001okay [Music] thank you oh yeah 33 and ask everyone if you stand and join the vice president seaberg and Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance 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 roll call Mrs Jackson here Mr holquest here sparkling here dispense here I am also president vice president here and president Arnold president all presidents thank you first order business public comment do you have any public comment this evening we'll just have fun I grab one Wisconsin I'd like the information she's in their City there for anybody who looks like I can't go through all this information in three minutes but my speed written is not just nothing also initially want to
002thank you for hearing me and I also wanted to say that I got submitted in December a request for public records information I have not receiving any information back on that I was sort of revealed so I didn't hear about that tonight's comment was concerning the gender identity policies the Dei programs and the advocates for Houston my summary of those comments today what positive results did academics mental health and well-being have been demonstrated by the policies and programs such as the DPI CSE and other gender explanations so the interesting they have here the second sheet and I'm not going to go over that much I was trying to look up information pertaining to the executive order 139.88 is pertaining to how that affects the changes or Alters the uh 1975 law the family educational rights
003and Privacy Act and I don't see I'm not a lawyer I don't have no legalese but I can't see where that changes anything whereas the journal rights of the paired to be informed of anything that's going on with their parents okay so and that's there and you guys probably don't know about that I do but I sure would like to know what the laws are and federal law versus the executive order then the other thing I had was the comprehensive sexual education program these uh this notes here has been too former sex Educators Veronica Klein and Audrey Werner through the SEL program the comprehensive sexual education program isn't on how to practice safe sex it's your name program which talks about how to use a Content using the role-playing practice Planned Parenthood works with these
004teachers to LDS CSE to teach the children to have safe safe sex then further on on the comments here these materials might be considered obscene according to the obscenity laws in most States exemptions to schools libraries and museums this material is allowed to be given to Children attempts to repeal these obscenity exemptions which several States haven't done that both here and in Nebraska those have failed to go through then also therefore the children are being exposed to this material in schools across the country that I couldn't have access to myself I could do social emotional learning programs and reading a material that part of the curriculum these programs unlike the curriculum not subject to review by the parents then just in final synopsis from the material that I had to I want to share with
005you is that from the slide the advocates for youth psych which is where the compliments of sexual education programs can be accessed I understand if this is wrong let me know because I'm just look at what I see that's out there there's the evidence for youth site which says the new youth activist toolkit was developed with youth writers and activists to be detailed guide to help young people develop a plan organize a coalition and find and Implement strategies to achieve measurable social impact goals young people understand that reproductive and sexual health and rights are inexplicably tied to social justice in the fight for Liberation Joy thousands of people youth activists and adult allies as we build a better and more Equitable world then the amazed youth program which has several videos and I just pulled
006up the title to some of them so here are some of them my friend is a transgender I think I might be bisexual I think I might be invested in these are all different I think I might be gay I think I might be asexual how to use a condom do the Amaze youth program that you're initiating okay youth ambassador program online animated sex and education series is conducting a nationwide search for young people's age 10 to 16 with like Ambassador project I'm sorry I just don't think it's right thank you thank you very much and you did you leave your hand out to over there on the uh maybe a table okay thank you anybody at the board you would like to pick up a copy of what you said thank you next order
007business is a consent agenda we have one additional add-in to be added to the Personnel agenda addendum at the bottom of personal recommendation and travel requests so we'll be covering approval of the minutes for the January 9 2003 school board meeting approval of the minutes for January 9 2023 or reorganizational meeting approval of minutes of January 9 2023 Board of Finance meeting approval of the minutes of January 23rd 2020 special executive session financials and ratification and approval of February 13th 2023 the treasures report for January 2023 and the Personnel recommendations and travel requests and before we vote on that I'd like to have a motion and approval of board to have the personality addendum you will pass out so thank you great president Jennifer thank you have a motion approval Hold Us in favor aye
008opposed past 7-0 so with the consent agenda now having been read and do I have a motion to pass so moved Mr President thank you second and secondary motion cruel any discussion all over the favors goodbye 7-0 president Arnold the fight could uh thank you for your support on the consent agenda and having approved that this evening there are a couple key appointments that would like to bring forward here or make public and that is the fact that the official approval was here tonight for a football head football coach for LaPorte High School and that's Bob James and as well we have a key position our maintenance facility assistant director and that's Terry Pointon and many of you know terriers have them having worked at Trevor field and we were also happy to announce that
009Matt Stahl will be replacing Terry Pointon and being in charge of sharper field maintenance thank you for your support on those things member of the board interface thank you Dr Fred storm in fact we have no old business to read reports the superintendent would you like to give your report yes I would thank you we are pleased to have quite a few of our teachers being awarded teacher grants from the Laporte Education Foundation and to present those this evening is Teresa schabel good evening I'm Teresa schabel the principal at Richfield Elementary and I also serve on Laporte educational development foundation for part of my duties is to award a teacher grants and something we look forward to every year because as you can see these teachers are very dedicated and we very much appreciate that
010they're all here France to allow personality to be in their classrooms that are not normally able to always be funded and so because of our generous donations throughout the Turkey Trot that we have every November we're able to have about 22 Awards this evening and so when I call your name if you would please come up and then just stand over to the side collect your certificate and they'll get a picture at the very end and if you would wait till the end I do have several that that we're not able to attend to start with James blazorik from LaPorte High School as well as Don varda charity Oliver from Laporte middle school for empty bowls project and Bonnie dewul for sewing up the American Revolution Tracy hand and Kristen Ulrich for over excuse me
011for wrestling Intermediate School pbl and moon Transformations Amy Hancock from the kessland campus in recognition for the victory garden Megan haversack and third grade team for building up steam in third grade two Allie West Lisa West Alice talison and Lynette Patterson or purposeful play a second grade team from Kingsbury Elementary Stephanie Kaiser and Jill Kaufman for Kingsbury literacy project Taylor sass from Kingsbury for rooted in reading books uh Maria moral amor from Lincoln Elementary we're building a Facebook Library as well as Marcia Aragon from Lincoln uh Sheila reisik for uh from Riley Elementary or public health location charts Esmeralda Vargas from Highland Elementary for supporting our Ells Lauren Dixon from Indian Trail or come up and show your thinking as well as Courtney powley or graphic novels Galore Brittany Huber from Hanley Elementary or smegen's
012Mentor text as well as Hannah schroll Sarah ebersol and Nicole Moore from Hanley Elementary or Hoosier hungry for books Aaron Lozano from Henry Elementary for young authors uh Jeanette James Raymond from our Little Learners Preschool we're big science for Little Learners continue and then the teachers that I knew were not able to be here tonight are holly Lyles from Riley Elementary sponge from heilman and Jesse Davenport she left her baby for a few minutes um so Alexis had US stamp ends as well so again congratulations to all these dedicated educators so I would I would like to say one thing thank you to the foundation of course for going up above and beyond uh granting money to our staff who are themselves going above and beyond if you're listening to some of the things we're
013highlighting here as far as their grants and the requests all for things that are very solid regarding going above and beyond project-based learning ways to deliver education that students are interested in variations of approaches with students Hands-On learning all these things are very much supported making accommodations and so hats off to all of our staff for the extra work it takes to go after these things and to deliver so thank you very much would like to have a picture here and if you could come up we're going to have to get close here we want to get you all in here so I'd get a couple different levels right over here there you go that's better nice thank you very much yeah foreign so continuing on with my report I would like to provide an
014update on our strategic planning process progress at this point this is a big week for us since our last meeting we've had a couple different planning team meetings tomorrow we will be having a large group of close to 50 individuals both from the community and from our staff working together to narrow down specifically things that are come out on our out of our Focus areas in order to give us some data to work on to very specifically list initiatives and goals from the ideas that are coming out of the categories of safety curriculum and Community parent and staff engagement so we're really excited about that we're also narrowing down the mission Mission Vision and values for the corporation and by the end of the year again we'll have a product that will be able to
015work towards over the next three to five years so we're really excited about that that concludes my report thank you Dr Francis County any questions comments from the board next we'll have the elementary assistant superintendent Dr tanagel all right good evening everyone I'm really excited to invite up to the podium some of our staff and representatives from Kingsford Heights Elementary School to do a school Spotlight and some special stem programming so this is kosher our principal come up with your team please you passed the first test whenever you're ready good evening yeah we appreciate Dr tonigal uh inviting us to come to talk about or brag about a lot of the stem and Robotics initiatives that we have going on at kingster Heights I'm Amy kosher principal at Kingsford Heights I have with me Sarah
016sites our Project Lead the Way teacher she serves both at Kingston Heights and heilman and then I have Miss Sophia Nieto and she is a student has been our student since she was in preschool and now she's in fourth grade and so she will be your robotics expert to be able to answer any questions you might have right and she's ready to go um we thought it might be um a good idea to share with you some of the initiatives in video format so that you can kind of get a better idea of how we um run our programming and what the kids are engaged in and then if you have questions after that we can go ahead and answer questions for you so I believe our video is like three or four minutes um
017but but in summary we just applied for idoe stem certification in October end of October it was due and then we just found out the beginning of January that we were classified as a developing stem school which means that gives us until the following October to put into place a few other important aspects of our application we are very appreciative of Miss Aaron Meyer over here for helping us with our video website we had to construct which was pretty intense but we were really happy to learn these new things and see what's expected at the idoe for becoming a stem certified School via way in LaPorte County there are only two stem certified schools one being crichfield and their certification ends this year so they'll be starting recertification next year and the only other school
018within the county is Lake Hills Elementary School which is a part of Michigan City School school corporation and they are a designated stem school but they are a magnet stem school as well so um anyway so that's kind of an interesting fact that there's only two two schools in the entire County and I think I read the fact that 109 across the state of all schools all age levels 109 stone certified schools out of almost 1700 schools so it's kind of a you know an interesting uh achievement and you know very important achievement so um we'll go ahead and start our program you guys can take a look at that foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you so that's what we've been up to over the past
019couple of years photos were still from when we were in covid but we did not stop learning stomach that um activities and initiatives while they were open today um so if anybody has any questions for Sarah regarding Project Lead the Way or Miss Sophia would you like to tell them how many years you can I'm going to read your story because hello my name is and Kingsford Heights third and fourth grade students can join our robotics team this year we compete with two tournaments one interested in the living and one at Kingsport Heights Elementary I have participated in robotics for two years this is pretty good good job okay that's closure you say you applied for stem certification we did I'll let Sarah answer that because she was also she's our leader in that area
020I'm the secondary leader but she's very involved in the process so how long does it take to get to contain that certification well we we are not certified yet we are progressing toward that developing that we have another year Well October we'll apply again and um hopefully uh refine some things that didn't go so well in our application now that we know more about the process because we really didn't know anything about the process going in and learned a lot through through it but yeah the application is just available through the idoe and they kind of gave us some guidelines but until we got their feedback we really didn't know um much yeah specifics now now we can really um attack in a different way I think I was really happy to see rings of
021Life on you my wife's been involved with brain's life about 18 years and she was out there today and I'm really happy to see that being as what up and coming organization our stem application to to the ID OB the whole process has changed a great deal in five years so now there is this technological component with you having to divide every school having to develop their own website and have all of their data all of their documentation all on a a created you know website so for us that was a new experience as well when Crutchfield did their certification five years ago it was submitted in documents not electronically so things have changed a lot so even for us to go to our colleagues and talk about you know how you know how did
022this go for you how can we uh take some advice from you um it's it's completely different so I I kind of gather that they'll be asking us some questions coming up here as they start this whole process in October or next fall and then we all submit our final products in October end of October uh for 2023. so hopefully we'll have some good news for you next school year as we get our final results back Sophia what's your favorite part of being in the robotics Club [Music] learning about different kind of things about technology works that's awesome very cool oh so last year it was um these balls that you have to launch up into a basketball but this year is this you gotta shoot um and if you if you touch where this
023arm then that's extra points cool so each year there is a new challenge that Vex robotics gives to the kids you need the new equipment that you have to purchase and the kids have to learn the new challenge the coaches have to learn the new challenge first so that they can help the kids along in the process but it's all very exciting as you can see from the pictures that's it's um we're we're very excited at Kingsbury Hearts Kingsford Heights will be one of the schools that hosts a Vex robotics tournament it's a lot of work and a lot of time but this is our fourth year doing it now so we're kind of getting pretty decent at it so we're pretty proud of that this year the teams went to Chesterton intermediate as well
024earlier in the year so they learned a lot to bring it back to adjust make adjustments to their robots you know figure out some things that they needed to do better um and then they would have that opportunity to make changes for the next tournament and we had some pretty good results Sofia's team was 11. so awesome it's closer and Mrs sites first of all I'd like to thank you for modeling what it takes to take on these challenges for for the children who are being challenged as well uh you guys have been really working towards just challenging students in stem for a number of years this particular Declaration of being a stem certified school is just one more challenge for you but it's we're proud of you and proud of students like Sophia when
025we can see they're excited about what they're doing learning things that certainly are going to serve them well in the future so thank you for your efforts we're gonna grab a picture so thank you Mrs kosher Mr Seitz and Miss Sophia we appreciate you presenting tonight all right thank you very much for allowing us thank you thank you all right thank you one more item for my report I'm going to be giving an update on our playground space Improvement projects through the Healthcare Foundation I have a short presentation that I'm going to go over with you some of this is just historical but since we have so many new board members I'm going to repeat some information set up here so as she's setting that up this is our second round of grants that we
026are applying for through the Healthcare Foundation the first one was done in 2022 and we are still working on that we're a little behind due to various interruptions in the supply chain and the weather and having a workers be able to to do the installation all that sort of thing but we're not to be discouraged the projects are moving on so while those projects are finishing up we also are continuing to forge ahead by applying for a new grant for three new schools and so that's in the 2023 Grant and that's what I'm going to share with you thank you all right this chart right here shows a little bit of the um amount of financial aid involved in the projects the colors in green are the current projects that are going on right now
027and that's how I'm in Kingsbury and Riley the yellow projects are the new projects that we are applying for the letter of an intent right now through the Healthcare Foundation so you'll notice up there we these are all estimated costs but we have a grant cost from the Healthcare Foundation that we're requesting and then we have some money factored in from our school ptas or ptos who have historically invested in some fundraising for these projects so right now Kingsbury heilman and Riley are all involved in the installation of the new playgrounds they all were delivered here in the last month so all the equipment is on site the old equipment is being removed but we're being very careful not to pull it too quick because we don't want too much of a disruption for our
028kids so right now Riley's equipment has been removed there's an excavator out there and they're prepping the ground and the installation crew is is currently out there right now Kingsbury will be next followed by heilman this is the same installation crew that works on all three projects so we're hoping this beautiful spring weather in February continues because that will help us kind of catch back up heilman's a little bit different we're doing a port service at heilman and so the weather really has to cooperate versus the um the surface of the other schools with the mulch The Mulch surface so that's a little different that's why they're going last we're going to try to time that in the spring when the when real spring is here all right there's a couple pictures of Riley on
029our left is right over by Weller Avenue and on our right that picture is behind the school we're going to swap our playgrounds and put our older playground with a two to five playground up here near the road currently that was the Pre-K 2-1 playground but we want to get The Littles off the road and move them to the back so we're going to be flipping those out so they're really two new playgrounds coming in at Riley there's our Kingsbury delivery sitting and waiting and the same thing with heilman so our three new schools just to make a couple comments about those we've got critchfield first these projects were all prioritized according to A needs assessment so annually we have a crew that comes out and does an inspection and lists the priorities of which
030equipment needs to be fixed so how did we get the first three schools on the list they were the most neediest schools so these next three Schools fall after that our Corporation has historically provided the maintenance and the compliance factors with playgrounds we have updated playgrounds anytime there's a major building project but playgrounds are really expensive and they don't get upgraded very often we've had limitations with the amount of capital projects money that's available and there's lots of needs with parking lots and all kinds of Maintenance and HVAC and those types of things and so they've kind of fall on the lower end of the priority list and so what we end up doing is fixing them constantly well you get to a certain point when they're more difficult to fix and in the latest
031case with Kingsbury we were told that some of these parts are just you can't you know can't get them anymore they're too hard to get so you have to start replacing them so these fundraisers have been going on for years and years and years at our schools because they've had a goal to update playgrounds I think Indian Trail was the last school to do their whole playground through a fundraiser but you know the cost of these playgrounds are such right now you know if your child was in kindergarten when you started fundraising on the PTA or PTO you might be 45 by the time your playground gets done so I came in and looked at how do we you know accelerate this process in the Healthcare Foundation of Laporte has shared goals and initiatives and
032priorities that align with what we're trying to do we want healthy kids we want active kids we want community um space for families to get together and exercise and play and that sort of thing so this was a good opportunity for us you can see Crutchfield has it looks like twenty five thousand dollars right now in the bank ready to go and they're continuing to do some fundraising so as prices go up um you know we'll be getting quotes on these things and trying to make it all fit together Lincoln has been another school in need thing I'll say about Lincoln is traditionally it's been a school that's been closed off with a fence because of maybe concerns with trespassers or vandalism or that sort of thing these playgrounds are going to be accessible to
033the neighborhood during reasonable hours we're going to have posted signs that welcome the community into them during hours of operation we talked a lot about trying to align that with how we do our County Parks so getting verbiage that would designate that space as being accessible sun up to sundown I don't remember exactly how we phrased it on on the signs but the Healthcare Foundation entered into an mou with our school board with the last school board saying that these would this space would be accessible to the community neighborhood so we will be making sure that at Riley at Lincoln at Crutchfield all have access to these um the one comment I'll make about Kingsford Heights and probably should have had Mrs kosher make this but I call them space improvements because it's not just
034about Playgrounds a lot of our schools have access to Great Green Space Trails um you know basketball courts soccer fields that sort of thing Trail and so in the case of Kingsford Heights they've been um working on their Trail for a little while working with their playground or with their PTO PTA to enhance the whole Space across the whole ground so we're not just looking at the actual equipment slides and you know swing sets and that sort of thing we're looking at this holistically to get the community involved so that's really exciting for them to be able to get some help because again it's a really expensive project uh one question that our previous that previously came up last year when I presented on this why aren't we using Esser dollars to do this sort
035of thing extra dollars were focused on learning loss that was our primary um you know interest in using us or dollars there was a non-learning loss category form but we did some other things with HVAC bus purifiers all those sorts of things and so we did not designate money for our playgrounds into our Esther budget and that budget is posted online so you can see how that money is being spent so right now our letter of intent has been sent to the Healthcare Foundation and they will be reviewing it once they approve that then we will be doing a full Grant application for those three schools if all goes well we would be looking to do the next three schools in the next cycle in the 2024 cycle I'd be glad to answer any questions
036about the grant or any of the projects the lifespan of the playground I mean I could probably do the math thinking about like how old Riley's playground is and Kings fairies but how long until a replacement is normal they last a long time and and they most of them are in place when the building was lastly renovated or or last built um you can keep them going you know there's not a lot of moving Parts on them so as long as you can you know fix things that rust or you know the moving Parts on swings they can they can go for a long time so I don't know that I've ever been given a timeline on them um I'll show you well it's not on this one the playground specs for 2023 are a
037lot more enhanced than they were in 1960 or 1970s so the playgrounds we're putting in are so much more engaging so um from that standpoint you know you're probably looking at 20 years and you probably need to start upgrading some of the equipment just to keep up with the local parks and that sort of thing I was just thinking about it from a standpoint of this these grants are amazing and I was thinking like long term but yeah this should buy us 20 years or so a long time yeah right correct yeah there's Riley right there oh cool um that is Kingsbury I believe and again these are there's a little playground and a big playground for your lower grades and your upper grades heilman with the port surface right there we look at Port
038Services for either three new ones no poor surface said heilman all are Ada accessible okay any other questions that concludes my report thank you thank you okay we'll move on now to these you know we've been talking a lot about our Pathways at the high school and the intermediate campus the presentation tonight on a project lead the way kind of leads into what our students and staff are doing right now which is being able to choose their courses for experiences starting in fifth grade and then really a little more focused in seventh grade so right now is the time with our program of studies our schools are having parent meetings they're meeting with the students they're sending the information home so we would just encourage parents to really be looking at our course offerings as
039they're doing their schedules for next year and February is a Career Technical Education Month and so I wanted to highlight this month with a presentation by our director of career Readiness Jen Goss so I'll have her come up and I would like her to highlight our health careers pathway so you you might recall before covid we actually applied for a Healthcare Foundation Grant and started a health careers program at the high school and it was a little difficult to do that virtually but it was the first step in growing that program and at the time we were partnering with our clinic and having the nurse practitioner as our instructor and had to make a few modifications on that but this year we really um kind of bounced back reboosted what we were doing we were
040able to hire an amazing instructor Tabitha Hughes for the health careers program Jen was able to recruit students last year who wanted to go into the health career field and so we've started that program this year along with a lot of other excellent pieces so I won't take her the slides from her Powerpoint but I'd like to introduce Jen gas to share that information with you tonight hello hi thank you for having me I'm Jennifer about slicer Health Sciences and what our goals are for the future so Health Sciences is broken down into Health Science one and health science too during Health Science one students take principles of Health Care Medical Terminology and Healthcare Specialists Healthcare Specialists is what students need to take in order to earn their CNA or their certified nursing assistant uh
041certification so this course covers the fundamentals of careers in the health field medical terminology and the structure and function of the human body all of these courses are dual credit um Tabitha came to us ready to go with Eatonville credit certified so that's awesome um and so students will be earning their college credits while still in high school um and then the health science too which is the second year of it that's their Capstone so the Capstone is of course a course that will provide Healthcare students with additional Knowledge and Skills necessary to work in a variety of healthcare settings Beyond just long-term care facilities so we they can work in hospitals doctors offices and Clinics students can accomplish this goal by completing coursework that will cover topics such as medical law ethics electronic health
042records and or Behavioral Health so just a quick overview of what those are we've been very fortunate to have partnered with Northwest Health we're already working on some internship type opportunities for students that qualify to go into that in many different fields phlebotomy is an x-ray to Surge checks so we're working closely with them [Music] some future careers that students might be interested in in pursuing in the CNA program or the Health Sciences program or registered nurse CNA phlebotomist dental assistant EMT vet tech x-ray technician physician I've had students finish the program in other places that have gone on to like speech therapy or there now you might see them riding around in ambulances around the area because they went up to EMT school and then also some of our students are working at our
043local hospitals so Northwest Health has again been a big supporter of the Inception of this program we were invited to attend um student surgical day at Northwest Health they created this specifically for LaPorte County students interested in health careers during this day students will will spend about two hours on the Northwest Hospital campus they'll highlight Three core roles of the operating room they will experience the operating room and surgical procedure set up and then they'll see a mock endoscopy Suite to be honest I'm not really sure what that all means yet but I will I will let you know afterwards I'm sure there will be lots of pictures taken so HOSA if you're not familiar is used to be Health occupation students of America it's a it's a club there's student-led organization that students in
044high school can join um it's now called future health professionals but they're still using HOSA as the acronym um when Tampa that came to us she also wanted to start a HOSA program with the health science program and she has done that and we have a wonderful group of students that are part of HOSA so HOSA is a student-led organization Empower host of members to become leaders in the global Health Community hope to also promotes career opportunities it enhances the delivery of Quality Health Care to all people and it works with their leadership development so all of these students well most of those students will be going to Indianapolis in April to go to their HOSA convention some of them might be competing um in some different activities like they do CPR they do basic
045life support those kinds of things so we're very excited about our coaster group um hosa's main objective is to have a community service project they've chosen to do project Adam um if you're not familiar with the project Adam it is a my notes here it's a heart safe school program and there are currently five high schools in the state of Indiana that are certified through project Adam the closest one to us being new Prairie High School um and so hosa's goal is that by the end of the calendar year 2023 the port high school will be a designated project out of heart safe school um recently new Prairie Middle School and Rolling Prairie Elementary School earned their project Adam Park safe School designations um Tabitha and I were invited to go and watch this and
046it was very neat how it was put on we were able to talk to hosts of students that were involved in the process we watched live drills we met with a doctor from Riley Children's as well as a forget like a respiratory therapist from Riley and they're very excited to work with Laporte um and we're going to go from there so we have already started our checklist and we're working on a lot of things new Prairie High School has offered Zoo assist us with writing a certification plan a safety certification plan to get our safety team up and ready to go um so host of students will be instrumental in this process like I said post a student-led and project Adam really wants their students involved in this and what they will be doing once
047LaPorte High School is deemed a heart safe school is that they will then work with our athletic and band students to be to get them CPR trained because unfortunately these sudden cardiac arrests happen during strenuous activity right that happened on the on the basketball court they happen on the football field they happen and often just places where kids are and so we want our students to be trained in how to how to assist with that because the second save lives here um so that's what our athletic or sorry our host of students will be doing they'll be working with our athletic and band students and every time a whole team gets CPR or an AED train They will receive a gold heart pin for their letterman jacket so I think coach offered baseball up first
048laughs so that is our goal for the next two years with HOSA you guys have any questions first thank you very cool thank you very good one of our many Pathways that our students are involved in and just shows the diligence and the hard work of our leadership with doing all we can for the kids that are involved in those so we really appreciate all the work that Jennifer's done to bring all of those pieces together so thank you to her just a few other highlights this evening I do want to make the public aware through our meeting that March 8th from 5 to 8 o'clock we will be doing parent teacher conferences at LaPorte High School I hear there will be other exciting things going on for parents so we want to make that
049open for parents and this Friday between our JV and varsity basketball game we will be highlighting a few folks into the Hall of Fame at 4 30 so might have a celebrity Among Us here but I won't point that out but we want to congratulate all of them so we invite all of you out to the high school at 4 30 this Friday we have a couple of students to highlight also several years ago the colleges came together to offer a full tuition scholarship in What's called the Posse scholarship and it is a highly competitive scholar designation and we have a senior student Puja Verma who has been awarded this scholar designation so we are very excited and proud of her accomplishment with that um and in the Fine Arts area we had Junior Zach
050kemczynski who was selected for the 2023 IBA All-Star honor band so he had the auditioned for that and um it is an honor for us to have a student that is involved in that as well some highlights again with CTE many of you have seen Mr Barta here with the High School radio and TV competition team last weekend the 4th of February like two weekends ago now the team won the regional skills USA competition in Elkhart and they will be going to state competition this spring so we are congratulating them for that as well and at our intermediate campus just an event next week they are having their cabin fever for all kessling families so we'd like to encourage them to be at that and then this is the time of year when we're looking
051at adoption of materials so all of our buildings that the secondary have had teams of teachers involved in looking at health and science curriculum so as they do that over the next few months we will be bringing back a recommendation to the board for any information as we move forward with that so again happy CTE month just there this month and if you have any questions about any of our Pathways we would be happy to answer those or have you come in and just see all the great things that our kids are doing in those classes classes high school and intermediate campus thank you bless your comments for Dr Larson thank you very much assistant superintendent business and operation Mr Hunt thank you president Arnold this evening there are two items on my report the
052first of which is just an update on the general assembly I'm going to go over a couple of the bills that are being discussed in committee and things are starting to move or again I talked to president Arnold a little bit about this we're getting towards the halfway point and that's when things start to really take shape as far as some of these bills are concerned I want to start with the house Ways and Means Committee a couple of bills that wanted to bring to your attention one of which is House Bill 1454 which is also known as the department of local government finance bill one of the things that I'm very interested in I think is going to benefit the school corporation is the possibility of increasing the Public Works threshold currently our threshold
053when we do Public Works which means any type of Capital Improvements that we would make to any of the facilities that we have in the corporation there's a threshold of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that threshold it means after you've reached that threshold then you have to put out for uh bid and in this particular case if that threshold were to be increased to three hundred thousand dollars we would not have to go out to bid for those particular projects now we certainly could continue to do that uh but by Statute we would not have to so that's one of the things that I'm kind of following and very interested in another thing as far as the house ways and commits meeting committee is concerned um is House Bill 1499 which is taxation of
054Homestead Property and I'm going to get into that in just a moment because that starts to play into our funding as far as our operations fund is concerned but again I'll get into that in just a moment uh then also House Bill 1498 which is the maximum operating referendum tax so that's something else keeping a close eye on if we were to go to a referendum and particular statue as far as this is concerned there may be a maximum amount as far as those taxes are concerned but then getting back to again what I had mentioned which is the the homestead and the thing that that I wanted to bring to the board's attention is currently as it stands with the homestead the the property tax cap is one percent um but going forward what
055they're looking at is actually reducing that amount which means that there would be less I mean we couldn't tax less or be less than the one percent that we're at right now and what is looked to be done is is actually going forward and it would be at uh 90 I think it's 97.5 percent um and then going forward again I think it's down to 98 but again what that does is that lessens the amount that we're available to collect on our Homestead property taxes again that circuit breaker or that tax cap if you will is set at one percent so that being put into place for those two years we're looking at less amount that we would be able to collect for again our operations fund again that is that is a concern of
056mine as we go forward and looking at those particular property taxes um but then again it's looked at at after a 25 it would be boosted up again to one percent but again interested in following that uh the other thing is the maximum growth quotient the maximum growth quotient is the percentage that the department of local government finance will allow you to basically um charge your operations fund uh so in other words we can increase it by three percent that would be the maximum amount and that is what they're looking to do just to give a little bit of perspective the last time around our maximum growth quotient was five percent so we were seeing more what they're looking to do would be maxing out now that's not to say it's going to be three
057percent but they're stating that they're maxing out at three percent uh for our maximum growth quotient and that would be for both fiscal year 24 and fiscal year 25. so those are again are things that keeping a very very close eye on some of the other things of course when it comes to the education funding again I just had it here would be looking at the overall education budget that would be put forth and it looks as though it would be around a six percent increase in tuition support and fiscal year 24. and a two percent increase in fiscal year 25. now I will say this that doesn't say public education that just says the education budget so I'm not saying that is going to be going to some Charter Schools or some of those
058outside of the public realm but that is a very good possibility that would happen again wanted the board to be aware of that so these are a couple of things that again that I wanted to bring to the board's attention as we move forward I encourage the board and I'm sure you already are doing this but as best you can to follow what's happening with the general assembly a lot of questions that will come up a lot of times our legislators will reach out to whether it's the administration or board members getting their input as far as what is going on and to be very well versed as to what is happening as far as the general assembly is concerned it's very important which to do that one of the other things that I did
059want to bring up too is Senate bill this is again with the education committee Senate Bill 443 I'm going to read this to you and I want some clarification because it says provides that cert Provisions in the bill regarding teacher compensation threshold requirements apply after June 30th of 2024 provides that after June 30th 2024 a school corporation shall expend an amount for Teacher compensation that is not less than an amount equal to 62 percent of the state tuition support distributed to the school corporation during the state fiscal year it includes School social workers and definitions of teacher regarding requirement and again I do believe that that is being brought and it's increased right now we're at a threshold where it's actually being increased to bring into the benefits into that computation and that's the reason
060why it would be raised to 62 percent although it doesn't state it as such in the language that I have read this evening but again that would really be the intent and again that is Senate bill 443. so again I wanted to bring those particular ones to your attention anything that I do see on the fiscal side I will certainly share with Dr Francisco and he could be able to share with you in weekly reports if there's anything that is again is pressing that our organizations are bringing forth is something to really pay close attention to the other before I go any questions on this question Greg so the the property tax relief my understanding from reading about it was because the thought was property values would be inflated correct have we been tracking at
061all the assessed values have our assessed values have been inflating they have inflated now again that inflation was based upon last year's AV I've not had an update on where we're headed for and as far as the potential of the future is headed okay but again that was the thought because there was an inflation our our school corporation in particular inflated about 10 percent is where we were at as far as AV is concerned that was actually below the average of the state and there were some school corporations that were around the 20 25 increase in their AV so as far as that is is concerned that was the consideration is the reason why that Homestead decrease as far as the Caps concerned right and the challenge there is that you and then it's gone
062and so when you start to look at trying to sustain salaries or increases it makes it very difficult so I know I know just about enough of what Drake's talking about to try to keep it as simple as possible but a couple of things are really key that he's talking about here including what you're presenting the other thing too is that what people don't often understand is that your tax dollars on your houses that are tied to your assessment those only those funds only go to Capital type of items in other words that's your operations that's utilities it's anything with buildings it's some Personnel it's all those things that are all of us are paying more for at home and that that number that you can the percentage that you can transfer in order to
063keep up with all those expenses is limited to 15 so we take 15 as the minimum just to maintain things from year to year right uh and and then there's also a distinction between salaries and building building and maintaining buildings and so oftentimes we hear what how can they not pay salaries but they're building buildings well buildings are a totally separate fund it's done publicly as far as funding goes and bonds and so forth and so um that has nothing to do with salaries and the last thing I would say is that they are it sounds like they're going to propose 62 percent as out of your operations fund spent towards uh salaries and it's teacher sellers specifically correct that would be the teachers that yeah the teachers challenge so we is they started at
06445 because the number of school corporations weren't even spending 45 percent of their operations fund well all along we've carried well well above that we're slightly above 55 actually right now uh but it sounds as if this continues then we will have to be revisiting that one of the other things we've seen is that it could potentially already be higher than 57 because of some things that we take on because with the Lea for special needs and some other positions that may or may not be taken taken into account with that but we should be prepared for that if that comes up correct and again that 62 percent is really what has been happening is we as business officials have had to report in fact our second report is coming up here this week as
065far as benefits for teachers are concerned so what they're doing is they're keeping track of what is being spent on an average of those benefits across the state to to put into that that calculation that then is that 62 percent right foreign last thing on my report this evening is just a quick update on the transportation garage unfortunately uh Mr Merkel from Larson Danielson thank you unfortunately Mr Merkel was under the weather this afternoon I reached out to me and let me know that he was a month but it is exciting to again to see the progression that is taking place with our transportation garage this is the northeast corner building at the office vestibule and so there are actual doors that have been doors but the windows have just been installed so excited to
066see that a lot of work is taking place which I'll show you here inside the office area so you can see the studying taking place of course you see again the windows there on the left hand side interior office Framing and again like I said the windows installed I'm anxious to see the update or to present the update next month because the drywall is starting to and I'll get to this in a moment uh the drywall is being delivered which again I'll show you in a slight uh it's not starting been installed yet in the offices but again starting to see that uh right here you see the maintenance storage area so this is where um our maintenance departments will have their shop we currently have a shop at the the runway street address or
067or SSC it will be relocated here equipped with the equipment and which to equip our biggest department to do all of the work that needs to be done prior to going out to the buildings including welding but there's plenty of storage space in here as well but very very excited about the opportunity for our maintenance and utility staff to utilize this space here this is a look inside one of the bus bays and again you can start to see the progress there of course flooring has not been poured yet because of the temperatures we were able to do that like we had mentioned at the last board meeting with our office space because we have temporary heating that is in that particular part of the building but with this we're waiting until the spring was
068to be able to pour that flooring but again progression is made you can see the lights here you can see the mezzanine there's work being done up here on the mezzanine again excited to see that that uh progression I mentioned the drywall this is a picture here of some of the drywall being unloaded again that will be hung in the office area and then as we look ahead again I'm really excited about the next board meeting but looking ahead we're looking at the hanging of the drywall in the office area like I mentioned the mechanical equipment connections on the mezzanine I pointed out that mezzanine area we're going to continue to install the lighting but the lighting is is has been a big benefit or a help as again the contractors have been working on
069this particular project and then the grading work will start at Stevens Road there's that Improvement out there on Stevens Road there's going to be a widening of that area for our buses an improvement on that particular road again that work will start here very shortly and again start to install underground utilities along Stevens Road Again continue to uh to progress and move forward nothing at all is staying our way again completing this project on time again so that we're able to move in and be ready to go to start that 23-24 school year exciting exciting to see it again if you have not been out that way to see the progression I do encourage you to get out there so a big again big thank you to uh Larson Daniels who is the CMC for
070this project as well as Schmidt and all the things that are going on to again make this facility possible questions thank you thank you Mr how's my report we'll move on to new business the acceptance for gifts donations and the gift requests give me a gift request Dr Francisco thank you president Arnold in front of you tonight donation of 200 from Mr Mike Michael comrade specifically designated for Food Service kindness act that he is behind and supporting the money we use to pay off negative student lunch balances and so saving some some of the days for some of our students at the high school that are overusing their accounts but with that we like to consider that for your approval and put that in front of you tonight can I hear a motion someone so
071move second second most a second no questions comments all in favor say aye aye aye opposed thank you very much next real is the consideration for recommendation to renew the niesc membership for LaPorte County school report civil Corporation Food Service Mr Hunt thank you president Arnold uh before this evening in your board packet you will see uh action item which is the approval of the renewal of the membership for the northern Indiana Educational Services Center those of you that do not know about that particular organization they work specifically with school corporations we are able to do a number of different things through Northern Indiana Educational Services Center there are several School corporations that are part of this membership and it's really to secure procurement for a number of different things in this particular case it
072is for food service in fact the rebates that we receive from a couple of other items that we'll be bringing up the next agenda action item actually pays for this and then what happens is actually the price reduction that we get because of the procurement for our food service department actually then saves us more money on top of that so again rebates pay for it and then those savings continue to help our food service department but not only our food service department we as a school corporation have utilized Northern Indiana Educational Services Center in which to purchase a number of different products or supplies as well again reducing those prices because of again the number of different School corporations that are included in that Cooperative so again this evening I asked the board approve the
073recommendation to renew the membership for the northern Indiana Educational Services Center in the amount of twenty one thousand two hundred and ten dollars and fifteen cents thank you Mr Hunt reports heard any questions comments Greg what are some of the other items that like you might buy with this I mean there are a number of different things uh we can go through and get um copy paper for instance copy paper would be one of those things uh we bid those things out and again there was a time this last school year that we saved it you know a considerable amount of money by being a member of the Educational Services Center and then when we had those other quotes coming in it was far under those other quotes so that's just one of those ways
074but there are a number of different things like I said supplies but in majority of the reasons we use this particular organization is again for the procurement of our food service because it's a federally funded program there are certain Hoops that we have to jump through in which to secure our federal funding one of those is which is the procurement and this is one of those ways in which to procure and again that organization is able to do that for us if I could just add something to Mr C word they provide some academic programming for us as well the textbook Caravan that Dr Larson mentioned earlier they organized that so they provide training professional development for teachers different licensing update so we use them outside the business office this is this is more than
075food yes it encompasses an entire School corporations great including technology that Co-op event discounts we actually also meet as a group of all the technology directors of the nasc Mr Walter comments questions from the board you've heard the presentation of Mr Hunt Dr Botanical I hear emotionally approved some movement so move second second question or comments all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you consideration with recommendation to approve the GPO food distributor Dairy distributor and bakery distributor for Laporte Community School System food service department Mr Hunt you're on again thank you again president Arnold again this is going to kind of line up with what we just did so that membership through the northern Indian Educational Services Center provides us that again that Avenue in which to procure and this evening they again do
076all of that leg work for us so what we're looking to do is approve those particular vendors which it again would be our governmental publishing office and then the bakery and dairy vendors for the upcoming year which includes July 1 of 23 through June 30th of 2024. um and that would then again procure the food distributor Alpha Baking Company I would be for our bread products and then Prairie farms for our Dairy renewal the vegetables will be coming up or the produce will be coming up at a later meeting but this evening I'm just asking the board approved those particular vendors for the 23-24 school year presentation any questions or comments from the board motion thank you second thank you hold the figure say hi hi opposed the consideration for the recommendation to accept an
077award Farmland red rental bid Mr Hunt you get president Arnold at the last board meeting and the board did approve for the advertisement for us to bid the Farm property that is located again at that corner of 18th and 8th Street or across the street from the former Educational Services Center we did run those advertisements on January 12th and also on January the 19th again to keep in line with State Statute as far as the the betting laws were concerned we did hold a bid opening at 10 o'clock Central Time on Monday February 6 2023 here at the Educational Services Center boardroom the bids were submitted as followed and you will actually sit and see those bid forms in your your packet as well we received bids from bandwork farms for sixty two hundred fifty
078dollars Andrew Minnick for 65.50 and Andrew Kramer for seven thousand dollars and so this evening I'm asking for the board to approve the recommendation to move forward with the Leasing Property this is for one year for March 1st 2023 to February 28th of 2024 to Adam Kramer the amount of seven thousand dollars thank you Mr George heard the presentation questions or comments motion to approve thank you enough Justin thank you a second okay thank you all the favor say aye aye to begin consideration for the recommendation to approve debt authorization and legal advertising for the summer 2023 Paving and traffic project Mr Hunt thank you again president Earl this evening I want you the board to understand that this is not an approval of a bid but the bid authorization meaning that you as a
079board are authorizing the school corporation to move forward in the bidding process which includes the legal advertisement to do the projects out at critchfield which is a traffic flow project as well as a Paving project we're going to improve the traffic flow off of Johnson Road they're a Richfield very excited about the improvements that are going to be made there again to improve that that flow there and again improve the the parking lot Pavements as well then also there's a portion on there just to bring the board's attention to improve our busing that comes in there or actually extending the parking out a little bit it's some of the buses are currently going off the parking lot in which to get in turn to get the right radius to go in so we're improving that
080there as well at the high school if you recall we did a Paving project or traffic flow project there last year we were not able to complete all of the walkways around the high school at that time this project would also be part of that as well and then the other thing I'm excited about is the Improvement of the lights in the parking lot which would then make things brighter but also using LED for Energy Efficiency so very excited about that but this evening I'm just asking that the board approved the authorization to bid for the Crutchfield high school project any questions or comments I hear a motion to accept second thank you all the very signified to say hi hi opposed consideration of a recommendation to accept an award the Port County Community School
081Corporation audio visual project Mr Hunt very excited about this particular project this has been a long time in the making I want to start off by commending Mr walshauer and his team we were blocked to our attention obviously we have currently smart boards and a number of our different classrooms in the corporation those were purchased many many years ago they have become outdated we want to improve upon the audio visual experience for our students to enhance the instruction of the classrooms this would be except for handling which is a new building kessland intermediate as well as that at Laporte middle school because of the projects and being newer they have newer equipment in there so we're looking at all the other Elementary buildings in addition to the high school but this evening if you find
082in your packet you will find a rundown of a number of different things you'll see a letter from Mr wall Tower actually outlining in the project in itself again this would be a projector screen as well as the audio needs for those particular classrooms those are all added in there there is the RFP over that request for proposal that we have sent out we have the RFP that had been sent back from focus focus a bid and then there is a bid Matrix that is part of your packet as well there's a rundown and again I commend Mr wall tower for having all those details we had advertised properly for this particular project again we talk about public works and the threshold what we need to do and then this would be Esser funding and
083we should do this because it is improving with the learning loss and improving the overall experience of instruction in the classroom so to say evening I'm asking the board approve the recommendation for the to accept the bid and award the bid from Focus audio video for eight hundred and thirty thousand four hundred and seventy dollars for the work to be completed to update lpcsc classroom audio visual equipment this will be done before the beginning of the 23-24 school year so again very excited about that um and we're going to obviously have to start before summer hits and again that'll be some organization on the heart of Mr Walter on his team but again very excited about the improvements to our classrooms and in the way of this particular project thank you Mr Mr Walter anything
084you'd like to add to that I mean this is a big project for us obviously this is a big step for the ingredients in the cloud as we've all done one to one now and we really move forward with one it's really moving the experience now to the actual child itself I think one of the things that we see a lot of complications have now even think back even to the days of when we were all in school you know the kids not seeing everything and when they're presenting up on the screen one thing that this does is actually because a 119 inch diagonal screen at the front of each classroom that is able to accommodate it adds audio to classrooms it didn't have audio but also kind of levels off the board for us
085because when we got into the covet time and we were ordered the gear Grant we got every teacher a brand new laptop one of the things first things we found was that the smart boards the resolution the smart boards were four by three like year old TVs they didn't match the newer technologies that we were getting out there so this updates all these across the board the teachers monitor is also updated to be widescreen as well the projector is a full HD projector so it matches the same resolution uh but also as a very uh bright projector so kids anywhere in the classroom can see and be able to actually you know see what's going on at the front of the classroom in addition to mentioned that there is a handheld device by the teacher
086so they do not have to sit at the desk in which to operate that they would be able to move around the classroom like this little uh increase uptime too right because yeah the smart boards go out there but yeah no sorry one of the things we do see right now even with like the BET keyboards is the reason the time it takes to get the BET keyboards back from the manufacturer if there is a warranty anything like that it also as far as like one goes down all it is is either a projector replacement or a bulb replacement we can do that with one of our stat movers order right now with any kind of been do or it knows it takes three of our staff members just to think about um and it's
087been taking about three to five months just to get something back in warranty so our biggest you know thing is also being there and responding to the teachers and when they have downtime we can't have a teacher down for that extended period of time this allows our staff to be able to take care of things right away and be responsible thank you any other questions comments from the board every building except for handling right well I did the kessling interview yeah the newer buildings through the last construction project yes the ones that I currently have some high school don't have anything in their classroom so Elementary's have the Smart Board that need to be updated they're going to be like PD for teachers on how to implement all this changes in this yes in fact
088they've already started some of that with the teachers and being able to introduce what those devices are going to look like this actually is mirrored in our office if you go to our lab in our office we mirrored this exact setup for the teachers last year because it's a group of them come in they were allowed to come in and take a look at the setup questions we also talked about technology as well but yeah we've actually got the exact setup actually in our lab to show them is any question comments before if 99 will entertain a motion to accept Mr Hunt's presentation and recommendation so moved so move second okay thank you motion of the second all the favor bye say aye aye opposed consideration recognition recommendation to approval Fort Community School assistant Corporation
089video surveillance project keep moving along um this evening again before you in your packet you will see a recommendation uh for a security camera project again this has been some some time in the making uh it really does step back again to covid and the traffic flow and the number of different activities that we are having around the building and in which to secure our building we wanted to put exterior cameras around the building that don't currently have exterior cameras but the one thing that this is actually going to take it a step further yes we're going to be able to do that through this project but the other thing we're going to be able to do is put everything on a one particular platform which we have not been able to do I'm going
090to go back again to the public works laws those bids were going out and so when you bid some of those different projects out it may have different vendors and so this again we're taking a look at everything and putting it on one platform one of the other things I'm very excited about is we have keyless entries in our buildings it will also be put on that platform as well and so the capabilities as far as the surveillance in those particular cameras are concerned and what we're going to be able to do and move forward is also going to be enhanced again because this is again pulling these things in as far as safety and things of because of what has happened through code we're going to be using answer dollars and which to do
091this project I again in your packet and I commend Mike because he does a really good job of putting everything together the advertisements the bids the requests for proposals The Matrix that we use in which to decide and again all of those are included with a letter from Mr waltauer again to outline the projects in its entirety in more specific but this evening that I'm asking if the the board approved the bids is submitted in award to videotech for 359 247.66 again this project would be taking place over the summer thank you Mr Mr Wildfire anything you want to add to that um you know our big Focus was unifying the systems and also right now the way we have it set up this also will be able to allow us to move forward some
092of our cyber security initiatives two-factor authentication but one of the things that we actually looked at really heavily was the current platform we're having to when we work with First Responders we're happy to really get with them and explain how to set it up each server has its own IP address we're having to you know really go through a lot more setup with them where this will actually if I was with the First Responders and Sheriff's Department those to be able to actually say here's a URL here's your login and away they go same thing with any kind of issues where you know we have a staff member that leaves for some reason we can actually pull back that access and they would they would have so there's a lot of more security side of
093things but like we also said it UniFi is also the door system um that that won't be right off the bat we'll have to work towards that because the system supports it but we have to do some conversion convertible system but it does allow us to move forward there's a lot more capabilities now in all these security camera systems now that you're able to do you know tracking and those kind of things if there was an event needed questions or comments on board good work Mike you've heard the recommendation from Mr Hart Mr Walther do I hear a motion from the board she'll move just in second second thank you Jennifer the motion second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed thank you very much it's got to be quick over there by the
094way you're learning aren't you I am okay consideration for the recommendation to approve the 2023 day 2024 and the 2024-2025 abort Community School Corporation school year calendars this is Dr time go a chance to speak all right thank you it's my privilege to be able to present to you a lot of work over the last three months that has gone into adapting a recommendation for two year calendar and so we engaged our district core team which represents School leaders from all different schools and departments they work on goals and guarantee viable curriculum staff parent Community engagement and safety and so not a better group to represent this work than them because a calendar is more than just dates it reflects the structure and the delivery of our programs and our services for our kids and
095so it's a very complicated process there's never going to be a hundred percent consensus on every thing you do on a calendar but we believe that we have some wins in this recommendation for you including and I'm not going to have exhaustive list of these but we really focused on balancing terms all right so we looked at instructional stretches for kids and students because one of the the beauties of this process is we're going through strategic planning and we're on these tours in our buildings listening to our staff listening from to our constituents talk about their experiences in our schools and so one of the things that came up is wellness and mental mental health and looking at breaks and so we wanted to balance this calendar more so just just quickly we look we
096looked at I'm going to give you some some numbers here in this recommendation in the first year calendar we have 11 stretches and the average stretch of of each one of those is 16 days if you compare that to this year's calendar in 22-23 there were 14 stretches of 12 and a half days so trying to get away from these long stretches short stretches and trying to even out as much as possible so that was one of the big drivers of this calendar we have a full week in there for fall or I'm sorry for Thanksgiving break that what we heard from our staff that it was important plus we reviewed data that showed that our attendance was really weak on short weeks especially around fall break and around Thanksgiving break a two-year calendar helps
097our families and staff prepare two years in advance so we thought that was a benefit we listened and we removed live e-learning days so our staff I think is really happy about that parents I think once they hear the outcome of this meeting if it's approved they will be glad about that as well we have a big change for spring break moving it from the first full week of April to the last week of March and that's to a better line with State Testing and as I mentioned earlier the balance of the calendar throughout the year and we also built in three staff days at the beginning of the year a full day for parent-teacher conferences and we're going to do district-wide open houses for our all our schools so previously that was kind of
098left up to individual schools to work out in their calendar this time we are setting time aside Focus time and doing it district-wide to ensure that it occurs in a systematic way across our schools and in the school year so there are lots of other points to that to that complicated process but I just want to emphasize the involvement of our staff the listening that took place to try to improve upon the previous calendar and there have been some changes due to that I'd be glad to answer any questions or comments from the board so Bill what does that look so do you have meetings with all these folks is that how you selected that information or did you put a survey or yes our core team meets once a month the district court team
099and we went through an activity we had guiding questions we engaged them in questions to try to expand the perspective of the complication that is involved when you do a calendar and so we ask that each building kind of mimic that activity go back to their core team and then produce some key takeaways what are the themes coming up in each building so then we analyze those themes those takeaways from all the schools and try to find commonalities across the board and so you know things that come up we want to go back to our notes and look was this a theme because we know you're not going to agree on on everything in this calendar but what were the main points of emphasis from the discussion from those those meetings that were Guided by
100those important questions so we felt that really engaged people and made their voice heard some of the schools did do some surveys we did not formally do that from the from the District but again doing the listening tour and strategic planning process right now that also really gave us good insight into how our people felt about life e-learning days you know vacations and those sorts of things so I've been on this job for one month and 13 days right and I have a whole new appreciation for schedules and the amount of effort you put into this is commendable I really appreciate there's a lot of moving parts to this like you said and so I just commend you well thank you it's not perfect and I'm not going to act like it it's perfect we
101will reevaluate but we thought having a two-year calendar gives us a chance to really see the themes and the patterns that come out of it so we will be hopefully bringing back to you some lessons learned here in a couple years so is it just one day for parent-teacher conference correct that's what they're allotted one day is there also um another I thought I read that there's another day um like in the during the day when school is taking place is that correct uh no there's one full day set aside for parent-teacher conferences that would be a no student day and so Our intention is to schedule that across the district so it might not be the traditional 7 30 to 3 30 hours we might stagger it a little bit so that way parents
102have some options in the evening but it aligns to what we've previously done we've done two evenings of of half days so now we're just we're putting it all in one day if that makes sense you've eliminated scheduled e-learning days correct so one of the big outcomes of that is what will we be doing when we have inclement weather and we plan to do posted e-learning days we'd get up to three right now if that were to increase we would also tap into whatever the state would allow and after that they would be made up on in in person at the end of the school year so post the learning day is where you post the homework assignment for the kids to do it's not necessarily instructional so it's not a zoom yeah they're not
103live whether it's a zoom their their information is posted I think by 9 am is what our action plan States questions comments from the board but they would still have live e-learning base as well no there are no Lively learning days built into this calendar okay yeah some of the recent feedback that you guys received after meeting with reps anything any takeaways from that information from the teachers rep says in the association yeah so that's a good question um so the fall break previously was a two-day fall break for staff and students and we had parent-teacher conferences on the back end of that so it would have been only one day for staff we met with the lft and again looking at themes can't do it all one of the themes was we want to
104move that date off of here off of fall break so we moved that to September 25th which is the fourth Monday in September so that would be a day off for students all-day parent-teacher conference the consequence of that is it's a one-day fall break for Staffing and students the payoff is you get a full week of Thanksgiving break we're not able to do a two-day fall break and a full day of Thanksgiving break and still keep those semesters balanced it's important that we have somewhat of a balance I believe in this current um iteration it's a 92-88 split with the 8892 I believe with the second half of the Year being usually more because of State Testing and you have some other interruptions like weather and that's thing so we're trying to keep a balance
105um and it's it's a domino effect you know it's a ripple effect when you move one thing it has a carryover effect on the rest of the calendar so that's that's what we did to that parent-teacher conference day got it off that Monday after a fall break so that Monday now is a student and staff day we put it in the middle of the month of September because also the feedback we had prior to that was about the timing of the of the Parent-Teacher conferences some of them were in favor of it being in the middle there was a chance for parents to have a chance to work with their children to get their grade up before the end of the nine weeks others were saying they elected at the end of the nine weeks
106that's why we put it where it was in the first place and since we were going to move it we said we're going to go back to it was pretty much 50 50. went back to the middle of the first nine weeks there's overall less time on these next two years for parenting like scheduling wise for parent-teacher conferences or is it all just one whole day yeah it's the same amount of time as previous years it's just one day not split up into two evenings and that challenge too is there's so many differences between Elementary and secondary regarding parent conferences yeah just as a parent with elementary kids it's a rat race as it is you know again and you sit down for 15 minutes you hear everything and they're gone so I'm just trying
107to we're trying to also hand off in this day and age regarding it's kind of like progress reports those are archaic right and so you're trying to move forward and say you know there are so many ways technology wise that we can keep up with and meet or discuss or have dialogue with parents rather than just one magical day with all of our technology you know think about it years ago it didn't none of it existed and you still have parent-teacher conference but we still have them but they're all uh you know there's so much to do electronically and not the substitute for dialogue but there are people that in parents that we definitely want to and need to be speaking with and others probably some ways we could do things outside of that window
108so not just that particular day to get updates oh I'm sorry the second semester goes after winter break right so it ends I'm sorry first semester so it ends January 12th well any concern about like final exam scheduling and kids having been off for two weeks prior to that for a secondary or um we talked about high school about that not really final exams are traditionally like they used to be final exams we have a staff records day on that Monday following the semester that's why there's another quick break there so not a real great stretch right there as you can see we talked about stretches earlier but no we engaged the high school on that Mr up and his team is well aware of as long as they know in advance they can plan
109a lot of projects a lot of courses have more projects now at the end of the year rather than a summative example yeah lastly I would say we have an FAQ document for our staff for our families and then for you and those all are a little bit tailored towards the audience we'll post that on our school website with these calendars once they're approved so that way our families can kind of look at questions that everybody's wondering about some of these are really good questions and it gives some of the explanation or rationale behind each question the question or comments reward do I hear a motion sorry what this may be getting the car in front of the horse but when will we start the next one Do Do Well we do a one-year add-on
110or is it always a two-year block two years okay so we'll look at December you get my dates right here of the second year so 2025 is that okay we'll start in that November December time period and then bring a recommendation to you sometime yeah so just kind of like six it's two years next yeah yeah we won't do a rollover we'll just do the two years and then we'll look to do another two-year calendar depending on the feedback and how it goes I hear a motion to accept is there any state assessment you know what the assessment Windows is there anything that you guys noticed previously that aren't getting assessments completed in time students weren't having the assessment time needed to complete assessments for moving the break oh over then it was it was
111a problem before it was a problem that it was an impacting testing no it's just it's jamming you have variables like weather and so you end up jamming in we don't like testing on Fridays so you just start to whittle down really quickly what is possible and those State Testing schedules change too I did look back at how our calendar aligned with the State Testing schedules and we took a more thorough look at that so it's hard to say when they're going to release a schedule this year it just happened to fall in that first week of April for the IM test I believe is the first one that starts there so you have to look at lots of factors including when your kids come back do you want them testing you know right away
112on that Tuesday after spring break probably not so no nobody was left out of testing we we still strive for the 100 Mark for all our all our testers we heard test exhaustion by students and trying to look at you know the window and time which we test try to jam it all in a week and then uh the frustrations that come with that so you know nothing was foolproof regarding the thoughts but we did hear things and tried to take that into account when we're looking at this window thinking that if you have the whole month in the case of iLearn then you certainly have plenty of time to do some lead up activities to test and spread it out and to also to catch up on the makeup work or the makeup testing
113that needs to happen all within that window we're testing more as well we tested our second graders and I read three so that's a new addition and then our NWA formative assessments that we do there's probably more discussion around those in the spring than there is around the state testing you know when do you put the formative assessment in you want your your kids to be able to be on their their best testing performance and we have the formative assessment that you can either do before the state testing or you can do after but either way that test fatigue is going to come in so again looking at how do you get all of this in into a limited amount of time feel that this is an option that we want to try for two
114years I'll entertain a motion to accept Dr technical's presentation they're excited to prove the 2020 324 and 2024-25 Google Calendar so I have a motion and a second all of the favorite second amount of signified by saying aye aye opposed thank you thank you thank you consideration for the recommendation to approve non-certified staff raises Dr Thomas all right it's another privilege of mine to be able to present to you a recommendation for employee raises all employee groups are being considered for a raise this year so that is a really good thing and hopefully we'll go a long ways and making our staff feel appreciated and retaining them this process began in the fall with our teachers not because they're the most important group they're very important to us but it's that timeline is guarded by
115a state state code so kicked off with them then we went on to our custodial group our maintenance group we looked at substitute teachers and now here we are looking at our non-certified staff so in front of you there's a pay schedule that has the ranges for different employee groups it involves a lot of employees and we are recommending a four and a half percent increase for those groups which is in alignment with the other groups that have already received their racist exceptions with you thank you Mr Hunt with the exception of the bus drivers which that process will go through negotiations thank you questions comments from the board give you a second to absorb this while you're looking at that I want to point out two other important pieces to this recommendation we are
116looking to create more consistency with our working schedules for our paraprofessionals there are some that are at six hours a day and some of them at six and a half we are recommending that all will go to six and a half hours per day so we get them all on the same working schedule in addition to that we increase or recommending an increase in leave benefits to five additional days of paid time off for those employees and we believe that by doing that it can lead to better retention for our staff and both of those benefits we are recommending start in 23 24 and that's due to just the logistical things involved in payroll and in our in our Skyward systems [Applause] I give Dr tonicle and his team credit for looking at this because
117the other thing we did is to look specifically at why it is that we have salary structure the way it is um not that it's always been this way if we can't explain why it's that way then we need to revisit it we asked ourselves that question in a number of cases why is this job in relation to this one A different pay certainly none of them are where we'd like for them to be in education but if there's a difference between them you know why is that and then I think the other thing too that we're looking at closely is Within These groups make it clear to what those salaries are why they're where they're at and how it is that some some of them some of our staff can move and aspire to
118improve their education and experience understand what it takes to get to that next level because most of the positions that are differentiated from one to the next have something to do with education experience certification which is what we're all about as educators another big data point that went into the Y was we have an analytics program just like we do for our academics we have a dashboard for wage and that sort of thing that we could pull comp data from other corporations in our Northwest Indiana area even even Northern Indiana and we did even look at corporations across the state that were similar to us so if we saw a high turnover in a certain area so we were kind of curious are we just really off right there we were able to pull those
119analytics and compare are we just too low are we too high so that also went into this factor of the recommendation before you question of comments we've worked I see the preschool facilitator is that considered the preschool teachers yeah and um are they contracted no they're not Physicians that are Grant funded we have some literacy coaches they're also licensed teachers they're funded by a grant so due to budgeting they're not contracted people even though they're licensed people are we having issues retaining them yes and no um there it's a feeder system for our classroom so we end up hiring a lot it's very common for us to hire a Pre-K facilitator they're a part of our Corporation they work with our teachers and then when there's an opening a classroom they move on so like
120the franciscany's talking about that kind of feeder program but there it is one of the positions that turns over a lot much like our literacy coaches our academic coaches we don't lose them to other corporations we lose them to ourselves so kind of a good thing and one other thing the bus the bus drivers um when winter are we looking at those negotiations will be starting up next week bus drivers we haven't even started negotiating too and that's duly agreed upon as far as when the start time is we'll have a letter that goes out pending your approval of this recommendation to our staff who are affected by this much like we did at our last board meeting that went out and explained what was approved and who was involved regarding the preschool one of
121the challenges as Dr tonigle said is its Grant funded title grants right and so not all of our schools are eligible for that so those schools are able to provide preschool funded by Title One to cover the cost of those staff members with that designation that they have as not being um you know a part of the association and not being on a contract but other than that we have two schools that do not get money and we don't get State funding for preschool so therefore we pay for the fees for parents for those two programs or three through a grant a gift actually that we have across the corporation so yeah we're we're proud to offer it we're one of the first schools to do it but again because of the way it's funded
122it's soft money right now and we we have to be guarded about how we manage that a question or comments the board saying that I had to accept a motion to approve Dr Taylor's presentation on non-certified staff raises so moved oh thank you second thank you all over the favor signify by aye aye opposed yeah the last consideration for the recommendation to approve administrators and directors raises Dr conical thank you president Arnold again this is very similar to our other units that have gone through the process of receiving raises we have our administrative schedule in front of you that outlines a range for each principal director assistant superintendent it's got all our positions in our Corporation a 4.5 percent increase is also added on this spreadsheet so that you can see where it falls in
123relation to other positions a lot of work goes into this to ensure alignment both vertically and horizontally we also use programs like our analytics program just to compare how our positions are paid compared to other corporations and so I ask that the administrators be approved for the raise as written under schedule for Doctor product of presentation every board comments questions motion to prove Dr title's recommendation thank you Rhonda have a second second okay thank you so it's your second all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you thank you now other business we have any other business probably for the board this evening board comments yes sir I would be remiss not to point out that one of the Hall of Fame inductees is sitting next to me Marie congratulations so congratulations well congratulations long
124time ago and you know what probably and I'm just throw this out there have you ever been an induction where a husband or wife or a doctor for the same night yes not being a slicer but being a veteran okay well congratulations any other board comments there's just a couple real quick things here and we need to schedule an executive sessions yes okay okay like you schedule an executive session and then also a work session for some topics that we need discuss those of course work sessions are distinguished from executive in that executive have a list of specific items that you can discuss or should discuss and must discuss behind closed doors whereas work sessions are almost a lot of other items that we'd like to discuss that public can attend but not participate in
125okay is there a certain time frame that you're looking at we can send something out we usually try to either do those in conjunction with a board meeting and or a Monday night since that seems to be the next thanks a little feed so I would suggest that we throw a couple dates out and try to try to schedule those let me just throw something out here a week from tonight this present yeah I don't know if anyone in Washington President's Day and that's that that's a Monday uh 20th Tammy can throw out a couple days I can kind of do a survey poll and find out who's available um it will be a five o'clock start for those I can say that and then the dates will vary I will say one thing I
126really really tickle with the responsible board this board responds and I send something out a little I could tell if they're really working or not so I appreciate the quick response to everybody certainly um again I want to remember and remind people that we haven't reached a halfway point of the legislative session yet there's still a lot of bills out there floating around you're reading about and so forth don't get too nervous yet because we've still got a lot of a lot of work we've done before the bills are voted out and our client only goes across to the other chamber so read about it keep up the data on them and don't don't get too shook up yet wait till halfway point of session and we'll start to start getting serious about it vice
127president sieber and myself will be attending the big School Board Association day at the state house next Tuesday and I'm praying for your first one the opportunity to honor and see what they actually do in the State House you may be happy you may be disappointed well we'll see but we'll be down there next Tuesday for a day at the state house and he'll he'll come back and report to you I mean and we did down there um uh oh I want to bring up if you remember last month I held off an appointment to the regional the uh development development Commission of LaPorte County and I have decided to appoint or make my recommendation to have Rhonda serve on that board I talked to the Christian president uh Haney the other day and we
128had discussion he called me back later that night and found out that the commission has to actually accept the appointment or vote on the appointment so we sent a formal letter requesting that that Rhonda be our point B and I just the children we sent so they either accept or they don't so the commission meeting is Wednesday night at six o'clock so hopefully they'll be notifying us Thursday morning Sunday whether you're beyond it but you're gonna have a lot of fun you're really an interesting board so I'm so happy to accept that assignment Amy and Jennifer and Justin thank you for your response today which we'll talk after me real quick about certainly as others committee so having said that I want to thank everybody for attending tonight and the northern business know the comments
129I'll entertain a motion you're sure the motion to adjourn a second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed me adjourned thank you hey don't run off there might be papers to sign