ACSD Townhall and Board Meeting 9-24-2025

001one solid you are being broadcast to the world. So watch what you say. Thanks. >> We're gonna wait a few minutes later. might not have >> they all includ We thought we had two guys. >> Well, we've also had so many that just solved something. [Music] Big truck had a truck going. Oh, that's why I want started. >> I don't have any experience with the >> Thank you. I'll give her 35. Wait a few more minutes. Like state earlier >> but I take pictures >> that's my hobby on the side that part I try They have one of those must have a structure. >> They're out there. >> All I know is I see people from shooting photos on state. So >> sure. Not every not every school or town has >> land started. >>

002Good evening everybody. We want to thank you all for coming. um we're excited that you're here and we're excited to have the opportunity to share a little bit about um some of the proposed projects that we have, but also to give you an opportunity to ask questions of us. Um this is our first one, so this is kind of the dry run, so uh be patient with us as we uh I'm assuming that these will get better as we move along through the process towards November 4th. Um I do believe that Dr. Johnson handed you a little slip of paper. Um, that's a good way for if you we'll go through the slideshow. Um, if you have questions that come up, you can write those down. You can I don't Do you want to take

003questions as we're going? >> Why don't we save questions for the end? Most of them we should be able to answer, but if we don't, we'll take that written question uh go find the answer and then we'll probably post it up on the web page. >> Absolutely. So, we've got um and we want to get started here. I know we kind of held it off a little bit um waiting for more people to show up. Um but we do have a board meeting scheduled at 6:30. So um you can know we're not going to take your whole evening here and so if you have more questions than what we have, come and show up again or there's other ways that we can address those as well. So um is that any thank you for coming

004tonight everyone. Uh like Christie said, it's our our first of many town home town hall meetings that we're going to present information to the public. that's also being televised and I'm hoping whoever's watching it from home they can see the screen but the first thing is that we wanted the public to kind of know what the board focuses on and that would be their goals. They have two main goals that they talk about about every meeting and it is focused on student um growth and and one is they want all students to make one academic year's growth every year and then they want all students to improve their attendance. So that's their main focus. And then you can see that all their decisions that they talk about and work on is focused at at on

005the students. Okay. So as you look at the the slides here, the board has spent more than a working on um what they call the master plan. And I've got a little timeline and that'll show you, but you can see eventually they came to a um timeline a facility review and it ended up being a $40 million um building project. And here's that timeline. So if you look at the timeline, I'm going to walk over so I can see it. So back in August of 23 um here and we had a large kindergarten class. We had 25 kindergarteners in all five sections uh to start the school year. That's a lot of little bodies running around in in the kindergarten classrooms. We couldn't uh find another classroom space. So, we went through the whole year

006with 25ish students in the kindergarten classroom. At that point, when I came to the board and said, "We got to do something." And the board said, "We don't know what to do. Do we need to do a facility review any of our buildings? do we shift third grade in Washington up to Schuler? What do we do? And so they said, you know, it's time that the board looks into doing a facility review. So in the process, um by May of 24, they hired a company uh called IAT, Espus Construction. They are supported with uh through the high school buildings association to do a facility assessment. So they looked at all of our facilities, even our bus barn and the achievement center, all four main attended centers. And then in December of 2024, they hired um

007an architect company called SBPA. and SPA and IAP work together on the major needs that high priority needs the medium needs and and other projects that could wait two to five years down the road you know for life maintenance projects. So, um, SBPA put together some conceptual drawings and you can see that's what it's listed up here and by May of 2025 which was just a few months ago um SBPA presented the master plan and we'll show you what it kind of looks like um the summary page of it and then in 20 or May they also hired a communication specialist called the Donovan Group um and then they are working on getting information out to the public through um the web page and and flyers and handouts and anything that we can think of

008to try to get more information out to the community. Uh the board also hired a finance group held Piper Sandler and Travis Wire is here tonight to speak or answer any questions on the finances. So if you have any of those questions, he's our experts at to um find the answers. Board also had to hire an attorney. it is the school district's attorney committee the bond financing and then by August of 2025 board decided it's time um to look at doing a a bond referendum and through that process they um looked at that $40 million building project that would uh come to all four buildings and they wanted to make sure that the public the patrons were not uh being taxed too heavily so they divided it into two funds one's a sales tax or

009you'll hear us call it the save fund or sometimes we'll call it a a penny sales tax and then the other one is a general obligation bond which we might call it a geo bond but we're kind of switching words around here board what else do you want to add in on this I'm just kind of talking for them I've done a few of these presentations here's that master plan that we talked about uh SVPA and ES construction they had about a couple pages of this where they had high priority medium priority ity and then other things that need to get done in the different buildings. And again, those might be things that we put off 3 to 5 years out, but you can see what they ended up coming to. And they're they're most

010important thing that they know even as Washington Elementary. Keep it in that building. Uh there's a lot of things that need to be fixed um either um renovated or additional classrooms. a lot of spaces in Washington like the lunchroom slashgy um it's a it's a multi-purpose room but through all the costs here you can see that it ended up being close to an $18 million project just that Washington Schuler they decided that Schuler it needed uh all three floors of the restrooms to be renovated and then uh at the middle school you know where the the the walk is that it needs some attention and improvement. And during that discussion, they talked about the need of a lunchroom or a common because a middle school in Schuler, they they shared the same lunchroom at the

011Schuler Chino. So, you'll see um conceptual drawings um of what they decided was a good plan to address the skywalk and then that columns. And then you get down to the high school. here at the high school. It's a 30 year old building, 32 year old building. It's really not been touched. You know, some carpet, some paint. Um but otherwise, everything's pretty original if you look around the building, even this media center. So, um in the high school here, you can see library, the media center. We need to refurbish it and use this kind of prime area for additional classrooms for students to use. And then also some needs for atom classrooms and then our CTE our career technology education. We need to really improve those locations along with that you'll see right here. Um

012and before we get to that all four buildings needed security entrances and and that's been kind of a high priority as you walk into this building or any of the other classrooms. Uh it it's kind of pretty easy to get into buildings. you know, you you're buzzed in and then you can walk right into buildings, but we need to chip at that. We need to secure. And then the last thing that we have here is the fieldhouse. The fieldhouse, as I understand, and again, I've only been here for a couple of years, but I know the board's been approached quite a few years by patrons and families and students that they need additional practice. So, the more they talked to people, coaches, um that became part of that whole plan of kind of a high

013need. Um and so that's why made the final master plan. Laura, do you have the stuff that Jonah had? >> Uh, well, I don't know what your sentence was, so >> Yeah. Well, we were just about to go over the basket plan. >> Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. I I'll let you catch a breath. >> I'll jump in if I need to. >> Yeah. Okay. And I I kind of want to keep moving on this, but on the ballot in November, on November 4th, there'll be three things, and this is going to be hopefully not as confusing as it first appears, but three things the patrons will be voting on. First one is that general obligation uh bond, and that's a $22.5 million building project. It covers everything except the fieldhouse. And then the second one, um,

014the public will vote on a save bond or that penny sales tax bond. It's 18.5. Now, um, again, that's kind of a hard one to understand what the save is. Save money comes in every year to the school district. It it is calculated by the uh, student population. This year, we're about, and Travis, you'll know these numbers better than I am, but we're at about 1.8 8 million projected to to receive um probably around 2 million every year for the next 20 years. So the plan is to use part of that same fund to finance and fund um the building of that multi-purpose field house so that the public in it they're not getting taxed on that. They're only getting taxed on this 22.5. Um and on this save bond uh they'll borrow against and

015use portion of that each year. They'll save back some money anywhere from 600 to 800,000 and and as they they use they they use the save funds for carpet. We're also using that to um like replace the roof here at the high school. So they're every year they'll save back some of that money. They won't use it all because we we do have to do maintenance projects. So I'm involved in this. And then the last thing you'll be voting on is a revenue purpose statement that on the ballot and that just gives the board authority to use that save money. Even though it's coming in, it justically every year we get that save money. It just gives the board permission to use that that money that we just are the state of Iowa all the

016folks are being taxed on it. Anything else to add on that Travis? Thanks. >> Um no, you're good there. Um, >> I'll say one thing that I was going to say about the save that I was looking at, and you know, part of the reason why that number is as high as it is, is that with that save money, we're required when we bond against it to keep one year's worth of repayment. Is that right, Lisa? And so that's the money that we're talking about investing. So, we kind of like have to that save number is inflated over like what we think we're probably going to be able to spend because some of it is money that we're holding back for investment. Right. >> Right. So the the $18.5 million produces the amount for the

017budgeted on the fieldhouse, the 16.9. So there's $1.5 million that will go into a debt reserve fund equal to one year's payment. And so that will be district money. You have it. It essentially makes the last year's payment. It's a security feature for the investors that allows you to borrow at the lowest possible rates. So you know, you're borrowing at four and a half% or 4.4% instead of five. Um, so it's a it's an advantageous um thing to have that in place. It does add some confusion. Um, but the the intention here is not to spend $18.5 million on that component. Um, $18.5 million borrowing produces 16.9 of your uh, proceeds for that, >> which would be the maximum that we're able to spend. Correct. And we certainly can spend less than that. >> Correct.

018>> And we certainly can borrow less than that. >> Yeah. You'll wait till you get you got to go through like right now this is like boxes of square footage footage and cost per square feet. >> Um so the best you can do is put estimates up. Um you don't want to spend a half million dollars to design development this project u before you get it to the ballot. So you're spending a minimal amount after you go up or down and whether it passes or not that's when the design work would start. um the ability for committees to get formed, prioritize square footage, and be able to in on a finer design. Um should you spend more money beforehand, we do have districts that will spend, you know, a half million dollars to get that

019project fully designed. Um it was not the decision of the board to want to do that without getting voter and public input first. So, um you know, part of this process is getting authority and then the design would take place later. I know there's a lot of uncertainty about exactly what it looks like and one of the things that we're thrown into as a as a state now is we only get one chance to vote which is November. So, you know, ideally, you know, the board would have had a few more months perhaps for a March ballot, but you're faced with the cost of on a $40 million worth of project and you wait a year on it. You're looking at spending off a couple million dollars more of construction cost inflation. And if you

020picked a really bad year like 2122 and you waited a year, uh you ended up with an extra, you know,5 to6 million dollars to fund. Um so, so part of it just being prudent with district resources. It they finished the facility plan. They know it's going to take some time to design and get it developed. Um and so that's why it it came up with a public hearing uh this fall. help me on a little bit here, but uh we are one of 40ome school districts that are doing a a bond referendum in November. That's the only time that uh school districts are patrons can vote. Now is one time a year in November. We're one of 40 43 about $1.3 billion of school projects across the state of Iowa are going to be voted

021on this fall. Um largest in uh De Moines is looking at around 200 million. Then there's some smaller ones and the I think the smallest one is about 8 million at this point. Um you know I think I don't know if this is the most recent presentation because I do have that one slide of talking about um construction budget context but you know this project five years ago you know because 40 million you know when I saw that number first I'd be like what the heck are they going to spend $40 million on? How did how did this project all of a sudden become 40 million? Well, if you go back into the 2020s when you did your last project, uh this project would only be about 29 million. Um the construction inflation from 2020

022until current dollars in 2026 um makes what would have been a 29 20 $29 million project a $40 million project today. And if you were to go back 10 years ago, it'd been a $24 million project. So, right slide up. Travis, >> what's that? >> I don't have the right slide up. I don't have the the newest one that up there. >> So, we we can go over that in more detail, but I I think just one of the things that, you know, sticker shock is a real thing. You know, I live in a district where we're going to be asked to to vote for $130 million this fall um in in Ankenany. And you look at the things that are that are happening there and you're like, well, it it it makes sense. Um

023and and their tax impact is really about the same as where yours is as well. Um that $2.50 per thousand range. Um they also just paid off a debt obligation and will be, you know, rolling into a new debt obligation. So we're seeing that a lot across the state. Um districts have paid off some of those projects 20 years ago. In your case, you did a bond 10, not even 10 years ago, but six years ago, and you've already paid it off. It was a 10-year bond for $10 million and it was the the first voted bond issue that you had had um since that 1993 uh referendum for the high school. Um so you paid that one off a couple years early, you took a few years off and then now you uh paid

024this debt obligation off uh three years early as well. So you did a lot of good work. Um the the board was very diligent in deciding that we're going to take on a project that we know we need to do and we're going to get it paid off as quickly as possible because at that time they knew there were other projects that were going to be needs. But they had not yet been through the the full master plan of prioritizing everything in every building. So they took that on this time and now the number is larger. But it's not any different than the needs that they had five to seven years ago. Um there's just numbers to them. Well, I I had two PowerPoints going today. This morning's which, which is this one, and then

025this afternoon's tracks. Quite a few other power point slides in it. Open up the right one. Do you want me to try to open that one up? >> Sure. That that would be helpful just because I think there's some financial stuff and we're we're largely moving into to that right now. Um while we're waiting, um are there are there any questions? Anybody have any any questions while we're waiting to pull up from you? >> Go fast. So, >> yeah. Go. >> I know the one cent sale. How long was that going on? When did we first vote for that? >> Oh, Cass County. So, if you go back, >> it used to be a county bycounty tax. Cass County was one of the last counties to vote. So, you were kind of right before the

026the Johnston Lyn. So I think that local option tax has been around was a 10-year tax and I think you started in about FY5. So it's been about 20 years. You're you're remembering that correctly. Um in 2019 the legislature made the decision to extend that to 201. So once the tax became statewide, all 99 counties had voted. Uh the state swooped in and said, you know, it's statewide tax. we're going to control how you spend the money on a statewide basis. Um, so one of the things that they've done every time they've extended though is said, "Well, yeah, I know the district voted on how you wanted to spend the revenue purpose statement, but now that we made it a statewide tax, that goes away." So, you now have to come back and vote every

027time the state decides to change the tax. So when they extended the tax in 2019, every district now needed to get on a cycle to renew their revenue purpose statement. Um so to date about 220 school districts have already voted to renew their revenue purpose statement. So there's about a hundred left. You're one of the the hundred that are left and I think there's probably about 10 to 15 that are voting again this fall. >> And that's the third question. >> That's the third that's the third question on the ballot that revenue purpose statement. But um to kind of hit on that that revenue, it's grown substantially. Um when you were just generating local dollars in Cass County, you know, you were getting at that time $5 $600 per uh student. Um now on a

028statewide basis, it's paying $1,360 per student. So your sales tax right now for this current year is forecasted to be 1.97 million. So just shy of of two million will be the the current year's projection. Uh part of that is due the increase over last year is due to the fact that you had more students last fall. So it always goes in a reverse. So since you your fall of 24 enrollment growth is causing you to have more sales tax revenues FY26. >> Good question. All right. So we're on it. Okay. >> Yeah. >> So this was the slide, you know, and and it's a little bit busy. Um, I recognize that. Uh, but what this was the the point that we're trying to make. So, if you see those black boxes and then that

029big jag in the middle that goes up in 2022, uh, that's 19.85% construction inflation. That's coming from the producer price index at the Fed. So, this is aggregating uh, school projects specifically across the country. Um thankfully you guys voted in 20 2020 on that project. So you actually got ahead of that um that bidding with your last project. Um unfortunately though a lot of districts now are finding that you know you're now bidding in this higher environment. So um I only wanted to put this up just to address some of the sticker shock. We don't have any idea what future project inflation would be. But if you took school project inflation from 2005 to 200, sorry, 2006 to 2025, it averaged 4.3%. Um, so just if if you were to assume, you know, it doesn't

030go through and you have to wait five years to do this project, you could expect the project might be closer to 50 million than it is at 40 million. That's just taking a a straight 4.3% construction inflation each year. I'll be the first to say, you know, we can't get scared about those things, right? Like inflation means we do a project, but um one thing is for certain that when we look at, you know, valuations across the state, they're typically not growing as fast as construction inflation is um across the country. So, school districts purchasing power has largely gone down across the state over the last 10 years. That's a personal opinion, so I should stay away from those. But, um, that would be the the metrics that we're seeing. Districts that could afford to

031build a new elementary school can only now afford to renovate an elementary school. Um, and and that's just based on the same levies. Um, I think that the next things were then what's on the ballot. So, I think we already covered covered through those. Um, the funding sources component here. And again, just to to be to be clear here, you know, there there's no perfect way to separate um the the two projects. Um the desire of the board was to simply get that, you know, one didn't necessarily cause the other one to uh fail from the standpoint of, you know, we don't want them necessarily tied to each other. So if if people wanted to vote for the athletic center and not do Washington, they would have the option to do that. If people wanted

032to vote for Washington and not for the other, they would have the option to do that. But that doesn't change the fact that the master facility plan came forth with $40 million of recommendations. Um the the board was committed to looking at the full scope of the projects and and putting them forward. it was just easier uh from the standpoint of separating the two. Um you were not going to have the money to do everything with sales tax on the left side of the the page. Um so it made sense to group the projects together um that would fit then on the general obligation bond and then the sales tax bond. And one of the things to to note here is district originally went in with trying to uh reserve uh more of their sales

033tax um and made the decision to instead lower the amount of property tax asking. So that process from June to August um led to a lower property tax asking as the board attempted to do their diligence. So if it if for some people you know looking in from the outside it may look like oh they just you know did a bait and switch. It was a very methodical process of thinking about you know how could we put these together that made sense as well as you know how far can we commit our own resources on the sales tax side so that we can lower the amount of tax asking going forward. It was originally thought if we did 28.5 million, it was the same average debt levy rate that the district had over the past

034five years u when you were paying off the other or six years paying off the other bond from 2020 to 2025. Um instead now it'll actually be lower than the debt levy you were paying over that period. Instead of paying $310, it will be $2.50. And if you believe where interest rates are today, it would actually be a little bit lower. We've seen the rates come down since our analysis in August. So I would say it might be less than a dollar per thousand increase, but it given that we're already this far in communication, we're not going to shift. We're just going to say this is the maximum that we think is going to happen. So um I think the re the next section then does pick up a little bit more um on the

035approval sides. General obligation bonds take a 60% vote to pass. Sales tax revenue bonds require 50%. And the revenue purpose statement also requires 50%. Um the next section then does deal with a little bit more of construction and this is completely out of my wheelhouse so I don't have anything to say here. So this can go on. >> You guys want to talk to us? Do you want to get some words in and back this up a little bit? >> Um thanks Travis. >> Yeah. So, um I think that from the beginning of when this board started, which was last summer, um when we started talking about this stuff, we had already identified that there were a lot of needs in Washington, specifically overcrowding every year. We were getting in these numbers for kindergarten where

036we were like, "Oh, where did all these kids come from?" And a lot of them were last minute enrollments. So, we weren't even though we do put out surveys and we try to anticipate um two years in advance, um we just have had a lot of influx into the community of kids in that at that bottom level, which is great because then they're able to start, you know, with our school district and and move up through it. Um but it has been a perpetual question to be asking um uh to be asking Stacy, well, where are you putting all these teachers and where are you putting all these kids? So, we've been aware of the crowd. Um, I think that uh other people, my kids didn't actually attend Washington Elementary, so other board members may

037have been more aware of just the the building sort of, you know, deteriorating over time. And um and when you go into I don't know if some of you have opportunities to go into like learning centers in other communities, but you know, there's been like the the modern movement is a lot more toward um like this was constructed in a time, right, Beth? where it was sort of a you have a square classroom and the kids sit in rows and the teachers up front. And now there's just like a lot more of a focus on cooperative learning, kids learning in groups, um having flexibility in terms of your building to be able to use individual classrooms, but then also, you know, to expand so you can have larger groups together, all of that kind of

038stuff. And um Washington just didn't there was we were really limited by the facility. And so that's, you know, you do everything that you can with the building, but sometimes you just reach a point where you say all of these things put together um means it really would be good for us to make a significant investment here. And um and so that was what uh the board was really pushing for when we started to talk about master planning was that we really wanted Washington to have a significant upgrade. And so we worked with uh SBPA, which was our consultants for that. Kind of sent them back. They did multiple designs for us. we had different, you know, things that we had different requests and needs. I don't know if some of you can remember some

039of the things that that they were seeing and um they had the suggestion. I I don't remember if we asked them about bringing the preschool over there or if that was something that they just did just because it's um we have the same principal who's kind of covering all of those grades from preschool all the way through to third grade. And having them all be in the same facility is kind of nice. It's nice for the kids too to be able to grow up through the same facility. Um, so we did talk about that. What else? We were I mean I think that's been a challenge. Those of you who have been in the district for a long time know that um we've had continual space needs. So we kind of keep repurposing buildings sort

040of adding campuses with the achievement center different things and and ideally having our students on our main campuses is I would say a fair goal of this board um to move towards just for safety for for lots of reasons. >> We've got the conceptual drawings up here and again we asked SVPA to create kind of just a a big picture idea drawing of what potentially it would look like to add six grades or six classrooms uh kindergarten first, second, and third. So that's what you're seeing here. um knowing that they still wanted to keep everything on that same campus site. If you look over here, this is where they thought this would be a good place to add the kindergarten and first grade wing. It also has some special education classrooms in it. Um here's

041a bigger version of it, but you can see this this is just inception. We said we wanted so many classrooms. What could it looked like if we put it together? And they said, "Well, you know what? It could fit here where the tennis courts are at. And they try to place it on the other side over here on this side where it comes off of well like the the the um kindergarten first grade playground here. They just put a new playground in there. They thought of put there, but just wasn't big enough space. They didn't want to move the new playground. They looked at down there, put the new parking lot again. They just put a new parking lot in there, invested that money. So, right now, they're just looking at putting that wing in

042and they would if the bond passes, they do it in phases. So, I I'm assuming by next summer, they could have specific drawings made up and construction could begin and they do this section here in phase one. And that could be being built during the school year. that's not going to disturb anything that's going on in the classes other time. So this section here and be built during all of the school year and then some and the plans would be then uh phase two would be they demo out the old current 1958 and 62 sections of the building during the summer and then build back those areas. probably do some renovation to the the current gym and make make that a dedicated gym and then add in the cafeteria, a new music room, um secure

043entrances, art room, any of those special classrooms are undersized for the program. So, music, art, PE is shared in gym, lunch, lunch starts at 10:50 and it goes I think till 1:00. So, that curtain is down and they're trying to have lunch and pe going on at the same time. Imagine the noise. Uh, and then the second third grade wing right here, it's a a twotory. It would stay the same. I'm thinking that they would do some renovations in those classrooms too, just to update it. So, you can see how they're projecting it to be done bases. Anything else on the schematics on this? >> I think everybody knows the hard part with Washington is at the top of the hill. So that was kind of the problem with construction is you can really only

044go that way because otherwise you have massive amounts of dirt. So >> yeah and if you building the building site's limited that's also going to get addressed. It doesn't look like it's going to be addressed in the drawings, but the board has talked about it needs to be addressed and and fixed up or or low maintenance on it, right? or if something is done there. >> You want to talk about Schuler and and the middle school? >> I guess I I will quickly. I guess obviously secure entrances have been talked about at all buildings. I think there's a couple minor pictures of that. Um I know in my time on the board they've always talked about we share the lunchroom with uh in the middle school or I'm sorry in Schuler. Same exact thing as

045at Washington the gym class and uh cafeteria. So it's tied up most of the time. Um so I think the design here is with that the skywalk or the catwalk to expand that into an area where that can be the lunchroom that frees up the gymnasium. Uh, and also I suppose it would probably be some type of I guess you could use it for lots of different purposes outside of the lunch uh lunchtime, but that's been something that we've obviously talked about about every single year since I've been here as far as that's a scheduling somewhat of a nightmare as far as that. So, um, and then the other is, uh, just kind of a a renovation of all the restrooms in the Schuler building to some of them are kind of beat up a

046little bit and need uh need a little love, I think. As far as middle school, that's obviously kind of been all redone fire. So, >> that's kind of that. >> There's some locker room stuff, too. Something, right? renovation that's like second priority. So that would be >> Oh yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. >> That's not on the bond. >> Yeah. >> But somehow it made the drawings would be we would probably do that kind of renovation on our own using some of that uh save money that we would you if we'd save that >> uh and do our own um projects and not have be part of that. And >> and that's just a good discussion point that the master plan did have things prioritized. So there were kind of second and three tier levels

047of you know here's some other things that we see that need to be addressed and that was kind of the process that the board went through that you know this we didn't want to inflate the project larger than what it was. So there were some of those things that we thought these are smaller things that we can tackle on an as needed basis. >> I also one thing that I learned about the middle school it's a historic building right it's on the or okay is that >> it is it it's been back and forth on whether I can get the ideas. So my understanding from the architects is that because it's it's on some sort of a historic registry, we're really limited in terms of what we can do with it architecturally. You're not supposed

048to do anything that sort of destroys its historic character. And so any renovations we do with the middle school, they have to be a lot more thoughtful. And so a lot of, you know, we we couldn't just do like we want to do a Washington, we're like tacking on a wing. You actually like we're not supposed to do that with that school. So that was partly where the idea for the skywalk came from because it's not technically part of the building and so we can do things to that to give a little bit more space for the middle school kids for their lunch time then. And I substitute taunt at the middle school today and I tell you the lunchrooms are really packed and you know like there one of the lunch breaks was from

04911:40 11:43 to 12:09 and a lot of kids go through that lunchroom and then it's all got to be cleaned up and ready for gym class at whatever time and yeah so it's definitely a need. Ask questions as you go. >> Absolutely. >> What Janice, will you write them down on a piece of paper? >> People want to try to save the questions and then put them on the website. >> Oh, we do. We still want to hear it though, right? >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. >> You want us to ask now? Because like I kind of Yeah. >> Like so I teach at Schuler and I know like when they came around and asked us like about the building, it was supposed to be like building only. So they asked about, you know, like the

050furnace and the air and that's why we said the bathrooms are like a high priority for us there. But like as a teacher, is it something that we could ask for or something like storage in our building is terrible? Like I have one cabinet in my classroom and stuff. So Greg, he's my janitor. He helped find a space under stairs that I can put some stuff cuz with the new curriculum came a whole bunch of stuff which is great but we just have a big lack of storage as a building not just my own personal classroom but like is that something because it's not changing the building but is that something some of these funds potentially could be used for since we're not getting the huge renovations that like some of the new classrooms at

051Washington potentially getting >> sure. Yeah. Um, I know we did sort of, um, in our discussions we were kind of pushing about Schuler because it felt like Scheler was not really getting very much out of this project. Um, and I guess that you know what we'd heard was that space in general in terms of classrooms was you guys are pretty good. You're pretty balanced. Um, there were some needs we identified and they just didn't end up necessarily on the major projects list for the bond. So, but they still could be there on those like the second tier or whatever, you know. like a different phase for things like that. >> And that was one of the nice things just about, you know, this discovery process was like even hearing about some of those like smaller

052projects, you know, not just a can we please make Washington better, you know, but things like can I please have a space to store this curriculum. Um, and then thinking about how we can how we can fit that in where that'll be slotted. >> Yeah. Part of the overall plan um involves within the sales tax and pebble revenues that the district receives, which is a little over two and a half million when you combine the two. Um there's ongoing needs of roughly 700,000 that are just kind of buses, technology, but there's also 700,000 that's being earmarked for using for ongoing projects. So, you know, the summer project cycle, they don't want that to end, right? But, you know, sometimes you might have a high school roof like you have did right now and that was

0531.3 million. So, >> now you may have to couple a couple years and different projects. So, um >> like down the line I know >> but those are things for rest here. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Who else has a question? When you are looking at Schuler and the plumbing, the bathrooms, are you looking at the plumbing issues? >> Yes, that's my understanding. That's the main thing. >> You are going to actually put plumbing not just the pretties. No, >> but the actual plumbing. >> That's my That's the main thing I've heard about is that it's the actual plumbing that that they're trying to fix. Yeah. Okay. The other thing, and I know this doesn't fall into the plan as it is being presented, but there since they're adding uh preschool to Washington, has there any

054been any discussions of making Schuler a 35 building by putting an addition on where your administration is a little more equally spread Stacy Horning right now that takes care of preschool, kindergarten, first, second, third. James along with other things is fourth and fifth. Then you have the middle school with six, seven, eight, and four at the high school with two administrators. You know, there quality to the staff, to the students, and to your administration. I think we're open to that. I don't think I I think that that idea was brought up pretty early on or has been brought up over the years as ways to alleviate the crowding at Washington was whether to shift to Scheler and I don't know as much about, you know, sort of the nitty-gritty of how many classrooms are in

055each building. But I I was told, you know, that that was a good that would be a more significant change than you think it is. >> You'll probably I'll I'll step in a little You'll probably remember Janice um back prior to the um the previous bond issue there was some discussion when we had this bubble of enrollment and there were drawings that were drawn up with an addition to Schuler. Um at that time a lot of different things were being proposed but you know it was discussed and kind of looked at um one of the limitations that was brought up at that time was the lunchroom situation and how are we going to feed another grade? we're already going from 1050 to 1:00 and then we're going to add, you know, another 120 kids to

056that. So that that's part of it. But yes, I agree. You know, there there is kind of that that need uh to look at balance. Uh the AR architects actually had schematic drawings. I'm putting another three sections on that east side of Schuler and what would it be? And then you know the whole pressure of adding another six classrooms of third graders over there. What does that mean on everything that goes on over at that building? And so they they did talk about it and work on it. We presented it. We we kind of argued it. What's the benefits of keeping third grade at Washington or moving them to Schuler? But as far as this project goes, we knew that work had to be done at Washington because of the um it it just being

057more the word keeps being like decrepit and I don't want to say it's like that bad, but you know, like more outdated and so we knew work had got to be done better. Anyway, I understand that and I worked in the building for 34 years and nothing has been done. But when you are looking at adding things on, you have to consider the kids you're working with. When I looked at the plan, and I know it's not finalized, they're walking through the entire kindergarten first grade hallway to get to the playground. Have you heard it? Because that's what you're doing with kindergarteners. They will be running, walking, doing everything they can to get out of the building. So when you are looking at it with the architect, you need to make sure the kindergarten and

058first grade teachers are approving this because they're in charge. I'm I you know I I know Washington needs repairs and replacements, but make sure they are well thought out. Sure. Yeah. And that that's part of what this process is. I mean that's that's been one of the big challenges we've had is that the drawings we have are still conceptual you know and a lot of it is this is the time unfortunately we have to ask for the money before we can really like you know get the input from people as far as like oh you know what what if instead of there this be located over here or wouldn't it make more sense to uh that that kind of thing. So yeah there's space for all that. Yeah. So there's space to make sure that

059those things are still in people's brains. And as a person that was married to a man is married to a man that worked with architects and engineers, what they can draw may not end up reality >> because they don't get to work in those buildings after they've designed them. Well, and and certainly too when you're renovating, you know, you never know what you're going to come up with renovating. It's much different than having a blank slate and coming in with new construction. And so we we recognize that. We recognize that this is um an example of what it could look like at this point in time. But when we're renovating, when we go over budget, where is that money going to come from? Because all we've said is conceptual conceptual one teacher already say, "Hey,

060I'd like some more room." That's one teacher. Multiply that by all the teachers that I'm sure anyone's going to tell you they need more room. Talked about bank that just magically is going to fix itself and it's going to be redone, which we didn't see in the projects. when it goes over, do we have a plan of what's getting cut? Can we take some of that save money and help with the schools? As that's where I am as a person of interest when we go over um budget because it will because we're renovating. Everyone who's done a home renovation project knows you bust out that wall that support beam was gone. Well, now you have to do that. That wasn't in the budget. Now we're doing a whole school that's been in the 50s and

061the 60s mold. That word hasn't been said yet, but when that goes over budget, where's that money coming from? What's getting cut? Furthermore, we're talking about all of this influx of students and just working on this one building. This conversation is going to happen in three years if it's not already happening to the middle school and Schuler and the high school. These are my concerns. This is yeah $40 million worth of projects a 16 year mark for our rec center when it goes over budget can we where is the money coming from what's going to get cut because I feel like we all want the schools to be taken care of as a number one um that's I guess by what I've been hearing. Where's that money? Where's this magic money for the bank? That

062was just that's not the bank and landscaping work is not going to be cheap. It's it's not. And the next thing someone's going to want some room. I think everybody wants room, space, storage. That's a concern we should about now when we're upgrading and making $18 million renovations to a new room. I don't want a teacher going in there and saying, "Okay, great." But there's no room. And I know nothing's finalized, but I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of um a lot of room for bad things to happen in this renovation. >> Yeah, I think you're accurate. Every project goes through that, you know, from a design development standpoint and there are contingencies built into the the budget by the architects. So you work through those. Um the board remains in

063control of of the budgets. So as you work through design, you know, the goal will be we've got this amount to work with. So we're going to make that live. That was the property tax component. Now, when you start looking at, you know, on the the sales tax at Pebble side and dollars available there, you know, the district does have a healthy balance available for covering off uh, you know, expenditures. If you had a $200,000 overage, they've got the money to do that, you know, but from the standpoint of coming up with an extra $4 million, no, that's that's not in the plan. Um, so every every design development project is going to have to work through those priorities. And you'd love to say yes to everything. And so then we go back to, well,

064we should have voted 50 million. You know, that's your maximum. But, you know, the district was trying to say, let's take off what we can. They did that seven years ago. We're responsive. Brought in that project on budget. U So, I think they're looking to do the same. I mean, I don't think it's a guarantee. As you know, you you renovate a home, nothing always goes nothing goes as planned, but I think there's adequate contingencies and professional staff to work through that design. >> So, we want to kind of shuffle through the rest. >> You can see that here's kind of the schematic conceptual ideas that the architects put together on just for um let's say Schuler and then Washington. how we conceptualized how the public would come in to the main office, check in,

065and then if needed, they would then move into the main part of the school. Otherwise, right now, when you enter any of the buildings, it's pretty easy to get in once you're just kind of buzzed in or the doors unlock. And potentially, this is what it can look like at the other two schools, the high school and then the middle school. Oh, okay. Okay. So, at the high school, um 30 plus years old, again, it's it's in great shape, some carpet, some paint, but there are areas that uh we need to have it kind of updated to match the uh educational programs for the students that are in the high school. And one of the spaces is this media center. It's overspaced now. Um you can see there aren't hardly any folks on the stacks.

066So, we need to really repurpose this so we can use it kind of in a multi-purpose model where we have different kids and groups and in uh students in classes meeting in here at the same time. What we do know is that uh education has shifted and changed. Students even at a kindergarten level, they are users of information. Not necessarily I mean they're learning information, but they're actually taking information and using it. So, um the style of instruction that goes on in the book classroom, they're not necessarily in rows of desks anymore because the teacher isn't just the the um the primary source of information, you know, telling kids what they need to learn and use the textbooks. Students are users of information uh because they have all kinds of technology, textbooks. We need to

067have kids take that information, use it, and then that 21st century skills. So they're collaborating, they're communicating, they're being creative, any of those kinds of things. So that's what we're really looking at. How can we accommodate the learning style for kids of today and what's it going to look like five 10 years from now? So that's kind of that idea that we're trying to um predict what education would look like in the classrooms for today and then the future. If you look at the drawing there, even there's some different areas that the architects have put in kind of just to show us what possibly we could be doing. There's the media center, but here's two spaces here within the building. They are current classrooms, and they're calling those flex spaces. Um and the flex spaces

068are used for kids uh to learn how to work uh collaboratively togetherly like in small groups working on projects giving and again they're producers of information given this information create some create a project what you learn from apply synthesize any of those things so I can be in this classroom the teach go over the flex area uh to you and three other kids you need to work on this project they have to have that space in addition to what the classrooms are doing and that's kind of what these are are signifying and then our CTE programs along with our science classrooms we need to upgrade and uh and those areas too. These are the other two. These are the other four classrooms that will be added on to the tubing wings that go towards the

069east. And then here's that large drawing and it's got the field house on there. Now, we we really really tried to get the fieldhouse because again we were being told that there was a need to have three ports. Uh, and we really tried to get it over here. Doesn't it make sense to have it right beside the other gym? There's just no way you can put three ports and then everything that else that goes along along with that fieldhouse that box place it over here. It just doesn't fit. No matter how you try to fix it, return it. We try to look at it being right here. Um, and and so that's where it ended up in the middle. Anything else you guys want to comment on? >> Just that it's about 6:30. So, um

070I did anyone else have a question you really wanted to get answered here? Yeah, I got a couple questions about uh classrooms based on the high school with adding the flex in the common areas of you know as you were talking about you explained uh how those are going to be used but the four additional classrooms those those flexing common areas are taking teachers that are already in those classrooms out and putting them elsewhere or are they going to be in those classrooms right now? >> I think it it'd be a redesigning of the the classroom lose space. There are rooms up here at the high school that aren't being used all eight grades of the day. >> Mhm. >> So, you know, and you go to most high schools, sometimes they're sharing space. >>

071Yeah. Yeah. Um, so with that being said, I'm I was made aware that the uh the EOC kids have been brought up here to the high school >> and they're down there right across the well where your plants say the welding where the you know your uh welding shop's going to be. I believe it was Dan Mart's old uh Spanish Spanish rail. Where where are they going to go? >> Again, I think that's that's down the road. It it it be trying to design and in place best location of programs. Right now, some of our um subject areas are side by side and other parts of the building. You've got it just as the senior wing for classes. I think that would be something that would be down the road in and really more of

072a detailed design than to try to decide, well, this is where the EOCC goes, this is where the skish class goes, that kind of thing. >> But it just seems like you're losing classroom space for teachers of the EOC kids. And effectively, you'd only be getting really two new classrooms out of four. You're building because the two teachers that are going to have to go in those flex, you know, those flex areas are going to have to have a whole less classroom because as I'm understanding right now, that is an English class over there. That's a history class. Those are classes that are going to have a lot of kids in it because they're two classes that everybody has to take. So, they're going to have they're going to need the classroom space for a

073full-size classroom, not just, hey, you know, we have to split our room up and whatnot. Um, and then also with the the EOCC kids, I mean, you're taking you're you're So, what I'm assuming is you're going to put the the two teachers in these classrooms, you're going to put them over here, wherever, in one of the other two classrooms. You'll just place them over there, and then you'll see kids are going to go in another one. So effectively you're only getting one more classroom and adding space for one more classroom. >> If it turned out that that was the case and that we were like oh darn you know we miscalculated and this teacher has nowhere to have a room we would fix that. I mean you know we're when we get to like the

074final we're not going to like you know let any teachers or you know necessary classrooms like be unhoused. Um I think that we're looking to add four classrooms um onto that that end wing. So that would help recapture some of that, you know, if you're looking for the onetoone correlation. But I mean hopefully it's an opportunity for the high school to kind of look at their use of space and try to make sure you know we're consolidating and you know we're we're really using our space effectively and we're keeping uh you know all the departments together and you know so that that would be my hope is that you know we're going to um we're going to take advantage that even the places that aren't necessarily being directly renovated will be used better. This is

075all conceptual. Yes, that's important to remember. >> This is just ideas. The actual movement of things is part of >> what it should be, right? >> Well, of course, we're just not if you're going to talk about how it's conceptual, you got to take everything into consideration. Correct. From the getgo, not later. Yeah. But, you know, >> if you're going to present this as what it is, you I mean, it's right here. You got to shut it down. I mean, have I mean, you you got to be able to say, "Hey, you know, what's going to look appealing to them, you know, and what what what's going to make the most sense? What are we going to put on this? What are we going to show them to make make it make sense to them?"

076I mean, the voters. The voters, you know, that's that's huge. >> Yep. Absolutely. Because if you can't guys if you guys can't make it make sense to us, the voters, how how are we supposed to expect you guys to make the right decisions when you can't make it make sense to us? >> All right. Well, thank you. We're going to wrap that. I'll follow up on that. You guys, sorry. [Music] If you have questions that didn't get answered, >> um, turn those in and those can get added up onto the website. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. >> You wrote something down. >> Yeah. We're actively collecting questions from people um to add to the FAQs because if it's a question for you, it's probably a question for someone else. So, we appreciate you coming. >> Thank

077you to everyone. Anyone we're on, right? Yes, we are. >> Anyone who's tuning in for the um for the actual schoolboard meeting, we're just wrapping up the town hall and so we're going to start that meeting in just a couple of minutes. >> Yes. for sure. Isa, do you have agendas for us? >> Oh, yes. >> My t-shirt. I didn't tell you. >> Why did I think that was >> All right, Lisa. Let me know when we're ready. >> I'll just talk. I'll say we had a very nice uh town hall meeting here. We really appreciate the people who came out for it. What did we have? Uh 15 20 people there. Yeah, it's great. Uh asked some good questions. Had an opportunity to almost get through our slide deck. Uh we're all kind of

078learning. time and do this. Um, and so just letting those people get cleared out and getting started with our uh with our regular board work session. So I think we're ready to do that now. And um so I'm going to at this point that's 6:37 um uh call to order uh this meeting of the Atlantic uh Board of Education um September 24th, 2025. This is our board work session for September. Um, can I have the roll call, please? >> Jenny Good. >> Yes. >> Jenny Jordan, >> yes. >> Josh Clair, >> yes. >> Lauren Mlan, >> yes. >> Christ, >> yes. >> Um, so for our agenda tonight, we're just going to be hearing from our director of student services, Staca Schmidt. Uh, and she has sort of a a new role at the district.

079This is her second year, and it's sort of an an a more encompassing role of multiple uh special student populations. So, she's going to be uh talking to the board about some of the work she's been doing and anticipates doing this year. And then uh we're going to have some discussion of that town hall meeting because we have several more of those coming up. So, um at this point, I'll take a motion to approve the agenda. >> So, move. >> Second. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Jenny, >> yes. >> Josh, >> yes. >> Laura, yes. >> Christie, >> yes. Enjoy. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Lisa. All right. Are you ready to go? >> Yep. >> Excellent. >> So, first of all, I would just want to say thank you for asking me to give

080a presentation about the position that you hired me for um a little over a year ago. Um so, most of the the staff and everyone is aware I was hired in the spring of 24 and I started in July 24. So, I'm just into my second year with the district. Um, and my title is the director of student services. And basically what that means is I am overseeing the support programs for students throughout the district. So, homeschool assistance, TAG, EEL, special education at risk. Um, and so what I do and what I bring to the table is a little bit different than a building administrator because building administrators are very focused in their buildings and I provide more of a district perspective for those programs. So I'm not necessarily um, you know, I walk side

081by side with those with those building principles. I'm a parallel administrator with them. Um, but I oversee a program more specifically than they might just because I'm focusing in on those programs, whereas they're focusing on the entire population of their building, if that makes any sense. So, what I did for you today, and I did email you guys all my presentation, and you'll see in that presentation, there's going to be some hyperlinks that brings you to the Department of Ed um that actually dictates the law that I have to know. And um I that's one of the things that I was tasked with is making sure that we stay in compliance with all of these different programs um to make sure that we are doing what we need to do um at that district level.

082So first of all I want to start with the homeschool assistance program. Um the homeschool assistance program I will be honest with you what we have here in Atlantic was completely foreign to me. Um, where I come from the different the northwest part of the state, we don't have a homechool assistance program. And actually, I don't think many schools have it like Atlantic. We have a very unique system here. Um, so if you don't know, there's actually two forms of homeschool. There's IPI and there's CPI. IPI is independent private instruction. And that basically there's just there's no guidelines. It's way more loose. um families can decide what they want to do for their um curriculum that there's not as many constraints on them. If they follow the CPI model, they're eligible for for dual enrollments,

083which does have benefits um for the district and the families. Um and the big piece here and what people have to understand is homeschool. Um choosing to go home, it's it's not an easy option. It's not an easy out. there are a lot of things that are required for families with those with that decision. Um, and it can even dictate whether or not a student receives a diploma. So, there's there's just um and if you see on that one before that page before that blue link is where you can go to get this information, but the program that we have is the CPI program. And so students can be dual enrolled, which means if they choose that dual enrollment, they can actually participate in activities with our district, whether it's um extracurriculars or if a

084student has an IEP, they can continue receiving those special education supports. Okay. The restrictions that are put into place by the state of Iowa dictates that our teachers that we have on staff can only work with 25 families or 50 students each and that's whatever comes first. So if they're working with 50 students out of 18 families, they're capped. That's all the more they can work with. Uh so currently our enrollment is we are currently sitting at 48 families serving 86 students. If you notice those numbers with two teachers, we can only serve at max in a perfect storm 50 families or 100 students. So, I'm going to go back to those numbers because we're really close and our homeschool teachers are very concerned because we looked last spring at some information and I called

085the state and got involved with with some of that information for our staff. What happens when we're when we're maxed out? Well, they're like, "Well, maybe we can just apply for, you know, a variance and we can get some, you know, the state straight up told me that is very, they don't do that very often. There's a reason there's a cap." And so, we're looking at, well, what do we do next? because by capping that, we're really limiting those families. We're limiting families that maybe need a homeschool um situation but are looking to maybe reenroll back into that district. And the the the concern is if they have to leave us to go find that support, we're not going to get them back. And so we're working through that. We're working with the homeschool staff.

086We're coming up with options. Um and we're looking at this. This this became a reality last spring. We we did have we are growing. This homeschool assistance program is growing and so we really need to address it and it's it's one of it's one of the top priorities we have with the district right now because we do receive funding if they're following the CPI. We are receiving funding from those families for those students. So even when they open enroll from a different district but they're receiving homeschool assistance through us. We are getting some of that funding from those home districts. We're billing out for that. So that state aid we receive three and point4 if they're dual enrolled. So it doesn't seem like a lot. So what we get for student assistance from the state

087strict just for a student who is CPI homeschool assistance program in our district we receive.3 of that funding. the information we received from our staff and you'll see a link there that was put together by our two homeschool teachers. Um we're looking at 22 new kindergarten students in the families we already have potentially for next year. Just that influx puts us over cap. So you can see that that's definitely a concern and it's in their the front part front of their brain. The second program I'm going to talk about is special education. Um, you know, last year when I um had my updates for you throughout the year, I gave you a running kind of a um a guide for where I was spending my time and you guys you saw that like about 75

088to 80% of my time gets consumed by SPED. It is definitely the largest um population of students that I work with. And again, that link there is going to take you to the Department of Ed and all the regulations and everything we look at. Basically, right now, what I came up with information for you guys is in the 2526 school year, right now we have 20 special education teachers. That includes the four preschool teachers that we have because they are all certified in early childhood special education. So, we have three-year-old special education all the way through senior plus. We have five teachers at the high school, five teachers at the middle school, six teachers in the elementary, and we have one teacher that is shared between Schuler and middle school. So, it's a 48 span.

089We have 52 district sped paras that's just specifically sped. So they are coded in their um their job is working directly with special education students and right now and I know that that number is going to change and it changes constantly. We have 229 IEPs directly related to our district but I know for a fact we have at least three to four uh initials that are coming up. We have count starting. So, we have lots going on in the sped in the sped world. Compliance. Um, if you talk to if you're in if you're in a conversation with Dr. Johnson and myself, you will hear us say the word compliance. And that is one of the biggest things that I am working on and trying to um collaborate with staff on. It is the thing

090that you don't ever want to be found lacking. like you do not want to be out of compliance because when that becomes the issue, that is when families can um file grievances with the state and it means the district is not holding up what they need to for those special education needs. That's when lawsuits happen. That's when we go to court. That's when lots of things it it's it's usually not very pleasant. Um and so that's that's what I'm working on doing of those 229 IEPs this last summer. I went through every single one of them to figure out how much support we needed, what was written into every IEP for PARF minutes for support to make sure the district is doing what we need to do so that everybody's covered. Uh within the federal

091law of IDA, there's something known as FAPE. And you probably hear FAPE. FAPE is a portion. It comes out of IDA and it stands for free and public education. Um, I also put the AEA up there. Uh, and basically what that is is those things dictate all the laws that special education fall under. And that's why compliance is such a big deal. We are not just talking about the state of Iowa. We're not just talking about the Department of Ed. We're talking federal mandates, federal law that are in place to protect our students with special needs. And so we as a district are looking at the way that we write IEPs. Are we doing the best that we can do for our students districtwide? Are we unified in the way that we're approaching the support

092needed in the in the district for students? We want that language consistent so when they move from one building to another, the implementation of that IEP is easy and doable. Um, and we're working on the flux, the give and take within the district. When a big group of kids moves from one building to the next, we might have to move some of the staff as well because we have an increase of need and of of support in another building. On the bottom there, I just said that we are participating in a district-wide audit. Um, basically what I'm doing is I'm asking the A.E.A. to take the IEPs that we have written in the district, look at them, what where where do we need to make improvements? What do they see as common errors? It might

093be um you know, even just how we approach the topic of specialized transportation. It might be how we broach the subject of how are we determining the number of minutes paras need to support a st student in their general education classes. They're going to give us ways to look at it, analyze it, improve it and make it better. >> Um, so faith, I already said that. Um, basically, >> can I ask about the audit? So, how is So, that's um that's not like a requirement or anything. You just tested it. >> No. So, basically in the state of Iowa with special education, they used to do what's called a site visit. And basically what they would do is they would come into a district and they would literally tear apart all of your special education

094files. You had to have everything in there. You had to have everything in order. You had to have, you know, big lists like who can get into the files, who can't get into the files. Everything had to be and they would just come and they would just say, "Okay, I need these three files from you. I need these four files from you. I need this, this, and this from you. High school, we're going to double check that everybody teaching a class is certified to teach that class." They don't do that anymore. And so, an audit is a way that we can do that job. we can find out what are we doing wrong with our IEPs to make sure that we are writing our IEPs appropriately for our students. We have the appropriate support for

095our students and it's going to keep us in complaints. >> How long does that take? >> So, um well, we actually originally requested it last year. There was a glitch. We are getting it taken care of this fall. Um, I was told by the A.E.A. that what they would do is they would probably once it got lined up and the team was basically brought together, it would take about two weeks to go through the IEPs that they're doing, they're pulling two from every teacher um of our current of our of our former staff. I'm not putting our new staff in there because they probably may or may not have written a new IEP at this point. Um, and then they will bring that back to me and then as the director of special education, I

096will decide what we're going to do with that. I will present it to Dr. Johnson and we will move forward. Are we going to need like should we ask for more support from the AAA in rectifying the problems that we found? What kind of coaching do we need? Um, we've brought the DE in. We brought the DEA in last year several times. We worked with Ivan Gentry. We worked with Joe Wurichek. He's our special ed director from the AA Green Hills. Um, and so just depending on what they find, we'll kind of guide what we do with it the rest of the year. >> So, who's actually doing the audit? >> The AA. >> Any specific person? >> Uh, no. So, that's changed a little bit. You know, with the restructuring that they're doing at

097the AAA, the new name that I have is Stephanie Eastston. And then she puts a team of AEA consultants together who are wellversed in IEP writing goals, all those things. and they're going to assess it and then they will each whatever they're doing, whatever part of that audit they're doing, they will formulate that into one great big giant report and bring it back to me. I'll look at it, figure it out, present it, and we'll take we'll decide what next steps need to be kind need to happen. >> And so a lot of the audit just involves like is our paperwork in order, are the IEPs written correctly and stuff. So they're not evaluating like teacher competence or >> no no level. So actually if in this next slide here uh these are some of

098the issues that I actually came across last year stepping into the district and some some of the issues that I know might be an issue if if if those are the IEPs they look at because again they're not looking at all of them. They're not going to review all 229 of them. length of day um and that specifically to certain programming um specialized transportation, who is it being offered to and why is it being offered to it? Is it being offered because of the disability or because of the program that they belong to? Support services in general. Are we over are we over supporting students when we should be fading supports to get more independence? Um, and that in general will help us determine our need for staff. Do we need more paras? Do we

099need less paras? Do we need more special education teachers? Um, is there another position in the district that we potentially might need with the restructuring of the Aeas? There's a lot of things up in the air right now because the the the Aea staff that we are utilizing with their new pay per um uh pay pay for service, it changes it changes everything that we know and have functioned on for years. Not bad, not good. It's just different. And so now even um this AA the review, the audit, it's a pay for service. So we asked for it last year. So, it's being given to us because it was it should have been done last year, but the actual consulting and coaching, if anything comes out of that, we're going to have to ask that's

100that's going to have to be paid for >> pay separately. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> With the funds that we receive to do that. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying we don't have that money, but it's it's more can it's more the district can decide what they want to do with their funds, >> right? >> And we just have to decide exactly how we want to use it. So, with these kind of issues though, it looks like they're not just looking at um like I I was trying to get at are they just drilling down on very specific sort of a oh this teacher has a real problem with writing this particular aspect of but they're helping you look at sort of the overall are we right sized. For an example, um, one of I I

101don't want to give a lot of specifics because I there's just I want to protect our students. I want to protect our staff. But for example, if I was writing an IEP for a student, um, or actually, let's let's even step back. If I was doing a special education annual review and I we were reviewing the IEP of a student and it was determined that that student needed more supports, we would try to find the data. We would put things in place. Did did that help that student achieve and have more access to their education? If it did, then we look at it and as a team we decide, do we think that that support is something that needs to be written into the IEP? Is it something that needs a goal area? Well, one

102of the things that I I think can be confusing in the special ed world is it it's something that wants that people want to give, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a goal area just because the child is on an IEP. Does that make sense? So, for example, if we added um >> yeah, we can see things that that it would be great for kids to be learning this because everything doesn't have >> No. And just because they have a need in math doesn't mean well there, oh, there's a gap in reading. If the gap isn't big enough to qualify for special education, we don't put SEI time in for that. We we provide other supports. But if we do need special education or a goal area for that, the SDI, the specially designed

103instruction has to match the goal areas. And that doesn't always happen. It's just it's just one of those things where we're just making sure that we clean up our paperwork. And it's not that anybody's doing anything wrong. You don't know what you don't know. And so by doing an audit, we're going to learn more of what we don't know and we're going to fix it. You guys are aware of this. I'm just hitting this up. Um when I said specifically and it said, "Hey, I'll do this presentation. What kinds of things do you want to know?" Well, hey, what do you do? What are you doing? Well, I do monthly training. You guys know that. Um I'm providing Paris um training once a month and the special education team gets training once a month. Um

104and I've linked two of my presentations in there for you to see if you want to take the time to do that. The PAR training is the one I did today. Um, and the neat thing about that is again you we are able to team with the AEA and offer credit for the reertification for those southern bias. And that did get approved. I I brought that up last week at the the other meeting or maybe two weeks ago. Um, and um, as far as the teachers go, we look at what we need as a district. What what do we need to talk about? Obviously, when we get our information back from the AA, one of our part of one of our trainings is going to be the information we got back from our audit, right?

105what did they find? Um, maybe even having them do like a peer audit. You guys take an IEP that you wrote, bring it to the team. You're going to partner up. What do you guys see? What are some things we should work on? Just looking at things that way. So, um, also one of the big things we're going to dive into is determining how do we determine the number of minutes we use our pairs for in the general education. Um, that's a big one. It's a it's a it's a it's a point of uh that needs reflection and we need to make sure that we're doing it the correct way. There are guidelines from the state. So, we'll be using that as training. Yelp, I'm not going to steal their thunder. They are they graciously

106agreed to come in in October for you guys. So, they're going to be giving a presentation October. So, I'm not going to give you all their numbers and stuff because they're coming. So, I will give you some basic information. Um, so in the district, we have students that qualify and and are are recognized as immigrants. And basically in the state of Iowa, what that means is you are recognized as a you are labeled immigrant status for three years. Three years the for the very first time that you're registering in the United States as a student. It doesn't have to be just in Iowa. So if they move to Montana and then come to Iowa, if they were there one year and us two years, after three total years in the United States, that immigration status

107goes away. Okay? Or immigrant status, sorry. Um, we currently have students from six countries that are labeled in that immigrant status in our district, six different countries. Um, our EL supports specifically in the state of Iowa, we get funding for five years. That doesn't mean our students are competent in five years, but we get funding from the state for five years in the state of Iowa. Um, they show proficiency in four areas. We talked about that before. to listen, speak, read, write. Um, but we continue to provide services even after that fifth year if they are not competent or show competence if they don't have proficiency in those four areas, they continue. Um, and I, like I said, I'm not going to steal the thunder because we had some great um, celebrations that they're going

108to share with you next month. >> Um, that whole proficiency thing, that's one piece of it, showing proficiency. So being a four or five on the ELPA testing in read, write, listen, and speak. And the other things that we look at is their success in the classroom having being able to access uh the instruction as well as participating in the school and in the community. Those are all areas in our staff. Specifically for EL the current year, we have three teachers and two paras that are dedicated specifically to our EL population. The last one that I'm going to be hitting on tonight is our gifted and talented. Um, you guys probably remember it, some of you, as TAG. Um, G&T is the new label. Um, and in the state of Iowa, it is required to

109offer um support to students K12. Um that is something um that we are looking at in the district um because we currently have 72 students that qualify for the G&T program um that will be receiving extension and um advanced support um in many different ways. This is not going to look the same as it used to look um where you know a student is labeled as tagged, they get pulled out of the room, they go do a project and then go back to their classroom. these extension projects. It's actually a collaboration piece because one of the things that we know is we support our lower our lower learners are um the students that need support to access really well. Most districts do they forget about the top tier that also needs the support and the

110ability to have access to learning. And so um that is one of the things that we are looking at the district the program goals and objectives. All of this information basically is just what we realize we need to do to basically revamp our G&T program in the district. We are working on that. Uh we have dedicated a full-time staff member back to that. That staff member was shared um in teaching a classroom for the last couple years. We've brought that person back full-time to TAG. Sorry, G&T. I have a hard time, too. That's what it takes to do. I can't get it out of my head. Um, but yeah, the goal right now for our year is to re start restructuring the program. And this will not be a one-year process. It is probably going

111to be three to five because you you're starting from scratch. You're still offering support and extension. Um, but you still have to revamp what that looks like. you have to revamp the way teachers approach the program, the uh the support and collaboration that you have with the the general education teachers because they're going to be offering some of that support. >> So, you are working closely with that one teacher to to help them to um to do this because that's huge. I mean, that's a huge thing. Yep. And we is there some guidance that comes from the state or something to be like, hey, you haven't been doing TAG. Here's how you should do that. >> Yeah. In fact, one of the areas that we um were kind of I don't think we were nailed

112last year as far as being out of compliance. I don't think we received a letter, but uh we were told at the state conference that you basically have a a little narrow window of time to get in into compliance with it because you're receiving the money. So, you need to make sure you're doing everything you need to do. And one of the areas we did not have lower elementary identified um and so that is one of the areas that we are working on. We are working with um our the principles to make sure that the identification process is being done. First of all, it is being done correctly. We're triangulating um data. Uh we're using three different areas of information along with teacher recommendations, student performance um to make those identifications. We also realize that

113there might be a flux in and out um which is part of the concern with the program. Principles don't like that a student can be identified and maybe not qualify the next year. that can be very hard um for families and for the students as well as um one of the areas that we are brought that are that continually is brought up is the mental health piece of this because just like in our general population, we have a high need for mental health support in that upper tier of kids because of the way that they function and they do so much independently. We need to make sure that we're providing that mental support as well. That's my last slide. Sorry, Dr. Johnson. It was more than 10 minutes. >> Oh, 10 minutes. >> Can you

114give us an example of what you're doing right now for the TAG program or is it all just >> Yes. Nope. So, um I can give you an example. So, we met um two weeks ago to um deliberate and basically dissect the data that was put together at the elementary at Washington specifically. Um and we identif we did successfully identify students K three um that will be receiving extension and supports. There is a very specific reading group that is happening. There is going to be a math group that is going to be happening. Um and then there are also very specific things that Vanessa is working on. um she hasn't it takes a little bit of time because we're also getting kiddos regulated and into the class and into the routine and so she I

115don't think has a has been able to do the third piece of it yet which is reaching out to the teachers to provide the extension activities that are happening just during general instruction. Um but that will be the third piece that's happening there. Um in fourth and fifth grade they have um groups at the end of the day specifically for their G&T time. Um, we're working with the middle school yet because when you get into middle school and high school, you have a whole different beast because you have a completely different kind of schedule. And so in the middle school and the high school, eventually what's going to take over and what's going to need to be is prepping and pre-planning because you almost need like a class period dedicated to your TAG instruction. At

116the high school, um, Vanessa's been rolled into the AO time. So, she actually has an extension time where she's able to pull those kids and work with them in the morning just like everyone else is. Um, so that part is working great. It's just right now the middle school schedule is just a little bit harder. Um, the best time of the day is not the best time for the students because we have a couple skinny periods that would work really, really well, but that tends to be the periods where we have kids in the arts and in the music programs. And a lot of our kids that would qualify tend to be the kids that are in those extracurricular um programs as well. And so you don't want to make them choose. So you got

117to try to find another time for them, which again would be maybe a hex where they would be pulled out specifically for their take time. Sorry, G&T time. >> What did they do in high school? >> I'm just curious them do for like is it projects or >> Yep. So this is new for Vanessa. So, she's going to be um providing them time, support, and help plan different projects that they find interest in. There's five areas of um G&T. There's leadership, there's creativity, there's there's five different areas, and it the older they get, the easier it is to get those kids into those. I mean, obviously, leadership is really hard with kindergarten and first graders. Uh but as they get older, they can actually start really finding the things that interest them. Um and so,

118it's going to be a lot of project based. Those students are also eligible for the AP classes that are offered in the high school. Um, I believe we have AP in English, math. I don't know if we have any AP science classes. I'm not sure. Um, I know for sure the math and the sc or the math and the the ELA. I feel like in the past, you know, most of that uh tag or G&T time was done during ELA, you know, in lie of that. So they >> kind of progressed up through their ELA and then, >> you know, had the tag ELA separate. That was a good >> Yep. >> And and I think it's a good time, but it's also the easy easiest recognized area of advancement because if you're, you know,

119reading Dr. Shivago in third grade, you know, it's pretty obvious that you're probably a high reader, right? So, it's easy to understand and recognize those high readers, but the the development of the program is it needs to get beyond that because we do have kids that may be talented in math, but they're not necessarily going to show those high chart skills in English. So, we need to provide support there, too. You might have kids that are super um I mean we've got kids walking around that are just like walking engineers, right? It's >> they see things differently than other people. And so we have to find those kids and figure out a way to pro >> properly support them. >> Advancing them subjectwise, >> right? Because advancing subject-wise, all that's doing is providing the next

120year's curriculum. It's not actually an extension of the learning. And you know, um, that's one of the questions that comes up with AP classes and advanced classes as well, because if you're just accelerating the curriculum, are you truly challenging that child? Right. >> Many people would argue no. So, right. All right. Any other questions? >> Thank you, for that was interesting to hear. Yeah, I appreciate so much of it is it's really a way for us it's focusing on each student as an individual and what their individual needs are. I mean, that's like all the areas that you're covering is kind of saying, okay, this is a kid who how do we how do we look at them as an individual and here we're at this institution, you know, where the easiest thing is teaching

121kids that are are similar. So, these kids who are who are different and have these different needs, >> but that also aligns with our goal to get Yeah, every kid learning advancing. Yes. >> Great. Yes. >> All right. Our second item is a discussion to uh review the town hall meeting. >> Go ahead. >> I would ask the board what do you think went well? What do we need to go back and address and make sure we do a better job? Or did you do another >> I've done some with small groups and it's it didn't have as many slides as what uh Travis has added in. He added in a lot of finance pieces into it. So it kind of caught me off guard a little bit and he explained those really well. >>

122Yeah. I mean I think it was in that they were useful when having him here. I my personal feeling is I feel like the group was waiting more to dive into the projects kind of end up that's just our learning and I I when I introduced it that it was first time and it'll get better as we go along. But I that was my own sense is that we just didn't have enough time to dive into projects for people to have questions there. We spent a lot of time kind of outlining the process at the usually takes me about half an hour 45 minutes. I I just presented at Rotary yesterday and it was about a half an hour and they didn't have a lot of questions. It was just an overview overview of you

123know what the board had done in the past you know some of the processes and then some of those conceptual drawings and a little bit of the why behind it >> is the plan for every town meeting to do this slideshow >> at this point. >> Okay. >> As you you do you have access to that slideshow? I think it's forwarded to you. There's a lot of slides in there that get into a lot of detail on the flying. >> I don't know if we we keep those on there or we put them towards the end if we have time. You know, maybe we push more of those conceptual drawings to the front part so that everybody has a chance to look at them. >> That's Yeah, I was going to say I wonder if

124you know for the town halls maybe you you take the same presentation and you flip it sometimes. So sometimes you start with the kind of the the process and here's the projects that were outlined and then here's how we're going to pay for it. >> Yeah. >> And then sometimes do it the other way. And so it's, you know, if you keep coming, you kind of get >> Yeah. >> I think when I talked to Travis and and a few of the others because they've done enough u those initial town hall meetings, they said most people come and they want to know a lot about the finances. And so that's why we toploaded, frontloaded a lot of those slides with finances because they really wanted to understand the bonds, the difference, how it was going

125to be financed, what the taxes nor the tax impact. I like having them in there because if people do ask those kind of detailed questions, it's nice to be prepared and to be able to say, you know, yeah, this is this is what that is. And even for us to sort of have some help with the verbiage. Uh, but I mean the people tonight were more interested in hearing more about the project like what are we actually going to change and have we thought about this and have we thought about that which is of course what people are automatically going to go to. Maybe I put down notes here. Maybe we have more discussion on just conceptual drawings. These are, you know, uh, square footage per classroom, six kindergarten classrooms. Here's what the cost is

126projected. It could look like that. um it has a you know finished product on a on a blueprint or it could look different. They're just projecting costs to the the board. So then >> uh >> we might want to put that on a couple of slides. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I like the idea of starting out with just we're so excited. We've been spending months and months planning this and we're so excited to be able to present this to other people because every time we have conversations with people and they start to understand the project, they get excited about it. I mean really that's that's that's our huge hugest selling point I think. Um and so you know start with that and say this is what we want to do and this is why we're

127excited and this is why it's a need and then you know as we have questions and stuff talk about the financing. Right. Do you think that would >> um did the Rotary wait till the end questions? >> They didn't have a lot of questions. I mean, some of them and it was maybe some of the schematic drawings of the the sketches, the conceptuals, a little bit of that. >> I think maybe if we wait till the end for questions that way we can get through or if we know we're getting down to the last 10 minutes or whatever. >> I just want to make sure there's enough time though because I feel like people come and that's like the main thing they want is they're like, I want this one question to get answered. Yeah,

128they feel like I sat here and listened to you for an hour and didn't get to get my one piece of >> and the bad part about the way that transpired. The people that asked that were the ones that kind of came later and didn't get >> hard to get explained the process of that. >> Sure. >> I think everybody wants to know the difference between the geo bonds and the save bonds. That's a big piece that's a little confusing and then throw that third uh vote on there. Uh you know that that's that's going to be interesting. So somehow we need to do a good job of separating that all out so they know what they're voting on. >> Maybe we need just a whole slide on that. That um what's it called? >>

129Purpose. Purpose. That's the word I keep forgetting. Um maybe we need a slide on that since it is going to be something people have to go on. >> Yeah, that's kind of an important thing that needs a little time spent on it because I think it's something, you know, typically that goes on a ballot without other things on there. And so now you get kind of lots of things muddying that up. Um I do think it's important uh for the process just you know those questions that came up you know regarding like kindergarteners walking through I looking at that plan like okay where do they have to walk through what is that you know because those are the things that when we get into the more detailed drawings um >> that is good to think

130about >> yeah need to be addressed uh you know the same with this space here and renovating that and you know kind of drilling down like well what's your net new classroom so you know maybe our things need to say there's an addition of two classrooms because really you're swapping out the other however that looks but you're gaining space I know I personally was asked about common space well I kept thinking like where are they getting common space well we refer to these classrooms as flex common space and somebody thought we were kind of redoing the they said what's wrong with the commons you know So there's details that people can get um concerned about that with ballot, you know, that all of a sudden, well, I'm against the project because I don't think the

131comments needs to be redone. >> Someone I'm definitely getting >> and I and I'm just using that as example because that was one I heard and I just had to kind of dialogue a little bit. Say, well, explain to me a little bit more. They said, well, it's a new high school like why do you need to do the province? >> I was going to say that theme of it it's a new high school. I that's coming up. Why do we need to do anything to the high school? >> Um yeah. >> So being able to articulate and I I think it's helpful having people in here because then when you when you look in here you realize like oh okay the space does mean there's a lot of years old. Well and I did

132explain and it's not that 30 years old is it is our newest building. >> Yeah. But but I think saying 30 does help. >> Well it it just learns so much different. What I had to say is it's just like your own home that you lived in and you raised your family in and all of a sudden your kids and everybody are gone and you come back and you look at like oh gosh like the moldings, the doors at things that are needing to be replaced and um >> I I liked your being able to just say look there's not that many books in here and you know see boxes over there. They weeded some some books out and it just less and less because kids aren't using paper books in the library anymore. And

133again, this could be reconfigured, >> but you don't need reference material, >> you know, because they they have the reference material online. U so, you know, you still need your novels and those kinds of things that >> I mean, this could be a classroom, that classroom, that could be a classroom or a flex area, you know, using and sharing that common space. So you're you're gaining space. >> I mean in a way we're saying to them we're saying well we invite you to think about it with us. Like this is the time when we're saying to you know that those things are possible and we actually really want your feedback. We want to know you know we're asking you to help us figure it out. there there is no bad suggestion at this point in

134time other than I did appreciate the project does you know we we sort of have set a a cap on the project um and you know so then you got to work within that there's always tradeoffs in a construction project that you make there is a built-in contingency within the project And with the construction company along with the architects, they really u pay closely attention to all of that as they're creating and then building and then change orders. That's just all part of it >> and we've been through that. You know, some of those change orders come in your favor, some against and you vote on every one of them in terms of what you want. This is a great FAQ though because there are a lot of people who are going to be like

135that gentleman who are just they're the worst case scenario people and you know he's kind of thinking well you guys you know you're going to have this gap you're going to go over then what are you going to do? Are you going to come back to us? I mean that's what people start thinking you know how how we want to know what is if I vote because I really support um the preschool being moved over there and then it turns out you guys go over on something else and now I lose the preschool. That's the stuff people are thinking about. I think it's a great FAQ to say we have contingencies built in and the board will you know make those decisions as we go along that there there are newer and broadly I want

136to say plat construction models out there CMR CMA when we get to that point and the board's going to get updated and educated on that whole construction management style of how to maintain what the budget is and what the projects are and that's part of this new way of management of construction. Semar CMA >> this board will just have to you know if we get to that point maintain very focused on what the priorities were and what the goals were >> because there will be things that come up that people will want to do. So when is our next uh call scheduled? >> Today I know we have have one on the 8th and >> yes one next week then I think so the middle school maybe is one middle school this we have a

137town hall set up right before every board uh meeting and work session and we talked about maybe flipping it and maybe having a town hall after the board meeting. That's I mean that's hard to do to project how long that board would be done. >> Yeah. >> It also might be hard for people to get here after work though. >> I know >> that was that was my only suggestion. Like sometimes if we have a if we have a meeting where we have a work session that we can just purposely make ourselves stick to an hour and a half and start it at seven or something, you know, or two. >> And I think you have a work session set for like 7 to 9. one of a do you remember that when I was

138putting them on my calendar. So, >> okay, >> that would be great for people who Yeah, because I think the same thing. >> I will have the slideshow in a table with information at one of the home volleyball events and have it out in common. So, if people are coming to the game and they have to see it, they want to stop and ask questions, we can kind of share information that way, too. Is there any way we could get maybe some of the schematics printed up large to hang up at the football field on homecoming? >> It's a good idea. I think we have a printer that would do that. >> And like we can ask like Snyder and Associates if they would do it for us, you know, even SBPA might end up

139doing that too for us. >> So Oh, that's next week already. So um because next Wednesday would be the first, correct? Yes. So there I don't think we have a town hall. I didn't say that. >> But we have one every other week I think until >> right up till November 1st. >> Right. >> We we're we're going to set it up during parent teacher conferences the 29th in one of the buildings and then the 30th same thing. We'll have kind of a screen up and be able to show and and be there to answer questions from parents that are coming in for for your teacher conferences. I'm looking at the list. You do have that one that we talked about that was at the uh at the club is October 1st. So that's a

140different group that you're speaking to there. >> Where was that one? >> There potential ones at the country club. There's one country >> and then there's an Atlantic one. These are just kind of smaller groups that have asked. We've got the heritage. >> I'm not a country club person. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Good. Go for it. >> We all in favor. >> I thank you. >> Thanks, Dan. I hope we didn't put you asleep. >> No. >> Josh, do I get end streaming? >> I just pushed into everything and then shut it. Yeah. Showed me how to do it. Yeah, we always just like turn everything off. >> I just end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end and then I

141ex out everything too. >> Just going to say >> we are back up there >> very fortunate that Mr. Helzer has been able