001You want to push your button so your new microphones will come on. And are we good back there? All right. So, call the meeting to order at 5:31. And we have four members present. So, we have quorum. I think we'll have one member joining us very shortly. First item is approval of the agenda. >> I move we approve the agenda as is. >> Second. All right. Moved by Deward, seconded by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Oppose. Nay. >> Passes for zero. I can count. It feels really quiet up here today. Uh, next is our celebrations and recognitions. and I will turn it over to Director Dashmitt to talk about Ames High National Honor Society. >> Good evening. If I can have National Honor Society members and also the teacher
002sponsor appear as well. You're good right there. For its exemplary record of leadership, service, and efforts to improve the school and community, the National Honor Society school NHS chapter the overall award of excellence. NHS is supported by its parent organization, the National Association of Secondary School Principles, which also oversees the National Association of Student Councils. The Ames High School NHS chapter distinguished itself this year with initiatives that emphasized inclusion, service, and leadership. To strengthen connections among its 100 plus members, the chapter hosted social events such as pickle ball night and capture the flag, which fostered a sense of community across grade levels. Members also honored staff with a studentrun pancake breakfast and supported the local homeless shelter through a blanket making project, donating dozens of handmade tie blankets. These efforts highlighted the chapter's commitment to
003the NHS pillars while creating meaningful impact both inside and outside of the school. The NSH the NHS chapter pillar awards are prestigious recognitions to celebrate the outstanding achievements of NHS chapters across the country. In addition to basic requirements, the chapters must have demonstrated successful activities that exemplify one or all of the core values of NHS scholarship, leadership, service, and character. Um, we have some students with us tonight that are part of National Honor Society and also Ames High National Honor Society is led by Jessica Zeiss. Congratulations. [Applause] Congratulations and thank you for representing the district so well. Next item on our agenda is public forum. acknowledge that director beer bomb has joined us. Start by reading uh our statement on public forum. Residents of the district, students attending the district, parents or guardians of students
004attending the district and district staff members may address the board about any topic relevant to the district whether on the current agenda or not. Those who wish to speak must sign up at the beginning of the meeting. Speaker participation is limited to three minutes once per item. The views and opinions of citizens addressing the board do not necessarily reflect those of the board, district administration, or staff. Speakers are to remember that Iowa law prohibits the board from discussing specific employees, students, or their performance. Student speakers will state their name and school. Others will state their name and address. And we'll have we have a a microphone set back over here in that corner for public forum. And we have a threem minute timer that you can see on all the screens. If you run over,
005I will refer you to conclude so we can make sure everybody gets plenty and plenty of time and the same amount of time. Um, first up I have uh Bruce Antian Anton. will add for those of you who who haven't done this or for our students that are here. We listen to public forum, but we don't interact during the public forum. They're addressing the board. It's not a give and take. So, for our students that might think that looks weird, I wanted to let you know what was going on. >> Good afternoon. I'm Bruce Anton. I live at 1422 Stafford Avenue in Ames. I retired in 2010 after 30 years of teaching American history and students with special needs at the junior high and middle school level here in Ames. I spent another decade in
006secondary coaching and substitute teaching at the elementary level. We are a multicultural, multi-generational group of parents, educators, students, and community members who are organizing for fully funded public schools that teach the full truth of our history, uphold the dignity of individuals of all races and backgrounds, and have the resources to unlock the full potential of all students so they can be the leaders of tomorrow. A little more than a year ago in early summer, Susie Petra, Judy Lemish, and I joined Public School Strong at a meeting at CCI with Tim Glaza. Since then, we have been gathering signatures at book clubs, breakfast clubs, beer clubs, and at public events like the city hall open house. On the petitions that you have received, we would ask folks, do you support our public schools? The vast majority
007said yes, and the vast majority agreed to sign the petition. Some agreed to take petitions to get signatures at their workplaces or at their social gatherings. And earlier this summer, we reached and then exceeded our signature requirements. Every district has had to reckon with the $2 billion shortfall in state funding just from the point of keeping up with inflation over the past two decades. We're often told you can't solve our education problems by throwing more money at them. But that money would have provided adequate and nutritious food for all our students, timely replacement of textbooks, safe modern facilities, and highly qualified teachers, support staff, and administrators. We believe that the schools that accept vouchers need to be held accountable for the public money they receive. that the income cap needs to be restored and that
008in fact the vast majority of public money needs to be spent on the 92% of students that remain in our public schools. We hope that you will join us in producing the in pursuing the reduction and eventual elimination of the current voucher program. Thank you. >> Thank you, Bruce. Next, I have Judy Lemish. Hello, my name is Judy Lemish. I live at 327 South Maple in Ames. In fact, I was born and raised here and I'm a proud product of the Ames public school system. I am also a member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Iowa's scheme to spend public money for private school vouchers or educational savings accounts, ESAs, is a misuse of this money. Public money is for the public good, like roads, bridges, public safety, schools, and libraries. It must benefit all.
009This money must also be accounted for in a transparent fashion. If we now use public money for private entities, this presents a strange precedent. Would, for example, libraries now be required to give public money to people who choose to use Barnes & Noble instead? One of the operative words here is choice. Choice with regards to private schools is a myth. Forprofit private schools can pick and choose who attends while public schools welcome all. The other important word here is transparency. The use of public money comes with the responsibility of being transparent and accountable to taxpayers and the communities being served. Legislation passed to fund these vouchers or ESAs forgot this part and exempted private schools from this responsibility. Unlike our public schools, it seems to me this public funding of forprofit pri for-profit private schools
010works to create a separate but unequal system of educ. There is no full access and no accountability involved in this scheme. If you remember your history like I was taught here in Ames, you know this country adjudicated this issue a long time ago. In conclusion, I want the Ames Public School Board to stand with me and with all the petitioners to courageously let everyone know it supports our goal to phase out publicly funded vouchers or ESAs and to say public money need only go to public schools. I stand here today as a well-educated, proud, excuse me, graduate of the Ames public schools. Future graduates must be able to share this excellent education and feel the same sense of pride I do. Sorry. I thank you all for your time and your consideration. >> Thank you,
011Judy. [Applause] Next, I have Susie Petra. Susie Petra, 2011 Duff Avenue, retired Ames educator, 30 years, Central Junior High, Ames High School. Also an Iowa CCI member and a public school strong leader. I would like you to visualize this at every event we attended. People lining up, signing this petition, supporting our public schools. People so excited to sign, talking to those around them about finally a chance to do something to show their concern supporting better funding of our public education. And so many many people then said to us, "Signing our name though isn't enough. It can't end here with just these signatures. We want change." Well, it doesn't end here. This is the beginning. We are going to write a bill, a citizen bill, a piece of legislation to address Iowa's educational crisis. Our state
012senator, Herman Kumbach, has offered to sponsor this bill. Madame President, would you please hold up that stack? >> I thought you had a copy. >> We have a big stack of signatures, but >> it weighs 14 pounds. Um, these are petitions presented to the board by us earlier. These signed petitions along with all those gathered from school districts across Iowa will be assembled by Iowa CCI from Ians in small school districts and large rural and urban public schools. These signatures are the voice of the people of Iowa. We value our public schools. We are passionate about their importance. We strongly believe that public education should be fully funded for all of our students. Public education is our society's primary path to a small D democracy. And members of the Ames Community School Board, it begins
013with you. On behalf of Public Schools Strong and Iowa CCI, we have submitted 590 local signatures in support of this resolution, urging the governor of Iowa and the state legislature to fully fund public schools by an annual 5% increase of state supplemental aid adjusted for inflation. restore the income cap to the ESA vouchers, phase out the ESA voucher program over 5 years time, and use public funds for public schools only. We request that you adopt a resolution knowing you have your community's support, and we sincerely thank you for your service to the people of Ames. [Applause] Thank you, Susie. Sorry, I thought you had it. Uh, and next up I have Herman Cornbach. Very nice to join you tonight. Uh, thank you for the time. Uh Susie Petra mentioned she was coming up and uh
014talking to you and uh I said I had just completed updating my figures as far as how well school funding uh from the state has >> address first name and address. I'm sorry. >> Can you state your name and address first? >> Oh, I'm sorry. Herman Kbach 102 Jared Circle. All right. Um, I had just finished updating my usual annual analysis of how well school funding from the state has done in keeping up with inflation or not. Uh, spoiler alert, the answer is not. Um, so I thought I'd come and share some of those numbers with you real quickly tonight. The fundamental building block for state funding of uh public schools and your ability to spend money is the state cost per pupil. That is the amount on a per pupil basis the school districts
015are allowed to spend uh of for general fund purposes. It's funded by a combination of local property tax and state aid. The combination is complicated. Give me an hour. I'll explain it to you sometime. Uh suffice it to say that's your building block where you start from. There are several additional streams of state dollars called categoricals. For example, the teacher salary supplement, the teacher leadership compensation, couple of others. Those are also done on a per pupil basis. The state cost per pupil and the categoricals each year are adjusted by the state percent of growth. So the question here is how has the state percent of growth done in comparison with the rate of inflation? If you'll look at the first chart in the handout and I'm sorry I didn't have enough copies for everybody. The
016first chart here, the bottom line is the actual amount and the line above it, the red line above it is how much you would have had to spend on a per pupil basis had we kept up with the consumer price index each year. As you can see, the gap uh started out small. The the graph is anchored in the year that Kim Reynolds assumed the governorship. Uh the graph shows that the gap has started small uh but uh accelerated the last four or five years. It's now $1,000 per student. How what could you do with $1,000 per student? You could put a new computer in the hands of every school kid in the district. Or you add that up over the 25 students in a second grade classroom. You could hire a teacher's assistant and
017double the amount of per pupil attention you get in learning how to read. or I'm sure you have a couple hundred other ways you could use the money. If you turn to the next graph, I'll try to be real quick. As you know, um the special ed funding is a on a per pupil basis is a multiple of the state cost per pupil. So, when we fall behind for the regular program kids, we fall behind by even greater amounts. For the most needy kids, level three, we're more than $3,500 behind this year. And finally, the last graph is the total. And you, as you can see there, uh, the gap again has grown substantially, $526 million this year alone. That compares with the $340 million that the state is siphoning off to fund the voucher
018program. So, it's a it's a matter of choice, not funding school public schools and funding instead vouchers. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Uh, and next I have Sue Ravencraftoft. >> Hello, my name is Sue Ravenscraftoft. I live at 455 Westwood in Ames, Iowa. I'm a retired CPA. I'm also a retired professor of accounting. For several years, I taught governmental accounting. And I learned that corporate accounting and governmental accounting differ. Corporate accounting is about following the rules for financial reporting. Did you make a profit or not? Governmental accounting is about accountability. What did those officials do with the money that was entrusted to them mostly through taxation? So, I have a very strong professional interest in accountability. But I would posit that all of us here care about accountability too. We
019all care about how the money that we give for the public good is spent. And I also want to note that I have been a student for a very long time. I was a teacher, but I was I took a very leisurely route to get my degree. So I was in school for 28 years, all but two of them in public school. And I will say this is an aside, I won't generalize. Those two years in private education were the most costly and the least beneficial. Public school is great people. You are lucky to be going to Ames High. So although in Iowa we now give equal money to students whether they're in private or public education, the accountability between public and private schools differs extraordinarily deeply. I voted in elections that put all of
020you where you are. I bet a lot of people here voted in those elections, too. I've also voted on school villages, but I have never been given the privilege of voting for a single board member of a private school. Why? Well, you might say, "But do you have any kids in private schools?" No, but I don't have any kids in public schools either, and I never have. But I've been able to vote for you or vote against you. And I won't say how I did. I actually can't remember right now, but But I've never been able to vote on anything that private schools do and they get equal money. So that really isn't fair, is it? The votes I've made, the meetings I've been to are comprise accountability. That's my right as a citizen to
021have some responsibility. I can say to you, you're not doing well with the money that you're accountable for. You're not handling it well. But I don't see any accountability in private schools even though they're getting equal funding. Accountability is taxation with representation. Private school vouchers represent taxation without representation. And I've been doing some reading on the Revolutionary War. We fought Judy's right. We fought this issue already. I want taxation with representation. I want support for public education, not the unaccountable private schools. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, that is everyone I have signed up and we don't have anyone signed up on Zoom. So, I'll go ahead and close the public forum and we will move to our next item on the agenda, which is our consent agenda. I move the board approve the
022consent agenda as presented. >> Second move by Deward, seconded by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes. 50. Next, we'll move to our reports. And first up, we have our associate superintendent with three items. Speaking from a new location since we've rearranged. Good evening, board. Can you hear me? Oh, here we go. All right. All right. Well, thank you for the opportunity to present to you. I'm excited to uh go over a few things with you tonight. The first is just an overview of the ESSA process which will help set the stage for and provide some context for the next thing that I'll talk with you about which is the review of our Iowa school performance profile results. Um so uh ESSA stands for every uh student succeeds act.
023It's a federal law that uh is our accountability process. Um this is taken from the Iowa Department of Education's website. It reads that ESSA is focused on equitable access to education, high standards and accountability as a and a decrease in achievement gaps across student groups, including students with disabilities, students who are economically disadvantaged, students from major ethnic and racial groups, English learners, and students of military connected families as well as student migrant homeless or in foster care. This plan serves as the foundation of the Iowa Department of Education support for students, educators, and schools and is used as a not only to align the work, but also as a vehicle to reinforce a commitment to equity, educational excellence, and coordination of programs and support processes about your struggling. Okay, >> there you go. Thank you.
024That's better. >> Eat the mic. Got it. All right, >> we're on the radio. Okay. So again, this was the statement taken from the Iowa Department of Education. Um, which aligns very nicely, by the way, with our uh uh strategic plan and and the the parameters and the belief statements uh that are embedded within our strategic plan. There are some uh required processes. I'll I'll review our results again in just a moment. We have three schools that are uh labeled as targeted year 2 schools. So we have a few required processes. But maybe most importantly I would want you to know because this process is really a school improvement model that asks people to look at data, analyze that make uh some priority decisions about what that data is telling us and then make action
025plans for improvement. We uh work with all of our buildings to do this level of analysis regardless of whether they're idented building or not. Sorry, I keep drifting from that. Um again, we believe this is just good school improvement work and so therefore all of our buildings do it regardless of their their um status as a identified building or not. Uh but the the processes required include um what's called a resource allocation review. That's done at a district level where we take a look at some of the data that we get back uh from the state and essentially uh in a very broad way try to determine does this data give us any insight as to how we allocate our resources and use our resources and do we need to be thinking about other priorities
026within the system. There is a data review that is done by each building uh where they look uh specifically at their data. We most recently did that last week on Thursday with our um principles and their instructional coach partners in their building. They dug into their building data in order to determine what priorities might exist from that data set. We um actually have been doing the uh what's called the SAM. It's the self assessment of multi-tered systems of uh it's a selfanalysis of how well our MTSS systems are being implemented our buildings. We we do that process uh in June. Uh that allows us to build pull in um the teacher leadership teams associated with each building. Uh we run them through a process of looking at their data um and assessing how well did
027they do against their building goals and how well did they do against the action plan they had established in order to improve their MTSS system. Then they reassess to see if they'd made any growth on that SAM self- assessment process and then reset goals. Um again, the reason that we do it in June is so that uh buildings hopefully leave in a position to make sure that there's really good alignment between the plans that they are creating to accomplish building goals and the plans that they're creating in order to improve their MTSS. so that those are not misaligned in any way and that buildings can leave with one set of action plans to accomplish two things. We we did uh call down to the state because uh the state would require that these uh once
028the Iowa school performance profiles are released that it kicks in some processes that are due in December 5th. And I had a conversation with the department of ed to say hey wait we just did this in June and this is why we did it and they said oh that that's a really good way to do that. Um yeah you don't have to redo it. So again, we we've kind of seems to be a natural uh uh and logical way for us to do our plan. In addition in addition to the Sammy, uh like I said, we need to make action plans for how we're going to improve our MTSS system. And then depending upon our status, there may be some required visits and progress updates. Again, I kind of just walked you through how we're
029handling here in our system. uh we we most recently did that data review with everybody and as I mentioned we've already done the the SAMI and the action planning uh later in November we will pull together the uh representatives that we need for that uh resource allocation review and we'll complete that process and then you can see in uh October what we're asking is that the um the folks that we did the data review with go back to their buildings share that information with their building level leadership teams and update any kind of action plans that they might have created last June. And then December, January, and June is when we will facilitate a process for them to kind of check in on what steps have you made so far with the action plans that
030you currently have a and it will help us fulfill. Sorry to scroll back up this progress reports responsibility here. This process of continuous growth and improvement of student results uh aligns really really well with both our district goals and our strategic plan. You can see this is goal number two around academic achievement. Um you can see that the ISASP is specifically named as well as seeing uh student growth across program and demographic groups as measured by grade level um reading and math assessments. So the goal itself is really well positioned uh to align to a school improvement model uh which is what the ESSA process is. And then I I underlined several of the action steps that the district has identified that we want to grow in that align really nicely with the ESSA process.
031So you can see there's a really tight alignment between accomplishing our district goals and uh a school improvement process like the ESSA process. The next slide identifies the alignment of the ESSA process to our strategic plan. So again, here you can see um alignment between objective two and objective three as well as the parameters that are within our strategic plan as far as how that aligns to again a school improvement model. And then finally here I just have some of the areas that we look at when we self assess ourselves with that Sammy tool. So again, that school improvement is focused around how well are we using assessments and data in order to make decisions. How well are we approaching universal instruction in in reading and math as well as uh social emotional learning? Uh
032what is our intervention system look like? Is our is our leadership set up? Do we have teams set up in order to analyze the data and make decisions both at the building and district level? And then is the infrastructure that we need, the schedules and the processes and the resources we we need to use our MTSS system is is that in a healthy working order. So those are the components of school improvement that Sammy asks us to look at. Okay, that is an overview of what we do when we go through the Are there any questions? No. Okay. Well, then again, that leads really nicely into So, how are we doing, which is the the next presentation I'll give in just a second. >> Well, I'm really excited to be able to talk with you
033about how we're doing on our Iowa performance profile because we're we're doing really well. It's it's this will be a fun report to be able to give. So the the when I when I say that we're doing a data review in the ESSA process, the data that we're reviewing comes directly from the performance profile, which is largely grounded in the ISASP test that our students grades 3 through 11 take each spring. That's the primary data source. There are other data sources such as attendance or um graduation rate, staff retention rate. If you remember to last January, Iation over some of the changes in this and I indicated that there were some called learning measures that generate a score and then some other measures that don't generate a score per se, but they data um same
034same uh assessment tool. So the Iowa school performance profile and again it is intended to provide a transparent overview of how well each public school in the state is performing across multiple academic measures. Uh it's the primary tool that we use to meet our federal requirements. Um and they publish uh online reports. They used to be called the school report card uh that highlights areas of strength and areas of need for improvement. And then again it is the foundational basis of the data that we use for the ESSA process. These are the updated uh demographics uh of our district that um are from the Iowa school performance profile. There's just slight changes to these uh from last year relatively consistent with um what we've seen in past years from a demographic standpoint. And this slide
035is one of the the pictures, if you will, of the main homepage of the Iowa School performance profile. For those of folks that are watching this and and want to click in the the the link here takes to the Iowa school performance profile site, as well as if you just type in Iowa school performance profile and as it'll take you to this. I say that only because I know this is a little hard to read. U but this goes through um all sorts of different measures. This is the overall um view of the measure of our performance. It goes through things like how many students participated in science, math, English uh testing. Um how many students were growing in their attendance. Attendance growth is an interesting one. They take the number of students that were
036identified as chronically absent the year prior and then they measure did those students who were identified as chronically absent grow in their attendance. I mean, you can see that we we did grow in that area. Uh chronic absenteeism, uh we want to see that number decrease. four-year graduation rate, five-year graduation rate, growth in our ELPA 21, uh our growth in our English language arts score, growth in mathematics, and then proficiency in science, math, and language arts, as well as post-secondary readiness and post-secary readiness as far as college credit is concerned, as well as work-based learning. The orange arrows in these categories represent a an improvement for our district. Uh the red down arrows represented a a space where we we decreased in performance. So you can see overall our district grew in the vast majority
037of areas of our our Iowa school performance profile. Can >> I ask you a question really quickly? The dots are those state. Great question. Thank you. Yeah. So, the numbers off to the side here. Um I'll I'll pick one. Right. Um this uh >> uh English language growth, ELPA growth, the 65. So that 65 represents our score and this green bar also represents that that same 65. This dot in the middle represents the state average. So you can see um uh on this assessment that I'm talking about how you can see how far we exceeded the state average. So the the number represents the average of the state and then this number over here represents uh our actual score. Yep. Great great question. Thank you for that prompt. Again, I wanted to be able to
038show this to you to show that uh for the most part we're seeing uh with throughout the system that uh we're seeing really good growth in in the majority of areas that the Iowa school performance profile measures. I would like to believe that that is an indication that we are implementing our strategic plan with fidelity that we are accomplishing our theories of action towards our district goals with fidelity and we're seeing growth from our students. This is also a metric that is shown on the main page of the Iowa school performance profile. Um I want to show here um this is this is a great accomplishment for us. Uh that the when all of the uh buildings were assessed this year um using this tool, using these measures, we all met the expectations of that.
039Um that is not something that has been um a common theme in the seven years I've been in the district. So I'm really excited to be I I mean I know that it seems like okay well we met the expectation. Great. But having all of our buildings meet that expectation is a is a really big deal for us. As I said, we do have three buildings that are identified as targeted because they're simply in year two. They're target no matter what those buildings did, they would have been in targeted year 2 status this year. Um and so we'll we'll do a great job again next year and then a year from now we will have no buildings in targeted status. So, uh, again, I'm really really proud of the work that's going on in our
040building order to, uh, meet that comprehensive status. In fact, these arrows going up show, um, an increase, quote unquote, or decrease, there are no decreases in the overall score of those buildings, right? So, every single one of our buildings improved their Iowa school profile score from the previous year. and the range of that because we had some buildings that had pretty high scores already. We had um uh we had a range of an improvement of 1.86 points to a range of improvement of 77.86 points. So growth everywhere, lots of growth in a few places. Um so again, I'm I'm very proud of the work that our buildings are doing in order to accomplish these results. This slide is included just to let you know that each one of those individual areas that I went through
041earlier can be further broken down. I if uh if somebody wanted to click into the links of that, they they're further broken down by uh program group and by demographic group. I I don't intend tonight to go through the performance of all of those program and demographic groups, but I just wanted the the board to be aware that that data is available. Again, this um because this is the foundation for that school improvement model that I just talked about and the school improvement model aligns really well. Uh we we see the same uh really good alignment between these results and our strategic plan and then I thought I would go through a few key implications for our system. I've kind of already discussed the procedural implications when I talked about the ESSA and our systems
042growth implications are that we continue to implement the strategies called for in the strategic plan and we continue to implement the theories of action from our uh district and building goals, right? Implementing those things are are working for us. Some outcome implications would be um it'll be important for us to increase graduation rate uh to continue to improve attendance. We we did see growth in attendance. uh we're still below the state average. Even though we're seeing growth and we're making improvement, we're still the below the state average in both of those attendance measures that are measured in the Iowa school performance profile. So, we can continue to improve there. And then growth in work-based learning experiences. So, those are some simple uh system implications for us. Again, I'd be happy to take any questions about
043this presentation. >> Okay. That was great news. >> It is. It's great news. Again, I'm really proud of our buildings. They're doing a great job. >> I appreciate the good news and and tying it to the strategic plan for us as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Feels like it's working the way that it's supposed to. >> And then Yeah. And then my final presentation tonight is just a little bit of uh information for you about uh the the new career academy that DMAC is wanting to enter into uh partnership with us. It's called the information technology career academy. Um so here's what's being offered. Um it will offer students a two semesters of course work that will result in a I believe that's C++ application developer certificate. Uh in the first semester, students will learn
044programming logic and database fundamentals and how to apply those concepts in programming language. And in the second semester, students will take an elective project course in which they build projects to bridge the topics learned in first semester uh while furthering their knowledge of programming and advanced database concepts. that that's really what they're doing is a is a year-long course out at DMAC to further it aligns really nicely um with uh the coursework both that we offer currently at the high school as well as our some planned expansions. It aligns very well of course to our vision for PK and beyond which is about developing career readiness and exposing the students to local industries, progressive work-based learning opportunities, uh potential careers outside of high school. So, so, uh, this is just be another great opportunity for
045our students to, um, get a little bit more depth of knowledge about a potential career field. >> Dr. Is that the Huner DMAC? So, they can go there physically. >> Yes. Yep, that is correct. Yep. This uh, the careermies are offered on the Huner site. Yep. Good question. And then I thought I would also make a connection. You can see that objective five of our strategic plan talks about building stakeholder engagement and support and students benefiting from a variety of community partnerships that and again that community partnerships uh to support their education and their future opportunities is exactly what the PK and beyond about and this is another great opportunity uh for our students and so I wanted to make sure that the board had an opportunity to hear about this new career academy through
046DMAC. questions or comments. >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Hawkins. >> Yep. Thank you. >> Um, next up, we have our reports from the superintendent. >> Yeah. The first report I'd like to kind of talk about the enrollment. Uh we had our certified enrollment at the beginning of the month certified October 15th. Just wanted to walk through a little bit knowledge and information around the certified enrollment. Uh so this is a um average between one uh this year and last year and this year kind of breaks it down by resident students open rolled out in the line that the uh board probably pays the most attention is the certified enrollment change. uh we have gone down 91 students from the previous uh year. Uh within the state of Iowa and even just the UEEN uh
047schools um all schools are down except for two or three. All except for three, but the two that are up or like one's up nine and one's up three. Uh so um that ranges from a decrease of 60 students up to 200 decrease of 200 to 600 students in our UEEN schools. Um this is a when it comes down to certified enrollment dollars from the state. This is where we get our numbers from from year to year. Uh I just bring that to the attention every year of the board. I keep that as a um kind of a marking point to look at growth and not and then it also starts the beginning conversation right now of staffing class sizes uh moving on to next year and then also preparing for uh discussions with legislation
048on what SSA will be for the following year. Um from my understanding is that the state did not have as many dollars coming in as they predicted. So therefore, that's going to probably come out as an impact towards uh public education um and not receiving enough funding that we will need support. But just an indication overall from most of the districts in the state of Iowa that I've had conversations around, they are actually decreasing. Um they have a lot of smaller numbers coming in in the elementaryaries and our larger numbers are going out in the uh secondaries. Um 2020 would have been about the enrollment year for kindergarten enrollment right now and from what I'm hearing from around ueen metro soups story county soups little Hawkeye conference soups all groups of which we now have
049conversations around kindergarten numbers are lower than they have been um expected in the past. So, just an FYI, large classes going out, small classes coming in. Um, I do monitor the birth rate by county. So, I can also give you that information down the road if you'd like. But, uh, there is a way to calculate your enrollment based off birth rate of your of the county based on the numbers and percentage that's in your school population. It's just another way that I'd probably look at enrollment um, for future and changes down the road. So not good news but we were predicting it to be larger than that. So on the good news it's smaller number than we were projecting. Um but on the other end of that um something that we need to monitor as
050well. Uh the question that everyone has is what's the ESA ESA funding? How is that affecting to our school? So that is actually a number that is maintained in our certified enrollment. Um we had 126 ESA funded last year. Currently we don't have the number available yet. Uh still waiting for data to come in from our state on that enrollment. Um FTE change. So when we talk about our enrollment and staffing uh we also yeartoear uh see our FTE changes. So you want to kind of monitor what I discussed a year ago with you. we are having um kind of all this culminates into enrollment. Uh so if you think about tonight's ideas that we still want the best education for our students, which we're seeing with their performance profile, want to maintain the staff
051that we have to maintain uh the number of students we have. If we're decreasing numbers, we're probably going to need to work on decreasing staff. That's typically done through attritions. We're going to talk about early retirement tonight, which is a tool of which the board can use to help set the stage for next year. But all of that is pivoted around two functions that the board has no control over. >> Uh the two functions is certified enrollment, which the board really cannot just make up kids. and two, the legislation, which the board could have an impact on, but it's very hard to uh have an impact with legislation with its current um situation it's in now. But we will continue to have conversations, impact and um talk about what ways enrollment funding is actually impacting
052the largest population of our state, which is our public uh our public school. That's a lot that just came out there. Sorry. Uh just wanted to break it down by group. Uh the next one just kind of shows these are screenshots from the report that we turn into the state. Uh so it just gives you a screenshot of each building, classes in each building, the size for that that one date in particular time. Understand that we always have increasing and decreasing enrollment throughout the school year. And also know that the dollars we're receiving for the students that we are being funded is actually from two years ago. So we do not have on-time funding for the enrollment that we are working with uh going up or down. Um both have challenges. So you think well
053a growing district is uh where you want to be. Uh I was in a growing district. Um it has just as much strains on it as a uh enrollment that maybe be decreasing. Um what we do have fortunate is a supportive board, supportive staff, great community support and Story County um is really rising to the occasion of uh ensuring support for our public schools and PK and beyond will support that as well. uh enrollment in and out kind of gives you an indication where enrollment goes when they're open rolled um in from where and then open rolled out from where uh Ames is a net positive open RO so we have more students open rolled into our district out of our district. um I always want to maintain that and then I always put that
054percentage of open enrollment in and out based on our residents numbers. And then um the other two pieces is the enrollment numbers for our elementary enrollment numbers which is the monthly that I present to the board uh with our last year's enrollment first uh this year's enrollment um graph shows where those uh numbers of teacher reductions were at. Please understand that um our elementary class sizes are either at or below our board goals. So the board did make a uh intention last year to decrease our cap sizes for our elementary classrooms. So we are able to maintain that within the staffing situation. And then in a couple months I'll be rolling this data into next year. And so once we have um some possible resignations and then looking at rolling our numbers into next year,
055I will be able to come to the board probably in January with a plus minus of staffing to start those conversations um at that point. So a lot of information here. You can probably guess I could spend a lot more time. I really believe enrollment is key for the success and strengths in uh planning for our district. You got enrollment, you got SSA, and then you have being able to provide and support the programming that our students uh deserve in our district. And not only do I believe in Ames, but not just Ames, but Story County districts as well. So, that's part of a PK conversation and we'll have a work session on that at the next board meeting. I can just pin it all into enrollment, can't I? >> Okay, I'm done. >> Any
056questions on enrollment? >> Uh facilities. Uh we had our facilities meeting kind of finalized the uh the work at the uh track. We do have lines down. Uh we have brought in packages. So with the um 13th and northwestern project, we are taking in bids. We will be demolitioning the two uh buildings that are I would put in is eyesore for area. So we'll the uh three-story building will be torn down as well as the garages. Those will be leveled. Uh and then um the ground nicely presented for future projects. Uh within that uh last month we discussed the um kind of the stages of that and future work. Um we also talked about Dr. um facilities uh director Addie uh talked about Ames Middle School updating interiors but also knowing we're going to need
057future planning for some facility updates and needs. And we also are selling some items uh that legally we have to post on gov deals. It has to be open to everybody in the public. Uh we can't just sell our computers um individually. It has to kind of go through a legal process since those are purchased with taxpayer dollars. We have to dispose of them with taxpayer properties based off of uh legislation and uh rules so that we are not misusing and we're very transparent with our public funding. Uh we can't even give away computers without being transparent where our taxpayers are using their dollars. So heard that somewhere earlier today. So any questions on facilities? Uh gifts to the district. Uh with the great support around uh we are every month able to uh have
058and celebrate donations into the district. So, we have some non-per perishable items. A $2,000 value from Celebrate Community for Hope Pantry. $1,000 cash from Anonymous uh for the Ames Middle School girls cross country. $500 cash from Hard Family for the Ames High girls wrestling. $500 cash from K Meyer for Sawyer Elementary. We have a Bluetooth speaker at the value of $100 from Anonymous Two Fellows Elementary. We have books uh with $100 value from the Iowa State Athletics to the Fellows Elementary. We have books from Neutrorain, $51 value for Fellows Elementary, $50 cash anonymous, Ames High band department, miscellaneous supplies, $40 value from Jessica and Darren Hedger, Ames High Science Department. We have $42 of miscellaneous supplies from Anonymous from Ames High Science Department. And we have miscellaneous supplies $20 24 $25 value from Lanti Dai
059and Zenyang Zoo from Ames High Science Department. So thanks again for uh our community and our support um providing other opportunities for dollars into our district so that we can support our students. Thank you. >> All right. Any questions? All right. Next up, uh our chief financial officer. few items. >> Okay. So, to begin with, um I'm bringing to the um board the a resolution to consider approving um transfer of funds to the flexibility account within the general fund expenditures and to set a public hearing for a proposed resolution. And so, where the where I'm um recommending these funds come from are the homeschool assistance program, otherwise known as HSAP, um in our district. And that account has a carryover balance in it after meeting all the requirements of the program. So prior to um
060FY25, so prior to well I guess FY24 last year um our host our homeschool assistance program was housed outside the district and they paid rent and storage costs. And so um how I'll give you a little history about how the HSAP program funding works. the district does not receive any general education funds um to support those students in our district. So kind of like it's the indirect cost like the utilities um you know our water our custodian at the AIM center um admin cost and you know things like that and so by flexing those funds for any general fund use the funds can be used you know for the AIM center support or for any general fund purpose within our district. So, I would like to hold a public hearing at the second board meeting
061in November um for action to be taken on flexing $50,000 again to our general fund to support the indirect cost and the and labor for custodians and other services over at the Ames. >> Any questions? Okay. So, my next item is staff early resignation notification incentive. That's kind of a mouthful actually. Okay. So, we we did offer this last year and it's become a great tool um planning tool to use for our district. And what it is, it will be offered on a first come first served opportunity. We're going to open that up the first 15 teachers, nurses, and counselors. So like our certified staff in our district who apply um starting December 1st. So everything will be timestamped. This is first come first- serve basis um through January 15th. Um this will allow us
062time, you know, to do some recruitment and to get the best possible candidates if if our staff plans to leave. So if we have staff members that resign May 31st, we're not going to necessarily get the best science feature, you know, walking in our door. So it just helps us a little bit and to get the best possible candidate for the positions that we have when a staff member, a certified staff member resigns from our district. We are not opening this up to CLA classified staff members or to directors or administrators, just teachers, nurses, counsel, anyone um that's a certified staff member with a license to the BOE. So, what what our plan is this year is if they if staff member resigns December 1st through January 15th, they would receive a $1,500 um type
063for doing that. And then if we have um do not have all 15 people, we'll keep it open January 16th through February 13th until our remaining funds are used. So, um we've set aside $22,500 for this and those will be $1,000 payouts up until the amount um of the funds are depleted. Any questions on that? Okay. So, my next one is the um retirement incentive for employees. This one's kind of remained unchanged from the last several years. And so what it is is it's a early retirement incentive for our employees who have who have worked full-time in the district. And full-time um for our district is 30 hours or more a week. And it's not it's all all employees. So all classification. So here's administrators, certified staff, everyone. um they have to um have reached
06455 years of age by June 30th, retirement date, and work full-time for 10 continuous years in the district. And employees are required to work the full length of their employment of their contract or employment letter. So, we're not going to say, "Oh, I'm going to be done April 15th and then you get this." No, you have to work the full length of your employment um that you signed on for that year. Okay. And it's a great tool to use for budgeting, for staff reductions, and for orderly attrition of staff. So over here, she's thinking um a front plot. So, Mary Lynn in our um HR office will forward a form to all employees who are eligible. Currently, we have 48 employees eligible for early retirement in the district. And so, you know, that comes kind
065of a shocking big number to me, you know, when I'm trying to budget all of this as well. Um, so what's going what it looks like this year is 15% of the employees salary for each unus. So up to a maximum of 180 days will be placed in a 403 special pay plan. Um and the employees pdeium salary for each unused vacation days. So if it's a director or if it's a classified staff member, they may have vacation days, you know, where a teacher would not. But if they have vacation days, then that is put into their they're paid that out in their July payroll. Um, and then currently it's $465 per month contributed towards the a district sponsored health insurance plan that's available up to Medicare eligibility date. Okay. So, I just want to
066make sure that everyone's aware, you know, we do re-evaluate the um early retirement incentive every year. You know, it's something that we look at and you know, we just never know, you know, with the property tax reform um legislation which may happen, you know. So, like last year, um, property tax reform legislation, you know, brought up and it was they were only going to schools could only have a fund balance of 180 and then there was they were going to phase it back to 160% of the balance that of the average of the three years before. Well, you know, with the evaluation increases and and our buildings and with work comp insurance, you know, increasing, we don't know where that is. Like running the numbers for this early retirement plan get kind of hard to
067say the least. Um, and so you know, one thing that I've talked about thought a lot about was just doing a flat early retirement incentive. you know what that would look like for our district instead of saying we're going to pay it for insurance till you're 65. It's like no, here's your one-time money and then we can budget for that that year. And that's what we we put on our management fund levy. Um it's and it's and it's fair to staff. That's how I feel about it. So, we're not paying maybe one month of early retirement insurance for one person and 10 years for another. So, it's kind of a more equitable way in my mind anyway of a way to treat staff fairly that have worked for a long time for our district. Um,
068and it's a, you know, it's a very predictable dollar amount to levy when we're working on our budget. So, we know exactly what that's going to cost us every year instead of, you know, paying 10 years down the road for someone and five years for one and one month for another. It's it's an easier way to budget when we know that we have you know perhaps 48 people >> and within that I will let you know the previous two districts that I have worked at I have moved from a health fund insurance base of retirement to a fixed amount um due to uh the pressures of maintaining being able to manage the management fund uh also limited the number of groups that was allowed to take early retirement um and then also limited the number
069of individuals that could take retirement from year to year. So if you look at this year's early retirement and if you were to think about what recommendation I would bring to the board if we were to have retirement early retirement next year I'd be coming to the board next year with a flat amount. I'd be reducing the amount of groups that could take the early retirement and I would probably limit the number that the board would act on for the early retirement. So I don't know what that's telling the people that are interested in retirement this year versus the future. Uh right now all 48 are eligible. Next year I do not believe that our district can maintain a open benefit uh early retirement from year to year. It is not something that we we
070can maintain. I understand that many of these early retirement have been systems there have been act on as a I I'm entitled to this. This is way it's always been. Um unfortunately that is not the intent of a board and it's not as much as a benefit than it is a tool for the school board. when the board treats it as a benefit the staff they're not actually doing early retirement properly um just to maintain that uh feeling flat rate reduce the the class the classifications and probably limiting the number for the future of early retirement be my recommendation for next but we're this year so you still and recommend if you want to go through it this year, but our recommendation is to maintain where it is now. >> Like I said, keep um
071those interested, just keep your eyes on the lookout for a frontline form. Um Mary Lynn will be um forwarding those out to the staff members that are eligible. So 48 people will receive a notice from her and they'll have until December 12th end of the daymber >> 12th get that back and then we will be acting on that on the first board meeting in January. I just want to say I really appreciate the transparency um that you brought this which brought this to us um so that people who are thinking forward um down the road a couple of years kind of know how to plan and it I do think it's what is most responsible fiscally for the district and for maintaining our staffing levels and we know we have I'll echo that Thank you
072all. And yeah, I think we we did talk about this last year as well. So hopefully staff who are nearing retirement are attuned to these conversations so they can make decisions. All right. Um is that everything? Yep. Next we have um any reports from our student representative? >> Um no items today. Thank you. >> Well, thank you for joining us. I know you're probably learning so much. Apparently, the other students didn't have to stay for the whole meeting. >> They had to stay for an hour, I think. >> An hour. >> They didn't get the selfie, though, so that's not that doesn't count. >> Oh, did they? >> Wow. They know. >> Um, so our next item then are our board member reports. And so I have put the petition uh under this item. So,
073we've been presented with a petition from um Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and Public School Strong, which we uh heard from in our public forum. They presented us with 590 signatures. Iowa code allows for community members to petition school boards to place an item on the agenda if they meet the signature requirement, which they have. Um and code in our board policy says that it's um our discretion on whether we want to discuss or act on an item. I think it's certainly worth discussing. Uh the petition that we've received obviously rece 590 signatures and um I think I want to thank those folks for your work advocating for public education and its importance uh the importance of us properly funding public education in the state. I I think I can say pretty confidently that everybody
074at the board table uh cares a lot. That's why we do this volunteer job. Uh I wanted to collect media regularly in recent news um about other districts that no, we do not get paid to do this. This is a labor of love just like really it is for a lot of our teachers as well. Um, but the uh petition that was brought to us in sum uh and it's attached to the agenda asks us to consider a resolution that would, and I'm going to quote, urge the governor of Iowa and state legislature to fully fund public schools by an annual 5% increase of state supplemental aid adjusted for inflation, to maintain an income cap ESAs, and to phase out the ESA voucher program over the next five years, and to use public funs for
075public schools only. So there are a couple things that I want to um bring to discussion or share with you about the petition. Um the first kind of is what our position is on these issues, specifically SSA and vouchers. And then the second is how we breast express our uh position on those issues. So, for those of you who don't know, uh, and those of you who maybe weren't weren't here, on August 8th, we, uh, ranked and voted for our legislative priorities, uh, that were then shared with the Iowa Association of School Boards and the Urban Education Network. Our top three priorities from that vote were state supplemental aid, mental health, and private school choice. So, um, I can say pretty confidently confidently based on that vote that the board uh is in agreement with
076those requests. So, to dive a little bit deeper into um what those legislative resolutions look like for IASB, um I've abbreviated ICCI, there's too many acronyms now. ICI uh noted a 5% increase for state supplemental aid. the IASB priority that we voted to support included incorporating inflation and cost of living increases into SSA uh and some other items about fully funding. So, not specific to the 5% but in the same spirit of funding at numbers that are appropriate. Uh and Senator Cornbach's graph showed how underfunded that is. Um the IAS IASB resolution about ESA's vouchers um includes closing educational savings accounts, opposing policies that direct tax dollars to private schools and opposing expansion of the program which would address the income cap as well. So the legislative resolutions that we have reported to IES um
077are very much in line with what uh ICCI has uh brought us. Um, I think, you know, we've expressed our our position in that way and I'm curious to see if anybody has anything else to add about those issues. I want to also add to our discussion that we should consider how we want to express this. Um, they've brought us a resolution. We've also um historically our board has not been in the habit of passing resolutions particularly on legislative issues that we don't have direct control. Um, our channel has generally been through IES, the Iowa Association of School Boards, and UEEN, the Urban Education Network, and they lobby on behalf of public schools across Iowa. Uh, and there are strength in numbers, and I I believe that several other districts in the state have or
078will be receiving those petitions. Um, so I expect those will be passed up in those um through those avenues. Uh, Director Beerbomb will represent us at the IASB delegates assembly in November where they will ratify our legislative priorities. Um, knowing that multiple districts received petitions like this, I imagine this would be something um for discussion around those resolutions at IASB uh delegate assembly as well. Uh and then it might be appropriate to express those um that that petition discussion there. Uh I know De Moines also received a petition and discussed in their meeting kind of a similar strategy of incorporating this into our legislative priorities um and working through the lobbying bodies that exist. Uh we also communicate with our legislators. Thanks for joining us too, Senator Kernbach. um who represent as um director beer
079bomb is our legislative liaison. I also know many of us try to go to the IES day on the hill uh and talk with legislators as well and try to communicate all the legislators that represent parts of the Ames Community School District and letting them know what matters to us and individually. I know I send a lot of emails uh as well. So, I'd like to uh kind of given what we know about our legislative agenda, what we've already approved, what has been brought to us today to discuss, and what we might do with that, what are your thoughts um about the petition and those issues? Do you have anything new or that you want to reiterate from our previous discussion on legislation? I would say having been on the board quite a while and
080seen what IASB and also indirectly SAI and others do in the state. Uh these topics are definitely well represented and are talked about a lot. Um I've been at Dan Hill and talked to Herman about these and other people. So I know these are highly there. Um, as far as the resolution that's before us, um, I have hesitation to form a pattern by which groups are bringing things like this to have us try to take action because I think it's actually better. We work with those groups to understand their concerns and take action through other means. Um, so that's where I'm currently thinking about. I This would be a precedence and I would like the precedence to be that we communicate through other channels and then we do as we've done in the past and
081take action and go after these um pursuits in other ways >> and I and I'll say and that's and that is why we brought it as a kind of a discussion item and what I've seen you know with De Moine as well um figure what the best means are to make sure that this message is getting to where it needs to go. >> Yeah. And I I will echo um what Director Beerbomb said. Um fully support public education and that is why we're here and why we do what we do um and put in the hours that we do. Um it's a little bit hard to hear all of the comments because I completely agree with everything that was said. Um we don't have any control over that. That is all things that are in
082the control of the legislature. um we cannot act to on any of the the things that were talked about um it but it was all things that have been written in letters that I have written to my legislators um personally and so I do support those items um and agree with Director Beerbomb that um I wouldn't I'm nervous about the precedent that we might set with a resolution but I agree also that we have um outlined those priorities they fit perfectly with what we have already stated as our legislative priorities. Um, and we really do work to push those forward to the legislature through the lobbyists with IASB um, and UEEN and by going to the Day on the Hill um, and communicating regularly, providing stories of what's happening in our district and in our
083schools. Um, help understand what the impact of some of these things are. Um, and so I definitely plan to continue doing that as well. >> Yeah. One thing that I want to say is I I understand how it feels to feel like your hands are tied and you can't do anything about you can't affect change about this. Um, and I I I agree there's unfortunately not much that we can do to affect that change. But what I would urge everybody to do is vote uh vote to support the things that you want to support. Um, and the other thing would be um, as everybody's mentioned, send those emails to the legislators, not just your own. Um, I I send up I send out a big old blast every time I email everybody. Um, the the
084more those voices get heard over and over and over, the more they're resounding. Um, so those would be two of my um personal I take >> you don't have to add something before you. >> I just want to echo, you know, a lot of what Sabrina said. You know, I I heard you guys today. Um, I I stand with a lot of what you said. um the strategy at which we move forward with this. I I I side with director beer bong on that. Um and you know at the same time you know I think yeah uh the people of as have kind of spoken and they kind of stand in support of the board and and public education and overall so um I you know anyone that's watching I would always strongly suggest that
085they make sure their voices are heard if they haven't had their voices heard now. um and to you know of course always go out and vote and write your legislators if you're unhappy with their performance and what they're doing. So >> and I just want to add also a huge thank you to our local legislators who do tirelessly continue to fight for these things. Um and we greatly appreciate it. We know that um that is a a difficult battle and we really appreciate those efforts >> towards that one thing that talked to a few people at the state house about that I would encourage the number of people that signed us. I love that if those people could contact anybody they know in the legislature including our representatives but also if they know ones in
086other areas that has a huge impact because when I talk to the legislators the capital they are responding to the people they hear from that are constituents in a way they kind of consider schoolboard members biased towards some of these topics having them talk to them and give stories and give input they huge credence on that they want to know the stories of the individuals, the people in the communities. That is huge. Um so I would highly encourage people to do that to reach out the letters and everything else. I think that one of the um I from from what I'm hearing and what our practice has been, I think it would be good to prioritize this as we already have voted to make this a legislative priority, but maybe it's one that we um
087say we vote on our legislative priorities every year. uh but I don't we don't know how much we really talk about them after that except for maybe when we get to wanting to know what SSA is uh in the spring. Um so perhaps one of the ways that we can facilitate this work is to work together towards the people that who can make that change uh or help the people who would like to make that change that are in those positions talk to other folks as well. Um, I know that we are all individually active. Um, and as a board have that representation and with IASB, um, and I think we can continue to be even more vocal and maybe do more of that updating, uh, in our, uh, our board agenda. I think are
088are newly not it's not new anymore but the agenda order that we have now lends itself to board reports board member reports so we can maybe after ISB get an update on what those legislative resolutions um looked like when they were ratified. I have pretty much no doubt that at least something close to the school choice um one that we're that we selected will will pass. But um I think that's a good update to have as well and as we work with our legislative um with director beerbomb being a legislative liaison but really any board members um can work with legislators as well. And I would add too with those signatures I wonder if there's more places to send them to. We didn't attach them to the agenda because we don't put 590 people's personal
089info on. I guess it's a public record, but we don't even make um but uh you know those signatures say something about the support for public education and I proud product public education. I didn't go to school here, but I am a proud product of public education. And I think that the stories that you tell uh as well about that experience are things that you can be telling folks um on a broader scale. And uh obviously, you know, Herman supports uh funding public education appropriately and I think maybe we can help direct some of that to other folks as well. So may this is legislative priority. We will update on ISB legislative assembly uh and particularly on this issue with how that that resolution looks. >> Yes. >> Go ahead. >> I know this is
090a board area. >> No, you're good. >> But I do want to say that it doesn't matter know what what the resolution or what we're moving forward with. I think what I take away from this and you said this immediately, we want to support the public school district and we want to support what you guys are doing. We want to push that and we want to help support you guys. And I think the signatures alone in this community, whether you had 500, whether you had five and number you had, it just it strengthens my belief in public education. and it gives a renewed sense of what purpose I have here or to support this district and this board. But I don't want it to go unnoticed. It just drives me to to do a better
091job as a as a leader and also communicate that as well. Um I will say that through the Ames Community School District, I am more actively engaged with legislation than I have been in previous districts. Um feel that is the support that I get from the community the public and the drive whether it's written or unwritten messages that uh the amount of support in Ames County Community School District in Story County is like something we need to make sure we're we're using it as a positive as moving forward and I just want to these signatures support the work up here. It supports the people who are interested in being in the board in the future. We do have an election coming up. I believe that people on are coming on for are those that are
092advocating however you vote. I believe they have public education in their minds and I think they want the best for all the students that we work with. So I know this is the board area but I just remiss if I didn't at least publicly say what strength and support that I feel we have up here >> and I think our concerns about enrollment and funding >> well you know >> reflect Yes. >> Uh yes, >> we'll work on that. >> Yeah. Um, but I think that's additional data that that can be helpful as we um try to keep advocating and maybe advocating louder around those issues and it's good to know there's so much support for um the next item is actually the IASB board uh convention which is November 19th and 20th. uh the
09319th is the pre-conference and I think delegate assembly starts then uh and then the 20th is the actual convention if you are able to go um I am able to go this year so I'm very excited uh JD can register you so let him know uh if you're able to attend the Wednesday pre-conference let JD know which workshops you'd like to attend which I will do after this meeting and then Thursday you don't have to pre-seelelect any sessions but Um, you can see the full agenda online. Any questions about ISB or any other board member update? Okay, new business. We will start with gifts to the district. >> I move the board approve the gifts as presented. >> Second. Sorry. Okay. Moved by the war, seconded by Shield Cook. All in favor say I. >>
094I oppose. Nay. Passes. 50. Our policies for discussion. I move the board approve the policies as presented. >> Second. Moved >> by Shields Cook. Seconded by Ward. Any discussion? All right. All in favor say I. I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes. 5 Z. a lot of policy. Uh a resolution to consider transfer of funds. >> I move the request to approve the resolution to consider approving transfer of funds to the flexibility account within the general fund expenditures and setting hearing on proposed resolution approving expenditure of funds in the flexibility account for the board uh meeting on November 7th, 2021 17, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. >> Second. Any discussion? All right, it's moved by Deward, seconded by Beerbomb. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oh, sorry. It's a roll call. My bad. >> Winfrey. >>
095I. >> Alen Beerbomb. >> Iron. >> I >> pass 5. >> Uh, the high school track and bleacher improvement change order. I move the board approve the change order as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Moved by Beerbomb, seconded by Rodriguez. All in favor say I. >> I. Oppose. Nay. >> Passes. 5-0. Elementary playground equipment. >> Move the board approve the substantial completion of bid packet number two, 2025, elementary playground equipment and surface improvements project. >> Second. Any discussion? Move by beer bomb, seconded by Ward. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. >> Passes 50. Staff early resignation. I >> move the board approve the staff early resignation notification incentive as >> second. >> Any discussion? Move by Beerbomb. Second by Rodriguez. All in favor say I. >> I. Oppose. Nay. passes
0965-0. Retirement incentive. >> Move the board approve the retirement incentives for employees as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion? By beer bomb. Seconded by the ward. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes. 5 Z. >> Disposal of property. Move board approve the sale of obsolete property including but not limited to technology equipment and furniture on the online auction site devdees.com on an ongoing and as needed basis that >> uh any discussion move by beer bomb second by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. I >> oppose. Nay passes 5 Z. I don't think we have any requests for the superintendent. Our board planning calendar. Next regular meeting is November 3rd. And then we have a new item before anybody can adjurnn our Ames accolades. >> Yes. So >> which I said
097for you. >> Yes. Thank you very much. Uh we're bringing back Ames accolades um but also want to make it more of a public facing uh document. So this is accolades between staff and staff. Uh found it very beneficial um you know kind of be able to publicly acknowledge peers others within the district and then also this will be shared out as a PDF with the staff update after each board meeting. Um you'll find that this probably will grow um through the process. I do think it's good for the board to focus in from the student level and staff level. Positive things going on in school world district public school district. >> Okay. >> Ames public school district. >> The batteries are running. >> Sounds great. I move we adjourn. >> Second. >> Moved by
098beer mom. Second by award. All in favor of adjournment say I. >> I. Oppose. Nay. We are adjourned. 5 Z at 7 or 7:30? >> 7:30. >> All right. We can still get there. We're going to have a board of people with