. Before probably 2022, most of the funding that we received was primarily at the high school level. You know, kids taking summer PE, summer house, credit recovery, some of those classes. But the state has really shifted their focus and their money towards the elementary buildings with focus on literacy. So, as we've seen this transition, the high
020school has adjusted. So, really the summer P numbers are going down. We are going to offer summer band as well on site. So, we will have some kids in the building this summer, but a lot of our programming will be through Adventum, which is our online platform. A lot of credit recovery. There'll be some classes that are required that the high school will offer to certain groups just to keep them on track and give them some flexibility with their schedules. Um, but just wanted to to bring that to your attention. We don't have any hard numbers yet as far as the number of kids that'll be taking those classes, but as we do, we'll bring those to you. Just wanted to get that on your radar. Second item I have is the CTE agreement with
021Walker Career Center. I know we talk a lot about the new Hancock County Career Center. The truth is we will have some students that are finishing their program at Walker. Uh perhaps that program is not offered at HC3. We're going to have a few of those as well. So, uh we do have this agreement that was sent to us. We're asking for approval [snorts] so that we can get that signed. We do anticipate to have a similar agreement with HC3 later in the spring so that everybody will be up to speed and then eventually those will be phased out and in the future we'll only be sending kids to manage to HC3. [clears throat] >> Happy to answer any questions. >> Yeah, no questions or comments. Can I get a motion to approve the CTE
022agreement with Walter Kirstson to approve? Second. All in favor say I. I. All same. >> Thank you. on to construction update. Dr. >> Just gave you a little bit of an [cough and clears throat] update on on iate. Obviously, our our students have been been working pretty diligently, our second and third graders here in the last week. Uh doing that again this week. We've gotten preliminary results in on third grade. They're very, very positive. Keeping in mind that many of our second graders from last year had passed that at a rate somewhere between 65 and 70%. So, we've been able to really target a lot of that support. Um but things are are moving along very well for us on that front. >> Glad to hear. >> All right. If nothing else, then I'll move
023along. >> Yes. So you notice in your construction report a couple different things and we have some some guests with us today. The first one I put on here was just talking a little bit about the uh Greenfield Central West property improvements and giving you a little bit of an idea of some of that work that is still left to be done there. I know that's one of those things where people drive by and and those tennis courts look like they're just about ready. Waiting for that temperature to get a little bit warmer so we can seal those, stripe those, get the the nets and post in place. Got just a little bit of curb work to do along the uh the parking lot area. The biggest [clears throat] thing that I brought your attention
024to was certainly the the hawk signal. Got a little bit of a surprise there. And that we did get that put up right about [clears throat] right before President's Day. And right after that was installed, it was very quickly noticed that the top of that cross beam didn't have enough clearance between that and the high voltage wire. So we it was taken down within about uh two days. So we're working on a solution there. Just been a few barriers we've hit here over the last uh four weeks, three and a half weeks, but we'll work toward a solution. We'll bring that back to you. But we're getting really close in terms of that facility uh being ready for our kids to use this spring. >> Second piece that I've listed there would just be some
025construction updates related to the restructuring process. So that would include Weston, GIS, Harris, and Maxwell. And we're fortunate today we have a number of our our partners with us. We have um a couple of our people from uh Skilman here as well. And Misha, are you going to start or are we going to have uh Skiilman go first here? >> I think we're going to start. >> Okay. Well, Han, if you and Misha would come up and give a little update. >> Yeah. Well, thanks everyone. My name is Hanin. I'm with Lancer Associates. Um project manager um has worked on the renovations and improvements and addition project for the Greenfield schools and that may include um Harris, uh Maxwell, and Weston. Here you have um or you see um a floor plan for Harris. Starting
026with that um you will see all the orange areas that are included in our improvements or renovations piece for the Harris school. Um and that includes enlarging some classrooms to have more appropriate sized uh kindergarten classrooms and adding more K classrooms to that. So you will see that on the middle of that portion where we have enlarged or added more K classrooms there. uh took down some walls here um and added more larger classrooms um that can have uh K students there with um some individual restrooms in there and some storage spaces to service that as well. Um on the far right, we have enlarged that classroom there. We didn't really add any restrooms there or anything as we already have some. Uh but you may see some walls come down and some improvements there
027on the finishes for these classrooms there. >> Just kind of a reminder, the typical classroom is usually 900 square feet. Kindergarten classrooms are generally a little bit over a,000 square feet, have a restroom in them. So thus the the need for some of that renovation. >> Correct. On on the far left side we have um the science classrooms or the science spaces that we have converted into regular classroom spaces now. And with that we needed to remove all the existing casework. Um nothing major there. The walls are staying in the structure and there but majorly it's really on the finishes portion as well for these classrooms to to have them um used as regular classroom spaces. So we have three classrooms in there. Um, and that's pretty much it for Harris. >> And if you've
028not walked that building before, that would have been the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade science labs. So, those are a little bit larger. Just a lot of casework around the outside of the room. Sorry, Mr. Ram. We're going to repurpose those. >> The second one we have is Weston. um is we are converting these classrooms into prek. Um so we do have some prek classrooms in that facility there, but we're adding more. Um so again, we're enlarging those classrooms so they are more sized appropriately for the prek level. Um and then we may took down some walls there um to enlarge these classrooms and add some individual restrooms, storage spaces and some other services for these classrooms um there. So I think in total we have 10 >> 11 prek classrooms there. So anything in
029orange should be the prek uh classroom. The corridors are highlighted in gray because they will get new ceilings and lights. Um, anything that's on the right side is not included in scope and anything in [clears throat] yellow would be these restroom and services spaces that we have added in between these classrooms there. >> And if you'll scroll that down just a little bit the other way, you'll see that there were two rooms on top there already. That's where we're coming up with the room. >> Correct. And then um the third building we have here is Maxwell and for that we are building a new addition that includes um four classroom spaces, some restrooms, a mechanical storage space um and some other staff restroom spaces as well and maybe some storage spaces in between the classroom
030and some general storage spaces for the building generally. Um and the yellow portion would be the addition where we are attaching to the west wing of the building and then we are running that connector um from that northeast corridor there. We're punching that opening uh or kind of enlarging that opening to provide a door there and then having that connector piece that leads into the four classrooms edition as shown in the floor plan in yellow here. Um, and these are regular size classroom spaces, 900 square f feet, maybe slightly larger larger than that, but yeah. And I do have some elevations just to show the intent or the design intent that we're planning to match the existing materials and overlooks and aesthetics of the building generally. So, we're using kind of the same bricks and
031maybe any of the aesthetic pieces that include um some boards that that match the color of the ephus on the existing portion. Windows should match the existing sizes as well. Um so, it should kind of mimic the same aesthetics and looks of the building. That's just another elevation view for the remaining portions of the building. But I think we are ready to move to the other file or the second portion and that would be the playground. So we're adding a playground to Weston as well on the north portion of that lot. Um and that's just a schematic or a conceptual floor plan that really includes some of the structure and some of the equipment that we're adding there. And maybe in in gray you will see that path or track um that's concrete pavement um
032with some rubber servicing there. So, we just wanted to give you an idea about like generally um the the the playground equipment and and how it's going to look like. >> Pretty familiar with the the playground currently. It's across the parking lot and obviously the equipment's for much older children. This would be adjacent to the the building just off the the north edge. >> The north edge of it. Yeah. And that's just a rendering of how the equipment is going to look like. It really mimics all the equipment that's being used at all the other playgrounds at the other schools. structure as well. >> I'm done with my part and I think here >> along with the design side which Lancer has been great to work with both Hanine and Miesa. We've been working with
033Skilman Corporation. U so we have [clears throat and cough] Jake and Victor here. Jake think you're going to start that? >> Yep. >> Hi, I'm Jake Samberg, project manager for the Skilman Corporation. um wanted to provide an update uh on our construction estimate as we continue the the design process of this project. Um as you can see uh we've got renovations at Harris Elementary uh the Maxwell Intermediate Edition and the Weston Elementary uh renovations. Um our total project um construction costs are right at 7.2 million. Um and then our preliminary soft cost budget um being 1,800 800,000. U I'm sorry. Greg, can we get the Are you broadcasting? Can you see if we got the updated construction piece because we we did a little bit of work. It's tweaked. >> Yeah. The soft cost is
034a little lower than that. [clears throat] I tell Jake, you can go ahead and go forward and then we'll we'll show you the revised piece here. Okay. So, as Sine and her team uh continue to to develop the design, we continue to update our our estimate and so far we're uh staying consistent within the budget. Um and we will continue to work on a final estimate as the design team continues to the design. [clears throat] >> Yes. Yeah, it's been trimmed a little bit there. Jake, I'll let you go ahead. >> So, our our schedule milestones, uh, we're still a few weeks away from the complete design. Um, so once we receive, um, the documents from Lancer, we will get those documents on the street for for bidding. um allows us roughly four weeks uh
035bid period time and a bid opening on April 23 28th at 2 p.m. Um and then few few short weeks after that we will um send this to to your board uh for approval which gives us a good runway for um construction submittals and uh material procurement u to start in August um with the goal of being done in December of 2027. Then we have uh our construction schedule um that we've laid out here. Uh we're going to start the big bulk of the work at Maxwell. Uh it's going to be a 12 12 month duration there. Um and then going to kind of kind of bounce around to the different different areas trying to keep uh the limited impact to the kids as possible. Um so we we'll start at Maxwell and then start
036on the new playground work. um and continue to work with the schools to keep those kids in in their classes as much as we can. >> I think as you look at the construction schedule, things work out very well for us, specifically in the old GIS facility. Having that vacant next year allows us to do the work we need to do there. Uh working with Mrs. Garlic on the the Harris side, able to move some teachers a little bit to create that opportunity for us just south of the library. I think that should work out pretty well. Clearly the the new addition at at Maxwell, we can do that work outside the existing footprint. That the toughest part here would let's just acknowledge it would be the Weston Elementary School piece that we can't get
037in there and do all the work we need to do while we're still using it as a K4 facility. So, it does [clears throat] push that off a little bit. Um it's very likely that we'll have an opportunity to to move some of those classrooms at semester if we want to do that as we look to January of of 2028. So that's that one piece that does just kind of hang out there a little bit. It's not in not perfectly uh wrapped there, but that is the the reality of of working on existing spaces. I I do appreciate the work that Jake and and Victor have done to help us squeeze that as much as possible. >> And and it's very possible at Weston as you see the phase one uh new north restrooms, classroom
038renovations north. Um, the goal is to be able to open at least the north portion of that hallway uh with six preschool classrooms [clears throat] in it at the beginning of the 2728 school year and then fill fill the south end with existing classrooms a semester if that works out. >> I will tell you if you'll go back to the slide on cost a little bit. Clearly, we had a conversation publicly about this being roughly an $8 billion project and it has grown a little bit from that. I would tell you we've we've run into quite a few things on the the site at GIS and West than with a lot of the the drainage storage. Um it's just a lot more comprehensive work than we thought on some of that site work. The same
039thing at Maxwell having to relocate some of the utility side. And then the other surprise would be I think we were all surprised that the cost of the preschool playground just to do that work well was a little higher than our initial number. So just kind of the reality of >> of construction. >> So are we keeping the playground the same or we got to scale it back? >> We're talking about at Weston. >> Yeah. >> We will leave the existing playground there for the community to use, but it is not fit for three, four, and fivey old kids. So, we're putting one that's directly north of the two kindergarten classrooms. Right now, we have worked that design quite a bit with way to to make that work within our budget. >> On the initial
040playground, you saw the page turn. >> Yeah. We have shrunk that um we've shrunk that some. We've cut back on the amount of port in place >> which is very expensive. Um, we've looked at some alternative um, playground equipment while still providing that that good activity center for those kids. Um, we did take out some equipment from that initial design. So, yeah, we we've squeezed that down probably 40%. Please. >> Um, I would just like to point out, you know, Scumman's been a great partner of ours, but just so you know, Jake Samberg here is the one who landed the end of the uh auditorium project and and brought that to completion. So, he's he's been with us. He's experienced with us. He uh he he's willing to put up with us. [laughter] >> Wait,
041you probably mostly me? Yes. uh privy, but he's been he has lots of experience with us, so we're excited to have him back. And as always, having Victor as part of the team is great. So, we're happy to be back. >> We certainly want to make sure that you are seeing that before we finalize things to put things out on on the street, but I hope that's really a fulfillment of the things we've we've led you to believe the the project would be. >> We appreciate that. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> continue. >> Oh, there is more of this. [laughter] >> We did put a piece in there about a potential solar energy project. As we've talked about ways to be as efficient as we can be, we've looked at this as
042a an option a couple times over the last four or five years. Uh, and we have thrown some materials in there for you to take a look at. Just another option for us. Mr. D, you want to add anything to that versus what they have in front of them? >> Um, just really that it's it's very similar to the project we discussed last fall um at the junior high. the the the design has not changed too terribly much. Um, we're looking at alternate financing and alternate ways to capture savings as quickly as possible. Um, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. [snorts] >> I don't think we have any at this time. >> Well, I I think I have some kind of highly technical questions and I think Mr. Day offered to to
043maybe set up a meeting for me with um some of the folks from Energy Harvest to go through those. So, I think that would be useful. >> So, we do have Kyle Chaffy from Energy Harris here this evening sitting in the back and yeah, we'll find a time to to get together and answer some of those questions. >> Okay, >> I think we have the ends. >> Yep. That's the last piece there on. Thank you for not letting me forget that we do have this as an agreement with the the city of Greenfield. Mr. Charles had a chance to look at that with uh Mr. Morlock. Anything you want to add to that? >> No, I'm We've got the agreement draft here and basically allow us to put the hawks crossing back up again in
044the right spot. So, >> so I'm sorry. Does that cover what the sol doesn't really cover what the solution is going to be for? >> It does not. >> Okay. >> Just allows them kind of access to that. >> Okay. >> Do you have any questions or comments? Can I get a motion to approve the encroachment agreement as presented >> that we the encroachment agreement as presented? >> Okay. Second. >> I'll second. >> All in favor say I. >> All say [clears throat] on to the 2027 2028 school. >> Yes. I I know you're seeing this for for a third time. Obviously, we've tried to get a lot of input on this and really what I've come back to based on the input we've received up to this point is really more of uh what
045I'll call a traditional balance calendar that we've been in for about 15 years. So, I have included that for you to to look at. I think it highlights the things that you're asking for from the February meeting. So, if you don't have any questions, I would recommend approval of that draft calendar. to get a motion to approve the 2027 2020 school calendar to approve the calendar. >> Second. All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Say the student athlete handbook second reading. >> And again a second reading here. No substantial changes. We did make that edit that Dr. Wayne noted in there. But if you don't have any questions, I would recommend approval of both the junior high and high school athletic handbook. >> Yeah. Can I get a motion to approve the athletic
046handbook as presented? I move. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. Say on to business information. >> Mr. Brown, before we move to new business, can I just ask I think there were a couple of items at the end of the instruction report that you might have skipped over. There was a intermediate school onetoone devices and then there's a an online safety announcement. >> Be happy to address both of those real quick. Um, basically with the the intermediate school onetoone devices, it's one of those things where I feel like that the pendulum swinging a little bit. We went all in on our our one one kindergarten through 12th grade for a number of years. I think we're realizing that uh springtime with our youngest learners isn't always in their best interest. So,
047you've seen us move that back substantially with our K3 now K4 students. We have had a lot of conversation with our intermediate school administrative team. U really feel like we will probably move that back a little bit even with our intermediate school students not sending them home every night. Uh sending those home when it's appropriate but not being part of that normal cadence that just always goes home. Um there are a couple advantages to that. We do think limiting screen time for our our younger students is good. uh we also see the side that the u the longevity of those devices will increase by not going home on a regular basis as well. You did notice from the general assembly a lot of concern about the software that that students are having access to at
048home though we have had opportunities ways to shut that down. In fact I think currently where my intermediate school folk we we oftentimes shut that down. Bronson what time we doing that? Uh currently right now it can we can shut it down around like like threeish. >> We can kind of set the time of day when when we're shutting that down. So we have been slowly working toward that. I think you will see us make a concerted effort to continue to reduce that time of screen time. So that's what that piece was about there. But again, you've got my team here. We're happy to answer any questions about that. if no questions. The last thing there, we [clears throat] actually had Dr. Drew uh speak in our community here within the last I think it
049was last fall right in this room. We had a parent night. I believe Dr. Wene was with us for that. Uh I know that Mr. Johnson was with us was with us as well. We didn't have a great turnout, but the information was really very good. We're going to do that again in terms of talking about some of the the safety pieces that parents can can do to keep their kids safer on devices and clear things we want to do as a school. And I know we have Miss Lclair in the back. Anything you want to add specific to that? >> Uh there she's really going to focus on the online predators and how kids can get um drawn into that. Uh before she talked about too much screen time and being addicted to screen
050time, but she's going to talk about how to be safe from online predators for parents to keep their kids safe. So, she'll talk to the school, she'll go talk to the students, she'll talk to our kids in grades 5 through 10 um on two different days, and then she'll do an evening uh presentation for parents on the 15th. >> So, that's April 15. That's April. April 15th. Yes. >> Will that be recorded for people that are >> She will not allow recordings, but it will be live streamed. Okay. >> So, people who can't come that night, but who can watch it at that time will be able to, but due to reasons that, you know, she doesn't want people to >> alter her content or steal her content. She does not prefer that to happen.
051>> She's going to advertise that for the entire county for that event. And it is unfortunate the the tragedy that took place in Fisers has really put this on the radar of a lot of families. So I think now might be the time families a little bit more receptive to that. >> There's anything else. >> Now on to uh business information. Mr. Day. >> Yes. I have two items in business information. The first is grants and donations. Uh Don Hansen and the Pause of GC program received a donation of $3,840 from the Charlotte Helen Bacon Foundation. Um I would like to ask the board to approve that grant and donation and the amount of the opportunity is $3,840. >> Get a motion to approve the grants and donations as presented. >> I move that we
052approve the grant and donations as presented. >> Second. >> Same. >> Thank you. My second item is the yearly cancellization of old checks. Um public entities are required to cancel all outstanding checks that are issued over two years ago. Once a check is canceled, just deposit fund [cough and clears throat] from which it was expended. I have details for admin, junior high, and high school are three are three groups who issue the most checks. Um and the checks that need to be cancelled in those areas. Think I get a motion to approve the list of old checks to be cancelled. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Have a second. >> All in favor say I. [snorts] >> Second. >> Thank you. On to Hancock County Public. We >> do have a couple guests this evening.
053Kyle and we also have Jeanie both here. Kyle go [clears throat] over the highlights of your report. The board does have that. >> Did everybody get a cost? >> Yes. So, I'm Kyle Turpin. I'm the marketing manager at the Hancock County Public Library. I'm here with Jeannie Roberts, our your appointment to our board. Real happy to work with Genie. She's been a great asset to our board and to our community. Um, I'm really excited to be here specifically because I started my career at the library about 24 years ago. My office was back there where Jenny's office is right now. >> So, I'll try to make this uh as brief as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me at any time. Um, usually every year we explain how our complicated budget
054works. Um, that's all kind of in flux now with SEA1. So, here we have our uh our expenditures and the average of the the state average of how how the the five buckets are broken down. Um, we spend about about 53% on our salaries and benefits um versus 61% of the state average. so that we can spend a little bit more in our collection than the state does. We we like to pump a lot of a lot of money into our materials um to help provide things for our community. About 2% on supplies, 16.7 that's in other services. That's everything else it takes to keep the building running. Um utilities, repairs, uh snow removal, things like that. And then, um capital, that number is a little large this year. Uh we had an HVAC to
055replace. Um and then some more issues with the HVAC to replace. Um we've got we've got a parking lot project coming soon as well. Next slide. Thank you. So here's some of our highlights from last year. Um we have over 21,000 card holders uh as of December 31st. That number kind of flexes a little bit as some people's cards expire and then we add more. Uh we had almost 460,000 visits to our library locations including the bookmobile. If all of our materials were returned, uh we usually have about 30 to 40,000 materials out at any given time. If everything were to come back, we would have about 252,000 items on our shelves, and that's physical items. That's not even including our digital collection. Uh beyond beyond our collection, um we had 19,190 people attend our
056874 events over the year. And then I give a little breakdown of our physical versus digital. About a third of our collection, a third of our checkouts are digital items, ebooks, audio books, um other entertainment, but we still have 634 physical items that were borrowed in 2025. [clears throat] Beyond those stats, um, we in addition, we issue student cards. As you know, every student in every school district, uh, is issued a digital access card. Uh, that allows them access to our online resources and our digital collection. Since 2018, we've issued over 25,000 student cards, and those students have checked out over 89,000 items. So, it's really successful partnership we have. little breakdown of our electronic resources just to show you how much usage we're getting. Um over 17,000 movies, TV shows, and documentaries were watched
057on services like Hoopla and Canopy. Um 151,761 audio books checked out through services like Libby and Hoopla. >> Um 118,000 ebooks were read both on Libby and Hoopla. Uh we also have music through Hoopla. Um, we have since retired our our physical CDs, but a lot of music can be accessed through through Dub 5,900 songs played. And then recently we added a service, tutor.com. We had it before um we replaced it with Brainfuse. That wasn't as successful as tutor.com. So we went back to tutor.com. We had 665 onetoone tutoring sessions um with these tutors through tutor.com last year. and those are in any topics from grades K through college. Um Dave, our director, was just telling me his son got a calculus tutoring session just last week. So, it's it's a really valuable service. Um
058in addition to all of the one-on-one live tutors that we we have use our study rooms, this is a service that can be used by anyone with a with a library card. So, beyond just our our collection and our online resources, we like to go beyond the bookshelf as well um with some things that you wouldn't necessarily think a library would offer. Um our patrons can check out experience passes and those are free or reduced admission to parks and cultural sites across Indiana. One of the most popular ones that we we offer is the uh state parks pass. We also have and are growing even more this year a library of things that includes things like board games, learning tools, [cough] uh early learning kits so people can st take story time home, Blu-ray players,
059projectors, iPads, hotspots, and we're continuing to add more this year. Um I talked a little bit about our programs in that that first stats. Um we also have study rooms that people use very often. We had over 6,300 people use our study rooms last year um for things like meetings or some some people just like to check one out for a a quiet area to study. Uh we also have tutors use those daily. Believe it or not, our public computers are still used quite a lot. We had 53,000 public computer sessions last year at both of our locations. And then again, 19,000 people attended our 874 programs. >> [clears throat] >> We also like to offer personalized service. Uh we have a lot of professional librarians on staff. Um and you can reserve a librarian
060for an hour on one-on-one session for help with professional research uh or technology help. We get a lot of people coming in um getting help with their phones or their iPads, accessing our services or uh one-on-one genealogy assistance. And we also offer personalized reading recommendations. People can let us know what they like or dislike and we will curate a selection of books for them and they can just come in and get our suggestions and check them out in one bundle. We also do the same thing for parents. They can request a stack of books for their kids. let us know their their topics, their preferences, what they what they absolutely don't want in the hands of their kids, what they want in the hands of their kids, and we will get a big stack of
061books, and they come in and it's all bagged up, and they just check it out in the [clears throat] door and write out with their stack of books. And then if there's something that we can't purchase or um you know, if it's a super niche request that isn't necessarily reflective of our community, but someone still wants access to it, we can request that from another library through inter library loan. That's an agreement that we have with the state library. All of the libraries share materials and mail them to each other. Um, and then we can also get some things out of state for a little extra cost. We also like to offer service wherever you are. Um, meet people where they are in their homes or at their at their schools or local healthcare communities.
062I'm sure you've seen our bookmobile come to your schools and your classrooms. Um, we did 466 stops last year, serving 17,930 people through these bookmobile stops. In addition to the bookmobile, we have a smaller delivery van. We affectionately call it Baby Book. Um, >> it will deliver and pick up materials for for patrons who are um transportation insecure or homebound. We served 153 of those homebound patrons last year. And we also, similar to the stack of books that parents can request, teachers can request a special collection for their classroom. So if there's a certain unit that they are uh teaching or a project they're doing, um they can contact Mike, our outreach services manager, and he delivered 196 of those special collections to your classrooms last year. So, that's something we're we're really happy with
063and we we hope that teachers learn more about can use more. And we can't be everywhere. Even though we would love to put put a library branch in in every township, um the way we found best to serve three eastern townships is a remote locker at Eastern Hancock. um it was a much more economical way to serve that community than to put a branch out there, but also gives people the opportunity to get materials without having to drive all the way into Greenfield or New Valley. So, all they have all you have to do over on the eastern side [clears throat] of the county is select Eastern Hancock pickup lockers as as your hold location. Um we'll collect the books. Mike will drive them out, put them in the locker, and then Mondays, Wednesdays, and
064Fridays you can go pick up your books. When you're done, just turn around and there's a dropbox right behind on the other side that you can't see in that picture and then we come and pick them up and check them back in. Uh, next slide. Thank you. One of the things we're really proud of um is our summer reading program. We do this it's it's been pretty successful for as as long as I have even been a patron at the library. Uh we do this for a few reasons. one, during the summer, people are a little less busy with school activities. Um, and so we we offer a lot of programs for people to still be engaged um with with their children and we we offer a lot of adult programs as well, but also
065to kind of support you guys and help prevent summer slide. And so in this reading program last year and and it grows every year, last year we had 4,183 people read about 8 and a half million minutes. And then we also do a lot of programming during the summer. Um I showed you the the number of programs we offer in an earlier slide, 874 events. 237 of those happen in June and July. And at those 237 programs, we had 8,900 people attend this. Now, on the topic of summer slide and literacy, uh we also partner with the community foundation to offer Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. This is a program, if you're not familiar, it mails books to children's homes from birth through age five. And so, the kids are really excited to to open the
066mail and get a book as addressed to them. Um, but beyond the the warm and fuzzy feeling of a child receiving a book in the mail, it also does make an impact. And as you know, reading to children does does have an a positive effect. And we were happy to see that the community foundation partnered with Ball State University and they conducted a study and there's a linked article up there um at the top that talks about this study and it shows that students who participated in Imagination Library performed at the same level as their peers six months ahead of them. So, we're we're happy to be a part of that program and happy to show that it does have an impact. Our biggest project last year, um, and this is this was my big
067baby. I'm really proud of it, is our website redesign and and app upgrade. Um, we had an opportunity to really redesign not only the look and feel of the website, but the information architecture as well to make our library services and spaces a little more e easier to find on the website. um a little more featured as well. And along with that, we were able to update everything to be um WCAG 2.0 compliant. That's web content accessibility guidelines. It's kind of an ADA standard sort of thing. Um and along with that, we also refreshed our mobile app so that people can manage their accounts a little better. So, that pretty much concludes this is all of our um board members. You see the wonderful Jeannie Roberts up there. again, we're happy to have her. Um,
068and all of Dave's contacts, Dave Gray, our director. If you guys have any questions, you can contact him via email or send him a text on a cell phone. Um, or visit our website or you have my card as well if you have any questions about our public relations or marketing or adult programming. >> You guys have any questions now? >> Thank you. Thank you for your support. appreciate [clears throat] all of uh the work you guys do and all the partnerships we have together. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Move right along to uh out of state overnight road trips. >> Have two of those for you this evening. A trip you've seen before taking our art students potentially to Chicago. That's from Mr. Wyland and Miss Junga. And then a second trip from our
069cheering coach Christy Kerry to take students to a camp in Lexington, Kentucky. That would be in July. These are trips they've taken in the past. They've been good ambassadors for us. They understand our expectations. I have no reservations. >> Okay. Get a motion to approve the overnight field trips as presented. >> Move that we approve the overnight field trips as presented. >> Second. All >> in favor say I. >> All those same. On to contract recommendation, resignations, leaves and absence. >> Certified recommendation for Amy Lorch and Jansen Wagner. Certified retirements, Karen Edwards, Candy Neoth, Don Style. DCA recommendations for Brad No, Sarah Rogers, Michael Pope, and on that second page, Haley Arthur, Kaylin Whitman, Guy Volley, Nick Lacy, Jordan Andis, Emily Young, Scott Burton, Allison Gray, Cameron Clark, Adam Ellis, Carson Gibson, and Noah Mohler.
070Can I get a motion to approve the personnel report as presented? >> I move that we approve the personnel report as presented and give permission to hire as needed for the remainder of the school year. >> A second. >> Second. All in favor say I. >> I. Say we have nothing else. Uh future dates. Spring break March 18th through the 27th grade school board meeting Monday, April the 13th, 2026. E-learning day, April the 7th, 2026. If we have nothing else, can I get a motion to adjurnn to ajourn? >> Second. >> All say [clears throat] it. >> Thank you. >> Thanks everyone. Have a good night.