001I'd like to call the Harper Creek Board of Education regular meeting for Monday, May 11, 2026 to order. Please rise for the public allegiance, followed by a short moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, Madam Secretary, please call the roll. Mr. Halverson is absent tonight. Mrs. Reisner is absent tonight. Mrs. Waterson? Yes. Mrs. Waterson is absent tonight. Mr. Smith. Here. And Mr. Bass. I am present. We have a quorum. All right, thank you for that. And we'll say are there any modifications to the agenda, Mr. Rodriguez? No modifications to the agenda tonight. All right. We'll start out with communications and presence remarks. Good evening
002to all those in the audience and those attending online. We really appreciate you taking the time to attend. Graduation is right around the corner. Field trips are happening. Spring sports are providing fun outdoor activities around our campus. It's an exciting time in our district, and we're looking forward to a great meeting tonight. With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Ridgeway. All right. I have to say, it's quite a bit. We have a lot of events that are happening and some things that have happened. We've got our high school choir and high school band headsers. They did a wonderful job. I believe that we will have at least a soloist here today. Show us their talents. And then softball, baseball, girls tennis, and boys track all won the All-City Championship. So that's happened in
003the past and coming up. Tomorrow is our 6th, 7th, 9th grade choir concert at the auditorium at 7. Community Connections luncheon that is formerly the senior citizen luncheon, but now it's just simply open to anybody that would like to come and learn more information. We will talk about school choice, we'll talk about the seal money, and we'll talk about this bond issue that we will have on the agenda today. Our seniors last week is this week. Isn't that crazy? We're already there. Seniors last. Today is on Thursday. They do the senior walk, the slideshow, and then the senior awards are May 15th at 8 a.m. Other things, Sonoma Art Gallery, Welcome to the Jungle, May 15th. Wells Park Elementary Fun Fair, May 15th. Girls on the Run this Saturday at Harper Creek Stadium. The Jazz
004Band Dinner Dance is this Saturday. The Harper Creek Educational Foundation Scholarship Reception is this Sunday. Lots of fun stuff. And then as we finish up the year, the fourth graders will visit the middle school on May 18th. The eighth grade is doing a new celebration. I think they started last year. So second year, May 26th. The field, Butte Lake Elementary Field Day in color run is May 28th. They'll do our Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Citizen Ceremony on May 29th at 3 o'clock, followed by graduation at 6. Hopefully entertaining. Wear blue? I was looking at James. I was like, I made fun of it on Friday because I had a red shirt on and we were playing Marshall. Oh. Yeah. Wilds Park Elementary field day June 2nd. Sonoma color run on June 4th. Day of school.
005A lot of things happening this week and in the future. But write down graduation on your notes just to make sure you have it. Thank you for that. Madam Secretary. We do have one thank you note to share with the board. It's from Alyssa Peek. I just want to read it. It's very well written. Dear Harper Creek Board of Education, I'm ready to express my sincere gratitude for your generous support throughout my educational journey. I appreciate the cost of my schooling materials and resources needed to complete school and state testing. This support has helped ease the financial burden. I'm truly thankful for this opportunity. Sincerely, Alyssa Peek. She was one of our Grow Your Own. That's very cool. Very cool. Thank you for that kind card. Any other... That's all. We are going to start
006with a presentation from our middle school choir soloist. And Mr. Port is here with... We'll let Mr. Port introduce our soloists. Oh, hands up. She's a young adult, so I'll actually let her do the introduction. Right up there. Hello, my name is Olivia Dishman, and I will be singing Maybe by Sienna Spiro. And then tomorrow we have a fire concert, if any of you guys would like to attend it. It is going to be at the high school. And us fire kids, we need to be there by 6.30, but it's like at 7. Yes, sir. So maybe. any of you imagine doing that back when you were in eighth grade? Not just only having that voice, but also getting in front of adults and being able to do that. So, you know, big props to
007you, Leah. And just thank you for your support of the choir program and that's what we're always trying to do is build kids' voices, but also give them the confidence to be able to. stand in front of a room of adults and do something really incredible like that. So we'd love to see you at our middle school choir concert tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the high school auditorium. You'll get to hear lots of incredible music like that. And thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Phenomenal. Thank you. All right. It's going to be a tough act to follow. Oh, it's not it. Me, me, me, me, me. All right, Jay. Yep, yep. This one should be actually short and sweet. The nice thing about testing season is everyone's extremely busy. So our early warning
008indicators are looking good. They're actually tracking a little bit better than they were last week, which is nice for this time of year. Just a few things to point out on the report. Communication when we first got here when I first took on the position I've heard a few times over and over again that We were not or we could have improved our efficiency in high school scheduling so I'm very happy to show you that In our communication portion of this that we're have about 90% of all of our students have a schedule for next school year So this is early warning indicators, but yes, so we're we and this was done probably about a week and a half ago so I'm guessing that We're a little bit further along with that. The middle school,
009again, with the changes of their schedule, they're roughly at 84% of their students are scheduled with their schedule. So we're moving along actually quite well there. I'm excited about that. Yes, PD. We're still working on the final touches with PD, which is mostly just me trying to work through some things. But we're getting close to that for next year. So far for kindergarten registration, we have 140 students enrolled for next school year. To give you some context, the first thing I did is look for what was last year. Last year was roughly around 156, but it's fluctuated between those numbers. So it's pretty... consistent to what we have been in years past. Just my last thing with that is Michelle Burkhart and an army of people, Kaylee Fuller and the elementary secretaries and elementary principals
010did a wonderful job with kindergarten registration. But I guess this will be my meeting that I say nice things about Michelle, but she also has worked really, really hard in secondary scheduling to make sure that that's underway and worked really well with high school counseling team to put together a... solid plan as we move forward. So just happy to work with her and everyone else. That's it for community. Questions, comments? Kendra, did you predict that our kindergarten enrollment was going to be a little lower? So we don't do necessarily kindergarten enrollment. We do, according, we've done the same as spring count, which is actually down usually from fall count a little bit. So even if it is down a little bit, if everything else stays the same, we should be in good shape. Yeah, it
011definitely grows from here, you know in terms of sometimes we there's some folks that don't get the same thing that we keep our eye on. We're hopeful to get to about 200. I'm just here on my inner breath. I feel like he'd be proud to be asking me. Mr. Redway, can I put one other caveat that I didn't ask? Sure. On communication as well, I have a typo in here because I was looking at the wrong report when I typed this in. It said that we currently had 84 students signed up for summer school. That number is not true. I put another number that's six at the moment. So we're still working on registration for summer school. That went out last week, correct. And I put another text message out to the parents today that
012they have that in their email as well. So I'm hoping that that helps that number soon. What is the threshold that it wouldn't? Move forward have not discussed that I don't know if I'm worried about that yet when I'm talking with um well Aaron and Ashley will run this in the past I don't know if we're worried about that quite yet might be something that we have to discuss, but we have some time And quite honestly, I think it's more of communication from me communicating that information out than it is The numbers being true at this moment in time at least that's what I'm banking on But yeah, yeah Okay, let's move on to the city's Mr. Robinson. Good evening. I submitted a report last week. A couple things I wanted to just touch on.
013I think we're going to talk later about some projects and stuff like that, I believe. But we're working on assembling summer projects right now. and a lot of things in the works right now as far as planning with a bond, with just maintenance, grounds, capital outlay projects. Things like that are in the works right now. A couple things we've been working on for a little bit, and I just got a quote just a minute ago before this meeting started. condensing unit that failed at Wallace Park for that media center. I finally got the quote back for that. We were worried that we're going to have to replace the whole condensing unit because it's no longer made. So I've been working with a vendor that we work with a lot. He was able to get Some
014parts and so we think we can fix it now. I got a quote so it's it's gonna be about 13 almost $14,000 but it's about a quarter of the cost as would be if we had to replace Everything so that's good for the district. So we've worked hard for that. It's taken a lot longer than planned because of the nature of the system. So, besides that, we're plugging away, getting ready for graduation. I had a meeting today on graduation, so we're excited to get that going on. And we're just praying for good weather. Oh, yes. The sign, right now we're waiting on... Approvals from the state from the state state permitting. We're waiting on for both electrical and the foundation plant last I spoke to Fritz was last week and they're looking at the eighth
015now and they still believe they can have it done early July So as long as we don't have any more notes from the state I'm pushing as hard as they can though Yeah, but they really are a little They don't really want to put the digital piece into play until they get those permits in case there's some major changes to make because then somebody has to eat the cost of that. So, but I think it would be okay. What's that? So they can do that. Yeah. I'm hoping. But that's the plan right now. We'll talk about the summer project if we have an agenda item. So the folks that are here at least can discuss what we're looking at. And I did put a little bit more of the schedule for the Wall of Heels
016in the report, too. There are some more firm dates and times. I'm still not sure when the opening ceremony is going to be. We do have Mr. McLuhan, who is a Medal of Honor winner, going to be doing the opening ceremony with us. So he closed last year, or four years ago, but he'll open this one. It's pretty impressive. And there's helicopter rides? That is going to be across the street. Nowhere near the wall. What's the helicopter called? It's a Huey. Across the street. And they're also going to do an opening ceremony and they're having things that are happening at the American Legion on top of the wall. They're working together. We're working on coordinating all of those efforts. They're going to have all kinds of stuff. They're going to be going back and forth
017to the two different events. Yeah, it's good for you. We were a little concerned initially, of course, with the helicopters for obvious reasons and not with our veterans. And so that's why they're keeping them. They're not allowed to come anywhere over this way. I've been in one many times, though. Reliable? Huh? Reliable? Are they liable? Yes. Well, I hope so. Yeah. That's why they're over there. That's why they're not over here. I know. So anyway. We're a little worried about the crashes, by the way. So we're working with the Calhoun County Red, White, and Blue Foundation, and then there's another group that's doing, I think it's a Vietnam group that's doing the Hueys, and that's part of the American Legion Next Door. Yeah, I'm on their committee, and Jim's on the Red, White, and Blue
018committee. Okay. Very good. All right, let's move on to the finance. All right, my regular board reports are attached. I have, okay, my board breakdown. Everything is pretty much in line. I did want to talk a little bit about, I'm going to bring the budget that I'm doing to you guys for the... This year and next but this year's budget is looking better. I still work. It's not done obviously But I have it right around negative 300,000 so better than the negative 794 that we brought in January Just a caveat that no interrupt but the the we don't do a revision until June Because that goes to the auditors and the auditors judge our last revision and how we actually finish. Yeah, how far off So that's why we want to kind of wait until
019that June, really end of June meeting to do the final revision, to be as accurate as we can. But we do believe we're done. Yeah, I have it done, but if we wait, I get it closer. Next year's, the first swipe at it, we were at negative $1.4 million. We were asked by the budget committee to... Think of some potential options we have around eight hundred and thirty thousand and potential options to cut and we were asked to prior for lack of better words prioritize the list of least impactful towards students As you know it usually comes in better so we probably won't come with a zero balance budget, but it'll be less than 1.4 million And then one thing a little bit different that we're looking at, normally in schools you can only look
020at... Cuts right well something a little bit different is we're looking at into a drop-off dropout recovery program Where we pair with graduation alliance this is for kids 18 to 22 and we get a portion of the revenue of that with not as much and so that there is potential for where we're still looking into it, but for the first year a Minimal amount of students we can potentially get 50,000 for next year So we're excited that we come up with something revenue based instead of tax based. We'll take a look at those priority things in terms of eventually reductions like what is the things that we would do first and what's hopefully less impactful. That impact on kids in classrooms all the way to things that are more impactful. scheduling and we have, we
021didn't need one last teacher at a grade level or somewhere in the school district, that's not very impactful versus saying, okay, we're not going to run this program this year. Right. We're getting closer and closer. Yep. We do plan on having a meeting, you might want to write this on your calendar, that last Monday in June, June, actually the 22nd, not the 29th, but probably the 40th. Whatever, whichever. Let's plan on June 22nd as a potential budget hearing date. That's typical. Make sure we have a quorum and all that. If we can. 430 is like great. 430 or after. 430? Yeah. Did you say 5? 5. June 22nd. We'll double check with the other folks that I'm here, but just to make sure we know Sarah was at the bill her though And then the
022cash balance I just wanted you to guess take a look we so are in 31,000 but the debt fund as you can see a Little over four million dollars towards paying off that Yeah So for those in the audience, any board members, we pay the debt fund is for our current bond issues. I'll say specifically that paid for the high school and lots of other renovations that occurred back then. And so we have a payment that's due every early May. Yep, May 1st. But taxes bill that back up and again next year we just continue that process. Interest earned you can see we're at three hundred five thousand a year, which is yeah, that's just you know money for our kids is Yeah, just wise That's my gap for tonight This summer between the new
023computers that we purchase and the ones we have to deal with nearly a thousand computers to work on the summer And that's shaping up to be fun. The fun one though is the elementary school gym. So we did a prototype AV system at Wilds Park. We replaced the old one. And it was pretty rough. Anyone who's been there can tell you that it had remnants of like two prior systems in it. It was hard to use. So we totally gutted it and put in a new projector, a new microphone, new amplifier, new speakers, new control system, add some lighting. It's much better now. But it's a prototype working car. There's a picture at the top there. And I put for comparison the projector at Sonoma below it so you can see. And that picture was
024taken half the distance away, and it still looks that poor. So that's... Bob is the new... Bob is the... So we are going to make a few more refinements to it, and then once we get it how we like it, we're going to replicate it at the other two schools. So... And... Yeah, when the... author was here we had an offer here for the elementary school and when they were at wild spark the sounds for you know speaking sound was really good all of you been there with your kids and it's like what yeah what they say so it's much much better so i appreciate you and efforts on improvements at the elementary what's that costing you you know i've been trying to get a price breakdown but well under 10 000. it's the biggest
025but there was a 5 000 projector And there was probably a few thousand dollars in everything else. A combination of new and used. And I installed it myself, so. Good job. Nice. I did. It was a little creepy when you got there, but it's... Okay. Thank you for that. Comments related to agenda items, Madam Secretary? Lenore Crooker? You want to wait until the next one? Okay. There's another agenda. Okay. Thank you for that. Move on to the consent agenda. Madam Secretary. Chair calls for a motion at the Harper Creek Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as follows. Approve the general fund check, school services fund check, school lunch, and student and school activity fund checks in accordance with the list discussed. Approve the following minutes as reviewed. April 13th, 2026, regular Board of
026Education meeting minutes. May 7th, 2026, budget committee meeting minutes. So moved. And moved and supported. You're gonna win over the plan. Yeah, we'll move this forward to a discussion Hearing is not physical. This is water step This is over. I go. Yes, mr. Smith. Yes, and mr. Best. No. Yes motion carries for you Excellent. I'm a lot of information discussion safety community update. Mr. Ridgeway. Okay, so I think most people in the room at least other connected to school know that we had a safety incident on Friday We had a bomb threat that came into the high school A little before 2 p.m. on Friday. And so that caused us to go into our safety protocols. The first thing that occurred is the high school called a lockdown. because based on the phone call that
027we received, we wanted to ensure that we had the opportunity to sweep the school as quickly as possible to see if there was anything that we could obviously see both inside and outside of the school. And then during the process, we worked very closely with Emmet Township Department of Public Safety. I think... they did a nice job so we have the resource officer here he was on scene when it happened and then another seven well six officers and the police chief all came and they were doing a few things one thing we really worry about in evacuating students out of school is that somebody's outside waiting to do harm and so Officer, or Chief Mackey now, Chief Mackey told me that we have to check the exterior of the building to make sure that's not
028the case before we evacuate. And we were under a compressed timeline. We needed to get the students from their classroom out, so we decided to take them to the stadium. Once things were clear outside, we did do an evacuation of all kids. They did a really nice job. The staff did a really nice job of ensuring orderliness. You know, it was very serious. I mean the kids took it. Well, it was very serious. They were scared. And so they went out and once they were safe, then we did a call out to parents to tell them, hey, what's happening? B, how do they pick their children up? Now, we were a little bit fortunate that this had occurred at the end of the day. So we just simply had the kids get on the buses
029at the middle school because that middle school was getting out at the same time. And then we... At the same time, we're working on kids that get picked up. So I told the parents to come to the stadium or the football field to pick their kids up. And the last piece of the pie was we have kids that drive, so they needed to go back up to the parking lot to get their cars. So the whole process took really from 2 o'clock, I think the last child was picked up around 4-ish. So not too bad in my opinion. Everybody was saying that the one thing that we do when these things happen is it's a great opportunity for us to learn and grow. And if you were in the district 11 years ago, we had
030a bound thread. And if we're going to be quite honest, it did not go well in terms of the organization, how everything went down. And so we worked really hard. The safety committee, who I'm talking about now, worked very hard for the last 11 years. And not that we're patting ourselves on the back saying, oh, we did a perfect job. We're just simply saying it was improved by 100%. And now we're going to continue to say what refinements do we have in case. That event does happen within our school. It's called a SWATing call. You may not know what that means. People try to make up scenarios for the SWAT team to come in. It's something that is happening around, really, America. There was an incident last week in Jackson. There was three incidents in
031Lansing. I heard an incident in Kalamazoo County as well where a similar event happened. There's an open investigation I'm very hopeful it sounds like based on what I'm hearing that there may be an arrest in the situation coming up and If that's so I actually hope it happens because it would be a great deterrent for people to say it's just not okay to scare folks But I am proud of the staff. I think that's I heard that with the safety meeting our board members that were attending Understanding that they did they We never want to second guess what happened. We want to replay it and say, what would we like to do differently? But if somebody calls a lockdown at school, we don't want them to feel like they can't in the future. We want
032them to say, yes, you did the right thing in the moment. And then the evacuation occurred, so everything happened correctly. And everybody was safe. End of the day, everybody went home to their families. That's what we want every day. So that was our safety committee today. I'm not going to talk about the specific upgrades. To be honest, safety and public information, we don't want the bad folks to know what we are going to do to combat some of the things that they are trying to do that are out there. So we'll keep that a little bit close to the vest, but just know that every detail of what happened was analyzed, and then we looked at things that we could do differently in the future to make sure that we keep everybody safe, and then
033we get them back to their parents as efficiently as possible when we do have incidences that may come up. Any questions? No, I have a comment. I just, you know, I was really... Pleased with the conversation at the safety committee meeting Everybody came to the table with with good questions even Chief Mackie said okay if this happened in a different season What would you do differently and it was it was really a great conversation and and to have the emergency manager from the county there to say good job You know that that rest That gives my heart, does my heart good knowing that we're on the right track. I think that the staff needs huge kudos for their demonstration of safety and the protocols that we have in place. Yeah, I would absolutely echo that.
034I mean, having done this long enough, sometimes the... The best barometer is what you don't hear. I think we all as board members have no shortage of people we know who will call us or send us texts when things aren't going well. And it was very quiet. In fact, the few people I ran into were very complimentary as to how the leadership and how the staff really stepped up and did a fantastic job. I have to say, 11 and a half years I've been on the board, I've been a part of the safety committee, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Ridgeway. And I'd say the work that's been done there to facilitate us to this point over that period of time has showed in that meeting that I think what happened. So kudos to all involved. Well
035done for looking. If it ain't broken, make it better, right? All right. We'll move on to the strategic plan updates. Well, we can see a lot of the... Work is being done on building our future. You can see quite a few of the things we have prepared for this potential I think a potential today is the day that we would actually call the election stuff is going to go for potential to propose But the things that we have prepared with our partners entertain me. I'm going to entertain you. I'm going to show this video. This is one example of the videos that were created in Hartford Creek Community Schools. Some of our teachers are teaching from cars. That's why we're proposing a bond focused on our most urgent needs, with a zero-mil increase above 2026
036levels. We'll add four classrooms at each elementary school and convert the unused middle school pool area into classrooms. Right now, we're using every available space. These additions create room for the support students rely on, before and after care, special education, one-on-one help, and more. This is how we build a bridge. to the future at Harper Creek. Please vote by August 4th. School choice, casino money, those are two hot topics in Harpacrete. So that I could explain why we participate in school choice. It's really because of the efficiencies more than anything. We're really not necessarily growing in student population. Now, you might say, why do you need space if you're not growing? Well, we grew to this point 2,800 kids, and now we're full. And so we really need space for our elementary and middle schools.
037but the school choice program helps us be efficient if we didn't have it there's a lot of things that could happen here how great they do now and then casino money you know I kind of went through the the whole how do we spend it how does it go is a lot of people think we're rich because we have school choice that is not the case we are even with most of the districts around us because we receive less state and federal grant money but not to go too much more detail All those things are on these boards that we have talking about these videos that we have and then we're also planning on sending out a postcard to all of our registered voters tomorrow So you should be seeing those in the mail for
038folks that are in the district that are registered voters So that we can get information out and I would never sit here and tell somebody what they have to how they how they vote or how they should vote you need to just vote based on Your own research and your own personal circumstance I think it's critically important that we support schools, but that's me. It's not he's a school superintendent I hope that you see the Board of Education has been good stewards of our of our money. We've gone through at least 11 years in a row of positive budgets ensuring that we have what we need as a school district for our kids to be successful we continue to offer programs you don't necessarily hear about harper creek laying off employees so we have Worked
039very hard to earn the trust of our community so that we can move forward for our future And this is really I said a bridge to the future Basically what's happening is this particular bond issue is is what we would need in the moment How much that we think that our folks can afford because it's a zero millage increase over what we currently have our current millage is 7.12 Mills if this if this were to pass it would be seven 2.12 Mills next year as well. So no millage increase for taxpayers. Then when we pay off the bonds that I was talking about earlier for the high school and renovations in the past, then we could come back to voters and say, okay, here's our next step in our plan. And we have a master
040plan for that, that I outlined at the meeting that we had earlier. And I think... Everybody that was in attendance was fairly positive about the fact that they like that this Board of Education doesn't just have, we want to do this and then we'll throw darts later in the future. We want to do this and that would bridge us to what our future would look like so that we continue to have a strong district forever. So that's my strategic plan. Also, there was, we were like a little spotlight in the shopper, and I had questions about school choice. There were very specific laid out numbers as to how many students we had basically room for for eighth grade. So, I think that was last, I know, I think it was last week. And so, that's
041a good point. We have targeted school choice for first through twelfth grade, which means we don't just open it up and anybody can come in. we have this is the menu how many spots we have and by law if a student has disciplined in the last two years we can say no and we do um and we've been fairly uh strict about that as a district we are opening kindergarten because it is really hard to predict but this year we're a little bit down it looks like when mr abraham had presented and so we want to make sure that we can be strong all the way through we don't want to have a situation where we have to have different numbers of teachers at every grade level that is not stable or efficient we want
042to be stable and efficient as a district we're not trying to use school of choice to grow and get bigger and bigger and bigger we're just trying to be efficient with our student population our finances and hopefully our facilities i would underscore that that administration and The past boards have been very frugal and thrifty with the district's finances. We find ourselves in a very good financial position today because of it. And we also haven't had a bond passed in 20... The last bond was passed in 2007, and then work was done in 2008. So it's been quite a while. It's been over 19 years. And many other districts have been out to bond and had bonds passed, so... Good work that could be done here. Anything else, board members? If not, we move on to
043call the board the special August 4, 2026 election. So there is a resolution. I think it's in your packet. And hopefully you have a chance to look at it in the board book as well. This is a formal resolution. Basically what it is saying. is that the Board of Education, if passed, we ask voters on the ballot in August. August is a gubernatorial primary, so we are sharing that election with anybody who wants to be the governor of Michigan. And that helps us so we don't have to, our election costs are very low. And that was something that our voters really thought was really important. And why would we not do it in November? Because if we wait until November, the construction can't start for a whole other summer. If we do it in August,
044then we can do construction, some construction that next summer. So basically, we're asking voters to approve a no-mill increase over current values. So the current value is 7.12 mills. That would raise $28 million. And you really have three major things. Safety and technology, space for elementary and middle school, and then the third thing are maintenance projects. I'm not gonna say repairs, but it's really, it's renovations, it's doing the parking lot. If you were at the stadium earlier today or picking your kids up, you know that parking lot is in really poor shape and that would be replaced. The transportation parking lot, there's pieces of the high school road. Those are the maintenance projects. At Sonoma Elementary, we have some drainage issues we need to fix. At Waddles Park, we've got to fix that pickup and
045drop-off. I'm just reminding Waddle Park parents. Mr. Swine's back there. He stands out in the road right now to direct traffic every day so that we don't have accidents. And then, B-Lake Elementary, their playground is something that is a high priority because it is not in the best of shape at this point in time. So lots of maintenance infrastructure. Technology and safety. So safety, We want to put up safety film on every lower floor window. And why would we do that? Because we want to make sure we keep the bad folks out for as long as we possibly can. Because if we can get kids behind a locked door, like in the lockdown on Friday, every single door in that high school was locked and had a lockdown device put in. You as a person,
046a human, cannot open that door. You cannot. And so if we can get those kids behind those locked doors. That's the safest place that they can be because there's never been anybody injured behind a locked door in a school shooting The safety film helps because it makes it so that window keep this integrity So somebody's trying to break in it's going to take them a lot longer I'm not going to say they can't break in it will just take them longer and give us time I think that the high school went to lockdown they have kids in the lockdown in 30 seconds probably less but I'll say a conservative estimate of 30 seconds. And if we can get a minute or two from the windows, that will ensure more fitness. Technology, every classroom would have
047an upgrade. We looked at the difference in projectors a second ago. So every classroom would have an upgraded projector or screen. Our sound systems in the element are in all of the classrooms, as well as we call it a document camera. Where you could be a projector when I was teaching where you project but now it's a camera that projects onto the screen So that we have the best technology for our kids. We haven't done anything large scale since 2007. It's been a long time for plastic technology. And then we have our Wi-Fi system And then the repairs in Maine as I already mentioned a few of those big big big big things. This election will be at Tuesday August 4th There are some things that we would ask the election for games of talent
048time to do in the resolution, but generally speaking If the board says yes, we would be asking taxpayers for twenty million dollars, but it would cost There would be no millage increase Over current values as we as we move into this bond Any questions or more clarification that the board might need or that they? Little history, we've been looking at this potentially since last April. So over a year ago we did a... Starting in May, we did a complete facility assessment to see exactly what our needs were. We have more needs than money, so we prioritize those needs. We did that with a steering committee. We did that with input from staff. We did that with input from community with community meetings. We also did a community survey. So we feel like we've listened and
049talked to folks over what those needs might be and what we both feel like. They potentially could support if we were to present. I think the only things I would point out is that facilities obviously age. Times change as far as what the needs are of districts and that the funding that schools receive don't necessarily support major infrastructure needs. And so I think before I was on the school board, I thought that... Money that each student the school gets for each student. It facilitates all that. It's just not how the funding strategy works. So we could definitely use some dollars to make those things happen. That being said, we'll move on to summer work bids. Basically, we talked about casino money. So right now, Jim is going to talk a little bit about the projects
050that we could potentially spend casino money on for maintenance. We have a budget of about $200,000 for maintenance projects this summer. So Jim, you have some ideas that you want to share. We might want to kick it to the building committee to finalize things. But go ahead, Jim. Thank you. So first of all, our high school compactor, which is for our waste in the back of the high school, that is the original unit that was Put in in back in 2004 that unit is as beyond repair and failed. I actually took bids on this unit last week But I'm finalizing some things. I'm not ready to ask for approval on anything right now But those bids are anywhere from I think the high end at 77 to the low end of 41 so but also
051The drive is as mr. Ridgeway spoke of at the bottles Park Drop off and pick up area why we know right now we can't expand a lot But we could at least try and get that back drive fixed because there's some potholes right now that you need map quest to get out of They're huge and we're doing everything we can to fill them, but it's they just the it's just Gone we're talking about a potential sidewalk at the high school. What is that? That's going to be And that's going to be part of our safety committee, I think. We're making some decisions on that. It's still a little bit up in the air because we've got some other obstacles to cross. But what we're looking at doing is that sidewalk would connect the auditorium lot
052to the front sidewalk in the high school. Ultimately, we'd love to get our high school to where there's one entrance. Right now there's two, and it's a little bit more difficult to monitor. If we could get it to where there's one entrance, but we have some obstacles, traffic being a big one, some things like that. So that's going to be something that probably will go through the safety committee before we move forward with that. But I'm working on getting budget numbers for that. Some other projects, the west side of the tennis fence, we have some posts that are loose and broken and will need to be replaced. A project that we do every year is add to our playground mulch. You know our safety surface that we have in our playgrounds, so that's something we
053do every year We've talked a lot about the rental house I've talked with Chief Mackey and we're still trying to figure out a way to do that But I'm probably gonna end up having to get a price on demo of that house and the thing with that We would still have to pay even if they did a controlled burn We would still Harper Creek would still have to pay for the removal of that also the removal of the basement the regrading of the property so either one way or the other we're going to look at but we're going to have to reprice that cooling tower at the high school it's working now but we need a new frequency drive for that one of the things we talked about just mr ridgeway and i talked about
054last week tables for our elementary and by that what are you like what do you mean what i'm talking about is the eight foot plastic tables that you see at every event that you go to Right now we have about 13 that my ground shop has and we take them from building to building to building to building to building every time there's an event. Well this time of year it gets crazy. And so we've talked about, okay, what do we think about, and I know Mr. Swan will probably agree with me because he doesn't tell book fairs, is get each building 10 of their own so that they have them there. And so also that it's not, you know, nobody's lacking tables or anything like that. So that's something, and that's a minimal charge, but
055it's something that, and also I'd like to finish up the room numbering. We did the high school last year. I'd like to finish up the middle school and the elementary buildings. um with just getting some new freshen up the room numbering because a lot of those you can't see and some small grounds pieces like we're looking at just a small more like you'd have at your house almost to do like around some of our tight areas that we can't get our big mowers into and then our infield drag there's a little three-wheel tractor that we use to drag all of our infields, baseball, both baseball fields, the softball field, the practice softball field, the shot put area. Well, that drag was used when we got it. Mr. Greenman acquired that through the, I think they
056were the Battle Cats at the time when they were changing over, and it was probably 10 years old then. So it's... The piece of equipment is tired and it's about done. We're doing everything we can to keep it running. So I'm pricing something like that. We might not do an infield drag. We might do a tractor of some sort that would replace that because the infield drags are super expensive. So we're going to figure something out like that. So those are the big projects that I have this year. You know, of course, the signs that you see in front of us that we'll talk about here in a minute. That's going to add to the list. So really, those are the projects that I've talked to a lot of other people, and so those are
057the big ones we're looking at right now. So Jim, those projects you just listed off, are those within the $200,000? Probably not. I'm going to have to prioritize. Those are the ones I, that was my first shot at the title, shall we say. Now, we're also looking at the possibility of Ginger and I are working together on the high school compactor, and hopefully some food service funds can help us with that. So we're trying to get a little creative, too, with the way we do some of these things. So my recommendation is to kick it to the building committee. I don't know if we have to or want to, but I think that's a nice space to go a little more detailed and look at the dollars and prioritize that list, and then we would
058be really ready to start a project. That's a good idea. So I think that's it. Sarah? Yeah. Thank you. I think it's really important to hope right here is how we're spending it. Also, one other thing. I put it at your place, and I should have spoke about this earlier. At our last board meeting, we had your facility assessment plan that everybody was given. We didn't have a high school piece added to it. This is the high school piece that's added to that. And I will get it to the rest of the board members as well. Want to make sure mr. Atkins knows I'm following up with I told him I think All right, I was going to say a membership this is a easy one image if they had rules and regulations of the
059Revolution basically says it will follow the rules and regulations in exchange. They will allow us to play in their state tournament I'm sure it's a little more detail than that, but that's the general consensus is if you want to be part of the MHSAA that you will agree to follow their rules. I think that most of our coaches really don't want to play in the tournament. I'll tell you that. I will strongly recommend that we approve the MHSAA regulation. One large change next year is they're going to cede The football playoffs with the region. Instead of the district. So that just simply means that you may not have to play the best team in the region first. If you're good. It's a big change. But you may have to travel a little bit further for
060that first game. Although, when we played last year, Grand Rapids Christian, that's not very close by. Catholic? I think it's Christian. Go to your mascot. Wild on. All right, let's move on to comments from the audience, and I know we have one. Please come up, state your name, and address for the record. My name is Linda Brooker. I have my grandson from Varsity Hall entrance. And being only a grandparent, I'm not privy to the phone calls that come from Robin, et cetera. I was obviously aware that there was something going on when I pulled in and came out. Emma Township was there with their blue lights flashing. The school buses were late. The teachers, when they came out, when the students started coming out, teachers came out of every pore. And this was at the
061middle school. And I just think that safety was at the utmost. For the whole situation. I have no idea what was going on in high school I only could see varsity and the people that were there picking up their kids and There were so many cards in the parking lot and it was just amazing To see everybody pulling together and that the safety of the kids was the priority. So I just want to thank everybody We appreciate that very much Alright, we're going to move on to action. Call for a special August 4th, 2026 election. Chair calls for a motion that the Harbor Creek Board of Education approve the resolution provided by a Truen law firm to call for a special August 4th election and name the newspaper of, was that Peter Schaffer? Schaffer. For
062general circulation for notices and success and review. So moved. So far. It's been moved and supported. Do we have discussion? We need to make sure before Aaron leaves, we have to get that signed or whoever has to sign it. We need it as the board secretary twice. And does this have to be read or not? We don't think it has to be read because you were given advance copies and we gave you copies today as well. If you have any further questions, I'd be more than happy to answer anything in it. I went over the general parameters of what is going to happen. If you go a couple pages in, it has the actual ballot language. As long as you use all of that, it's going to get action. I just want to make sure
063it doesn't have to be formally read, but I'm okay with it. Any other discussion? All right, please call the motion. Mrs. Watterson? Yes. Mrs. Albert, I vote yes. Mr. Smith? Yes. And Mr. Best? I vote yes. Motion carries 4-0. Thank you for that. And action item B, MHSAA annual membership. Chair calls for a motion that the Harbour Creek Board of Education approve the 2026-2027 Michigan High School Athletic Association resolution as discussed and reviewed. So moved. So moved and supported. We have a discussion. Right here in San Francisco roll. This is water spin. Yeah, this is all right. I vote. Yes. Mr. Smith. Yes and mr. Best yes ocean carries 4-0 Remember should we have anything for the next? the MASB renewal letter today for our membership. I don't know if you guys have received that.
064They sent me a copy of it. Yeah, we will take it if you have it. And with that, we will adjourn the meeting at 6.59 p.m. Good evening.