001all right we're going to go ahead and call the finance board meeting um to order i would like to entertain a motion or a recommendation to elect a president of the board of finance i will just remind our board that they would like the president and the secretary to hold the same office on the regular board so if just keep that in mind as we move forward that might help direct us a little bit so i'd like to go ahead and entertain that motion okay so i have a motion made and seconded by was that ken that we go ahead and retain terry barnhart as the president of the finance board of finance and steve stichter as the secretary of board of finance all in favor say aye anyone opposed all right um uh agenda
002item number two investment report uh tom mcfarlane would you uh be able to uh do go through that for us would you like the microphone sir no in your board packet you have the board of finance uh investment report um you'd be able to compare the balances between december 31st 2020 and december 31st 2021 we do have our main checking account on two million dollars of cds for a total balance this year of 4.48 million dollars compared to 4.18 last year so we have increased slightly of there and at the bottom of that report you can see the interest we've earned in 2021 of 8 000 a long way from 2019 where we received over 101 000 so any questions second report is the cancellation of outstanding checks that you require that we receive back
003in any outstanding check that's older than two years after the december 31st that it was written we do have two checks those will be reseeded into the lunch account and the education fund as they were never deposited and lastly we have a new report it's required that we report out on our fiscal indicators there are five fiscal indicators mentioned in this report at the bottom you can see the link to the complete report but our adm we have been trending down except for this year we had a tick up fund balances remain positive with the exceptions of federal grants are always negative because their reimbursement so we've got to spend the money and then file for reimbursement our deficit surplus we've had a surplus every year except 2020. the reason we didn't have it this
004year was just a timing issue of when the reimbursements were filed for the federal grants and then in 2019 we received bond money if we didn't spend until 2020 so it just caused a bigger surplus previous year and a deficit second year uh fund balance is a percentage of expenditures um our reserves have increased drastically over the last five or six years to the point where there's no intent to continue that increase hoping to plateau and hold those reserves steady don't want to get into the snowball effect and get to decreasing that right now our reserves are healthy and last lastly the revenue by type we are funded state tuition support is the majority of funding coming in second is property taxes and then very minimalist fees and stuff like that so overall i would
005say our fiscal date is that being said uh tom a question was asked i think mr stichter asked that um typically the from the september count to the february count um we have seen a dip in that um [Music] we usually lose 15 to 20 kids between september and february um we were at 9 10 in september and i think we're going to be close to 9 25 so we're going to say last one is like 9 24 and yeah we're going to be up 15 this year bar getting major changes in the next few weeks so another positive yes i'll go ahead and make a motion that we are asked for a recommendation to adjourn the board of finance session okay moved by steve seconded by wes all in favor all right we will
006uh we will resume at 7 pm with the reorganizational session all right let's go ahead and stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all as is typical the first board meeting of january we have a reorganization session so we'll go ahead and start with agenda item number one which is the oath of office but due to the fact that we don't have do not have any new board members recently elected we do not necessarily have to give the oath of office so we'll move right on to agenda item number two agenda item number two is the election of officers so i would like to entertain a motion or
007recommendation for the triton board of trustee president do i have a recommendation okay we have a motion made by steve a second by wes uh to elect uh re-elect uh terry barnhart as the president of the board um and with that mo or excuse me all in favor say aye any opposed all right with that motion and with that uh um passing i will go ahead and pass the microphone over to terry all right i would entertain a motion to uh for the vice president it's been removed by kevin or ken seconded by steve all in favor if kevin accepts motion passes 5-0 it entertain a motion for the secretary it's been moved by west second by ken all in favor motion passes 5-0 um our meeting date time and location currently is the second
008monday of each month at 7 pm in the administration building everyone agreeable to this okay then i need a motion to move the move by kevin seconded by steve all in favor motion passes 5-0 on to appointments we need an appointment for it's been treasurer by steve seconded by kevin all in favor motion passes five-o our attorney currently is warwick and boeing is that correct it's been moved by ken seconded by steve all in favor motion passes 5-0 um now on to our isba delegate and legislation liaison currently um it was steve entertain emotion you do like it though you don't move by west seconded by kevin all in favor motion passes 5-0 now we have appointments for the student handbook the textbook adoption and the board west you had done the student handbook before
009i had done the textbook adoption and the board policies unless anyone else would like to jump up so we'll lump those together if someone wants to make a motion of those okay it's moved by steve second by ken all in favor motion passes 5-0 all right currently our board salary is 1 850 per year um the limit is two correct um and i know in the past uh you could take it all give some back or so make a motion to okay it's been moved by kevin seconded by ken any other discussion all in favor motion passes 5-0 in front of you you should find the uniform conflict of interest disclosure statements um and all signatures are required on those each year whether you actually i think do business or not we just all do
010it right yeah if you don't have any conflicts just write down on there okay all right i would entertain a motion to adjourn the reorganization session all right it's been moved and seconded by stephen kevin then we will go on into our regular session and since we already stood and did the pledge we will move on to our consensus agenda i move we approve the vouchers presented to us uh in the amount of one million one hundred ninety seven thousand four hundred and twenty six dollars and eighty eight cents plus payrolls 311.76 for a grand total of expenditures of 1 million 617 738.6 plus the minutes of our december meeting the move by steve seconded by kevin any discussion all in favor motion passes at this time we would entertain any patrons comments if there
011are any okay we will move on to personnel [Music] all right i would recommend the approval of lisa andrews as an elementary special education teacher um i would recommend the approval of deborah green as the high school custodian i'd recommend the approval of karen warsham as a substitute teacher i'm going to go ahead and lump these substitute teachers in at the same time as their all reputable individuals approved delaney groves as a substitute teacher approved casey yarbrough as a substitute teacher and ruthie mccullough as a substitute teacher the one that was the secretary of the high school for a while yes we accept those as presented the move by steve second by 10 any discussion more discussion all in favor motion passes i recommend the approval we'll go ahead and lump these two together as
012well as their volunteer coaches aaron feldman is fifth grade girls basketball volunteer coach and brandon stewart seventh grade girls basketball volunteer coach that is allison stewart who we've already approved as the seventh grade basketball coach it's her husband he was actually a assistant varsity football or excuse me i think he was a volunteer assistant for the varsity football team as well so all of his background check and everything was already on file she had requested that she had a little help and asked for him to do that so so long as i get along second all right it's been moved by kevin second by steve any other discussion all in favor motion passes by them the next item i'd like to recommend the second reading of the corporation policy uh we once again met with
013neola and have just simply reviewed a lot of the policies that really we've already recommended we just needed to clean a lot of those up um so we are bringing to you the second reading of the corporation policy i guess what i'm saying is there's a variety of policies in there it's not aligned to one topic or subject there was a lot of cleanup to be done with just minor errors and corrections removed by 10 seconds all in favor motion passes on to other business uh i'd recommend the approval of the transfer of funds from the education fund to the operations fund which is the typical january procedure so i recommend that approval second move by cut kevin second by steve all my favorite questions about how much money was that i think i saw
014that someplace but i remember 905 000. it's a result of when the state back in 2019 changed from a general fund to education and switched some classifications to where people are paid so that way tuition support helps fund those any other discussion all in favor motion passes also i'd like to recommend the approval of the transfer to the rainy day fund resolution what's phone number phone number i'm sorry 941 000. got to make it bigger questions as i recall tom you told us you put appropriations into the rainy day time this year correct correct no one tends to use them unless needed but say if we never would need them it would save additional red tape and i recommend the appropriation transfers just anything all in favor i recommend the approval of the transportation request
015from the napanen missionary church as you're aware last year they requested that our transportation department take their students to camp that obviously went well enough for them to ask us to do that again i believe we have had people sign up for that already so we were a little concerned with where that fell as far as fare time and all of that stuff but they would ask for that uh i would recommend that for approval at this time no i think there were some discussions of just um timeliness and where to go and those type of things as far as maybe some changes in some schedules um but as far as that i mean there's just logistical things that that typically happen with taking kids to a park yep i recommend the approval of the
016floor maintenance quotes as we do each summer from cedar creek flooring for the high school elementary and tac gym floors the cost of that is fifteen thousand nine hundred and forty three dollars as listed there we'll go ahead and move on to core values i think it's important to start off with our core values of just uh i think our organization really cares about its people um and it's no different obviously when we lose an individual in our corporation so i just want to my heart goes out to the king family and the loss of their mother jerry king we did post about that i apologize um that that may have come off um inappropriate to our to our public but i did want to let our our board know that i did speak to
017her daughter um she was aware of kind of how we were going to go about that and she was she was very grateful very respectful about it thanked us all over the place for just commemorating her mother i will tell you the viewing or not the viewing the celebration of life was going to be last friday but unfortunately they have some some illness in the family so we will make sure we get that information out to both the high school and to the board when they reschedule that so i just want to send our condolences to the king family let them know we appreciate jerry and all that she did for specifically our high school over the last approximately four years just about four years so our heart goes out to them continuous improvement we
018talk about our first strategic planning session uh was held the afternoon of january 3rd we worked through a swat analysis which was strengths weakness opportunities and challenges that that we obviously the strengths that we have as a corporation maybe some of the weaknesses that we can continue to improve on um opportunities that come of that and then of course the challenges that we face um it was a good exercise but i'll tell you we we have a lot to be thankful for at triton school corporation and a lot of that is because the people that work here the board that we have the individuals that care a lot about our kids so obviously we're working through that did come up with some things that we definitely need to work on for sure and we're looking
019forward to that process continuing most likely at the end of january we have not set a second date for that second workshop the infocus team had already compiled consistent themes from the surveys from our students staff and parents completed over the last couple of months so they were very very impressed with the feedback that they received and the percentage of individuals that actually completed those so i think amongst our staff and our students there was above a 70 percent answer rate i don't know exactly how they do you remember how they said that response rate i guess and they said that was just incredible so we did make it a priority we did ask our students to do that during an slc time our staff obviously took that very serious and felt that that was
020an opportunity to give us some feedback and we appreciate that shared leadership over the last several weeks the triton school administrators nurses have continued dialogue concerning our data from the first semester and how we can continue to provide a common sense approach to combating the virus while also making sure to keep our scholars and staff safe i pushed out an email on saturday actually to our staff on friday after we spoke a little bit about that at our professional development on monday i sent an email on friday just confirming those new procedures i pushed out an email and a call to our patrons on saturday evening to review our updated quarantine protocol and share some of the information that we have gathered since august 11th our first student day the numbers are concerning the numbers
021of students being quarantined continue to be concerning concerning statistic therefore we continue to do our best to take steps to keep healthy kids in school and ask for parents to keep those who are not feeling well at home until they are fever-free or symptom-free so i just tell you difficult decisions there i want to thank jerry our nurse naomi our nurse mrs cook mr mccann all the people that in those times of trying to make the best decision possible while also keeping our staff and students safe it's just i appreciate their support and just unified effort so if we have any questions on those i did send those to the board as well i've shared those bullets the biggest changes probably were the the five day quarantine which became a national uh conversation on december
02227th i believe it was with the presidential press conference the state department of health came back on thursday december 30th we talked a little bit more about that we kind of gathered our thoughts last week to just make sure we were on the same page and and see what that looked like at triton school corporation some some interesting statistics that we that i did share with our community and with our board in in writing was the fact is that we had approximately overall we had approximately 400 and what 45 quarantines in the first semester which is just i mean it's just a lot i mean that if you think about every one of those that simply means we're sending kids home to do education from home and that's pretty disconcerting 15 positive cases at the
023at the elementary and 34 at the high school but i will i'm happy to say that we can only really document and i and i said possibly because we really don't know how things are transmitted and if somebody got the virus from somebody else but approximately seven students that we feel were sick because of a close contact right so if you think about 400 and some odd quarantines seven of those maybe became sick because of being a close contact really made us look a little bit closer at what we're doing we are trying to incentivize mask wearing that's not a mandate i think we as a board have said we're not going to be into to overarching mandates unless we feel it's absolutely necessary so i think we hold true to that ideal but we're
024trying to say you know what if you want to just give yourself one more layer of protection and not be quarantined go ahead and mask up do they work i don't know do vaccines work i don't know the the debate that is happening right now is ridiculous i mean we don't want to get in the middle of all of that we just want kids to be educated we want them to be in the classroom and we want them to continue to learn so so that's kind of kind of where we're at right now we'll continue to adjust we don't want our pride to be so extreme that we can't adjust if need be and i want to thank the board for their confidence to be able to make some of those decisions as needed and
025we can just know that we continue to have those conversations as as time goes moving on to social responsibility um you know what i did not have one for that one um accountability uh the triton staff took part in building level professional development last monday they're completing their training on how best to identify human trafficking and suicide prevention training this is just one more example of the important work that our teachers and staff do on a daily basis to try and keep our our students and our fellow staff members safe i just want to continue to reiterate our corporation goals underneath the accountability piece increased percent of students reading at or above grade level at 85 percent and then increase overall pass rates on standardized tests by at least 20 percent we know that math
026was a difficult area in our last testing cycle and we want to continue to increase that and our students are working excuse me our students and staff are working really really hard to accomplish those goals high expectations i want to thank mrs cook mr mccann mrs lecher we met with jesse executive director linda holland today to discuss how we can continue to get better at providing our resource scholars their least restrictive environment so just diving into the data seeing how best to to meet those needs alignment strategic planning is obviously once again a great example of how we how we are most successful when our learning organization works together to achieve common goals some exciting things our football bleachers are almost completed if you haven't seen that i encourage you to do that in the
027very short time that it's light out right now in indiana but those are almost finished and they've done a great job of completing those i will let the board know that they are going to complete the baseball bleachers as well evidently they are light enough when they are completed to pick up and put on the cement so while they are on site they are going to go ahead and complete the bleachers we will have to move them so the cement when it is done in the spring will be completed and then we'll put those on and bruce will actually anchor those to the ground so while they're here so we don't have to take them off other jobs and or get pushed back further and further and further they're going to go ahead and complete
028that when they're on site so excited to have the updates of those two areas done here real soon i'm also excited to tell our board and our community we received a 35 000 grant from the k21 foundation k21 health foundation excuse me to go towards our weight room coach eunice and a lot of our coaches have asked for quite some time for us to replace the racks and the weights in the weight room and k21 was generous uh by giving us the thirty five thousand dollars it's going to take to totally replace um those racks and they will be our colors they'll have our names on them they have our logos on the benches so it'll really clean up that area moving forward so excited about that i do want to draw the attention the
029board's attention to the legislative updates quite a packed legislative session that we really it seemed as if i don't know i it just amazes me how they can come up with new laws every time but they do one of them that are especially concerning i think we've discussed a little bit is just the one of the latest bills about board members having to identify their their affiliation or political party affiliation that's one of the ones that i will tell you the iasb [Music] or excuse me iapss people are definitely looking into and opposing i will also tell you that the curriculum trans uh parentsy bill is another one we know where this is coming from a lot of the crt conversation that's been taking place the critical race theory parents wanting to make sure that
030they have a say and or are informed about the curriculum that's going on in the classroom that is something that is is definitely on people's radar and they're wanting to make sure that nobody's slipping stuff by them in our curriculum i would tell our patrons you are welcome any time to ask questions about that we'll be more than happy to show you what we're teaching our students but this bill would take it to the next level of posting lesson plans and posting the books that are read and so on so it's just as we talk about teachers and we talk about all the things that they have to do on a daily basis this just feels like it's just one more thing to to make that a really really difficult transition so just know that
031iapss isba that many of you guys are a member of are really looking at those and and giving feedback on them who knows where they land we know that they go through all sorts of processes but that's something definitely to to keep keep our eye on [Music] i think we'll go ahead and move right into building level reports mrs cook do you want to do that or oh sorry patrons comments you are a patron um so we are we actually um some of the bleachers from the football stands went to the etna green football field and then the smaller bleachers that are that were at the baseball diamond they're actually still out by the woods so they haven't gone anywhere yet the town has talked about possibly wanting to put some of those around their
032baseball diamonds so that's just something we haven't done yet because we weren't sure that we'd be able to get that project done so those are still on site they haven't been given or gifted to anybody at this time but that is definitely a conversation that they've expressed interest in those sam i make a comment to the board members we actually do have two senators and two state representatives that cover our district typically new township is covered by a different senator and representative than the rest of us so mr mitchell here's our senator um top of my head i can't remember i had those last year when i was sending in some information that both of these bills kurt nicely represent some of us but feel free to reach out to them and they all have
033email addresses that will just guarantee that you'll get a reply that's basically generic and hopefully that gets to a staffer that can pass on information but it does not hurt for us to reach out on these issues okay do you mind if i go ahead and give nate's report he's feeling a little under the weather tonight so i'm going to go ahead and share out for him so we finished our first semester final exams went well he does want to thank our staff and obviously we tried a few things there at the end of the semester to make sure kids could wrap up their work as far as bringing some of those quarantined kids back to make sure that they were on target to completing items and getting their testing in so appreciate all the
034flexibility that took that took wrapping up any makeup exams last week and then this week because obviously there were some students who were not able to attend professional development as we discussed january 3rd suicide prevention human trafficking and he also did a rise training for all the teachers so they kind of understood what he was looking for when he came into the classroom and just to be able to talk through that after watching a video of a teacher give a lesson and talk through some of the pros or the the good things that they did and some of the things that they need to work on just as he would do when he meets with them through his evaluation we did have a k-9 training over break the state police ran through drills it's good
035that they are getting to know our building and we have built a pretty good relationship with them the more they know the nooks and crannies of our building the better we are prepared for for unfortunate events that obviously we hope never happen study tables a plan to start up next week and homework help for struggling students continues deca students will compete at their district contest tomorrow in south bend and then the counseling department scheduling update all high school students have made their schedule requests counselors are currently in the work works of making the 2223 schedule scheduling for junior high will take place january and february freshman orientation will be january 18th this will be an informative meeting with some of our teachers promoting their classes albert hanselman talking about cte programs and an open house
036in the halls with our clubs sports and groups in hopes to get students more involved i think mrs barnhart made a really good notion when we talked a little bit about our strategic planning committee our counselors are doing just a bang-up job and i appreciate all the efforts that they're they're giving and they'll continue to have their hands full with a lot of the things that they're diving into right now so appreciate that so mrs cook the elementary report best for last here everybody else sat down for their report i'm gonna sit down for my report if that's okay no that's all right um so as mr rifle mentioned earlier we have had quite a few students quarantined since returning from thanksgiving break i feel like it really kind of started to heat up there
037and then going into christmas break um we are over and and we're not through you know this this week has been tough too so we are seeing overall just more illnesses just kids sick and then but also more students who have tested positive from covid than last year as far as the student rate um i really do appreciate jerry and naomi their efforts um even during the day in the evenings on the weekends when they're getting calls and we're making calls and coming up to the school to kind of do some measuring and check on desks and that kind of thing i mean we're we're all in that but they're really helping out a lot having those conversations and is really helpful for me that they have conversations um but it's it's easy to even
038with parents i was gonna say but it is also easy to get confused as the guidelines change sometimes and so forth so i appreciate their help very much in spite of all the quarantines we were able to complete the bulk of our mid-year assessments before christmas break and in january 3rd we spent time looking at our mid-year data while we are making progress toward our goals it's not quite as much growth as we have seen in previous years it's still kind of tough going lots of absences still kids missing out coming in lower than they have been in the past and we're still not back to teaching full force um in all of our strategies like we would normally do so but we are we are making gains we are making gains um i'd like
039to thank melissa ella sure for leading the teachers through that process um as you know based on the um requirements by the state now and of indiana we do a dyslexia screen with our kindergartners first graders first and second graders in the middle of the year so basically we identified 15 students whose mid-year performance put them at some risk for dyslexia we don't diagnose it but we do say there are some indicators that are consistent with dyslexia that's two fewer students than were identified last year at this time so i think that's good and and we have more students so i still i think that's a very good trend if we're starting that trend those students just today started a new intervention which is a dyslexia approved program for our stars so i appreciate terry
040large and marcia kaiser for for doing those and implementing those programs as mr rivlaw also said we welcome two new staff members um lisa and stephanie andrews not related that i'm aware of but lisa is our new special education teacher she's got experience in both special education and counseling and um so far um the thumbs up okay is what we're saying and we're glad to have her although i was here today so and probably will be tomorrow um but the kids are doing great with the change and i appreciate that because i know that's difficult sometimes for parents in the middle of the year stephanie andrews is helping with our um mostly kindergarten but also sometimes preschool she's doing a great job and getting certified so that she can work with the preschoolers and and
041i appreciate her work with that we did an orientation last week as far as extracurriculars our fifth and sixth grade girls basketball has begun fifth grade continues with dare during the school day fourth graders um have little hoosiers once a month after school for those who are interested we have a good number of kids who are doing that this year and um fifth and sixth now have the opportunity this year this is the second year now to participate in jv winter guard that starts on monday and that is leads into being able to work with the color guard with the band as they get older with the varsity guards so that's we had a lot of fifth and sixth graders who said they were interested and took information now i don't know how many will
042show up on monday but um last year we only had four but that was our first year ever so maybe we'll have five that would be great if we could do that also in march we hope to offer a new program for elementary students after some after school program meets twice a week it's called girls on the run and that's kind of a strange name i don't know what everybody thinks about but they might it's not about runaway girls or anything it's actually a health and fitness kind of club that also has a curriculum for um building confidence in students it's all about kind of goal setting and building confidence and self-esteem and making good choices just being a well-rounded person it's a lot of fun mrs vermillion taught it before when she taught at
043rochester so she is i guess she's going to be one of our coaches also sarah melling kindergarten teacher and kim kelly and then marcy feldman brian's wife is going to be our liaison our site liaison and also an assistant coach so this is going to be something new at the very end of the program they are ready to um run in a 5k that's just for the girls on the run from all across like northern indiana and it's uh it's a really it's a good time for what i understand it's something that we can offer some of our kids elementary kids who may not be athletic may not have any extracurriculars to participate in yet but we're gonna try it this year and see what we get we need to have at least eight and
044it's i think it's like grades three to six so more on that will be coming also melissa and i will be meeting with teachers friday and monday to look at their um [Music] the progress on their personal student learning objectives for their class it's kind of a mid-year check-in and we're looking at this kind of the same data that we had but their own personal goals that they have set for this year and looking about how much progress that their students have made i think that's it all right um i would ask for a motion to adjourn okay then we're going to adjourn at 7 39. thank you you