001All right, I've got five o'clock. Let's call a meeting to order. If we would stand for a moment of silence. You join me in the pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Let's call our role. Mr. Williams is out tonight. I am present. Mr. Peter present. Mrs. Watasha Barnes Griffin present. Mr. Irvin absent tonight. Mr. Low present. Mrs. Washburn present. All right. Wonderful. Dr. Reynolds is up. Hi. Good evening everybody. Uh I'll try to keep it brief today because I I'm going save my minutes from this week for next week. I know. Or next month. I know that our July will be full of updates and exciting things
002to talk about, but um uh just a few updates for everybody. Work is continuing on the central campus. The um concrete work around the fieldhouse um is is is being poured and and is looking great. Getting close to laying some black top, I believe. We're got a little behind schedule with some uh wastewater lines and different things, but that's uh close to close to getting back on track. Um and and just really starting to take nice shape there. Um on your place mats too, I I provided you with the band schedule. That is all um the performances for the summer for the summer marching band. Those kids kicked it off two weeks ago. I think this is their second week at it um in the hot sun. Spent uh majority of the time la yesterday
003I think inside. It was it was pretty steamy, so they went inside for for some rehearsal inside. But that kind of gives you the performances and the locations for the summer that kicks off next month. Um I think I shared last week too that um I read three results are starting to come in. We have some unofficial counts but um very promising numbers. We'll we'll share those as soon as possible. Just um just got to say how proud I am of the work that that the teachers and the students um administrators are doing out in our elementary schools and all of our schools, but in this case our elementary schools. um and the work that they've done with the i3 and and anxious to be able to share those results with everybody and publicly. Um
004just a quick update on our monastery uh program that's going to be based at Camp Adventure. So, um just a just a um quick update that we we're offering a prek um kindergarten class at Camp Adventure that will officially be housed at Gryom on inclement weather days or as a home base that they will they will be there um as their home school, but they will spend nearly every day out at Camp Adventure for a nature-based learning experience through the monastery um philosophy. Right now, the program is at capacity. We have 10 preschool kids, pre-K kids and 10 kindergarten kids. So, um very excited about about that new niche program coming to the Muny community schools. It's been in the works for a long time and excited to finally get that launched. Um, if you
005see any uh Bearcat MCS branded debit cards when you're out and about, we're starting a partnership with Thrive Credit Union where you can get a MCS um Bearcat branded debit card uh attached to your account, which our students who are with the Muny Parks program, part of that learning program, they um they get a a banking account at Thrive. So, um, every swipe of that Thrive card, it gets a I think it's 8 cents a swipe that goes back to the school district. So, you get enough folks doing that and, uh, get some good shoppers. Maybe we can bring a little extra dollars into the corporation to to help support our kids. And then finally, we we were a rewarded about a um a $50,000 digital intervention grant, which kind of ties nicely into what
006um, Mrs. Pul Meek will talk about and her adoption, but um that will be uh focused on our middle schools and helping our our kids that are struggling with reading at our middle school. So, we're we're excited about that opportunity. Um and that grant we were awarded. I think that's it, Dr. O'Neal. Okay. Any questions for Dr. Reynolds? Good. All right. Moving on. Do we have any public comments at all? Okay. All right. Moving on to our consent agenda. Um, it's my understanding that we have some new uh teachers, new hires here tonight. Anybody here that wants to come on and step up and talk to us a little bit? Just introduce yourselves. Do they want to or will they be willing to be be willing to How about that? Yeah. Come on. All All
007right. There we go. There we go. Sydney. Okay. Hi, I'm Sydney. I have the privilege of teaching fourth grade at East Washington Academy and I went to Muny School of Education and I'm excited to be able to give back to my community what it gave me. Graduate of Central and your university is Taylor. Taylor University from Taylor University. Great. Awesome. Welcome. Thank you. All right. My name is Eric Curts. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of Muny Community Schools. Over the past year and a half, I've had the privilege of being the building sub over at East Washington Academy. And my time there has been great and I'm excited to get started as a physical education teacher this upcoming year and continuing to build those relationships with my students and
008continue to pour back into this community. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Eric. Welcome. Eric got to spend a lot of time at East Washington and and working with our kids, so he knows the kids. spent a lot of time with Mr. How who um you know who retired so it'll be be terrific uh a terrific transition right to Eric and Eric still has Mr. house cell phone number. So if he needs any any support, he'll be getting a hold of Ronnie. That's right. Great mentor. All right. Hi, I am Stephanie Curtain. I am thrilled to be returning to my schools as the middle school math instructional coach. Awesome. Wonderful. So, where have you spent time away? This past year, I was at Yorktown. Okay. I won't I won't say anything bad. I know Jim would say something,
009but I'm gonna I'm not gonna I'm not going to say anything bad at all. Thank you. I'm Well, welcome. Thank you. Glad you're back. Mr. Anderson. Hello. I'm Cedric Anderson. And also before I say my history, I also want to introduce my wife Kiana Anderson. My youngest son Cameron Anderson and my oldest son Cedric Jr. They all came with us today um just to um meet you guys and things of that nature. But I have the privilege of working at North Side um this coming year as the alternative teacher um for the last um I think almost 10 years I've been working in school suspension and I was at the priority school at YC when it was still going on and then I have about 10 years of in school suspension from Cooko as well.
010Um and then also I'm a um pastor in the city. So, um I'm most definitely glad and that I'm able to um service our kids here and then learn from my mentors here. Awesome. Great. Awesome. All right. I know I I know it's kind of out of turn, but I I I would like to thank Dr. Bell and our principles for working so hard uh at in the spring to get our positions filled. we are in we're in really good shape and it's it's through the hard work of our principles and Dr. Bell's leadership to to help get that taken care of. So, thank you Dr. Bell. We I appreciate that. Wonderful. That's great. All right, we have the consent agenda before us. Any questions? I entertain a motion move to approve. Second. It's moved
011and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Oppos same sign. Motion carries. All right. Curriculum. All right. I'm going to turn this over to Mrs. Pulp Meek to to lead this conversation with with us today. Thank you so much. Um I'm not going to talk too long. Dr. Reynolds promised to give me like that eye when I start I get really excited when I start talking about um specifically reading and reading intervention. Um so this um is just a simple request to approve the adoption of curriculum known as megawwords. As you all are very aware they've done a fantas fantastic job of um implementing the science of reading that 50 years of research that body of research that supports how kids learn how to read in the elementary schools. And so we want to capitalize
012on that and through um this particular curriculum, it will allow us to continue to address some um fundamental reading challenges that some of our students are still coming to us with. Um and will also along with the digital um grant that Dr. Reynolds um mentioned allow us to work with Marian University who has been providing that critical uh literacy support in the elementary. So we're kind of creating despite um the states kind of stopped in that particular space, we're kind of creating a version of the literacy cadre for our own students at the middle level. Um so it's it it is the curriculum definitely, but it's also the additional um training that our staff will receive as a result of the curriculum over the next year. Awesome. Thanks. Absolutely. Any questions? I apologize. I didn't
013download it. What's the cost for the program? 97. I forgot the download. 97. How much? 9700. Wow. It's pretty It's pretty reasonable. It's It's not super flashy, but it's really supportive. It's systematic and explicit. And did you choose that because of its connectivity to um science or reading, or were were there are there 15 of those out there to choose from? So I I pulled this specifically after having worked in the literacy space at the department of ed for three years. It was really um obvious to us as we were starting to build out that intervention space in in adolescence um that there weren't a lot of good curricular programs, right? Um so it was chosen very deliberately based on um trying to find a systematic and explicit way to think about word recognition for
014our our kiddos. So the the first unit in this particular curriculum deals specifically with syllabocation um and and how kids break down multi-elabic words um prefixes and suffixes. So it is absolutely aligned to the science of reading um and even though um we weren't officially working with Marian University last year um I was able to reach out to them and had a lot of really great conversations with them and another professional who's very well known in the state Dr. Jamie Peaveler um who highly recommended this particular program and again it's it's as much about the training of the the staff as it is about the curriculum itself. So it's a kind of a six-step very explicit way of helping kids to break down words um and and to train them to stop. You know for
015a lot of years kids were trained to just skip the words they didn't understand um and and then to go back and try to find context. Um, this is really a way to get kids to be able to think about how they're going to stop when they come to a word that they don't understand, how they sound it out, and then how they use prefixes and suffixes and other things that they've learned in order to to to encode decode those words. Um, so very very deliberate in its approach. Awesome. Yeah, I'd move approval. So Carrie did a really nice job. So, our amplified science of reading curriculum is is for everybody that we adopted last for last school year. This will be that that second tier of intervention for our kids that are struggling a
016little bit. And then that digital intervention grant will be that third tier intervention very very explicit and directed to a small group of kids. And what we what we did see and what we did notice was again how wonderful the elementarymentaries were doing and how they were seeing that growth right with their kiddos. That didn't necessarily mean that they were sending kiddos to us that were at grade level. And so we don't want to lose that growth and we don't want to lose that capacity. And so it was just so critical that we had a curriculum that supported that as well as the training for our secondary teachers who aren't necessarily um always trained to teach kids how to read right in that secondary space. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion.
017Need a second. Second. Moved in second. All in favor say I. I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion carries. All right, Mr. Derome. Thank you. Uh, in your board packet was our financial update uh for the month of May. Just a few highlights to bring to the attention of the board and the public um uh that has occurred since we last met. um still expecting to receive a little over 47.8 million in revenue. Uh one item to note with that we will receive the new estimate for our uh state basic grant later this week. Um so right now the reason that looks about 800,000 higher than a year ago that now of course includes the textbook rental of about 700,000 plus 750,000 plus. That is not a separate grant like it was in the past. Now
018it's rolled into the state funding formula. Um so that almost looks like an artificial increase of 800,000 really. It's not. That had been funded separately in a separate grant. It's now part of the um funding formula. So we'll get probably updated information um for you uh month a month from now in July when we have our next meeting. Um still having a overall uh fund cash balance of a little over just under 35 million at the end of May. Our state loan is just uh a little bit now down to $7 million. Um as we continue to pay that pay that off at $180,000 a month. A couple things that have occurred since we last met. Uh we did receive this this uh last week of local property taxes of $4.6 million. Always like to
019report that. and we will be paying out 4.3 million of that uh to pay our long-term debts uh later this week as well to satisfy our outstanding bond debt and outstanding uh uh bonds and debts that are due. And uh we do that in June and December. So, we're on target with that. Uh also too, um our $19.8 million construction project will still continue to move forward. We had received word that that had passed all the necessary legal hurdles and all the periods of u uh the 30-day waiting period. So, we're now we'll be bringing more information to you as we meet again in July with what the attorneys say we have to do next. And if you remember, that's the next phase of some of our the projects that we're trying to do to
020improve the um um the the boiler and air conditioning system at the fieldhouse, which there is no air conditioning at the fieldhouse. Um right now, we need to replace a boiler who doesn't have one. Uh it will we will still have to rent uh a boiler again for this next winter, but at least we can continue on with that project. um expected timeline, uh we would be probably selling bonds in the fourth quarter of 2025. Uh that's why we'd still have to rent a boiler for next winter. Um that would include some roofing projects if you remember, uh a chiller perhaps at Northside Middle School, some bleachers, a lot of exterior doors at Muny Central, and just some real uh improvement items that were were necessary. So anyway, that's a brief brief update on that.
021We thought that was a positive thing to report to the board. Um very happy to report that that we'll be able to continue that project. In the month of July, we'll have more items for that as we continue to um name officially our architect and open the process for our construction manager for that project. So anyway, uh additional cash items I mentioned the the $35 million cash balance. There's the charts and graphs behind you where we're trending. Um, like I mentioned, the property taxes came in this last week and they will go away for the uh to pay our debts, but that how that's how that's that's how that works. Um, it's still trending uh where we expect to still be almost $35 million in the overall cash balance uh by the end of this
022year and expecting to be over 15 million uh in the expected cash balance for the education fund at the end of this uh calendar year. Uh so we're on target with where we expect to be and uh appropriation wise we're still monitoring that of course uh we use operation fund and rainy day fund to to spend the remaining about 7.6 million of appropriations we expect to spend between operation and rainy day because that those funds are very tight. We will have money left in rainy day. Uh we're continuing to do that uh to use rainy day to help us offset operational needs. And we know that's not a long-term solution. We do know that uh right now that's just how we have had set that up. Um so that is really our update for the
023month of uh for the month of May information. So you'll have a lot more uh we're gearing up for the uh fiscal the fiscal year end closing coming up here at the end of June and then that be gets the uh all that financial information gets switched to from cash basis of accounting to acrruel accounting uh for our gap financial statement conversion. Baker Tilly helps us with that and we do that because of all state and their financial statement audit and we start getting more busy in July. So anyway, just that completes my report. Quick question. I think I know the answer. Nothing changed the way it education fund, debt service, operation fund, all the same. It's just the mechanism within those that change with Senate Bill one, right? Kind of. Yeah. All the current
024funds stay the same. Nothing changed there on how we do the buckets of cost. What has changed with Senville one is just how um the expectation is that assessed valuation for the county and for the part that affects us as a school will continue to go down perhaps 25% or 30%. So if AB goes down which helps the taxpayer um could limit how much incoming property tax revenue we might get. So stay tuned for that as we'll have uh our first board meeting in August. We'll have the budget presentation and we'll continue to gather as much data as we can as the state DLGF uh continues to release guidance on that. I have a quick question. Um, do we know if anybody that is in the realm of authority or decision making power has their
025eye on this on the ball as it relates to operation fund and how that's all working? Is is there anybody out there that is paying attention to this that that has any hope for any change? Well, that's a that's a good question. Uh, in other words, is um anyone looking out for districts like us, we we're one of those um we're that top 10 district of districts who lose over 50% of of property taxes because of the tax caps. And really, that's we've been dealing with that for a number of years. So what we're hearing from our fellow districts around us is now because of the threat of SB1 and how that's affecting them or how that could affect them. We know some of our fellow districts are concerned. For us, we've been we've been
026living with the property tax reduction for a number of years. Um so getting back to your question, are they looking at that? Well, I think the big the big thing from this past legislative session was just to try to reduce the property tax liability for the taxpayers and we were supposed to just deal with it. That that was kind of the philosophy we were given. So, it's a work in pro. It's a work in project, I would say. Um um we will just see uh we've done a number of things to try to limit our spending in operation fund and uh obviously July one we're bringing over the the the SSC folks that that contract of course was terminated to help us save money in the operation fund and we're continuing to put as many
027things as we can in other funds and pay them out of grants when we can but it's it's a constant challenge. Um, I don't I don't know. The legislature is supposed to be looking out for us at times, but I think right now it's just property tax reform. Um, but more to your question, is there anybody in the state, you know, Chuck or Leanne, that's aggregating all this information together from all the other school corporations to show how this is um impacting schools. And that that report is available. It'd be great to see a report. Yeah. So, I think they're just now the the financial advisors that a lot of the districts use that the all the districts use um are are still unpacking that to see the impact be because your districts are so
028um unique in their property tax base and what is in within the their boundaries because um the rural rural schools didn't have a whole lot of impact before but now they do because of the of the relief relief given to farm to farmland and um businesses they were you know if they had a lot of businesses you were bringing in lots of revenue a lot of the tax caps are hitting businesses in their proper personal property um in or personal property relief for equipment I think in excess of a million dollars or something like that. Um so it's I guess to Brad point it's it's really impacting a lot of folks um that had not impacted in the past. So, um, but all all of the large, um, organizations, the Indiana School Board Association, the,
029um, Indiana Association of of School Superintendants, um, Principal Association, Teacher Association, they're all lobbying very hard to to see the impact. Now, I think the problem is no one quite knows where that impact is going to land yet. So, um, if you recall, um, Dr. Kay and I kind of went on a road show last year and visited with superintendent like superintendent um across the state and then key legislators to to kind of explain where we were sitting. So and and a lot of that information was provided by our financial consultants who ha who have access to that information. Um um so I think that there will be people continue to lobby and um try to communicate the impact and but the problem right now is we don't quite know the full implication of of
030that legislation yet and we know the financial consultants they're all basically saying the same thing as you have mentioned before too uh Dr. Reynolds that we're doing some of the same things the financial consultants are saying we should do. We've sold bonds to help us offset in the operation fund. Uh once we finish this process in 2025, that'll be four years in a row. We have done that with very short paybacks of only one or two years. That's helping us offset some spending in the operation fund. Um so we're doing everything that's available to us right now. Y and I know uh when we sell these bonds in 2025, some of our bond debt will then be we we will not be able to sell bonds again for like another uh we have to wait
031two years. Um so that is some of these new procedures or or laws that were put in place at the legislature. We now have to comply with that as well. So what's the two years based on Oh, it's a just kind of like a moratorum. Yep. On it's a mor it's a kind of a moratorium. I don't know if that's the right word, but they they put like a two-year weight in between bond issuing new bonds. That's to simplify it, I think, to explain it uh in that manner. That that was new legislation that just passed as well. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. We have a motion. So move. Second. Seconded. All in favor say I. I. Post same sign. All right. Updates. Yeah. So, as we continue to un unpack the uh the legislation that
032of course impacts some of our policies that we have, we work very closely with Church Hill and Antrum to to update our policies to make sure we're compliant with with the um the new Indiana codes and laws that go into effect July 1. So before you today, you'll see a list and a bullet summary of some of those. I I won't read them all to you. I I know that you you've taken time to review that. Some of them are just language like the first one. It just updates the language from um from the last legislative session on um non-discrimination, anti-harassment. So it just updates some of that language. Um school attendance. This one really defines gives more legs and definitions to school attendance which which I I think is is a good thing. Provides
033um definition of an absence um u definition of excused absences and what that can can um can be the parent access. Uh that new C225 uh some of those apply to us some of them do not because of House Bill 1315. I guess the most significant um portion of that that um that we'll have to comply with is a parent consent permission slip from the state that you have to use. We always did um parent permission slips when they we had um human sexuality conversations with with fourth graders, middle school health and high school health class. We'd always send permission slips home for parent consent to to participate in that um portion of the content. this year that you have to provide you have to use the provided provided permission slip uh or yeah provided
034informationational slip from the um latest legislation um kind of highlights from any of the rest of them. One is repeal D255 the teacher appreciation grant if you recall Dr. Bell would always bring that and have special approval on the breakdown of percentages and how much and when it would be distributed. That's all been repealed. They're they're revamping that entire grant. Um we believe we have the So there's no policy that you have to adopt. They're going to DOE is going to give us all the the um information that we need to to uh roll that out. New religious release time. That information is now listed. F125 is some purchasing and capital asset procedures um that Brad um will deal with. Most of those deal with dollar amounts look like some recycling and and different things.
035Um property procurement. Yes. Capitalization minimum capitalization is $10,000 and that's is what it was before. We're just updating it in the policy. Yeah. And then just some language about audio visual audio and video recordings on school property, school meetings and um executive sessions, data breaches. Th those were really pretty standard just updatedformational pieces based on that legislation. Who goes through and decides what uh capitalized assets? Is that all you? You okay? doing a wonderful job. By the way, it took five of us to do it. So, and you won. Okay, great. Okay, so um I'm asking for permission tonight to um approve these policies, adopt these policies and then wave that second um wave the second reading straight to approval. Have a motion. I'll make that motion. I'll second. All in favor? I oppos same
036sign. Okay. All right. Do we have any dialogue board? Anything anybody has? I've caused as much trouble as I want to cause tonight. You know, I got the heebie-jeebies when Brad said something about a boiler. That's like twitching. Any media? No media here tonight, I think. All right. Is there a motion to adjourn? So move. Second. Moved and second. And all in favor say I. I. We are ajourned. Welcome new teachers. We're glad you're here. Let us know if you need anything. Great. Great. Cindy, I got in too.