001Yeah, you're good. Okay, we're live now. So, I'd welcome everybody to the April 9th uh school board meeting. Um, so would you call in favor, please? Jody Gri, yes. Vinnie Jordan, yes. Josh McLaren, yes. Christy Kelly, yes. And motion to approve the agenda with the addition. Uh, I don't saw your email. Not there's a hard copy of fundraiser Costa Rica trip fundraiser. So we just have to amend it to add that and that would go in the uh consent agenda. I move to approve agenda with the addition of the Costa Rica fundraising approval form under Yeah. Perfect. Yes. Second. Sorry. Sorry, Jenny Jordan. Yes, Josh. Christie, yes. Yes. I should probably explain. Sorry about that. Yeah, we don't have any visitors. So, we'll go move on to the public hearing for the 2526 school calendar.
002I think Dr. Johnson's gonna talk on it just real briefly. Yeah, if you look at the calendar board members unique uh situation for next school year, um we cannot start school until after August 23rd. So, Monday the 25th is our first day of school with students. And of course, we want to try to end and have our last day of school in May before Memorial weekend. So, it kind of puts this a really tight book in. May 22nd is uh the Friday before Memorial and then uh August 25th is our start date. So figuring out how to get 177 student days in and 190 teacher work days in still being compliant with at least that 1080 hours of um instruction or or student learning. Again, we we we put a little um additional hours in
003just because of our snow days. So if you look at it, um unique pieces of it, um we do have homecoming listed there. We just learned today homecoming is October 3rd. And then our parent teacher conferences um are the 29th and 30th. And then um because of the additional hours that the teachers are putting in for those parent teacher conferences, then it's a no school day on Friday for all. November, we have um Thanksgiving off on Thursday and then the 26th, Wednesday, right before Thanksgiving, we're making that a flexible teacher work day. So teachers have to put in um work time at the building sometime. Um they could do it that day or they could choose to come in on a weekend. they just have to put work time in the building at some time
004uh for that flex day. And then the same thing on December 23rd, it's a flex day again. Teachers can work that day on the 23rd or they could come in during that holiday break. They just had to do the work in the building. So that's what a flex day is. And then the kids won't they'll be on break from December 23rd through January 2nd. It's going to be odd to come back and go to one day of school on the 22nd of December, but we couldn't find any other place to set it up that way. So, it's going to be a unique year. Like I said, um if you look at March, we put two days in for spring break, Thursday and a Friday, March 12th to 13th. And then again, we put a day
005in on April 3rd, which is um Good Friday for Easter. And then that takes us right up to May 22nd, last day of school. We do have some hours again um buffered in for snow days. Then we have our snow day plans that we'll continue to do, too. Any questions on this? I don't think did we receive any? did not we did not receive any written comments. I don't like the shortened spring break schedule. I think that's going to interfere with a lot of families plans for that time of year. I'll give you some uh information on that. We had um had staff look we had two different calendars. one with a full week long spring break and it it connected right up to Easter. I think that's what the one was and and the
006majority of staff said they like the the two breaks um instead of a week long break. So that's kind of what we went with two short breaks. That makes sense. looking to bring that other calendar back and and do another proposal. Yes, I'm I'm fine with whatever they do. I don't have strong feelings. high school kids that are involved in sports, they really don't get any kind of spring break because they are going to practice every night during spring break. So, it doesn't really affect them if they are in them. Do we have I guess I'm more concerned. I mean there's some differences with our law changes about the number of days. I think a lot of times families would just take breaks whenever it um worked for them. And I could see some families
007taking that 9th and 10th off 11th off just extending it the whole week. Um, I'm more concerned, I guess, if you've heard from staff that they don't need a whole week because we don't want them gone. Obviously, we need our teachers in the classroom not taking those days off. So, that would be my concern and if they're okay with that. It would be interesting to know how many families actually do a nice, you know, spring break where they're they're going somewhere out of town, you know, traveling or doing some little mini vacation. I don't know if we can try to I mean, there are some that do, but um yeah. Yeah. Even if you don't go anywhere though, I think the concern is staff taking excess vacation days that aren't blocked. We had that situation
008happen this year and there was a lot of staff if they did uh have an extended vacation during this school year. Uh some of them did take it I think during spring break and others I don't know because the scheduling they actually had their they took vacation time um not during spring break. So outside of that time, I think it would be nice to encourage staff to take their vacations during the breaks they already have built into their schedule for them to be in the classroom. the kids are I don't know how many staff go on um vacations that are company vacations. I know that when I was teaching Jim's company twice gave us a week long trip like a cruise one time one time to someplace else and we didn't pass it up. Right.
009I think that comes around with some of the stuff too that they when they go when I think we've recognized that that's going to happen. It's balancing so there aren't like a lot gone at the same time. How you determine that that you know I'm hoping our administrators are good gatekeepers to make sure it's tolerable. Any suggestions on this again? Is it just a hearing? Yeah, I mean that that's just my concern is I want to make sure it's functional and that it works for our buildings so that we don't have everybody say, "Well, we didn't get a week break, so I'm taking my week here." That's back to have How did you Was that a written survey? Principles had talked to their building leadership teams and the majority of them said they they liked
010it split instead of one long week, they wanted it split into two short. Okay. Okay, we'll close that public hearing. Uh we'll move on to special presentations. Sarah's here from Homes Murphy. So Sarah Bradshaw is here with us with Homes Murphy. She's one of our brokers that helps us with our determination. Do you need a podium? I don't know where I could. Can I move your guys? You want the podium? So, you Okay. Okay. We have handouts. Good. Okay. Thanks everybody for having me here. I am uh the benefits consultant for the school district and uh this year we were faced with um some decisions to make regarding the benefits renewal, specifically the medical insurance. Um, so referring to page two of the handout, we've got some history here where the health plan itself has
011performed really well over the past several years. And with that, we did not have to make a lot of changes. Um, there was minimal impacts to increases. We were able to negotiate those down as we saw them come in. Um, but that's because the the plan itself was running really well. So the the claim performance was running well. And you see loss ratios listed there. Um, favorable loss ratios for a fully insured policy like you have is around 75 to 80%. We enjoyed those or excuse me, Atlantic enjoyed those from 2018 pretty much all the way up to 2022. uh we did start to see a little bit of an uptick, but we had moved from Walmart Blue Cross Blue Shield back in 2015 when the re renewal from Walmart at that time got to
012be too high. So, we've been with United Healthcare for a number of years. Going into this renewal for July 1st, the loss ratio on the plan jumped pretty significantly to 107.7%. Looking at page three, that carries over. I've highlighted that 107.7%. Uh, normally we would say, you know, this is maybe an anomaly. Maybe this is just a couple of months where we had a spike. Uh, but if you look at the toward the bottom of page three, we have November claims experience as well that carried into a high loss ratio as well. So, we do see a trend uh going here. And then of our high-cost claimments um over $25,000 that comprised a million dollars of the claim spend with almost $650,000 going toward pharmacy. Knowing we were faced with a pretty high renewal from
013United Healthcare this year to the tune of about 36%. Uh we got to work right away and went to the market. So, we looked at several carriers and we looked at different ways that Atlantic could fund their health insurance rather than being fully insured with a partial self-und deductible buyout like you've had for years. Uh we looked at self-unding and um if you'll refer to page four, we have several options listed there in order of uh the percent of increase. And you'll see that we have a recommended option should the board approve to move to Wellmar Blue Cross Blue Shield, keeping the plan designs the same as what the employees have today, but going to a self-funded arrangement. Um, for that recommendation, that would be about 2.3 million expected cost. And then if you look
014down a little bit further, you'll see our UHC renewal at 2.4 million. So 2.3 compared to 2.4, we're seeing um some decent amount of of planes dollars that could be retained by Atlantic if they're not spent on claims. And you see we do have some other carriers in the mix. We wanted to make sure and put it out to enough carriers. Um, but you'll notice that those that carrier was not competitive. We also had a couple carriers that declined to quote. Any questions so far? And UHC declined to offer self-funded. Correct. Yeah, that is noted there. Uh, UHC declined to quote a self-funded option. Page five, we wanted to provide actually page five and six plan designs between Wellmark and United Healthcare so that you could see um what if any differences there were. Um,
015you'll note that on page six there's items in red. There are items that are changing from your current plan designed to the next year plan design because of IRS regulations. So, the IRS is requiring your high deductible health plan to go up by $100 on the single and that is just something that is indexed up annually. Um, you'll notice that on UHC that was going from 3,200 to 3,300 and then the family was going from 6,400 to 6600. The law does not require you to increase the family deductible on that high deductible, but that is a plan that UHC is essentially forcing you to take if you were to renew with them. If you look back up to page five, you'll see that Walmart is also putting your high deductible at a 3,300 because that
016is required by law, but then they're not forcing you to increase that family to 6600. So that would stay at 6,400. Uh, and you'll notice the other attributes between the Wellmark and the United Healthcare plans are very similar, if not identical. There is a savings program with Walmart that's noted at the bottom of page five. This is a uh pharmacy savings program that all of Walmart's fully insured business has today. Um it's a way for the members to save money on certain medications as well as the plan. So, if a member is taking a drug that's on that Prudent RX list, they would be uh reached out to by Prudent RX get signed up for the program and then they would receive their medication via mail order as they normally do. They would get the
017savings on that and then also the school district would get the savings on the claim on the back end. Anytime you are moving insurance carriers, there is a potential for certain medication to move on the drug list. So, there is a potential that that could be a little bit of a change for a member either to the positive or to the negative depending on how Walmart lists their drug list. I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that. On page seven, we have a little bit of a layout on how self-funding works compared to fully insured. In self, you have a lot of opportunity to retain money that is not spent on claims. When you are insured, you're actually what we call renting your insurance. So, the insurance company takes on all the
018risk, but if they don't spend all your money on claims, they get to keep the profit. When you're self-insured, you send less money to the insurance company for fixed fees like administrative costs and stop-loss insurance. And then you have a bigger bucket that you retain to pay claims as they come in. Your risk is up to $50,000 per member on the plan. and then you buy insurance to cover anything above $50,000. We have that information listed there on the left for the self-funded dollar. You can see that uh just about 1.8 million of the self-funded expected costs is expected to go towards claims. We did add about 10% cushion to those expected claims in year one. And the reason we did that is so that you could begin to build up a little bit more
019of a claim reserve because in year one typically your claims are a little bit less because uh you're coming out of a fully insured contract. And United Healthcare is going to pay every claim that is incurred up to June 30th of this year, even if they don't get that in their hands until later in the year. So you're not paying those claims that happened with United Healthcare. So first year claims are typically a little less. So we want to continue to save some money in that reserve fund to pay claims that we know will happen in year two and beyond. Uh lastly on page eight we provided an individual claims example to show what how that stop loss works. In purple is the liability the school district on each claim. So for a $45,000 claim,
020this could possibly be a hospitalization of some sort. If that were to come in, Atlantic would be responsible for that whole $45,000. On the next claim, um we have a $125,000 claim. Again, Atlantic would be responsible for the first 50 and then the stop loss or reinsurance would cover that remaining 7% to add any any questions. Would you like to review any of the sections in more detail? I will add one of the items that is a consideration for self-funding is that if you if you do have a high claims year and you're self-funded, if the next year your claims improve, you're getting a brand new baseline to start over from on your claims. Whereas, if you're fully insured and you get this 35% increase and you take that, the next year they're building off
021that 35% increase. They're not resetting your baseline if your claims improve. You also have uh more flexibility um to help control costs when you are self-funded. How many school districts do you work with and is that kind of what school districts are moving towards is self-funding model? Yes. So I work with several school districts. I'm not going to have the count correctly right now off the top of my head but at least eight school districts and within my company we work with several more across Iowa but me personally just about eight. Um, several of them have an arrangement like you do where you partially self-fund and you have built up a reserve in that account over the years which makes it a little bit easier to contemplate self-funding because you already have a bank of
022money that you have been acrewing and you've dipped your toe so to speak in self-unding. Uh I would say uh a few of my schools are also at the point this year where they're strongly considering self-funding and it's making sense for them to move forward with that. And a majority of them are with Blue Cross. Um some of them are with a couple of their carriers. I'm just curious because it I mean it makes sense based on the quotes that you've shared for us to move from UHC to Walmart, but it also looks like we could consider the option to fully insure through Walmart also savings. Is that correct? Great question. So page four, uh if you're referencing um the webark POS alternate, is that what you're referencing in blue? Yes. So this one this
023one is a little unique when you see POS that means point of service and that is similar to an HMO. So while that is not a bad option uh it does limit your network generally to the state of Iowa unless you're traveling and you have an emergency then it's covered as a network. So that's difficult when we are so close to Nebraska. There there are some bordering counties in Nebraska that would be in that point of service network. Um that is you know that is something we wanted to make sure and show. There are several school districts in the state of Iowa that offer this option as one option in conjunction with the PO questions for Sarah. Thank you all. Thank you for coming. We move on to reports. So the rest of us are
024going to do our best to pretend. So if you have a lot of questions, we're not we're gonna try. Um so Tonight we're gonna talk to you. Wait a second. Is that Sorry. Is that the district? Yes. Yes. That's our discussion item. Can we wait? Uh that we got for you. Okay. Okay. This is our This is our agenda. Yeah. Oh, sorry. So, do you want us to make or do you want us to just do this now? That is your report. This is our report. Okay. Uh whatever you want. I thought it doesn't have an actual Well, how about how about this? Let's wait superintendent. Let us do the superintendent report and then Yeah, you guys just hang tight. Okay, thank you. Totally get it. All right, so we'll move on to uh yeah,
025superintendent report. Okay, on on my report, few things to kind of uh if you've had a chance to look at it, trying to pull it up too. We are going to be doing a um data dive on justice scores and the data dive will be with our leadership team. you can look at our our ISF scores through the years um per grade level just so you're aware of um that we are starting to move in um to discussion and practicing looking at data and reflecting on it and hopefully it tells us a story and that it also kind of guides us for u instruction and and and improvement in learning so you can kind of see where our sports are examples and we're doing ISAPs testing this week and then next week. What I thought
026was kind of fun for the board to see um the students have to sign an honor code, but we've also included it in multiple languages. And I thought it was kind of fun to look at the multiple languages. So, two keys and Spanish. and then also Chinese. It's accommodating our students in those various languages. It's kind of fun to see cell phones. Uh there is it is uh passed through the house on the cell phone policy. So we're assuming that is IASB will be drafting a new or even updated version for the cell phone policy and it will be effective starting 1st. our SRO officer Ben Sandy and I know it's been in the news. He started this week. So, he has been around to the bu buildings kind of uh putting a face to
027his his title. And I think for the next couple days at least, he will be visiting the SRO in Shelby County. That'd be Harland community. And then he's also going to I think u he's going to get fitted for some uniform and equipment. And then he's also got to do some range shooting range practice, something like that. I'm not sure what that means, but he's going to the range. We did have um a threat made since our last board meeting, a social media threat made. And then uh I just I think I think I'm putting this on a a board my agenda to compliment and recognize our student that did um receive the social media threat. they reacted in the right way and shared that immediately to um principles and then also uh Atlantic PD
028and so that's what we want to see happen is is students or um anybody they are aware of a threat that they pass it along and that's our best really our best line of any kind of reaction defense on these types of things. So just wanted to commend u the whole process that student especially safety grant is near complete I know the walkie-talkies some of them have been distributed in the buildings and they're in the hands of the teacher the audit from 22 23 is complete so that's three years Any questions, comments, discussion? I'll go on to the board report if any board members have anything to add. I guess just briefly, I was at the what do they call it? Wasn't the career day, but that's what we call it. Yeah. Okay. I went
029and presented to the fifth grade classes about my job. I there was several of us, but that's the third or fourth year I've done that now. It's kind of fun. And obviously I have lots of fun stuff I carry with me that they seem to like. So So it was a good it was a good morning. So I appreciate doing that. Um, one thing that I do frequently is go to conference board meetings, um, which is the supervisors, the mayors, and a representative from each school district, which has been an interesting learning experience. Um, and then I went to a training for boards of review and it was open meetings and ethics training which several of us from that group went. saw it. Just an interesting thing that extra thing that they do and I
030went to legislative golf. I got to hear four of our speech students today present in high school. Very good. They they should be doing great work and of course um they commended Trisha on her award as well. So I that was really nice to see too. So John to our speech department. Well, are you ready for a financial report? Sure. So I shared with you the March uh March report. So that is our ninth month out of 12. So we are winding down this year. Um revenues were slightly down, but we will see an uptick because everyone's going to pay their property taxes uh which are due March 31st. So, we'll see April's uh numbers uh come up. Um we're right about where we should be. Uh we knew that our expenses would be up
031because we did increase salaries by 6% last year for this year. So, we knew that there our expenses would be up, but we're right where we had anticipated that we would be. Um nutrition receipts are up, which I am thankful for. We've had a few people that have come through and and paid off some lunch balances. um not to the level that we'd like them to. We are still working on um selecting a collections agency to start working with um as maybe a last resort to take care of those accounts because they are supposed to be cleared up by June 30th because it is money that you owe the school. And so that is an option that we have considered and looking at board policy it says that that is an option we can pursue.
032um working with some other schools to see what's been exc uh worked for them is one of the things we're doing. I'm meeting with our nutrition director pretty regularly to see what we can do, what information can we put out next year so that we can try to catch more of those um um opportunities for people to complete an application that would allow them to maybe have free lunches or reduced price lunches. and we're trying to see what we can do to get information out over the summer because once uh school is in session for 30 days if they were on a free or reduced application now um they have to fill it out every year and once 30 days hits that contract is null and void and you have to start paying for lunches.
033So, we're finding those first 30 days are so vital for parents to fill those out. And we're hoping we can try to push that information out uh through social media, through uh it's an electronic form now uh this year. So, we're hoping that helps. Um but we're we're working on trying to find ways. So, if anyone has other ideas, I would love to come chat with me or talk with me if you can think of things that we can do to help reach our our community to try to pay their what they owe their students lunch accounts. Is there a motion to approve the financial reports? I think so. Move second. Okay. Josh, yes. Christie, yes. Jody, yes. Jenny, yes. Move to the consent agenda item. Uh, obviously, we did add the Costa Rica fundraiser
034to that consent agenda earlier on. Consent agenda with the additional amendment. Okay. Second. Okay. Christy, yes. Jody, yes. Jenny, yes. Josh, yes. Okay. Now, the discussion item is the district career academic plan. Like, do I say which is great that you mentioned career day because that kind of falls into all of it. like that's one of the lower supports for the career development plan. So, I'm glad you said that question. They do love your job. So, um this plan has to be aligned with the district's strategic goals. So, um, Heather has it like all outlined where student success is their goal number one and goal number two is a supportive environment. Yep. See, I got pretty good eyes and I there. Uh so she has you know just the different things that fall under um
035both of those areas including um skill development, portrait of a Trojan, um challenging programs, financial planning, all those good things that we want kids to learn how to do. We got so much stuff going on. So there's like purpose of the presentation is obviously show you guys for you guys to see the career academic plan importance and benefits of it the goals. So we'll go over goals for the next for last year and then this year um and then integration and implementation of the plan. This comes out of um it's is law that we have to show you guys all this stuff which is why we want to make sure that we're complying. Uh so she has found that we want to be system focused a holistic approach so that we give kids all the
036different experiences that we need them to have so they can make good decisions for their future and that the district has a rising career career guidance plan and it gets reunion. She works tight with her counselors to ensure that that happens. So then like the vision the students uh personalized academic plans each student uh guides each student towards their achievement post secondary and career aspirations and this part of it like when you guys remember the getting Zello if you remember the Zello um program that I mean that is a huge part of it They started even in like in elementary school and they go all the way up um adding to it and changing it and getting more focused and specific. Uh so that's the vision for the students. Schools teachers recognize their spiritual role
037in supporting students post secondary successes. community engages business partners in planning activities that enhance student learning experiences and then everyone uh because education becomes more meaningful and relevant when deliberate focus is on preparing students for their future. So like I said this I mean parts of it do fall into hey when we have that at the elementary just talking about careers at the small level like bringing people in to do that and then building on that as they go in the middle school they they do they have a career yeah we have career sex that all our eighth graders have to partake in um so they work with Mrs. C for about eight or well nine weeks this year full quarter um it's um with they're with Mrs. and they'll do some shadowing. I don't
038know if been out there. I know they gone out and done a lot of shadowing, different jobs. Also, the high school counselors have been coming over and helping the eighth graders create that first high school schedule. Um, so that's always an exciting time because now they kind of get to choose their classes, some of them anyway. Um and uh and I don't know um from a middle school perspective how this fits in. But one thing that we're trying to do um improve upon is build up our I still call them exploratories. That's that's kind of the old school term, but um just try to get more options for kids to try to uh so when they get seventh and eighth grade, they could actually choose they want to do try industrial tech or maybe even
039get a weight text in there and just different things to help them get more experience. so that um when they do make that high school schedule, they already kind of know they are interested in this and they don't have to find out in high school when they're keeping track of credits and everything, we can try to help them create the vision for high school maybe a little bit earlier. So, we have such great CTE programs here at the high school, too, that we have a really wide range of kids that are involved in those programs, which is awesome. Um this is what happened last year. Uh so last year's goals and James just talked to you guys about Zello a little bit. Um getting that career readiness was that first goal. Working with our stakeholders
040is the second and u the high school especially does a lot of work with business partners and getting those kids into experiences. I'm thinking about like the building and trades kids that are working on the house that kind of stuff. There's a lot of partnerships that go with that. And then just aligning everything with our portrait of a Trojan. So when they reviewed the plan last year, areas that they need to develop or improve on were annual board meeting review, workbased learning, career information, career exploration, career and post-secondary decision. And I remember Heather saying they were not far off on a lot of those. Uh so I think some of the successes like were very very easy to get hopefully uh proficient level uh district summary statement course planning self understanding post-secondary exploration FAFSA district
041plan integration and then the advance with the stakeholder involvement. So all the things that we do with our community in this assessment would like you to have such great support and involvement. Um so her plan for 2425 was just to work on those areas that were not in that proficient range um quite yet. And she's got some different ways that she's going to do that. They're going to use more data from that from Zello. They're going to collect um SEAL data from Panorama and different student performance metrics that's going to help them make decisions on how they want to program. So then the goals just like last time the career readiness still there leveraging the Zel software that we talked about. Goal two stakeholder collaboration so collaboration approach which is similar goal as to what
042they had before. Uh and goal three is expanding the expanding the offer. So district added new three new career tech uh student organizations and I believe all of the career tech strands had to have a career organization this year. Uh so they offered that and future business leaders um and you can see it right there like the trades USA and did some of those things brought in speakers and um [Music] sorry yeah so this is one of our final one of the final steps that's needed. We've got to submit it to the AA also and um we'll get an update as well. If you have questions, we'll try. Yeah, we're dangerously we know enough to be dangerous. I could just say for um for personally for me um the anchor was huge for for my
043two boys. Um, Tate is a full adult now working in um as an aronomist and and Rob is studying it and I give all credit to Eric Miller for their success in that area. He's amazing. Can I ask just in general and it probably targets a little bit of of you guys because throughout you referred to it as the district plan which obviously career we focus on the high school but yet you mentioned Zello the career day some other things. Yeah. So is this truly a plan just for 912 or is it a district plan that really should encompass this as a Yeah. So it does encompass um so like I think one of the reasons that we were like in 2000 like last year the community partners was a bigger one was because that
044the lower levels we are starting to introduce the career day even though it's minor compared to what they're doing at the high school you know some of those some of those smaller things what the expectation is so that we can just like I said we can build upon it endure that career day and get some ideas for the kids share some different things and then as they get into middle school and getting that cello you know that's they use the Zello in the elementary but they start hitting a little bit harder as they get to the end of the elementary and to middle school so it is district but it it falls more because of the CT on middle school high school and I'm just wondering if there's more if you have ideas or thoughts
045on how we might interject careers more throughout our counselors do a pretty good job of that is harder the younger they are all of our kids want to be like YouTubers and NFL players, you know, like that's where they're at. We didn't even know what a YouTuber was. Right. Right. So, yeah. So, so just introducing them to the careers that are out there and and employability skills. That's another thing that we kind of hit at the lower level to like actual. Yeah. I think you know like even in like fourth grade they do the symposium and they bring out different they explore different pieces. one of those classes focus on, hey, what career do you want to do? And a little bit of so they try to scratch the surface a little bit, you know,
046but all of them want to be soccer players, NFL players. Yeah. What was the other one? Sean. Yeah. You game developers. Game developers. They want to be game. But I like the idea that you talk about employability skills because I think if you really think about it, there are things you're doing when you do the little science fairs or the other show and tells in the gym, you know, and everybody comes around and walks around, you know, those are communication skills that you're building and being able to stand in front of people and talk and answer questions about your project and Yeah. Well, that's it. And you've seen them, you've been there and they're interesting sometimes, but Right. But those are things I feel like we could highlight and Yeah, that's a good point. Embrace
047and encourage. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Now we're on to the action items. Item A is theou with the green for the upcoming year. As we know uh the Aea uh has completely changed. So it's next year is going to mean 90% uh where the money comes to the district directly and then we um we uh ask for services or we pay for services from uh the Aea. So if you look at theou these are the services that we've asked for and and hope to contract with the A.E.A. it's very similar to what we've done in the past. You could see it's very expensive things that we're adding in that is new for next year and it goes right along with the uh CTE presentation. We are wanting to contract one day a week. So
0482 FTE position uh for that CTE consultant. We we probably need to do a better job of knowing how to organize and prepare our kids. Right now we're doing the best that we can for what we know with this CTE consultant from the A.E.A. you. You can see that four other schools in um our Green Hills area, they're also going to take advantage of a consultant. So, we're going to add that position in just because they are the those experts in those areas and they're going to get us going probably in in um more defined directions. And then the next position, it's called work workbased coordinator. And this is another point. 2 position. So, it's one day a week that this workbased learning coordinator is going to come out and help us do a better
049job of getting our kids ready for career, college, employment. So, I I don't know if that'll be all four years of high school. I don't know um where where the focus area will be at, but we need some help and guidance because again those are areas um that are on legislation that we need to address and and we try to find our resources and go to trainings, but you know, you you can go to so many trainings and and workshops and pick up on whatever you can, but we can't just expect high school principal, assistant principal, and any of those administrators to no fault. So, we need to have somebody to be here to start us and guide us on those two things. Schoolbased interventionist, one more position, and that is a $45,000 person or
050position. We are going to use our AEA funds for this person. They will be a full-time employee um or person working at the district contracted out uh from from the Aea. This person is going to help us. Their focus will be on attendance. So, they will be working directly with students and families assisting the principles on attendance. Uh when I talked to the principles about this position and what they thought, I asked them how much of their day do they spend on students that are starting to exceed that attendance and then they have to meet with families. um a lot of their day some days are just spent working with families because the students have exceeded their their days or they're nearing days of I don't know the 20 30 50 days of being absent.
051Anything to add on that position that you guys thought you would like that person? That's that's the school based interventionist, right? Yes. Yes. And what did you say that was? 45,000. And that's a contracted fee. So, um, it's probably good. It's spent out of our dollars. That's out of our ADA. So, those are 2.2 positions. So, two part-time positions and a full-time position. Those are areas I really think that we we just need some support and guidance and help on. we could try it one year and then and then go from there. We still have quite a bit of money left of our monies that we're receiving in for our Aea fund. So, we're we're well under I think we're 65% of that amount. So, we're not we're not 100% spent out of what we
052spent past years to the APA. Does that make sense? So, are these people coming from the AEA? They're they're they're already they're being hired by the A.E.A. and then we contract services from them kind of like our school sites. So, we're going to contract a full-time employee from A.E.A. just for is it for like a year? For a year. And where will they be housed or based out of? No, we have that because usually like our we usually have like office space and things we provide them that I don't know. I think I said that's on the service. Yeah, it's a great comment. We'll have to right now. Well, and just because partly that too, it seems like then that lens typically where they would maybe spend most of their efforts too. You know, is
053that in the lower elementary? Is that in the high school? You know what? Sorry. Going to office at the middle school just right inside, you know, the inside the main doors. It's a big enough space. Maybe we could have the uh school based interventionist housed there too. We have the school based intervention is a million years ago because I've been here a million years. It was in the middle school was it? Because you've got two buildings. Two two two buildings. It was Angela C back in the day. You remember that, Jenny? Yeah. Okay. This area is what we've been told by the A.E.A. people when they talked about all these positions. Their area of focus will be on helping schools with students and unattendance. And that would definitely help. that also. Yes, exactly. [Music] Well,
054and so I mean it brings the point, you know, I think it's like it's an opportunity. There's extra resources that are coming in to help administrators. So, you know, I'd be curious. You know, there's always those things like when you get done with the day or you get done with the month or the week or whatever that you didn't get to, what what types of things will you refocus your efforts on if you have more time that you're not spending on attendance issues or paperwork or maybe I threw that out maybe about that. No, I like I love getting class doing bar walks and I mean I can tell you right you know the days that I'm not swamped down bogged down with some of that stuff it's I'll get class the kids talk with
055the teachers and see how they deal like that I mean that was always our goal was to be able to support you as instructional leaders um in your buildings and so yeah but then things time with the change in the law this year. I don't think any of us expected big of a thing with attendance I think is it's a reactionary issue because it's you're responding to things that are out of your control. So if these guys have more of that time freed up, they're able to be more forward thinking and more proactive in other issues because they aren't spending so much, you know, concentrated effort in a reactionary way, which I personally feel is very beneficial for them as well. I think it's worth a year of giving a try on all three of
056those positions just because we need to get going on something. I mean, we've been doing the same thing for a couple years and it's consuming a lot of their their time. Some days, I mean, they might spend half their day just working on attendance and having attendance meetings with parents and students. That's a half a day that they are with students and staff and and, you know, being those instructional leaders. That could be a couple times a week. That's a lot of time. based on the legislature too. The only thing that they're looking at changing from the student attendance is not sending out the certified letters. Otherwise, there's not really, from what I've read, not a lot of changes to the policy. It will still continue to be that number of days with the you
057have to get involved with the parents and the county attorney. But the the postal uh piece looks like that might change, but I'm not sure how that I move we approve theou with the green second. Okay. Christie, yes. Jody, yes. Jenny, yes. Josh, yes. Uh actually item B is the 25 supposed to be 2526 educational agreement with Iowa Western annual agreement uh with Iowa Western Community College uh providing services for their um programs that they offer to the high school students and it delineates different responsibilities between the district and Iowa Western. Yeah, I feel like this is more detailed than maybe we received in the past. Did you I think it is too very because I just remember that. Have we always been at 90% tuition? Is that the right way to ask? I don't
058I don't either check I move to approve the Iowa Western College Early Start Education Services. Also, second home service. Okay. Jody, yes. Jenny, yes. Josh, yes. Christy, yes. Uh, the next one is the 2526 Timberline Building Services Agreement for Medicaid. Okay. I'm going to defer to Lisa now. So, Timberline, there are two main companies in the state of Iowa that do billing on our behalf for Medicaid. And Timberline is the company that we have been using for some time. So, this is their annual agreement um do this again next year, but this is their agreement plus the addendum um that says they will provide those services. We submit things to them and then they submit to Medicaid on our behalf. So, this is basically something we do each year. Do you know what they they
059mentioned the change percentage? Do you know what it was previously? I could look it up, though. I know it's well worth having them do it, but the amount of time and the paperwork alone, you would almost have to have somebody dedicated here to do it if you went. I remember when we hired them, we didn't have it and yeah, we were not. It was amazing how much we recaped after that. It is. Yeah. We had a conversation actually today on this whole thing next August when we have our um inservice days with staff, teachers, parents. Stacy, I'm looking at you. Um we are going to bring in all the special ed teachers and special ed parents and anybody else connected. Right. So the hope is that um as a district we become more Medicaid aware
060We got some information from Lisa when she came back for ISIL training. And one of the things that we know we need to do is do a better job of first identifying students that would qualify and secondly we need to do everything we can to recoup that money. Um it's a reimbursement and we need to educate our educators, our paras and our families to what it is. And I think it's it's just one of those things where a lot of teachers don't get involved in Medicaid um billing and so they don't really understand the concept. They don't understand the benefits to it. But it is it can have a very profound um effect financially on a district if you do it correctly. Um and so I think by bringing some experts in, educating our teachers,
061the the paris staff and then getting our because we do a timberline training every year. did it earlier this year. Um, but if if you get the teachers educated, get all the paras on board with knowing what it is and then do specific training for the special ed paras that are required to turn in the paperwork. I'm hoping that we will have a much better um rate of success in actually doing the paperwork, turning in successfully, having fewer errors, and bringing that money back. The state has someone that they're willing to send our way. There were 21 schools there and Atlantic was the bottom of number of dollars received through Medicaid. It's not a good conversation for me to be in that room when I was seeing other districts smaller than us that receiving hundreds
062of thousands of dollars and we were the number one lowest of claiming Medicaid dollars even though we had more students. They were able to pull up a list of number of students and the number of services and yet we were not capturing those dollars and those offset your special ed dollars which means your special ed negative balance goes down because Medicaid is picking up the cost. It does not hinder anything that a parent gets from Medicaid. It's from a different plot of money and it's a large pot of money that we're not getting. So, um, the trainer volunteered her time to come and train us so that we can be more aware of how that interacts and works. And it was a great conversation, but a very humbling one to be in a room of
063that many and know that Atlantic was the number one worst one in the room when it came to collecting uh the data, the Medicaid paperwork. And um so yeah, so I think between Lisa and Stacy and then Kelly Evans, our director of health services, these guys are going to be on top of it next year explaining to their families it's not going to harm or hurt any of their any of their Medicaid. It just isn't going to allow hundreds of thousands of dollars to come to the district. Timberline will be part of it. Bringing about some questions. Do we need to look at or explore how other districts do their registration at the start of the year? I mean, is there things, you know, I know we've kind of moved towards online type things and
064stuff. Is there a way that we can interact better with families at the start of the year to get all of this accomplished? As far as Medicaid goes, as far as signing up for any any of it, whether it's free reduce, Medicaid, just anything like back to school night is a rat race and it's like what is it an hour or two when if you have to go to more than one building. I mean just lengthening the time of back to school night to give families time to go to and I don't I'm even thinking before that when they register for classes like the registration you know if there's a way that one of the one of the things we discussed throughout the year and it was I've had this conversation with a couple different
065people but it's even potentially offering like especially for our um e families having specific nights set aside where we have some translators available to go through things and to have computers available because some things some of the forms are just not they're not cell phone friendly. They just they are not and there some of those families don't have access to computers. So if we can have some of those things that's some of the things I'm exploring just because I know like in talking with Natalie I know the reintroduce it the form is just so confusing and there's a section that if they sign it because it looks like you should sign it but if you sign it you're actually denying yourself sentence on a section. So, we've just said that that might be a good
066way to do it because you can offer support without all the chaos of the of the multits. Would that help out families? I'm just I'm just brainstorming a little bit like there's got to be a way that it might be more manpower on our part because I know we've worked really hard to make everything online and don't don't come in the building, but maybe it's really an opportunity that we're missing that face-toface contact with families, that connection opportunity, that opportunity to show some hospitality, welcome them into the building, and get some of these things accomplished. I think that's like we've even explored I mean we I had a conversation I know I talk to Casey and Heather about it with the hospital too just to we haven't heard back yet but maybe even set up
067like a whole night and make it physical so like we get doctors into our building so we know or even figure out ways to like because there's a lot of like even sports physicals for some of the students that's not manageable. So if we could do that then they would get you everything else at that same meeting. Yeah. It might be like in July that I'm talking this is not like this is yeah we were talking about like yeah last week in July or you know county fair timeish not maybe over county but you know yeah it's almost like stations you know right it's a set fee because sometimes you go in the cost of if you call in and say you're getting a sports physical for some people that's Yeah. No, I I think
068there's a lot of things that could be done that could help families if you could get the word out and get them there. But making that part of a getting them back into our buildings physically so that it's not like they drop them off the first day of school and it's like, "Oh, I didn't know I had paperwork. I didn't know I had." And at least like you said, offering multiple options. Like if we don't need to come in can do it all, it's great. But if you want to come in and talk to somebody and we figure out that way, then it's another multiple to try to catch those families. Yeah, I missed them here. Have this coming up. Okay. So, I would move to approve the annual agreement with Timberline. I'll help you
069out, Josh. And the agenda. It's good conversation. Second. Okay. J. Yes, Jenny. Yes, Josh. Yes, Christine. Yes. Uh, item D is the sponsorship for the industrial tech club. Part two, uh, industrial arts teachers. Um, they want to do very something very similar to the robotics club and ask the board to approve a sponsorship for Skills USA. Skills USA. um my experiences with that program, it it can be a huge benefit to many kids. It goes beyond uh industrial arts. It goes into speaking, goes into any kind of area on a career pathway. We we tend to see it with industrial arts and the shop classes, but really can go in a large vast area. And I'd like to see it grow. maybe with our CTE person from our A.E.A., they might have some more resources
070to do uh additional things that Skills USA offers. Anyhow, they're want to do some kind of um sponsorship similar to the robotics and you can see they they kind of mirrored a lot of the stuff that we're doing with the robotics. It's the same kind of pler. He was coming tonight and then um he just couldn't make it in questions. I can help you out on I would move that we approve the sponsorship for industrial technology. Second. Okay. Jenny. Yes. Josh. Yep. Christine. Yes. Jody. Yes. And item B I believe is the last action item which is the approval of the graduating class of 2025. 32 is a lot. That's it is that's but I don't know that we've ever I don't remember it ever like eliminating out like who graduated early or who met
071early. There's a lot there. Yeah. I asked them some early graduates in the program too as I understand it. I asked them to put it on there and separate it out those that graduated maybe a semester through the um credit recovery programs and things such as that. So that list everyone really that's graduating. those students walk through ceremonies. They could option. So I had her just separate that out so you could kind of see the number of students really. I'm just curious if that seems like it's class size. Finally approve our graduating seniors. Congratulations to them. Get all your work done. you make it. Okay. Josh, yes. Christie, yes. Jody, yes. Jay, yes. Okay. We have uh upcoming date of the board session on the 23rd and then the negotiation was the what? 20 21st
072at 4:30. A couple of additions on that 23rd. We are looking because we are there's potential we might have some hiring that we need to approve. We probably will have a special meeting ahead of time of that. You can't have action items in a work session. So, it'll have to be a separate meeting. Also, that's also when public hearing, budget hearing number two is happening and so it'll be a quick little budget hearing plus a special meeting potentially and then a work session. Um, so should we have it in here since we're going to be doing kind of all that? I know SVPA will be presenting along with IAT on just the cost. You know, they've talked about that the last time they they came and presented. Okay. Lisa, you're also going to talk about
073assembly and and board policies. If you got a chance to see the new board policies, I sent you a link um to what those look like. Those have went um been cleaned up and and they're located on the website, but also wanted to give you all access to that too. We are going to be using a new platform to do our minutes and our agendas board uh through a company called Assembly. They're also managing our board policies. You can find that most school districts in Iowa have already been with them. Um I've been very impressed with the company, but there is a little bit of some training involved. I've set you all up with accounts. you'll be getting an email soon that says you need to set up a password, but at this right now
074there's nothing on there because we haven't set up the minutes and agenda piece, but um I'm working on that and hopefully by the time we have our work session, you'll be able to log in, you'll be able to see it, kind of feel it's we can it it shouldn't take too long. I guess it could depending on how long we need individually to kind of look it over and see what the thing. Anybody else have anything? Make a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? 7:42. We did. I kept looking. I was like, get this done in an hour and then we couldn't find Christie kept asking questions. I know. Sorry. Let's meet here for that work session on that 23rd since there's going to be so many
075of us. Yeah. enjoy that too. Thank you. Uh, no. Josh, I was gonna tell you before anybody's class that day, do you?