001Good morning everyone. Welcome to our Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 regular school board meeting. We invite you to sit, relax and enjoy, be informed and to our virtual community as well. We hope you're listening and enjoying and being engaged as well. At this time we will call to order our Pledge of Allegiance. Those that can stand please. Thank you roll call of officers trustee guerra Trustee Stanford present trustee candelera president trustee Blake King present we have a quorum For president mr. Salinas, it's all yours Thank you. Thank you trustee Good evening members of the community our first presentation tonight is our financial presentation So I'd like to call Daniel Dalton to the podium. Good evening Good evening board members and superintendent Salinas. I'm here to give an update on the third or the first quarter financials
002for the school district January through March 31st. So if you wouldn't mind going to that second page here, I'll just give a brief overview and then I'll open this up for any questions. So as you can see here, the education fund is running relatively stable compared to where we began the year. The revenues and the expenditures are in line with what we anticipated based on the budgeted amounts. Debt service fund, you'll notice roughly $2.2 million deficit in the fund. This is expected. As I had explained last month, we will receive our property tax revenues in June and then again in December, which will replenish that fund and allow us enough revenue to support the debt service obligations. And in the operations fund, you'll see that we began the year with roughly 20.1 million. We're now
003sitting at 16.1 million. So, yes, that is a $4 million drop deficit. However, property taxes will replenish a good proportion of that. Rainy day, you'll see we have 6.3 million. This is a good fund for emergency purposes. I would not recommend using this fund for any day-to-day or operational maintenance expenses, but at least it's there if we absolutely need it. And then self-insurance, this one began the year 2.6 million and now sits at roughly 3.7 million in cash balance. This one ebbs and flows and it's hard to really predict what the amount of claims that come in any given month, the amount of premiums that the district pays. But as you can see, it looks positive today. And then down below, you'll see the title funds, which compared to my presentation last month, the negatives
004are less negative. So you can see that some of the reimbursements that were requested were reimbursed to the school district. And so that's positive news as well. Moving forward. Thank you. I added the month of March in here. You can see that we received roughly $7.6, $7.7 million in March, which lines up well with January and February. The education fund is mainly, the revenues are mainly the basic grant tuition received by the state of Indiana. And the expenditures fall in line with similar to what February looked like. Moving forward, please. The operations fund, you will notice that the revenues, again, look very similar month over month. Aside from property taxes that we will get in June and December, the month-by-month revenues for this fund are transfers in from the education fund, which is a portion
005of the basic grant tuition. The expenditures, you can see, are what the expenditures are, but I will get into what that looks compared to the budget here in a couple of slides. Next page, please. Debt service fund. The next obligations will come due in June or July. And so as you see in January, there's a big black bar. And then February and March, those are what's called paying agent fees, which are the fees to, let's just say, U.S. Bank, just who's the distributor of the bonds. They kind of manage the financing of each of our bonds. But in January and July, we will see the actual debt service obligations posted. Next slide, please. Here's what was budgeted versus what has been actually spent for the first quarter of the year. Education fund, you'll see we
006sit right at 72% remaining after the first quarter, which is fairly well on track. I would have liked to see it at 75%, but I'm not going to argue over 3%. Debt service, that's natural. We have biannual payments, so having roughly 57% of the budget left and one more payment through the year, that's good news. And then the operations fund, it looks very similar. It's roughly on track with 73% remaining. So these next two slides detail month-by-month cash flow for both the education fund and the operations fund. These are posted so that members of the public can see where the projections look for this year versus what has actually been received and spent for active months. If there are any questions on those projections, I would be happy to answer. But with that, that concludes
007my report. Any questions, board members? Our negative at the bottom here, has that gone down? Or it's from our last project? Yes. Okay. Yes, it is. And what makes it go down? As the actuals came in for the month of March, we realized we spent more than what was anticipated to be spent for the month. Hence, the deficit at the end of the year then goes down with it. And so if you wouldn't mind pulling that back up again, this is the operations fund. You'll see under expenditures about two-thirds of the page down. the support services that's sorry yes there we go thank you okay the support services you'll see that what was spent in March was roughly 2.9 million mm-hmm what would what I had predicted was roughly 2.5 million so a four hundred
008thousand dollar difference from what I thought was going to be the month expenditure versus what actually was the month expenditure Thanks for the question, Trustee. Does that conclude your report? Okay, thank you, Mr. Dalton. We'll see you next month. Just a footnote for the public's benefit and for the board's benefit, we're going to start adding a Q&A as part of our financial report, things that perhaps when we say circuit breaker, you might not understand it. He's going to put there what it actually is. So we're just trying to meet the needs of our public so they can understand our financial report and so that we as board members can understand it as well. Thank you, Mr. Dalton. Okay, Mr. Salinas. Thank you. And to Trustee Blake King's point, there's sometimes a lot of vocabulary or
009lingo that is often used or articulated that we may not be clear on. And so that's just to benefit so that people can reference what it is that we're talking about when we're talking about finances as we are endeavoring to be as transparent as possible with our finances. So thank you again, Mr. Dalton. Next I would like to call Regina Grohar, principal of Franklin Elementary School, who will give us a presentation on Franklin Elks Hoop Shoot State Competition. Principal Grohar. Good evening, President Blake King, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Salinas, and community members. Here at Franklin, we are very excited to recognize some students who did awesome in our Elks Hoop Shoot, including regional and state competition. At this time, I'd actually like to call up Mrs. Stephanie Vargas. She is our physical education teacher and
010is the one that has organized most of this, so I'm going to let her lead the presentation this evening. Okay, go, Stephanie. Good evening, everyone. My name is Stephanie Vargas. I'm the PE teacher at Franklin Elementary. I've been with the school city of Hammond for over 21 years. First, I'd like to recognize the Elks organization. They are an outstanding partner, not just to Franklin, but to the community, especially in our Robertsdale Whiting community as a whole. Actually, we have Jim Moratory here from the Elks. He's the Elks Hoop Shoot Director. But they host our third graders for a monthly dinner. They do dinners for our troops and just lots of other outstanding community organizations. So we're really happy to partner with them for this. I actually had to look, I had to reach out to
011my PE teacher when I was at Franklin to see when we started this. And to the best of our records, we've been doing this since 1993. And this is the most successful year that we've ever had. So I really felt it was important to recognize all the accomplishments of our students. So we had winners, and two of our students aren't here today, but we had winners at the local level at Whiting High School. And that was Julianna Campbell, Alex Franklin, Jaden Ray, and Thea Robinson. They would all, Thea and Jaden, if you want to come on up, because they're here with us today. Thea and they all advanced to the regional competition at Plymouth High School, which, shout out to their parents for on a cold. winter saturday with the time difference driving them there
012in the dark so thank you parents for making that happen um but they they competed jaden was one basket short of advancing to state and thea actually advanced to state and she was able to compete at the um knights the gym in knightstown which is where the film hoosiers was made um so we're just really proud of all their hard work and just wanted them to be recognized so thank you thank you very much Well, mind on my head, this is what makes our day. When we see our students come before us, when they have performed so well in such an outstanding way, and it makes us happy. That's what education is all about. So thank you to our parents, to the principal. Go ahead. Oh, yes, absolutely, picture. You know, I love my pictures.
013But again, all of the exposure. Can you get in the middle? I'm trying not to get the podium in the middle. Oh boy, we'll have him soon. Can't wait. Okay, Mr. Salinas, thank you. All right. Thank you, Mrs. Vargas, for that presentation. Principal Groharn, to our outstanding students, congratulations again. Our next presentation is we're going to recognize our PTA reflections and Trustee Guerra will be sharing and recognizing our winners of PTA reflections. So Trustee Guerra. So first I want to start off. We have two students performing. So this is Miracle and she's from Edison. Miracle, how old are you? She's 11. Fifth grade? She's a fifth grader, and she composed that all by herself. We have some really talented kids, and now we have Miss Blessing coming as well. Down, down, down to the ground.
014Thank you. Thank you. This blessing is from Edison as well, I believe. So this year we had a couple entries into our accessible arts division, which is for our exceptional learners. So we wanted to highlight that. This was the first year that we had entries in that category, so we're very happy with that. This is the first year that we had entries in every category, actually. And we had one student who entered every category. So what Reflections is, is it's an arts program that is through national PTA. And that's what makes it different than PTOs. So we are lucky we get to plug into national and the programs that they have. Reflections is for everybody. They have different themes every year, which I have actually the theme for next year as well, is what my
015culture means to me. This year, the theme was I belong. We don't choose it. They do actually the students choose it students enter themes and they choose a theme from the student entries every year That just happened to fit Kind of what we're doing here very very well this year So they can enter music composition, which you saw they can enter dance choreography literature visual arts Film and I'm forgetting one I know dancing all of those are actually entries that we have this year We had some really good entries. You can you can see them up there They have different categories for ages. So they've got the primary, they've got the intermediate, the middle schoolers, the high schoolers. They're competing against their own age group. And we're actually going to state on Saturday. So our
016students are going down and getting recognized at state. And we don't know yet. We will find out on Saturday if any of our kids are going to national this year. So I'm going to stop talking because it's not about me. And if my students who had entries this year can come up. Yes, pretty students. So we have the, are you at the beginning or can you scroll back to the beginning? Sorry. You can scroll, sorry. Students, if you see your name, can you just step forward when you see your name? So Sebastian Amador did music composition and he is a junior. Destiny Anderson did music composition and she's a fifth grader. Destiny. Louis Arcega is a freshman and he did music composition as well. Music composition is a big category that we have, which is
017amazing. I know when I was talking to State, they said that music composition is actually the hardest category and in School City Hammond, we rise to the challenge. Donovan Bernard is a fifth grader who did visual arts. and I think you can see it up there actually. Okay. Ms. Kayla Blanch is a senior at Hammond Central who did photography, black and white. Ms. Blessing, who you saw, is a first grader at Edison. She was in our accessible arts category for music composition. Ms. Madison Edwards did dance. She's a senior at Morton. You can see a little bit of it. And for dance, the same way with music composition, she choreographed this herself and performed it. And then our next one is Kamira Gafford, who's a senior who also did dance. You can see a little
018bit of hers as well. We have some really talented students. Miss Emery Gary is a fourth grader at Lincoln. She did literature. Silas Glasgow is an eighth grader. This is his second year doing this as well. This is our second year doing this. Jose Haro and his sister Marisol, fourth and fifth grade at Irving. Lyric Henderson is a fourth grader at Lincoln who did visual arts, and you can see our kids are very talented. Trinity Huddleston is a senior as well at Hammond Central who did dance as well. Miss Violet. The film category is also, the film category and music composition are the two hardest, and that's what we have the most of. So that tells you something about us. Juliana Joya is a fifth grader at Lincoln who did visual arts. Logan Lukasik is
019a sixth grader at Harding. And these take a lot of time. These animations take a lot of time. And this is his second year doing this as well, and you can see the progress. And then he also entered visual arts. He did a sculpture. And we have Ms. Jamila Nettles. This is her second year as well doing this. She's a sophomore at Morton, and she did a literature. She's also one of our dual entries. She did music composition as well. Elena Pavey is a senior at Hammond Central. She did visual arts, and you can see just how detailed that is. Ms. Maisie Rodriguez is a fourth grader at Burns Hicks, do visual arts, and I know that one's sitting up there too. Alexis Ruiz is a junior at Hammond Central who did a literature piece.
020Luis Salas is a sophomore at Hammond Central as well. He did music composition. Ms. Isabella Silva is a senior at Morton who did visual arts, a sculpture. That was Ms. Ariel Smith, who I believe is a senior at Morton. And just a quick plug there too, we have a lot of students who enter the dance and music because we have an amazing program called HAPA. This is the perfect showcase for our HAPA students to show people outside of Hammond what we can do. Ms. Emily Suardi did dance choreography as well as she did actually every category. We love seeing the animals. That's her literature piece. And her music composition. Like I said, this is the first year we had a student enter all categories. We have multi-talented students. Ms. Takaya Tulliver is a fourth grader
021at Burns Hicks as well with visual arts. Antonio Vargas is a third grader. And you can see his visual arts piece up there. Holly West is a sixth grader at Burns Hicks who did literature as well. Miracle, who you saw earlier, is a fifth grader at Edison. And like I said, this Saturday, I know quite a few of our students are going down to Indianapolis to receive their awards from state and see if any of our students are going on to national this year. Can we just get a big round of applause for our kids? Awesome. I'll see you all in Hollywood, Academy Awards. You can do it. I will see all of you all in Carnegie Hall. All of that, dream, astronauts, the best talent in this room, you guys will command the world.
022Give yourselves a big round of applause. So let's take our photo. Oh, boy. Great job, great job. And again, we applaud our parents for taking the time with your students to encourage them all the way. To our parents, thank you. Mr. Salinas. Thank you very much. Thank you again, Trustee, for your leadership. Thank you to all the students. Thank you to all the parents. And congratulations and good luck to all of you who are going down to state. Hopefully we'll see you at nationals. Yes. We've come to the first period of public expression. Trustee Stanford. First speaker, limited to items on the agenda, Mary Ellen Slezak. Mary Ellen Slazik, 68, 47, California. Ah, looking at the budget, looking at the numbers, there shouldn't be any run at all. I know there's been some slight improvements,
023but I think the administration can do better than that. The board can do better than that. Things are going up in price. I know they are. I'm sure everybody squealed like crazy when they got their NIPSCO bill. I know I did. I thought it was going to be a hard attack. But it is what it is. If you have less coming in, you got to spend a little less. Maybe cut out some contracts, outsourcing. Just makes sense. You can't have the frills anymore. And you never spend money you don't have. Because that's the way you get yourself in a lot of trouble. And I have read the news, and so have y'all, I'm sure. Many school corporations over the past few years have been in a lot of trouble. They way overspend. Look what happened
024to Gary. They got taken over by the state for a while. And we never want that to happen here. Because I think we can handle our own things here if we act more responsibly with it. That being said, I mean, if I got a budget, y'all got a budget, and you got to be a little tighter. It's not easy when you're depending on taxes or some grants or whatever. If you need more money for things. There is some money available and maybe it'd be a good idea to really delve into that to get the extra funds in the form of grants or maybe some kind of charitable organization that wants to give you a boost and do something for the kids. Something extra. I mean, they can't have too much education. They can't have too
025much stimulation. They need everything they can get to make it in this world today. And there's a way to do it, but sometimes it's not too easy to do. I'm not going to say cut maybe some of the contracts, outsourcing. I think there's enough talented people in the school city of Hammond that we shouldn't have to outsource anything. We shouldn't have to contract anything out. Because we have the talent here. We just need to utilize it. So for the good of everyone, the kids, the school city of Hammond employees, the taxpayers, Let's get it together a little tighter and focus better and see what we can do because we can't accomplish a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, Vanjie Garcia. Did I get that right? President King, board members, Superintendent Salinas. My
026name is Evangelina Garcia. I am the LPN at Eggers in the nurse's office. We are here to ask you for your vote to approve the relationship between Health Services staff and the Hammond Teachers Federation. As you know, Health Services staff plays a vital role in caring for students who attend School City of Hammond. We support students with complex medical needs such as managing diabetes and asthma. In addition, we provide care for staff members who may become ill while in our buildings. By health services staff joining HTF, it will strengthen our collective voice and better position us to serve the entire community, students and staff. This department includes RNs, LPNs, EMTs and MAs. We are led by Kelly Flynn, RN. She assures that we have the resources and supports us and advocates for us and to
027the community. to continue to provide high quality care to our students, staff, and community. We stand here and we thank you for your consideration and support during this matter. Excuse me, what was the name of the group again? Health Services. Health Services, okay. If I may just say one sentence. The three of us here has 61 years of service combined here in School City Hammond and the others here. HAVE COMBINED OVER 75 YEARS, JUST THE FOUR OF US THAT ARE HERE. THAT'S INCREDIBLE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE. MRS. SALINAS, WE HAVE THAT. NEXT READER, RICH HUDSON. CAN YOU LIFT THAT MIC JUST A LITTLE? I HAVE TO TALK INTO THE MIC. IS THAT BETTER? JUST RAISE IT UP. THERE YOU GO. HOW ABOUT THAT? Board of Trustees, Superintendent Salinas. My name is Rich Hudson and
028I'm from Shorewood, Illinois. I'm the president and founder of the XL Youth Programs. And our mission is working with kids and students, exposing them to the trades as well as college-bound students. We have a 10-week life skills curriculum in which we discuss basic life skills that lead to success. We're here tonight hoping that we get approval for fall semester 2026 and spring 2027. We want to implement our program to assist the district in leading our kids to success. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. McKayla? Last speaker on the list. Good evening. I feel like I'm still playing catch up a little bit because I feel like when I looked at the agenda before I left my house, which was a really long time ago because... It was very hectic out there traffic-wise. And then
029when I looked at it here, there were so much more things on there. But something that I thought, and I don't know if that was a technical error or what, something I was really encouraged to see on the agenda, looks like we're getting some employee handbooks, which I'm thrilled about. And it looks like there's longevity talked about in the support staff handbook, which I'm thrilled about. I'm really, really happy. And kudos to Ms. Letera for getting it done and everybody else involved. Because I remember, you know, long ago and far away, when there were all these changes being talked about and there was a lot of... contention and a lot of fear and i'm really glad to see us rounding that corner um i since we're on the topic of kind of like i guess
030it was like a q a thing or maybe like an faq thing like frequently asked questions as mentioned earlier on the financial report i think it'd be really good uh the title iii grant I think that that gets so confusing in terms of like the allocation, you know, the letter you get, the spans of time it covers because you look at all those parts separately, it gets very confusing because at first glance it looks like, oh, maybe you're getting a little bit more, but maybe you're not, and that would be really good since people seem very concerned and, you know, for good reason about the financial situation. Though I don't think that we need to quite... go all the way there to you know that the specter of state takeover um because i don't think
031that takeover is hopefully what anyone has in mind, but sometimes they might have worse things in mind. You never know. One thing I did want to highlight, though, regarding the amount of taxes hopefully we may receive, this is another part where maybe we can get some clarification in our next financial update. So it's come to my attention that in this county... all of us are who are residential are experiencing these huge tax increases that we didn't necessarily expect because downstate they say oh your taxes are going to go down and some of our state legislatures are thinking about that as statewide thing but uh we were our property tax replacement credit fund was uh overstated by 40 million they discovered and so apparently we're all paying that back at a 4% rate but it seems
032much higher than 4% so the question is does the school getting of those funds or we just paying the state back I'd really like to know thank you thank you that ends session one Thank You trustee our next agenda item is unfinished business okay Trustees, item A under unfinished business, approval of recognition of the Health Service Group as a unit of the Hammond Teachers Federation. May I have a motion? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the recognition of the Health Service Group as a unit of the Hammond Teachers Federation as presented. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and probably second for the approval of the recognition of the Health Service Group as a unit of the Hammond Teachers Federation. Are there any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye.
033Ayes have it. Motion approved. Congratulations. Mr. Salinas. The next agenda item is the minutes for the executive sessions and school board meetings. Trustees, we have items A through D, approval of minutes, executive sessions, and regular school board meetings. What's your pleasure? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of items A and B, the approval of the executive session minutes, March 3rd, 2026, March 17th, 2026, as presented. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved improperly. Second for the approval of Executive Session Minutes March 3rd, 2026 and Executive Session Minutes March 17th, 2026. Are there any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Ayes have it. Motion carried. The other two items may have a motion. Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of items C and D. The approval of the
034school board meeting minutes March 3rd, 2026, March 17th, 2026 as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and probably second by Trustee Stanford for the approval of school board meeting minutes March 3rd, 2026 and March 17th, 2026. Are there any questions? Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Ayes have it. Motion carried. Mr. Salinas. Thank you, Trustee. The next agenda item is the consent agenda. Trustees, we have our consent agenda before us, items A through G. What's your pleasure? Madam President. Trustee Conellera. I move for the approval of items A through G as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and properly seconded that we approve consent agenda items A through G. Are there any questions? I will read the accounts payable docket register. Dated April 21st, 2026,
035consisting of 465 pages. For total claims, the amount is $4,442,223.06. Total payroll, $7,763,837.19. Thank you, Trustee Stansford. Mr. Salinas, could you give us a small explanation as to... These numbers seem to be a little high. I'm sorry, you caught me off guard. I'm sorry. Our accounts payable docket register seemingly is a little high normally. Could you explain to the public why? Yes, that has to do because of the dates of our school boards, our meetings. And so when we have regular meetings every two weeks, we're accustomed to the payables seem to make sense. Anytime we change the meetings and it gets a little bit longer between meetings, then our payables are a little bit higher, and that's the reason for that. It's not that we're spending more money, it's just that we take longer to
036pay them. Exactly. Thank you, Mr. Salinas. Okay, we've had a motion. It's been second. We've had our question. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Okay, Mr. Salinas. Okay. We are moving on to new business. Wow. Very exciting business. Yes. Take care of this business. Our first agenda item for new business is the approval of our long-awaited employee handbooks, and we will be asking for approval of the employee handbooks for the following groups, our classified coordinators, our executive assistants, our food service staff, our Head Start staff, our psychologists, our support staff, and our technology staff. Do I hear a motion for the approval of our employee handbooks? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the employee handbooks as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's
037been moved and probably second for the approval of our employee handbooks. Are there any questions? Any questions? I simply would like to thank each and every one that worked on this committee. It has been long coming. It was a lot of work. But you put your heads together, you stuck together, and we did it. So I thank you very much. All right. Are we ready to vote? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Thank you. Mr. Salinas. The next item is the approval of the 2025-2027 Title III grant in the amount of $232,532. This is going to support our English learners within our school corporation to help increase their English language proficiency, achieve high levels of academic success, and also provide targeted instructional support, high-quality professional development for our
038staff. May I have a motion? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the 2025-2027 Title III grant as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and probably second for the approval of the 2025-2027 Title III grant. Are there any questions? Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Item C. Thank you. Our next item is approval of the Hammond Education Foundation Acorn Grant for Edison Elementary School in the amount of $2,000. This is a grant for the iRobot Root Coding Robot. It's an educational robot designed to teach students coding, problem solving, and computational thinking through hands-on learning. Thank you trustees do I hear a motion madam president trustee Candelaria I move for the approval of the HEF acorn grant for Edison Edison
039elementary school as presented may have a second second It's been moved and properly second that we approve the HEF acorn grant for Edison elementary school Are there any questions any questions all in favor say aye aye any opposed ayes have it motion carried item D. Mr. Salinas Our next item is the approval of the MOU with Excel Youth Program. Just to clarify, an MOU is a memorandum of understanding between the two entities. And so this MOU establishes a collaborative partnership to support students through enrichment, mentoring, and youth development services aligned with the mission and priorities of the school city of Hammond. And Mr. Rich Hudson was just at the podium who gave us further information about this memorandum of understanding. Mr. Hudson, thank you for being present this evening. Thank you, Mr. Salinas. Trustees, may
040I have a motion? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the MOU with Excel Youth Program as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and properly seconded that we approve the MOU with the Excel Youth Program. Are there any questions? Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Item E, Mr. Salinas. Thank you. The next item is the Memorandum of Understanding between the School City of Hammond and Skybound Education. This memorandum is going to help us with the writing of our next-gen SIG grant for school improvement, which will be paid. from this grant and so this will enable our district to refine its instructional delivery model to more closely tailor instruction to the unique strengths and needs of our students. I'd like
041to say a little bit more about this. This is a grant that the Indiana Department of Education contacted the school city of Hammond and informed us of which buildings were eligible for this. We had about seven buildings, schools that were eligible. We also got guidance about a strategic way to ensure that these grants would be passed or approved I should say and one of the ways that they did that is for us to more than instead of going broad and and apply for all buildings they said start slow start smart and perhaps just have a focus we've decided to focus on our secondary schools which means that we will be writing grants for both our middle schools both our high schools and I would like to say that this MOU although our partners will help
042us write the grant if we do not write the grant successfully there will be no charge for the services the services will be charged only if the grant is awarded we also have in the audience with us our consultant mr charles williams i believe he's in the back of the room here um thank you mr williams for being here mr williams will also be present tomorrow morning as this work begins the writing of the grant the narrative is for both the middle schools and the high schools so we wish our four Secondary school is the best of luck and I'm sure we'll be presenting to the board soon that we have indeed won and got these grants. Absolutely, Mr. Salinas, and this is how we're going to continue to move and elevate and restore our
043district because we're 10 times better. May I have a motion, please? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the MOU with Skybound Education as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and properly seconded that we approve the MOU with Skybound Education. Are there any questions? I have one. Any questions? I have one. Because I didn't hear, I don't know if you know this or not, but do we know how much the grants are? Yes, we do. Good question, Trustee. So they gave us a planning year, and each school will get $300,000 for the planning year. That year you'll be able to use those funds to plan out what your mission and your plan is for improvement, school improvement. After that, you will get up to $3 million per building
044over the course of three years. Thank you, Trustee, for asking that question. That's vital. Pretty important information. My apologies. For the record. $3 million per building over the course of three years. Say it again, Mr. Salinas. $3 million. To be very honest, this is a very, very exciting opportunity for us to really transform that instruction, perhaps delivery model, supports, just an opportunity to really meet the needs of our students. Thank you. Any more questions? That was the best one. The best one. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Welcome aboard. Okay. Mr. Salinas. The next item is approval of contract with grant specialties. This contract is, again, with grant specialties, and we will be working with the U.S. Department of Justice to help us. again write a successful grant
045for the school safety of our building we will of our school corporation we will be using this to really make sure that all of our safety protocols are up to date we currently we do have uh some software that is out of date we also have to make decisions right now whether we keep a or b because we can't afford it i had a conversation with mr suarez and instead of compromising safety we decided to go for this grant uh write it hopefully we will um be awarded the grant, but again, it will keep us in top notch shape in terms of safety, communication with our families, and also help us make sure we have the latest software for all of our weapon detection systems at all of our buildings. Currently, that is not the
046case, and again, while it is going to cost us some money to consult, the payoff will be big in terms of us hopefully bringing this grant into Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Salinas. Trustees, what's your pleasure? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the contract with grant specialties as presented. Do we have a second? Second. It's been moved and probably second that we approve the contract with grant specialties. Are there any questions? Same question, actually. Do we know the amount with this one? I don't know the amount. Does Mr. Suarez know the amount? I should, and I don't think. Put on the spot tonight. That's why the trustees are here It's a competitive grant so it varies on how much you'll get for it they're giving us a discount for the contract with
047them because I've already established rapport with JustGrants. So it's based on competition, how much you're going to get. So I can't say $3 million like a previous person, but it's just competitive and it just depends on how many people apply for it, how much they're requesting, and then they'll disperse it accordingly. Do they tell you what the pool is or how much you can go for? It's one of those things that varies, but it is a three-year contract or grant. So it varies, but we'll have it expand for three years. Okay? Thank you. So, of course, if there's any additional information, you can share it with Mr. Salinas, and he will indeed share it with us, and we'll share it with the public. Thank you for that question, Trustee Guerra. Any more questions? Are we
048ready to vote? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion carried. Mr. Salinas. The next agenda item is approval of the MOU between Starbase Indiana and Jefferson Elementary School. And as many of you know, Starbase is a partner with School City of Hammond. And so it provides hands-on inquiry-based STEM experiences for our students who actually take field trips to the military base here in Gary, Indiana. And many of our schools have had this opportunity. So we're just asking for this opportunity to continue for Jefferson Elementary. Very good. Trustees? Madam president trustee can I move for the approval of the MOU between Starbase Indiana Inc and Jefferson Elementary School as presented may have a second second Are there any questions? any questions All in favor say aye. Aye any opposed ayes have
049it motion carry. Mr. Salinas final one The next item is the approval of contract between Smekens Education Solutions and St. John the Baptist School. And again, as you well know, we are required to provide our parochial schools with their equitable share of our title dollars. So this is in the amount of $2,934 and will be paid out of our Title I funds. Trustees, what's your pleasure? Madam President. Trustee Candelaria. I move for the approval of the contract between Smekins Education Solutions, Inc. and St. John the Baptist School as presented. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved and properly seconded that we approve the contract between Smekins Education Solutions, Inc. and St. John the Baptist School. Are there any questions? Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it. Motion
050carried. Mr. Salinas. Our next agenda item is the calendar of upcoming board meetings. Thank you. Our upcoming calendar, April 28th at 5.30 p.m., there will be a public meeting. Tuesday, May 12th, an executive session at 5.15 p.m. here at the Administration Center. And that same Tuesday, May 12th, our regular school board meeting at 6 p.m., Administration Center. On Tuesday, May 26th, is our executive session, 5.15 p.m., Administration Center. And Tuesday, May 26th, our regular school board meeting at 6 p.m., Administration Center. Those are our upcoming school board meetings. Thank you. Madam President. If we could, just a bit of housekeeping, just to note to the public that an executive session was held immediately prior to this meeting, which went into recess, and that we're going to reconvene for that exec session following this meeting. Thank
051you. So noted. Record will be recorded. So we will be recombining back into our executive session. Thank you, Attorney Harris. Okay, what's next? Mr. Slaner. Our next agenda item is public expression, second period. Trustee Stanford. All right, for general matters, our first speaker is Tabitha Haro. Did I say that correctly? Freezing. Good evening. I stood at this spot three years ago because my daughter, who has special needs, was sexually harassed and assaulted at one of your schools. Not once, but twice. Nobody wanted to do anything until I contacted the ADA and the DOE. Even then you protected the attacker. I see today you're doing the same thing. Last week a special needs student gets beat up at your school and the attacker gets a day out of school? But what happens if we do that
052to somebody on the street? That's assault and battery. How do you have an autism awareness cover on your website when you're not protecting the kids with autism? Can you explain to me how a student with an IEP who takes an extra sandwich at school gets the same punishment as someone who commits assault and battery? My daughter, who has special needs, graduates this year, and I am so thankful because it's safer for her on the street than it is in school. You say you guys have a zero-bullying policy, but every parent knows that's a lie. You need to punish these attackers so that it doesn't happen again. Make behavioral classes mandatory to come back to school the following year once they've been expelled Thank you. Thank you Thank you for that Next speaker Dakota. Can you
053please tell me what how to pronounce your last name? I'm not sure how many of you know me or have had me in your classes, but to the ones who have, you'd probably remember me as quiet. But I feel that I've been quiet for far too long. Maybe you don't know me, but you definitely know my last name because of my very verbal mom and because of my sister. Since moving to Hammond, I have seen far too many things I can no longer just sit back and be a bystander to. Last week, one of your special needs students got his head smashed continuously into a desk. a desk in one of your classrooms and where was the teacher i don't need to name him you guys know who i'm talking about i've known this kid
054since i was in seventh grade and i have had to witness the things people have said to him and it sickens me he's been constantly bullied and harassed even before i knew him and there's one very specific thing i've noticed you guys don't actually care and if you do you sure do a horrible job at showing this And this is not just a Morton issue, this is a district issue. You guys are supposed to treat everybody fairly and punish the ones who don't, but how do you punish yourselves for standing on the sidelines while things like this continue to happen over and over again? And you guys continue to let these bullies roam your halls. They have friends and they go on about their lives, still harassing kids who are different from them. Not just
055disabled kids, people like me. Kids who are quiet and stand by while others do whatever pleases them. But these are kids. These are humans. Though they're different from other kids, different from you, they have feelings. They have emotions, and they are affected by the things you continuously let slide. Your teachers, your supervisors, your security guards. Though it is their job to take responsibility for these children while they are on school grounds and to ensure their safety at all costs, they do not do that. Going back to that kid, you guys have failed him. You have let your students provoke him over and over again and only ever do something when he defends himself. If you guys knew anything about developmental disabilities, you would know that he and kids like him have the intellectual capacity of
056a child. And if you guys even remember being children, you know that children pick up on their surroundings and their environments and that is what influences them and makes them into the people they become. And you guys are showing him and me that this is what we're supposed to learn from, that this is just okay. There is so much that you guys can do to show others that this behavior is not acceptable, yet you fail to do so. Maybe if we actually focused on punishing those who are responsible for these things, it wouldn't be so normalized. We are in high school. We are almost adults, so treat us like adults. Punish the kids who bully people over and over again just because they know they can, like adults. They need to be aware of the
057fact that in no world should this behavior be acceptable. Maybe I have more empathy for these children because of my own experiences, but that is exactly why I believe that you should educate your children. But first and foremost, educate yourselves and take accountability for your lack of education. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Salinas, would you speak to these last two? Ms. Tabitha and this young lady after the board meeting. Please, if you can stay after the meeting, Mr. Salinas will. address these issues. Thank you very much. Last speaker, Dr. McKayla. I think I'm going to have some trouble formulating my thoughts after that. And I just want to say, it takes a lot of guts to do when you're young. I hope whatever is happening gets resolved as soon as possible. Somebody the other day
058was talking to me about some years ago, like having a special ed coordinator or something, special ed department head. Sorry, the words aren't there, but who used to just come into the classrooms a lot. I think this was some years back and just like make sure things were going well again. And I think if we're able to get somebody in, somebody that we know really cares about the kids. As I understand, we have like an interim or an acting, we have a lot of acting, everything, and it all seems to be. piled up right but like if if we get people if we permanently start filling some of these department head positions to be doing like the the real kind of getting in there and in helping thing we obviously really need it um again
059that's just based off of my my thoughts that are not very well organized right now because obviously i'm very concerned about what i just heard i'm i'm sure everybody is and I just want to say to that young lady and I just want to say to the kid that she described and I want to say to all the kids like I really do believe that there are people here that care about you and I'm so sorry that you ever feel that that is not the case and I'm sure that I believe I want to believe so strongly that it will be resolved and I'm so sorry it hasn't been resolved yet but know that there is a community of people that care and and i believe that this board cares sometimes it's very very hard
060there's a lot of disconnects but we've got to get back in there and we've got to really take a hands-on approach if we want to prevent things like that because that should never happen i really hope to um i know i was talking about handbooks earlier so you desperately try to pull any thoughts out of my brain like the staff that are in there are teachers the ones that really want to help these kids they need help too i know there had been something before about support staff and teachers and maybe somebody coming together I'm really happy for the medical staff. I hope that can happen for everyone. I hope when we're supporting the people in the classrooms that really care about these kids, that we can stop anything bad from happening ever again as
061much as we possibly can. Thank you. Thank you. That ends second session. Thank you. Before we begin with our superintendent's report, I'd like to share with the community and also with the board that the school city of Hammond, we had 22 applications for the Hammond gaming grants, and school city of Hammond was awarded $79,000 to our school corporation for these grants. So we had grants from elementary, middle school, high school, ACC. So again, thank you very much for those who applied, and congratulations to those who were awarded this money. For my superintendent's report today, I have a little bit of help. I'd like to call on Mrs. Karimar Weeks, who is going to share a lot of exciting news that is coming on now and that will be going on in the corporation. So, welcome,
062Mrs. Weeks. Thank you, Mr. Salinas. Good evening, Madam President, Trustees, members of our beautiful Hammond community. We have some announcements. First, we have on Saturday, April 11th, 93 students from the Hammond Area Career Center competed in the 2026 Indiana SkillsUSA competition. Students from 21 different competitions placed in the top three. 23 students qualified for the National Skill USA competition in Atlanta, Georgia. That will be June 1st through the 6th. Also, HOSA State Leadership Conference was held from April 15th through the 17th. 30 health occupation students competed at the state level. 14 students finished in the top 10, with 7 students placing in the top 3. These finalists qualified for the International Leadership Conference in Indianapolis this June. Congratulations to all of them. A huge thank you to our team Hammond Robotics for a truly revolutionary
063and inspiring season. While the team did not qualify for Worlds, the season was about much more than just winning. It was about the growth and hard work that led to their prestigious award in Lafayette. Students took initiative by creating leadership roles and mentoring the next generation, making the team more stable and successful than ever. We also have two contests going on in the School City of Hammond. We have the HPD. The Hammond Police Department is seeking original anti-drug, anti-vaping slogans from middle school and high school students. The deadline to submit to your principal's office is May 1st. Prices are seven winners will have slogans displayed on squad cars and receive Festival of the Lakes prizes. We also have our Kindness Crew Creative Writing Challenge still going on. The deadline for that is also May 1st
064and that is open to all K through 12 students. They could submit a one-page essay or two-minute video. One winner per grade category will receive $100 from the Hammond Council PTA. Thank you to Hammond Council PTA. Also with the Hammond Council PTA, we have a Create with Kindness workshop coming up in May 7th from 4.30 till 6 o'clock at Hammond Central High School. Registration for that is mandatory. Parents' Court information will be sent this week. Food will be available for registered attendees. May 7th. You want to take it over, Mr. Salinas? For our service and community engagement, our JROTC, happy hearts and helping hands. Congratulations to our JROTC students on a successful Easter egg hunt. This was in partnership with our PNW SLG National Sorority. Students delivered Easter baskets to Chicago Shriners Children's Hospital and
065Powers Health in Munster. congratulations to our gerald tc cadets and um our major bonds thank you um early learning center our fair will be tomorrow april 22nd from 4 30 p.m to 6 p.m at the early learning center which is located at 7006 marshall avenue come to celebrate our youngest artists Also, we have our Hammond Heroes in Education. The 2026 awards night will be on Friday, May 8th from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Wicker Park Memorial Social Center in Highland. We have a lot of announcements today. Parents, the 2627 registration is open. Please visit the website. It's simple. Click on register, then click on 2627 registration. There's also an incentive. Please register by April 30th if you want to be entered into a raffle to win gift cards. Our pre-K and kindergarten registration
066and community event will be held on Wednesday, May 6th from 830 till 5 p.m. And this will be also at the Early Learning Center, 7006 Marshall Avenue. Students, not students, I'm sorry, parents, your uniformity of color survey is still up. You can submit your responses by tomorrow, Wednesday the 22nd at 11.59 p.m. The link for that was shared via ParentSquare and Facebook. With that being said, we also have our scholarship folder that's on our website. That's on Facebook, and you could call anytime if you need assistance with that. Opportunities are still listed. Please take advantage of that money. Also, a reminder to parents, there is no school on Tuesday, May 5th. That's due to elections, correct? In closing... We want to extend our deepest gratitude to all of our staff groups who celebrate their professional
067days this month and next month. You tireless work behind the scenes and in the classrooms and what makes the school city of Hammond a place of excellence for our students. So we thank all of our groups. And last but not least, on behalf of the district, Superintendent Salinas, we would like a moment to personally recognize and celebrate Trustee Melissa Guerra. As she concludes her tenure as PTA president, Trustee Guerra is a definition of a community champion who has consistently gone above and beyond the call of duty from the physical grit of driving miles to secure truckloads of books and toys to the reflections that y'all... saw today to the vision required to bring the Harlem Wizards to Hammond to unite our community and families her leadership has been an invaluable asset to our staff and
068the students alike and while she is stepping down from their presidency we're incredibly fortunate that she will continue to serve as schools still as a member at large you're not going anywhere thank you for her unwavering partnership melissa and for everything you do to make school city of hammond a better place to learn and to grow thank you wow congratulations trustee You are a valuable asset to this school district, definitely. Mr. Salinas. So, um... That was your superintendent's report brought to you by Mrs. Kelly-Mott Weeks. Lots of stuff happening, lots of stuff that is coming up. It is going to be very busy, busy next few weeks as we wrap up the school year, but we're very grateful for all of the opportunities that are coming up within our corporation. Thank you very much, Mrs.
069Weeks. And again, thank you very much, Trustee Guerra, for all of your leadership and for everything you do for the students of the School City of Hammond. You are appreciated. Thank you. Okay, reports from the board? Any reports, comments, questions? I would just like to add, as we were giving out those announcements, someone emailed me. No talent like Harding talent. It's a talent show, fashion show. Cash-only event at Harding Elementary School, which will be held Thursday, April 30th. They're looking for volunteers, parents, and staff. And it seems like they're having all kinds of good things going on. One dollar admission, so there's no reason why you can't show up. Children under four are free. Another reason why everybody should show up. And they have a concession stand and so many things going on. So please,
070get your tickets for the No Talent Like Harding Talent Showtime. Don't meet me there, beat me there. I will be there. Oh, it starts at 4.30 to 6.30 p.m., Harding Elementary School. And my last comment is regarding our Hammett Public Library. We know the summer is coming, and parents, please don't forget, it's an incredible resource. We get a newsletter every year, and I'm going to ask that they do this digital so everybody can see all of the wonderful programs for our kids and our partnership we had with them a couple of years ago that... requires that every student and parent has a library card. So we're going to keep that going. So there's a plethora of opportunities at our Hamlet Public Library. There's no reason why we shouldn't use it because if we don't use
071it, we're going to lose it like everything else. So we'll be commenting on this quite a bit during the summer. That concludes my report. So we're not adjourning. We're going back into session to complete our executive. So you can adjourn the regular board meeting. We were just informing the public that we would reconvene the exec session. Well, you heard what he said. Put that in the record. Thank you, Attorney Harris. So does that conclude everything? Are we finished? I'll see y'all later. Bye. Oh, we can adjourn. He said we can adjourn. The meeting is adjourned. Bye.