MSD of Martinsville School Board Meeting 5/20/2021

001We're live, just for now. We're live, I'm not capturing any audio just yet, until mics start going on. Okay, testing. It is 7 o'clock. I would like to call this meeting to order. If everyone would please stand and join us with the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. My name is Don Lips and I'm currently serving as the president of the Martinsville School Board. I'd like to welcome everyone this evening to the May 20th School Board meeting for the MSD of Martinsville. This meeting is a meeting of the school board in public for the purpose of conducting school district business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. Opportunities for public participation will be permitted in accordance with policy B-250. The first item of business here this evening is student recognition. I'd like to

002turn it over to Mr. Buckler. Good evening, everyone. It is my pleasure to introduce Mrs. Rachel Lanigan. She is our orchestra director, and she is going to speak to us, and then we're going to be lucky enough to have a little performance this evening. Thank you Martinsville administration school board members Martinsville community mentors and all those in Attendance for the honor of having us perform for you this evening My name is Rachel Lanigan and I am the director of orchestras in Martinsville School District. I want to also thank all my music colleagues within the district whose fine teaching, support, and strength throughout this challenging year have been amazing. The orchestras are honored to work alongside of you every day. Music is the language that our soul speaks and it is our honor to work with

003such talented musicians and educators in all of Martinsville schools. In Martinsville, we offer band, choir, and orchestra to students in grades 6 through 12. And tonight, I bring with you one of the orchestras from our district, the Mancini Strings, our 8th graders. This is a group of students who enjoy playing their instrument every day. They are eager to join with friends to express their emotions through music and performance. This year our Mancini Strings performed an in-house music festival for our community in March and received a gold rating for three judges that were in attendance. Our high school orchestra also performed a virtual competition for three judges with the Indiana State School Music Association Festival and received a gold rating as well, which is an amazing feat considering what year we've been in. Recently our embrace

004students, that's my high school orchestra, they're called embrace symphony, chose our middle school students to mentor. They communicated on social media, videos and email to start to bring the two schools together and take out of the fear of what high school will be like. After a few months of communicating, last week the two groups met for the first time. And they had a special luncheon and a rehearsal that culminated in our spring concert last week with all 7 through 12 graders. We have also had the opportunity to work with a local violin teacher. Her name is Ann Pearson, who helped us look out into the world by sharing with us stories and videos of her students in Burundi, Africa. The Embrace Symphony members had an opportunity to make a Zoom video call. live in Africa

005and here in Martinsville. They played for us and then we played for them. We hope to begin an exchange students for our orchestra students and for those across the globe in Burundi, Africa at a later date. But in the meantime, we're just communicating virtually. The MSD Martinsville School District offers unique music classes beginning in the sixth grade at Bell Intermediate Academy with band, choir, and orchestra. Students can be a part of these groups until they graduate high school. If a student wishes to sign up for music, they should contact the main office at Bell Intermediate Academy for more information. Once again, I want to thank you for inviting us this evening. we will be performing the following three tunes. Dragon Hunter by Richard Meyer, Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Odds, arranged by Bob

006Cerulli, and Viking by Soonhee Newbold. Thank you. I'm Samantha Ressler, and I play cello. I'm Katie Dotson, and I play cello. I'm Ayla Alte, and I play the viola. I'm Evan Allen, and I play the viola. I'm Alexis Lane, and I play the violin. I'm Violet Piney, and I play the violin. I'm Caitlin McPhee and I play the violin. My name is Alex Vandergriff and I play the violin. My name is Mikaela Matthews and I play violin. I'm Aliyah Woodruff and I play the violin. I'm Samantha Cohen and I play the viola. Well thank you Rachel and thank you orchestra. Do we have any parents of orchestra members in here? If you are in here would you please stand and be recognized? Parents of the orchestra members? Mr. Buckner do you have anything else? Okay.

007All right. We do have an exit plan, which has been very popular. We're giving the orchestra and the parents an opportunity here to exit if you would like to exit. We would love to have you stay for the meeting if you would like to stay for the meeting. However, if you do want to leave, we'll give you some time here to gather up and leave before we start our meeting. They didn't have to be here. It's fine. We just weren't going to make them wait. No, no, no. No, no. So ladies, we're going to jump around the agenda a little bit. So if I could have our two high school ladies step up just for a quick recognition. And I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Baugh. She's shaking her head no, so I'm

008going to do it. I would like to introduce two individuals to the community as well as to our school board, if you don't already know Katie and Allison. Katie Hong is our valedictorian. Allison is our salutatorian so next week at graduation you will all be seeing them up on the stage and we wanted to recognize them tonight for their efforts and all their hard work over the last four years and many years before that so we really appreciate you representing Martinsville in such a positive way and thank you for being here tonight and we've managed to embarrass you one more time right thank you to either of you have anything you'd like to say or you're good all right we'll see you next Friday thank you thank you ladies Good luck on your AP exams.

009Yes. Thank you, Mr. Lips. Okay, next on the agenda is public comments regarding agenda items. Courtney, we have anyone signed up? Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, School Board Administration. I wanted to speak tonight to thank the School Board for considering Mr. Buckler's contract renewal. I saw it on the agenda for this evening, and I wanted to thank you. Mr. Buckler is unaware that I wanted to speak tonight, but I felt like it was important the School Board and this audience know... how valuable and frankly terrific he is. I've been in education for almost 18 years now in multiple districts under various supervisors and never in my career have I had the pleasure of working for an individual that selflessly puts the needs of kids first. Mr. Bruckler has brought professionalism, an amazing attitude, and

010an enormous amount of positivity to MSD of Martinsville. And not only that, he's provided hundreds and thousands of dollars in grants and title funding. I have seen more funding and positive change in the short time that he's here than I have in any other district that I've been a part of. And I know that often the triumphs of great leadership go. unnoticed and i wanted to make sure everyone here tonight could take a moment and see the great things that mr buckler has done so i just wanted to say to mr buckler thank you for your professionalism your systemic approach to curriculum and love for our students and thank you to the school board for considering his contract renewal this evening it is well deserved i also believe mr paul spar's contract is also a

011renewal and i think that's on the agenda And he's just another great example of leadership that puts kids first. So thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Brian. Courtney, we have anyone else? Okay, thank you. Next on the agenda here is the consent agenda. And the consent, excuse me, the consent agenda. is a culmination of the minutes, the payroll claims, the payroll report, budgetary claims, certified personnel report, the non-certified personnel report. We receive this as board members four or five days in advance, so it gives us plenty of time to look over this and study this. So at this time, I'd like to ask for a motion to approve the consent agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda. Okay, we have a motion. Can we have a second? I second. Okay,

012we have a motion and a second. All in favor of the approval of the consent agenda as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Consent agenda passes. Student field trips. Dr. Arthur, thank you very much. This evening we have four field trips. I'm going to actually just go through them all together, and if it's okay, we'll vote for everything together unless somebody would like them separate. The first one is the Martinsville High School Overnight Boys Cross Country Trip to McCormick's Creek State Park. This is being chaperoned by Coach Lorna Bain and staff. The second one is Martinsville High School Overnight Girls Cross Country Trip to Waycross Camp Conference Center. This is with Jared Crismore and staff. Make sure I have the right names here. I may have those twisted. One's Laura Bain

013and one is Jared. The next one, Martinsville High School Overnight Boys Basketball Trip, Lawrenceburg Shootout. It's Mr. Kip Staggs. And then the final one is Martinsville High School Middle School Overnight Wrestling Trip, Union County High School Team, Team Camp. So I would ask this evening for a motion to approve these four field trips. Okay, would someone like to make a motion that we approve all these field trips? I make a motion that we approve all the field trips. I second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any questions or any discussion? Okay, we'll take a vote. All in favor of approving all the field trips as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. It's kind of pointless at this point, but I left off Briar

014Runyon and Dave Contreras, so I just want to make sure I mention them. For the wrestling. Yes. Thank you. Okay, next item on the agenda is the reports. Mr. Craig Buckler, curriculum. Good evening, everyone. I have a fairly brief report this evening, but lots of great things to report on. So a quick update. When I completed my report the middle of last week, our summer programming numbers were... waning a bit i'm pleased to report that we had a push over the weekend and we've ended up with 244 total students that'll be participating in 12 different courses over the two two-week sessions one two week in june and one a couple weeks in july and that does not count the special programming that the band and orchestra is doing so obviously that wasn't opened up to

015everyone because you already needed to know how to play your instrument to come in and get that extra support so i'm really thrilled about that and that will be taking place there are a couple high school courses so those will be at the high school but everything else will be held at smith elementary those two weeks in june and two weeks again in july so i'm really really excited about that and thanks to the teachers and we unfortunately had some sessions that didn't fill up but i'm hoping to do this again next summer so i encourage those teachers to keep the plans and we can roll it over again in summer 22. we're hopeful i included the update on the artesian online or the online possible programming i can speak to that now as part

016of my report or it's also in another section of the agenda so it doesn't matter to me whichever you all would prefer okay let's wait till we get to it on the other end of the agenda Just a district testing update. I'm pleased to report that we have completed all statewide assessments. I step plus at the high school. I read three at the elementary schools. I learn grades three through eight. WIDA, which would be all students, students who are English is not their first language, and then the I am assessment, which assesses some of our special education students. A huge appreciation from me to the teachers, the administrators, the other staff members that made this possible. This was a heavy lift this year, considering all of the things that we had. had taken into consideration

017with testing. This did include all of our at-home learners as well. So we were able to accommodate them on Wednesdays. Mr. Mills is in the rear of the room and he provided transportation for the students that needed that. So it really was a huge effort from everyone to get that accomplished today. In addition, over the course of the year, we screened 820 students for dyslexia in grades K through two, which is required each year in those grades by law. As the data comes in, it's going to be very important that the building administrators and myself really analyze this data to start identifying where our holes are based on the learning loss over the last 14 to 16 months due to the pandemic. We're going to really work hard to close those achievement gaps, but I

018think it's important for everyone to recognize that research shows that we're looking at an 18 to 36 month time period to get those gaps closed. So that's a significant amount of time. but we will certainly give it our best effort. We're wrapping up NWEA. That's the last piece of testing that we do in grades kindergarten through eighth. We have some high school students in the English department that take that assessment as well. Beginning next year, math students at the high school will be taking NWEA, so we'll have continuous data that's from the same type of assessment, grades K through 10, and those... have been completed with our at-home learners as well but they will be able to be tested at home they did not have to come on site to do that testing so that's

019just a quick wrap up from our year in assessments and the last thing that i wanted to highlight is some updates that are happening at the intermediate academy as we heard at our evening workshop with the community one of the concerns the parents expressed was that some of our fantastic programming that takes place at the elementary school there wasn't a continuation of that at bell intermediate Didn't have the opportunity to share but those plans were already in the works. Mr. Sederloff and his team worked really really hard to come up with a plan to value all of the things that are going on at our seven elementaries. What that mostly means is he shifted a couple staff members one will be teaching communications and one will be teaching a fine arts course and so students

020will have that opportunity in fifth grade to take both of those and then once they get to the sixth grade level they can start to hone in on what maybe their interest is that will then bridge them to the middle school and then on to the high school so continuing to work on that alignment piece he really thought outside the box And it was not any additional staff to his building. He just reallocated the staff that he had and we're really excited to get that program in place and beginning next year. And that's all I have right now. Anyone have any questions? Mr. Beckler? Is there any foreign language at Bell? Spanish. Spanish is there, right? That's twofold. So for our Spanish immersion students from Poston, they continue in that cohort and actually they're going

021to be working with some high school staff. They're coming and really focusing on language, grammar to get them ready for Spanish 1, I believe, once they get to the middle school. It's going to be less of the similar program that they have at Poston where it's the immersion, but really working on building those language skills that they need to be more successful. And then Spanish for beginners is offered to all of the students. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Buckler. Next up is enrollment update. Ms. Audrey Jackson. Good evening. Currently, we have 143 new kindergarten applications that we have in, and we have 85 enrolled pre-K students that will be rolling over. So that's a total of 228 kindergarten students. This time last year, we only had 72 new applications. So we're doing

022very well on that end. We also have 62 new and returning students and grades 1 through 12 applications for next year. So that number is also encouraging. That's up for 32 from last month. I mentioned last month that we had sent out a survey for just to gauge returning students to see where they were at. We're still working on getting responses for that survey and pushing that out weekly. To date, we've had 830 responses to that. 827 are returning and only three are not returning. So while I would hope that we would have continued to get those responses, that's encouraging numbers of... numbers are returning versus not returning. Percentage wise, we have 24% of our elementary so far are returning, 23% from Bell and 20% from Wooden and 21% from MHS. I also want to

023acknowledge a couple of individuals here tonight. Shannon Adams, I know Carrie Randall, and I believe Susie Lips, a group of individuals at the high school who have offered to, or teachers who have offered to reach out to students who have left us, but to kind of see where they're at and see if they'll be coming back. So we've already been making those phone calls, but they wanted to take the extra step and see if they could. encourage them to come back at that teacher standpoint so i want to appreciate appreciate you guys for doing that questions on enrollment before i move on i know um with the numbers that you just gave do we know why the three are not returning is it a situation where they're moving or um off of my head one

024was a foreign exchange student um one was a pre-k kiddo that was going to go to the district that their their child or their sorry their parent was teaching at the other one was moving thank you Audrey, I know we have several students, we've lost several students this year because we didn't offer online, an option for online. Some parents chose to keep their kids homeschooled. Correct. Do we have the names of those kids that did not attend that we were expecting to attend and have those people been contacted? Yes. So those were on the list that each school received. They received lists of students that withdrew because of homeschool. went to an online academy or online school, went to another school in Morgan County. They also received names of students that went to Center Grove,

025Indian Creek, and I think Owen Valley. So looking at the STN, we've lost students to those schools as well. So they reached out to those individuals. And you said, I think we have a total of 272 kindergartners. 228 right now. Did we have an expectation for how many we might have registered for kindergarten? Well, if we look at last, the current number, we have 290 something, I believe. Starting account day last year, we had 279. So we always are going to have those ones that are trickling in. I can say that we were, as far as the survey, we were pretty stagnant in the 600s. Most of... probably up until last week and then we've started to really see those those responses come in so i think people are starting to see the end of

026the school year and get ready for for next school year so i think we're going to start to see more of those applications come in okay thank you you're welcome anyone else have any enrollment questions Do we know how many are in our graduating class? Just trying to see how the kindergarten are offsetting the ones that are graduating. Last, when I did the graduation COVID plan, there was about 310. Now that was about a month ago. So you're going to, you know, some may not graduate. Those were students that were in a senior class and also were early junior grads. So around that. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Any other enrollment questions? Okay, we'll move. You want to move right into then the COVID-19? Yeah, I'm up here. So part of the ESSER III grant

027money, and ESSER III is a federal grant that we're receiving for reopening schools. It's a very nice sum of money that we definitely want to receive. Within 30 days of receiving that grant money, we need to post our opening plan for next school year. we also need to gather public comment on that and then post it to our website now keep in mind a lot of schools in the country did not go back to in in-person learning so we kind of did a lot of this stuff last year but we still have to do this in order to get this money so What's the next steps are going to be? We've presented it to our administration. We present it to our teachers. We've gone back and forth with kind of giving input on that. So

028letting you guys have now seen a copy of it and will now be presenting it to the public for that public opinion. So that's where we're at on that. A lot of unknowns at this point in time, which I know people have a lot of questions on. What are masks look like next year? What are vaccines, contact tracing? And we really don't know a lot of those at the moment. But what I can tell you is our goal is to make things as normal as possible next year and to follow any state mandates that we have and leave it at that. Anyone have any questions for Ms. Jackson concerning the COVID plan? Are we going to try to stay together as a county too? I mean, like I think last year all the county schools

029started and Martinsville started on red. Is that going to change? And I thought we were, you know. Who are we listening to for those updates? I can speak to why we started on red. We started on red last year not because we were trying to do something different than the other districts. We started on red because we had a staffing shortage. So we had a large number of staff who were sick at the beginning of the year, and we had to get that under control before we started the school year. That was why we delayed. Okay. So that was not planned. Okay. And we should have started at the same time. We actually did meet as a county a couple of times in the summer, actually more so, and started out with a basic foundation

030of these are the things we're going to do throughout this year. And I feel like we stuck to that, obviously, until some of the CDC stuff changed. But for the most part, I believe we were on the same page about the majority of the things that we originally agreed to. Okay. Just checking. And I would say that we are five days in school next year. We're not, there should be no red, yellow, green. We are full on green. Again, we are pretty much back to normal next year. Audrey, would that include students going eating in the cafeteria at all schools as well? That is the plan. So we've transitioned that back to a lot of schools. Some of the schools like it due to lack of student discipline. They've found that it's actually been beneficial.

031They've been able to build relationships with their students. We need you know, there is that trade-off of teaching STEM students some social skills with that too So that may be a discussion that we'll have But a lot of schools have been going back to the cafeteria already. I think we have three schools that are not fully back in the cafeteria Sorry three that are not at all. And we have a couple that are kind of quasi. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay next on the agenda is the excessive educational fund transfer dr arthur i think you're going to take that over thank you mr lips um tonight i'm going to talk just briefly about the distress unit a letter that we received about 75 days ago and we have a

03290-day window to respond um officially we brought this to you a couple of months ago in terms of um you in essence have to admit that you're on a naughty list for going over the 15 of transfer from the education fund to the operations fund just as a reminder this is not a situation in which the district overspent What we actually did was we over-transferred. So what that means is we moved too much money from one fund to another in preparation for saving dollars from the 20 budget and moving them to the 21 budget so we would have less of a hit this year with the pandemic. Our actual percentage ended up being we were just too close was 15.1%. So had we not had that one-tenth of a percent, obviously we wouldn't be sitting

033here having this conversation. But as a result, the... sort of a smack on the hand from the state of Indiana is that you have to publish that you're over that 15 percent so our corrective action letter will go to them tomorrow and that should take care of things if it doesn't they will send a report back indicating any other additional things they feel like we need to do to get this under that 15% moving forward. We have put some things in place already, basically immediately after we figure this out with our treasurer, to ensure we know exactly what that 15% is, and we will shoot lower than that 15% this next year to ensure that we're not sitting here having this conversation again. Again, I just want to remind everyone that this is not illegal.

034We haven't done anything illegal. It's not anything that we're... were punished for other than you have to put it out on your website that you are over the 15 percent and you have to talk about it in a meeting this meeting will also serve as the opportunity for public to give comment which nobody did today but that's an additional reason that we need to have it on the agenda tonight so no action needed but just wanted to update everybody and answer any questions if there are any lingering anyone have any questions Dr. Arthur No, but you say, Courtney, you guys, or not Courtney, but Whitney, you guys will get together and figure out what that 15% is. Yes. How will you monitor that? Yes, so you said Courtney. My name's just here. Whitney already monitors

035it. on a monthly basis, had we not made the very last switch at the very end of the year last year, and had we not asked the board to make that very last transfer, we would have been fine. The amount of money is pretty minuscule, but again, it's a tenth of a percent over, so you're over, you're over. I did plead with the department and asked them, because it's a tenth and we've never had any issues, can we just... Sometimes they'll wiggle a little bit, as I'm sure you probably know. They were not willing to do that. So that is what it is. Whitney is monitoring that, and she knows the exact end result that we can't go over, and so she's monitoring that, and we've divided that by the number of payments throughout the

036year that we request, so we know exactly what we can request. Chances are, when we get to the end of the year, I will be saying, let's take a little bit off that before we ask for that final transfer from all of you, but you'll be a part of that final transfer at the end of the year. We generally do transfer some dollars from year to year each year. Thank you. Any other questions on this matter? Okay. Thank you, Dr. Archer. Thank you. You want to go into the next couple items here? Yes, I can. Mr. Kip Staggs, I'm going to invite you to the podium, if you wouldn't mind, to talk about unified sports coming up. Mr. Staggs is our athletic director for the high school. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. The journey

037for unified sports at Martinsville High School really began a little over a year ago. Nate Dilley, Renee Staley, and myself talked about the possibilities of bringing unified sports to our programming. And we were on track to do just that last fall, but due to COVID and some other restrictions, we opted to pause and revisit. And so this past April, we've sat down for four or five different meetings discussing the possibility of unified sports and what that would look like at Martinsville High School. To give you some clarity of what it is, the IHSA, the Indiana High School Athletic Association, the Special Olympics of Indiana, it's a project that they've been a part of in the last several years, and it's allowed high school students with and without intellectual disabilities the opportunity to represent their high

038school in an IHSA-sanctioned activity by participating on a unified sports team. The focus of the IHSA Unified Sports is competition and not simply participation. Sports, as you know, teach many life lessons to work as a team, to follow rules, and to be committed. Through sports, we find shared interests that allow friendships to form. Through the IHSA and Special Olympics of Indiana, we have the opportunity to make a real positive change in the lives of students with and without disabilities. While we look at this programming, we also are looking at the opportunity for inclusion. Who participates? The participants would be a unified student athlete, and this school would identify a student as a unified student athlete if the student is receiving special education and or related services pursuant to their IEP based on cognitive, developmental, or

039intellectual delay. The second participant would be the unified student partner. This is a student that meets the eligibility criteria outlined in IHSA guidelines, but is not identified by the school as a unified student athlete. Coaches would also have to adhere to the IHSA certification, which currently is five different certifications that all of our 20 coaches, our 20 sports and their coaches have to adhere to. This would include concussion and sport, heat illness training, sudden cardiac arrest, and I can continue. The unified sports participants would also have to comply to all the other requirements, such as a physical. They would have to adhere to 10 practices before their first contest and complete all the digital final forms that we have our student athletes currently complete. Our goal is that in the fall of 2021, we would

040offer unified flag football. This would be a team of five individuals playing in another school of five individuals that would include three unified student athletes and two unified student partners on the same field. In this game, safety is the primary consideration. Flag football is not contact sport. Stationary screen blocking, but no moving blocks. No kickoffs or punts, no returns of fumbles or interception. The game would consist of two 20-minute halves, and it would be on a field of 60 yards by 25 yards. Our goal would be to have four to five games in the fall of 2021, and then to participate in the IHSA tournament in October. Other opportunities for unified sports would include unified track and field. Those events would include the 100-meter dash, the 400-meter dash, the 4x1 relay for boys, the 4x1

041relay for girls, shot put, and the long jump. Two other unified sports opportunities are bocce and unified bowling. Our goal to start the school year with the blessing. of our district leadership would start with unified flag football. And after two meetings with call out at the high school, we do have some interest. And so we want to continue building that interest with the goal of starting in August. With that being said, if unified flag football goes well, then our goal would be to look at unified track in the spring. Again, we believe that this will create inclusion with our student athletes and will provide lifelong opportunities for growth, lifelong opportunities for understanding, lifelong opportunities for friendships. So we appreciate your conversation today. We appreciate you listening to this opportunity, and we'll continue to move forward

042with your blessing. Thank you, Mr. Staggs. We appreciate the presentation. So really worthwhile program coming from a district that has it in place, and the friendships and the connections that students make are fairly amazing. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, action items. First one up is Adams Roofing. This is for a bid for a portion of a high school roof to be replaced. This is the second floor portion over the academic area. There were a handful of bids that were shared in your packet. The one that was selected or is being suggested tonight for your approval is our Adams Roofing. We use a company called Moisture Management as a consultant. they were present at the bid opening process with Mr. Arns and this was the recommendation that they're making to us. We are also asking

043for the approval of both the full that we're asked for the approval of the full bid for the alternate as well as the the original price. So you'll see two different numbers there we actually want to do both of those pieces. Just for clarification the additional portion of this the $11,700 is for all the gas lines that are on the roof. that feed the rooftop units to have them refurbished and repainted while they're doing the roof so that we don't have to be on the roof again a second time down the road. So it asks for consideration of that tonight. And this is part of our CPF plan. Basically, it's been pre-approved, but now we're bringing the bid to you. Okay, do we have a motion to approve the bid as presented? I make a

044motion to approve the bid. I second. okay we have a motion and a second anyone have any questions okay all in favor of approving the bid uh to hire through moisture management the adams roofing company uh for the bid presented signify by saying aye aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries thank you sir Next item is resolution 444. This is a State Board of Accounts financial item that we need from you for electronic funds transfer for athletics. So we are currently using EventLink for portions of our athletic program for calendaring and those kinds of things. What we'd like to be able to do is use two products, EventLink and ArbiterPay. to process electronic payments to folks who are on the field in the moment so that we're not slowing things down and paying them

045those kinds of things so it would allow the district to use these two pieces of software to pay people basically immediately so i'd like to ask the board for approval of the resolution 444 to use these two companies to to be able to do this at both wooden and the high school okay i'd like to ask for a motion for resolution 444. i make a motion that we accept that resolution i second it okay we have a motion we have a second all in favor of resolution 444 signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries thank you very much Next three items I'm going to group together three, four, and five and ask for one vote if that's okay with you all. The first one is the Martinsville and MCTA MOU. So

046this was the memorandum of understanding. We're basically opening the teacher's contract to provide a one-time pandemic bonus to our teachers for $3,500. So each teacher who meets the criteria of that MOU in essence basically needs to be here a large portion of the school year in their classroom teaching would receive this $3,500. The first item is that MOU. I know there was a great deal of discussion. I really appreciate all the banter. Thank you. It was helpful to us to kind of get through some of these pieces. There was some conversation about ECAs and how we pay those and what that looks like, and we sort of ran out of time, to be quite honest. We wanted to make sure that we didn't miss the deadline. So we will be bringing back to you, most

047likely, an ECA proposal to take care of coaches and other... folks who are running activities after school so that will probably come at esser three that is not included in this um but wanted to make sure that i mentioned that to everyone um the esser two number four is basically the same as number three i just need you to sign an additional document so that's a basically a repeat item and then number five is the support staff stipend um in your packet you should have seen or should have a copy of the esser fund matrix which has the stipends broken out by different work groups, numbers of hours, those kinds of things, how people are assigned to their positions. We would ask this evening for your approval of those stipends as well so that we're

048taking care of. basically every employee in the district who was here during the pandemic will be receiving some sort of bonus just to give a general idea these non-certified or classified bonuses are three times what we've given in the past in terms of their amounts so this is a really nice way i believe to say thank you to our staff i know that they will be very appreciative and i know our teachers will be as well so i'm one shout out to mrs adams in the back for her help with me and getting the mou turned around so quickly so thank you for doing that the grant has been turned in we are waiting for approval on that the way funds would roll if you all approve these two items tonight is we have we

049are obligating ourselves to roll the dollars within 30 days of the grant approval so we'll try and do it more quickly but sometimes payroll doesn't always work out the way that we hope that it does so giving ourselves a little bit of room but we're going to turn that around as fast as we can as soon as the grant is approved Okay, I'd like to ask for a motion to approve the MOU stipend, ESSER II for the certified staff, and ESSER II for the support staff. I'll make a motion to approve the MOU, the stipend for certified staff, and the stipend for support staff. I second. Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. Do we have any comments? Okay, all in favor of passing the three that were presented by Dr. Arthur,

050the MOU Certified Staff Stipend and the ESSER II Non-Certified Support Staff Stipend? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. I know our staff very much appreciate that recognition. They've worked extremely hard this year and have kept our kids safe, so we really appreciate that. The next item is Mr. Paul Spahr's contract extending for one year at his current rate of pay. He's off cycle and so this gets him on cycle with all the other principals. All of their contracts I believe are due at the end of next year so he would then naturally be in the same group. So this kind of gets him lined up with everyone else. I'd ask for your approval of his contract tonight as presented. I'd like to ask

051for a motion for Paul Spahr contract as presented. I move to approve Paul Spahr's contract as presented. Second. Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. Is there any discussion? Okay, all in favor of approving the Paul Spahr contract as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. The next item, item seven, I understand the board is not interested in hearing this evening, so we will take that off the list. Table it. number eight artisans online so that's a toss to me I had the pleasure of working with a really dynamic group of educators that included teachers district level staff the instructional coaches to prepare really our goal was to identify guidance for what that would potentially look like if we wanted to develop an online platform

052for our students in the upcoming year I'm kind of a simultaneously it fell into our lap through the service center that they're going to be offering online through their Indiana online academy which we already use for summer school at the high school for grade 7 through 12. Those students would attend that they would have their own teachers it would be their own program but they would still be MSD students we would receive their ADM funding and a portion of that we would pay the service center to provide that education to their students. So that kind of fell into our lap at the same time. We still needed to develop guidance for what our expectations are, accountability, and all of those pieces. So I've included in your packet kind of the process that we went through

053this group and i met two times in person and then several emails back and forth and again i appreciate all of their time and they gave it up on some pretty short notice we were very focused and it was really really a good process but what we did was we identified the structure at both the elementary and the secondary secondary using the indiana online and the elementary structure really grouping students as best we could we were developing this plan really shooting in the dark not knowing what our enrollment numbers were potentially going to be so simultaneously we sent out a survey to our families or currently enrolled families which would have included all of our at-home students now and asked for them to return if this would be something that they would be interested in

054So I included all of the guidance documents. We created an online learning contract, instructor qualifications, an interview process for people who would be potentially interested in being an instructor, an exit procedure for students and their families who aren't meeting the expectations that are set forth in the contract. an FAQ document for families, an FAQ document for staff, and then I also included the information from the survey that we sent home. You can see on the survey we had 276 responses and it was over a seven day window and really quite honestly with one exception of fifth grade the numbers lined up pretty similar similarly K through six and similarly that's hard work for me to get out seven through twelve. So you can kind of see on there we only had about 35 total students

055grades K through 2 that expressed an interest. I included some consideration. There did not seem to be an overwhelming response to this as an interest for our families based on the survey results. Something for us to keep in mind moving forward, our online students will only be funded at 85%. They will not receive the full 100% funding from the ADM. A special education would still need to be included and that becomes tricky or difficult for our students with an IEP who are not on site. We would not necessarily be as able to meet the social emotional needs of our students in an online learning environment. Staffing becomes very challenging because we're trying to plan for something that we don't know the students to who will be participating and so We spoke, we actually had this

056on discussion I think last week. I'm looking back at Shannon and Carrie, I think it was last week or two weeks ago. And so that's a big question mark, finding staff that would be interested in participating in this. It would have to be a multi-age. perhaps setting so that's a consideration as well and then one of the key pieces for participating with the Indiana online through the service center is that we have a local district coordinator so someone who's in charge of our 7 through 12 students doing that those weekly check-ins the monitoring you know monitoring the grades and really providing that local support to that student and their families as they participate in this online option So I included a recommendation. My recommendation is that we not offer this at our elementary level except

057in perhaps some case-by-case situations. There could be some families that have some unique situations that we need to attend to. And then I would work with the association. Perhaps that could be an additional stipend for a teacher. We spoke with my curriculum team. I think we're thinking along the lines of something similar to the homebound instruction that we provide for some of our students. But it is my recommendation as we seem to have a great deal more interest in grades 7 through 12 to participate in the Indiana Online Academy through the service center and that would involve my recommendation would be that we identify someone that would coordinate that program for us here locally. That's a whole lot of work in about 10 minutes or less. So any questions you have I'd be happy to

058answer. I have a question. What's like how much you said there was a cost involved by using the service center? Mm-hmm. Does that offset what we're getting? It would be less than what we're receiving. So yes, we would receive, you know, if we received $100 per student, I always work in $100 because the math is easy for me. We would only be getting $85. Perhaps the service center is only charging us $65. So we would still net some of the ADM funds because they will be available to participate in extracurriculars. They'll still be doing some things and be considered our students. They just would be taking their courses through the service center. I can only speak for myself personally here, but my interest in online option for kids is I don't like losing anyone from

059our district. And I know that we have only we will only be receiving 85%. That's better than nothing for those kids. I certainly agree that our preference is to have kids in our building in front of our teachers because there's no substitute for teachers. But again, my interest in this is to be able to offer a program where kids would not have to go somewhere else so they could stay within our district. So none of these students would be going anywhere. These students are our students counted as a Martinsville High School student. Maybe there's some confusion, but they would be a Martinsville High School student or a Wooden student counted that way. And so they're just, in essence, being taught by a teacher who is providing that instruction. Trying to manage those pieces with such

060a small group of kids and do it in a way that's efficient really kind of... causes us some problems particularly at the secondary level it's a lot easier at the elementary level if we had sort of the bubble there we could probably do this a lot easier we don't disagree with you we want the kids to stay here as well maybe i misunderstood your point but i i don't i don't want anybody to walk away thinking that we're asking anybody else to take the kids several other corporations are also using the service center as well there are 26 27 districts that are part of it i know hamilton southeastern about two weeks ago approved of the same sort of approach for their students so there are districts that um are investing in the same sort

061of programming model that we're we're looking at here another if i may one other thing real quick um this particular program as well and you may have said this i'm sorry i was reading while you were talking but um it is a much more robust approach than what people are used to with typical Indiana online if that makes sense. So that's another piece that we want to make sure our students and families understand that there will be expectations that students are actually following a schedule throughout the day and are actually up at eight o'clock in the morning and are sitting in front of their computer and getting actual time with the teacher on the screen. So that's an important piece of this whereas typical Indiana online was all just online work. So we want to

062make sure that people understand it it is still a teacher it's just through the screen instead of being here. at the high school or at the middle school i'm sorry i interrupted mr ankins no that's fine the only question i had was i know we're having to pay this central indiana yes i didn't know if it was cheaper to do it here with somebody or we feel like it's more cost efficient to go through the central india it's it's substantially more cost effective for us to use cisc um that's what it's about twenty four hundred dollars i can do the numbers it was about twenty four hundred dollars ahead for us to pay for students to be involved on the cisc side and we'll receive around six thousand dollars ahead per student so being able

063to count them and being able to make sure that those dollars are coming back into our fund actually correction 85 of that 6 000. i'm sorry Missed that part but still it's a substantial amount of money that would not be spent on the instruction of that student And would be coming back to the district Just because CISC is trying to really help all its member districts Craig just so I understand your recommendation on the elementary level students because there was such I really feel like maybe this is not a true representation right now of what's going to happen. A lot of that's going to be based on what CDC and Morgan County Health mask mandates and those kind of things. But my only thought of this, too, and again, that's my personal feeling, that the

064individual teachers at the elementary level, it would be nice to take that virtual piece off their plate because that's what everyone had to do this year. And I think that was very difficult. I don't disagree, but what I think we're trying to prevent is a great deal of students coming out of our in-person enrollment because what we then have to work with the association to determine is who's going where. Somebody has to teach, and it wouldn't be fair for Mrs. Lips, for example, to be sitting in a classroom in person with 10 students and Mrs. Staggs to have virtual 35 students. And so really it's... We're shooting into the dark. We're making a whole lot of assumptions that as we get back to normal that people are not going to return for the folks that

065chose to stay home this year and do the online learning or to go someplace else. Everything that I'm reading, hearing is, of course, the best practices to have students in person. And we're really trying to balance also being aware of our staff that are in place. It would be difficult to justify hiring additional staff to do this piece when we're then pulling students potentially from class sizes that are always already fairly low in some of our buildings. Then we're looking at asking teachers to change assignment, change what they're doing once summer has started. You know, there needs to be, my other piece of this would be we'll determine based on what the service center advises a hard and fast date. This year it was in and out. We could be online, we could be in

066person, we could be online. Grades K through eight would be a semester commitment and the high school students would have to commit to a year. The Indiana online will be a semester. format and since we're on trimesters the high school team that worked with me were very adamant that that would not be a smooth transition for students at the middle of the in the middle of the year i'm sure if you read through the guidance as well it's very rigorous on the expectations those were outlined for students for families and for staff and my point to that too as well as for the agreement is that a year is a long time if they're struggling. So, you know, and I know that we have some exit programs here and some reasons that they may leave

067the program. So I know you mentioned monitoring like every couple of weeks or something like that. So it would be more frequently than that. Yes. Because that would be my concern, you know, a semester at the elementary and if they're struggling, that's a long time. A year at the high school and they're struggling, that's a long time. 100%, which is why if we offered this at the elementary, whomever the teacher of those students would be would obviously be monitoring what they're doing. These teachers would also be under one elementary, and so they would have a principal that would be supervising that as well. And for the 7 through 12 students, that's why part of that key piece of that district coordinator is they're the person. who's doing the weekly monitoring? What are we doing to

068support you? And if we needed to on a case-by-case basis, then work on getting them integrated back into the high school. One of the challenges this year, and we have several teachers in the audience, has been the in and out. You know, we are online for six weeks, then we come back for a month. And so this really spoke to what we identified as a group. Keep in mind all of these documents were really based on consensus from a wide range with elementary, middle, high school folks, some district people. Great input and it was a good reminder to me that it's been a long time since I've turned in my work to an English teacher. We had one of the English teachers on the team and he was just great at helping me get this

069all pulled together. Mr. Becker, did we have any input from building principals? I noticed there wasn't any building principals on the planning team. They have been part of the process all along. So we have offered it just as we took this to the association last week. We presented it last Thursday to the building principals as well. Their concerns, quite honestly, are if I'm the principal at Poston and 30 of my students. decide to be virtual and the virtual program is hosted at green for example those students become green students so they feel pretty passionate as well as we all do you know having students in person in the buildings So at this time, we're looking for a recommendation, not a recommendation, we're looking for a motion, pardon me, for approval for the 7 through 12

070program with CISC and doing the K through 6 the way in which Mr. Buckler has presented, case-by-case basis for students that we find need those additional supports. If that's not something the board wants to entertain, then I think the board would need to offer a different motion. Anyone else have any questions for Dr. Arthur or Mr. Buckler? No, I think there's just a lot of unknowns right now, and that's the problem. We don't know based on these responses. That's really not a very good representation of our student body to determine if you need. five teachers to teach all of the elementary or whatever. You're describing the same issue that we have. We're struggling with as well. We're also under the pressure of hearing from the community as well as our staff on give us an

071answer. We're trying to balance that in providing something that we think makes sense based on what we know today with some projection. I think those of you that are seasoned know half of what we do is projected. This is one more program in which we're projecting to try and figure out what this needs to look like. I fully expect we'll be adjusting the whole way through, to be quite honest. That's going to be my question. It can be tweaked here. Of course, yes. Is there a deadline when this, I mean, does this need to be done at this meeting? So I really, if we would wait until the June meeting, it would only probably be a week and a half for parents. We really need a July 1st. Like I'm really now putting my old

072principal's hat on and thinking about teachers and what's in their best interest. No teacher wants a phone call on July 20th that says. in two weeks you're not teaching second grade you're teaching third and fourth grade online because of what those numbers are so i'm really thinking as far as the teacher the teacher piece i would add in my mind i was thinking a july 1st deadline for families that wanted to commit the other difficulty in this as well and i'll use mrs lips for an example she's an english teacher and so she can pretty much adjust 7 through 12. language arts as she would need to there's a very different piece from a kindergartener learning to read and you know a fourth grader who reading so also from the teacher perspective it could be

073a little bit still a challenge but a little bit less challenging at the secondary level than the elementary I would just simply add on the date issue. We will run into some trouble with CISC because they contractually are trying to contract with teachers, so they're looking for a number as well. They're in the same boat we are in trying to provide enough staff for the 26 districts that potentially might be a part of this. Now, I'm not saying all 26 are, but it's been offered to all 26. So I suspect as districts start getting on, the others will probably take some of this up as well. So they're looking for a number from us as well. i thought it was june 15th but their their timeline is much sooner yes okay so i think the

074question is do we want to wait another month to make a decision on this or are we ready to vote on this here this evening I'm ready to vote as long as it can be modified in the future if it needs to be. Right. I don't want this hard to set in stone right now because I think there's just too many factors that could change, would change. I think it would be helpful if you could clarify on which pieces you're referring to, or maybe that needs to be part of the motion because I don't think we can modify the CISC portion. So I feel like we need to. Right. Okay. I just feel like we need to either stick with it or not. And perhaps this is two motions or it's whatever. I would say

075just number as we see numbers for elementary. Sure. We are more than happy to bring back a different proposal or adjust the proposal for elementary if we need to do that based on numbers. I think we would need to do that at this point because I don't think that should be included in this. I'm saying. We need an answer tonight, but we also are willing to come back with an additional one that's different if that's what we need to do. Perhaps we can think about marketing in a different way, just a general, it would be if you are a student who will be in grades K through 6 for the upcoming year, if you have interest in this opportunity. Yay or nay we don't even wouldn't even need names, but that would perhaps and that

076could be something I don't know My next question can we send out another survey to you? Absolutely, but the issue is the students who aren't enrolled aren't getting the survey, right? So we would need to think about you know, perhaps the newspaper perhaps some time on the radio But we still have the contact information for those students not enrolled we do so we could still reach out to those we can absolutely work on an additional survey to those elementary folks I would like to see that done and then as far as the district coordinator are we talking about a person who's already here and adding additional that's to be determined I wanted to kind of get some some input this evening if that was the direction that we needed to go What was the feeling

077of the team of the planning team? What was their thoughts on that on that person? That will probably be a very heavy lift for someone so probably perhaps identifying someone that we could perhaps change their role For the service center piece, if we're committed to the service center, one of the requirements is that we have a dedicated person. And so in the phone call with them or one of the phone calls or webinars, they were highly suggestive. And basically, it's part of the commitment that we would have a dedicated person and not just take, for example, a counselor and say to a counselor, this is an extra duty for you. So we will have to either get creative or take something off of someone's plate to make sure that they have the time to do

078this work. I envision. This is my personal opinion at this point. I'm not making a recommendation, but I envision this person being responsible for... helping track those kids that fall off the wagon just as they did this year. We are not going to have it. We won't be able to have another year where we have kids all over the place and we don't know where they are. The Department of Education has made it clear that that's not going to be acceptable. I feel like our principals, our staff have done the best job that they can this year given the circumstances, but next year the actual punitive pieces will come back into play, I suspect, from are folks that are involved with attendance and those kinds of things in terms of prosecutor's office, etc. So somebody

079is going to have to manage that piece or is going to have to be on top of that. And how is the attendance going to be taken for grades 7 through 12? And how are the grades going to be transferred to us to be input into Skyward or the grade book? How is that going to work? I don't know that exact logistic at this point. I'm sorry. So we don't know if it's our people that's going to keep attendance or just they're keeping us they're keeping attendance But it will be sent to us, but we'll have to input it into our own system. They're not inputting anything for us but it's not a matter of the students checking in with us first and then Going there. I mean there if this is an all-inclusive sort

080of program package for the student on the CISC side Our involvement is making sure that they're actually showing up They're doing the things you're supposed to be doing and that's the connectivity between CISC and that individual who's in this role And the fees for these classes that will be offered, will that be the same fees that a student in person here would get charged, or are we looking at different? No, I believe that they're, that's a great question. I don't know what that will be from Indiana Online. We haven't got to that part yet. And that would be my only problem. I think there's just maybe some unanswered questions that could very easily be. you know answered a portion of that a portion of that question I can answer every student has to have a

081Chromebook or has to have a device and so that is being provided by the school district so there's of course that fee so there will be fees attached to the students who are part of the service center program it won't just be free for them they'll have to pay the same level of fees that any other student would have to pay if they were enrolling in a particular course now what those actual fees are for those courses right now I don't know I don't anticipate uh curricular fees necessarily just technology fees we are always as well more than happy when we send the packet out ahead of time to gather this information so that we have it for the meeting so in the future if there are questions that you have if you call craig

082or i or send us an email we'd be more than happy to be prepared at the meeting with those kinds of answers okay do we have any other questions at this time So are we in favor here as a board? Anybody else have an input? Do we want to separate these two or do we want to make one motion for both of these? Jackie, what's your feeling? I mean, my gut would be to separate the two. And if we're going to do the CIESC with grade 7 through 12, but I still think that there's some questions that need answered, you know, that we need to find out. I'm not opposed to allowing our students to do that. I think that's a great opportunity. for the students and a way to keep our students in our

083corporation. Elementary, my concern would be exactly that if we have a lot and it's a virtual piece on the teacher's plate again. And I'm not sure that's a great thing either. Are there suggested solutions? We are more than happy to hear any solutions anyone might have. I mean, looking at the numbers that are low right now at the elementary school, I mean, you know, one suggestion would be possibly if the numbers grow, a teacher doing like kindergarten in the morning, let's say, and first grade in the afternoon, or one teacher doing second grade in the morning and third grade in the afternoon. I'm not opposed to that at all. I don't know how the teachers feel about that, but that would be my thought so that we still. service our students and that a teacher's

084not trying to do both in-person lesson plan and a virtual lesson plan as well because i think that's a lot to put on their plate so that would be my suggestion but again the numbers here don't really warrant that so i would say send a second survey out or let's try to contact the people we have their contact information whether they're enrolled here or not they're still in our database um and as far as like a district coordinator I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but what that person exactly would do. I think we're getting in the weeds here on things that really are for us to decide and figure out. We're happy to report them to you, but we will make those recommendations to you as we figure out those pieces. So I want to

085prove something that can't be changed. That's my opinion. That can't be changed later. Anyone else have any questions on separation here? Michelle? Matt? No, I'm okay. Heather? So the decision here is to separate? Yes. All right. So I'd like to ask for a motion to approve the secondary or 7 through 12 as presented. I'll make a motion to approve that. I'll second that. Okay. The motion has been made and seconded. All in favor of accepting as presented the Artesian Online for grades 7 through 12? Signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Okay, that motion carries. Thank you. So we will move forward with the contract with CISC for 7 through 12. I can pull together an update for the elementary, and we can just put that on the back burner, but just postpone

086it until we get some more additional numbers. Okay. Thank you. Two points just to make. We will need to take that through district discussion again. So if we're not going to have a lot of time here, we're going to have to turn this around pretty fast. Okay. Next item is the board's item. Okay. Next item is the approval of Bose, McKinney, and Evans as board counsel. I recommend that the Board of Education for the MSD of Martinsville approve the selection of Bose, McKinney, and Evans as counsel to the board for matters as determined from time to time by the board president. Can I have a motion? I'll make the motion to approve Bose, McKinney, and Evans as the board counsel. I'll second. Okay, the motion has been made and seconded. Do we have any discussion?

087Can I ask where the money will come from to pay Bose-McKinney? The money will come from the same areas that our current attorney is being paid. So additional fees from that will go to pay Bose? Bose will only be paid on an hourly basis when used. There's no retainer fee of any kind. And it's really pretty standard procedure for school districts to have multiple legal firms. So it's not unheard of. A lot of them have for different reasons. So some of them have three and four legal companies that represent different portions of questions that you may have. So it's not really anything unheard of. Okay, but like for a parent who may want to know and hear, hey, they've got two attorneys, why would we need two attorneys? Well, let me say this. The previous

088board hired Church, Church, and Hiddle to do the everyday business, and that was upon the recommendation of Dr. Arthur because that was Dr. Arthur's comfort zone, and I think it's important that our superintendent be comfortable with the attorney. We're asking to do the same thing as this board. This board would like to hire an attorney that we can counsel with whenever we feel like it's necessary, that we feel comfortable with, and that's why we're making this motion. Was there any conversation between, I guess, the board president and the superintendent to explain the new attorney or additional attorney? We have talked to him about it. We brought the subject up. Was there any concerns on the administration side? Sure, yes. And what were those? Well, you'd have to ask him. What were the concerns? You've mentioned,

089I mean, I'm concerned about two attorneys arguing over the same kinds of things when they're... both equally qualified to provide guidance. I've worked with Bose McKinney on other things before, and they actually represent us in some other areas. They actually represent us on one of our trusts, and so we have that connectivity. It's not that we selected them. That's what the trust selected. So they're a reputable company, but I just find it interesting that we're going to have two sets of attorneys arguing about matters that we can't get on the same page about. hard for me to make sense of. And I don't think that's the purpose for it. And again, it's not unheard of for school corporations to have multiple legal firms. For example, there may be a firm that specializes in special education,

090but one firm may specialize in contracts or they may specialize in something else, negotiations, teacher negotiations. So it's really not unheard of. You're absolutely right. It's not. I have worked in a number of corporations and we've had other companies that have worked on different items. I think what's different about this is that this is, the board using one attorney and the school district using a different attorney but i view it as a school corporation just using different it's it's not i don't view that as the legal counsel arguing over the same issue okay and you're saying that i was asked what my opinion is i was providing it so and you're saying this is fiscally responsible to spend this money on an additional attorney yes yes and none of this would be taken out of

091curriculum or anything for the kids Absolutely not. And again, it's an additional charge unless they're consulted for something. It would be no different if we consulted with them or you consulted with church, church. I guess I'm not understanding why we can't all consult with the same attorney. That's what I don't understand. You have met the attorney. We actually used several from the same group. And I guess I'm just really struggling with when you all haven't met or worked with them, you're already making a decision to not work with them. And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because these same attorneys are working with all of our directors in a number of capacities to support them in what they're doing. For the exact reason that you just mentioned, because there are several different

092attorneys who have different capacities or have different things that they're passionate about. That's one of the reasons that we chose this firm over the firm that we were using before the firm that we were using before did not have that breadth in my opinion and Did not we're not able to support us on a number of matters We were getting opinions from one attorney because that was the attorney that wanted our business We were not getting the opinions of multiple attorneys from that particular firm so going with the firm that we did just as some historical was so that we could have multiple people who had expertise in different areas as an example one of the attorneys is a former irb attorney and so on all of our issues in which we're dealing with things

093that involve labor we reach out to that particular church attorney the one that you all met here who came into training andrew mana his particular focus is special education and board council they all have different areas we used a different andrew can't remember his last name for when we did the bond project so i just am struggling with myself in a superintendent position understanding why the board feels it needs to lawyer up that's what it feels like well we have no intention of debating about the council that represents us now. We want to continue having Church Hiddle represent us on a daily basis. Thank you. The recommendation here is that we sign this letter of engagement so that if the board wants to seek different council, then we have the right to do so. Any

094other discussion from the board members? Okay, we've had a motion, we've had a second, we've had a discussion. All in favor of the proposal here for the board to hire Bose, McKinney, and Evans for board council, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Aye. Okay, motion carries four to one. Next three items are donations. The first one, the IHSA director of broadcasting, executive producer, Heath Shanahan, broadcast anchor desk donation to Martinsville High School video production class. I want to just, out of all transparency, let you all know that I've already accepted this donation. It's actually on property. But we could certainly get rid of it if you don't want it, but they were going to dispose of it And I didn't want us to lose this opportunity. Mr. Meyer was very passionate

095about having this particular desk. It's pretty cool. So that first donation is an actual piece of furniture. The second one Duke Energy and REMC $5,195 to the MSD of Martinsville kindergarten real men read program. I should say real men not real mean. I got a little typo there. The next one, L. Duane and Helen Tackett O'Neill Foundation, $2,840, along with the cost of T-shirts, that would be in addition to that $2,840, to Carrie Palma and the fourth grade MSD of Martinsville students to attend the Discovery Symphony Concert at the Hilbert Circle Theater. I just want to say a special thanks to this particular foundation and family for all their donations to our school district. They additionally give a $10,000 scholarship each year that's good for four years. So in essence, they're giving $40,000 a year

096to the MSD of Martinsville. So very appreciative of that. And this is yet another donation from their family. And what this also did was this gave $2,840 more to the foundation to give to grants to other teachers because this was a grant that was submitted to the foundation originally. And Lisa O'Neill reached out and offered to take this to the foundation. So I would ask for a motion to approve those three donations this evening. I'll make a motion to approve those. I've seen the anchor desk, is what I was going to say, because it's actually very nice. It's very nice, so I'll make a motion to approve these. We don't usually do that. I'll second it. Okay, a motion has been made, seconded, to accept all three donations that were just presented. Anyone have any

097questions or any discussion? Okay, all in favor of accepting the donations as presented, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Okay, next item on the agenda is public comments and announcements. If you would like to make a comment or if you'd like to make an announcement, we would like to ask that when you come up to the microphone, if you would please state your name, and we ask you to stay within a two-minute time limit. Good evening. Bill Mitchell, taxpayer. I'm going to challenge right away off the bat the new lawyers. I want to challenge Mrs. Staggs and Mr. Lips on the sports department of this school system because they're well involved. Mrs. Staggs was married to the coach. That's one nepotism by an elected official. It's

098not supposed to happen. This is a school and they elected officials, so either that has to change. And then we got some more things here. These are not these are not done, but just go and check it we pay 81 to 85 cents out every dollar for this school system and Back to another question. I had a question back there early about bullying Nobody got back with me so I went to the state and asked him According to the state when you bully somebody if you get done three or four times It's not taken care of It happens again a little bit of time three or four times. They're not taking care of It happens again, and not not taking care of reported right or cleared up then You have no record of that being

099volunteered. So the state cannot come on the school system and say, you guys, there's no problem there because you guys have no record of them child being bullied. Both sides, both people bullied. It takes two. One's got a mouth and one reacts. And then you got another one here. You got the bus part. I found out from some old people in the bus barn down there, I've come out of that bus barn driving a bus for 33 years and I've smacked the back of my bus a couple of times because the fence on the west side of the bus garage is 10 foot too close to the boundary lines, it's 10 foot away from the fence now. John Grant. And me and Dick Cunningham put that fence up there because he wanted to mow on

100the back side of the fence to keep it looking nice. It never got mowed. It never got moved. We've had many buses hit the tail swing, hit the back doors going out of the doors on the bus because there's not enough room. And I've talked to DROPLIC about it. They'll be glad to help out resurveying it and fixing that problem. But that's up to you guys. Okay, American Disabilities Act. I went around the school the other day, drove around all the parking lots. Us people are getting older. The handicap disability things are not enough to adequately to the new athletic complex. You guys have put that building back over there for the sports now people have to walk all the way through there this American Disability Act You're not supposed to have any objects in

101your road So I would make a suggestion just a suggestion that you build a parking lot behind a visiting football grandstands for handicapped accessible people for the parents because we're getting older we got our wheelchairs walkers and everything else and we're walking over 300 almost 700 feet from the from the parking lot in front of the building in high school through the maze that building and over to the parking lot to get into the grants to send any of the bleachers to football stadium. I drove behind the school between the school and athletic field. There's only four places for handicapped parking. I drove over here to East and Smith the other day. There's only one place behind Smith to park and there's none behind East. You drive over to West or to Wooden and Wooden

102has nobody. They have three places up next to the school door 10, nobody towards the athletic field or baseball stuff. There's no handicap accessible places down there for anybody. So you come over here until you do that. So we need to have more handicap parking for the people who are getting older. We're living longer. We can't go see our grandkids or our grandfamilies or anybody else because we can't get there because of the obstacles put in front of us by just nature. Okay, one other thing about taxpayers. We started out with Dr. Moore with $47 million in debt. When she went out, we was in $36 million to the black. Now we're back at $43 to $44 million in debt again. And then they talk about diversity. The reason why we're not getting any kids

103in this school, we have diversion of children coming to this school. We have no diversion for teachers. We're all one color. So let's diversify as a school board to get more people to come in because we've got kids coming now. And Martinsville is just a bedroom community. The paper tells you all the time that we're not going to get any industry here because the ground will not accept large buildings. So all we're going to be is a bedroom community for Bloomington and Indianapolis. And the paper even says that we have the water problem, we've got the sand problem. So we're going to have to own up to it, diversify our education teachers. to get something else and then another question well that'll be enough right now oh and this certified sports thing we well we

104already talked about that mrs staggs and her husband so one of them needs to resign or step away and mr lips you should not be voting on sport things because you are a previous athletic director and you have you're going to lean towards sports so i would suggest now and then you have elections for sporting events This is Deckard, this is Ball, and Mr. Hankins' vote on the sporting events. Because if you go out here, I've had people coaching basketball for these special sports things. A lot of times the coach goes out and he teaches the kids what he wants them to do, and he turns around and these kids go back to their schools and tell the coaches, hey, that coach told me how to beat them on this certain sport. Then they come

105back and they beat them the next year. It's been proven over and over again. Three or four times in Martin's what's happened. So I'll give you something to think about tonight, and I'll wait back for the I'll wait back for the rest of the stuff But that the Disability Act is not followed by this school system And if you don't somebody may take it may go down the road with the kicker can down the road Thanks for time and information Well, my name is Shannon Adams. I am a community member and I'm a mom of a kid at the MHS and I'm also the exclusive representative for the Teachers Association. Originally, I had about 15 seconds worth of something to say and then I got inspired and that that corner so sorry, Mr. Buckler, I

106am now off script, but I'm gonna go fast. I have this this movie that I like to watch. It's called Moneyball and there's this quote at the end and it says, how can you not be romantic about baseball? And I've never felt that statement before for something else until tonight. And I wish you could have seen Mrs. Lanigan's face expressing to those kids. And she was even smiling at me. And then to think that those eighth graders have more talent in their pinky musical talent than I have in my entire person is just amazing. When you allow yourself to see inspiration, you see it. And so that's the reason I'm here tonight. A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week, the MSD of Martinsville, teacher and staff appreciation. And part of that was

107a little bit of a, hey, we're proud of our schools, our teachers, our staff, our people are proud of the MSD of Martinsville schools. And we're all one team. And we're the home team of this community. And so something the association chose to do was have signs made. And we intentionally had a couple hundred extra made, more people than we have in the district. And so I wanted to offer a sign to everyone here tonight. And I have extras. If you would like one. please take one. I have some more in my garage. If they run out tonight, get me your name and I'll get you one. We are very proud of our schools, very proud of our kids, and we just want to see this community move forward and we want to be an

108active part in it. And so thank you for all that everyone in this room and beyond the borders of this room does to make this a great experience for our kids. Thank you, Shannon. Hi, I'm Shelly Tackett Campbell. I grew up in this community. I've been away for about 40 years and moved back. I raised three girls in Carmel High School. I just wanted to make some remarks about what was said tonight. I took some copious notes. I want to better understand SEL, social emotional learning, and I want to better understand critical race theory as it pertains to our curriculum here. So those are the two things I want to float out. But then as I was listening, I heard a lot about budget and dollars being spent for the teachers. And I'm a teacher

109by education. And $3,500 bonus is a great bonus. And I heard about how it's all-inclusive, staff and everyone. But what I didn't hear about is, what are we going to do to help our kids? If you took that bonus, and I don't know where the bonus comes from, and you take it towards the number of teachers and staff, which I believe is like 325, I don't know, that's about $1,137,000. That's a lot of money. So I looked through the agenda and there's Duke Energy and they're providing almost $5,200. If I took that and divided it by a tutor rate of $40, we could tutor up to 129 hours. which is three weeks, a lot of students. So when you ask earlier, I think it was Jackie or someone said earlier, what do we do? Do

110we find district coordinators to help with these gaps in care? What do we do? I think you've got a lot of educated people setting out here that could give you great ideas. I worked in corporate America for 40 years. This is what I do every day. I look at numbers and I look at budgets and I... back into these numbers to figure out what do we need to do to promote and help these children. They're going to be coming back with tons of mental health issues that wasn't even addressed tonight. I don't know where the money is for mental health. So those are the things that are concerning for me. So if we're going to give $1,137,000 in bonuses to the teachers, and hear me loud and clear. God love you teachers. You guys had

111a hard job. But what if we had that same amount of money to put towards mental health for our children, put towards tutoring for our children? There's a lot of resources in the community. I'm retired now, but there's a lot of resources in this community that could tutor, and I actually tutor three kids that cannot afford a tutor. So I think you can draw on the community to backfill some of these gaps, and it was disappointing that that wasn't pointed out or mentioned. Thank you. Shelly, I would just like to say that me personally, it's my belief that if we invest in teachers, we're investing in our students. Because teachers are very important, and one of our goals is to maintain our teachers, to retain our teachers, and eliminate as much turnover as we can

112possibly have. And Don, I understand that, but when I looked at the numbers, I went out to the website, I looked at the numbers, and the budget's $37 million. We've lost kids every year, and this teacher count has stayed the same. When I back into those numbers, I'm like, why are these kids leaving? What aren't we doing to attract them to the schools? What's the gap? And we can survey all day long. But I think you have an audience here that could answer a lot of those questions. So again, it's just the numbers. It's just the data. That's all I did, backed into it. And then when I heard some of the things that we released in bonuses, and again, Thank you, teachers. Don't hear that I'm beating on the teachers. I am not. But,

113you know, do we need grant writers to find some mental health dollars for these kids? I mean, what do we need? You've got an awesome community. Like I said, I grew up here. I know everybody in the community. We can get a lot accomplished if we know what the agenda is and if we get fed the agenda way before. I just got this piece of paper when I walked in the door. So I'm allied. I'm back in this community. I live in this community. I invest in this community. My whole family's here. My aunts and uncles, my brother and everyone. So I'm vested here. And I want to be an ally and I want to help. But what I heard tonight was not music to my ears. It's upsetting. Shelly, if you'd like to stay

114afterwards, I'll give you my card because I think there are a number of things that you have misinformation about that either Mr. Buckler or I would be happy to get you up to speed on. Okay. Thank you. Yes, my name is Donna Harmon. For the past two school board elections, you, our representatives, have run on a platform of transparency. The most crucial aspect of assuring transparency in our school corporation is our school board policy. As long as we keep a light shined on that policy, transparency will always exist. That is why it was written, that is why each of you took an oath to uphold it and to uphold all existing laws. Everyone in our school community should be overseers and should be encouraged to always come forward when they observe any wrongdoing without fear

115of repercussions. A vital part of the school board policy was inclusion of section 4211 support staff required reports and protection of whistleblowers. Whistleblower laws are critical in protecting people who expose misconduct within our schools. If someone makes a disclosure, the school board should respond carefully to ensure that they afford the whistleblower protection under the Indiana whistleblower statutes. We want to see our school board do its due diligence in upholding our policy and establishing integrity in due process. My question for the two board members that served with the previous board members is, Why was the whistleblower statute removed from our school board policy? Mr. Lips or Mrs. Ball, could you please answer this question? Donna, this is not a question-answer session here. This is an opportunity for you to ask questions. We will discuss this. Someone

116will get back with you. But at this point, this is not a question-answer session. Okay. Pardon? I know. That's exactly a good question. What do they have to talk? Why did you remove the whistleboard clause? Yeah, we will discuss this. All these questions, we will discuss this, and we will get back. And I know we didn't get back with you on the last one. I take responsibility for that as a board president, but that is our intention here is to listen to what people have to say, listen to their questions, their comments, and then we can get together and come up with answers because we don't know all the answers to every question that's going to be asked. But we will get back. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lana Farron. I love our teachers,

117love the school district, had a wonderful high school. I know you might not be able to answer this night, and that's fine. Just get back to me with it. I just kind of like to know, pardon me, I just kind of like to know where the COVID money was spent. I know that other school districts around us, they went to school all year. You know, we didn't. Is that COVID money? Could that bounty have been used towards? The teachers bonuses and I love all of our teachers. I have 12 grandchildren here. Never had a problem with the teacher in a school. Yes, I'm involved in it because I'm a main keeper of them, especially e-learning on Wednesdays because all my kids, they work, they have a job. They have not, they have worked through the

118whole COVID. Never one day have they missed. I know some of them even got to enjoy some of the educators. I know what's up. You know, we went to that two day thing. You know, I know that lots of times that, you know, they probably had to be at the school and do things, but I know others that I'd see about public on e-learning days and stuff. But I'd kind of like to know about COVID stuff. And I'd like for somebody to point me in the direction of I would like to have all the reading material that our libraries have. Because I want to know what books are being taken out, why, and what books are being brought in. Because I have seen some very disturbing things. And also, I recently, somebody sent me a

119poll, a good friend of mine. 65% of parents, this poll was done for the state of Indiana. 65% of parents. Didn't say they would prefer in what you guys call online. Didn't say they preferred that because of the pandemic, the mask and all that. They prefer it because they want to see what their kids are being taught. See, I think that's why a lot of these kids aren't coming back. I talk to parents that go to ball games, get the same thing. We're thinking about not bringing our kids back. We don't like what's coming into the classroom. Now I'm sure some of you know what's coming into the classroom. I do. I do. Everybody, be sure and get on Purple for Parents in Indiana. You better be reading about your kids' stuff that's going on

120in this school. You better be reading about it. Just read it. If you don't understand it, reach out for help. Because I'm telling you, some of the things that are going to be taught, you might want to go ahead and keep your kids at home and homeschool them. Because I'm getting ready to get my four boys sitting down, have a talk with them, and I'm getting ready to point some stuff out to them and maybe change my 10, because two's already graduated, 10 out of the school district and get them where they can be educated in a proper way. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. Superintendent's comments? Thanks, sir. I'd just like to start by saying I'm a proud public school student. I went K through 12 to a public school. I happened to go to

121a school just down the street that was filled with all kinds of different kids that looked very different than me. It was an exceptional education, exceptional experience. And quite honestly, it's why I landed where I am today in a role in which I have the degrees that I have and I'm sitting in a public school working today because I believe in public school and I believe in what it stands for. And so I'm very appreciative of the great work that our teachers do and our staff do to support our kids regardless of where they come from, what they look like, what they believe educationally, what their sex... what their orientation is, what their religion is. We don't care. We're a public school education, a public school district, and we will continue to educate every student

122who walks through our doors. I feel it's important that we say that tonight. Shifting to my next comment, I'd like to give a shout out to Mr. Dennis Mills in the back. Thank you, Mr. Mills. He hates attention, but I have to say this year in terms of the pandemic, we have thrown more. curveballs at him in terms of shifting transportation and moving things and I just want to say thank you for your dedication to our students. I know a lot of times Dennis has to be the person that tells people no and they don't like that but that's one of the tough things of being the transportation director so thank you we appreciate you. Next group I'd really like to say thank you to our nurses and our nursing aides. We last week, while

123we did attempt to recognize our nurses and give them a gift, a couple of them were unable to meet with us to receive that gift on time. There was a proclamation last week. I believe it was Wednesday by the governor making Wednesday school nurse day. And so we want to make sure that they understand how much we've appreciated them this school year in terms of all the things that they've done to keep our kids safe and us safe, quite honestly. So thank you to our school nurses. Super excited to have the Brooklyn STEM. Academy Innovation Project open yesterday. Super excited about all the people that came. We had a huge turnout. We're exceptionally happy about that. A large number of kids from other districts and so Bring it. We're excited. We will we will help

124you get enrolled. So reach out to Brooklyn STEM Academy Academy or you can go to our website here at just the MSD of Martinsville dot org and there's enrollment information there. We're happy to help you. I also like to give a shout out to an awesome show at MHS, the theater, The Clue, or the show Clue last week. And I'm looking forward to as a final comment. us having a normal a normal year next year and i think we all need that everybody is on edge pins and needles and we need a normal year next year and we're working very hard to bring a normal near a normal year next year and my final comment i guess i have one final comment which is we're super excited about graduation and watching those kids walk across

125the stage again i'm a proud public school student and i'm proud of what our kids do and bring to the table and friday is a celebration for them so lord thank you for your support of everything that we all do and thank you for the time thank you dr arthur board members anyone have any comments I do want to say thank you to Shannon Adams and all the teachers who made the videos for Teacher Appreciation Week and everyone telling the reasons why you're proud to be an Artesian. I'm proud to be an Artesian, and I'm glad you guys are too, so thank you. And compliments too, Shannon, on the signs. We're seeing those pop up everywhere around town, and very attractive signs, attention getters, so thank you. I do, although I'm sure school board comments

126after this might be tabled from now on. I do want to say that you haven't seen anything until you've seen Shannon Adams' son get a home run on his birthday. I got to witness that, and his dad, too. I'm not going to leave you out. It was very exciting to see Ian get a home run. So there's some initials. I don't know what they mean, but HBD19. Hopefully that's not bad. Anybody Google that if it's bad and let me know later. Good luck to all the spring sports as they are getting ready to prepare for sectionals. Congratulations to Eric Myers and his Rewind class for being second runner-up. for school video of the year at the Indiana Association of School Broadcasters Virtual State Competition. I'm so glad we didn't have to make a motion on

127that one. I am also wanting to congratulate Brooklyn. I got a call from one of the teachers. They were so excited. Wanted to thank the board so much for all their support. They did tell me they had over 200 people coming through the door and visiting. I have to give a shout out because the reason they were letting me know is my husband had been talking up camp invention at Lilly and a family came with their two kids and is probably going to transfer their kids so the balls are doing their job for transferring And I know that we're not seeing the cute little kiddo faces on the big screen. I just want to say there is more than welcome to be behind me because I would much rather have people looking at those cute

128little faces than staring at me. So they're more than willing to get back up. They're cuties. Also a couple of people I wanted to recognize. First are the retired staff. This year has brought a lot of retirements. I would like to tell each of you thank you for all you've done to make Martinsville the best it can be. I greatly appreciate all you have done and wish you many, many years of retirement bliss. Although I do not have time to get to each one of you individually, there are a few I would like to mention. I'm going to start with the mac daddy of them all, Mr. and Mrs. Lund. They were at every event I attended and even more. They were that cute couple sitting high above like proud peacocks watching their young. i

129did not know them personally but heard nothing but greatness from their peers and students i would love to share what i believe has been said more than just in my household It was a busy COVID shut down our school day last year, and my oldest, Andrew, informed me he had to go meet Mr. Lund in town to get his completion award for Mr. Lund's class. I knew he'd been studying hard for that class and asked how he thought he did. I remembered his response word for word. Mom, I didn't get the best grade in his class, but Mr. Lund was my best teacher. Another one is someone that will be greatly missed due to their ability to still be a favorite to students and be able to get kids to comprehend math. That's Mr. Gary

130Dean. I'm sure any room that you are ever in, someone was taught by Mr. Dean. But he will be retiring and Mr. Dean will have left the building. P.E. is losing a person full of so much energy. Tammy Cheeseman. I read her name on my agenda this month and thought, how in the world is she retiring? She is way too young. over the years i've told a few people that i was voting no to their retirement not to be mean but because i didn't want them to go one was mr carl wagner another susie lee a nurse and this year it's phyllis pemberton cafeteria member our cafeteria manager. She told me she had been thinking about it while tailgating this fall. I told her not to, but obviously my negotiating skills are weak. She'll be

131missed by the kiddos, and I know she will be missed. She will miss them as well. Again, I wish I could name all of you one by one, but thank you for making Martinsville so awesome. I wanted to end with a quote of a great author, Dr. Seuss, who said, Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. I hope your time here at the MSD of Martinsville leaves you with a lifetime of smiles. Enjoy your retirement. And last, but certainly not least, to the seniors of 2021. I am sure when you started high school, you never imagined this is how your senior year would play out. But even through a pandemic, your voices were heard. When the weight room was too hot and classrooms were too cold, we listened. When you demanded girl athletes

132be treated equal to their male counterparts, we listened. When you asked to have the opportunity to have a prom, we listened. You all did what you had to do. to play, act, sing, dance, perform, and participate. You have handled life's disappointments with more maturity than most adults, and your younger siblings, relatives, and future teens were watching. What a great example you set. You impacted more lives than you know. And to those near and dear to my heart, as a daughter of a retired Army veteran, I salute those of you who choose to serve. Thank you for your bravery, your courage, and your love of country. Thank you and stay safe. Congratulations to our valedictorian Katie and salutatorian Allison. Girl power. I know you worked hard and we are very proud of you. To the class

133of 2021, I want to leave you with a quote, again from one of my favorite authors, Dr. Seuss. Sometimes you will never value a moment until it becomes a memory. I hope your memories from Martinsville are part of your great story still left to tell. It has been my honor to serve on your school board. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Anyone else? Okay, and I would just like to give a couple upcoming dates here. Next Thursday, May 27th, will be our final student day. Next Friday, May 28th, will be our last teacher day. Also, as Dr. Arthur alluded to, next Friday, May 28th, at 7 o'clock in the evening at Siderwitz Field, we will have our graduation. summer school we have two sessions one session is from June 7th to June 17th and the second

134session is from July 9th to July 19th is that right Mr. Buckler and then finally our next school board meeting is scheduled for Thursday June 17th thank you all for attending can I have a motion to adjourn I'll second Okay, we have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor signify by saying aye. All opposed, same sign.