May Monthly Board Meeting

001Sorry. You're good. All right, we'll get started. Uh, it's Monday, May 19th, uh, 6:31 p.m. I call to order this regular monthly meeting of the board of directors of the Fairfield Community School District to be held at 6:30 p.m. on the third Monday of each month. The meeting is open to the public and the public is encouraged to attend. Time is provided in the meeting for public input. The mission of the Fairfield Community School Board of Directors is one Fairfield where relationships foster growth. Do we need to change this? Protect learners, unlock individual potential, serve every student every day. Um, let's see. Uh, can we have a roll call, please? Mark Porter here. Ty Ward here. Christy Kessle here. Megan Robbins here. Mark Thornton here. Deborah Williamson here. Dave Spurn here. All president. And yes,

002we can update the mission. We'll get that for next time. Yep. All right. Do we have any perfections to the agenda? I have none. Nothing for me. Okay, cool. Uh, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda as presented? So moved. Second. Dave and Christie. Uh, any discussion? No discussion. All right. All in favor? I. Motion carries. U. All right. Up first, we have a focus on learning. Yeah, I asked uh we've got a variety of K12 collaborative learning teams and they meet out here about once a month. Um and so we thought it would be good for maybe a couple of them to come come and share what that work um has entailed or what it's looked like um so far. So we're going to have first our counseling student support at risk

003team um and the representative here is uh Mr. Jay Thompson. So we'll start with him. If you move that up I think you can. It's on the right side. Can you hear me through the microphone? You good online, John? Am I John? You can raise it a little bit if you'd like. Okay, be great. [Music] How about that? Is that better? I think so. Yes. Okay, great. Um All right. So, I am Jay Thompson. I am the K8 uh success coordinator and school counselor representing the um K12 uh collaborative uh team that met on Fridays uh as you know as scheduled. So um in our um Whoa, I'm going to get used to the clicker. Okay, there we go. So that's our team. Um those are the uh individuals that represent your school counselors and

004at risk uh success coordinators in the district and uh we like I said met on um met on these Fridays and this was our focus. So uh the overall goal was uh by the end of the academic year we'll communicate collaborate on a building approaches to addressing student needs in the following areas. transition and belonging uh connection and involvement growth and success. So uh in order to do that um we kind of had to start where are we now and we were kind of we listened to each uh building kind of present on what they do and how they do it and uh provided some feedback and got some questions answered uh during that process. Um we'll start with Washington. Uh they uh Kelsey is there. I'm there one morning every other Thursday morning. Um

005so they don't get to see me a lot, but I'm there one Thursday morning every other week as the um at risk and I see a very small case load of students individually. The rest is uh Kelsey and this is what she uh presented us. So their children can participate in the school uh climate survey. Uh parents gave permission for that. Um they received over 60 lessons on topics such as social emotional skills from the counselor and two uh preschool rooms also received one lesson per week. Um she did four small groups or help per day and uh lessons um four per day as well guidance lessons or classroom lessons along with individual sessions and support um sometimes kids in crisis things like that as well. uh they use leader and me and PBIS systems.

006As you'll notice, that's a reoccurring theme between all the buildings um is use of uh at least kindergarten through um 8th grade especially is use of liter and PBIS systems. Um PBIS is a positive base intervention system. So it's basically a school climate and trying to catch kids doing things well. So I realize I'm speaking lingo and you may not know what that is. So that that is u u something where you can we're trying to incorporate a positive school environment that that's been in place since I started in 2016. That's been around since before then. What's added to that over the years is leader in me. So, um, they also use, uh, high school mentors that come over and meet with some of the kids that are kind of struggling with some of their

007behaviors as, uh, as as a positive thing. And, oh, you got to you got to make sure you're doing the right thing. So, you can meet with your mentor and your your mentor, you can tell your mentor some positive things about how you're doing today. So, same things like that. Um, outside counseling, referrals, wellness, support is al so again kind of across the board. uh any any counselor if the student is beyond our our scope of practice, they're going to get a referral um for behavioral support outside to families. We sometimes give them a list. Other times, families are overwhelmed and we literally walk them through the system, get them signed up ourselves, uh help fill out the paperwork, whatever we need to do to make sure they're getting u mental health services and support.

008Sometimes that's uh behavioral um support too like OPTIM uh behiss behavioral health intervention system um help where uh a therapist will come and work with the family, work with the kids in the home and in the community. So we'll make referrals for that too if need be. Some of this is we get phone calls from parents. What do we do? Look, I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what to do to help my kid. So that's what we're there for. Um, next one was Pence. Again, the they have Pence families. Uh, you'll hear uh Trojan uh you in when you get to the middle school, it's uh it's Trojan time at at uh it's a little different structured a little differently, but it's similar. It's again building that community, building that sense of oneness

009amongst each other while also learning some lessons, maybe showing some certain skills uh or you know giving back to your school type thing. So it's kind of a mix of all kinds of things. Um Miss Sarah who won a teacher of the year this year, uh she's phenomenal. So you can see lunch groups serves 32 students through lunch groups in a week. Uh she does individual and small group counseling. She is just on the move 247. I swear I don't swear she doesn't sleep. So she's constantly u re-evaluating what needs to be done. Helps with the mentoring program. Uh coordinates the PBIS check-in checkout. So, check in checkout is a program for students that are struggling um with their behavior. They can get a it's a chart and it tells how often they're on task

010and that check-in checkout system gives them a person to check in with in the morning and set a goal. Let's see if we can do 80% today. Yesterday, we got 79 or 78%. Can we do 80% of the time? you being on task in these three areas, you know, not talking out or whatever the goals may be. Can you get 80% today? And the chart gets marked up during the day as they go from teacher to teacher. And at the end of the day, the checkout person is the same person. Oh, did did you do it? Yes, you did it. You know, celebrations and things like that. So, it's trying to help them, you know, focus their energies towards their goals and get through the day in a positive way. uh and then also increases

011behavior compliance and u allows for more learning if their if their behaviors are less. Um did a climate survey uh they did a community day, leader me community day where you bring the community into the building. Um also leadership assemblies uh once a month. So quite a bit going on at Pence as well. uh middle school um same use of leader mean PBIS systems uh we do have that uh five through eight so it mixes fifth sixth seventh and eighth graders in a group it's small groups um usually around 10 around I think mine's 11 um so it helps them develop a sense of community uh fifth through 8th we've had high schoolers come back and tell us that helped them when they went to high school because they knew some older kids in the

012hallways because they used to be in their charging time group before they went on to high school and now when they have joined them they already know some faces of older students and things like that. So uh it's a again it's also a time of instruction. We do some of our leader a lot of our leader me instruction during that time too. It's 10 minutes in the morning. At the end of the day it's really just a computer check-in time and check in with them see how they're doing. Um, I'm been in charge of this. 100% of FMS students have some type of leadership and or involvement connecting them to school. So, we look at anything. It was our our our wig, our wildly important goal. Our wig for the year was that all students

013would have some type of connection back into the school. That's really hard to do when some kids, you know, their mindset is school school, you know. So, it's it can be it can be tough. It can be tough nuts to crack sometimes. But, um, even if it's a classroom job where they're willing to get up and do something in class, maybe they're not ready to join an athletic sport or a club or something, but if we can at least get them a job in class that they do successfully, we count it. So, it's anything we try to get 100% of our students involved in doing something outside of just themselves in the building, giving back, doing something, feeling connected to the school in some way. And we've met that. Um, we also I you know,

014I was really proud of our staff. They worked really hard. All of our staff worked hard on these um barriers, is what I call them, that the state has put before us for mental health where we have to get every parent and we have to try to get them to sign things and and approve uh for mental health screeners. That used to just be routine. You had to opt out of them. Now, everyone has to opt in by state law. So, we have to like really pursue some parents to get things filled out and signed. And it took a lot, but we had a high percentage that were finally we were able to do the mental health screener. And several I do not have the stats right in front of me, but uh several students,

015you know, needed followup. Um I would say in the neighborhood of about 20 to 25 needed follow-up with us based on that screener with urgent mental health needs. And some went home that day or to went with um with their parent to seek additional outside counseling because it was severe and others we just worked on getting them hooked up to services and things like that. But the screener helps us figure that out and catch those kids that we might not otherwise catch. So it's a really important thing I think that we do. Uh we did connection student connection survey again. How do you feel connected to school? Do you have an adult? If you know if you had a problem, who is the adult you would see? So, we kind of get some names. It's

016interesting. Sometimes they'll say, "No, I don't have an adult." But if I did have a problem, I'd see Mr. Shank. Okay. So, so yeah, they do have an adult. They they have someone they would like to talk to. So, um so I see over 35 um FMS students for individual counseling um on a regular basis. Some of them are weekly, some of them are bi-weekly, some of them are monthly. U Molly sees 25. And then I also oversee the 504 plans for 27 students and any new determinations that are made. So that's uh a significant um uh thing that I oversee. And then the middle school builder club, uh they're pictured up there to the right. Uh that's a new club um that uh Rachel Brown from the community from Beaner's funeral home um she

017approached me. We're both in Kuanas and she said, "Hey, I used to be involved in this club and I want to add a a new club to the middle school, but I need a staff sponsor. Are you up for it?" And I said, "Sure, why not?" So I found out about it. Love it. It's teaching kids leadership, uh community service, giving back. This was packing carry-on bags uh for the district just earlier, like two weeks ago. So, we packed the bags for the remainder of the year that go into student lockers for them to take home to have food on weekends on families that have signed up to participate to receive food. So, it was another um another club, another another way to get kids connected and to get them thinking outside of themselves, thinking

018about community service. And Quantis the club is just super excited about it and loves that we're doing it and joined us. They're in the background packing, too. Um high school, um 40 new students over the course of the school year have been enrolled and trying to get things set up for that. um tracking buildingwide student uh participation ext extracurricular activities um trying to encourage that peer-to-peer relationship building sense of community sense of belonging um I visited with the counselors over there and it's it's currently at 74% when you just look at um athletics and fine arts um they are still calculating when you add in um clubs, other clubs and other things, that number is anticipated to probably go closer to about 84 85%. I talked to Mr. Courtright about it, too, and he said,

019"Yeah, that's that's correct." So, that's what they anticipated it'll go to, but they just haven't added those in quite yet. Uh freshman forum is used to help ninth graders kind of transition to life as a high schooler. Um they do a lot of the onetoone academic counseling for students that are falling behind and tracking that and trying to help them pull their grades up. Um they have offered over 200 credit recovery classes um completed by the alternative education students and 12 students completed graduation requirements as an alternative school enroll. Um, and they also serve uh surveyed the 11th and 12th grade students to determine post high school plans leading to follow-up conferences, things like that to help them find a direction if they didn't already have one. And then uh 44 students participated in Indian

020Hills Community College Careermies, 85 online and 85 online courses taken by students, 23 AP online classes and 221 enrolles in concurrent enrollment classes. So it's all very encouraging. That's all our students uh taking advantage of some opportunities to get college credit before they get to college officially. Um 37 seniors received over $430,000 in local and foundation scholarships and the counseling office is in charge of organizing that. And uh they've also met with the eighth grade students and parents to discuss transition opportunities, academics, those types of things, scheduling just kind of chucking along here. If you have anything, stop me. Um, so some of the opportunities for growth just in looking at where we're at right now. Um, Washington, again, some of these like the the Pence one, I kind of said, well, we could have

021just said Washington Pence Middle School and High School because it's it's a lot of the same things. We're all looking to develop the leader and me program. We're all kind of looking at how things can be implemented and connected from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade so we have a better continuum of um guidance and counseling and all of those things. Um trauma-informed practices. Again, all of these things are what we're trying to figure out how to help our students um and improve their school experience and their ability to learn. Because one thing we know for sure is when these kids come with trauma and they've carried something in that door, they're not ready to learn. We have to help them process whatever it is they've gone through that morning a month ago, five

022years ago, whatever that's suddenly coming out and we have to help them learn how to social emotionally deal with that and then they can learn. Trying to force a student to learn before that you it's like a ticking time bomb. Um, I'd highlight the other thing on there that I'm very excited about is I got trained on the strengthening families program 10 to 14. Um, this is an Iowa State Extension program. It was a three-day training. It g I went home every night with a headache. There was so much information and such a good program. I actually did this program in uh when I was working at an elementary school in De Moines. It was a brand it was a 5-year-old program at that point because it started in 1992. U it's now been evaluated

023uh as scientifically researched and there was a six there was a study uh academic study done of 6,000 programs that are offered that could be drugrevention programs. And this is one because it strengthens a family. It teaches them communication and helps kids see their families not as someone to rebel against, but you know to learn from. And it helps the family be more healthy. And it was the number one program out of 6,000 programs studied. It was the number one program to find the correlation between reduced crime, reduced drug use. So, uh, it's a great program. It'll be offered free to 10 families this fall and we're looking at another probably 10 families in the spring. I get goosebumps every time I talk about it because I know the impact that this could have on

024our um our kids and our families. I've already got one family that was in my office in crisis and I said, "Hey, I don't have it right now, but I have this program. Let me tell you about it." And I told her, she said, "Sign us up." Yes, we'll be your first family. Yes, we'd love to come to that. That sounds amazing. So, um I think it's going to be a great program. It's going to be seven evenings um where families will come. We're gonna work on finding some community support to pay for meals. Uh we're going to feed them a meal at 5:30 at 6:00. Parents go to a meeting. Kids go to their meeting. And it's a very it's very it's got a program. It's got a curriculum. You follow the curriculum. The

025parents it's a video that leads them with pauses and discussions. And then the kids, it's all hands-on. They're not sitting. They're not doing worksheets. They're up doing activities, things, and graphs while they're learning about that material. And then you come back and you do, and that's an hour. And then you come back and you do an hour together as a family. And you're strengthening your family. You're learning how to communicate. You're doing your family history. You're doing all kinds of different things together during those seven weeks. And then you we throw them a graduation party on the on the seventh week. So, it's a pretty cool program. I'm very excited about it. All right, I'll move on. Opportunities for growth. Um, so these are some things when we as a unit spoke that we thought

026um Oh, this is for the high school. That's that's the next one I'm thinking of. Um, so the high school said uh they're going to be working on a seminar period for grades 9 to 12 emphasizing academic success, career readiness, leadership development. They're also continuing to develop curriculum and academic course offerings u and this continued widespread growth of internship and job shadowing opportunities. Um I was talking to Mr. represent about that just a little bit ago and just about how that's really taking off and you will see that on the one of the next slides too how that could be supported. Um continued promotion of extracurricular activities involvement and then career affairs things like that are all things that they're kind of working on. That's a picture of to the right of the TAG students

027that tour the University of Iowa recently. John, I might need your help. It's not moving. There it goes. Never mind. It went. Okay. Um, so here's the what I thought originally the ideas for future growth as a big picture with K through 12 um, uh, counseling. So, one of the suggestions and that I think it's necessary is a full-time K4 specific at risk person just between Washington and Pence would be huge just because like I told you, I'm at Washington one morning every two weeks. I can't be there nearly as much as I would like to be given the demands of the middle school and some of the things that they need. So it would be a full-time they this is just the suggestions of where areas to consider things that we could grow would

028be to have someone designated a K4 someone designated 5'8 full-time you could easily support that. Um, right now K5 guidance curriculum is like kind of Kelsey's trying to put her things together. Sarah kind of put her things together and then Molly teaches uh fifth grade. She puts her things together. We don't really have a purchased set um curriculum K through five that could be a unified okay kindergarten will teach these lessons first grade will teach these lessons because sometimes we get into where Molly or sometimes I'm filling in for well we did this last year in fourth grade so it's it's just kind of hard the communication and it would just be nice if there was a K5 curriculum and that's something that I is a suggest suggestion to explore. Uh also curriculum to support

029individual and small groups of students with social emotional skills and executive functioning development. Um especially at the middle school that was that was from Molly and I. Um we really feel like that would be beneficial to have some dedicated curriculum to that as opposed to we've received some training in uh dialectical behavioral therapy techniques. We're not doing therapy. Whoa. Where did that go? Um, there we go. I'll put this down. Um, but um, you know, we're trying to pull things out of books and trying to teach lessons and she has a lift group. It's the end of the day group where she's working with a group of students and trying to teach them these techniques and trying to help them learn how to process some trauma and things that have gone in their past. just

030some of the basic techniques to come and be a great student. Again, you got to figure out how to put some of that trauma down long enough to learn and and deal with it. And so, it would be great. There's some curriculum out there that could be purchased to support that, too. Um, and then, uh, the high school would love to see a a liaison to assist with the growing number of internship placements in the in Fairfield. um they're working on hiring on the the position, but their understanding is that position won't necessarily be the person that's going out and trying to recruit uh businesses and agencies for internships and help place the students there. Mr. Eperson's doing that on top of his other duties and um just finding that difficult. He's got 30 right

031now and he said I'm going to have you know double that next year. So it's already I've got 60. So he's just you know there if there is a opportunity to continue to look at that for future for support. These are all things that the counseling kind of department thinks would be helpful. And I think this is great that all of this stuff has come out of us getting time to sit down and have these discussions because we're kind of on I'm unique. I'm on three islands, but we're kind of on our own little island and we're dealing with stuff in the middle school. Pence is dealing with stuff at Pence, you know, and so it's nice when we get to sit down and go, "Oh, you have that. What do you do to deal

032with that and how are you doing this and let's let's look at how does how could this be put together better?" You know, things like that. And so, I just thank the school board for the time to be able to do that, to sit down and have those meaningful conversations. um questions. Yes. So, this was a great presentation. Thank you so much. Um and it's it's uh I think it's really valuable for the children. Um so, what do you see as uh your smart goals? How how will you know who this is helping and how much it's helping? So, um, in terms we we look at and I put together like I can speak I can't speak for every building and how but I can tell you that I have an at risk document that

033I look at and um part of my contract is 10 extra days in my contract. I do eight before the school year. Those eight days I am um getting kids ready. I'm helping families figure out if they need school supplies, where to get them, how to get some for free, if they need clothes. I'm doing that stuff on the front end. On the back end, I'm doing my uh program evaluation and I'm looking at the data and I'm looking to see who our top flyers are. And then next year, you know, we can hit the ground with, okay, these people, this these were some maybe holes that we didn't see that we didn't see. The they had more referrals for behavior. They had more um bad grades, maybe low test scores. So what we're doing

034is looking at those that data and then we're setting up and we have an SAT team that didn't make it into the things but we have a student assistant team where we meet with the community support specialists and the counselors and the administrators um approximately every other week on Wednesday mornings at the middle school and we sit and we say who has come to the surface as biggest concerns recently. What are some successes we've had? Where have we seen success? Where could we target some more success? And and so we're looking at the data on an ongoing regular basis to see if we're being effective, if we're not, what we need to do. Do we need to get this student hooked into teachers more after school because they need there's they're a slow slower learner

035like I was in middle school. So, do they need some additional support? Do they need that extra help academically? Does this student, he doesn't like school? He's struggling with school. His attitude is that he's forced to be here. It's jail. So, how can we improve that? What can what teacher does he which teachers does he like? Who does he have a is it an associate? Is it the janitor? Who can we get him connected to to help him like school or her like school more? So we're always looking at that data like every two weeks to see where we can be more successful, more effective. So it sounds like the relationships are important. Relationships are huge at middle school level because they think they're grown and they're not and they need all the support you

036can get. And if you ever need to know exactly how your hair looks, how your clothes look, just come there. they will tell you. They have no filter. So, you can get honest feedback. So, no, it they're they're great. I love that age. It's my favorite age to work with. And uh because they're starting to realize their world and some of that is painful and some of that's exciting. Some of that's painful like not every family's like this. What do you mean? You don't get hit when you go home? I do. So, they're coming to that painful realization and that's what's very hard. But they're also realizing like, I really like taking care of people. I think I want to be a nurse. How can I be a nurse, Mr. Thompson? Well, let me tell

037you, it's some of the things you would need to do to get ready to do that. So, it's a mixed bag like life is, right? And we're just trying to help them navigate and be the best students they can be. And I think counseling staff K uh K12 does an excellent job of that. And you're um strengthening families. Um, so I picture the kids over in this area, the parents in this area. So, um, I'm I'm not tracking exactly what's happening. Um, but I guess what I would hope would happen is um that the parents would be handed the tools and the training to better help develop the children. Yep. setting goals and for them and yeah, much like we would expect from a a speech therapist with a three-year-old, the speech therapist is giving

038the parents the correct assignment. Yep. The the the parent session is prepping them to go home and try something different. Okay. Maybe different than they've done or maybe tweak it a little bit. Maybe they've never used a rewards chart. Maybe they've never tried certain things. This just gives them lots of tools to choose from. It uses um you've probably heard of um love and logic. This is love and limits. So, you're you're showing them love, which some families need to learn how to do that. And it's also learning how to set limits and consequences for things that aren't going correctly. and how to correct the behavior without yelling, beating, you know, whatever that child, how can you really help that child and learn to be the best person they can be? So, we're trying to

039break some generational things and um it's like it's a very powerful tool. It's a really cool program and it's it's really improved since 1997 when I did it before. So, but yeah, it's this binder of curriculum. So yes, parents are learning that kids are learning something similar the kid version and that what they can do to learn like processing and how to say no to that in negative influential peer. How to how to walk away what and they practice it. This is how you walk away from a negative situation. This is how you seek positive people in your life. This is you know so there's that learning that goes on with it. Well, it's a tall order. Thank you. Bless you. Thanks. How many parents attended the 8th grade to high school transition meeting? Like

040or do we do we know to I don't know the exact I could find that up for you and shoot you an email, but I don't know. Something that we could work on making sure we get because it's bubble size more. Yeah. Yeah. And whatever. And if parents don't attend for that student, you know, do they need some extra support figuring out things? Yeah. the the information goes home regardless. It goes home uh because they fill out like their coursework and that sheet goes home and the parent is supposed to sign off on it and then it's supposed to come back and get turned in to be processed for like the the classes and things like that that they have elected to take or want to take and then uh and the ones they have

041to take. Um but yeah, it's great if the parents come hear that presentation and hear that information. Not always accessible, but it's tough and you know, it's usually in the evenings and I know there's people that have second shift jobs and things like that and not everybody, you know, it's hard to make something that works for everybody, but I think I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was recorded, but I could be wrong, too. So, it could be available to parents outside. Thanks. So that time just one question. I appreciate your presentation, but what I'm interested in what are the one or two what's the biggest barriers for getting kids connected to their school, getting them in extracurricular activities, those kind of you kind of alluded to it. If you could clarify that, what

042are the what are the barriers? What are we dealing with here? the the biggest barrier is what I would call unresolved trauma. That's the number one biggest barrier. We also have poverty and other things like that, but unresolved trauma is what's happened to them or is happening to them outside of school, outside of our control that they bring with them when they come into school. This is not just Fairfield. This is everywhere. Um, and those kids struggle with processing um, I like what Pence calls it, big emotions. Processing big emotions. What can you do with your big emotions? How can we get this figured out? And it's definitely been on an uptick. Um I I don't the research suggests that you know early exposure to electronics and these things is very negative that you shouldn't

043get a phone till you're 16 is the most recent research if you look it up. That's the most recent research is that kids really shouldn't have a phone until they're 16. Their brains are not prepared to handle the nuances of social media and all these things. But I will go to a doctor's appointment and I'll walk look over and there's a 2-year-old crying or something. Here's your tablet. Just just play on that and then the parents on their phone and it breaks my heart because that kid's not learning how to deal with their emotions. They're dealing to be they're learning to deal with it with electronics, things like that. So that's a that's one, you know, physical abuse, um mental health issues, uh sexual abuse, all kinds of things that come through our doors every

044day that we have to try to mitigate and figure out how to help them as best we can. Sometimes that's calling DHS, sometimes that's, you know, getting them therapy services. Sometimes it's all kinds of different things. But it's it's not an easy task. It's one that um I love to do, but it's it's a not an easy task. I would say that would be the number trauma would be the number one. And you know, just a continued sense of parental involvement. That's another one. Just that they're reading with their kids. How much are you reading with your your kid at night? You know, are you are you preparing them to go to school? It's not like when I was in school and we learned our colors when we got and you know you learned your

045one two threes and stuff. They hit the ground running by kindergarten. You're way behind if that's what you're still learning. They're reading by the end of kindergarten. A lot of them are, you know, so it's it's very important just continued parental involvement. Thank you, Jay. That's great. I just wanted to go ahead. I just wanted to comment. Um, a a lot of folks assume that if kids are engaged in activities, um, that somehow that's a sign of them being mentally well. And so, so the the the truth is you can be a straight A student, straight A student in band, in this, in that only because School is the safest place to be. Correct. And you can keep yourself so busy that your brain doesn't process the trauma. Correct. You can just fall asleep dead

046tired and get up the next morning and go go and just do. So you don't, you know, you're not acting out, you know. So it's got to be hard for you to know who's suffering from that. If if Yeah. If they don't tell us, yeah. if they don't tell us or sometimes a peer, thank goodness we've created a culture where peers will come and say, "Hey, Mr. Thompson, I'm really worried about Susie. She's got this going on at home. She's told me this is happening and she's got some selfharm thoughts, things like that." And so then we can pull her in and say, "Hey, we're here to help. What can we do? What's going on?" on and sometimes it sometimes there's a wall and sometimes there's just the floodgate of tears and like there can

047finally tell somebody. Thank you very much. Appreciate All right. Good evening. I promise we won't be near as long as Jay. We're not longwinded. 20 minutes tops. These are short. All right. So, we are the title reading um team part of part of it. We're missing a couple. Um and we put together a short presentation for you tonight um to discuss our goals for the year and um whether we reach them or not. Um, before we start, I'm Lanni Boyd. I teach uh Title One reading at Washington. And I have with me tonight Renee Smith from Pence, um, Amanda Huts from Pence, and Sarah P from the middle school. And then we're missing Rose Smith from Washington, and Rachel Dorman from Pence. So, we came up with three goals um that tie into the district

048goals for the school year. The first was to update the title plan. And the title plan is something that the state requires us to have. Basically, it's just a document. Document. Thank you. That um we have to have put together of um forms that we send home um criteria criteria, deadlines, things like that. Um, and this had not been updated for at least five or six years to our knowledge, if not longer. So, we had said early on this year to Zach that we this was something that we would like to get together this year and work on. And he said, "Then let's do it." So, we were able to meet on the morning of January 20th from 8 to 11:30 with um Mr. Wagel and Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones. Was that it? Mhm. and

049we went through this document page by page. We were able to take out a bunch of things that were old and outdated that we no longer needed to do and update a lot of the things um that we did need to do. Um we also were able to create a lot of things that created some consistency between the buildings which had not been done for a while. The next goal was to have 100% of title students to show growth on the FAST or district assessments. And the last goal was to have 100% of title students to feel they belong and have a safe space in title. And we did we are doing that or going to show that we're doing that by creating a title one reading climate survey. And this is what it looked

050like. Um we reach kindergarten through sixth grade students so we wanted to keep it as basic as we could. Um we have it available on tablet or on a Google form. Um but for especially at my age we did a paper pencil form where they just got to color in the smiley faces. We kept it as basic as we could. Um three questions were how do you feel in this classroom? Do you do you feel your teacher cares about you? and do you believe you will be successful in this classroom? And I was able to give this three times throughout this year so that I could see how um the data improved. Um I did have different groups of kids. Um so you'll see at the beginning of the year on the first question I

051only had well I shouldn't say I Washington had 39 students in title take this and with that between the happy and the neutral faces there was 97.4% that chose that and the end of the year we had 51 students and 98% chose that. So it did improve. The second question, do you feel your teacher cares about you? Again, with the 39 at the beginning of the year, it was at 97.5% and at the end of the year, the 51 was at 100% between the two. And the do you believe you will be successful? The beginning of the year was 94.9% and end of the year was 98%. So all three rose as the year went up. And now I will turn it. Oh n sorry. Um for our growth um kindergarten title students 20 out

052of 20 or 100% made growth from their fall to spring on their composite of their fast score. And 31 out of 34 or 92% of first grade title students made growth on their composite. Six students exited our title program at midyear and three would have been able to exit at the end of the year. And now I will hand it over to I will do back the clicker. All right. So we obviously did the same survey as Washington and the middle school. So our first one, the first question, how do you feel in this classroom? um we did it just twice. So we did middle of the year and end of the year. So our students actually were the same students minus maybe two kiddos that were staffed um it into special ed. So we

053started out the year at or middle of the year 83% felt happy in the title classroom and that increased to 95% by the end of the year. The next one was do you feel your teacher cares about you? That one at the middle of the year was 91% of them felt that their teacher cared about them and that increased to 94% by the end of the year. And then the last one, which we kind of talked about this, this one was hard too cuz explaining to our kiddos what successful actually means. So some I we kind of feel like there was a little bit of confusion with that. Um but they had we had 67% at middle of the year believed that they would be successful in the in the classroom in our title classroom

054with what we were teaching them and then that then increased to 86% by the end of the year. Now data like we need a drum roll. Um we're so excited for Pence. We have um multiple tests that we give throughout the year, but what we primarily put um students into title is through our CBMR. It's that one minute read that we give students. Um according to our test um results, we are still taking our test. So hopefully by the end of the week, we'll have our test completed. We right now um are seeing wonderful growth. The expected benchmark for student growth is 1.4 four words um per per week or in the course of um 36 weeks it is 50 words increase. Many of our title students have demonstrated outstanding progress for example individual growth

055in words correct per minute include scores drum roll 49 66 81 and even even an 85 word increase. Another exciting part that we are constantly seeing as students accuracy continue to improve. Many times at the beginning of the year we see students who come in with 70% accuracy and by the end of the year they're reading se um 90 to 100% accuracy which is really exciting and we know as accuracy improves we also know that student fluency um improves and their overall reading comprehension improves. So along with that improvement, our exited title students after middle of the year testing, we had 13 title students test out. Um and then so far, because we are still doing the CBMR testing, so far we've had five that would be tested out of title. So that's something that

05618 18 students total. So so far that have actually been tested out of title. So that's awesome. I think at the beginning of the year we were serving close to 115 students. Um and we're right now serving about 110 students. 105. So um it's exciting to see how many kids we work with and how many kids are making growth. The last thing we're excited about is our A-reading data. Um it's also still being collected. Um we do hope that our as we continue to um test that our prof proficiency will also improve and we will continue to meet goals for our grade level benchmarks. And then our last thing that we have on here, this is for ISAS which you guys have already kind of I think maybe seen some of this data. It's not

057tied directly to our title students but it's something that we're kind of celebrating big right now over at Pence. Um our third grade was at 63% proficient and that's for ELA. Um, and then fourth grade was 69% proficient. Last year as third graders, they were 50% proficient. So, those are some of the better numbers that we've had um for third and fourth grade in a while. So, it's we had a big celebration about it on Friday and it's just something that we wanted to highlight because it's something exciting happening over at Pence. So, okay. And then, um, as said previously, I'm Sarah Pulk. Uh I teach uh title to fifth and sixth grade students at the middle school. Um so I just kind of put these all in one slide so we don't have to

058bop through a bunch of them. Um so how students feel in the title classroom. Um as middle schoolers, they're not the most happiest to be in my room. Um especially when for some sixth graders it takes them out of some of their elective classes, which is really unfortunate. But I'm glad that they're getting the support and the services that they need. Um but no nos on that one. So that is a positive. Um do you feel feel your teacher cares about you? I had two students who said no, but otherwise uh I feel really happy for the other about 35ish kids. Um and do you feel you will be successful in this classroom? Um I had three kids say no, but the rest said yes or neutral, which I also kind of agree with Pence

059of. I probably should have been a little bit more um direct about my explanation of what successful meant to them because I think for some of them it means leaving my classroom. Um and for others I think we've celebrated a lot of growth and they've felt like they've really achieved a lot in the time that they've had this year. um for some of our fluency growth. So, I put our fluency and our comprehension information on here because uh for sixth graders, uh I serve fluency some fluency groups and some groups that are solely on comprehension because the students have met our benchmarks for fluency, but they're still demonstrating some deficits in their comprehension. Uh so, first off, all students that were in title made growth in their fluency scores, which was amazing. Um, so from

060the beginning of the year to the end of the year, uh, fifth grade students, uh, which is about, I think 14 I have right now, uh, grew by an average of 31.5 words per minute, which is really huge for them. Uh, and then sixth grade students grew by an average of 23.5 words per minute. For comprehension, um, we use a reading to measure their comprehension scores in the fall, winter, and spring. sixth grade students grew by an average of 10 and a half points. Um, that doesn't mean anything to you, I'm sure. But, uh, for benchmark over the course of the year, the expected growth is seven points. So, 10 and a half is really huge. I had many kids who were in the double digits. So, it was really good to see. And then,

061um, over the course of the school year, I've had seven students exited from title. Uh, I also have a few that I will not see from fifth grade into sixth grade. And then um some sixth graders who would exit, but since we're so close to the end of the school year and scheduling is very difficult, I've just kept them in for the rest of the school year just to for like the last few weeks. But otherwise, really good positive growth from our fifth and sixth graders. Any questions? How many sixth graders did you have? Um I do you want like beginning of the year numbers or end of the year numbers? I guess I'm just curious like now that they're done with sixth grade. What what will continue to do? Yeah. I mean I know

062they won't have title but you know how many are kind of at that level still or not not testing out of it. So I had so on the fluency side they won't be we don't test for fluency after sixth grade. Um but what we will continue to monitor is their comprehension skills. And what at FMS we do in seventh and eighth grade and also sixth grade as well is we have uh 20 to 25 minute time at the end of the day called lift. So they would be in a comprehension reading lift if they are not showing proficiency on our um a readings tests. And then for my comprehension groups, uh I had two that were proficient at the end of the year. So then I have eight more kids who are really close. Um

063and they will just continue to monitor them as they go into seventh grade. Thanks. So how do you guys determine how many kids you guys can each have in your title classes and then how do you give and take? because I know that there's been times that certain kids you've thought need to be a part of title that can't be because you're overloaded. How do you guys kind of draw the line with the testing and how all that works? It really kind of depends on the grade level. Um in an ideal world um at Penn we like to have about six per group. Um we do 20 minute groups and they literally come in. Megan actually came and watched us one day and they literally one group right after the other. I mean, we just

064continuously for an hour, each grade has an hour and it's 20-minute um groups and we take three groups. Yeah. Per grade level and it's normally six, but I know you guys we try to do less just because of the grade level. Um, but I believe the title plan does say no more than six in a group. We we served all of red second graders. So, we served all the red second graders. We served all the red, third, and fourth grade. So, we the three of us like seven. Yeah, there were a couple groups that, but we try to make kind of our lower groups a little bit smaller so they can get more one-on-one. Um, and then some of the little bit higher ones maybe have some more kids in them. So, overall, do you

065feel like enough students are getting served or do you feel I mean, do you feel like you have the resources you need or It's a loaded question. Yeah, depends on where you are. Um, you know, I think our goal is to serve all the kids that we possibly can. Um, I know at Pence, every red kid was served. When I say red, it means they're not proficient on that one minute read. Um, so if they have an IEP, they they will be getting those services. So if they don't have an IEP, their support would be the next would be title services. So all the kids that were not proficient, if they didn't have an IEP to get some sort of reading support through us. I mean, I think our groups are pretty our days are

066pretty with we had two MTSS groups this year and with those two groups we were the three of us were serving 10 groups of small groups a day. So, makes the day go really fast. It's like fast and furious. It's amazing. Absolutely. Do you guys have any ideas on how to improve uh identifying and intervening earlier for so many students? more support, having more speakers low in a lower level. I think that just that consistency I I know and we're getting there. Like I think Mr. Wel has done an awesome job at, you know, finding ways to make our elementarymentaries work together. And I think we'll get there even better in the next couple years. Um I think just having communication, allowing time for us to talk about, okay, what are you guys doing? what

067skills are you practicing? Um, what strategies are you working on and that just that communication piece and just making sure that we're all accountable. I think that's the biggest part is just making sure every kid that is struggling is getting some kind of reading support. And I not sure how to get there, but I think that is a huge key to our success. I'd just like to applaud you all for all of your hard work. Um, it's really so important and you know I know the fourth grade class now was learning how to read during co in kindergarten and so like you guys have made such huge strides so it's just a testament to all your hard work. So good job. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you. [Music] All right. We are

068moving on to committee reports. Each committee chair will share two and three minutes. Uh update connected to we've been working on committees. So I guess we'll start with Mr. Mark Wharton. Policy. Yeah, ours is pretty quick. I don't have it pulled up here, but we met a couple weeks ago and just went over some of the policies you'll see coming before today. I think they're all on the 900 series. So, they were our next block of one so we could review quickly to get some uh I think there's one more changes, another we're going to delete one. So, and then we quickly reviewed the cell phone policy will become for the first reading next month and final reading before the beginning of the school year. So, you'll see that coming out here soon. And like

069that was a pretty quick meeting. Thanks. Ty, do you want to speak on strategic planning? Sure. We met earlier this week. Uh looking back on the notes, um for marketing, we talked about mission and vision. I'm making a video for that. Um we talked about kind of who all we'd like to tap to get into a video about that. Um getting some new people in our videos instead of the same old people we usually use. Um, but we talked about maybe having uh a video warehouse where we can kind of have a spot where all of these are uploaded. Um, so they're easily accessible. Um, right now they're kind of all over the place. Uh, we talked about our plan for the summer. um just basically how we're going to, you know, market ourselves as

070a destination district um through our academic growth, mission, vision, mission, belonging, facilities, diversity, all those kind of things. Um just kind of highlighting what we do well and getting the message out um in our marketing that we're doing this summer. Uh, we talked a little bit about the general bond, general obligation bonds, um, our approach for that, which I think we're going to go into a little bit later. Um, maybe right after committee meetings or something. Uh, SCAK, we have an upcoming meeting about SCAK. Uh, sounds like most of the people that were in it before are uh, you know, offering to come back, which is awesome. Um, and yeah, that's meeting is in a few weeks. The 24th, June 4th. June 4th. Yeah. Um and yeah, that's about it. Great. Thanks. Finance. Okay. Thank

071you, Megan. Um we met on May 12th on Monday. Uh we had a pretty extensive meeting. Uh first of all, we went over the new transportation plan that the uh district is implementing. Uh the objective of the transportation plan is to optimize the routes and the number of buses to minimize the cost of our transportation plan uh without within some constraints that we have like crossing hazardous routes, legal limits on maximum time on the bus, legal distance from the attendance center, and the size of the district. And within those constraints, uh the new transportation plan will provide us about uh $3,500 in cost savings with the routes and hub elimination and we're we would uh service this with 12 buses. So we think that we have met the goals to minimize cost and optimize the

072routes and still u be able to uh live within the constraints that we have. Uh we have also been able to eliminate soft costs from efficiencies and discipline issues when uh the drivers don't know the passengers. It seems the last trip after the hub is to after the transfer hub is the is a discipline problem. So we have uh uh better connection with the drivers and the passengers. So we were satisfied with the transportation plan and the the way it will be implemented and and that it meets our goals and the constraints and provides us some cost savings. Uh we will be facing a uh buy lease decision in 2027. We have buses leased now at a very favorable interest rate. um there is a possibility to move to smaller buses and we have to

073consider field trips and transportation to extracurricular activities with those buss. So we will be facing sort of a buy lease decision in 2027. So we're going to be looking at that and working on that in that uh time frame. Uh we went over the uh cash position forecast for the end of the school year. We all know we face um at the end we have to cover two at least two months with cash on hand for our expenses, salaries, th those kind of issues. So we looked at what our forecast cash position was. Our goal is net days cash of 90 days uh as the the we finished last year with only 13 days. So, we were very close to triggering our a contingency funding plan. And so, we wanted to make sure that we

074weren't going to be close with a forecast to triggering that plan. On April 30th, we had 101 days and were projected to have uh 70 to 80 days net cash as of June 30th to cover expenses and salaries for July and August. And we'll receive a cash infusion in September and October with the collection of the cash levy. uh we don't see the contingency funding plan coming into play for the district. And finally, we uh reviewed the financial impact of the new health plan. The district will be using fund 72 within the general fund to account for the HSA contributions for employees in the district. So, we reviewed how those will be accounted for. The total pro program cost reduction is expected to be $375,000 which includes the premium for our stop loss insurance coverage

075in case we reach a certain point if we're self-funding and that insurance then covers the uh cost for the self-unding plan if our utilization rate is much higher than what we had projected. uh worst case with a higher utilization rate that uh than projected the uh than projected the cost will be 2.2 $.2 million for the district, but this will drop our UAB to 13.3% while the cash retention in the program will cause the solveny ratio to move up to 14.9. So, we will have cash. Both are acceptable to obtain a likely cost savings while providing employees with the best level of health insurance we can. Fi and finally, we went over what we will discuss later in the meeting, and that is a budget amendment. Uh we reviewed the certified budget comparison. The committee

076agreed to review uh the comparison using the projected FY2025 as it represents a forward-looking comparison. The committee is cognizant of auditor comments related to favorable or unfavorable variances. That was one of the comments in our audit carrying favorable variances. In other words, underbudget or unfavorable variances which are overbudget and carrying them forward instead of reconciling them during the year. So that's one of our uh one of our goals is to reconcile those variances. Uh the comparison review revealed the following variances. We have a favorable in uh projected uh variance of $346,151 in in the instructional segment which is under budget. uh support services 672,547 favorable which is under budget and a non-instructional programs of $174,650 which is unfavorable which is overbudget and our other category is merely 13,457 favorable over the main reasons for these

077variances are para educator support for student IEPs that are hard, very very hard to forecast and budget for and the results of detailed audit of contracts carried by the district that Zach and Evan have been doing throughout the year. So, um the committee noted that in addition there was $200,000 uh ple debt payoff. So, that was very favorable. So, uh, we're recommending to avoid adverse auditor comment and to bring the district into line with best practices for large variances, the committee will recommend a budget amendment to allocate $350,000 from the large favorable variance for support services to non-instructural services in the amount of 300,000 and to the other category in the amount of 50,000. So that'll be our that's our recommendation by by vote of the committee uh for our amendment coming up later in

078the meeting. Sorry for the lengthy meeting. We had a lot. Thanks Dave. Um all right Christy I don't know you guys met. Do you have no update or No, we're actually kind of struggling with like what we should be doing as an HR committee. So, I don't know if Zach and uh Evan have any guidance there, but I feel like we're kind of just Yeah, my experience has been it's usually more um intense or busy during the negotiation season. So, it may not be something that, you know, comes up every month, but um more of an ad hoc based on where we're at in the 12-month calendar. Um the other thing could be you know from a HR standpoint um if there's specific things um that we would want to bring to that that group

079to see if um there would be board support around making a switch or a change connected to some type of practice. U but again I think that would be on a as needed basis. I'm not sure what your thoughts are. Yeah, I mean um some of the things that we're we've been working on and I think comes later in the meeting and Sax highlights is we have some um continued work we need to do around our pair educators. We'll be looking at their total value, their belonging, their pay structures move forward and then we're going to continue building our hiring practices through talent books and our talent handbooks and making sure we have a clear picture on how we hire and how we find the next fit for our Fairfield family. Um, so those are

080some ideas kind of moving into next year that are kind of on my plate that I'm been thinking through to bring to the HR community. Okay, Houston. Cool. I'll talk about some high school things real quick. Uh, we'll start off with on Thursday we have our Trojan Palooa. What is that? We learned about it today. Basically, it's kind of a sendoff for the seniors cuz that's their last day. And so it's kind of just a fun-filled day uh that I believe a team of teachers have for have put together at the high school. So I know that happens. Seniors, their last day is Thursday. Graduation is this Sunday. Um and we'll just move on to sport things. Um I know the boys track team, they just got done at conference and they had a lot

081of people that got approved to go to state. So we'll be sending a lot of those off to state. So that's cool. Uh golfers, I believe we had two boys go to state or are going to state and then one girl I believe that made it across the state. Um and then we had one tennis player as well go to state. And our esport team is actually up at state in Marshalltown right now playing for they have a chance they have a shot at the third place title for one of our spring games. They're leading in the first match of the third round as of now. Cool. And then um yeah, band band and choir. We hosted large group this year. That was a lot of work on our end, but it paid off. We

082got high grades and all of those. So that's cool. And yeah, we're pretty much just winding down the school year, chilling and killing in style. So yeah, Mark Porter. Yep. Yep. So we met about two and a half hours ago. We actually met before the meeting tonight and uh didn't cover a lot of information but did touch on a few things. One of the first things we primarily talked about was the bank bids coming out. Um basically there was a handful of banks here in the community that uh received an RFP basically and had the opportunity to talk to the district about becoming a depository for the district. Um you'll see that coming in vote later on and and Evan will touch on this a little bit more. So but Iowa State Bank is probably

083going to be the bank that he's going to go on ahead and recommend to us. Um there were several different factors that came into that. Several it was community involvement and another thing was just u being the best interest rate. So um basically the uh 4.23% is the interest rate Iowa State Bank is offering the district at this time and that's based on a quarterly rate. So there was a few other factors that play as well. Iowa State Bank has also been extremely involved in the community and a few other things. But all that being said um basically that's the bank that they plan on recommending to us to become a depository. And as we talked about, four of us are going to have to make that decision because there's a few board members that

084have to abstain from that vote, but we'll talk about that later. So, so, um, we also talked about the bond that's coming up. Um, talked about the survey that went out and talked about the variety of people that responded to that survey. I think in total, Zach said there was about 460 total people that responded to the survey. And about 120 of those people basically said that one of the reasons they didn't uh vote for the bond is simply came down to the total cost of the project. So, um, there's several different things that we talked about that there's a lot of numbers that we'd like to start, you know, may present to the community, different variety of reasons of why we think the new building will in the long term cost the district, um,

085dramatically less money. So, you know, um, a lot of that just comes down to the pure maintenance cost of of the current middle school, but there's also variety of other factors at play as well. So, um, we talked about that a little bit. Um, from there, um, oh yeah, we talked about the tech update. So, one of the things that's coming up for a vote tonight as well is is um the new iPad lease for the students. Um currently the new iPad lease, which provides, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, an iPad to every student. Correct. Correct. Is going to cost about $900,000. They can actually trade in the old MacBook Airs, which will actually bring that cost down to about $600,000. But that's going to be a total of 1550 iPads for the

086students of the district. So, um we talked about kind of how the students are using that today. I think I've really became out of date with how little they're using the variety of things that we used to use when we were in the classroom, meaning computers, textbooks, all those things. They're using iPads for the bulk of a lot of those things to my understanding. So um we also talked about you know obviously one of my concern is you know you you lease those out to or essentially you know rent those out to all those students you know how are we you know tracking and maintaining you know getting those iPads back in good condition you know and I think when they sign up for registration they have to sign some sort of agreement basically stating

087that you know they're going to take care of it and then actually refund it. They did say that the replacement cost of an iPad if a student loses it or whatever is about $324. did say that there is concerns, you know, in getting that money back when that does come up. So, but obviously it's going to cost the district a lot of money, but clearly something that they're utilizing and something that they have to have to get the education that they need. So, we'll take a look at that tonight. Um, and that basically covered the bulk of it. So, the parents are getting the paras are getting iPads. Yes. Yes. As well. So, and then Christie, you're welcome to mention anything that I forgot. So, um I would just say that it's a significant cost

088savings uh going from the MacBooks to the iPad. So, correct. Yep. All right. Great. Thank you for all the updates. We'll move along to number five, bond planning discussion. Yeah. So, we'll kind of start just from uh what's been happening the last six weeks. Just want to bring everybody up up to speed and get um some input or thoughts from the board collectively. Um but we have had that that core team which includes a few board members, administrators, directors, um FE representatives, um Carl A Nelson, and we've been looking at kind of the feedback from the survey which I've shared with all the different committees. Um a couple themes that came from that. Number one, the tax burden and just the cost. that was a big reason why um people maybe didn't vote or felt

089like it was too much, too big, whatever. Uh another piece had to do with kind of the the grade structure, what that looked like. Um some other things that that came out of that again was, you know, the the cost connected to maintenance versus new construction. So, as we were kind of navigating these these meetings, we were looking at timeline, what we need to make sure we got done before the end of this school year. number one was agree to a a number that we're going to put on the ballot. Um the number that we're going to ask people to sign for signatures, petitions, um before the end of the school year so that we could get um our employees that want to sign that the ability to do it before we go off for

090summer. So then we'll kind of have a number of what we need to spend time over the next three months, two and a half months getting signatures on. And so essentially we've we've got two options. And here's kind of the discussion I'd like to have with all of you is do we look at pretty similar um square footage space, try to fit as many students as we possibly can in there. Um go to geo bond as high as we can get or do we look at the feedback, maybe scale it back a little bit, reduce some of the square footage in that space, you know, whether that's the fourth grade kind of mindset wing that we had looking at it or other spaces. um and then reduce that that geo bond rate um as far

091as the number. So Evan's going to dive into a sheet that he shared with each of you um that you have access to to kind of look at those options and then really we'll just turn it over to you to kind of share and discuss kind of your thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. Um you guys should have this bond options for project worksheet. If you don't, let me know. Um, so kind of what I mapped out is I've been working with Macles over the last couple days and I'm just seeing where our current bonding capacity is at and I presented two options for you guys kind of off the current environment or the current feedback that we received. So option A reads very similar to what we proposed last November um that failed with updated numbers. Um

092so if we were to do a max geo bond funding which is um row two or row three we can go to bond or max capacity of 39.5 million on the geo bond and that's based on numbers currently. So projecting out that could be higher but as it sits that's what it is correct. That would be if we went to bond today. Um and then say bond funding would be at a $19.7 million max. So if you took those two funding streams together you could do a total project of 60.2 million. Um that does not mean the project's going to come in at 60.2 million. It just means that's our availability. Um there's a projection of about 1 million in interest earnings. Um so tying back to as we think about like the depository discussion

093coming down the road or something um in the future is when we sell bonds, we're need to place to place that cash um as we're doing the project and as we pay bills. So, as we place that cash in institutions, we're expected to get about $1 million in revenue. So, that'll cover almost one annual payment. Um, that would be a tax levy of $2.70. So, that' be the same calculation we kind of showed last year. Um, what's kind of new u moving forward or an option we discussed is we can actually do a 23-year save bond. Um the reason why we can do that is in 201 our current u revenue purpose statement that ties to save funding actually expires and we're now within a range where we can actually extend the life of the

094bond out to 23 years. Doesn't mean we have to. We can still do it at 20 years or less but that is now an option to extend that same bond out 23 years. Um and a geo bond is 20 years um max. Um that'll be at $2.70 today. And if property values raise that can go down or we can do a surplus levy to try to continue to pay it off early. Um interest savings um there's none really specified at this current moment and the referendum requirements. So 60% voter approval um legislation closed this week. Um so nothing changed on that end. So we sought to get a 60% supermajority to pass the geo bond and the public hearing that we did on the state bond last year since the amount is down from last

095year. July 2024 hearing should be able to stick. So we already have that still on the table to use. Um also we'll verify with legal counsel to triple check that. But our impression is that we wouldn't have to go back to a public hearing or a vote at the board table for that save capacity. Um, option B, this is kind of the projection of what we're thinking if um, like Zach was describing, if we reduce a little bit of the square footage based off some of the feedback, we're looking at a total project. So, this would be just this project of costing about 54.2 million. Um, assuming we want to use max save bond, it' be 19.7 million out of save, leaving 34.5 million on the geo bond question, which presents us two different tax

096levy options when we're doing our budget every year. Remember, when we go to vote, it's a dollar figure. It's not the levy. Um, but if we were to do 34.5 and we wanted to run it out for 20 years, the levy would be $2.40 to $2.50 depending on property value when we sell. But we would have the option also do $2.70. If we were to do $2.70 as it sits today, we'd pay off that bond in 17 years. Um, which would save 2.7 million um in interest over those three years of just paid off quicker. Um and it's the same approval 60% um for the geo bond and then the July 2024 hearing will still s uh stick for save. So I just want to present those two options um to you guys and we'll

097have a discussion or kind of looking for consensus on where you want us to go. There's no vote just kind of consensus or guidance um next steps. Yeah, I think just keeping in mind, you know, if we're truly aiming to become a destination district where we all belong, learn, and grow, um what's going to be the option that we need to put forward and um move on. I think, you know, the first first thing that comes to my mind is I feel like all of us were pretty pretty strongly in agreement that this really is the best thing for our school district. that it is the highest and best use of our tax dollars. And I think, you know, to to dumb down any version of this, we would we would be doing a disservice

098to our community. Um, you know, we were we were really close to getting to that 60%, unfortunately. We fell, you know, just short. Um hopefully we can do some more educating around what the actual financial benefits to our community are and you know just re-emphasizing how important it is for a small town like ours to have quality schools. You know we're not going to continue to bring back young people to a small town if we don't have the facilities to teach their kids. and um I really feel like the plan that we presented um is what our school district needs. You know, it gets us towards that future goal of the one campus. You know, it's the first step and why spend more time and money unnecessarily to redesign something that we've already, you know,

099said this is what's best for us. Well, I agree. You know, where I I think I made mine stand. I per I agree with everything Christie said. Um I think that yes, uh it is very very important to listen to the people that voted no. Why did you vote no? But I think that we have to listen to the 58% that voted yes. And uh I think that to be a destination and I am very pleased with the mission statement that came out the destination district um that option A we have to go back in and not redesign it. I think the uh we should go in and ask the community to support um fully this mission of their public schools and get it and get a quality building that uh not only meets our

100needs now but in the future. And I I personally wouldn't even redesign the plan to move the fourth graders there. Um, I've tried my best not to project what happened 60, 50 years ago into the future because it that was another planet. But when I was in elementary school, it was K through 7th grade in each building and we were able to manage it. And so I think that this the plan we had segregated classes uh it aided the throughput into the through the lunch area. U I think it met the needs of our school district now and in the future better than option B. And uh as far as the $2.7 million savings and interest savings, I think that we could manage that and there should be nothing in the uh bond indenture that

101prevents us from adding adding payments to pay it off early or even refund it um if it if it's there. So we could manage that 2.7 million throughout the 20-year life of this bond. um adding extra principal payments if we needed to. So, um I perfectly agree with everything Christy said. So, I I endorse that. And on option A, I didn't map it out where we'd be doing a $2.70 all 20 years. I did a trickle down based on a 3% property value growth. Um so, that's why I'm not showing any interest savings there. Um you can always go back down the road and map that out, too. I'm sure there's I'm sure there is savings. I just don't know what it would be at this moment. So yeah, I think it's important to note

102too that our end goal is kind of a K through whatever cuz you know this is just step one. Um we can't do all of it at once but eventually we do need to design this correctly in a way that the shared areas are in a place where we can add onto the building. um you know have the gyms and the lunchrooms kind of in an area where we can add on then you know K through four, K through five, whatever we need to add on um later on to this building so that we end up with a building that is you know end up with one campus would be great eventually. But yeah, getting everything besides the high school in one area would should be our twostep two-phase goal here. agree, you know, and

103I would just also hope that the public acknowledges that I don't think it's that often that you see a board that's all unanimously in agreement so like adamantly together. And I I do feel like our board has that. And so I hope that the community values that in some regard, you know, the fact that we all have put in a lot of time and energy and we really do feel confident that this is the right plan for our district and that's why we, you know, don't feel like it is the right decision to make these changes because, you know, ultimately we want to do what's best for our community. We want to be the best stewards of their tax dollars. I know we want to come up with a number that we want to put

104on the addition, but it's also going to cost more to build the building we wanted to build last year, now a year later or three years later, whatever, you know, by the time we get there. Um, I guess so. Can we talk about how much more expensive or can we still build the same building or um Yeah. So, right now the projection is from $375 a square foot, it's up to $439 a square foot. Yeah. So, significant increase over the course of really a year. Um, so no, even with the the that higher number, the 39.5 or whatever it is, probably isn't going to be able to produce 110,000 foot facility. Um, again, once we finalize this kind of where we're at here, then we're going to look at the programming documents, which we spent

105some time on today, so that Carl and Nelson and their team can really map out what that probably would would end up costing for um Yeah. So, I mean, we could all be I did a back of the envelope calculation and it's about it it $439 a square foot has about $2 million to the project. The the building is about $48 million and then allocating $2 million to tear down the other school. Right. And I Yeah, I guess another component is we want this building to be really flexible because we don't exactly know our needs over the next 10 to 15 years, right? So it could initially be a 5 through8 building. It could be uh it could it could shift to 2 through 7. It could it could shift around. So I think we

106just want to be aware that our district is going to have different needs. you know, I see the destination district as well as everyone here at the table. It might take, you know, a few years to get there. Um, it might mean different uses of other buildings. Um, so we have to, I guess, move forward with that real flexibility in what we're creating so that we're not backed into a corner with something that's only serving the immediate need. Now, yeah, I think flexibility is key. We talked about that a lot in our strategic planning meeting. Um just you know right now where enrollment numbers are projecting forward versus you know if we get some kids to stay in open enrollments um you know that could change us dramatically. Um and you know changing what grades

107we could fit in that building. So flexibility is paramount for sure. So given our trajectory approximately what might our enrollment be in three years uh grades 4 through 8 is that um I can pull that up for you if you just give me a second. Yeah, if we go it's right on here. It's right on this. It's right on the agenda. And how many years? Three. So, it'll be 2 3 4 25 27 427. That's if this just stays the same. Mhm. For how many grades? That was four, right? When you say stay the same, you mean enrollment not decreasing in those specific grades, but okay. The other grades wouldn't be there yet to that kind of middle level experience, but those right now, I mean, we're at 80 right now in our kindergarten class.

108We have 76 that are currently in enrolled um for for kindergarten for next year already. M um so as it continues I mean those are dropping from the you know hundreds down to the 80s as far as enrollment enrollment goes. So now right now with our enrollment numbers if if we do in fact continue to maintain the 75 to 90 kids in the kindergarten classes coming up once we get a handful of years out I mean will we consider adding additional grade to that building and will we have that in the designs? I think that's what Megan was speaking to the flexibility around what that looks like because could it mean that we have to move 8th grade up to the high school now so we have an 812 building. Um could it mean we

109shift things around at at Penn? Do we move? Yeah, I think those are the discussions we need to have um either in the strategic planning kind of committee world um or the facilities facilities commit committee world so we can bring recommendations to the board table. But I do think from a standpoint of facility spacewise building right now a middle school that's going to be flexible and able to adjust based on kind of how things go. We want them to go here, but they may stay here for a while. Um, and you know, who knows? So, I think having that flexibility is going to be key because that's one thing when we were saw last time, it seemed like to me we kind of had specific what wings were going to go to certain grades, so

110on so forth. And it seems like to me that could change between the time design phase and even having constructed especially within the first few years I have kids there and u obviously some things are going on fair that we hope will get our enrollment numbers driven up a little bit but that's really yet to be seen so I think it's really hard to you know even project that far out because there are so many factors you know online schooling became really you know trendy after co and you know maybe we see that you know go down and get more enrollment that way. Or maybe something happens in a nearby district and we see some you know increased enrollment around that or you know the new housing developments hopefully that's bringing in you know new

111families. So I think it's just really hard to to project you know accurately and that is why we have to you know have that flexibility to be able to kind of pivot and do what works best. The one thing I think we can accurately forecast is that that building is not uh usable for our long-term goals, right? Absolutely. Um and yeah, we need to do something about it for sure. And a new space would be, you know, the most flexible we can look at. Um our existing spaces were built in times where flexibility was not top of mind. uh anything we kn do build coming up um will be at least more flexible than what we have as flexible as we can make it. Mark Thornton, do you have any thoughts? Some of the ones

112that were brought up in some of those meetings too was you can reduce like that third wing, whatever you want to call it, at some point. Um but again you don't want to reduce the others because we need to have that flexibility of moving it in even later. So even if you do take a slice now you don't want to really reduce the commons or reduce you know some of the other spaces because you want to be able to again get that one campus. So it's a matter of do you do it all at once? Do you do most of it and slide that in as you know get most of it done and add another one. There's more complexity there. So yeah, I think you have to, you know, keep in mind too, like

113it's not going to get less expensive, it's going to get more expensive. And, you know, to cut a small portion is not really going to save much money because you're still, you know, paying the overall costs of the project and the design and everything. So, you know, to go back and cut things, you know, you're you're spending more money to redesign and do, you know, these things. And again, in the long run, it's going to end up costing you more money if you do have to go add additional space. I I think one thing I always want to mention is is you know for me this is probably since being on this board this has been one of the most difficult things for me to wrap my head around because I work and I feel

114like represent a lot of people that don't really have much of a vested interest in the district. So it's not so much the people I'm thinking of aren't people that so much have a concern about the children. It's more concerned about how their tax dollars are being managed. And I have seen too many scenarios right now. And I've seen too many bids and too many too many things that need to be done in that building that I just don't see any other way other than it just being simply much more inexpensive to actually build a building than actually continue to maintain that. And I think that's what has to be maintained. It I'm I want to be honest with you guys in my position. If I saw that it was going to be more expensive

115to maintain or keep that building, I would probably be pushing the other way and this wouldn't be unanimous board. I've been sitting through this for too long and too many meetings to really look the other way. And that's what I want the community to start to realize because it just I don't want to say it's an unfixable building because anything is fixable, but there's just been too many things that have been done wrong on that building for too many years. I think we can get it feasibly rectified and that's why it's going to be so key to make sure this new one gets done right. So Mark, on a on a cash flow basis, if if it was feasible to renovate and would cost the district less, I'd vote with you. Yeah. But I can't

116vote to renovate this building. Because just run the numbers, it's better to have 110,000 square foot building to even try to renovate. I've been sitting through these meetings for four years and I still continuously get phone calls from people upset with me. You know, why would you be in support of this and your position and the environment that you work in? Because ultimately it's going to cost us less money. I truly believe that. So, if it's done right, ask. So, bond question last year was for 38,515,000. Correct. Yep. So, you're proposing here option A would go to 39.5. Correct. Correct. Okay. I think that's one of the questions we will get which is obviously just every year you wait it's going to get more and more expensive for less and less square footage. So do

117you remember what it was? I found that two years before let me go 34 and a halfish and we weren't planning on using save funds. Okay. At least to my knowledge. Oh, wow. That's all right. And Evan knows uh you know Charles City, they built a middle school with only save funds for less than 20 million what, eight years ago? 2017, $19 million brand new school. Every year we don't get this done. It costs more money. I don't see construction costs going down in the in the future. So, do we need a vote or what? We're not voting, but we would want maybe a consensus or I don't know. Yeah, we don't need to like take a vote, but I I mean, I'm hearing everyone seems more towards option A, but can you talk about

118why we'd want to I mean, is that kind of the do you guys feel like we want to go and we can somehow manage the you know, just go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was thinking once once we get back from FE and Carly Nelson's as we kind of program some of these things, um what they think it's going to cost. If it's if the 30 if the 34 and a half plus the save won't cover that with a good cushion just for all the different things, then I think we would go to that other number. But if we can do it with that, thinking about kind of this flexible mindset, um, with the intent of having, you know, this one campus eventually moving that K kind of four over at some point with another

119space. Um, if we can do that at 30 34 and a half, great. with this first phase, I guess, would there be push back or would you guys if it was only fifth through 8th, is that going to be something that's you're not in support of, I guess, is the question. Um, what were the numbers? About a quarter of the people listed that as a possibility of why they didn't vote for it. 33 out of the 121 that voted no said it was because of the great ban structure. Um, and again, I don't think we want to build it off of the grainband structure if we're really thinking about we may have to move some things, you know, in the next three to five years after we open it. Um, there's still some programming that

120has to happen because of the grade levels, but I think we can be they can be creative. And what a told us is right now, I mean, they're willing to update the design as it sits free of charge kind of based on what we decide from a programming space standpoint, which is nice. If I think the consensus is the 110,000 square foot building if we can get it with the 39 and a half, right? And the grade bands don't really go into that, right? So based on square footage, I'm thinking right now it would still be a 4 to eight building, but that doesn't that I don't think we need to be trapped into that. Okay. Okay. because we may want to move eighth grade to the high school at some point. And it could

121be in four years, grades three to seven. But I I think the 110,000 foot building gives us the greater flexibility. Yeah. And the cash flow numbers are telling us that we can we can do that at $439 a square foot. So, I think what we should do is tell FE and Carly Nelson our consensus is 110,000 square ft at 439 with a $2 million tear down. And I think the program that we went through today with them was 10 what was it? Five 105,000 square feet is what we did today was the the program we went through. Now, we looked at that and subtracted some here, added some there. It was me, Evan, Megan, Courtright, um, Carly, WY. Do we have anyone else there? So, we were looking at all these spaces, but it was

122at 105,36 ft. Um, so when I'm guessing it's going to be close to that or a little bit above. Um, and there's some spots where we probably could go back up from a storage standpoint, but we did change some of the room sizes. what was originally programmed back back this last time. There were some spaces that weren't big enough. Um some that maybe were a little bit too big. So, but that's two gyms as well. Correct. We did not compromise on that. No. No. No. The only spaces we were looking at um compromising were some some additional classrooms. And that is also moving the district office. Correct. Yep. And the savings there was you thought 50k a year for moving the district offices over 53,000 a year and we didn't hear there was no negative

123feedback around that idea in any of the feedback we got. Where does that much savings come from? I mean just simply I mean that's just I mean those are some really like easy hard cost. So that's utilities, electrical bill, insurance, um insurance um some disposal fees like trash cans. So, it's just mainly like the everyday piece. That's before we get into, you know, maybe some tech changes or bathroom sharing or But then do we still need the school buses the maintenance? Yeah. So, the school bus or maintenance barn will still exist. It'd be just this specific building. So, you still have to have a market for this building then, too. And yeah, we have to sell it. Yeah. But I'm just saying there has to be a business that has a use for it, too.

124not unload the I mean I I don't know how you place a value in this building is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, there's a lot of office space. I don't think that 53 was putting a value on this building though. That's ongoing costs. Yeah. Yeah. That wasn't like what we would if we sold it for 500 grand. That wasn't including that at all. I'm just saying I have no idea what this would bring. So we'll have available office space in Fairfield. So it's in pretty good condition. It should it should have some value for sure. Any other thoughts? Thank you. Thanks. Can we should we take a very brief recess or Yeah, we'll just check in. I can take a minute. Do you want to do the consent agenda first and then Yeah. then

125do it? Sure. Just to get through that. Sounds good. All right. Uh, do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Salute. Second. Uh, any discussion? Okay. Um, all in favor? I posted carries. Uh, public participation real quick. Seeing none, we'll uh move on to new business after a brief recess. Perfect. Thank you. that rowdy crowd. Uh, we'll begin again. 8:21 p.m. Uh, new business. Do I hear a motion to approve Iowa State Bank and Trust Company is the official depository for the Fairfield Community School District in accordance with the stipulations outlined in the banking services request for proposal? So move and Mark Thornton. Uh any discussion here? Evan, you want to fill us in on this? Yeah, I can start a little bit. you know, obviously we put out an RFP

126um to remove all of the funds um from ISJIT and get them in one of our local financial institutions um and really go away from having multiple accounts with multiple banks um locally and things we wanted to look at and I'll let Evan kind of walk through the rubric. Um number one was was interest rate, making sure that they're at or above what is is been providing us. Um, and then the second piece to that was really just the overall um, I don't know if I want to say customer service and community involvement and just history around um, being a part of Carefield. So those were kind of the two pieces as we looked through this. Yeah, absolutely. So there's um, five categories that we kind of scored. So the um committee was made up

127of Megan Robbins as the finance committee representative just due to affiliations um Zach Wel um myself and Tracy W who's our payroll manager um we met with all besides one bank in person but we had several phone conversations um with that um bank throughout this um process like Zach alluded to. We were really looking at um ISJ current interest rate to make sure it was at or above. Um ISJ when we were doing this bid was at 4.08%. Iowa State Bank came in at 4.23%. So that's above um the current is rate which would have generated additional $25,500 worth of revenue spread out across all the funds that um encompasses. Um the question I have received is was that the highest interest rate and the answer is no. But it was close to the highest

128one. But the difference of what they proposed was a quarter long lock in with a floor. So it was not going to dip below 4.23% during a quarter and it could go up depending on what rates or what metrics they're using at the given time. So it provided some stability, but it could go down after that quarter, but then it would stay at whatever that was for a quarter. Correct. and they agreed to meet with us on a quarterly basis to see what they're analyzing, what their rates are currently doing, kind of see what is JIT's doing and consistently communicating and making sure it's competitive. So, the stability along with interest rate increase um was a major factor in that decision. Um availability and quality of services um three of the banks um did a

129really really nice job. They actually all got 11s um out of 12. um you know just participation in the school advocacy for the school um three of the banks did a really really nice job on that u bank stability so we're measuring assets but what we were very closely looking at there as a group was assets loaned out back into our local community sofield Jefferson County as a whole so we put that money in it goes back into our um local economy so we were asking percentage of assets loaned out locally so That's how we're kind of man managing bank stability. Um technology innovation actually across the board they all got the same story. I guess you can see that on the RFP. Um they all had unique technology features but it all was right

130there. I guess we didn't really have a clear mindset of what a perfect 12 would be but they were all very very comparable. And then the last big piece was cost conversion. Um the cost conversion really tied to we're transferring as I said since today about $17 million. I didn't want to have a huge wire fee or a percentage for that transfer over um because that could be a detriment um to the district or unpredicted financial costs. So we look at the cost conversion of moving funds over um to the bank. Um so yeah, that was kind of our thought process as we went out. Um, and you can see the total sum of scores there. It was close between two banks. Um, but tally done up as is. And I'm recommending the high score

131for the bank. Any questions? So, we're going to vote, but I know that maybe I'd like to do this for a roll call. Okay. And there'll be a few people recusing themselves. Any more discussion? Sorry. Go ahead. All right. Mark Porter. I. Ty Ward. Abstain. Christy Kessle. Abstain. And Robbins. I. Mark Thornton. I. Deborah Williamson. I. Davies. Abstain. Passes 403. Abstaining. Okay, great. 8.2. Do I hear a motion to approve June 16th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. for holding a public hearing on the proposed 2024 2025 budget amendment for the Fairfield Community School District as required by Iowa code? So much second. There's seen eye. All right. Um discussion here report. Yep. Any any questions on what Dave was talking about? Makes sense. Okay. All in favor? I I opposed. Motion carries. Okay. Some capital projects.

132Do I hear a motion to approve the bid from Unified in the amount of $29,920 for services related to the 2025 2026 capital projects to be paid from the Pebble Fund? So moved. So that remarks Mark Thornton. All right. Any discussion here? So the unified, what's that about? Yeah. So, um, we go to gas bids, um, every year and we're waiting on those results, but we get bulk fuel to deliver to our fuel pumps behind the bus station. They're just out of date, out of service, not um, pumping um, gas quickly anymore. Um, so with some savings that came out of actually the roof bid that you guys will look at later on, Josh proposed that we update those pumps to better take care of our um, buses. He reached out to two or three

133different contractors to bid, one did not, and Unified was the lowest bid and he was happy with the product. So, he replaced in our fuel pumps over at the most bar. So, you guys just have gas tanks that are no diesel tanks. Is that right? And there's two different pumps. I believe one is diesel. So, when I see the bills come through, you'll see diesel bulk fuel and gas bul. Are you replacing both gas and diesel tanks or? Yep. It would be both the tanks. How many diesel vehicles and buses do we even have anymore? Oh jeez. Uh I think we are running three or four diesel buses right now. They're the ones that aren't on the lease. Um mainly our special education buses. Glasses. Do they all have to be replaced? I mean is

134the diesel ones necessary? Um yeah. So how they tie together for the fuel and how the bids work? Yeah. They come as a I don't know if you've ever seen like the unit at the gas station. So just make sure the lines work. Oh, they are mask. It's just you know just for only three or four buses. know if it was necessary to spend the money or not. So we do know when we do the bulk fuel that pays for itself having it on campus through those beds. So do we know how old the current ones are lifespan on on new pump? Oh jeez. Um it's a great question. I mean they've been there since that building was pretty much put in. Um so I don't want to say that year out loud because I

135can't think of it off the top of my head. It's been a while. It's been a while. Yeah. Any other questions? Discussion. All right. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Do I hear a motion to approve the bid for manning commercial roofing excluding the high school gym roof as presented? So moved. Second. Deborah and Christie. uh discussion here on these bids. Yeah. So, um WY did a good job. He reached out to three different roofing companies um based on the product that we need. Manning was the um only company to submit a bid. A couple people said they were not going to submit a bid or be able to compete or the travel or the capacity to even get it completed this summer. Um Josh was very pleased with um what they did and

136as I said they came in lower than what he was expecting um which allowed him to do the fuel pumps. So recommendation is main roofing as presented excluding high school gym roof um which will get pushed to the 26 27 capital plan. Is that just because of expense or It was so we were talking about this solar conversation. So we moved all the pence roofs over. So Josh was trying to estimate what other roofs after that change because the pence roofs are still in good shape compared to other. So he was trying to push as many out within the budget and that one came in about where he expected but it would put us 10 grand over budget for the year. And he said that's really the next part that needs to go. So he'd

137rather move that out one more year. So these just got pushed up because we are the solar project, right? Yeah. So he went back and reanalyzed which roofs are more pertinent now if we weren't going to do a solar project. And have we worked with this roofing company before? Yes, he's had experience between old jobs and current jobs. And he's gone up on all of our roast and core sampling and recommended products. and some of his plan changed slightly based on he's like this one's actually worse than this one. I recommend doing this and so he's been really good to work with. So you said excluding the high school gym. I mean so the four I mean are we doing all four of these sections right now then? The roof one at Washington five Washington

138roof 15 at the high school roof 21 at the high school because I thought you said something about excluding the gym. Yeah. So, if you look on page three of the bid in there, you'll see number one, gym roof is 15,000 square ft and exclude crossed out. So, everything that's not crossed out is what would be included. Any other questions? Still looking through it or All in favor? I I opposed. Motion carries. Do I hear a motion to approve W industries to create and supply additional engraved trash cans as requested? So moved. Second. I Christie. This ties to the marketing budget. We all lot in recurrent expenses every year for $50,000. Um, as we discussed in facilities committee a couple meetings back, um, we purchased a bunch with the Trojan heads. They're heavier last year,

139but we've noticed throughout the year is areas that trash is still left. So, usually the answer is more trash cans. So, these these are the same ones we got last time. Yep. Yep. How much money is this? And how many are we getting? It's 11 grand, I think. That's 11 grand. And how many trash cans should say on there? Six or seven. 15. 15. 21. 20. 21. Yeah, that sounds right. 21 15.6. I mean, these are relatively undestructible, right? I mean, they should last very long. Yeah. And one of the big pieces is they're heavy. They're stainless steel coated properly. Um, our custodians and maintenance crew has seen a drastic decrease in amount of time they spend picking up trash every day. Um, so are they mostly going to middle school and high school or

140I think it's it's scattered kind of throughout the district, but I think the majority of them are going to the high school like around the parking lot area. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Right. Board policy new items. Do I hear a motion to approve the board policies with no change? So move. Second. Thank you. Ty and Mark. Um any discussion here? As Mark mentioned, these are the 900 series. Um, just kind of the general comm communication policies. No change. Any questions? Discussion. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. I hear a motion to approve board policies with change and wave a second reading. So move. Second Christian Dave. Any questions here on the change? The reason behind the wave of the second readiness is just grammatical errors. We

141had extra words in there. So it's not any content change. It's just shall and be that don't need to be in there. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. Do I hear a motion to approve board policies for deletion? Some moved. I second. Any questions, discussion? This one we went through. It doesn't say a lot. It's not required. So, we got discussion about it. Just thought it would up. Yeah. Redundant. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. All right. To hear a motion to approve rescheduling the regularly stated July meeting of the board of directors to July 14th, 2025 and to hold a work session prior to the meeting beginning at 5:00 p.m. So moved. Second. Mark Christie. Any questions? All in favor? Opposed. All right. Um, so here a motion to approve the milk bid

142submitted by Anderson Ericson um as recommended by the food service director. So moved second Mark Thornton. Any discussion here? It sounds like has Prairie Farms ever serviced us or is that um we've been AE for since mainly since Stephanie's been here every couple years or every year she has to go out to bid and we're required to serve milk as part of the dietary guidelines. So she reaches out to Prairie Farms every time and they send letters back like this saying we're not going to bid. So, we got she sent out four letters and a still won a bid and so um usually the letters talk about a shortage or they can get enough supply for us in our area. So, all in favor? I opposed. Milk bid carries. Um do I hear a motion

143to approve the 2024 2025 graduates as presented? So moved. Second. Tai and Mark Porter. All in favor? I opposed. Great. How many graduates do we have this year? We'll be right at close to 100. We We'll have a couple that'll be game time decision. Dave East 1972 8.8. Do I hear a motion to approve True North statement of work as presented? So move. Second. Dave and Christie. Any questions, discussion here? So the HR committee, what's been your guys's uh feelings working with them? I've only been on one of their initial meetings. I do believe that was there. I mean, seems like people are, I guess, excited about it. I don't know. There hasn't been a bunch of effort. So, yeah, I don't know if excited is the word, but they're pleasantly surprised by, I would

144say, the customer service so far. Um, the onboarding process, we've had four of those dates. Um, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I do think once, you know, we really get to the change come July, there's going to be more questions and more clarity that probably is going to need to be shared, but um and they're going to be your front line for taking care of those questions or just supplying you guys with the info so you can answer it. No, they'll be our go-to. Now, when you think about a TPA and having a separate entity, Consociate Health, really handles the claims. Um, that's probably where Evan and Tracy would will spend more of their communication at times because we're paying those now. Um, so that'll be different for the back house, but on the front

145end, it's going to be and we told True North this up front, we're the ones that you're the ones that we hired to be the people that talk to our people. So, um, there's still maybe some some pieces because we have a it's called Med One, which is all the pharmacy side of things. So, there's there's a whole part there. So, Evan and I have been meeting with them with Consociate Health and then there's another party for our HSA, FSA um, component and that's another party. Um, so there's a lot of pieces that are moving in this and True North really is the one that oversees and kind of brokers all of it. Um, yeah. So time will tell. I mean really whether or not it's good customer service and our people feel like um

146they get what they need or it's been you know seamless. But is it's going to be a shift. What was the final deductible thing there we had figured out like the different options? No, with getting the information from Walmart. Yes. Yeah. We uh finally got the majority of the data that we needed. Yeah. Yep. So, we were able to go to stop loss and get the different quotes and all of that was it all worked at the last six days before open. And this will take effect July. July one. Okay. Uh all in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. All right. technology lease. Uh, do I hear a motion to approve the three-year lease board resolution for the technology refresh as presented, including the application of buyback funds to reduce year 1 and year three payments

147with annual payments not to exceed the quoted amounts while acknowledging payment dates may be adjusted to align with physical plant and equipment levy. Revenue with payments made on or around October 15th of each year, 2025, 2026, and 2027. Deborah second and Christie. All right. I have questions about this one. The uh how much are we saving for moving to iPad instead of uh MacBooks? Yeah. So, the iPads are $324 a piece. A MacBook Air was 700. And John, what was the MacBook Air? Is it It was just over 800. Yeah. So, from 800 down to 324. Why are they so expensive? Well, I think it's for me personally, this might be an age thing. I think iMacs are way easier to use and I'm way more productive on a laptop type thing than an iPad.

148See, I was just going to ask like if you guys thought about like just kind of differences in productivity and the kids going from a laptop like iMac to a iPad where they're touching and everything like I'm I'm thinking about kids typing on those things and not on a keyboard. They'll have a keyboard. They have a keyboard attached. whole. Yeah, the whole it's one one piece, but it opens up, stands up just like this. The keyboard isn't quite as big as this one, but it it's going to have the same feel. It's got the same touch pad. It still has the touchcreen capability, obviously, because it's an iPad, but it'll all be right here. The plugin, it'll have the headphone jack just like like these do. Um, we've been piloting them since midFebruary at the

149middle school and high school. Some kids have, you know, enjoyed them, some haven't. Um, so they'll still have the CA, it'll still be this same capabilities. It's just not as big. And they have good cases on them, so we're going to not have a bunch of the case that they were trying, not trying, the case that they wanted us to get was actually more expensive. But then I kind of pushed back and I'm like, this doesn't I mean, it doesn't it just it feels different. Um, and I kind of to your point, so we we had them find some other ones that they've used or that they haven't used but they're going to use. And so we're going with one that um was about $10 cheaper, but it seems from again from what we've gathered

150to be just as durable and um probably more conducive to the feeling of a laptop. Tristan, what are your thoughts? my thoughts from what I've heard from him after I had my meeting with him today. I went in and looked at like the case brand that we're thinking of buying. I'm thinking the the case the case it looks like an iPad or it looks like a MacBook from what I'm seeing with like the the the keys like I know this one the one that we're like thinking of getting the keys are more marketed as this is like a laptop and it seems like a laptop. Me personally haven't been in a class yet where they're test driving them, but I've had friends from those classes and they're saying that that the iPads are just as

151seamless as the MacBooks and they work as well. So cool. And the screen sizes are not not as big as this. It would be like the what's what's that one? It'd be it'd be that size. Yep. operating system is a little different, right? You're using um I mean still iOS. I'm not sure. There's there's apps built in, but from a um you know, Chrome and Safari standpoint, they just Yeah. The biggest thing to me would be like on an iPad, you wouldn't be able to do like uh like tabs, like have different programs working at the same time kind of. They've got differences there between the iMacs and the iPads that I would notice. Another difference will be kids are going to have their own Apple ID that's connected to their device through school. So,

152that's going to be different um for a variety of reasons. A lot of it has to do with security and safety. But yeah, um the other option I mean we looked at was Chromebooks. Um, and I those are significantly cheaper, too. Um, more of the laptop type design. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with them, but just from a overall um, usability standpoint and upkeep, they're the district I worked in prior had a lot of those. Um, and it just was kind of a nightmare. All of our staff will still get the MacBook Airs, the new ones. Um, and then one of the additions to this is going to be keeping back some of the the newest MacBook Airs that we we do have so that we can issue those to our pair

153of professionals um as part of their uh employment with us um just from a supporting student standpoint and from a being able to do some of the things we asked them to do. Um so they're not doing it on their phone all the time. So the last component on the financial end that I wanted to say how loud is we're also purchasing Apple Care with this product. Um so it's an overnight replacement for a charger, broken screen, so forth onwards. Um you get two per year per device, so up to six of the lifespan free like free of charge to replace it. But why we went that route, it was a little bit of an added cost, but I'm able to back off our insurance um equipment maintenance insurance on the number of devices we

154insure. So the cost of Apple Care, moving it to the PEL based on that vote and relieving the insurance cost out of management fund in the over the three-year period should assist on the tax levy as well. Um currently pay about $196,000 a year to insure all of our devices. Um, and when we looked at Apple Care, looked at like 70,000. So, if you look at the three-year trend around that, we're a couple hundred,000 ahead on that mainframe levy. So, well, I love a good bargain, but I'm concerned about the um and I've never read a study that that proves this, but I assume that with a smaller screen, productivity might go down only because my own experience with big screens and more screens, but then I don't have that experience as a student using

155a smaller screen. So, what do you think about screen size? I'm thinking the screen size won't matter that much because I did some slight research on these iPads, too. I believe the screen size is around 11 in and these are only 13 in, I believe. So, I don't think a 2 in difference will sway that much in productivity. That's that's my two cents. Thanks. Yes, man. Yeah, I love the I love the saved money and all that. I'm just if it was me personally and my work told me that I was moving to an iPad, I would throw a huge fit. Well, we didn't tell our employees that they're doing that. Just our student, right? So, I'm putting myself in their shoes, but uh yeah, I'm I'm willing to give it a shot. So, it's

156a three-year lease, right? Yeah. And then what happens after the three-year lease typically? I mean, that's kind of where we're at now. Yeah. So, we could do a couple different things. you can sell back some of them. Um the buyback is part of it. If we wanted to keep some or lease some longer or purchase them outright, we can do that. Um I mean, it's a variety of options um kind of based on where we're at or what we need. And the buyback's part of this motion, too, right? We're getting 310,000 back for our And some of that will be Apple purchasing it and others would be a third party vendor that's buying the ones that maybe Apple won't. And the I was say the quotes that we got are like the very lowest pot.

157Like we're for sure going to get this no matter what. It may be more. So yeah, the buyback's part of EB's. You'll see year one payment. It's going to say like $600,000, but that includes the buyback on top of it. And our current Pebble plan budgets $29,000 per year for the Apple lease, but with that buyback, it's actually be $155,000 a year. So we're just frontloading. So pretty much what we're what's on the table is you're telling them that yes, use that trade in money to put towards the first payment um which is to buy the year two and three down 0% interest. That's rare. All right. Well, any other this this other like this old contract? Is it just cuz we're amending it cuz we've already had the one that's in place? So, no.

158They're showing you that old contract because that contract ties to the ones were sound back. So, when that board approved, okay, those devices, they wanted to show what essentially what agreement they're going off of from the buyback. Gota was trying to put dates together and it didn't make any sense, but that makes sense. I asked the same question. All right. Um, anything else? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Superintendent updates. Yeah. Um hopefully to get our ISASP um published reports early June. So, as soon as we get those, we're going to um celebrate as much as we can and highlight and communicate a lot of that um proficiency growth um that we've seen so far in house. Can't share all of that yet just because it's not final, but there's a lot of exciting

159things there. Um I just want to thank Judy, too. I on the back end of all she does um with so many things, but specifically with ISASS, she does a lot of work that takes um the pressure and things off of our principles. A lot of what she did is what in my prior districts I did as a building principal, they don't have to do that here because she does a lot of it. So, that's a huge um blessing. We had, excuse me, uh, just over 30 students receive a IRC, which is an industry recognized credential. There's tons of these types of credentials, but um, we had students in um, welding, health sciences, and the education field all receive these um, IRC's. and I've asked our CTE team to to share some um information with

160me so that I can apply for um some grants through the department of ed that would allow um them to get certified so that kids that take their classes can get um these IRC's as well. So it'll kind of depend on how much information I get from them. I've got to get it all submitted before the end of the month. U but that's a good thing. Um like we had talked about SCAK invited around 35 individuals um some new people the team that was there prior um and our first meeting is June 4th where they're going to set the the tone for what the purpose of that group is. Um walk through our new mission and vision and then we'll have a couple other things on the agenda that that night as well. Set some

161dates. Um we'll probably have four dates for sure that we'll set for next year. uh talked about this I think earlier too, but we had three conference championships this spring. Um both our tennis teams and our our our boys uh track and field team. Uh benefits for our open enrollment um connected to all things um health plan ends on the 30th of May. Uh and then it starts July 1st. I just want to publicly thank all of you um as uh a servant of the district. um sitting on the board is not an easy task. I know you get a lot of things thrown at you um or sent your way. Um and just walking through those uh professionally can be a lot of times and um I thank you for your your service and

162um enjoy working with you. So appreciate that. Uh the last piece was um again connected to our pair of professionals as we've given this belonging survey that subgroup of of employee there's definitely a sense of um or lack of uh sense of belonging and so we had established a a pair of lead team that Evan's kind of taken the lead on. Um they've met throughout the course of the year. Um identifying some things that we could um do to better serve or support them so they feel more valued or appreciated. Um, part of that was getting them all together. We we did that about a month ago, three weeks ago um to get some input around um how we can do that. Some structured questions. We've gathered that information. We're all going to be back

163together again on June 3rd. Um we probably had about 50 that came out of the 75 or so. Um, but we're going to continue um those conversations and start implementing some some things next year that hopefully will allow um yeah, allow them to feel more connected and and better part of the system. So, that's all I got. Thanks. All right, highlights. Tristan, would you like to start? Sure, I can start. I don't have to piggy back off someone for once. Um, I know Jay Thompson isn't here anymore, but it was a really nice, neat put together presentation that he gave and it really provided an insight onto what like our counselors do around school and I thought that was just really cool with how like in-depth he went and how everything was so easily understandable

164about what he had. Awesome. Thanks, Deborah. I'm super excited to move forward with the uh the geo bond process and and hopefully build the new metals. I would ditto both of what they said. I will pull out of what something Jay talked about was Trojan time. So both my kids have been through the middle school or one's still doing it. But I think the Trojan time is a really cool asset that they have there. Um just interacting like he was saying with the different grades. So just something that I think is cool thing to pull in and as he said as they go to the high school they know some people at least a handful from different grades that they've had in the Trojan times. So I've heard some pretty cool stories from at least

165my kids. So, um, yeah, I think that's a cool plus that sometimes gets overlooked of just simple things that they're doing for what is it like 8 minutes or something at the beginning of the day. So, yeah, cool stuff. Thanks, Ty. Um, graduates, it's graduation week. We, uh, we okay 100 or so people to in order to after Sunday start their post high school lives, which is pretty awesome. Um, and I just looked at the forecast. Uh, there's a 70% chance of rain. So, we might be looking at my first personal indoor uh, graduation possibly. We'll test out that new AC. We always use that as an excuse for AC in the gym. Thanks, Mark. Um, I think my highlights would be the title team. I really enjoyed their presentation. I really appreciate the hard

166work they put into the um, helping out those lower levels. You know, I think it's incredible the progress that they've been made in those buildings when it comes to some of those uh those items. And then um I think the other thing would be the milk bid. You know, I love milk when I was a kid. And uh you know, anyways, no. Uh just uh I think I think when you're in elementary school, what? No. Anyways, no. Uh, nah, I kind of joke about the milk thing, but you know, it's uh I always hear my kids talk about it and they really enjoy it. So, I'm glad that we approved that and they get some good milk. So, there we go. Serious. That's hard to really. Come on. Come on. Simple things. Well, my highlight

167was uh I did get a chance on May 8th to make a presentation to the Jefferson County Republicans at Jefferson County Republican women was invited to come. It was a very productive evening. I I really enjoyed it. Um, I went through was able to go through how we calculate our levy and the the drivers behind the levy calculation and uh got to go through and explain the value the uh pop u the valuation on the property and the application of the roll back. And uh so we had a very productive presentation uh as Helina Hayes from House District 88, she's on the education committee was also present as well as Jeff Shipley, House District 87, he's on the education committee, too. And they had Rob Sand from the state auditors who's now running for governor

168on the Democratic side. So that was an interesting evolution. U so we were able to also talk about school funding at the state level and do a little talking also about the proposed property tax adjustments and and how it would affect schools. So we were able to do that and um I was there till 10:30 at night answering the questions. I tried to stay in my lane and not embarrass the family and I hope that I did but I would encourage people that if you do get the opportunity to to talk to groups I think it be great to engage our community. Um, and I was also able to talk to them about why we meet in public, not with the public, and the frustrations we have and ask them to stay after the meeting

169so we could engage them and the frustrations we have and why that why that is. So, um, I thought it was really good. I think we, uh, convinced them. We talked a little about a bit about the new middle school. Yes. And I think I did go a long way to convince some people that uh voted no. Yes. Last time. So I would encourage people to if you get an invitation or whatever, take it. Just as long as Megan knows she's the spokesman say. So anyway, that was my highlight. Um great. Thank you. Um as always the focus on learning. I always appreciate hearing and getting that insight into what's happening in the buildings. Um I got an invitation to go with the fifth graders to the capital. So I I did that last week

170and it's really great to see the kids learning outside of the classroom too. I think those opportunities are really really wonderful for them. Um, so I'm glad that we do that, you know, at the end of the year or whenever through the year, but I know there's a lot at the end of the year in terms of special trips and fun things for them to do as well. So that's it. Um, do I hear a motion to adjurnn? All in favor? Second. I second. Thank you. I'm okay.