001i'll check it out on thursday tomorrow is hi chris good how are you you doing all right i still got you on the radio are you hearing yourself yeah it's funny i did a monthly recording today and steve introduced like a radio superstar and asked oh [Music] [Laughter] randomly kicked i'll be there for the storm pretty good hey how are you that was in your home [Music] foreign [Music] i'm very aware [Music] thank you oh [Music] for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everyone we'll call the roll i'm present dr o'neal present mr heater present mrs bales mrs barnes griffin mr irvin president mr lowe president okay we have a presentation tonight from the student advisory committee all right hello um good evening uh we are
002here to tell you a little bit about our group again and introduce the new members because we do have several alumni back which is awesome but this is a group that we've had i think this is our fourth year for it now um i say that because i think the seniors have been on for all four years so um i'm just gonna let them go with it they're going to read our mission statement and then they're going to introduce themselves okay hello the mission statement for the student advisory board is the student advisor board was made to have make the students have a voice in our school community and express to the school board any concerns or questions that our students may have within our community and many changes have been taken at mcs and
003we are continuing to do that and we would love to continue working with you all and we will provide and the students deserve to be part of the discussions moving forward within our community and we were going to introduce ourselves next so i'll just start my name is amaya kate and i am a junior at muncie central and i have been on the board for three years hi my name is alicia i'm a current senior this is my first year on the board but i do plenty of other leadership activities my name is sophia brandt i'm a senior and this is my first year on the board my name is nora cork i'm a junior and this is my third year on on the board my name is logan grady um i am a junior
004and this is my first year on the board as well i like your mask thank you i'm glad we have a cubs fan i'm josie sadler i'm currently a sophomore and this is my second year on the board and as you can see we have a number of students here but there are also a large number of students that weren't able to make it due to other extracurriculars or others after school events and they just weren't able to be here so we have um liaisa bristow emma ambler mackenzie durbin zachariah jones jordan dildy hunter matthews and lydia stevens they're all also on the board but they just weren't able to make it tonight and this year we've already gotten a head start although this is our first school board meeting we've gotten a head start
005on some topics to explore we've talked a lot about switching to a latin honor system so switching from valedictorian and salutatorian to more of a top 10 top 20 possibly giving recognition based off of gpa something like that we've worked a lot on dress code looking into a student-led dress code and working with the board to reform and reward parts of the dress code we've also looked into beautification of school grounds something like planting flowers mowing grass and working with groups throughout the school like nhs for kids to get volunteer hours for going out and planting and just making the school look nice we've also looked into changes in the lunch period and food lines because we've had a lot of problems with students be being able to eat lunch and get their lunch in
006a timely manner and finally we've looked into possibly getting an ap counselor so a counselor who would be at the school giving advice to ap students on what is going to look best in their schedule and what's going to get them to where they need to be in the next four years all right one of the things that uh we wanted to really make sure we hit hard tonight was that we changed our meeting times um we used to meet at seven in the morning and that was getting really hard for the kids to do and hard for anybody else to make it so now since we have our advisory period every day um that or on every day we have it but we're having our meetings every friday during that advisory period and it's
007from 9 35 to 10 05 in my room which is 4 28 so you guys are welcome any time to come during that meeting time to meet with the kids they we've already gotten a lot accomplished this year mr walker has come in a few times dr k has already come in and and talked with the group so um they would love your feedback and just be able to talk to you about any of those things for sure um so if you guys have any questions i told them just to be prepared to answer questions so hit them hard i have a quick question first of all i continue to be impressed by the ideas that you guys bring but also that you bring plans so i love that but i have a little bit
008of a challenge for you because you guys do a really great job of advocating for central high school and its students and i would love to see how you guys can help all mcs students and be their voice so i'm going to challenge you to try to start doing that somehow we've talked about trying to get student advisory boards for other schools started i know for me personally i went to southview and south side i have a sister there at southside right now and i know there's a lot of difficulties going on with their principals so i would love to see something like that happen yeah i feel like now that we have the zoom world to live in the logistics might be a little easier now and i would i follow up on ms
009spells's comment would love to see this group branch out and be representative of those schools because you you've attended those schools and you understand some of the issues that occur and those don't change overnight so uh to the extent that time permits and resources permit to the extent you're able to say pick a particular elementary during a period and say okay we're going to take a look at west view or south view or grissom or longfellow and sound out faculty or students or parents and say what you know what would you like to see us take to the board that would be ideal now i know that resources are limited and you guys are all busy students but that would be wonderful if you would be willing to undertake that um and you know even
010if it was a school a semester and then we were able to rotate it moving on you know for instance we have you know a project that's going to start here at ewa um within the next few weeks and you know making sure that that project's not completely disruptive to the education there uh that would be one thought but give that give that some consideration if you would you don't obviously this is your group not ours but um that would be wonderful so uh i know you've introduced yourselves but i i think the board would like to hear a little bit more about your plans um how you're doing at uh central and what your plans are potentially for post central so uh nora you want to lead off sure all right so as stated
011earlier i'm nora cork i'm currently a junior at muncie central i'm a little bit undecided on where i want to go for college but i have started touring went to vanderbilt last week didn't really like it but that's okay but i'm definitely looking into more of a pre-med route looking into neuroscience i'm currently enrolled in ap psychology ap environmental science ap calculus courses like that that will help me eventually in college and lead me to what i see myself doing in the future and what would that be right now it's kind of more looking like i kind of want to be a pediatrician but then there's also a part of me that wants to be a psychologist so we'll see it's and it is early and you can the world is your oyster yes it
012is so uh logan um i'm logan i've already addressed that part i know that um i'm a baseball fan clearly but the thing about me is uh post high school i really want to focus on a cop i really want to focus on a specific college i have a couple in mind that i want to go to in november i'm taking a tour of virginia tech um i want to hopefully play baseball there go d1 if i can you know the dream's alive um i'm really interested in music i've been playing instruments and singing since i was the age of two um i can play trombone guitar drums um a go-to one that i always have is frank sinatra's fly me to the moon i go a little classic just because you know there are
013older people in the crowd tonight so i like to keep it a little toned down but uh but uh post everything i just want to see myself doing something for the people something i've looked into a lot recently has been music therapy which is therapy through music i think music speaks volumes for a lot of people and i think it's untapped in a modern society i sure can fly me to the moon let me play among the stars is that good so logan logan if you would be so kind if you want to bring an instrument back and do a presentation we welcome it oh yeah i'm serious i'm serious i'll have to think about it okay now one other suggestion from mr heater and his older self baseball's wonderful i love it dearly oh
014if you're about to diss on the cubs no no i'm not no i'm not but i will tell you when you're in your 50s you're having your your music and that you know that hobby that vocation avocation of playing instruments will serve you so well thank you so you know stick with it i'll try my best thank you okay uh who's next hi i'm josie i will most likely go to ball state i'm not as musically talented as logan unfortunately but i really enjoy working with kids so and they have a really good teachers college there so something like that would be interesting for me and then she has a job well jesse yeah we'll have a place for you yeah hello i'm amaya i am a junior at muncie central and i would probably
015like to go somewhere into clinical psychology or somewhere in the math field maybe a math teacher not exactly sure what type of math but i like science and math type classes so pre-calc and ap chem is like my thing right now and i'm an ap psychology which will hopefully benefit my ideas into going into psychology i don't know where i'm going to college yet i'm looking for stay in or stanford maybe i don't know if i want to go that far because that's very far from monty indiana but we'll see um i'm sophia uh right now i'm thinking of going to michigan state um next year i'm looking into journalism and um something writing based english i like to write how i feel about things and just get it out there i think it'd be
016really neat to write maybe in a newspaper one day or something like that thank you hi i'm alicia as you can tell i've already applied to colleges um i want to go into the psychology field like a lot of the other ones up here i personally want to be a clinical psychologist it'll take a long time but i'm the current lily finalist at central so hopefully that'll help along the way thank you all thank you for your leadership and we'll look forward to hearing from you on a regular basis thank you dr krakowski thanks again students and i see chris walker at the back we just are so fortunate to have such amazing students that go to our schools i enjoy every chance i get to hear from them and to see the work they
017do i wanted to share that the georgian francis ball foundation is working with partners all across the city on the cradle to career initiative that we have and we call these our canned meetings so this morning i met with many other groups around the city we each have goals at different grade spans and just another great way that we're having many people trying to help our schools be the best they can be we just were notified um chuck work out worked on the ball brother foundation grant and we were just notified that we are being awarded 425 000 the funds will go towards athletics academic innovation marketing camp adventure coveted relief cte so we are very grateful for our foundations westview elementary they were just awarded a 2021 honoree for the iflta wide world award
018for distinguished dual language immersion program we go on and on every year about the the great program at west view it we have fantastic teachers instructing those programs and then i have to give a shout out to mr ambler the school principal who does a great job not only with our dual language program but with his entire school and i think that that is it as you you mentioned the ec east washington academy we're getting ready brad will be presenting some things tonight so we're excited to start some renovation on that school so that's always positive when we can bring improvement to our facilities okay any questions for dr frankowski but just to comment the grant ha the total has to be enormous and you guys have been really active in acquiring grant funding absolutely
019we were at since the time of the partnership we've been tracking not our normal type of grants that we get through formula driven but through competitive grants and our foundations we were at about 7.5 million so now this is going to take us to over 8 million that's it that's phenomenal not you know again the competitive grants but then our foundations have just been terrific to us that's a great job thank you yeah very good any additional questions okay uh mr hyatt you're up chris hyatt uh 2812 birdwood muncie be it remember back in september 14 mr williams violated both my statutory and constitutional rights which resulted in a formal complaint to the indiana public access counselor subsequently this body formally engaged an outside law firm to defend itself against the same as the response
020was authored as a defense of the board as a whole i'm assuming that you all have read and approved the final rendering of your response but just in case mr williams had acted severally and outside the knowledge of the rest of the board there's a copy of the board's response authored by church church hitler and antrim and if you are familiar with it for whatever reason i would encourage you to read it because it is about as disingenuous as mr williams virtue signaling diatribe of september 28th and his presentation to the ball state university trustees on october 1. i would like to also make a matter of formal record my request for the board's minutes regarding the discussion authorizations of any expenses associated with this issue let me quickly move on to another one of
021mr williams disingenuous interpretations regarding house enrolled act 1315. and that 1315 was never originally intended to be a permanent fix-all for the troubled muncie schools 89 pages long it reads in a more rounded understanding of the legislation as opposed to what mr williams would lead you to believe at the september 28th meeting mr arnold read you the indiana state attorney general's parental rights regarding public education in indiana we are now eager to find out how serious mr rakita is regarding parental rights in public schools as i seek a formal opinion of the constitutionality of the 18th chapter of title 20 article 23 of indiana law this cozy non-democratic assemblage created by special interests and non-affected indiana legislators cannot be sustained i have no confidence that the local appointed authorities will have the will to impose
022their own sunset and plan to return to muncie public schools back to the people and the parents of this community and finally i want to turn to the parents and grandparents of the muncie community school students and remind them in indiana you continue to have a choice a choice of where and who is responsible for the education of your children a choice of the schools of superior academic a choice of what your children are being taught an opportunity to be involved in the democratic administration of your child's education where if you don't like what's going on you can get involved and change things a choice of schools that embrace public discourse i want to hear what too many don't a choice to not only have to not have your children have to endure oppressive abusive
023and unhealthy policies such as forcing your child to wear a mask for eight hours a day and even more importantly to be rest assured that the minute they are authorized the muncie community school corporation will be undoubtedly mandating coveted vaccinations upon our children as well so be reminded that it's never too late you have a choice to control the most important aspects and experiences of the first 18 years of your children's lives and development thank you thank you mr hyatt mr hines hi i'm chris hines i live at 3321 north barn hill lane months indiana i'm 36 years old and father to two children at longfellow elementary third one at muncie central high school i the fellow before me covered a lot of my feelings pretty well especially about the masks that being said that's
024not something i can change all at once by myself with the masks i haven't i i would like for the school board to maybe put out some information to the public as to what guidelines were followed into coming to decision about that what kind of scientific evidence was followed for you know for why our kids are having to be masked like this but furthermore as long as we want to do it i've observed something pretty unsettling about it and i'm more concerned for a lot of other people's kids than i am my own because i can watch my own more carefully but i not all people may watch them as closely about this i've noticed several times that my children come home from school you know during a time that they weren't living with me
025and a lot of times when i would pick them up from school or they would get back from school they would have a lot of food or mess in their mask it would look pretty disgusting and i think that if the school is going to force children to wear masks they should have to supply the children with a new mask every day when they walk in school and then a new mask every day at lunch without question and every child should be at least made sure that their masks are clean i think that's really reasonable if we're going to look at this and be up in arms about it and so scared of it then let's really do some investigating in the problems rather than just making it all politics the other question that i
026would really like to answer i don't know where else to go to find it out and get an answer i don't know if you people are willing to answer me right now but i would like to you know yes or no is critical race there being taught in the school of my children because my daughter came home to me the other day and told me that you can't be racist against white people because they have no culture and that's all i've got to say today unless anyone would like to answer the question i asked okay mr hein's critical race theory as i went through in detail at the last meeting was not being taught in any of our schools critical race theory i will finish i will finish critical race theory is a graduate level
027or law school level theory uh we are not sanctioning it is not part of our curriculum our social studies curriculum is strictly within indiana standards uh and meets indiana standards so okay you can rest assured that if she heard that it wasn't part of any curriculum that is being organized or sanctioned by this board well i appreciate you answering my question and i will address the issue of the mask as well um we consulted closely with uh ball iu and specifically the physicians at the hospital and then other the department of health locally and the state department of health it is not our desire to keep kids in mask believe me we hate it um covet is seems to be receding a bit we will see where the next uh month or two leads us
028in terms of any resurgence but it is our goal uh again watching um the numbers locally we continue to see a remission of those cases if we can get to a point where community spread dips down we are going to seriously look at at going away from mask and that is certainly our goal okay um would it be possible for me to have the names of some of the physicians that you guys consulted with we consulted with dr byrd and dr voss the chief medical officer at the hospital okay awesome all right well yeah i mean i i know dr voss a little bit he's a great guy yeah we consulted closely with peterborough i just i want to make sure we're being careful as if it can and not too careful at the same
029time because with the dirty masks and stuff that that kind of thing really can get kids sick and i will ask um at this meeting that we communicate with our principals that we always have clean mask available to the kids if certainly we have a supply of mask available at the school yeah and if principals see somebody with a filthy or dirty or soiled mask then we get them a new mask and sometimes it may not be so noticeable if like in my kid's case a lot of times they'll wear the mask that has a lot of darker graphics and things on it you know cartoons things like that so it may not be readily apparent from the outside yeah no absolutely i think that's a a very very very valid point and we'll take
030steps we'll send messages down the chain uh to make sure we get cleaner mass so thank you for bringing that to our attention and uh we did if you will look uh on this on the website there is posted there a pdf of the board presentation at the last meeting that goes in detail into the curriculum issues that you raised so i would encourage you to take a look at that pdf which i think will give you some reassurance okay well i really appreciate that i thank you for your time today oh thank you for your time appreciate it um addressing mr hyatt who has left the meeting um the material put together in response to the open door complaint by church hittle was based on statements of i think five witnesses at the meeting
031who put together statements for the lawyer under developing the facts and conclusions of that meeting regarding the constitutionality of house bill we have to count on the level of expertise of the indiana legislature where it received broad support within the general assembly as well as from the governor's office and it is not without precedent on a nationwide basis so with regard to choices of schools we would again as a board indicate that our position is to always place the welfare of our students at the forefront are and that welfare includes their social uh and emotional and psychological development and i understand the difficulty of the past two years it's not been easy for any one of these students here tonight me anybody else we are all doing our level best with the first major pandemic
032in our lifetimes if you look at the news the political nature of this pandemic has become vitriolic and unproductive however it is not new if you go back and look at history during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic you saw many of the same issues arising when people's lives are disrupted by uh threatening and little understood infection that no one can see or predict um those anxieties oftentimes bubble into a significant disagreement over how best to manage them this board along with the input we have sought from epidemiologists doctors those who are treating coveted cases in the community have done our level best to balance the needs of our students academically and socially with their physical safety from this virus as we've done so unlike many other schools around this state we have kept our classrooms open
033for last year 180 days uh this year we have not seen any corn we have not seen our classrooms close this is unique and we've done so by taking the steps and i would applaud our leadership team dr kwakowski the dr reynolds miss phelps and mr jerome dia young who's back dr young who's back there and others who have worked tirelessly on our reopening and management plan to make certain we had kids in the classroom to the extent it was humanly possible and we managed to do that for the vast majority of our students last year and again this year so mr hines i appreciate your position i and in june i was relatively comfortable by july and conversations with dr voss and others they gave us guidance which we felt was necessary to keep
034our schools functioning and the governor's executive order which indicated that if our kids had on mask we did not have to as broadly quarantined students which again enabled us to keep the majority of our students in classrooms in a manner that many schools around the state have not been able to do i understand the challenges that have been faced with the kids what we should be talking about in all candor in terms of the education not only in muncie community schools but across the state of indiana in this nation is the learning loss which is still being measured which has occurred over the past 18 months the learning loss which has been endured by these students sitting right here and their peers at all levels has been nothing short of drastic these are students who
035will struggle uh the ones we have here and others to catch up from the impairment that has resulted from this there's no there's no other word for it it's a tragedy and this is one of many issues and that is the learning loss that has occurred at all levels i want to again applaud our leadership team we had over 500 students attending catch-up summers programs over the summer but it's a drop in the bucket so as we fuss and argue over a variety of things in house bill 1315 if we could make up the learning loss which has been suffered by this generation of students in a meaningful way i could care less what happens to house bill 1315. i really could uh we have a serious serious crisis nationwide that is getting scant attention
036because of all the fussing over quite frankly nonsense so with that we will move on mr president are you lying to comment from the audience public comment is over mr answer thank you um and the audience doesn't have the right to do a point of order by the way um we're moving to the consent agenda um consent agenda any questions concerning that i have a couple quick little edits um on the minutes i think it's noted that mr basham was here from the visitors bureau and he was here representing the rotary distributing those checks so just to fix that and then on the fundraising document i think girls is spelled wrong on girls basketball we think are we pretty sure [Laughter] any other questions so i want to take a moment and introduce uh mr
037mike raiders so mr raiders if you'll stand up for me i'll introduce you mr raiders is our new principal at southside middle school and we would welcome here to him here tonight mike raiders went to wabash college which i'm personally proud of um i think class of 1985 was 85 or 86 85 85 and he was three years in front of me there i had nothing to do with his hiring incidentally he then went to franklin schools franklin central central franklin central schools and where from that we're after from there so i was at franklin central actually before that i was at cecina high school franklin central high school and then went to wabash back to wabash as associate dean served in that capacity for four years and was promoted to the dean level and
038served in that capacity for 11 so i was there for 15 years total i know i'm not a i was a social studies teacher so i know that it's not an even number 15 years is an odd number i'm aware of that but it's kind of even-ish in terms of a solid time to say okay and time to go so so went into the education consulting world last semester served in an enter on an interim basis as principal of mount vernon middle school vernon community schools and back in the consulting world and here i am today so um mike was also a fantastic baseball player so yeah and a cubs fan as well like logan so the floor is yours welcome thank you thank you it's it's a real pleasure to be here i have
039uh you know in the consulting world i follow schools very carefully and recognize the efforts that this group here and the leadership back at at our school south side middle school are trying to to take to turn around schools and make us as strong and increase the learning and narrow that learning gap that mr williams talked about as much as we possibly can i believe that you do that by putting the students at the center of every discussion every decision and i also believe that we do that by developing good positive relationships with our students first and foremost our staff our faculty other administrators and other members of the of the community that support our students so that's that's me in a nutshell that's what you can expect from me i have high expectations a
040lot of experience at different levels and i will say that what i really learned uh especially at mount vernon last semester was uh that kids are kids uh and leadership is leadership uh and so the the skill set that's needed the how to do things uh is uh is really pretty consistent and here again you can you can expect me to be consistent in in my approach any questions for mr raiders thank you and let us know how we can support you we'll do thank you thank you [Applause] any additional questions concerning the consent agenda just a quick comment about lisa letzinger how do you ever replace her you don't right she's one of those teachers it's just hard to replace so thank you for the year she gave us really excellent yeah thank you
041jim for raising that that would entertain a motion to approve i moved to approve okay moved and seconded all those in favor signify by aye aye opposed same side okay we have next on the agenda the mcs ymca mou as anybody get a chance to review that document any questions concerning that okay um would entertain a motion to approve it so moved all those in favor all right pardon me second okay i'll second david's got a second mark any additional questions from the board all those in favor signify by all right opposed same sign uh financial report mr jerome uh thank you included in your board packet is the financial results and the information for the month of september just a few a few highlights to report that we did receive our state basic grant
042in the month of 3.3 million dollars still holding to our enrollment count in september of 4 900 i think it might be 4 925 right now still up significantly over last year up 164 since february up 117 since last september it's still in the final reconcilement phase with the state so that's positive news um payroll is about the same as last year in the month but year-to-date it's up because of our pandemic stipend that we had paid plus raises we finished the month with a little over 30 million dollars in the bank still have over 9 million in rainy day still expect to be in a positive cash position at the end of december uh still paying 50 000 a month on our common school loan to the state of indiana uh as we get
043closer to the end of december that's our snapshot the end of the 12 months so that's when our we have to make sure we don't suspend over our overall appropriations and our various tax supported funds of operation fund uh education funded debt service so we're still on target to to do that and that pretty much concludes my report for september okay any questions for mr jerome we've an irritation obtain a motion to approve some of them been moved and seconded any questions for mr jerome following the motion all those in favor signify by eye close same sign uh we have permission to fund project over fifty thousand from mr jerome uh thank you this uh this project right here kind of continued on from the project was started long before the pandemic this was to
044install some special needs playground and playground equipment and sections at grissom elementary really at this point now we have a the coming together of several grant opportunities at the same time to be able to afford these pieces and parts to make this happen so because it is over fifty thousand dollars uh with the vendor commercial recreation group we're asking permission for a motion to approve this uh with funding coming from community foundation grant of over fifty nine thousand dollars sr3 was forty two thousand nine hundred eighty eight dollars and the special education grant funded of 150 000 so looking for a motion to approve okay you've heard the presentation any questions and this is for the um playground equipment special needs okay and where is it being located and i missed that grissom i'm sorry
045move approval second been moved and seconded all those in favor signify by uh post same sign okay we'll show that past um dialogue of the board anything anything at all okay media questions mr president rick yesterday 150 mind telling us and the public it's written in english and you have a copy i believe no i do okay we'll get you a copy okay uh my name is mccoy i'm a faulty journalism student i am out on an assignment for a project to cover the ymca project currently looking for a couple interviews for that um set up an interview with the ceo for the ymca already so if there's a name i do need a second interview for that's from regular public perspective so mr klotz will work with you to get an interview set up
046and um okay thank you anything further my name pretty similar is um said i'm covering the special needs playground so if there is anybody on the board that would be willing to set up an interview with me i would appreciate that people will get that yeah if you work with andy we'll get that too and then also how exactly are we going to address issues with parking with the new ymca at central so we have on the wreath configured drawing um you're there you're taking no spots on the north side of central and out of 550 spots you're only losing about seven percent of those spots in the process so you're going to have as opposed to 550 spots about 490 spots that remain in that area plus overflow parking [Music] and we're going to
047reconfi yeah absolutely and we are reconfiguring all that to provide for traffic flow in a manner that actually improves the the current and existing pickup structure we are creating some overflow parking where we're going to create an additional overflow parking on the south side of the football field okay and i should add that most of that study is underway with cripe correct a civil engineering firm that will study both egress into and out of the parking lots time of day flow traffic and the parking situation so they will bring back to us a report and tell us how to address that yeah that we're still in a very early stage very early stage but the preliminary drawings indicate that even before you create overflow parking we're talking about a loss of 50 spots we're going
048to add more than 50 spots back on the south end of the football stadium lot of um a lot of their programs aren't really available to those who may be at central who are more low income we are [Music] we have community funders who will uh be providing we're looking at community funders to provide funding to provide universal access to mcs students any additional questions okay with that um entertain a motion to adjourn hello second moved and seconded all those in favor signify by aye aye all right opposed same side is andy andy we have two ball street journalism students who need to set up uh interviews uh regarding a couple different issues so andy's right there in the high-end suit [Music] thank you [Music]