January 5, 2026 MSD of Warren Township School Board Work Session

001is a joke. >> This is when I say as someone who grew a mixed Lutheran Roman Catholic, which exacts would you be using it being they have the same one. >> It's very interesting for someone who went to Sunday school at the commandments just magically change number depending on where you were at the time. >> Yeah. hanging in there. >> I was not sick as in other people who didn't good for about three hours. So Isbel obviously had it. >> Yeah. >> That's Isel's version of getting sick. >> Yeah. >> I'm always better. >> I'm not around a lot of people. We drove through there couple this area too. to the doctor Monday morning. >> My blood pressure really to see her because I literally can't >> Yeah, you got to get off. You're very

002welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to call the meeting to order. If I can have everyone rise for the pledge of >> allegiance. I aliance 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. Before we get started this evening, um we did not have cards out for public comment when people were coming in originally, um there are blue cards sitting on the edge of that table over there in front of Miss Finley. And so if you are a member of the public who would like to make a comment at the end, um those are there for you to fill out and just return back up there. So thank you. And with that, Dr. Hansen. >> All

003right. Good evening, President Burke, members of the board, community members both in person and we are live streaming tonight. So to our community members at home watching, um I think we can still say happy new year. Um as we welcome our our staff and kids back this week for tonight, we're looking forward to sharing with you lots of information. Um I kind of reference this as our halftime. Um we we've been in this process since September. We've had community engagements. We've sent out surveys. We've talked with staff. We have had focus groups. We've worked with our demographer, uh, Karen Jackson and Walpert, who you will hear from tonight. Um, and I want to reiterate to everyone that, um, while data is telling us things, no decisions have been made. Um, we will have this community

004engagement tonight. We will seek feedback from our staff and our families, students, and community after tonight as we present some information. Um, and we'll continue through that process uh until we get to a decision or a a recommendation for you guys to consider at the February board meeting. Um, so with that, um, there is lots of information. You have the slide decks in front of you. you have a hard copy of the Walpert um slide deck and you have a hard copy of the district presentation. Um for those that are viewing at home, this is also uploaded to our board docs. So if you want to access these PowerPoints, um you can access them through our board docs. So with that, I would like to invite uh Karen Jackson from Walpert Up and she will

005get us started. Thanks, Karen. Oops, there it is. All right. Well, thank you for having me. Um, I'm excited to be here to share some of this information with you. Um, as Dr. Hansen mentioned, it is a lot of information, so please, um, I think it makes more sense. If you have a question, please feel free to interrupt me as we go through it. Um it's going to be pretty difficult to just go back and forth on slides. Don't know why I did that. Um but to get started, this is our overall process. Um so as Dr. Hansen mentioned, we started back in September. Um our work included collecting and reviewing all sorts of data. We looked at student densities. We looked at your current facility utilizations, capacities, enrollment projections, housing projections, and more. Um

006much of which will be later on in this presentation. The district then went through and had their focus groups as well as their surveys. We then sent out a survey to develop boundary criteria or guidelines to be used um when creating boundary options. Um now we're in the community outreach portion of this pro process. So at the end of this presentation, we will be asking for the community to provide us feedback on the options presented. um we want to know everything about the options, what you think about them, what you like, dislike, areas that we can make improvements and so on. We'll then use that um feedback that we get to modify the options. Sometimes this means just completely throwing out an option and that is okay. It also can sometimes mean we create a

007new option based on what we've already created. So we can combine options to kind of make one that really um supports that community feedback. We'll then work together to come up with a recommendation again based on that feedback and based on the guidelines that we heard about. So the first thing I'm going to cover are our demographic studies. So we completed enrollment projections by boundary. So the numbers will be different if you look at the full report. They are different than those who attend the school. These are based on where students reside. We do this because it allows us to look at boundary options and really project longevity of these options. Um, if we were to just look at those who attend the school, that would include things like transfers and students from coming in

008from outside of the district and it wouldn't really give us a neighborhood by neighborhood feel for growth and decline. Um, so like I said, the projections are by boundary. They are developed using the cohort survival method, which looks at cohorts or groups, grades of students as they move through the system. So grade to grade, year to year. The percentage of students that are retained each year, also known as survival ratios, are then used to project enrollment forward. Um, in order to project kindergarten, we look at birth data based on zip code. Um, the zip code is the smallest geography that the Indiana Department of Health is able to give us. Um, so when we put all of this together, we also look at housing development census data sets as well. um we are projecting first

009flat to then increasing enrollment. Something I feel like is is very important to point out is the births. So over the last let's see uh 15 or so years births have remained under about 4,000 um within your zip codes. The last three years we have seen more births than we have over the last 15 years. Um, so if you look at that chart on the top right of this slide, you can see I kind of highlighted the last three years. Um, 2025 of course was still preliminary when we did this report. It will be for probably the next couple months. So we don't have that data, but you can see we had more births these last three years than we had have had the last 15 years. That translates into kindergarten enrollment five years later,

010which is really driving some of that growth that we're projecting. So you do have a handful of housing developments going up right now. So we also uh did a housing study. The housing study does have a or does use a different methodology of course than the enrollment projections. We're looking at student yields which is very simply number of students divided by number of houses. Um and it measures the impact that housing has on enrollment. Um this chart or this slide shows a couple different things. That chart in the middle is showing your actual student yields for this year. Um, so apartments are yielding.34 students per unit. That's about one K through2 student for every three apartments within the district. Um, and you can go down the list and see what your other yields are. The

011these are pretty standard. We do this work all over the country and and I would say these are these measure up to what other districts are seeing, especially in your area. Um, we also take this one step further and look at land that could be developed into housing in the future. Um, much of which of course in your district is on the south side and like the l and liberty park areas. Um, the map on the right hand side side of this slide does show the areas that we identified that could be developed. We look at um tracks of land that are first of all large enough to be developed. So we don't have any major topographical uh barriers or like water barriers that could impede development. So when we look at this at the

012yields um we also take it one step further and look at the yields based on age of home. So what we found is as a when a home is built it doesn't yield many students. Um there's a very common misconception out there that a home is going up three or four students are going to come out of it immediately. That is not the case. um we don't see very many students upfront, but it grows and grows until about year 10 to 15 um for that age of home and then it starts to decline after that. So we applied that model of yields to all of your existing housing, all of your housing developments as well as that vacant developable land and the forecast for that was also showing flat to then increasing enrollment once some

013of that vacant developable land starts to be developed. So similar trends there. So, moving on to capacity. I'm not doing a great job following along here. So, there are a couple different types of capacity that I want to go through. Um, the first type is a fire capacity. So, a fire capacity really is just the number of people that the building can safely accommodate. So, how many people can fit in a space before it's unsafe. Um, this slide has three different identical or three identical hallways. Um, so each of the yellow boxes, pretend that's a classroom hallway. So with a fire capacity, we're saying we can put 45 people into each classroom. So this hallway is has a capacity of 270. Of course, we would never put 45 students into a standard classroom. That's that

014is totally unrealistic. The middle uh hallway is showing the design or architectural capacity. So this is the number of students that a school was originally designed for. Essentially, this is saying, okay, if it was built like a classroom, it is a home room classroom, and we are going to put 25 students in it. So, in this same exact hallway, we're seeing a capacity of 150. What we are using moving forward is the programmatic capacity. And this is the number of students that the school can effectively educate given its programming. So, this considers things such as resource rooms that doesn't carry a capacity, special education spaces that carry a lower capacity. Um, So in this same exact hallway, we're showing a capacity of 100 because we have a resource room and a special education space. Um

015so just to give you an idea, there are different types of capacities. These numbers also do change usually um or sometimes on an annual basis because programming and needs change as students grow. Um I did mention earlier the couple of spaces that do not carry capacity. I just want to explain that a little bit further. So resource rooms or intervention spaces, this includes ML, speech, um occupational therapy or physical therapy, reading specialists, um and more. These don't carry a capacity because when students are pulled out of their classroom to attend these spaces, the rest of their class remains. Um special education classes in this model also do not carry a capacity because uh many of the students in your special education spaces are program placed. So they may not necessarily live within the boundary. They're

016placed where the program exists. And then specials. So your art, music, STEM, uh, and PE. These also do not carry capacity because when students leave their home room to attend these classes, their home room sits empty and they're not replaced by a new set of students like they are at a middle or high school level. And then the chart on the left here is just showing the capacity by room type. Um these numbers were provided to us and these are what these are the standards we're working with when I'm showing the capacity numbers. Um so a kindergarten classroom can hold 22 students first and second we're at 24 and third fourth and fifth would be 28. So we explored the idea of uh adding fifth grade into the elementary schools extensively. Um we took inventory

017of each space. We had conversations with principles um and we we also determined which spaces can be converted into fifth grade home rooms in every building. Um so the table on this slide is showing the classroom inventory at each school and the resulting capacity. Um we did standardize the number of sections per grade at each school. So that's why you're seeing similar capacities um at most of these buildings. The exception would be Lakeside and LOL. Uh, and that's because they would need to take on additional special education programming to account for the fifth graders that utilize those resources. Um, so adding fifth grade back into the elementary schools, it did prove to be more challenging than we were originally anticipating. Um, there's a couple reasons for this. Additional special ed programs would need to be

018added at the elementary level, and then finding the appropriate spaces for these programs was difficult. Um there aren't many that exist as they currently are there. Some could be transformed into these spaces, but it would take significant money. Um in order to find enough spaces for fifth grade home rooms, some schools would also have to lose their special education programs. And when talking to principles, this this was not popular. Those are obviously well-loved programs in their schools. Um adding enough home room classes for fifth graders would cause interventionists to be displaced. So some of those resource rooms would have to go away. um and the interventionists would have to move into offices or conference spaces and some schools have more of those than others. Um adding fifth grade to the elementary school would also add

019to those interventionist case load. So we'd have more students and less space to serve them. Um there would be little to no flexibility at the schools. So overall the schools would be utilized at 96%. We typically recommend that an elementary school is utilized anywhere from 85 to 95%. that gives you um that's efficient for operations and it also gives a little bit of flexibility should you have an especially large cohort moving through the system or need an extra resource base or something like that. And finally, the projections do indicate that K5 enrollment would exceed the K5 capacity within the next two years. So if we made the K through five change today, we'd be at 96% overall at our elementary schools. In the next two years, we'd be over 100% overall. Um, so I do

020want to note that this slide and analysis focuses only on the physical space associated with adding fifth grade back into the elementary schools, not any of the programmatic or academic um, items. >> Karen, >> yes, >> I have a question. >> So, um, in your report, are you able to I know not today, so you generalize like some schools would need additional, um, special ed. Are you able to give us a report on what that looks like per school? >> Actually, yeah. Um, unfortunately, I I took it out of this. I had I had the cells colored that were adding and losing spaces, but I I do have that table that I can send to you. >> Yeah, that would be beneficial. >> Absolutely. um when we're doing the um options >> and then also

021including I know um in our um prior board meeting we had four different scenarios that were provided to us. So I think it would be very beneficial to have those scenarios because I'm assuming those scenarios were given to our admin from Walberg. Is that correct Dr. Hansen? just one. >> Okay. >> Sure. >> The four scenarios that you're referring to are the class size scenarios. Yes. So, the current class sizes that uh Karen showed are what we try to operate under today. The first set of class sizes had 26 kids in kindergarten. Uh 28 students in first and second. I don't know if we did we cap at 30 for fourth and fifth. they were class sizes that we don't try to um enroll or place in those classes. So what you're seeing today at

022the 96% is the current class sizes that we operate under right now. >> Right. So what I'm requesting is with those since those scenarios were put out there if we could just get the pros and cons just like you have on this one scenario. That way as we're looking, the community is looking, we have a full scope to be able to compare and contrast because it's kind of hard to do that only looking at one slide. >> Yep. We'll we'll make that available to the board and we'll put it on our website. >> Thank you. I just wanted to say um you know since we're talking on this t uh subject of the fifth graders when the ideal of redistricting uh was brought up you know I'm just going to say I suggested that it

023was the timing was wrong and we needed to look at it a little bit more uh to evaluate if it was feasible to move the fifth graders back. And at that particular time when we talked about redistricing we had priorities. Our first goal was to balance enrollment and our second goal was to move the fifth graders back and then we talked about you know other things gifted and talented. Everyone was excited and you know it was not an if the way we understood it but it was a how. So basically we weren't saying if it could be done we were saying how it could be done. So there therefore we voted to hire a demographer to tell us how it could be done. Now it seems like we have a problem because you're saying that

024it cannot be done and we were expecting to hear how it could be done because that was top priority on our list, you know, and um so what I'm I'm saying is is there any way that we we see that you're saying it's impossible right now? Can you think of some ways of how it may be done? You know, since you guys are the experts, how we could do this? I know that when they gave our report on July 16th, they were talking about our priorities and how we the highlights, the reason for putting our fifth graders back. So, everybody was excited. We voted to go with um redistricting based on that information. Now that we have new in information, I wonder how our vote would have been, whether we would vote to redistrict or

025would we have voted not to redistrict because our top priorities was to set those fifth graders back and to do enrollment balancing. Um, as I began to brainstorm, I don't know, maybe Dr. Hes can help me with this. When we redistribute the first time, we closed two buildings and now we are lucky to have one of our buildings as our community center and that's Morehead. But I don't know what's being done with the second one, Heather Hills, because as I look at it, maybe if we open up Heather Hills, and we sort of put students in there in phases, you know, then we would be able to have the capacity to move fifth graders back into the elementary school. So, I'm thinking about how now, you know, so that's just one of the things that

026I thought of and I thought that maybe you can touch base on that. >> Yeah, I I think that's going to take a little bit more analysis on our end. So, I I don't want to stand up here and brainstorm. Um, so we we can come back to you with other ideas. Um, but we can certainly look look into into that. >> Lori, I can kind of tell you what's being done with it right now if that helps. Um, we have Warren online academy out of that and we have our adult education out of it. >> Okay. So, with those two things, I think that we can be flexible enough to find different locations for them in order for us to accommodate another school to uh put our fifth graders back because the the fifth

027graders are the our students, you know, in the fifth grade is what was our top goals. So maybe we could take a look at what we could do with our online because they're online and also our adult education. They might be able to utilize some of the buildings that we already have. >> It's not really online. They come in person. >> Yeah. >> You said what? >> Or sorry, our online is only online most of the time. They all come in in person. >> Yes. But what I'm saying is we might be able to utilize some other space for that because then that way that will allow us to have room for the fifth graders >> and then you'll be >> because our online and our adult education is a smaller entity than our fifth

028grade. So I'm just saying that's just one of my recommendations for us to take a look at. Karen, um I forgot to ask um you had mentioned in a prior slide that you guys will be you will be coming back with the recommendation. Is it standard practice for you to give recommendations or for you to give us options for us to look at? >> It really depends on the board. Some boards just want a recommendation. Um but if you want options we can certainly do that and share why why each option is being presented and how each support community feedback. So if that's what you would >> I am one of the board so I can say for myself I would like options. So we I think we have a pretty well educated and informed

029board that we could look at to options and ideally if this is standard practice if we give you a couple options then maybe you can say what the recommendation may be from those options that we are presenting because I'm very much on board with Miss Gloria at this point when we hired in the demographer that was not very popular amongst the community. Um, so just transparently. So we want to make sure that we are utilizing it and maximizing the expense that it costs. So we could be well informed on all the areas that we felt as though as the board and as our admin cabinet could not do that we needed a demographer, you know, for because right now and I know you have some detailed graphs. Um, Miss Gloria said this initially, we could

030walk through the um you know the schools and count the classrooms you know and I know that's not all you did but if we could have options detailing that would definitely for me I'm speaking for myself I don't know what um our my fellow board members would like but I I would prefer options over um just one recommendation. >> Sure. Um so when you say options are you talking about options for boundaries? Are you talking about options for capacities? >> I am talking about options for both. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> And I saw the options um in your slide later for the boundaries. We have about four. Did I miss one? So those are fine. So then you're waiting on feedback. I know we haven't got to those. So you're waiting on feedback from

031that. I would like to see that same thing for capacity. It seems like that is very detailed with the options. This is options one, two, three, four. Select from that. We'll give you feedback. I think for capacity, I would like to see those options as well. >> Did I confuse you a little bit? >> No, I'm just I'm just thinking. Um I mean the K through fifth capacity, you have programs that you you need to have. You have uh you have home rooms that you need to have. There's less like options. There's less playing around with that. Um especially in a situation where your buildings are going to be so heavily utilized. there's not going to be room to play around with that. So, I would say your options for the capacity would be the

032two that we're presenting here, the K through 5th or the K through fourth. Um, it those are more set in stone than boundaries where we can make an adjustment and have a domino or so on. Um and and just so you know, typically when we provide options to a board, boundary options to a board, what we'll do is we'll take all the feedback, combine options, make modifications based on that feedback, and then provide you maybe two or three options. Um so you won't you won't necessarily get the original four because surely there's something in those four that is not going to be popular that we just need to throw away. Um so you'll get you'll get modified options that you can then choose from. So, at least probably three because two, if we don't like

033it, we need something to go with. Um, but I think I'm stuck on capacity because that's just where I am. Capacity to me is something that is fixable and I along with Miss Gloria, I thought you guys would be able to tell us how we would be able to do that. So, those are the options. How could we go into Lakeside that you said may need a few more um um rooms for our option our exceptional learner students or our interventionist and resource um teachers may need a separate route. Does that make sense? >> It does. Okay. Thank you. >> It does. Um yeah, we'll we'll work with the district to come up with some of those and how we can how we can remedy that. All right. So, moving on to the K through

034four capacity. Um, this this graph details what pretty much how your buildings are being utilized today with a few exceptions. Of course, empty classrooms, we're counting those as home rooms because we want to fill those. Um, so this is these are the numbers that we used for the four boundary options you're going to see later on. Um, so just keep that in mind. Um, and we will we will look at all that stuff that we talked about. I wrote those down. I'm glad there's a pen up here. So, moving on to the boundary planning criteria. Um, back in I think early November, we sent out a survey to the community asking what they value in a boundary plan. Um, so we provided a bunch of different guidelines that could be used when adjusting boundaries. the

035um we received I think 356 responses um from families and the three that really rose to the top were to attempt to modify the boundaries in a way that impacts the fewest number of students possible um attempt to create boundaries that balance enrollments among schools equitably and attempt to create boundaries that assign students to their nearest school. It is really important to note that with these guidelines, they are not going to be all things to all people. Um, and they probably will contradict each other. Um, we may be able to have an option that doesn't move very many students, but um, it may not balance enrollment equitably uh, among schools. So, they they are going to contradict each other. And it's important to look at these and pay attention to them when we're making options,

036but they aren't going to be achievable for everybody's situation. Um, the other thing that we heard a lot within the survey, we we did have an open-ended I think two open-ended questions. Um, we heard a lot about those island zones. So, Hawthorne, Grassy Creek, and there's one other LOL have an island zone right now. um those do not seem to be very popular. I I read over and over that there are there are some issues with those. So, we did make it a priority in these options to remove those island zones. >> Karen, I'm sorry. Can you please explain we have people online what an island zone is? Thank you. >> Yeah, it's it's a detached boundary. So, let's look at Hawthorne. So Hawthorne has its current boundary kind of around the school, but they

037also have another boundary that's up closer to um Eastridge. It's like right down the street from Eastridge, but that area instead of being assigned to Eastridge is now is currently assigned to Hawthorne. Same with Grassy Creek. That one's a little bit more extensive. That one's way up on the north side. Um so we have students from one neighborhood that are traveling down to Grassy Creek even though the everything surrounding them is going to Lakeside. All right, moving on to some of our background data. So, this map is showing your current boundaries and the metrics associated with the current boundaries. Um, so the map on the left is showing your elementary boundaries. The blue outlines are your intermediate middle school zones and the map on the right is also showing the intermediate middle zones. Um, so

038you can see you can see the the islands. In this case, there's three of them. Um, we're also showing the elementary to IMS feeders. This is the K through eight progression. Um, we have no proposed changes to these feeder patterns. So, while some of our options do well, all of our options do impact the boundaries for the intermediate middle schools, the actual like school elementary to middle school progression will not change in any of the options. Um, currently 59% of elementary students and 74% of intermediate middle students are attending their geographically closest school. Something that's really important to note with that, um, we need your density exists on the north side of the district, but you have capacity on the south side. So, in order to get students into those southside schools, we do have

039to reach those boundaries north. So, many of the options do not improve that closest school metric. Um there are a few handful that do um but that is because we need to get students moved southward and we do that by pushing the boundaries northward if that makes sense. Um the chart on the bottom you're going to see these for each of our boundary options. It shows the live-in enrollment excuse me for each boundary the out of district enrollment that's that OOD um the utilization which is just enrollment divided by capacity. the direct certification percentage. So this is direct certification is the process that the USDA uses to determine who qualifies for free and reduced lunch. So we're using it to we're using it to measure socioeconomics at each school. Um so you're going to see

040that and then we have the average travel distance for everybody living in the boundary and then the maximum travel distance. And you'll notice uh the schools that do have those island boundaries have greater maximum travel distances just because students are traveling further. I need to ask the question. Um, does, um, this include high and low income, uh, areas combined because, you know, that's really important to how much money we receive and whether it's going to be equitable. So, you know, when you're talking about boundaries, are you including not only low income or are you in com combining high and low income when you do those boundaries? it it would be combined. So we have that information at the student level. So this is calculating for the students that live in that boundary. This is that

041is what the director for certification percentage is representing. Um it's not based on like neighborhood. It is based on the actual students within that. When you say the actual students, are are you still uh can you clarify that as far as you know um when you talk about boundaries and you know students going closer to the schools that they are? I just want to make sure that everything is equitable and um we are including not just students from one certain area you know maybe the low income or you know excluding high income. We want to make sure that it's balanced. That's what you're saying. Absolutely. Um Yeah. Yeah. We are moving when when students are moved in the options, it is it is a mix. Um we're not just taking let's say students from high

042income areas and moving them or students just students from low-income areas and moving them. There it is a good mix of of movement. And that's actually a great segue into this slide. Um, my label there is kind of interesting, but what these are showing are the student densities for your K12 student population. So, the map on the left is showing your K12 student density for all K12 students within the district. These are just your students um living well just your students in general because we do have quite a few students coming from outside of the district. Um, the density is showing the students per square mile. So, anything in blue is showing a lower student density or fewer students per square mile. Anything in like the reds and oranges are showing a higher student density

043or more students per square mile. Um, this is kind of what I was getting at a little bit ago. You have a lot more dense areas on the north side of the district than on the south side. And this map makes it very clear. Um, the map on the right is showing the percent or the density of directly certified students. So these maps are to the same scale, meaning that red or orange means the same thing on both maps. Um, just so you can get an idea of the hot spots there. What the map on the right is really showing is the difficulty or how difficult it would be to balance the um, socioeconomics among schools perfectly. Um, while it could be done, it would result in island zones for almost every boundary all over

044the place. Um, what I like to say is if we were to make a map like that, it would look like I just dropped Skittles on the map because we would need to pull from all over the place to get into these um some of these other districts that have fewer or have a lower density. So this map or this chart right here is a live attend analysis and what this is showing is the um students compared or where students reside compared to where they are actually attending school. Um the chart can be read both both vertically and horizontally. Um if you look at it horizontally you can see um where the schools that students are attending from where they're coming from. And then um if you look at it vertically, it would be where

045students are attending versus where they're coming from. So if we look at Brook Brookview for example, Brookview has 370 students that both live in their boundary and attend that school. Four live within the Brookview boundary and attend East Ridge. One lives in the Brookview boundary but attends uh Grassy Creek and so on. So I'm looking at that horizontally. If we look at it vertically, we've got two students that attend Brookview from the Eastridge boundary, 10 that attend Brookview from the Lakeside boundary, and so on. And so that's looking at it uh vertically. Um the bottom the the green uh row at the bottom is showing the out of district students and then anything that is not uh bolded is showing transfers. Um this includes intra district transfers. Again, out of district is at the bottom.

046Um, and the intrad district transfers can be for a variety of reasons. It does include high ability and then students getting placed in special education programs. Um, so it's a little bit of everything. And this last map is showing what your boundaries would look like if every student went to their geographically closest school. Inevitably in a process like this, we get the question, well, why can't everybody go to their closest school? And my goodness, if we could do that, it would be so easy. We would just do it. um it makes a ton of sense um to send people to their closest school. Unfortunately, with where your schools are located and where your populations are located, that that's not an option. Um it's not an option anywhere that we do this work. Uh people move

047and buildings do not. So, the populations have just migrated in different places over time. Um and you can't pick up a building and move it. So, if we were to adopt a plan like this, again, this is not an option. um Brookview well lol would be utilized at only 45% whereas lakeside would be utilized at 157%. Um so like I said this is not an option but it is a good illustration of um what the boundaries would look like and it is information that we used when creating boundary options because that that is a desire for families to live to go to a school close to home. All right. So, moving on to our boundary options. We do have four of these. Um, I do want to reiterate what Dr. Hansen said. No decisions have

048been made at this time. U, these options are were made to both generate conversation and get feedback. We want feedback about what they like, what people like, what they don't like, any improvements. Um, that's what we're going to be using to move forward in this process. So, as I'm going through these, I hope folks take some time and look through them a little bit deeper. Um, all of this is available within the survey, probably on the website as well. Um, so it is a lot of information, but I'm going to try to get through it. And like I said, if you have any questions, >> before you get started, can I ask a clarifying question? These options are only >> for the model of K4, >> correct? Yep. Yep. All four of them are. I'm

049gonna ask a question. It's probably more to Dr. Hansen. If no decisions have been made, then why are we only getting options for K4? It doesn't even leave us anything to look at for K5. So I it's you're saying no decisions have been made, but everything that I'm reading is geared only towards one model, not so who who do I direct that question to? because I'm just for me this is incomplete. It gives me nothing to compare and contrast. >> Yeah, we can I don't want to speak for Karen. They can run K5 models. When we got to the point where we looked at the current model and we were at 96% capacity, that was before we even saw the live birth rate data um to to acknowledge that our school enrollment K4 was going

050to increase uh in the next few years. right now. It just and and I will share when I come back up here, there will be some significant decisions that can be made in order for us to move fifth grade back to our elementary schools. >> I appreciate that. And I'll just reiterate if we came for the option for K through five and if you're saying going forward that no decision has been made until we make that final decision from input I would appreciate it if options would include both models so we can make some informed decisions. >> So Mr. Stripler that's a a great point permission to be very direct. The feedback won't the feed the this the decision that the board would have to make cannot be based on feedback from our community. the

051the feedback would the decision the factors in that decision are going to be financial and it's going to align with the philosophy to take out of district students because right now we receive $9 million in revenue for a little over a thousand out of district students. A little over 500 of them are at our K4 um schools. You probably saw the one that st sticks out the most is Pleasant Run. They have over 111. We've had some conversations um this fall uh with our board and IPS as they're looking to um rightsize their district with everything that's going on with their ILA. We thought that there was going to be an opportunity for us to annex some of that northern part of our district that would that exist in in Warren Township, but they are

052IPS school boundaries. I will tell you the majority of our out of district kids live in those areas. We have over 600 out of district kids that live um just south of 30th Street in that northern area. So, Mr. But I wish look I was the one cheerleading this and championing it and and getting out in front of the parade. I was and from an initial standpoint we took the number of K4 kids. We added the number of current uh fifth graders we had. We got uh 5200 and I divided that by nine because we have nine elementary schools. And that was the initial uh data point that we used to say from a mathematical standpoint, could this work? The special ed programming and and Karen, I apologize. I want to take over here, but

053um the special ed program, I do want to clarify something because on one of the the uh screens, the hallway, the boxes, there are two special ed rooms that have zero on them. We do need space to work with small groups, whether that's e any any student, right? Our our multilingual students, our special education students, our students who are not don't have a label necessarily. We need small and group group instruction uh spaces for our kids. You know, this some of our buildings have pod setups, which naturally makes that easier. And then some of our older buildings like Hawthorne who do not have a pod set up or a community space, we don't have the luxury of that of that additional space. What's more important though is the special ed programming, life skills, functional academics,

054um intensive mental health um for our kids. those some of those programs utilize full classroom spaces, but we only have 8 to 12 students in those classes. So, the schools that have those programs, their capacity is going to be lower because we can't put as many kids in those classrooms. You'll see here in a minute, Pleasant Run has a capacity of 630 kids. And you may be thinking, well, if Pleasant Run has a capacity of 630, why doesn't Hawthorne have a capacity of 630? because they're the same footprint. Mr. K, Mr. Kumler does not have any special ed programming in his building. He only has the dual language immersion, which means we can maximize the uh classroom space for full-size classrooms. Whereas Mr. Butler at Hawthorne, he does have special ed programming, which then decreases

055that. >> I'm not trying to confuse you or our community. I I think we we did need to give Walpert some direction to get us to this point. Um we and Ken, we've talked about this. We we can pull those maps of what that would look like for K5. >> Yes. And and you know, I love direct conversations. I don't like it any other way. But one thing I will say in contrast that um no the community feedback does not it will not make the final decision but it is very important a part of the decision that I am going to make. So when you made that statement it was you know that did not come across well for me because the um the community will have a play in my vote. I can't say

056about anybody else's but I understand we have a lot of dynamics to add in it. So that's why I'm asking for us to have a full clear whole picture so we can make those form decisions taking community feedback our financial situation and then when we go back in front of the community we can stand with solid information. If we have to walk some of the stuff back that got out before it shouldn't have then we can stand solid to say oops that's on us. We don't have the financial to build this capacity, but right now I don't feel as though I have enough information to be able to make that decision. So that's why I'm asking for >> full options, >> Mr. We will get you. >> Thank you. >> Let me backtrack because that

057was not what I intended with that statement. We want our community. There's a $9 million revenue stream with that that really the the you know that we may need to take a pause and and answer that question first before we move forward because if that depending on how that question is answered really drives the direction that this can go. Um right now if we maintained what we currently accept from an out of district and we do cap that um if if we maintain that we're not able to move fifth graders back into our we don't want to solve the problem of fifth graders and create other problems for class sizes transportation that doesn't come up in this conversation but it will come up in in our in our focus groups because there's other factors that

058go into that but I apologize That was not my intent to say that. >> Thank you for clarifying that. And and another thing just to be clear, the exact location of the fifth graders is not the whole focus of this. The purpose of even wanting to move the fifth graders was for academic success in social emotional learning. So it's not a matter of just shifting them to a different location. So if we cannot move them to another um location setting that research has proven that they can be more successful in, I would like to have some options on how do we still meet the needs of the fifth graders because you all are talking about projections and thank you for that clear view. We are all in elected positions that rotate every four years. You're

059talking about something in five or 10 years that we may not even be sitting in these seats to even vote on to have the capacity. So I would like some information for now for the students that are in our hands for the power and control that we have right now today within each of our tenures to be able to make some decisions with the projection seeing the future that oops we may have to come back to some stuff. But I do I do not want all everything projected on students that may not even we may not even touch because if we don't fix our academics, we're going to lose the families anyway and the families that are coming in is not going to touch us. So all of those projections are going to go away.

060So I don't want us to lose the focus. It's not just about it seems like we've gotten stuck in a power struggle of fifth graders have to go back. No, we have to do something because our records have shown. We have failed our fourth graders going transitioning and that has been a big gap that we've lost families. So that's why this is so important. We're going to have to make a decision and we're going to have to stand solid on it. Whatever that decision may be. Everybody's not going to be happy. We're all probably not even going to agree on it. But at least we can say at that time we made the best decision with the best information that was provided to us. And Dr. Hansen, while you're still there, I hate for you

061have to pop back up again. I thank you for the information and also from LSA. Um when um and it it all goes back to expectations. I think that why we're at a standstill is because originally everybody was so excited, the community and everybody was excited about moving the fifth graders back into the elementary schools. And at that particular time, like I said, it wasn't a question of if. We just knew that that would be an option. You know, that was one of our second goals. You know, the first goal was the enrollment management and then the second goal was moving them back. And so now that we have the demographers saying, "Oh my gosh, there's no space." So, we're at the point of how can we rectify this problem? you know, because there were

062high expectations of getting the fifth graders back and I think that it's just devastating to hear that it might not be possible. So, when I suggested us uh reopening that building, that is a great possibility because it will give jobs. So, we're going talking about financial here. We're going to have jobs for people. Also, some of those um programs and the ones that we have, they can still have a space in that building. And if we phase those students in because we want to keep students that have been at one school together. So, we want to try to maybe phase new students into the new building and then, you know, try to do it in phases so that it won't be uh, you know, devastating for our students, you know, to try to have to

063jump up and leave their friends and go somewhere else. But that is an option and I'm saying that that gives hope to people that were really looking forward to moving the fifth graders because at this point we have to think about options because like you said we're full to capacity. We don't want to interrupt what we have but at the same time we are lucky enough to have space another building. Let's think about how we can utilize that in order to make it happen and then everybody will be, you know, satisfied. >> And we can we can put the reopening of that on as an option. >> Yes, >> Miss Williams. It's my job to give you the pros and cons to that, you know, and there would be a financial piece to that that

064we would want to look at. So, >> I I think what you just ended with there will be the key to all of this. Basically, everyone wants an informed decision. No, no matter what it is, it's not going to be a win-win scenario. It's going to be a positive and a negative, a pro and cons to each. Just want to see it on board and everybody sees it on paper. And whichever direction we elect to go with, we just making the best informed decision. I think that's the best way to summarize everything. >> And I think the other thing to think about is the equity of that building compared to the other elementaryaries as well because it's got a lot of work needing to be done if we do that. Lastly, this is not probably

065not my last comment. I'm sorry y'all. I took over Miss Gloria's role today. Sorry, Miss Gloria. I thought you weren't going to be here, so I was ready. Um, for high ability, the other thing does these scenarios include um I know one of the important things was trying to work with our high ability um students that they do not have to shadow missing instructional time every day. Do the options include um them as well? >> Mr. Would it be okay if we pin that and then I'm gonna ask Allison to respond to that when she does her focus group um analysis. >> Thank you, Dr. Hansen. So, you just allowed us to have hope. You know how they say keep hope alive. >> All right. Um, so moving on to our boundary options. And I

066do just want to reassure you the feedback that we get should should this move in a different direction, the feedback that we get is still valuable. Um, because we will still hear from neighborhoods and folks about where they would like to be and so on. Um, so this is not all for not. We are we are still going to get very valuable information regardless of the direction that this goes. All right. So this slide has the map and metrics for option one. Um the table on the top right is showing those metrics that we talked about before. Um so the utilization and enrollment metrics, the direct certification and then those travel um the travel metrics. The bottom table is are showing the projections for the next five years. Um the table in the middle is

067showing the percentage of students moved and as well as the percentage of students attending their closest school. And then we also have the enrollments for the or the associated enrollments for the IMS buildings. Um this option mostly balances enrollments both in the short term and for the next five years. Um with the exception being Pleasant Run, but in this option we are not proposing any changes to Pleasant Run. Um so Pleasant Run would be more highly utilized in the 5-year outlook than the other schools. Um in this option we have 57% of stu elementary students and um 72% of IMS students that would attend their geographically closest school. That's about 55 fewer elementary students than today and 70 fewer um intermediate middle students. Um as I said before, an important note, we do have to

068push those southern boundaries north in order to capture more students. That is impacting these numbers. Um the travel distances are minimally impacted but mostly improved ever so slightly. Um the biggest improvements are of course to the schools where those island boundary zones have been removed. Um so you'll see a lower maximum travel distance and a lower average as well. Um in this option the Cresten enrollment is brought down below a thousand. Um this is the only one that does that. Crestston does have the most growth pointed at it. Um I believe all of the developments, the housing developments that are occurring are actually pointed at Crestston right now with maybe the exception of one that might be a smaller one that's pointed at Raymond Park. Um so Crestston will likely get hit by those. So

069this one brings that enrollment down to kind of account for that. >> So Karen, are you saying so we're going to have a capacity issue with Cresten no matter what we do just with the projections? >> Not necessarily. they're just going to see more growth than the other than the other um than the other intermediate middle schools. Sorry. >> And then in our southern boundaries, >> um did you guys in your um analyzations are those students going to other schools, other districts? Is that why >> there's just not as much down there? Um if you look on the north side of the district, there's all sorts of subdivisions, apartment complexes there. the housing is just more dense. It's more rural on the south side. So, those boundaries just need to get bigger to capture more

070students. Um, okay. So, the next slide is showing the areas moved. I am not going to go through each of these individual subdivisions that are moved. It is pretty extensive, but some of these subdivisions are like two or three homes. Um, we just included everything that was impacted. Um, but I do want to explain the maps. So what the map is showing is the current boundaries and then overlaid on top of that are the areas of change. The areas of change are outlined in the color associated with the boundary that they're moving to. So the areas moving into LOL are outlined in brown and you can see those kind of on the west side. Um areas outlined in pink are going to be moving to Liberty Park. The maroonish dark purple color would be moving

071to Grassy Creek. There's only a small area there. Um, it looks different on your screen. The areas outlined in green would be moving to Eastridge, orange are moving to Hawthorne, blue to Brookview, and then purple to Sunny Heights. Did I miss any? Oh, and then yellow, there's the yellow area in the top that would be moving into Lakeside. This map is showing the same information for the IMS buildings. Um, so anything in outlined in blue would be moving into um, Raymond Park. Anything outlined in green is moving into Crestston, and then anything outlined in red would be moving to Stonybrook. Um, again, we are not proposing any changes to the feeder system, but some of the boundary the elementary boundary changes do in turn change the intermediate middle boundaries. So, moving on to option two.

072Um, All of these options, they do kind of balance enrollments a little bit differently. So, we're moving different areas um in each one. So, option two again is mostly balancing um the enrollments among schools in the 5-year outlook again with the exception of Pleasant Run where we are not proposing any changes in this option. Um you can see the travel distances again are improved almost across the board. The exception being LOL because we had to push that boundary north to capture more students. Um this option moves fewer students. So we're moving 15% at the elementary level and 7% at the intermediate middle level. And then 59% of elementary students would be attending their geographically close to school. And that's actually about five more than today. And then 73% of IMS students would attend their geographically

073close to school or about 30 fewer than today. >> Can you give that percentage again? 15%. >> Uh yeah, 15% of elementary students, 7% of intermediate middle students. It's like in the middle chart. >> Cool. Um so in this option, Brookview and Cresten would both be a little bit less utilized in the five-year outlook. Um, but this space could also be filled with other programming or out of district enrollment. Um, again like I said earlier, Crestston's enrollment in this option would be a little bit higher than the others, but it still is reduced. This map again is showing those areas of change. The outlines are going to be the area that um or yeah, where the the area is moving to and then the background colors are your current boundaries. same information for the intermediate

074middle schools. Um, again, this is all online and within the survey, we've got the videos, we've got the the slide deck, so folks can take a closer look. All right, option three um does balance enrollments within the five-year outlook um better. That is because we are making a change to Pleasant Run. Um, so in this option, we're moving 14% of the elementary population and 6% of the IMS population. So fewer than the first two options there. Um, 58% of students would attend their geograph geographically close to school. That's about 40 fewer than today. And then 77% of the IMS students would attend their geographically close to school, which is actually around 80 more than today. Um, the average travel distance again is reduced for most boundaries. Um and same goes for the maximum travel distance.

075Again, LOL's boundaries pushed northward. You're going to see that across the board just to capture more students. Um in this option, Brookview would be less utilized in the 5-year outlook um at just slightly ever so slightly below the ideal utilization of 85 to 95% of an elementary school. Um, so with this option, Pleasant Run is used to um relieve Lakeside because Lakeside's taking on that island boundary zone that currently goes to uh East or Grassy Creek. Um, so in order to do this, Pleasant Run is taking on a little bit of Lakeside. Hawthorne then in turn is taking on a little bit of Pleasant Run, but that does leave Pleasant Run at a more ideal utilization. Next slide is showing the areas of change for the elementarymentaries and then we've got our areas of change

076for the intermediate middle schools. >> Can I ask a quick question? >> Please do. >> Um, as far as our Spanish immersion program at Pleasant Run, does that remain intact there through all these or I believe so. >> Okay. All right. And then the last one we're asking for feedback on is option four. Um, this option doesn't do as well at balancing enrollments in the five-year outlook. It does so initially. Um, but what it does do is it moves the fewest number of students of any option. So, in this option, we're moving fewer students. That was a desire by the community, but it is at the expense of longevity. Um, unfortunately. So other highlights of this option again average travel distances are reduced um for the most part. Maximum travel distances are mostly reduced as

077well. Um like I said earlier we're moving the fewest number of students in this option with 12% of the elementary students and 6% of the IMS students. Um 56% of the elementary students would attend their closest school. That's about a hundred fewer than today. and 78% of IMS students would attend their closest school or a over just over a hundred more than today. Um, again, with this option as well as the other ones, we're eliminating we're eliminating those island boundary zones. Um, but if you look at that five-year outlook, we have Eastridge, Pleasant Run, and Sunny Heights all being very highly utilized in the five-year outlook, whereas Brookview, Grassy Creek, and Hawthorne are slightly underutilized. Um, again, we are moving the fewest number of students in this one. So, that that's the biggest highlight there.

078These are the areas of change with option four for the elementary schools. and then your IMS buildings change areas. So, this last slide is just going over how to provide feedback. Um, we do have a survey and it's going to be open until the 21st at 11:59 p.m. So, please consider responding. Even if you're not impacted by these options, which the vast majority of the district is not impacted by any of these, uh, please, please, please consider responding. We want everybody's feedback. It is okay that you're not impacted. you can still respond. Um, the QR code on the slide will take you to the survey. The survey has everything you're going to need. It has a narrated presentation, a slide deck, um, background report, an options packet. It has a school locator where you can

079just type in your address and see if you're you're impacted or not. That's a really helpful tool. It makes it pretty easy to see, um, if you're going to be impacted or not. It also makes it really easy to see where exactly the lines are drawn. Um, the maps on these slides are great, but they're pretty small. So, if you go into that locator application, you can, uh, click through each option, kind of see how it compares to current, and see exactly where the lines are drawn in each one. Um, we also have very large maps. They're going to take a couple minutes to load, but if you're if you don't like the interactive clicking around map, um, and you prefer like a static paper map, we have those as well, and you can zoom

080in on that and see, um, see the boundary lines. That is all I have. Are there any last questions before I hand it back? >> All right. Yeah, go ahead. >> Yeah, I got one question. This is just in reference to the online survey that opens until January 21st. How much how much change do you think you're going to get between now and 21st that you don't already have? >> How much data on the surveys. Do you think you're going to be getting >> I think quite a bit. So, something that we ask for within the survey um is an address. So, it will never be tied to a student. I'm not even going to provide it to you or the district. Um I'm asking for an address so that I can plot each response

081on the map and that way I can go in to each neighborhood and I can say, "Okay, this neighborhood likes this option for these reasons." So, maybe I can I can make this tweak and make them happy. Um, so it it's going to provide a lot of really really good information as long as folks um as long as folks consider responding and and actually do respond to the survey. >> What if they decide u for privacy that they don't want to put their address down? >> You know, that happens. Um, usually most people do provide that to me. Um, it there is the caveat on there. says that I'm never going to provide it to any to anybody. You don't put your name, you don't put anything. Um, even if you just want to provide

082your zip code, great. I'll take that. Um, but the actual Pinpoint address is a lot more helpful. Um, and the survey explains kind of why why we want it. It just gives us a better a better geographical outlook on the responses. Um, the other thing that address lets us do is see where we're getting responses from. If we have an area that's highly impacted in these options and we are not hearing from them, that is a problem. Um, so it allows us to kind of make some targeted messaging for those areas. >> For those individuals that don't feel comfortable with putting their address, could you mention on there that if you don't feel comfortable putting your address, put your zip code. At least you would get something instead of them not giving you anything. >>

083Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely do that. I can make that change during the next presentation. >> Thank you. >> Awesome. Well, thank you very much. >> Thank you so much, Karen. Oh, um, really quick, Dr. Hansen, we want to make sure that there are no members of the community that um, have submitted cards that have a need to leave early. You do, ma'am. Um, if you could so we can figure out which card you have. Oh, we don't have her card yet. Okay. Um, so we're going to let her speak really quickly. Um the district's presentation I think is about 30 minutes. Um and I think it will answer more questions. So if you have the ability to wait until it's over, we'd appreciate that. But if you've got young kids and or need to

084do it now, we can also do that. Ma'am, you can stay standing because you're just gonna go to the microphone. Um Okay. Um, our board um, executive assistant is going to pull up a timer because as a reminder, you have three minutes. So, just so you have that visual and you know what's going on. And, um, as a reminder, if you could give us your name. All righty. Hi everyone. My name is Sabrina. Um I'm just here quickly to speak on the um fifth graders moving back to elementary school. Um I am coming as a Warren alum, a parent that who had who's had six children come through Warren. I have one more left. She's 13. Um I have a sibling who actually taught in Warren. I'm sometimes a guest teacher as well as being

085a volunteer. And I actually can remember back when this change occurred because my I think my children were one of them was in the fourth grade going to the fifth and I was devastated because I didn't believe that a nine-year-old should be going to school with pubescent children. We're talking facial hair. I mean now we we're in a totally different place like what 10 15 years later. Um, so that that really scared me. And even now as a guest teacher, sometimes I I can't sometimes fathom like nine and 10 year olds going to school with 15 year olds. We're, you know, I just feel like it, you know, um, developmentally, emotionally, there are a lot of things, especially with social media and so many things going on. Um, they are uh community members and we

086had one person um put NA. The four question prompts that we put in front of them were pretty much similar. Um what should the district think about to make sure the number of students at each of our nine elementary schools is more balanced? What should the district think about as we look at the possibility of moving fifth grade students back into elementary schools? Uh what should the district think about when we're looking at school start and end times for all three levels? And then what should the district think about as we look for ways to make our elementary highability program stronger board? The way I and community the way I organized this there are some numbers attached to some of the feedback. So in this first question around the balance um we had 87 students

087make provide a response to that 21 of those comments were they referenced that um there there wanted to be a fairness around the balance um a fair process. Six of them mentioned class sizes and five of them mentioned transportation for our parent caregiver um feedback. 866 parents responded. 25 of them mentioned that they wanted equitable resources and staffing. So, if we were going to move kids and spread them out, they wanted to make sure the resources and staffing came with them. 24 of our parents mentioned class sizes um as a concern. They wanted to make sure that class sizes wouldn't be um out of out of limit. You know, too too many students in a class. 18 parents made comments around boundaries that are transparent and logical. 11 uh referenced um equity of services. I

088think that was mainly referenced for high ability um special education DLI was a part of that on a couple of them and eight of them mentioned transportation and proximity for staff. um their top one which was 13 referenced class sizes, 12 referenced transportation proximity. 11, this was a little different on this one. They referenced um boundaries that we could sustain overtime. They also wanted um some clear clearness with that. Um 11 made comments regarding to avoid overcrowding andor underutilization. and then six made comments uh related to resources and staffing. I thought it would be good to kind of summarize all of them. Um so in this case, stakeholders agreed that balancing enrollment must be intentional, transparent, and data informed. School boundaries and redistricting are viewed as a the primary lever for balance. It's really difficult

089to do that without that. Class size and building capacity directly impact the student experience and instruction. Equitable distribution of teachers, specialists, and resources is critical. Transportation and proximity affect feasibility and community acceptance, and families expect consistent quality across all of our elementary schools, no matter where the students attend. Next question was around um the movement of fifth grade back to elementary. For this one, we had 137. Um, I don't know this will surprise anyone. The students were the group that that want to stay in middle school. They want to be the big the bigger uh kid. So, 45 of them um said, "Let's remain in IMS, the middle schools. 37 of them made a comment that it would be favorable to move back to elementary." Nine had a question or comment on capacity and eight

090referenced the developmental appropriateness of of fifth graders. Parent caregivers. Uh there were 87 comments. Uh 39 of them referenced returning to elementary. Uh 27 raised questions or concerns about about the developmental appropriateness of the placement and are we meeting their needs. 26 um so I put these in chronological order. 26 of them referenced remaining in the middle school, 12 made a comment about capacity and 10 um just transition impact from fourth to fifth. >> Dr. Hansen, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but for the 27 for the developmental that was they were concerned that um the uh IMS model was development inappropriate or they thought it was appropriate. They didn't necessarily say so I summarized that summary too as well. So uh there is a shared concern about whether fifth grade students are developmentally ready for

091middle school environment. Many respondents believe that elementary schools may better support social emotional needs, structure and age appropriate expectations while others, not as many see value in early exposure to middle school routines and and coursework. Um so for the staff uh 54 uh comments, um returned to elementary, 14 had some concerns or questions around capacity, 12 remain in the middle school transition impact and and similar to the developmental social emotional piece. Um again in summary of the summary, the feedback is thoughtful and balanced. Developmental appropriateness is the most common consideration. Elementary is associated with structure, comfort, and social emotional support. Middle school is associated with independence and preparation. Um the transition impact was defined as uh stress adjustment, multiple moves was a shared concern and space and staffing matter, but student experience is the priority.

092Okay. Start and end times. Um, we had more students participate on this one. Um, 41 want a later start time. >> No way. >> Um, 31 reference the need for more sleep. Uh, 26 referenced the earlier we the ear this one kind of contradicted it, but they they wanted to start earlier so they could get out earlier. I I was really impressed that we had 10 students recognize that there are transportation constraints around this. Um, so kudos to them. nine um made comments about consistency um you know not changing it from time to time seven so the activities concerns was seen across the board um and I think part of that um is at the middle level when we they get out at 4:15 their extracurriculars and later um I know we we talked about

093that at the high school level as well um five ref again kudos to kids five reference child care um needs for our parent caregiver. 26 also referenced the earlier start earlier end. Um sleep needs came in second with 25. Child care was um higher up on their end. They also recognized the transportation constraints. They also looking for consistency and also recognizing that because we are a three tier system, one of our tiers is going to have a later um end and activities will have later end. I'm sorry. We had 54 staff. And let me get out of here. 54 staff um referenced later start times. There were a lot of sleep comments in there and and readiness um for kids. 11 recognized the transportation constraints um in similar comments um as the other two groups.

094Kind of the summary of the summary. The students sleep and readiness were strong drivers of the feedback. Um parents and staff balanced student needs with child care, work schedules and supervision. Transportation and bus routing were recognized as major constraints. Um stakeholders do understand that there is no perfect schedule. uh and consistency and and overall system alignment were were valued. For our high ability, we had 98 students. Um the service delivery model came up across, you'll see that's number one across all of the models. Um the feedback from the survey essentially um referenced the placement wasn't as important as what the students were experiencing and how they were experiencing it. Um and you'll see rigorous work up here. Um our students, staff and families want our students challenged in the high ability program. They want rigorous

095work. um they really want that learning experience to be um elevated. Um all three groups reference the selection and participation process that goes into that. Um our parents made comment three comments on the transportation as well as three on the social emotional needs. for our staff. You'll notice their second um most comment was around their professional learning to meet our high ability students needs. Um and then access and equity also came up and uh then rigorous work. So again the summary of the summary the strong alignment that improvement links strongly to the service delivery model. Stakeholders want clarity and consistency on high ability services are delivered. Staffing and specialized training are critical to the program's strength. Identification processes should be transparent, inclusive, and equitable. Families and staff want assurance of rigor and meaningful challenge. And

096as I said, logistics are secondary to the instructional quality. From our community engagement, from our survey, we selected these seven focus groups so that we could then go in deeper on these conversations. So there are our focus groups. I have to play Matt Parkinson tonight because Matt was our leader for our enrollment management. Um and I did participate in his focus groups as well. Their priority was looking at capacity. Um you know taking a look at the building capacity, the physical classroom space, class sizes, um transportation impact. when we look at car rider lines and bus um you know logistics the programming space and and I'll kind of break this down because this is you know educational ease language um tier one tier two and tier three so what that means for us is tier

097one is our general instruction that all kids get tier two is for that next level group they may be uh students with special needs they may be multilingual they may not those are students that just need extra instruction, extra time. And then our tier three students are students who have um maybe even more significant need. Um so they get all three tiers. Those students most likely have been um identified with a special education need or or multilingual. Um so that went into those conversations, the multilingual um students sped and then related arts. And then there was conversation just around the ability to respond um really to projected in increased enrollments but also just shifts in in demographics um depending on where families choose to live. There was also a human capital capacity that came up

098in this group. the counselor to student ratio would shift um the admin to student ratio would shift and just what that class size impact would be on students I'm I'm sorry teachers priority two for this focus group was around the grandfathering provisions um whether we do fifth grade um or just redraw boundaries for K4 there will be a grandfathering conversation So, um, you know, the conversations they had were the fewer the exceptions, the better, um, because then that would counter all the work that would go into redistricting if we allowed everybody to grandfather um, in um, they did identify staff and caregivers as um, the number one priority. And then if we opened it up, the eldest grade and then siblings. Priority three, and you saw this in one of Karen's slides, the vertical and

099horizontal one. We do have a a process called the alternate school request process. Um there was conversations that we should maintain this um particularly around students that have siblings that may be in a program, whether it be special education, dual language immersion, high ability, then all of the kids are attending one school. This this process allows that to happen. there was some conversation that um remove all criteria um and leave it as a capacity decision. So, if there is room for students to um you know attend another school on an ASR and there's capacity there um that that that be the route um you know right now we we kind of leave it open to whatever they include on the form. Um and sometimes um you have to say yes to some and no to

100others because of capacity. So it kind of looks like we're inconsistent with that at times. Priority four um with the enrollment management group was around out of district. Um the conversation that took place was to maintain this. Um there was a strong not that these are in order of that but there is a strong sentiment and we've heard this from our community, our staff and our in our focus group here but we need to prioritize placement for our Warren families who live in district. Um, and that comes up sometimes for kindergarten. When we have kindergarten overflow, if we do have um classes where we cap a kindergarten class, we could potentially send a kindergarten student to their non-resident school while at the same time we have out of district kindergarteners sitting in that school. That's

101very hard to navigate because depending on when they enroll with us, we don't always they don't always enroll at the beginning of the school year. >> Dr. Hson, who makes what team makes the final decisions on our add a district enrollment? >> So, the board set forth policy um actually the state did. Um we have two criteria that we can um use for filtering um attendance and uh behavior discipline data. So, if they have less than 10 days of suspension or attendance, they are eligible to enroll in Warren. >> Right. I know the eligibility criteria. I'm saying who in our district make does that final decision come from you? Who makes that? >> Kathy Disney is the gatekeeper of that. Ultimately, it would be Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Anderson. Their their offices would would Kathy

102Disney makes most of the decisions. >> So, it goes to Kathy and then it goes to uh Dr. >> If there is a reason to elevate it, it would go to Dr. Anderson or Dr. Sullivan. >> Can you explain that to me? I'm a little confused. If they are the overseers of that. Then can you explain Cath? >> She processes the enrollment as long as they meet the criteria. So when a kid a family applies to be an out of district family, they go into a queue. >> Kathy processes that by reaching out to the school that they're coming from to make sure that we get their um documentation on the form. It will the family can identify what school they would like to attend. and Kathy will monitor our enrollment numbers through Synergy and

103if there is space available um and they meet the criteria she will play she will enroll them in the place them in those schools >> and if she feels as though they're not eligible for whatever reason then those decisions are passed on to um Dr. um Tyranny and Dr. Sullivan to re-evaluate that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Once they once they they then they go on a list that they were not accepted and we all monitor that. Um if they don't meet the criteria now we did provide some flexibility this year with attendance because we have an awesome attendance process here. Um but if they don't meet the criteria for behavior then there's I I can't think of any situ none happened this year where we relief um that criteria. >> Okay. So, we can do

104this at another meeting because I'm still kind of confused about the chain of command and where Kathy's coming in and what um their role is if she's making the final decisions. So, >> yeah, if they meet the criteria, she makes the decision. If they don't meet the criteria, Dr. Anderson or Dr. Sullivan could get involved, >> if she decides to pass it on. I'm just trying to get a clear picture. >> Yeah, they they have ongoing conversations with, you know, hey, this kid was at this school for twothirds of the year. if we did the full proportion, they would be out of compliance with the criteria. What do you want to do? >> So, she does confer with them. And I'm asking because a parent asks, I was I was like, hm, good question. I

105don't know who makes that final final decision. So, Kathy will receive the information, but she confers with um Dr. Tierney and Dr. Sullivan on the cases if there is a question. >> Yeah, the majority of our cases are there aren't questions. the majority of them are they meet the criteria. Um from there um from this group there is a a lot of conversation around developing a system to your point Mr. Triplet I think this might you know validate that develop a system structure for out of district enrollment and placement. I think our principles would like to have better transparency or predictability around that. Um I think one of the things that they recommended is putting caps on each of our schools. Um, and again, in theory, that sounds good. Um, we get a lot of

106enrollments, as you guys know, from August 1 to October one. Um, so we can we can work with that to to make that more streamlined and transparent. Um, how and when we accept students and then equalizing placements throughout the district. As I mentioned before, a large majority of our out of districts come from the northern part of our um district. they want the closest school to their um home because they have to provide transportation and that's where Kathy will have conversations too and that's where Dr. Anderson mainly Dr. Anderson because at the secondary there's only one choice right um but at the K8 there's multiple choices there and I see Mr. play and ready. Um, any other questions on enrollment management? >> Um, I have a question. I just want to make some clarification. Um,

107I know a lot of our community members might be thinking the idea like we're thinking about putting fifth grade back. Some of them might be thinking, why don't we just make a fifth and sixth grade academy and a seventh and eighth grade? Can you explain to our community and to everyone um that we've talked about that issue and why that is not something that we can necessarily feasibly do? >> Yes, we we did explore multiple options. We looked at a kindergarten center. We looked at a fifth grade center. We looked at a 56 78 um structure through conversations with Wilpert. We looked at a 78 structure and two 56s. Um, using current enrollment, that would give us about 16 to,700 students in one of those buildings. And, um, the the three middle schools don't have

108capacity for that many students. And you know, I I think you know, to even be more transparent right now, um you know, the conversation of building a new school, it just is not financially feasible to to provide that restructure. >> Thank you. I just really wanted that addressed so that our community knows that we have been thinking outside of the box and trying to do everything that we can to see what's going to work and how we can really just give our fifth and sixth grade their own little part. >> Yeah, it's a special group. >> What did you mean about building another school >> like that in that concept where to build a school that would have capacity for a fifth and sixth grade center? Oh, okay. Cuz we already have a school, so

109that's why I didn't I I didn't know you all had talked about building a school, but we already have a school. So, we talked about, you know, trying to figure out what we could do to utilize that. Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Marcus is going to talk to us a little bit about the school boundary. President Burke, Dr. Ant, and members of the board. Uh, I'm going to briefly talk about the focus group that I led, school boundaries. I think between what Karen shared tonight, um, what Dr. Hansen spoke to as it relates to enrollment management, we've pretty much beat the school boundary thing up for this evening. So, with that being said, I just want to share with you again much of which has been addressed today, uh, some of the feedback that was

110shared back when we met in early November. Um, as you heard tonight and Karen tried to, uh, to capture that through the four options she provided, but the feedback we received around keeping our neighborhoods together. Um, in other words, uh, providing options for our families to attend their their neighborhood schools. we know um some of the benefits behind that um again that have been shared tonight as well as address some of the the the family logistics um around um start and end times. I know Dr. Sullivan is going to um provide some of the feedback that came from his focus group and then um simple boundaries. Well, some of the options we saw tonight weren't so simple. Uh but some of the challenges that we shared with you during our previous meetings that uh Karen

111was able to provide some numbers and some data behind just some you know the the simple fact that um the locations of our families in terms of where they reside is disproportionate um to the location of some of our schools specifically north of East Washington Street. So how do we remedy that and at the same time balance out our our school enrollments? The second priority was around equity and balance also um again touched in several different focus groups but you know again we discussed some of the the challenges behind um high ability specifically the feedback with the the shuttles the current system that we have in place what is the future of our dual language immersion which as Dr. Hans pointed out um in terms of the location of that at Pleasant Run that wouldn't

112uh change from what we discussed um as well as uh resource distribution align boundaries to ensure balanced resources and equitable class sizes again which that was touched on from the feedback we received through the survey and then again just the challenges that come along with moving boundaries. Um what do transfers look like? Um part of the feedback that our committee provided was um tightening our policies around our out of district and alternate school requests. Um in other words, just use this as an opportunity to be transparent about our process and share with them exactly some of the input that goes into that. Um Dr. Hansen laid out what goes into our out of district process. What does that look like for our internal transfers or some of the students that live um near an elementary

113school or middle school but attend um elementary middle school that's not within their district? Phasing options, also known as grandfathering. Um what is our plan for that transition? In other words, if we have um a fourth grader, for example, that um if that family is through this process um redistric to go to another school, will that family have the option to finish that fourth grade year? In other words, if we had a third grader that's going to be a fourth grader next year, would they have an option to finish finish out at the school district that they started at? You know that's again that's not just a discussion that in a decision we'll have to make but any district you go to this is part of the the overall discussion decision making that goes into

114that and then sibling stability. Um I know I have a couple of the of our parents that participated in in the process. Um one of which is a former student in the back. Not calling you out, but um just some of the feedback that they shared was um more of a concern for that that third grader that will be a fourth grader next year. If they had a sibling that was younger, u making a transition earlier is better than making a transition later. So, um, as it relates to siblings, how would we, you know, make decisions around that, but also, um, being consistent with our goal of making sure that our buildings and our enrollment most importantly is is balanced with that. So, questions around that. And that's all I have from our focus group.

115I think the second portion of that was covered by what Karen provided this evening. President Burke, uh, Dr. Hansen, and school board members, u, I truly am going to be shorter than what Marcus said he was going to do. So, uh, we had the opportunity to have 21 respondents in our start and end time focus group. uh about 60% of our focus group was staff. And so you'll see a lot of the priorities that we came up with kind of mirror what it was that we had uh found from our feedback uh from the uh conversation that you just heard from Dr. Hansen. Uh we started each one of those uh meetings with talking about our purpose uh which is to make sure that as we rightsize our school, we want to meet the needs

116of our students and staff and make sure that we work with our transportation and operations team to ensure the feasibility of our current structure along with the possibility of other start and end time formats. That work was actually uh looked at through research, local data and feedback from family, staff and community partners. Uh we also had one student who attended our uh focus group. The way our focus group kind of started is each person had the opportunity to talk about why they were there and what their priorities were. each person had an opportunity to take stickies uh take those stickies write on each one of them their priorities. That way we made sure that everyone was heard. Uh you take that priority, put it on the board. Then in the end we kind of group

117those into certain groups that came out as priority number one, transportation capabilities. Priority two, staff commute and work schedules and child care priority three before and after school programming. and priority four, student safety. All of which were probably one or two votes within one another. Our homework from our first focus group was for each person to take home uh research packet uh which was really just information that we had gathered uh from different uh credible sites um and then come back to our next group and actually talk to us about the research that they had found and then we would take our priorities and from there make models. Um the group researched sleep patterns, optimal learning times, national best practice, and recent trends. Uh we also took a look at our um surrounding districts and

118what their uh start end times were and we kind of found that depending on where they were and depending on what the values of the community were um that they were kind of all over the place. So it wasn't like everyone was starting at the same time on the east side or everyone starting at the same time out west um depending on where the community was. You can see starting to end times all over the place. Uh from there we created four models uh based on the priorities that um we saw in the last uh slide and we based it on the findings of the research. Uh and those four models turned out to be our current model. Um, one of the models was changing the middle school and elementary tiers. Uh, one was balancing

119all the tiers so that there's not a clear elementary tier, clear middle or clear middle school tier, and a high school tier. And that was done for the sake of trying to make sure that the same number of buses would be able to go on every tier. And then the last one was an earlier start time and it was 15 minutes. Uh after we looked at all those models, uh we listed pros and cons of each one of the models and at the end um our focus group decided that the model that we have now is probably the best one going forward based on consistency and some of the unknowns uh including the fact that uh we are still trying to weigh whether or not the fifth grade is going to move back to the

120elementary. Thank you. So I just have this one slide. Our work um with our group was a little bit more narrow than some of the other groups that you guys heard. Um feedback from the community sessions earlier in the surveys really around DI was strong that wanted that program to continue. um you know we've we have our current first year of DLI that is an eighth grader uh right now um that's transitioning to the high school next year. So um the work in this group really focused on our high ability model. Um we had a great makeup of parents and teachers and administrators. Um and we did a number of things. First, we identified what our priorities were for the high ability uh model which um earlier in the presentation from that survey um the

121priorities our team identified really aligned with um the survey feedback which um we identified rigorous and accelerated academic growth um equitable and comprehensive access um cultivate well-being and belonging dynamic and meaningful engagement and establish um flexible student delivery. um that could be targeted and personalized um for some of the unique um ranges that appear in a classroom. Um as a group, we looked at our current model um what was going well with that areas of growth. Um and then we looked at um all possibilities of highability service delivery um the research around those and kind of the pros and cons to to those different things. Um overwhelmingly um the team really identified that um a self-contained um which we have two different versions here we'll talk through um keeping some sort of a self-contained model

122u was a priority. Um some of the other models we looked at were more um how if you think of a resource um for special education where uh a student's in a um you know regular third grade class and a teacher may pull out um you know for some math high ability instruction 30 minutes a day um or maybe a special rotation. So we looked at really things that were not self-contained um but the group really came back that self-contained um was um the biggest priority. Um ultimately the group determined that maintaining the current model um which with is having the cluster schools that are K4 um at LOL Brookview and Lakeside um with the ideal being direct busing if we have a way depending upon capacity and transportation to directly bus students to those

123schools so they weren't missing instruction time. That would be um the number one recommendation if not um to continue the shuttle bus model. um where I thought the busing because we've heard a lot about that was going to come up. Um that was not as big of a conversation as really what that classroom structure looked like. Um the the second area recommendation um if we didn't maintain the current model and we wanted to have a class at each elementary school would be to have a crossgrade level class um one located at each elementary school. Um this would look like grades two through four. Um, if we moved fifth grade back, it would be grades three through five. So, we wouldn't um, we would change when our high ability program started. Um, there would be a

124lot more flexibility for the teachers on how they were servicing students because they're going to have multiple grade levels with multiple um, ages, but we come up with a three-year scope and sequence of some themes and project based learning to have some consistency across all the buildings. Um but there was there would be more flexibility on you know if they have a lot of kids that are really high in math or oh sorry um you know however they group the students and depending upon what that grade level look like because there may not be equal distribution of third fourth and fifth or second third and fourth graders in that class depending upon what the school makeup look like. Um so I'm happy to answer any questions um at this time about that. >> Allison um

125how many was in your group? Uh we had um we invited a lot. We ended up having about 20. Um we had more parents than we did staff, which I was um happy about. So um we had teachers from um every all of our buildings and high ability, we had some administrators from both high ability and non- high ability schools and then um parents. I will note that um in the model that Karen showed with the K5 um where it showed the different classrooms and spaces um that based on our current enrollment and our current out of district numbers if we did move K5 if we went that way um there was no high ability classrooms that were on that chart. Um, so if we kept enrollment and out of district numbers as they were,

126we really would not be able to do a self-contained high ability model, we'd have to do something more um, like a pull out um, that I had referenced earlier. Um, if we'd need to make some adjustments to enrollment to be able to have space to have a high ability classroom either at every building or um, at the three sites. So, >> thank you. Can you get us um the numbers on how many students are feeding into our high ability schools from their boundary school? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Thank you. >> From their boundary school like by school from their home school to the feeder school. >> Okay. >> Like Pleasant Run goes to East Ridge. >> Correct. No, I'm sorry. Uh Brook View. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so then how many Yes. How many

127of our scholars at Pleasant Run feed into Brook? >> And was the question um did it come up regarding the extracurriculars that um was that important to the parents at all for high abilities like the specials that the um scholars are missing because of the shuttle? >> Um so the school that's mostly impacted that by that is Pleasant Run are students leaving Brookview. U honestly um that so that doesn't that's not necessarily specials at every building like it's a lot of them still get specials um at Brookview for example they're missing tier 2 time so if there's kids that have tier 2 needs that's what they're missing at the end of the day um that actually the priority to maintain the current model um overall for the group was and with the benefit not the

128with the busing being in place and the shuttling and kids missing that was more important to them than um than having that missed instruction time. >> Okay. If we keep the model the same, are we looking at how do we make that time up? >> Um so we have we did not we didn't have any of those discussions in in that space. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> I wanted to ask a question when they said uh keep the uh current model. The current model isn't it that they are bus to a particular area you know to get that extra >> the current model is a feeder pattern. So we have three elementaryaries that feed in. So for example lol elementary has high ability students from um Liberty Park, Hawthorne and LOL that feed into LOL.

129So that's what we mean by the current model of having the three feeder sites rather than a highability section at every school. >> Okay. Because when we started out, I thought that that was going to be a priority to try to have high ability in each school so that the kids wouldn't have to just go to three different areas. >> So you're saying that they preferred them not having their own class in each school and they wanted to keep moving. >> So the um conversation around that really was the advantage of and disadvantage of a crossgrade level class. Um, so much like we had conversation earlier about what grade levels are appropriate to be together, um, there was concern about having second graders and fourth graders in the same class all day. Um, and the

130benefits and harmful effects of of that cross grade level. So really the the only way for us to have high ability every school is to either do a crossgrade level class if we want it to be self-contained or to do something like push in and pull out. um we don't have the capacity um we don't have the number of students to be able to have um or the number of teachers and resources to be able to have like a second, third, fourth or third, fourth and fifth grade separate class at all nine buildings. We um we just don't have the resources to support additional 27 classrooms. Is that 27 27 18 classrooms in the district? >> Allison, do you know the other models like our surrounding district? what models are they kind of using? So

131we as we are reconfigurating, rethinking, we are kind of trying to be competitive of course tailoring to our demographic, but what other models are being used in our surrounding? >> Yeah. In Marian County, the um self-contained model is really um one of these self-contained models is really the what that looks like um across most schools, I would say, in Indiana and across the um the United States. some sort of self-contained one of these two. Um when you get up into Hamilton County, um you see more cluster grouping. So, for example, um they'll have a second grade section that one one class have second graders. This is the high ability class um for um you know, so that's what that looks like. But Marian County, we're we're pretty consistent with others. >> Okay. and I'll get

132you those numbers. >> Good evening everyone. I had the pleasure to lead the sixth and eighth grade or sixth through 8th grade experience uh group. It consisted of a just uh south of 30 participants uh 28 to be exact. Um we came up with four priorities uh through the conversation just about what that experience should look like. I will note that these can happen regardless of the fifth grade decision uh as we look at uh sixth through 8th grade. So first priorities all around the master schedule. Um, I'll take you back. Uh, last I believe it was April, we when we introduced the PP or uh PPC course or PCC PPC, I don't know where where I'm going. Let me start over. When we did the uh PCC course, when we added that to middle

133school, you may recall some of the challenges around elective opportunities that were voiced at a board meeting. um and really came all around uh the master and the elective opportunities or options that we offer our families or our students specifically because we have a traditional schedule. We only allow for two elective opportunities. As we did research just around middle school schedules in general, we found out that there obviously are a lot more creative ways in order to schedule students provide for more elective opportunities that don't take away for the opportunity for students to get remediation or enrichment academically as well. Um, so the appetite as I've been calling it to really look at that master to transform I'm going to say the word block but I don't want you to think about block as we

134have it currently at Warren Central High School but a modified block where students perhaps and again this is a a brainstorm that further details are needed if we move in this direction where maybe they have a consistent schedule on Monday, a traditional schedule on Monday where they see all of their teachers and then a different Tuesday, Wednesday or th or Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday schedule that would allow for more elective opportunities uh and remediation or enrichment for every student in the building. Right now, that's kind of handcuffed by uh if a student qualifies for a remediation opportunity, it takes away elective opportunity. If we design a schedule that provides enrichment and remediation for all students, then they get their electives in addition to that, which is important as we talk about the continuation and increasing

135electives. One of the it's not listed as a priority, but one of the main themes that came out of the 68 group uh was just the opportunity to build culture in our middle schools. uh you do that through providing students with choice and in or interested in certain um uh classes beyond what we would call traditional core classes. Um and right now when we do a comparison, we're kind of limited in our elective opportunities for students. uh and by uh flexing the schedule in a way that promotes more opportunities for that, it would be a way to keep uh those electives thriving and then be be able to add um additional opportunities for students as well. So that schedule was the first priority. Uh the second priority was around electives. I know I said electives

136a lot when I talked about this the schedule. Um, but additional elective opportunities of interest were really really popular uh from the parents, the staff, the counselors uh in this group and uh almost just as important was making sure that some of these elective opportunities really align with Bourne Central High School and Walker Career Center's pathway of interest. Uh, as you know, one of the reasons we did PCC in 8th grade as we prepared for the new high school diploma, students go into high school now needing a graduation plan. What diploma are they going to go after? What seal are they trying to accomplish? And we believe that better preparing students earlier as young as sixth grade and what those opportunities look like. Uh that is the concept of the jog centers that we'll spend

137a lot of time talking outside of this process through our Lily phase 3 initiative about how we'll utilize and transform those spaces in order to better prepare students for college career um employment enrollment enlistment uh all of those. Um, in doing so though, doing that through elective choices of both staff and student interest is uh one way to help build culture and prepare students for uh high school. Uh third um was really wrapping helping our students wrap their minds around what a grade is by formally developing a GPA system for the middle school level. Uh we've heard this through a variety of feedback from staff, from parents, from students themselves. uh students get to high school and that grade point average is so so important and so critical uh that we um do not do

138a fantastic job right now of preparing students from what a grade equates to from a GPA, what doors that opens in terms of what uh graduation um uh diploma that they're going to earn to how that GP GPA equates to what type of college or university they can get into. um it's used marginally now for eligibility requirements, but it's something that we can instill in students um from an earlier start about what a GPA is, why that's important in that transition to high school as well. And then last but not least, the extracurricular activities. And again, this focused around building school culture, uh, but making sure students had, uh, some type of activity, uh, not all athletics. We're not necessarily talking about athletics. That's one pathway for students to build school culture or feel a

139part of the school's culture. Uh, but just the same thing, things of interest that students want to engage in to keep them connected to their school. Um, we had a lot of great ideas. Anything from community service clubs to really specific like knitting clubs to robotics to the traditional ones that we heard or or that we that we see now, but really find a way to build that culture uh to get students connected to their school other than what the traditional hours are. Um, so those are the four priorities and the themes that popped up from the 6A group. Any questions? Ryan, when you get a chance, could you please provide us the details? I keep hearing about the Jock Center. Who's the Jock Center going to touch? Where are the Jock Centers going to

140be developed at and what is the Jock Center going to entail? Keep hearing about the Jock Center, but have >> no idea what this Jock Center is. >> Yep. Uh that's probably for another meeting or afterwards, but yeah, I'll be happy to >> uh talk a lot about that. So, >> thank you. >> Yeah, you're welcome. >> I just want to comment on the GPA. I think it's awesome that you're going to start talking to them about GPA because um many of our students, as you know, they have to sign up for 21st century scholars uh right away. I think it's sixth grade. And uh many of them don't understand the importance of the GPA. And a lot of our students are losing their 21st century scholars once they get into the higher grades because

141they don't keep their GPA up. So I think that that's extremely important for not only the students but to inform parents also that they have to keep that up because that's thousands of dollars that they're losing to go to school. >> Full tuition. Yes. >> Yes. Full tuition. And I don't think that they realize that. And then by the time they realize it, it's too late. and it's really expensive trying to further your education after high school. And if somebody's giving you thousands of dollars of free money, it's ridiculous to throw that away. So, I think that uh talking about GPA, not only to the students, but to the parents also, is going to be extremely beneficial. >> Yeah, absolutely. Not only that, but just um it serves as a pathway for us to support

142students to recognize students who are doing well um and all the other factors that go into um that as you mentioned. So, >> and also secondly, um the extracurricular activities uh that's a great component because a lot of them feel they have to wait till high school in order to get involved in in some but uh you know even the colleges say uh students they look at students not just academically but what kind of activities they're in. So it makes a well-rounded student. So, and we want them to be well-rounded. We want to not only encourage them academically, but also encourage them to get involved in some kind of extracurricular activity. So, I think that's preparing them wisely. >> Thank you. President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board, I had the privilege of facilitating

143the invest in our people focus group and uh you've heard me say and I know you guys know that uh we are what we do is very people driven and so the outline of these priorities uh more than anything uh because there's a lot of uh there was a lot of great discussion over two sessions with this focus group gave me a lot to think about uh but bottom line uh regardless of whether it involves uh administrators, teachers, or classified staff. Um the three priorities broadly outline our purpose which was to provide no matter what decision gets made uh to provide a clear and fair transparent process uh for anybody that's going to be impacted um two would be um um an appropriate timeline for notifying folks. And then three would be what types of

144supports do staff need? What kinds of professional development would they need? As you can see, many of these focus groups do impact staff one way or another. If it's um transportation, it's going to impact bus drivers and so on. Although this was this focus group was largely based on teacher uh concerns, um I just want to be clear that ultimately we're going to look out for our people. And I know in my career uh I'm a big believer in insisting that um uh in clear communication and really importantly advanced written notice any kind of any kind of substantial decision that's going to impact a staff member's employment situation. As you can see one of the concerns with child care for instance these are people with families and so um timely advanced written notice is very

145important because people need to adjust. They need to make decisions that are right for them. They need to know what they're getting into and how how their employment situation is going to change. So that said, uh uh with regard to a clear and fair process, um we want to use um um this is in involving reassigning impacted staff to potentially new classroom assignments. Um and we want to provide teachers an opportunity to make known their priorities and preferences. That's going to be really important. So, use a clearly communicated sequence of placement decisions grounded in existing procedures as detailed in our teacher employment guidelines. As you know, we have a teacher employment guidelines document that is uh working conditions types of issues that impact teachers outside of the collective barding agreement. One of those major features

146and it's a long longstanding uh policy and procedure for dealing with transfers and reassignments. Of course, depending on what we decide, this could be writ large and be quite the puzzle uh staffing puzzle. But that that does provide us with a protocol and uh traditional um uh procedures for how we have handled a lot of um transfer types decisions for vacancies and such. Uh depending on the staffing needs of a specific building, if there are more volunteers for transfer than available, this is where the teacher employment guidelines comes in. But we in the in the case of perhaps you know again as an option moving fifth grade back to K4 um you know we would want to publish criteria up front and use like rank ranked experience list so staff can see in order in

147which they will be offered available roles um it's important criteria for determining staffing placements um looking at teacher lensure years of experience in Warren evaluation rating and other types of special considerations so like a reading I mentioned a reading interventionist uh position for example, would be very specific. So, we would have to look at who could be potentially interested, who could be eligible. I can tell you already right now that HR is getting a jump on things. No matter what gets decided, we're already looking at who is licensed in what, particularly fifth and sixth grade, but uh across the board. Um, and that includes emergency permits. Um, and uh you know, for instance, Ryan just got done talking about the 68 model. As you can imagine, developing that master schedule has a real bearing on

148what could happen. Uh Dr. Anderson's going to talk about in a minute about the fifth fifth grade experience. So there's a lot of things that could that could apply. So for instance, maybe you're a 512 licensed teacher. You're teaching fifth grade uh but you're not interested in teaching um elementary age. What does that mean for you? Um perhaps you're uh an intermediate teacher licensed 512. You're strong in math. uh a middle school um principal um currently has a a math middle school math teacher with an emergency permit. Would that principal have the prerogative to put a stronger current fifth grade teacher in that role? You can just imagine the myriad possibilities. It was kind of a kind of a funny joke actually as we were going through the sessions that you could you really get

149on tangents and go down rabbit holes. But but this structure these priorities for your consideration um are to provide um some just essential basics on making sure we're going to look out for people and that um people have choice and voice in their preferences. We've talked about doing surveys. We've talked about um myself and u my deputy HR officers and others actually camping out at 58 buildings to actually interview teachers, hear their concerns, get their questions. We've talked with communications about, you know, K4 buildings, doing brochures and videos to just introduce some of the N K uh K4 buildings to teachers so they have a familiarity. The possibilities are endless in terms of getting the information to people who may be impacted and eventually reassigned to different positions. Again, just having an appropriate timeline. We

150want to make sure I mean uh no later than um April 22nd would be one month before the end of the school year. I I think it would be even more ideal to have people notified as much as possible by spring break depending on uh what gets decided and what what positions open. Um and again my emphasis on um written notification. People need advanced written notice. Those notices also become a part of their personnel record which creates a historical track record of where people get moved. Um and finally supports um as you can imagine um you know if fifth grade goes back to elementary uh is that mean we have a self-contained do we have a departmentalized model that instructional model would have a bearing on the types of professional development conceivably a teacher coming

151from the fifth six going to an elementary center may may need. Uh we've had a lot of great ideas about targeted PD sessions uh in in June and July uh sessions with principles and instructional coaches if there was movement. Um and just as an illustrative example of the types of things to consider uh we've always traditionally provided um um classroom transfer stipens to teachers uh respect for the uprooting yourself and moving. We've also made sure that uh our operations and maintenance people help teachers move their stuff from one location to another. So these are other types of considerations that we want to um take into consideration. So ultimately I just want to pledge u on on behalf of of HR as well as the district administration that we're going to do everything we can to

152make sure people are informed as much as possible in advance that the process is fair and that people have uh an understanding of what their options are. Bring us on in, Dr. Anderson. Our community's been waiting to speak. >> All right. >> And the heat is off. >> Well, I had the ple president Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board community. I had the pleasure of leading the fifth grade experience focus group. And I kind of want to talk to you first about our process and what we reviewed in our focus group sessions. So we had around roughly round about 20 participants and of those participants we had a healthy mix of a third of everything. It was third families, third staff and a third between administrators and um district level leaders. In those focus

153groups, we talked about the history of fifth grade in Warren Township. At one point, we were K6 schools, then we were K5 schools, then we were 56, 78, and two in one building, but two different schools, and now we're 5'8. We also looked at enrollment trends. Enrollment trends over the last five years from fourth grade to fifth grade. But we also looked at enrollment trends back when we were K5 and what was the K5 um fifth grade to sixth grade enrollment trends. We also looked at percentages of the students we lost from fifth to six. Um so we could see are we losing more students then are we losing more students now. So kind of we looked at all of that. Also, we looked at the location of fifth grade students along with the instructional

154model in Marian County. We looked at all the school districts with the exception of Speedway because we know they're an anomaly. Um, but we looked at where were fifth graders located. Was it a K5 building? Was it a one5 building? Was it a K6 building? Was it a one six building? Um, two school districts in Marian County have intermediate, but they're just 56. And then 78 is a middle school, so they have five six schools. So, two districts had that. So, really looking at Marian County, not only did we look at the location and instructional model of the fifth grade students, we also looked at their iLearn scores in regards to the instructional model and the location. Um so those are some things that we looked at. We also when I say um instructional model

155just for the community um that is how many teachers the students have if they have if they're self-contained which means they have one teacher pretty much primarily all day like our elementary schools or do they are they in an elementary building but they still have maybe they go between two teachers like a ELA in social studies and a math and um science. um do they have some even one district has them in an elementary building where they have four teachers and they have each individual subject and they rotate between those um teachers. So really looking at not only the instructional model the location the ilearn results of the fifth grade students. So those are things that we looked at and then at the end of the after we did our first presentation at our first

156focus group we look we had a carousel walk and we had questions on the board where they could put their sticky notes up there. what more information did they need? Um, what suggestions did they have? What questions did they have? So, my job in between the first focus group and the second focus group meeting was to take all of their post-it notes and provide them with more information based based on um what they needed. And so, the second focus group meeting, we came back, I gave them that information that they asked for. For example, I didn't have the I learn results the first uh meeting, but I had it the second meeting because that was one thing that we talked about. Um, then we came back and we did a dot activity where they could

157put their first kind of I like this one. This would be my primary and then here's my secondary, but everybody only got two dots. So, you couldn't put like all your dots and the dots were different colors. So, you couldn't put like all your dots on in in one quadrant. So, uh, making sure that we kind of saw what people wanted primarily and what people wanted secondarily, but still being able to tease that out, um, at the end of the activity. So, we had four priority areas that we really looked at. We talked about some other things, too, but these were the priority areas. Um, the first one was the location of fifth grade students. um their main primary between the most dots was to stay at the IMS building but create maybe a separate

158wing or a pod kind of like when we had the 56 78 in the same building. The second one was to leave it unchanged, leave them in the IMS building and have them remain with the two teachers. Now, the second priority is where we really did a lot of digging because it came out that for my focus group people, it came out that we really want to talk more about instruction and how we're serving students. And so, how are we being um how are we being developmentally appropriate? Even if we have to stay in the IMS building or even if we move them back to the elementary building, we still got to be developmentally appropriate there. And so, they really wanted to look at the instructional model. And after looking at the iLearn scores, the

159instructional model, and the location, their first um selection was self-contained, one teacher all day, so they can still build that relationship. It didn't matter the building at this point. We're just talking about the instructional model. The second one was no more than two teachers, so they can have ELA, social studies, and our math and science, um like a humanities block, and then a STEM block. The second the third priority was recess. Didn't matter where they were, they wanted them to have recess. But we also want them to have recess with developmentally appropriate equipment. Um I don't know if you all have seen fifth and sixth graders on recess, but they kind of just standing around. So like what things do they want to do? Um we know this is now 2026. They like things like

160a gaga pit, basketball courts, soccer goals. it is not all about swings and monkey bars u for them. So surveying the students to see what they would like to do during recess because we again we see a lot of them just kind of standing around talking um and then partnering with playworks to create a recess framework for activities so that we're not just out there because we know some of them are just going to stand and so how can we have some kind of organized recess so that we can get the students up and involved instead of just standing around talking. Um, our last priority area was grades. Um, if we bring the fifth graders back, we can't put them on an A through I mean, I'm sorry, MPN, which is what we currently have

161all of elementary. And so really looking at where would it be developmentally appropriate to start giving A through F grades. Um, we know that transition is hard for from fourth to fifth grade. Um, with already the the transition of grades is what I'm talking about. And then with the transition of going from elementary to middle school on top of the transition of the grading scale um is a double whammy for families. And so they did not want MP and N to go above second grade. So their first choice was K through two continue with MPN and N where three and five start to get three through grades three through five start to get traditional A throughF grades. Their second um choice was K through one MPNN and two through five received traditional A throughF grades.

162>> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I have a few questions for you, but I would ask um our president first if maybe you can come back because I see a couple I think students in here and um I want to see if we can get them >> absolutely >> have the room. But I yield to my president to give us instructions on that. Thank you. >> That will work. Why don't we wrap up the last slide, which I'm assuming is Dr. Hansen, >> the winner 2020. That one. >> Okay, we'll just put it up there because we read it. Got it. Um and we will go ahead, if it is okay with you, we're going to go ahead have you sit down. Um because I'm imagining that it's not going to be a short conversation. Um

163and it is cold and getting late. And so if I can have Kevin help me with calling up here. Oops. >> If we can have Justin Batty, please. >> I've lost our screens. Mr. Batty, if you give us a second to get our screens back, >> then I want to thank you for your patience this evening. >> Oh, yeah. Not an issue at all. >> You just give me a go. and it will be up there. >> Just sometimes our screens get tired, too. >> Hopefully they're not on the same on off as the heat. >> This place gets really great around 9:00. >> Really cold around 9 o'clock. That's what Kent's trying to get is the timer on the screen. >> There it is. That way we can see it. >> Okay, Mr. Batty,

164as with the two that I've gone previously, you will have three minutes and you'll be able to see where you are. >> Awesome. So, thank you everybody for giving the public a chance to talk here. I know during a work session, you technically don't have to. You know, as part of this, I want to speak from the standpoint of a parent of a ninth grader and a second grader, and most importantly, a family who left this community because of the experience our daughter had in fifth grade and the inappropriateness of the things she experienced from administration and students. She got her first vape in fifth grade from an eighth grade student on the bus. She got her second vape midway through fifth grade from another eighth grade student in the bathroom. When we talked to

165the school, we were told students here just have to know how to mature themselves and deal with peer pressure. Our daughter was not 9 years old yet because she was an high ability person that was entered into school early. She started looking up things on the internet of how to act more appropriate, how to act bigger and better and dress differently so she could fit in with her so-called peers. Studies show that's not the peers. Studies from Harvard, Stanford, the schools we hope a lot of our children will go to say this is not best practice to have them there. Best practice is to have them through K through fifth grade. You know, I am an executive leader at the state and national level in behavioral health, a recognized subject matter expert. And while I

166appreciate quantitative data, we've not seen any qualitative related to social emotional learning, how this impacts our grades, how this impacts our families and everything. We've just seen a numbers game. And unfortunately, we heard our direct leadership talk a money game. Not a student game, a money game is what we heard from the highest person in position right now. And I thank you for calling him out on that, Miss Triplet. I am embarrassed of some of the comments that have been made by this that it's all been a quantitative approach to everything. So, I appreciate those who have asked questions and looked at it. There's a reason why this conversation's had and I was part of the groups and I agree with what was shared that I think most of the community thought it was a

167how. We've not seen that. The final thing I would encourage this board to do is ask why. why leadership directed it towards a do not happen rather than doing the board's will that was voted in July of show us how it's done because we saw a complete waste of our time and almost $100,000 in my opinion by not doing the will of this board. I'm sorry for being so passionate and actually no that's a lie I'm not because this is about our community. Hooray for out of district people but let's care about Warren Township first. Let's figure out how to get $9 million for our community instead of making it off of the outside of the community. >> Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Batty. We appreciate it. >> All right. May we

168have Miss T. Young. Young, same instruction. The t the timer will be up there. You have three minutes. And thank you so much for your time this evening. >> Thank you. Good evening. Um, I lived in a Warren Township since about 1993. And during this time, I have fostered several children long term. I've raised one child who has completed um from kindergarten until high school. And currently, I have younger children who are uh school age. Based on my experiences, I have chosen to not place my younger children into Warren Township. With my oldest daughter being sent through high school, an example was very little was done in assisting her with her future as far as college and preparation for her to direction toward her career. With my younger children, my concerns began at a younger

169age for them. I experienced that the fifth grade interaction with junior high I didn't feel was developmentally um appropriate for my children. Younger children need to be with their peers and not pushed into the environment that they're not ready for. One of my children's was placed in the grade and she was doing very well excelling within Warren Township before we um we switched over. I was asked were there any opportunities of advancement and for her to receive anything that was more challenging for her and I was just told a simple no. My other daughter was labeled as being a bit disruptive and maybe ADHD. So I took her to get um tested and everything and they said that she was not ADHD. In fact, she just needed more work and more things to do. Um

170since moving my children outside of Warren Township, they've been supported. They have been challenged and haven't been labeled as anything. As a foster parent. I have also experienced this with those kids. Many times the children are expected to stay in their township or they're allowed to come to Warren Township, but I fight for them to go elsewhere instead of outside of Warren Township. Um even though I still live in Warren Township, one of my daughters is struggling with um things going on socially. I feel like she needs to have more diversity within her life. And that's one reason why I moved into Warren Township so long ago because it was a very diverse community. But now that um things have changed and really things haven't changed within the Warren Township community, I don't feel that

171it's that it's good for her to even be here because nothing has really changed throughout the years. Um I commute every day with at least 35 to 40 minutes to take two children to school. That's way outside of my district. It's hard and I do it alone on my own. That's another topic. But anyway, um it hurts to have outside of my door a bus stop for Warren Township that goes to high school, junior high, elementary. And not only that, the elementary school is two minutes away from my house, but I drive all the way outside of my district. I don't want to commun commute. I do absolutely I hate it. It's it's frustrating and it's hard. But I feel that I really have no choice. Once upon a time, Warren Township was very promising

172for families and the community was was promising and I felt proud to say, "Yeah, my children go to Warren. My children go to Warren." Not so much now. >> Thank you so much for your comments, Miss Young. Elicia Smith, Miss Smith, thank you for joining us tonight. Um, just with everyone else, you will have three minutes. And again, we appreciate your patience. >> Thank you. Members of the board, uh my daughter is currently a fourth grader who is bus to Brook View where our family lives in the Sunny Heights attendance area. So when we talk about redistricting tonight, this affects my family on multiple levels. First, my daughter's in the high ability program. Second, she will be transitioning to fifth grade next year. I want to be honest with you, as a parent, our experience

173with the exceptional learner program has been less than desirable. Transportation challenges have been ongoing and the learning experience, it's not what I expected it to be when we entered into program. From where I sit, I feel like the bar for Warren Township's high ability program has been set far too low. I recognize that this is my opinion, but it is one that is shaped by lived experience. Ideally, I would love for my daughter to access the exceptional learner program at her neighborhood school. Unfortunately, that option was simply not did not exist for us. Instead, we were required to rely entirely on the district provided transportation just to participate. And now, because of that structure, we're facing a very difficult decision. If the district moves forward with returning fifth graders to their elementary school, which I

174want to be clear I do support, I have to make a choice in sending my daughter back to Sunny Heights or requesting that she remain at Brookview under a grandfathering provision. That is not a small decision. My daughter has been at Brook since second grade. As she approaches fifth grade, a year that is academically, socially, and emotionally significant, stability matters. Sudden or poorly planned changes just don't disrupt schedules, they disrupt learning, confidence, and emotional well-being. This moment feels like a critical point in Warren Township's history. And that's where the responsibility for clear, open, and transparent communication is needed. Families deserve to understand why improvements to the fifth grade experience were delayed in the past and what is being done differently now. Let's avoid repeating insanity, expecting different results while doing the same thing. This is

175an opportunity, a real one, for the district to demonstrate genuine commitment to improving both the exceptional learner program and the fifth grade experience overall. As a parent, what I need most is assurance. assurance that that the these decisions are not being made with that are being made with my child's interest at heart. Show me, show all of us. Show us that our concerns are heard and that leadership is listening and that listening to the Warren families and students that this matter and we matter in this process. Thank you so much, Miss Smith, for your time this evening. Jared Douglas >> and this Samantha Douglas. >> Miss Douglas, I know you have now heard this many times, but I'm going to say it again. First of all, thank you for your patience and for being here

176tonight um and for commenting. And second, you will have three minutes and the time is on the screen. So, first I'm the president of the Far East Side Community Council. My name is Samantha Douglas. I'm a Warren alum and I'm also a Warren parent. I have four sons from third grade to senior. So, I have a kid at every level, elementary, middle school, and high school. And I will get back to that. However, first I want to start with how disrespectful and inconsiderate of our time tonight was because this is insane. It was not marketed as a board work session. It just said community engagement work session, including the Facebook post that was made today at 6:00. And so to not warn us ahead of time that we were going to have three minutes at

177the end of a meeting that already ran over is ridiculous and unacceptable, especially considering we all have kids that have to go to school for the first time tomorrow that have been staying up till god knows what time in the morning and now we have to get them up at starting at 6 tomorrow. It's unacceptable. And you don't have to tell us about how you feel or value or don't value our voice when you do it in practice. This is in practice giving us this much of a meeting that tells us what how much value is there. People don't come where they're not valued. So when you don't have parent engagement, it is because of this because of things like tonight because if this was my first meeting, I would never come back to another

178one. So I just want to start there. one, if K through five was not feasible data wise, why even come to us and waste our time with all of these focus groups and stuff. I was at Crestston doing all the things because that was what was proposed. But if that was not feasible data wise, why were we even talking about it? It's unacceptable and it's a waste of my time. Again, um extremely disappointed in what was actually said. I couldn't I couldn't believe that that was actually said, too. Um, also that with my kids. So with my youngest one, all four of my kids are in high high ability. My youngest son is supposed to go to Pleasant Run. I have to drive past Lakeside to take him to Brook View because that's where he's

179assigned. That's ridiculous. Why does that have to happen? And by the way, I take him because I don't want him to fool with the shuttle system. So that's why I take him to begin with. Then the start and end times. Right now, the way that it is, I can get my older two off on the bus, take him to school, get back in time to still help my middle schooler get off to school, too. If we change those times, we're jacking that up. Also, at the end of the day, my high schoolers are home first. So, if I'm not home with them with the smaller ones, the older ones can be home with them. That those things need to be considered. Um, other than that, like I'm just I'm incredibly frustrated with tonight with the

180way this process has went. Um, even with the perception that the outcomes of this could be manipulated with the limited options that have been presented, that's not real options. That's not real choice when you're limiting our options and what we can choose. Um, there's a thousand things and I'll write these all up in an email because I can't cover them all in this time, but I think it's ridiculous to give community three minutes and we sat here for two and a half hours. >> Thank you so much, Miss Douglas. Do we have any more Kevin? >> That's all Madam President. >> Okay, >> thank you. And I believe with that we are back to Miss Anderson, Dr. Anderson. >> Pardon me. >> President Burke, I can actually address my questions on Wednesday. >> Oh, okay.

181I can. >> Well, with that, um, can we put up the last slide about the winter 2026? Actually, can we put up the slide with the QR code for the survey? >> Oh, okay. Sorry. Is that a Mac? There we go. Um I do want to thank everyone for their time and input this evening. Um we do find it very valuable. I want to thank um Karen for being here from Malbert and that us hearing about our focus groups. Um and with that it being it is 8:37 meeting is adjourned.