001Good evening everyone. I have 7 o'clock. So, if I can go ahead and call the meeting to order and have everyone rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And with that, we will begin with the superintendence report. Dr. Hansen. >> Thank you, Dr. Burke. Uh members of the board community, thanks for being here this evening. Board, since our last meeting, um we have tragically lost two of our young students here in Warren. Uh Jamai Jeremiah Cotton uh who was a student at Crestston um passed on June 27th and Rodney Ward Jr. uh who was a student at
002Renaissance passed away this last weekend on July 11th. Both young men um were victims of gun violence and at this time I invite all of us to take a moment of silence to reflect on their lives and to honor their memory. Unfortunately, these two were many of victims um that have lost their lives here this summer in Marian County. Um over the last couple weeks, myself and all the mayor and county superintendents have been engaging with IMPD, our local law enforcement, um and city officials, helping distribute information not only to our students and to our families. My call today to our community provided detailed information around curfew changes, particularly this upcoming weekend. Um Indianapolis is hosting the WNBA All-Star game and as you know, uh this is Indiana Black Expo weekend. So, a lot of
003activities that are taking place downtown. Um, I saw Chief Bailey um present today that they're trying to find safe places for our students that or not our students, but our youth that may find themselves past um curfew. You know, jailing our kids is not the answer. Um but we do need to to enforce the the curfew as well. I've been engaging in conversation with many of our staff, including Chief Northingington, James Taylor, around actions that we can take to not only prevent, but intervene sooner with our our youth. Tabitha Jackson, Julie French, uh recently met to talk about um actions that we can do as a school district. Um they are planning a community fair later this fall to provide resources, information, and to engage our community in this crisis. Um, in the coming days
004and weeks, we will be providing some resources for our students, families, and community, particularly around gun safety. So, just want you to know that we are um committing to be a part of the solution. We know that investing in education is a long-term prevention for our youth. Um, you know, I had a conversation with Gloria this evening. Uh, when they have hope for their future committed to a career or college, um, then, you know, that's their focus and not not other things. So, um, you know, I'm reminded because we've been in this situation before, um, and you hear lots of conversations around gun violence and, um, violence in general. We got to keep the conversation going. We We can't just have the conversation right after it happens and then um hope that it doesn't happen
005again. And some conversations today with Chief and Logan really around what is our commitment? When kids don't know how to read, we we teach them how to read. And when kids um don't know how to do conflict management, we we need to teach them how to manage um conflict. So, just know that that's on our on our radar and our hearts and our and our um action plan, financial outlook. We continue to review and respond to state and federal funding decisions that are having significant impacts on our current funding sources. Um Matt and I have been working together. He is putting together a specific analysis to Warren that we'll share with you board and our local and state legislators to make sure that they know what the specific impact is. Um Kevin um and a
006couple of you were a part of a tour over the summer and Senator Jackson um asked us to provide you know the impact that that has on our um district. Um so we'll be getting that information to her. Matt and I are working with uh Dennis Jarrett on a series of communications that will go out to our staff and our families and community. We are creating a podcast that will we will release the 1 of August as one of those communication platforms. Um, so that that will be coming to you soon. All right. On a brighter note, board, I shared with you earlier that our preliminary I read three results, we have set a new high standard in Warren Township at 83.53%. Yes. And I'm really excited and proud for our teams. All of our
007elementary schools surpassed 80 or higher for the very first time. So, congratulations to them. Just a reminder board, those results are still embargoed until the August state board. So, we won't be able to release anything until um until August. I learn in front of you and uh in your email boxes are our iLearn results from the 2425 school year. We are very encouraged with the growth um in most of our areas and I would say we're equally as discouraged in a couple areas with um lack of growth. Um, we've already shared these results. Ryan's already shared these results with principles and we will be spending Friday uh morning breaking down the data and creating personalized improvement plans for each of our schools. Uh board, we will schedule a work session with you so that we
008can further disagregate this data and share our plan for improvement this school year. On some spotlight notes, uh 16th Street Soul um performed the national anthem at the June 25th Indians game. I want to give a shout out to Brian Long and Kelsey Cororum for the work that they pour into our students in this group. They will also be singing the national anthem at the July 23rd evening game and the August 5th um baseball game. So, if you get a chance, go out and check them out. Yeah. >> Shout out to our kindergarten teachers and elementary leaders for holding their kindergarten camps this year. I don't know if we keep a record, Allison, but I feel like this was one of our best attended years at 375 kids >> and we're not even done yet.
009I love it. I love it. But, um, you know, from going to the cafeteria, from getting on and off the bus, from lining up, going to the bathroom, washing their hands, sitting in class, just a great opportunity to give them, um, that first initial exposure to their new school. Um, back to school celebration tomorrow, Thursday, July 17th at MCRC. starts at 5:00. I would get there at 4:30. Um, it's going to be a jam-packed uh evening. I found out tonight we have 53 community service providers participating in that. So, looking forward to that. Kudos to Regina Murray and and her team for putting that together. On Saturday, New Beginnings uh Fellowship Church will be hosting their backpack and community celebration uh from 11 to 2. Family engagement leaison Malcolm Benell and I will be there
010representing Warren. Also, Julius Brents, uh, Warren Grad, current colt will be in attendance. Our K8 back to school nights are Tuesday, July 22nd. Board, our opening day pep rally is July 23rd. Doors open at 7:00 a.m. Event starts at 800 a.m. It is a western theme, so get out your boots. Remember board, our first day of school is um Thursday, July 24th for kindergarten through 9th grade students only. Our sophomores, juniors, and seniors do not attend school that day. Their first day is Friday the 25th. They will make that day up as an e-learning day later in the year. And that is my report for this evening. >> Thank you so much, Dr. Hansen. And with that, we will go on to board comments, starting with Gloria, please. >> Hello everyone. I tell you, it
011is so good to be almost to the opening of our school year. I am really excited. The children are excited and it seems like we're going to start off with a blast, especially tomorrow when they come to uh Morehead, you know, and we treat them with all the things that they may need to start out the school year. And um we want to start off happy and we want to end up happy. So, I'm just going to say we're gonna have a happy year this year and uh I just wish everyone the best. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh good to see everybody's here. >> Lovely people out there. >> Yeah. I I I too want to say u you know, we uh we're starting off the school year a new school year. Look forward to
012that. I know it's going to be a lot of fun. We had a lot of learning. Um a great job on these I read reports. I read um um results. Uh great job. Um I was also a part of that u uh Warren High School Walker Career Center tour. Thought it was outstanding. Uh it kind of like grew day after day after day. More people started showing up. I called around and said, "Hey, you know, we're going to be there, but what about the others?" And they Senator Jackson surprised us by showing up. We didn't we weren't expecting that. So, you know, the whole dynamics of the uh of the tour kind of changed a little bit, but uh uh she was wonderful. Um you know, uh Miss Taylor uh high school principal u did
013a great job on giving us an orientation. Uh it didn't start out like that initially. Uh we were thinking we were going to get uh uh the second team uh to give us a briefing, but we had the first team give us a briefing and she was super. Second team's good, too. No question about it. Brie uh was already prepared and was good to go. I wasn't expecting to see um the Dr. Rogers there. Uh I mean, this is vacation, guys. You know, we're we're asking a lot to have somebody come off their vacation to come on in and do some stuff. I don't think he would have missed that for the world and had a chance to show off the Walk Career Center, which was a a revelation for me because I haven't seen
014a lot of the changes that have gone on since the last time I was able to see the Water Career Center as a uh as an invite tour. Uh but this was really super. And it was good that they had us set up so that they showed us all the good stuff. We didn't have to worry about walking over some of the construction stuff and getting dirty and that kind of thing, but what they showed us was outstanding. So, and yeah, it was really a great job. Um I uh am on the development association u Warren Township Development Association and um uh when I uh I'm going to start bringing some tidbits of information that comes out of that that talks about the growth of our community and how the growth of our community means
015more kids and uh uh ADM. How about that? Uh but anyway, uh I'm going to start doing that. We had a short meeting this last time. I don't know if you guys know about Waw Wa, a restaurant, gasoline station sort of a thing. It's like uh uh get go on steroids. Uh I had a first chance to um how do you say experience Waw Wa when I was in Florida last year in Orlando and it was a super operation there. I had a chance to go to the one up in Noblesville. U one's coming here. We sure surely don't know exactly where it's going to be located, but it'll probably have a footprint that covers Cumberland and Warren Township, if you know what I mean. Right on that border, like um south of 70, north
016of Washington, Mount Carmel, Post Road, somewhere in there. So, we're looking forward to that coming to our our community. remember KK who was our student representative maybe two years ago. Two years ago, I ran I ran into her at at Kroger's. She was uh she was banging on the cash register and uh rung up my stuff. I said, "Don't know you." And she said, "Yeah, I thought I knew you, too. Your voice sounds familiar." "Hey, I'm I'm me. You." So, we in we reintroduced ourselves. She's uh off for the summer because she's a IA in one of our schools. I think it was Brookview. >> Oh, okay. >> And uh that was really kind of cool talking with her and uh she's going to school uh to get her uh education degree. She wants to
017go she wants to teach and she wants to come back here. So that was that was really cool. >> That was that was really cool. >> Uh liaison and and their their effort with you uh Dr. Hansen here recently. I thought that's really cool. I like I like listening to hear hearing about what they're doing because they're doing great stuff. And I'm looking forward to the MCRC um community um um um uh what are we calling it? Uh festival or back to school. Uh it's an event and if you can be there, be there because it's really kind of nice and these kids are just going to be uh uh feeling pretty good once we uh get them. Hey, you know that they're giving free haircuts. Give them free haircuts. I like that. I like
018that. >> I got to get one. Anyway, that's that's all I got. I norally don't try and talk too long, but I try to keep it down. But with a lot of stuff going on this summer and u you're up, Julie. >> Okay. >> All right. I too went to the um thing at the high school. It was a a great tour. Very nice. Um, I want to tell you a little bit. I'm going to throw in a legislative report here. We don't normally do them right now, but I just think this is important to know. Um, July 1st, there's a lot going on federally. We our season is normally the state in January through a March or April depending on which season it is. And um, but now there's a lot going on federally.
019So, I don't know how many of you guys know that we um are missing funding that was supposed to come to us on July 1st. Um it was it was supposed to be distributed by July 1st and now um the administration has decided not to send that out. So, um school districts around the nation are scrambling trying to figure out what to do. Um it the money goes towards afterchool and summer programs. Um and they provide academic enrichment and other opportunities for students. They support students learning uh English. So our uh our English language learners um are missing out. Teacher support, funding for hiring, retention, professional development of teachers, uh service for migrant students, supporting educational needs for migratory children, um that sort of thing. So um from what Dr. Hansen has sent us and
020what I understand Matt correct me if I'm wrong is we're pretty good for this year but we're not quite sure what's going to be happening next year. So um just remember that as we're checking up all the extra uh items that we need to think financially about. Um it's not going to be easy and we've got to we're going to be making tough decisions. So um just keep that in mind. Um remember we want to do everything we can to keep the money in our classrooms as much as possible. Um and then um in that respect when I was in Washington DC for the NSBA advocacy um program I met some people from Lawrence Township. They'd never been there. And then I also met a new school board member who is from um Washington Township
021and we um made a friendship and we actually have gotten together and are working on pulling together some of the Marian County uh school districts um to the schoolboard members to come together and talk about this and um we need to educate our community, let them know what's going on. um and tell them the good things and and share with them um our concerns and our and where we're at financially, how what kind of money we have and where what we're what we're getting it for and and just where we're at. And then also we need to think about next year as we hit into the the legislative season because it runs so fast. Um, so we want to uh tell our community, get people together so that they know and they will know where
022to look for this information as it's occurring and so that we can keep our district and our community informed. It's just very very important that we tell everybody and and let them know what's going on because it's a it's a time but we can weather it. We're good. That's what we've always to coin a phrase from a long time ago. We make uh lemonade out of lemons. And um we've always been that way and we will continue to be that way, but we also need to be on top of it and thinking about it and um just doing it. So, um and that one more thing, Kim, uh when Dr. Hansen mentioned about um the safety fair we're going to have, it's going to be October 25th. Mark your calendars. Um it's going to be
023at the high school um competition gym and that little commons area around that area and we are very excited about it. And I've already got stuff that's going to be coming in. I just got a email that you're going to be getting a few boxes of pamp pamphlets and activity booklets around gun safety. So when you see something from the NRA, it's Yeah. So, okay. And I'm done, I think. Welcome back everybody. we're ready to start this next year. >> Go ahead and go. Um, welcome everyone. Um, I know summer seems like it has come and gone and I know a lot of our teachers and our custodians, um, transportation, everyone's been working hard to get ready for the year. MCRC, their back to school bash is amazing. Um I've been able to attend that
024the last couple of years and this year I'll miss it due to a last minute vacation before my school starts. But um it's always amazing. There's tons of people. The community really comes out to support our kids and our families and it's amazing. Um seems like everything's running together. Um I did not mention last year week our last meeting about the adult graduation program which was absolutely fabulous. Um, seeing our adults um, go of a variety of ages go back and get their equivalency degree is amazing. Um, I also know that that funding is also affected by these federal cuts. So, that's another area of concern that um, we want to keep going for our community. And with that, I'll just pass it on to Lanna. I need help with this chair. I'm already short,
025so it has me like down too too low. Yes, Marcus. I feel like I can barely function. Thank you. And I don't have my heels on, so I feel I'm at a deficit. So, um, welcome back everyone. Um, I have enjoyed being in the community and working with our summer camp at MCRC. The youth actually got to come over to the ranch, so they got to groom the horses, um, all the things, do a STEM project. really really um inspirational to see inspiring to see them um interact with nature and not on their phones and you know gaming. So that was really wonderful to see um back to school. I think the only thing that has not been mentioned please for our families to come out and if you have families we will have food.
026Um I think we have about 250 dozen of eggs. So that's first come first serve um to make sure that um everyone gets out and get um the school supplies. Really proud of the district. our um supplies have like almost tripled um and yeah just about tripled but we were still able to provide the same quantity that we typically do in the years past. So um shout out to MCRTC team for working hard on that. And I think um that's about all my report. Oh, we did a mental health um adult mental health first aid today with our counselors and some of our social workers and some um staff from the YMCA. So, that was very great. It was held right here in this room. Oh, it's about 20 20 of us um who received
027our certification in that. We will be opening that up to more um staff in the district so we can just have more tools in our tool belts to be able to work with the adults and then the um youth mental health CP uh first aid classes will be coming out soon and we will be working with some of our teachers to get um certified in that. So with Oh, we have some SSOs and SRO's there as well today. So very diverse great group. I'll turn it over to Kevin. >> Well, I guess the first question is, shall I repeat everything starting with Gloria on up? Uh, yes, I participated in the uh the tours and the mental health and all the things they spoke of. So I won't repeat everything they said but we are
028excited for a new year a new opportunity and with the the way things are developing now there is more than enough bad news for everyone and gloom outlooks. So we might need to take a a extra role on shining a positive to our students, reassuring them that their future is still bright and is still in their hands and they they can be the world changers. They can they are the light that can make this thing this whole thing a better place. So we need to stay on the positive for them. and just reassure them that, you know, tough times come, but not even the bad lasts forever. And we're going to make it through this stretch. We've had financial crisis before, and this is just one more. We have passed through this one. We've been
029through tough times as a nation before. Our economy has been down before, but we always rise up. So their future is bright and all they need to do is to continue to learn, to grow, and develop and chart their own path. So we can be that positive motivation for them and shine that light for them because they are the reason we're here. Thank you. >> Thank you, Kevin. Um I think I for once in my life don't have anything else to add. incredibly true and incredibly powerful. I I don't have um ditto to what everyone else said, particularly Kevin. Um with that, Kevin, do we have any board correspondence? >> No, Madam President, we do not. >> What about blue cards for items on the agenda? >> No, we do not. Okay, then we will
030move on to the consent agenda. This much month, sorry. Our consent agenda consists of approval of minutes, financial reports, HR reports, supplemental personnel reports, HR work agreements, change orders, and the use of school property. Do I have a motion to accept the content con Oh my goodness. Consent agenda. >> So moved. >> I will second. Thank you, Julie. Do I have a second? >> I will. >> Thank you. Was that Terry? >> Thank you. Um and with that, we are um going to have to go to a voice vote this evening because I am virtual. So, um Mr. Humphrey, if you could call the vote. >> Yes. We will start you. Miss Gloria. >> Yay. >> Mr. Howard, Miss Julie. >> Yes. Terry, >> yay. >> Mr. Shauna, >> yay. >> And myself will be
031a yes. So Rachel, >> yes. >> So the >> I was gonna say I don't get to vote. No, it's you. Okay. >> So that would be unanimous. The A have it. >> Excellent. And with that, we are going to move on to the construction up with Mr. Clayton. All right, >> turn this on. All right, President Burke from Iceland, Dr. Hansen, members of the board, and to our Warren community like to present to you a combination of June and July's construction update. President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board, and to our entire Warren family on the far east side of Indianapolis. Welcome to the June graduation edition of Inside Warren. Our goal continues to be to invest in safety and operational excellence. If you look over my shoulder, you will see over 800
032graduates preparing to walk across that stage for the final time. Though their journey of a graduate is coming to an end, their journey for the rest of their life is just beginning. And a big congratulations to our preschool, our elementary, our middle school and high school teachers who all had a significant role in preparing our scholars for this day, but again for the rest of their lives. In today's episode, you'll get a chance to relive this proud day here in Warren Township of graduation. And also, we're going to peek in on a couple of those projects. But hey, let's not waste any time out here. I'm going to see some graduates walk across that stage. I got my boots on the ground. President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board, and to our entire Warren
033family on the far east side of Indianapolis. Welcome to the June graduation edition of Inside Warren. Our goal continues to be to invest. So, we're going to peek in on a couple of those. >> Matt, this is the song you have to dance to, by the way. >> Turn it up just >> Well, I hope you enjoyed that graduation day experience. It's always one of my favorite days of the years. It's uh far east side celebration and that's the Warren Central graduation. So, once again, congratulations to the class of 2025. We wish you the best of luck and understand that the journey might be over here in Warren, but the journey continues with life. So again, we wish you the best of luck. As a followup to our previous month's construction update, we are back
034at Warren Central High School and we're going to give you a quick teaser of the new locker room which is set to open officially and allow for our football team to move in and our baseball team. um here in about one month at about the second week of August or so. So, we're going to take a a look at that. But before we go in, I just want to give you a little surprise that you'll be able to see after this tour. We have our new series starting this year, this school year, called Beyond the Journey. And we're going to take a look at Warren Central graduates that have recently left us that are doing great things whether in college or professionally. So, be ready for that teaser. But for now, let's head into the
035locker room. Okay, so we're inside the Larry Woolen locker room. And compared to the last time we were here, I don't even recognize this place anymore just because of the progress that has taken place. But we are in the main, we're located in the main entrance right now. And if you come in off of lot 8, which is on the the east end of the locker room, you will enter this hallway. And this hallway will pretty much paint the history of Warren football. All right, welcome to the brand new Warren Central High School athletic training room. And the reason that we wanted to show you this room is because this is I don't think it's a debate. This is the best athletic training facility um that you'll see in the state of Indiana. And the
036reason why it's important for us when you're servicing over 800 plus student athletes, um, particularly in the fall and the spring season when we're in our outdoor sports, this room will service all Warren Central student athletes. It doesn't matter what sports you play in the fall and the spring, this will be the location of our athletic trainers. So, just starting off with the flooring. I think the flooring is really cool. You see the the black with the sprinkle of gold there. That's a nice little customized feature that we wanted to do because we also understand the importance of of branding and we want our kids to take pride in the black and gold. This is what we call the wet area. Here's the hydrotherapy tubs. So, if our kids need some sort of rehab or
037they need some type of assistance as it relates to um injuries or working with our athletic trainers, this will be accessible. In our old facility, we only had one. Now we can service and provide um this opportunity for multiple kids. We are now inside the coach's office. And what I would say is probably the the best feature of the coach's office outside of the space and understand here at Warren Central High School between our paid coaches and our volunteers on a a given day you're going to have up to 30 adults that will be right here in this office. um and then going out to work with our our student athletes. So, the best thing about this the way this office is set up is just the the the ability to supervise and provide supervision
038to our our student athletes. As you can see, you have here on the my left side, you have the varsity locker room. On my right side, you have our freshman and baseball locker rooms. And with these windows here, our coaches will be able to supervise our kids throughout the entire time they're inside the locker room. So, as we get ready to enter the equipment room, it's important to see this feature. When you have hundreds of thousands of dollars of product and equipment and cameras and all types of electronical equipment that teams need to provide the uh necessary assistance for their programs, it's important that we're able to lock it up. So, we have a keyless entry here where you'll have to use a a swipe card to get in. Something new for our locker room
039is this cage. This cage is going to provide an extra layer of security because again we have thousands and thousands of dollars of electronic equipment. As we continue to move on, probably the the the most noticeable thing that you'll see is what we call gear boxes and they're branded with the Warren W. The significance of these gear boxes is you got to think about here at Warren Warren Township, football's a big deal. And when you have just at the high school over 200 kids in the program, being able to store that many shoulder pads, that many helmets, game uniforms, pads, uh, and other types of equipment is is very important. In our other locker room, we didn't have enough space. We had to store things in the shower area, believe it or not, shoulder pads
040because we just didn't have enough space. These gear boxes, which open up, and we have several of them, we will be able to store all of our equipment, our footwear, our helmets, everything will be in one place. As we close out another school year and we transition to the 2526 school year, we just want to tell all of you thank you, especially our building principles that have taken valuable time out of their days to take you on some of these tours to bring you inside Warren as well as our design team from CSO um our construction teams from Skiilman Powers and Suns. But their cooperation, their teamwork has really made this a special year. Most importantly, we want to thank our our school board and our leadership, Dr. Hansen, because these projects are truly transforming
041our educational space here in Warren Township in our community. And I want to thank my cameraman and loyal partner Logan Hunt for all of his great work every week. And we can't wait to see you next year on another edition of Inside Warren. Here come the [Music] What's up, guys? This is Cam Herren, class of 2025 graduate, and welcome to Notre Dame. >> This fall, explore the inspiring stories of Warren Township's graduates with Beyond the Journey. Discover how their Warren experience prepared them for new opportunities as they transition into the next chapter of their lives. Kicking off the series is 2025 Warren Central graduate and University of Notre Dame freshman football player Cam Herren. Don't miss the debut of Beyond the Journey coming this fall. >> That was good. >> I got I got a
042question. I got a question. I know Skilman. I know CSO who are powerful power and what are they? >> So power and suns they are the construction company that we partner with for specifically with the locker room. They've also um were part of the renovation at um the performing arts center. Um if you recall um they were a minority owned company that we went through the process, interviewed um and as you know we have one of the most inclusive processes that you'll find around the state of Indiana thanks to your leadership um and um you know as we prepare for um hopefully another round starting 2026 um power skillman and some of the other um construction companies that we're in the process of interviewing um what will have opportunities down the road based on the
043good work they've done with this. >> Thanks, >> Marcus. That was a great presentation. I want to thank you so very much for having internet trouble. It made me feel like you're truly including me with all the internet troubles I've had since I've been on vacation. So, thank you. There's nothing like trying to communicate from halfway across the world. Um, and then add to that that Cam Harris used to be one of my kiddos. So, um, I'm really, really, really excited to see his presentation. And with that, we are up with the referendum update with Matt Parkinson. >> Uh, good evening, President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board. Um, I'm excited. I'm going to have two backto-back topics to talk about with the board this evening. Uh, we're going to talk about the referendum
044and then separately, we're going to talk about the next round of construction to build on what what Marcus just presented. You know what's great about both the referendum topic and the construction topic is these are two of the most student forward things that we do as a school district. I'm going to talk about our five referendum themes. All of them directly impact student learning. Same is going to be true when we get to the the construction piece. Um so board the referendum fits in with every part of the strategic plan. All five of the focus areas. It's critical to what we do um and the way we're able to fund the education for our students. So, just background for for the board, for the community on our school district's referendum timeline. We first passed a
045referendum in May 2018. That operating referendum was in place for four school years, 20 2019 through 2023. Um, we then went back to the community in 2023 to ask for approval for what we called a repeal and replace operating referendum. Through that process, um, we eliminated former referendum, reset the clock for a new, um, 8-year cycle, and we're in that cycle now, 2024 and forward. You know, we've used this slide almost every time I've presented on on a referendum. In Indiana, school districts are allowed to run three types of referenda. Here in our school district, we've only ever run one, an operating referendum. Um, separate types are capital referenda, used for construction. We've not used that one before. And then school safety referendum. We happen not to have run that one. Although we do have
046safety as a critical component of our operating referendum. Um so board community um our referendum budget for the fiscal year that just ended on June 30th was $13 million. Uh broken into the five categories that um we ran the referendum on. When we adopt the budget each March, this is something that that we display and walk through. We we did it in March of 2025 is get ready for fiscal year 2026. We're going to talk through each of the individual categories. Um we finished the year at about 12.4 4 million in expenditures in the operating referendum fund. So again, our fiscal year as a school district, it aligns closely with the school calendar, July 1st to June 30th. Um our adopted and certified budget by DGF is $13 million. Final expenditure is 12.4. Um our
047certified budget for fiscal year 2026, calendar year 226, we anticipate being $14 million. Realistically, we expect our expenditures to be pretty in line with what our expenditures were for the fiscal year that we just finished. So, I'm going to get into each of the five categories. Um, again, when we ran the referendum, there were five items that were listed on the ballot question. Five items we included in our materials, and those are the same five items that we um we carry out in our referendum today. First one is safety and security. Critically, for the way that we run our schools for the last fiscal year, we spent about 1.66 66 million in the safety and security bucket within the operating referendum fund. By and large, it funds SRO's and SSOs. More than 95% of that
0481.66 million is the wages and benefits for those key personnel in our buildings. The remaining piece is supplies, professional development, um small components like that. For the second category and the largest category is retention and recruitment, professional development, and family engagement. For fiscal year 2025, we spent $4.18 million in this category. The biggest piece of it, and the biggest piece of it by a lot, is the portion of our support staff pay that we're able to sustain through the operating referendum. So, by way of background for the community, just reminded for the school board, as part of our ESSER funding, we identified a critical need to get all of our support staff pay up to a minimum of $15 per hour. uh when we ran the referendum and generated additional revenue, the primary thing that
049we were going to do with those funds was to sustain that revenue or sustain those wages that we put in place for our support staff. So, the board meeting immediately after the referendum passed, we came to the board and the board graciously approved the um ongoing pay for our support staff. Um and that represented a major change in in wages for our support staff. For a typical district hourly employee whose school whose calendar lines up with the school year, um that raise was over $2,600 per year. um for some support staff members that work year round um it's up to $5,000. Um so this was a major investment by the community and by our school board and school district um and sustaining competitive pay for our support staff members. The other key bucket within um
050the within this category is our family engagement leaison previously paid using esser money. Um beginning in October they rolled into the operating referendum fund. Uh last year we spent about $88 million. For the upcoming year, we anticipate about $1.1 million. The third category within the operating referendum is transportation. Um, so last year out of the referendum fund, we spent about $3.05 million. Transportation is the biggest single thing that we do as a school district outside of running our classrooms. If you consider the number of school buses that we have on the road every day, over a hundred, nearly 10,000 kids um who ride the bus. And it's not just our regular routes getting to and from school, but it's field trips, it's extracurricular activities, it's summer school. Um, it's a major major part of our
051operation. Between the operations fund and the operating referendum fund, last year we spent nearly $9 million on transportation. As a school district, 34% of that um, excuse me, the referendum fund paid for 34.4% so more than one in every $3 in wages and benefits for our bus drivers and bus monitors. Uh and finally, board and community um fisc year 25 expenditures on um student and staff technology is $1.3 million. You'll recall that we had to move when Esther expired our device purchase cycle back into the operating referendum fund. We're going to talk in just a minute about um some of the outlook for the future of the referendum fund. Um it's going to have challenges. Um we're also going to get through them and get to the point Kevin was making earlier. Um, one of
052the ones that we talked about earlier this spring is our device purchase cycle is going to change not for the school year that we're going into, um, but for the upcoming school year. So, um, for this school year, for the last few school years, we've been using iPads forum kindergarten through fifth grade or buying them when students are in kindergarten and fifth grade, Chromebooks when students are in nth grade. U, in the future cycle, we're going to be purchasing iPads when students are in first grade, Chromebooks when students are in sixth grade. So, if you consider it, we're doing two purchases instead of three purchases every year. Um that's going to save us about threequarters of a million dollars. Um and so we're going to talk um after we get through this slide about what
053the future of that that fund looks like. So the last key piece is student learning, college and career readiness, and K12 enrichment. And by and large, this pays for our middle school and high school counseling positions to the tune of $2.2 million um in the school year that we just finished. You know, counselors play such a critical role in the way that we educate our students. um they play a critical role in academic achievement, social, emotional well-being, college and career exploration. Our young people are going through a lot. Um it's not easy to be a young person in 2025. The counselors at the middle school and the high school level that are sustained through the community's investment in the referendum fund are absolutely vital um to the way that we run our schools. So board,
054I do think it's important in this forum to talk about the impact of Senate Enrolled Act One and what it's going to mean for operating referenda for us and for every school district in the state that has an operating referendum. Um, so I I put in here just kind of for an awareness piece for the community. It the the formula that that indicates how much property tax revenue we collect in the fund. As a school district, we have what's called certified net assessed value. And so what that is is that's the cumulative assessed value for every taxable property in the school district. Homeowners, apartments, rental homes, business properties, farmland. Cumulatively, the taxable value of that totals just under $4 billion. Our operating referendum tax rate is 30 cents. That's a maximum rate. And so for
055this year, for the calendar year we're in, that generated an operating referendum levy of just under $12 million. Senate Enrolled Act One was designed to deliver property tax relief to taxpayers. Um, largely it did. Um, I think it's going to have some some we're all kind of unpacking. It's going to be probably some unintended consequences the way it's going to be rolled out, but um, it it was delivered for operating referendum funds. Taxpayers are going to see relief anywhere that they live if they're within a school district that has an operating referendum. That relief is going to come due to increases and deductions for 1% and 2% taxpayers. So 1% taxpayers are homeowners, 2% taxpayers or it's referring to farmland, rental properties, apartment complexes. Um as those deductions phase in over the next six years,
056that's going to push down operating referendum revenue because net assessed values are going to go down. Um so board and community, we work with a group called policy analytics does just fantastic work um in terms of projecting the impact of of property tax reform. Um this is what the picture looks like for MSD Warren over the remaining life of our operating referendum or through 2030. Um this year for the calendar year that we're in um through property taxes, we anticipate generating $12 million. If we look across that top line, had property tax reform through Senate enrolled act one not passed, this is what we would have anticipated in increases in funding um through property tax revenue. So these are largely at this point inflationary increases. As property values rise against that flat property tax rate,
057um our revenue would increase and we would use that to sustain all the priorities within our referendum fund. The second line is the projection for what our operating referendum revenue is going to be. And you'll notice that it declines. Um and the reason again it's declining is the level of deductions that roll in on the 1% and 2% properties are almost certain to drive down our net assessed value. And that's going to be the case for 95% of school districts around Indiana. We think based upon property tax reform. Um so we look out into 2026, pretty modest decline. 2027 it picks up. When we get all the way out to 2030, as we sit here today, our projection is that we're going to collect $10.7 million um in property taxes for the operating referendum fund.
058Um had Senate Ruled Act One not passed, we would have anticipated $14 million in that fund. That's $3.3 million that we would have anticipated being able to invest into programs and positions and services for our students. Um, and we're going to be forced to make difficult decisions. Again, every school district with an operating referendum is going to be forced to make difficult decisions. Even if we don't factor in those inflationary increases, that $10.7 million is $1.3 million less than we're collecting even this year. Um, certainly between 2025 and 2030, wages will go up. Uh, insurance costs will go up. Um, so this is going to be a challenge. We're resilient. We're going to navigate it. We've got a little bit of runway, but we're going to have we're going to have difficult conversations ahead. So,
059next steps, you know, our current referendum runs through 2031. Um, keep in mind, we last ran a referendum in 2023. We would have been due to run one in 2031. One of the other reforms in Senate Ruled Act One moved the dates on which school districts can run a referendum. So, the last year that we're going to be able to run a renewal operating referendum at this point is 2030. Um, so we still have years to go, but but that's going to get here before we know it. Again, our our highest revenue year is likely to be 2025, possibly 2026. Um, I should say to balance out what I just showed on those slides, we're hearing some early reports that assessed value is going to be higher for 2026 on commercial properties in particular, those
060are business properties, um, than than what went into those estimates. So, so we may have one more year where where things are fairly stable before the decline begins. You know, modifying our device purchase cycle, like we mentioned, is going to save about threequarters million dollars annually. That's a big piece of what we need to do just dollar-wise to get there. But again, relative to what would have happened under under tax reform. Our expenditures are going to have to be about $3.3 million lower at the end of this decade. Bottom line, we're going to continue investing in an outstanding educational experience for all MSD Warren students. Um, we're going to continue to to invest within those five buckets that we took to the community. Um, we're resilient. We find ways uh and I'm confident that we'll
061do so moving forward. So again, just in summary, um the community's investment is just absolutely vital. Um it's hard to say thank you enough for everything the community enables us to do through the operating referendum fund. Um, through the referendum fund, we've got a secure learning environment through funding our MSD Warren Township SRO's and SSOS, safe transportation for nearly 10,000 students, competitive wages for all of our hourly support staff directly funded through the operating referendum, iPad and Chromebook devices for all of our Warren students, robust counseling services at the middle school and high school level uh to support our kids. We have additional information on the referendum um up on our web page and just community awareness, board awareness. Um we catalog that. So every six months when we get through a half year cycle
062of of expenditures, we update it on on what's happened over the past year. We've already updated it. Appreciate the support from Logan Lamar. Um we've already updated it for the six months that ended on June 30th. We're going to continue doing that moving forward. Board, I'd be happy to answer any questions. I had I had one. I need you to go back few slides. Thank you. In reference to those Chromebooks and the iPads, kindergarten and fifth grade, then you got first grade going getting them in the second year or in the future. Uh why is that broken up like that? I thought all of those kids, all those grades had those iPads and Chromebooks. >> Yeah. So, so today we've got one to one devices um K through 12 and we do have devices for
063every kid. That will still be the case in the future. Not the one to one piece necessarily. Every kid is going to have access to devices. The cycle is going to switch to where we're purchasing the iPads in first grade and kids will hold on to them to fifth grade and then we'll have sort of modified classroom sets that go back at the kindergarten level. Um and then the Chromebook cycle instead of beginning at 9th grade is going to begin to sixth grade. Um, it'll be one to one from that point forward. Um, using Chromebook devices. >> I'm I'm I'm I'm And you don't have to answer this. I'm just I'm I I got confidence that this is happening because we got, you know, our tech guys are keeping tracks of these kind of things.
064But the inventory is what I'm concerned about. You got iPads with kids, Chromebooks with kids, maintenance, fair wear and tear, that sort of thing. How do you re how how we re uh how do you say refreshing our numbers so that our inventory is is is settled for the incoming other students that were going to be coming. >> Yeah, it's it's a a massive part of Kent's team's summer and so I'll invite him up to speak about >> come down. >> So as Matt was saying currently we purchase devices for kindergarteners each year. We have been >> new devices for fifth graders and then new devices for freshmen. So they use those for those cycle K4 58 and then 912. So what and that's one to one. So each student has one. It's assigned to
065them in our inventory system. Currently K8 don't take them home. So the wear and tear isn't as much as it used to be when they were taking them home. This year our damage rate was what Justin 3% or something roughly. Okay. >> So, not bad. >> Yeah. When they were going home, it was in the 20s. >> Yeah. >> So much much better when it's under adult supervision and they're charged. So, going forward, this it would be the same way, but rather than purchasing new devices for kindergarten classes each year, we'd be purchasing new devices for first grade classes. And they'll be classroom sets. So, not dissimilar to what they have now. It just won't be one to one. So each iPad will be assigned to a classroom rather than a student. So then we
066ask teachers, this is what we did when we used to have classroom sets. We ask teachers to check them each week. So we have a program where they go in and check the cart, look for damage. If they find one, they note it and then that application automatically opens a ticket for the tech for that building to come and check the device. And if it's damaged, we can send it back to Apple to if it's an iPad to be repaired and we replace it. If it's a Chromebook, we repair it ourselves. Um, but so it'll be the same. Chromebooks uh now are supported by Google for 10 years. >> That's new. So, previously the operating systems only got updates for four or five years, which really limited how long we could use them. So, this
067makes us uh able to issue them in sixth grade, ensuring that they'll still be supported for testing and other applications by the time they're seniors. >> I appreciate that. >> Yeah. I that 10 years is good. I I was thinking that it was not that you know getting them upgraded and getting them repaired and all that kind of stuff to keep them up with the trends as well uh is a you know is is is an effort. >> Yeah. >> And but 10 year that's not bad. We can >> Yeah. And the damage is pretty intuitive. The older the students get, the less damage we see, right? So, we we've always seen when they were going home, it was always those middle school uh grades where we saw the most damage. But since we don't
068send those home anymore, that has really dropped off. And and those students currently, they pick them up in their first period, carry them all day long, and put them back in the carts in the same classroom at the end of the day. So, they're still handling them all day long. We're just not seeing the damage because they're not on the bus, they're not going home, they're not being lost. Uh they're charged better because they can put them in the cards in the classroom. >> Are you able to control where they can go as it relates to accessing the internet and these other social media? >> Absolutely. So, we're required by law because we get federal funds for our internet through we're required to filter students. So, we do have that in place and whether they
069no matter where they take the device, they're still filtered whether it's here or at home. >> Okay, good. >> Thanks. >> Asked about the construction going to talk about it now later. >> Um, I just wanted to ask you, uh, Matt, you know, we're doing a lot of constructions within the school system, you know, in the district. How is that going to affect us and how are we going to you funding it? >> Sure. So, so the question was we're doing a lot of construction. How how is property tax reform going to impact us and how are we going to continue funding it? Um, so it's going to affect us quite a bit. Uh, and we'll talk about that during the next portion. I've got um some slides from from Baker Tilly that we present
070as part of the the preliminary determination hearing. Um, to the bottom line for us when it comes to the operating referendum is separate from construction. So, I just want to make sure that's out there. Uh we've historically managed to a flat debt service tax rate for the last at least four years. 52 cent tax rate. Um and essentially what happens is our net assessed value multiplied by that 52% is 52 cents is the amount that we can generate to repay our our bonds and then through those bonds we fund all the investments we make around the school district. So the five elementary schools that we've majorly renovated all the work we've done at Warren Central High School, at Crestston, Sunny Heights, um all funded through our bond projects. As net assessed values decrease, the impact
071that's going to have for us and for everybody is it's going to potentially limit the amount of projects we can take on or the dollar amount of projects that we can take on. Um we and everybody else is also going to have to have a conversation about what that means for property tax rates. Um one of the the ironies of property tax reform is it's almost certainly going to lead to property tax rate increases. Not specific to MSD Warren, every local government in the state. I I think even the bill's author would most likely acknowledge that. Um so, you know, our 1% taxpayers are already at their property tax caps. A rate increase for them doesn't necessarily impact their tax bills. Um but that's likely to be a function of what happens just because those
072assess values come down. We're still going to be able to invest in our buildings. We're still going to be able to do great things for our students. We're going to talk about some of those things here in just a few minutes. Um we'll adapt, but but it could curtail what we can get done. I just wanted to say um are we conveying this information also to the public and then in what um avenues are we ensuring that this transparency is not just getting to us as the board and just being stated in this meeting but we have to depend on our community in order to pass this referendum. So, I think it's important that we make sure this information gets back out into the community, that we are being good stewards over um the referendum
073that was passed and utilizing the funds in the manner that we had um proposed that we were going to do. >> Yeah, wholeheartedly agree. Absolutely agree. And really, the connection between the referendum fund and the taxpayer is probably more direct than any other fund that we have. um just the nature of a referendum fund. So, you're right. We we speak about it at schoolboard meetings um twice a year. Um we do update our website. We're we're beginning the podcast um to try to get content out through that means. Um, you know, it can be hard to reach people, I think, sometimes when it comes to to tax information especially. Um I wholeheartly agree that we've got to continue to make sure that's sort of front and center that people understand the impact. You know, one
074of the things that I've become uh more convinced on as I've sort of reflected on the impact of property tax reform is, you know, we talk about numbers frequently. That's kind of the the what we have to do from an administration level and a schoolboard level. The real impact of property tax reform when it comes to school districts is the types of services that we're able to put in front of our kids. And I think that's where we're going to connect most directly with our families, with our parents, um with those that live in the community is we have to make sure that we're ready to convey the direct impact that property tax reform has. Um and again, our revenue is going to drop and that's going to present challenges for us. It's going to
075present challenges for every school district with a referendum. Um that's where I think probably our focus has to be is making sure that we're really clear on what that specific impact is. >> I guess how are we conveying that? I know I think we all agree that it has to be conveyed, but how is it being conveyed? >> Yeah. So, I mean, three avenues that that come to my mind right now are through the board meetings, um through the website updates, and we're starting this outreach process through the podcast. Um I'd love to discuss more ways that we can get out into the community and talk about them. I' I'd welcome any any ideas or feedback that we've got. >> Okay, that's good. because we have caretakers that are um are seniors and they may
076not listening to the podcast or tapping into our technology and um they are the core of our community. So we need to ensure that we are reaching out and updating them and not only when it comes close to referendum but be building that trust now showing them that we have been good stewards. Um because not if we have to do another referendum, but when we have to do another referendum, we are already there and we our community knows that we're going to do what we've um stated we're going to do. But thank you for all your hard work. >> Thank you. >> I I just want to back on what you just said. We we we keep we we we're not using the Mword. We need to market all the stuff that we do. And
077that's what you're talking about. We need to be telling them what's going on and keep them fed with information so that they're they're on door and this isn't a surprise when we when we when we do have to announce it. So, you want to hear the M-word a lot? >> I hear it. >> You know, I was just thinking uh Morehead, you know, we have a lot of families that go through Morehead. That can be an avenue Sure. >> you know, of uh communicating with parents. Uh we can also give information to the counselors, the uh um the family leaison. I mean all of these different avenues we can give information to them to pass out to the families and things that they meet. And I think that that would give us a broader range
078of communicating you know with those uh families that may not get it otherwise. Okay. Thank you everyone. >> Thank you so much Matt for your time. Um and with that we're going to go on to our next agenda item which is our yellow cards which is um the business of citizens presence for items not on the agenda. Kevin, do we have any yellow cards? >> Yes, Madam President, we do. We have >> Okay. Could you please call up the speaker? >> We have Miss Elizabeth Banks. class of 81. Um, >> can you turn on your >> I'm technologically challenged. My son's not here to help me. >> Yeah, I got three minutes. Um, first of all, I'm very disappointed. Last year was Warren's 100th birthday. I saw nothing on the news, nothing on Facebook. There
079was no nothing. If y'all celebrated it, it wasn't out there. And I thought that would be a great boost. Warren pride. I'm always proud to say I'm from Warren. Like there's there's another school. It's Warren. And then um the plaque for Joseph Warren that y'all took down when you started messing with the front and the back door at Warren is leaning against the wall over in this other room and it needs to be put up. And I figured you would do that last year for your 100th our 100th birthday. Put it out there. We have warned people. We have Jeff George. We have Jane Paulie. They could have come made a big deal out of it. We're proud to be from Warren Township. I'm hoping that gets out there soon, either here or what you
080are now calling the back of Warren, which is 16th Street. And then um he was showing the construction. I took pictures when you were putting the bus bus depot in the back of Ward or the front my front your back 16th Street. And I had a lot of comments that people were like, "What's going on? This is all new." Because not everybody lives in Warren Township and I even live across the street from Warren and you don't hear anything about all this. Here we grow again needs to be out on Facebook so people can see on on the alumni page because all you get on the alumni pages are people that have passed. You need to this is what we're doing. This is where your money's going. People be proud to say they're from Warren.
081And look here, this is going on. We're getting all these new buildings and all this new area. You named the Prince the Prince Center after my brother that should have been up there. Yeah. I'm a provost. Two generations of graduates from Warren. Five of us. Four of us work. Not me. Four of us actually are work for Ward, but all that should have been up there to be proud of what we're doing. I know the budgets are tight and know what's going on, but you know, take a couple pictures, five minutes to somehow put it. I don't do all that stuff. That's what my son's for. Put it all in there and post it on Facebook. I wouldn't even know how to turn on a podcast or where to go to get a podcast. the
082magazines have them out at Kroger's so more people can have access to them. I didn't even know where you could get them besides coming here and you can have some of this stuff in your magazine in your week monthly magazines. Does that mean my three minutes are up? I tried to talk fast and be But yeah, I'm proud to be for more. I say it like there's no other school and we need just get out there and show people. >> Thank you so much, Miss Thanks for your comments. We always appreciate that. >> You want a coaching job? Sound like a coach. >> I'm too old. >> There's room for you. They have to tell the lie. >> Okay, we are going to go back to Matt Parkinson and um discuss the secondary schools project
083and a preliminary determination hearing. Okay. >> Good evening again, Dr. Hansen, President Burke, members of the board. Uh I'm excited to talk about our next phase of of construction this evening. We've got some really exciting things on tap um that are going to make a big difference in the educational experience for our students. Um board community, this is our second preliminary determination hearing. Um we have to do this two times um before taking on construction projects of this type. Uh I'm going to invite up our colleague um Hannah Clintenning this evening. Um Hannah works at Barnes & Thornberg alongside Jeff Quacenbush. Um Jeff was with us um last month when we did our first preliminary determination hearing. Um I'm going to invite Hannah just sort of walk through the process of what we have to
084do during this hearing this evening uh and then the resolution we're going to ask the board to adopt and then I'm going to present on the nature of the projects and the financial impact. So uh Hannah, would you mind providing us an overview? >> Good evening. Hannah Clintenning, Barnes & Thornberg. Um, as Matt said, this is the second of two required public hearings that kick off the process for a bond issue like this. Um, after the after we each give our presentations, we would ask the board to then invite the public up for comment or questions that they may have about the project. After that, close the public hearing and then we would ask the board to consider the resolution. Um, keep in mind that that resolution is just setting a bunch of maximum financial
085parameters and everything at this point is still preliminary. If the board approves the resolution, um, there would be a notice published in the paper, uh, detailing pretty much all of the key points and financial parameters contained in the resolution. Um, and then there would also be two more meetings that the school board would have to hold prior to any issuance of the bonds. And one of those would be another public hearing for the public to give comment or ask questions about the lease um that may have an additional appropriation depending on what um type of bonds are issued and at what point in time. So after this I'm going to turn it back over to Matt. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have now at the outset but otherwise I'll be available as
086so. >> Thanks. >> Okay. So board community, we're going to speak through our 2026 through 2028 construction projects in the leadup to asking the board to adopt a resolution um declaring or issuing a preliminary determination for the need for the projects. Um the board goals and strategic plan investing in academic excellence and student achievement war and student journey meeting needs of the whole child safety and operational excellence. Um we're going to discuss projects that are in the planning phase like Hannah mentioned. Um, just like we talked about with the referendum funds, Senate enrolled act one, it did make substantial changes to the property tax environment. Uh, we anticipate selling these bonds in 2026, in fall of 2026, most specifically, most likely October or November of 2026. Um, we're asking the board to approve up to
087$75 million in principal. We may sell the bonds for less than that, or we may sell it in phases, not all upfront. But the maximum parameters that Hannah mentioned are for that $75 million cap. There's two focus areas um for our 2026 through 2028 construction. It's the intermediate middle schools and Warren Central High School. Uh you know, our aim with this round of construction updates is to positively and directly impact the student experience. We're going to talk about classrooms, CTE, athletics performance. Like I mentioned when I first stood up here, this to me um and I think Mr. Clayton would say the same. This is one of the most exciting things we do that directly impact MSD Warren students. And it doesn't just impact them today, um, but for years and generations to come. The
088investments that we've made in Warren Central and in the five elementary schools we've renovated in the last few years set up those schools for the 2030s and for the 2040s. They're vital investments in the longevity of our school environment. Um, focus area one, we're going to talk about the intermediate middle schools. Um, so and board, if this is familiar, it's the same slide deck as last month. That's by design. Same to be true of the financing information I show. Working with Schmidt as the design professionals on this, working through the process to identify the construction manager. As Mr. Clayton mentioned, we're working on a facility assessment at all three of our intermediate middle schools. There's an important tiein to Lily phase three. Um, when it comes to the to the med middle schools through our
089jog centers or through the potential jog centers. So, um, board anticipated scope at the middle school level, the highest profile item is those jog centers. Again, there's a tie-in here with Lily phase three. So, for the community's awareness, Lily the Lily Foundation um opened up for Marian County Schools last year three different phases of grant funding. First two phases were non-competitive. They added up to a little over $5.5 million for our school district. Um the f third phase is competitive. We're eligible for up to $30 million in funding. Um so, this is generational meaningful funding potentially available. Um we anticipate if we're awarded that full amount about half of that going to construction work at our intermediate middle school levels. Um, the biggest piece of that would be jo centers. So, these would be flexible,
090multi-purpose spaces designed to bring down CTE education at a more advanced level into the middle school level. Um, to me, it's really capitalizing on what I think is a core strength of our brand here in Warren Township, which is the Walker Career Center. It's infusing the strength of the Walker Career Center and the principles that we're able to introduce to our students um, in a more advanced way at the at the middle school level. the middle schools, we're going to be talking about classroom improvements, items from floors to ceilings, and I mean that very literally. Classroom floors, paint, ceiling tiles, lights, things that impact the floor or the the student experience. Um, HVAC, so heating and cooling in the buildings, roofing, investments in building longevity. Um, board community, just a brief profile on our three
091intermediate middle schools. Um, Crestston um is our oldest intermediate middle school. Last renovated in a major way in 2007. Although we have done quite a bit of work over the last couple of years um up doing the floor, the paint, the furniture, the window wrap that goes around the exterior. It feels like a much brighter school today than it did as recently as a couple of years ago. But it's one of our our candidates for for some level of work. Um same with Raymond Park, the newest middle school. Um constructed in 1994, last renovated in 2003. Uh it does feel like even today, like I mentioned last month, I think even today, Raymond Park feels like the newest middle school in spite of the fact that it's incredibly 30 years old. Uh and then finally,
092Stony Brook. Um Stony Brook was built in 1972, last renovated in 2008. Like I mentioned last month, if we have one intermediate middle school that's likely to receive the bulk of our focus, pretty confident at this point it's going to be Stony Brook. Um, we still have again that facility assessment coming in from our partners at Schmidt, but our own eyes tell us and the early returns from them are that's the building that that's going to be the biggest c the best candidate for the most extensive work. Focus area two past the intermediate middle school level is our high school work. Um, so so board, we've had three phases of renovation at Warren Central. Functionally, this would be phase four. We're conducting a facility assessment with our partners at CSO um on on that campus
093right now. This work is going to follow the completion of Warren Central phase three. You know, I want to mention I we appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the feedback personally on, you know, needing to get the word out about all the great work that we've done in our buildings at Warren Central. Um Howard, what you mentioned um from the the tour of of the high school building, I I really believe genuinely we've transformed the learning environment at Warren Central over the last five years and especially with the phase three renovations, which we'll talk about in just a minute, in the main academic corridors. absolutely key to the way that kids are going to learn in that building for years to come. Um so um board community phase one at Warren Central was site improvements, drainage,
094parking. We did a lot in the performing arts portion of the building. We built the field on 16th Street that's largely used by uh by the band. Phase two of Warren Central's renovations was the high school administration office, the career center administration office, moving the counseling office from the 16th Street side up to where the principal's office used to be. Uh major renovations at the performing arts center. I'd encourage anybody who hasn't been in there in the last year, go take a look at the performing arts center. It's such a beautiful facility today. Um, a lot of parking in phase two, especially on the north side of the building. And then phase three, again, all of the classrooms downstairs and upstairs in the G&H hallways, those are where our students spend the biggest parts of
095their day. That's the biggest stretch of academic rooms that we have in the building. Um, they've all been touched through renovation. Same thing with all of our Walker Career Center classrooms or virtually all the Walker Career Center classrooms have been impacted by phase three construction. Um on industrial drive, which is the portion on the northeast part of the build on the building, the shop spaces, the auto body spaces have been renovated. We've expanded out the classrooms on the exterior portion of those buildings. Um really kind of making those uh class spaces appropriate for 2025 and beyond. A lot of HVAC improvements as part of phase three as we got to those classrooms and board. You'll recall, we're going to be bringing you a bid package this fall um for some major roofing work. We we
096purposely timed that for when phase three was largely complete, so that way we'd go in and do the work on top of it. A lot of Warren Central's roof is going to get replaced um through the end of phase three. Um so phase four, again, functionally our focus area two of our 2026 through 2028 construction projects. Um we're going to have a lot of great things that happen at Warren Central that we're studying at least at Warren Central. Um the fieldhouse in that building is 20 years old at this point and it feels 20 years old. Gets used daily heavily by physical education classes and by athletics. Um we're taking a look at art classrooms, um CTE classrooms that weren't updated through phase three, especially in um in the media space that's kind of right
097there adjacent to the new counseling office. Um the Warrior Dome is well past its useful life. Um we're going to have to take a look at a replacement for that facility. performing arts spaces, athletics, um a location for JOTC, HVAC, investments in building longevity. We have an ambitious list here um of things we're looking to get done at the high school and at the middle school levels for that level for that matter. Um probably this fall, we're going to reach a point where we're going to have to make decisions on on, you know, what's in and what's out. But we're attacking this thing with a lot of ambition and we're going to try to get done everything we can um for the students at Warren Central High School. >> Are are you providing us with
098a Yeah, thank you. Are you providing us with a priority list or is that just a you know you threw all those up there? >> Yeah, this so this is not a priority list. This is a list of the things that we're studying. Um we have asked CSO to prioritize a handful of things. Um actually it does pretty closely track with this. So we asked them to prioritize renovations to the fieldhouse, the art classrooms, um a replacement for the Warrior Dome, um and taking a look at the wrestling space. We've also looked at the science classrooms. they're candidates for for renovation, although honestly they're in they're in pretty reasonable shape. >> Uh so timeline, we're working on facility assessments with our design partners at Schmidt and Cso. We're going through the process to procure our
099construction manager. We anticipate coming back to the board at the August board meeting with an update um on who we would anticipate working with from the CM process. That was um the names that Marcus mentioned earlier for our current rounds of renovation and construction. Skilman has some of that work. Powers and Suns has some of that work today. Um it's going to be a competitive process where I'd anticipate they're going to be part of it and and probably others as well. >> Is that construction manager the Power and Suns? >> That's that's one of our two current construction managers. >> Who's the other one? >> Skilman. >> Okay. >> Uh this summer we're doing our preliminary determination hearings. That's what we did last month and what we're doing this evening. Um this fall we'll revine
100we'll revise the scope um and get into preliminary design. One of the first things we're going to have our construction managers do when they get on board with us is we're going to start putting cost estimates together. And that's where some of our conversations will have to come back together on we have an ambitious list of projects. We're going to try to tackle every single one of them that we can. Um there's going to come a point where where we decide um you know what those projects going to be with some dollar amounts associated. Um in the winter time we'll finalize design, develop construction documents. We anticipate in the spring um going to bid where we'd have potential um trades that participate. Uh and then fall 2026 through 2028 um is when we would break
101ground with construction. It's a lot of material. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the construction aspect and then I'm going to transition after this talk about the financial aspect of it. >> Okay. I had a question. How did you determine uh Stony Brook needed the most attention? Because during um our tour, it seems like Crestston needed the most attention. When was Cresten built and when was it last renovated? >> Sure. So, Crestston was built in 1964, last renovated in a major way in 2007. Um we did those building walkthroughs a couple years ago that that resulted in several million dollars in investment at Crestston. So, we've replaced flooring in all of the classrooms in that building. Um, we've painted all the classrooms in that building. New student furniture in every classroom in that
102building. Um, we've painted the door frames. We painted the rails going up the stairs. We put the window film around the outside. Crest's still going to need work, too. I don't think we're going to be in a position where any of the middle schools get no investment at all. Um, Crest's had more recent investment at a multi-million dollar level than than Stonybrook has. Um, and then past that, again, we're doing the facility assessment with Schmidt. Um, and we're looking at the aesthetic portions of of the classrooms, but we're also looking at building systems. So, we're talking about the boilers and the chillers, um, and the lighting and the electrical infrastructure. Um, and it's got more aged equipment in many places than what Crestston does. Crestston, to be really clear, could still use quite a bit
103of investment. We're going to have limited resources and we're going to have to make decisions. Um but what our eyes tell us in 2025 and again what we're seeing from um our design professionals is that the most likely candidate for that kind of deep level of renovation at this point is Stony Brook. >> Okay. I want to ask another question. When you um that's the second question I was going to ask about the air conditioning system, the heating system. I know that Crestston had major problems with that. Um has that been corrected? We so one of the last things we did with our ESR dollars is we we invested in a new cooling um tower at Crestins. That's the that's the biggest piece of the cooling infrastructure um at our middle school and high school
104buildings. So we did do that. That's been part of the facility assessment that we've heard is um Crestston and Raymond Park both on the heating side are probably candidates for boiler replacements at this point. Um so I think there's a strong chance that that gets factored in either through this project or through one of our annual geo bonds that we we invest in. >> Okay. Because that's the question I was going to ask. Instead of pouring all the money into Stony Brook, hitting prioritize and sort of hitting some of these major areas like you said, Raymond Park need a boiler, uh, Crestston need a boiler. And so maybe make sure that we address those major components in each school and then whatever remaining money, we can focus on Stony Brook. But it would be terrible
105just to ignore the fact that they need a boiler and they need those major things and we use all the money for just one location. >> Yeah, agreed. And if I've given that impression, I apologize. We're by no means are we going to let a building's boiler fail, for instance. Um I anticipate that we're going to do some level of investment at all three of the buildings. Um but the deepest investment is probably going to be at one. Um and so there will be a balance to to what this looks like. But most certainly if if we identify that the need is there for kind of that sort of major infrastructure replacement at any building, middle school or otherwise, we're going to take care of that. >> You know, the reason I'm asking, we want
106to make sure that our students in every school is proud of their building and proud of their school. And we don't want them feeling that some schools are better than others and have more uh accommodations, you know, than others. So, uh, when we walk into these middle schools, you know, like I was just disappointed when I went into that one middle school and they were having air condition problems and a lot of problems. We want to make sure that when we're renovating, we want to make sure that all of our students are being accommodated and feel comfortable and um, feel good about where they're going and have the same opportunity as other students in other buildings. >> Agreed. So that's why I said let's take a look across the board and not just focus on
107one building. Yep. And then neglect another. >> Yeah. And we have had folks from Schmidt in our buildings this very week at all three of our middle schools studying all three of them in depth. We're going to receive an in-depth report on all three of our middle school facilities. Um and then we'll come to the board's recommendations on renovation projects based upon that assessment. >> And I'm very proud that we did start addressing some of the issues at Crestston. That was great. That's a great start. >> Same. I I would encourage anybody that hasn't been in Crestston over the last year or two, that facility, it it honestly um feels so much brighter, so much fresher today than it did as recently as two years ago. Um it the learning environment has really been transformed
108in in that in that facility >> because we were talking about marketing and it's marketing is going to be important and we want to feel we want every parent that come to Warren to feel that they want their child to go to that school. We don't want them to say, "Oh, I don't want my child going to that school because they don't have this, this, this, and this. I want them going here." And then we'll run into a problem with overcrowding in one or two buildings just because they lack it in this building. So, we want an even plane so that parents and students can feel comfortable no matter what middle school they go to. >> Agreed. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh, I'm going to transition on. So, as part of the public hearing for
109this process, we have to talk about two aspects. The construction aspect and then the financial aspect. Um, so we're going to speak about just some materials we've got prepared from our partners at Baker Tilly. Baker Tilly is our financial adviser. They have a fiduciary responsibility to the school district to um guide us through our our bond issuances. So, for the board and communities awareness, um this is what our chart of existing annual debt service um lease rental payments uh looks like. So, um, just at at sort of the summary level, when we have a large construction or renovation project at any of our facilities, we sell bonds. Um, those bonds provide cash upfront. We use that cash to pay the contractors and design professionals, construction professionals that renovate our buildings. We pay back those bonds
110over a series of years. This is what our chart looks like um, from all the the bonds that are outstanding today. you'll notice a distinct pattern which is that the annual debt service payments um drop um pretty seriously over the next couple of years which is what where that room comes from to take on um these projects we're talking about today. This is a list for the boards and communities awareness of what each of those individual bonds are and the dollar amounts we pay per year. This is a summary of um what could happen with the bonds. Again, maximum $75 million uh borrowing amount repayment term over a maximum of 20 years. I'll remind the board and the community, we've done varying lengths of repayment over time. Our go bonds, some of them we've paid
111off as short as one year, two years, three years. Our last first mortgage bonds we sold, we're repaying over a term of 15 years. Um, we'll determine that that actual um repayment term when we get to the fall of 2026, and we'll come to the board for that approval. Um, our debt service tax rate is 52 cents, most likely for 2026 in spite of property tax reform. We believe it's going to be able to stay at 52 cents um in the years after that. by the time we go to sell these bonds, we'll have to have that conversation about what that looks like over the long term. This is a just an overlay chart of what our existing debt would look like with this bond issuance put on top of it. You'll notice even with
112this bond issuance at that maximum $75 million amount at what we think is a conservatively high interest rate, we still find ourselves a few years out um with less annual debt service than we have today. Um which provides room for future types of building renovations and construction projects. geo bonds take on small and medium-sized projects that could come up in any of our buildings. Board, I'd be happy to answer any questions about again the construction piece of this or about the financial implications. And if not, we'll move on to the next part of the hearing. >> On the financial, I guess I missed it. Are you planning on going full speed ahead using all that proposed money for that or are we going to monitor and reduce or you know I want to know how
113we're going to handle that. >> Yeah. So, that'll be definitely a piece that has board input. Um the the parameters of the resolution we're going to ask the board to adopt tonight set a maximum $75 million. Um we're then allowed within that, all these again are subject to board approval. We're allowed within that to sell a series of bonds that total up to $75 million. One set of bonds at a single sale at $75 million. Um I think we're going to let that be driven by really kind of two distinct um kind of factors. One of them is the construction element of it. So when we come back with construction estimates for how much it would take to do the jog centers and the middle school renovations and the work at the high school. The
114second piece of it is by next fall we're going to come back to the board with with kind of some indication of the tax rate impacts from some of those decisions we can make. Um and I think at that point we can decide whether we're going to go for the full 75 or something less. To me at this point the honest answer is they're both on the table. The full 75 or something below. So, you're saying we're voting on the full 75 tonight or a reduced amount? >> What we're asking the board to approve this evening is letting us move forward at a maximum amount of 75 million. But even at that, we we can't proceed with selling the bonds themselves without the board's approval. The the board's approval tonight is declaring that there's a
115preliminary need for the projects that are going to be funded by by the bond proceeds. there's there's still board steps um and with lease rental bonds, school building corporation steps involved before we can actually get to the pond sale itself. So there will be additional opportunities for board input on the on the sale itself. >> We discuss the same talking about reduction I got a different understanding. So, in our conversations, and you know, Matt's saying tonight with the resolution, the board is authorizing up to $75 million. Once we get the project um analysis back, that's going I guarantee it's going to be more than $75 million. We can pretty much guarantee that. Um so, we're going to have to pri prioritize those projects. We won't sell the bonds until >> fall of 2026, >> a
116year from now. At that time we will have a year of impact or almost a year of impact of the property tax you know um outcomes of that. So at that time we'll decide do we sell half our conversation today was in what we've been having conversation of one way to approach this is we could sell half of it and do this round of construction projects see how the property tax um rules have impacted us and then make a decision after that. that now I like that. Now, is that what we're going to vote on now? No. Using half of that, >> you're author tonight, and Matt, correct me if I'm not saying this correctly, but tonight the board is authorizing a resolution that would allow us to borrow up to a maximum of 75
117million. We may get to the fall of 2026 and they may change something in this upcoming legislative session that doesn't have such a negative impact on us. So, we're not making that decision tonight. That will be ongoing conversation. As Matt mentioned, we will include the board in those conversations and ultimately you will approve it. >> So, um the half that you're talking about is just a thought. You're not saying that it will happen. It's just a thought. >> It was a cautious um approach to it just to make sure that we're not overextending. >> So, why did we take that caution? >> Because we don't know what the future holds yet. >> Um correct me if I'm wrong. The way I'm taking it is we're setting up the maximum. Now, by setting up the maximum,
118that gives us a lot of flexibility. Whereas, if we don't need that much, we'll do less. And then if we go along and we find we need more, then we can sell a little bit more. Um, but just because we're asking for the maximum does not mean we're going to take the maximum, right? >> We're going to play it as as it comes out. By way of comparison, in 2018, I believe the school board adopted, we went through the same process, preliminary determination process before we began phases one, two, and three. So, the renovations of Lowell, Pleasant Run, Hawthorne, Eastridge, Grassy Creek, Warren Central High School. And that was set at, I believe, a maximum of $135 million or $130 million$125 north of $und00 million. And then within that, the school corporation came back to
119the board various times to sell the bonds to fund phase one, the bonds to fund phase two, and the bonds to fund phase three. What this resolution does is it sets the maximum parameter for this kind of group of projects that we're pulling together. And I guess the piece I want to sort of emphasize again is we can't sell the bonds even after tonight without the board's approval. There will still be board steps for the actual issuance of the debt itself. This sets the maximum parameters so we know how we can proceed with even just planning for the projects. >> Now when you say maximum you know cost keeps going up and up and up and I you know I keep hearing each time we come oh we need more we need more we need
120more you know so if we approve this 75 and then instead of reducing it trying to work with it we start talking about oh we need more you know uh keep coming back to the board talking about we need more. So this is my concern because as years go on, cost of living goes up, everything goes up. So it's it can be to the point where there's no stop, no no limit. And that's my concern. >> Sure. So So I wouldn't tell you otherwise. There will be future renovation projects that we're not contemplating um even through these projects right now. But you know, there's we may look up in five years or six years or eight years and there's something in the school district that we need to address that's not contemplated here. I think
121when we consider that we have three million square feet under roof, we've got 11,000 kids that we serve, it's a lot of infrastructure that we have responsibility to maintain and that bleeds to projects. Um, you know, when we originally set these parameters at 75 million before property tax reform went into place, the maximum working with our financial advisors, we calculated that we could keep within that 52cent tax rate was $150 million. already at that point we scaled it back and said let's go with half of that to preserve room for future projects within that debt service rate. The rules changed through property tax reform. Um and so this this $75 million is going to eat up a lot more of that debt capacity than we would have anticipated. But we already took that big kind
122of half bite off before we even brought the idea to the board of $75 million. And then again within that we'll have ample opportunity for the board to have input on what the final bonds are um in 2026 or whether we split it up in 2026 in future years. >> So basically >> have any other comments but you know I'm I'm just thinking that you know it's going to be a continuous continuous continuous and we need to try to focus on other things. You know we we renovated our buildings and things like that. You know, it's just like with your house. You know, you rebuild it and you're remodeling and stuff every year. You're not going to keep on saying, "Oh, well, now I think I'm gonna put a pool in the back. I think
123I want a sauna. I think I want this." No, it has to be a limit. >> Well, right. That is what we're establishing right now. This is a first thing. We're not spending any money. We're talking about putting a cap on how much money we are going to borrow up to. This doesn't mean we're going to spend more, but like Matt said, here's our limit. 75 million. If we only spend 40, we're only going to sp sell $40,000 worth of bonds and we won't even hit our cap of what we allowed him to set it at. >> I think for clarity and possibly this can help next time our bonds come up, if we're um maybe have a work session and sit down and kind of go through that for um some clarity and understanding
124on what you're going to be looking at, what's going to be prioritized, that may help. >> Sure. >> Um calm some of the unreiness. Um because when you talk about seven, you know, million dollars, that's a lot of money. And as you were talking about being good fiscal agents and stewards, then I think that would kind of help through a board work session because we can't figure this out right now. >> And so if you're asking us to take a vote on this and like you said, you know, we this is an item that really we needed to discuss a little bit more um so that we can decide this is a lot of money. Gloria, this is the second time this is not this is not the first time that this item has been
125discussed board. The other the other mechanism that we would have to exercise is a capital referendum. So we would have to go to our community and ask them to contribute through a capital referendum. We have to maintain our buildings and that's been a board goal. That's been a board direction that you guys have given us to make sure that our environments are equitable across our district and you know in this competitive landscape and yes you marketing is a part of that but it makes no sense to market to our families if our environments aren't adequate or even above adequate. So this is a mechanism that all school districts use. They issue debt to um maintain, to renovate, to to provide a safe environment both from heating and cooling and air quality, but also from a
126learning environment that we would all want our kids in. And this is the second part of the process. What we're asking the board tonight is to help us preliminary determine that there is a need. And I think we all agree that there is a need to upgrade our intermediate middle schools, whether it's behind the walls or inside the classrooms. There is a need to do that. Tonight, we're asking the board to allocate or to to approve up to $75 million. Again, Matt's reminder of this process when we went through this in 2017, which I think a few of you were a part of that process, it was 135 million. And Matt, I don't know how much we've spent of that initial piece, but close to it. >> We we've used it. >> Yeah, we've used
127it. >> And we've needed to, right? We we've needed to. So, um yeah, I think, you know, Lanna's point is well taken. It is a lot of information um to process. Uh with this being the second one, you know, we would ask the board tonight to approve that resolution. >> One thing I will say is I've always been very proud of how we've always been proactive on our buildings. We have always done summer projects and things to take care of our roofs and to fix things before they become really really bad and it ends up costing us a lot more to fix it in the long run. Um just um I'm sorry you finished >> Miss Gloria um because we do have to make a motion. Um You had made a statement that you would
128be more comfortable if what I don't I didn't write it down. Um if something was done you made a statement. >> What did you say? >> You had made a statement when you were speaking to Matt and I did not write it down that you would be more comfortable with this vote tonight with uh contingent. You said something. I said I would be more comfortable if we continue to have a discussion on it uh prior to voting on it. I don't think that we're to the point of voting on it right now because there's some questions and concerns. >> Voting on it or spending on it because we can we can do two things because we got to move the meeting on. We can vote on it with a stipulation before spending. However you want
129to phrase that, but we are giving the authorization tonight up to this amount with a spending clause that before spending is done, the board will have a another meeting or work session. >> Now, that sounds great. >> We can do that. So, we just need to make a a Madame President, I'm sorry. Um do a motion. >> I think that the motion >> is basically that because By making the maximum >> by by making the maximum, that doesn't mean we're spending it now. We're going to have to come back and vote again to actually spend it, >> right? But we can specifically say that instead of just saying so moved, we can specifically mention that just so it's on the record to move it along for Miss Gloria's unreadiness at this moment. Well, and again,
130first we need to get the preliminary hearing closed before we even get to the point where we as a board are voting. >> Yes, I understand that. >> Which is Yeah, we we need to get through the tech process of the preliminary hearing before we even get to the resolution. >> Right. I was just um madam president if that was an option for Miss Gloria because she is still looking with a lot of unreadiness once we get to the voting um process not seeing voting on it like right now at this instant >> right >> you hold the gavl I was just asking >> well we will let's let's get the hearing done first and then wait gets to an we can have discussion just so that we can I couldn't hear what >> close
131this part >> what did she say? >> Thank you. >> Um and so um my understanding Matt and correct me if I'm wrong that in order to do this my next statement is to open um the meeting to the public to see if there are any questions or concerns from them. Correct. >> Yes, that's correct. President Burke. >> Okay. And so I Okay. So I'm going to do that. Are there any members of the public that wish to offer testimony or questions or concerns and I'm going to need some help with that part coming forward? >> No, Madam President. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. So, with that, I'm going to close the preliminary hearing. um having officially taken public comment and there were not any. And then we will move on to action
132items. The first of which is resolution 646.25 um 10 which is the 1028 preliminary determination resolution. And so Matt, I I'm assuming that you're not going to do yet an entire other presentation about the preliminary hearing that we just did. >> I I have no more presentations. Okay. Okay. And so, um, yeah, I I think one of the things that we need to discuss before we amend the resolution is we need to make sure with, um, the bond attorney that is there that that is something we can legally stipulate is my concern. >> Yes, you can. I will add that legally speaking, nothing else can be done until the board meets at least two more times after this and approves two additional resolutions and has one additional public hearing. So, that is already built into
133the legal process. >> Can you I'm sorry, Miss Gloria. >> I think she's the attorney is at the um podium. She says something very important. So, if you can listen to that and see if that will um resolve your unreadiness, that's already built in. and then I'll let her put it in her legal language. So, >> yeah. So, it's totally fine if you want to make that stipulation about having some kind of additional discussion prior to making any more approvals. I will add that um legally speaking, nothing more can be done until the board has at least two additional meetings, approving two additional resolutions um actually three if you include the additional appropriation um and having one additional public hearing. So there are at least that many number of times that the board will reconvene
134um built into the legal process. Nothing can be sold or priced or really moved forward at all. This resolution really just starts the process. It enables the board to consider it in more detail. You know, take the steps necessary to evaluate it further and see what projects are needed and how they want to price them and that kind of thing. >> So we don't actually have to use it if we decide. >> Correct. Correct. This is just that's the reason it's called a preliminary determination here. Um and I apologize for interjecting. Okay. So, in order to get the process going because it's a very well said very well, we need to to move along. Do I have a motion to for the resolution? >> I go ahead. I so move that we >> have Lanna
135making >> I so move that we accept >> motion that's okay um as written in the um >> preliminary determination resolution >> the preliminary determination >> I will second >> thank you thank you Lanna Thank you, Terry. Is there any further discussion? >> None is being >> hearing any. >> Oh, okay. >> I just say thank you to the lawyer that came up that said that we have more time, you know, so that make me feel better that we don't have to worry about spending that right now. Okay, good. Is there any further further discussion? I just want to make sure everyone has had the chance to say what they feel that they need to say. >> Okay, not hearing any. Kevin, could you please call the vote? >> Miss Gloria, >> I have to
136be first. Yes, go first. >> I can start myself. >> Okay. Only because the lawyer came up. I will say yes. >> Mr. Howard, >> yes. >> Miss Terry, >> yes. >> Mrs. Sha, >> yes. >> That be yes for myself. And Madam President, >> yes. And with that, I believe the motion passes unanimously. It does. >> So, thank you. And I also do want to thank Lanna and Gloria for making sure we will definitely be holding work sessions on this, especially once we determine to help us determine what sort of work we need to do and what sort of total amounts we need to look at. Um next we have four um policies 5500 4 7540 and 7504 again but slightly different um and they are with both Ryan and Kent and I know
137that we are going to present these um >> as one item and so I don't know if they want to come up separately or together how they want to do that but we're going to present them as one item because they all kind of cover the same It's like a vitriloquist act >> which is AI usage. >> We're side by side President Burke. So we're uh going to present these as one. Excellent. President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board. I'm with um obviously my good friend here, Mr. Schroeder, and we're last month we brought to you those policies for discussion all specifically around AI. Tonight we're going to ask for them um all to be approved hopefully in one one swoop. So, we're happy to answer any questions if you have them. But at
138this time, we would like to ask for your approval. >> Do I have a motion? A motion to approve the four policies. >> So, move. >> Which one are you? >> So, we're going to approve the student contact >> all four of them. >> Cond artificial intelligence. >> They are all in since the same thing. Yeah. They all have to do with AI. >> Yes. So moved. >> Okay. So I heard Julie make the motion. Is there a second? >> A second. >> Kevin. >> Okay. Thank you, Kevin. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. Kevin, could you please take a vote? >> Miss Gloria. Yes, >> Mr. Howard. >> Yes, >> Miss Julie. >> Yes, >> Miss Terry. >> Yes, >> Miss Lana. >> Yes. >> And that would be a yes with myself and
139Madame President. >> Also, yes. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> And those policies pass unanimously. Thank you for your time, gentlemen. And now for the big other big discussion items, I should say. Um, beginning with Miss Pope and our wellness policy. >> President, Dr. Hans, members of the school board, can you hear me? Yeah, there. I just actually want to get quiet. I'm usually loud. I'm here to discuss policy 8510, which is our wellness policy. It is required to have every school is to have a wellness policy. It is also required to review it every three years. and we're at that three years. The wellness committee, we met um here in the spring and we made a few changes and I think you all have the changes in front of you and I'm
140here to see if anybody has any questions for me. There's not many I changed. There's only a few. Most of it was required. Any questions? All right. Well, that was quick. Thank you so much, Miss Pope, for your time. We appreciate it. We will see you again in two months. Um, and item Mr. Clayton and the 2627 redistricting plan. Good evening again, President Burke, Dr. Hansen, members of the board, and to our Warren community. For discussion tonight, I ask that we engage in important discussion about the future of our district's student placement and learning environment. Your insights along with community input are vital as we work together to shape a new direction for our district and continue to meet the needs of our warm families for years to come. So, as we have this discussion
141and we look at our schoolboard goal as well as our strategic plan focus, again, it hits all of the U focus areas. Um it's essential to recognize that our district strategic plan is the foundation um that will guide this redistricting effort. So part of this preliminary discussion, this opening discussion, I want to reiterate that this is just an opening uh discussion for for the board to have. um um we're going to provide you with information and um and feedback and then we'd like to come back and um continue this this discussion um in a month. But um as we look at why redistrict now, what is the why behind that? and understand we will refine this as we go through this process because there are some other things that will be brought up and will
142become part of this narrative um as we um communicate internally as well as externally with our community. So the time of up for redistricting is driven by several pressing needs. Currently our district faces significant enrollment disparities across elementary schools. We'll show you that with some some charts here shortly. Addressing these discrepancies will now help us better utilize existing resources and prevent future overcrowding. Additionally, reintegrating fifth grade into elementary schools offers developmental and academic achievement benefits. We also need to elevate whether modifications to high ability services delivery and school start times could further improve educational outcomes. Acting now positions us to proactively shape and balance innovative and be responsive as a district. So, as we start taking a look at uh some of the initial uh pieces of of data that we've prepared for you this
143evening, if you look at our current enrollment data, disparities are evident. Specifically, schools like East Ridge, Hawthorne, and Liberty Park have enrollments in the 400s, while others such as Pleasant Run, and Grassy Creek are over the 520s. So, that's just probably the most clear disparity that we have just um elementary enrollment wise. Our goal is to create a more equitable distribution of students across the nine elementaryaries. By doing so, each school can operate closer to the optimal capacity, which we'll discuss that as well. Around 625 students or so, depending on programming um and by achieving this balance in enrollment with will facilitate better resource allocation, provide more equitable opportunities for students and foster healthier, more cohesive school communities. Another part I want to mention by equalizing enrollment and again we'll discuss this it it will
144provide opportunities to be creative and innovative at the the the the IMS well potentially middle school um portion of what we do educationally. So, let's discuss our our current reality. Historically, after clo the closures of Heather Hills and Morehead Elementary, those of us that were that were here and we remember that back in 2009, uh, fifth graders were moved to the middle schools, which created our current IMS model, creating an intermediate structure. While this was necessary, a necessary response at the time, it has since presented challenges. The current intermediate middle school setup makes it difficult to provide developmentally appropriate experiences for fifth graders who benefit most from age appropriate environments that support social, emotional, and academic growth. Our goal is to reintegrate the fifth graders into elementary schools, fostering stronger community bonds and offering tailored
145supports that meet their developmental needs. This is an exercise and this is a discussion we've had um for decades. Um, one of our alumni that showed up today, I'm sure you could tell us when the middle schools were seven, eight, nine. Um, and the high schools was 10 through 12 and we had a different elementary model. Um, so this is a an exercise that that we have every um, 15 to 20 years. And that's that's why we're we're here today. I had mentioned before that this shift will create more age appropriate learning environments, strengthen elementary community culture, and allow middle schools to focus more intentionally on the unique needs of grades 6 through 8. We continue, this is an ongoing discussion in terms of what can we do as a district to be more creative
146and innovative in that middle school space. How can we really become much more intentional and focused in terms of what we provide academically? what can we do to retain our families because retention is a big portion of this as well. Uh we believe by reintegrating the fifth graders back into our elementary schools that will create those opportunities and we'll throw just some you know possibilities um out there here shortly. So next the next few slides we're going to take a look at some some some enrollment trends. The current slide is um from this past school year, our grade level enrollment. As you can see, just the trends starting with um kindergarten all the way through 12th. If I could uh specifically focus our attention, if we look at our K through 12, I'm sorry, our
147K through um four enrollment. And then when our fourth graders migrate to fifth grade, you see once they get to that IMS level from fifth to sixth grade, you see a drop. That's probably one of the most notice noticeable drops. All right? And then you also see in the next couple slides some trends as well. So if you look at our grade level enrollment and we're specifically looking at that K through five. All right. If you look at that over the past five years, enrollment trends have remained relatively stable. If you just look at the the the total enrollment with some fluctuations, for example, K through five um district-wise enrollment has hovered around 5,000 to 5,100 students annually. This consistency indicates a steady population, but the uneven distribution across schools calls for strategic redistricting. Analyzing
148these trends which will be a part of this process, part of this discussion. We're looking at trends will help us anticipate future growth and ensures our planning and data informed and allowing us to make adjustments that serve students best interests now and again for for years ahead. We'll have this conversation internally, but one of our our recommendations and one of our next steps is to bring in some experts to bring in demographers which have traditionally been a part of this process. Um, we are currently just having some brief preliminary discussions with some demographers that have been recommended to us. And again, this is very preliminary because obviously we want to make sure we introduce this and have this discussion and make sure this is the the time is right. This is the direction we want
149to go. Um but u if that's a process that we engage in, then we will be able to dig deeper into these numbers um and truly look at where we're currently at as a community and where we're going to be at in the next 5 to 10 years. But again, pay close attention to some of these trends as we go through the next couple slides, which will be very similar. So, we can't have this discussion about reintegrating fifth grade back into the elementary schools without looking at retention. We talked earlier during the meeting. We talked about um ADM. We talked about being able to grow. That's one of, you know, one of the the the the factors that is going to be essential to our financial health moving forward. We can't afford to lose families.
150We have to make sure whether it's a transition from preschool to kindergarten, from kindergarten to um or I should say our K through four space to um our five through eight or from the middle schools to the high school. During those transitions, we know that's when um statistically you lose the most students. So, how can we ensure through this process that we somehow combat that? And I would invite you to look at this current slide which illustrates that if you start with the first um the first row there with kindergarten. And if you just follow all the way to when they're in fifth grade, it kind of gives you an idea of what that looks like as they a kindergarten goes from um first to second to third to fourth to fifth. But what I
151specifically want you to focus on is those last two columns, fourth to fifth grade. Okay? If you look at fourth to fifth grade, you see that A49. Well, when that fourth grader leaves one of our elementary schools, our K through four buildings, and goes to the fifth grade, which that starts our IMS, you see a slight decline in in enrollment. Okay, that you may say that's not real significant. We're not talking about 100 students. But then if you look at again you continue to look at that pattern from fourth to fifth grade 858 to 846 the third under 22 23 816 to 790 well the gap gets a little bit bigger but the one thing that's consistent and we will continue to track that through this year is that we are losing kids from fourth
152to fifth grade. Dr. Hansen shared with us at cabinet that we have a total of 3,000 students that live in our community that go to either a combination of other public charter or private schools. Okay. So as we go through this process, this is going to allow us not only again internally but as we engage our community in this discussion is this is a this is a a concerning um problem that we have that collectively we have to find a way to address based on what we are initially looking at. If we stay consistent and return back to the model that we previously had and now our um and this is the same model actually when my daughter went through as a Warren Central student um she was in third grade when we u went
153to the intermediate school. So she she had four years or counting kindergarten at Grassy Creek um five years. So she didn't have the opportunity to go to fifth grade at at Grassy Creek. Um, again that happened going into her last year. But my point is is that what we've learned since 2009, we are losing students from fourth to fifth grade. We believe that we this provides an opportunity for us to stabilize not only our population, our enrollment another year, but it's also providing time for us to become more more creative in that 6 through8 space. And we'll talk about that here shortly. But I wanted to focus some attention on that because this is our reality. This is our reality. If we break it down by schools, we look at this the the five-year trends.
154As you can see, um starting with Brookview, um East Ridge, Grassy Creek, Hawthorne, Lakeside, Liberty Park, LOL, and Sunny Heights, you see the disparity, the discrepancies in terms of our enrollment. Again, you will see some schools that have grown that are well over 520 and if you look at their five-year average and then we have a school um like Hawthorne, again, we're not picking on Hawthorne and Eastridge. These these these are just the numbers. Um their averages are under 400. So the services we provide, the resources we provide at a school like, you know, for example, at um Grassy Creek with 528, at Pleasant Run at 542, we're providing those same resources at an elementary that has under 400 students. Okay. How can we make that more equitable to make sure that we are truly
155maximizing and taking advantage of those resources that our we know our students and families need. So the next question that we'll have a part of this this this the discussion is do we have the capacity to do this and based on our preliminary numbers and again we have administrators we have leadership in here that were elementary principles prior to the transition in 2009 and they were principles with buildings that had over 600 kids. All right. We believe through our assessment, again, this is more of our hypothesis going into it, we believe we currently have the capacity to bring fifth grade in back in reintegrate, I should say, back into our elementarymentaries. That is what we're going into this. And if you look at our our current five-year averages, and then you look at the the
156capacity, our projected capacity for the nine elementary buildings is at 625. Currently, we fall well below that. we fall well below that. Another thing I want to introduce or um I want to make sure that we include in this discussion is the the belief is that well okay if I'm at you know if I'm uh Pleasant Run and I have you know 562 students and you give me another 300 students I I don't have the capacity for that by going through that redistricting process that's not going to happen because we're going to make sure it's equitable in terms of the distribution and the numbers you know. So again, we'll continue to to vet that out, but I just want to make sure I put that out there because as we have this this discussion with,
157you know, our community. These are the type of questions that they're going to ask. But we believe that based on the current utilization and the capacity, again going to this process, we believe that we can make this transition back. We again we talk a lot about doing things creative and innovative at the middle school level. Um part of the experience we had and the collaboration we had through that initial um Ford NGL um you know program that we did as a district as we engaged in that exercise. Part of that was how can we create experiences K through 12 that will better prepare our our students for college and career readiness. And part of this this this this proposal or part of what we're looking at through this this discussion through this process is um
158how can we not only just from providing the best teaching and learning environment and opportunities for our students and our families but competitively speaking because let's just call it what it is. We are competing for families. We are competing to retain our families. We are trying to recruit new families. We have a lot of development in our township right now. Through this process, we're going to find out which households have students. We want to know where they're going and why they're going there. We know we're getting hit hard in the charter space. We have to compete with charter schools, period. Because not only does that have a ADM impact, but we also know now based on what Mr. Parkinson has prepared us for the last couple years. It also has an operational impact. We have
159to compete with them. We have to compete with Irvington. And where are we going to do it and where we're going to succeed and where we're going to win is going to be in that 6 through8 space. We believe that this will provide us an opportunity to get creative. And this is just an idea. And again, please don't take, oh, you guys are going to turn like this is just something with a possibility because this there's endless possibilities based on the good work that we've done the past few years. For example, this redesign experience provides a strong will provide a stronger focus again on college and career readiness and hands-on learning opportunities. And as you can see here, this is a possibility. Stony Brook Middle School could become our TM school STEM school. All right.
160And again, this is part of the discussion. We know that we have to prepare the next generation of learners to compete in a workforce that's going to integrate AI more and more is that that's a possibility. We can create some type of program college of career readiness program that focuses on artificial intelligence. That's and again these are just examples. These are just ideas, but these are things that are going to allow us to compete in this current educational school choice environment. We have to be creative. We have to be different. We've had a lot of conversations around it. We have a lot of highly intelligent people in this room right now that are ready for this challenge. And by engaging in this conversation, this will allow us to to really dig deep to see what
161best fits our school district, what best fits our community, and most importantly, through engaging in our community's conversation, what do they want, what do they feel like we should put in place to better prepare their kids for the next step. Our third goal is to ensure a stable and consistent learning environment for all students. In other words, we want to we want to create and Miss Glorious, you spoke to this earlier. We wanna we want to make sure that we have consistent learning environments. Doesn't matter what school you go to. It doesn't matter what side of the district it's on. We want to make sure that when it comes to teaching and learning that everything is consistent. So, we want to make sure that we provide the resource and opportunity to do that. And this
162is involves balancing resources, maintaining manageable class sizes and providing seamless educational experiences. And I want to go through just one example um what we do around high ability. right now our current model as you know because we've had discussions I know President Burke you you've been heavily involved in this discussion over the years around just high ability and right now we have three schools three elementary schools um that house our high ability program okay so if we look at what this can be in terms of reintegrating the fifth grade back. This provides us with the opportunity to offer these programs at all nine elementaryaries. That's that's when we talk about equable equitable access being able to offer again being consistent creating that consistent learning environment. It provides us with the opportunity to offer those programs
163in every at every elementary building. Okay. Now, I have Lynn Storm here. She's back there smiling because what we currently have to do, we have to shuttle those those students once they arrive to their technically their home school. We have to shuttle them to another school where they will receive that those high ability um services. That's that's that's we're we're working hard. We're getting results. But when we talk about operational efficiency, it provides opportunities to have discussions. How can we be more efficient operationally? This presents this opportunity. The fourth goal and part of this is we're, you know, how can this affect or potentially change our school start times? We may go through this this exercise, have this discussion, and we may remain where we're at right now. We know where we stand right now.
164We have three tiers. We know the high school is from 7:15 to 2:00 p.m. We know an hour later we bring our elementary students in at 8:15. And then our third tier is at 9:15 with our intermediate middle schools. All right. Again, this will provide us an opportunity to review our current um our current procedures, our processes, um our our policies around what this looks like. We know that if we're transporting kindergarten through fifth graders, we know that's going to kind of change how, you know, what those each tier looks like. Our elementary is still our our our biggest tier, but we know that that's going to add to it a little bit. So, again, what does that look like? Okay, it's always a healthy discussion. We we have discussions every year around school calendars
165and and make slight adjustments to start times. again that be a great opportunity to revisit that next steps. We will continue we we again we introduced the why we will continue to refine that because there is also um academic achievement data that will also support this this proposal this recommendation to seriously consider this. And I know um Mr. Mr. Russell and I have had that conversation and um to be honest with you as we refine this that might be one or two as we take a look at it, you know, academic outcomes, but we'll continue to refine the why. We'll conduct preliminary data analysis, which we showed you um a few pieces of that tonight. Um once we get your approval, we're going to establish a redistricting committee which will be essential and that will
166consist of not only our building leaders, we'll involve our teachers, we involve community members. Um this is going to be a community initiative. This needs to be a community decision. Again, we've had some preliminary discussions with demographers, but we would like to hire a a demographer. We'd like to bring a a company, a firm in to assist us in this process. And we've already got some pretty good recommendations. Once we if if if with your approval, um when we get to that point, um they will help us dig deeper into that data collection process. Um, one of the things that was was brought up the other day just in just a random discussion just around our families. We have families in our district, um, I should say multifamilies that live um, at one address. So,
167as we engage our demographer in conversations, we want to make sure they can they can capture that because if they're able to to capture that, that gives us a better idea of exactly what that that redistricting process needs to look like, what our resources need to reflect um operationally, so on and so forth. Community engagement is going to be very important. We will need to engage the community multiple times. That's why if this is as you see this is a this would be this recommendation would would start in 26 27 which would be a year from now. So we will need to engage a community multiple times. To miss um Lanna's point we have to be creative in what that looks like. We have to invite them in. We'll have to go to them. We'll
168have to utilize social media. We'll have to pass things out at churches. I mean whatever we have to do to bring our community in to be a part of this discussion because this this is a this is important decision. This is important decision and just from our experience and I know Dr. Hansen was on the committee back in 2008 2009 um we had some great turnouts. We had some great turnouts. I know as a parent at the time, I know many of us were there um as part of those discussions to see how that's going to impact um our our students. Um develop redistricting options and and have that discussion with with the board. Um we want to refine and finalize our redistricting plan. And again, this is this is aggressive. All right? But we
169want to make sure as we approach 2026, the second the second semester of this current school year that we are in planning stages. So we would like to bring a recommendation to the board in December. Okay. In order for that to happen again all these steps need to take place. the engagement working with our our demographer, working with our again our community to make sure and and work most importantly preparing our buildings. We will need a a a good semester just in preparation building wise. This isn't something we can, you know, do in May and just, you know, hey, all right, we got basically six weeks to to to get everything together so we can bring um a whole another class of fifth graders in. Okay. And then again what I was referring to was
170that that implementation planning along the way. It's important when we look at our norms, we we have to be transparent. That's important. We have to maintain um open communication along the process. We don't want any parents to feel surprised. We don't want anyone to feel like they didn't have a voice in this process. Uh there's legal considerations that we need to look at as well as it relates to state and federal laws. Um and again that's that's part of our our why is when we look at equitable um and non non-discriminatory um a non-crim discriminatory process and then as well as just the data security because we will dig deep into um our analysis by looking at um you know family student type data and we want to make sure we're sensitive to that. Again,
171I know that's a lot of information in a short period of time, but um for discussion right now, board, if you just have any questions in terms of anything you would like us to >> add to the discussion. >> This is going to I'm sorry. >> Oh, go ahead. >> I was just going to say this is just going to be ongoing discussion, including our families, our community. So, you're just making us aware of this today. Um which I appreciate. But I think that making sure our families know that we're considering this and that we're taking all the a look at everything. Um I know one of the big things we were concerned with minutes being lost when we were moving um transferring our gifted students to the other schools and talking about that transportation
172where they were losing 15 minutes at the beginning and 15 minutes at the end of the day. So, I'm hoping that that also gets um equitable as well. >> Yeah. And and and Terry, you you also know that if you go back when we did this a while ago, um some parents are just simply uncomfortable with their students going to an IMS a fifth grader on a bus with an eighth grader. Just something simp, you know, again, it that that's a big deal. and that, you know, as we go through this process, is that is that a reason we're losing kids from fourth to fifth grade? >> Um, I just wanted to, um, you know, I'd like your thought process and everything, but in talking about redistricting, um, I've been sitting here too too long,
173I can't hardly talk. Um, I think it poses a red flag, a problem. First of all, you know, we have a problem with uh teacher shortage and uh you're talking about bringing a lot of more people uh students into the district. So, right now Brian is telling us he has a problem trying to recruit teachers. We can't find enough teachers. Our classroom sizes are too large as it is. We need to focus on reducing classroom size so that our children can learn. So you're talking about bringing in more, but we need to deal with what we already have. We have new housing units that are being developed. So that means more and more students are going to be coming from those those units. So I feel that we need to market what we already have
174so that we can maintain our enrollment and we can at the same time encourage others to want to come. Hopefully one day we'll have a waiting list. How do we do that? Some of the things that you suggested, we uh at this point in time, our high ability students, they have to be transported to a different school. Well, when I was teaching high ability class at in IPS district, there was a high ability class in every school. So, why can't we do that? I taught high I was in an elementary school and I taught high ability class. So if we teach have a high ability class in every school then that will keep us from having to transport students. So what I'm uh suggesting is let's um take what we have and make it better.
175We don't want to try to start adding adding adding and redistricting and we can't accommodate what we have already. Our teachers are complaining now about class size. You know, we have things that we have to address first. There was another good suggestion by taking our middle schools and making them attractive. Like one school could be a STEM school, one school can be a health, you know, career school, one school can be trades. Every student is not going to college. every student they can develop a skill trade whether it's a plumber, electrician, you know, welding, something that when they graduate, they can walk out into the workforce and be valuable. Every student needs some kind of skill, even if they plan on going to college. A lot of our students don't even finish college and then
176they find themselves working at Family Dollar. Our students need to be equipped with skills that they can take to the workforce. So the idea that you had the middle school starting there, we can make them attractive by having them to be different schools, STEM, you know, health, you know, your uh trade schools. >> That way we're making what we have better by redistricting. I think you're just compounding on on, you know, the problem. You're you're bringing problems in. We we are great here in Warren Township. You know, we have a lot going on. We're renovating our buildings. That's being attractive. You know, we we have great programs for our students, whether it be sports, and we want to try to build upon that. what we have. We want to make what we have better so
177that it will attract more parents to want to come to our district. By redistricting, I think it's just going to cause a problem and uh with class enrollment, teacher recruitment, everything. And we're back where we started. So, that's just my idea. And would you go back to that uh page where you were showing how the uh enrollment was increasing and decreasing? Yes. Um, in 2021 it was 8.85 and that was the beginning of COVID. I'm looking at fifth grade. We we went from kindergarten to fifth. I'm stopping at fifth. 2122 we were just still struggling with that co. So yes, it went down because that's the time remember people started doing online and you know things like that and they were introduced to you know online uh teaching and working and stuff instead of going
178in to the classroom. Then in 2022 people began to catch their breath and you notice fifth grade went up to 846. Now in 2023 is the only time that I see that we really fell down low to 790. And what reason that is we don't know >> but we went back up in 2425 to 825. >> So we are still on a trends going up. I am just saying that we're not just totally going down totally in our enrollment what we have. We need to build upon it so that we can attract more students. So instead of focusing on redistricting we need to do more marketing. Miss Miss Gloria, Miss Gloria, I think you um >> the this is really more about redistributing what we have, not adding, not going out and bringing more students
179in that. He was focusing on making the each school. He showed the the disparity between one school from another is distribution. >> Didn't say distribution. You said redistrict. >> Well, you have to redistrict. >> Change. >> No, no, no, no, no, no. You have to redistrict the boundaries for each school to get them equal. >> That's the goal. >> Make it so that instead of 393 and Grassy Creek, Grassy Creek may have 450, >> right? Grassy Creek is at 528 and some schools are still at 400. So he's talking about redistricting zones, >> allowing some of those students that that have a high enrollment to go to the low enrollment school. Okay. But not necessarily changing the location that these kids are coming from. >> No, that's not and if I can >> we can't
180legally do that on our own. >> We we can't the dis larger on our own. That's that's that life involves the stage and a lot of other things. This is the boundary line within school district. And if I can provide some content, Miss Goria, um during my time when I went around to the schools, um during my presidency, a lot of this I first want to thank you, um superintendent and um Marcus and the cabinet for acknowledging some of the concerns that the principles were having rec and the community with the fifth graders being in our middle schools and the high ability losing Cuz when you say 15 minutes a day, it really doesn't sound like a big deal until you add up all of those minutes, which actually is a half an hour per
181day. So, they're missing a lot of instructional time. So, this plan is to help balance all of that out. Not going outside of our district. We can't go outside of our district boundary lines, but within our district, we can even out our um district boundaries to make our schools more um comparable in numbers. So, it would kind of reduce and our fifth graders are missing so much um developmental um stages that they need because they're in the middle school and the middle school they still need recess. The middle school is not equipped for that. So moving them back to the fifth grade um is a great um idea and a lot of parents you know have decided oh my child is not going to the sixth grade. Um so that's what we're doing. So not
182necessarily we're not going outside of our district bringing in outside district. >> Okay. Well that's good because when I thought about redisting that's what I started thinking about moving you know your boundaries lines and you you were listening. But you know it >> I know but you know what it is a great idea to put our fifth graders back in elementary school. That's the way it has always been. Uh and I hear a lot of parents concerned about that. You know having them in the me, you know this with the older kids. So I think that's a great move on our part. So what we have to still be concerned about is class sizes. >> Um so you know >> that's what that's >> Gloria. I hear everything you're saying. Um, and I think that
183considering what Marcus was saying about making sure that we were giving everyone enough time and the schools enough time to prepare for the next year, would there be an interest in putting forth a motion to allow for the operations department and the district as a whole to start this planning process, understanding that we would have to approve anything that they decided upon in December? So this is not approving what would h what kind of the end would be but putting forth a motion to get this process started so that we can start it as soon as possible so that we can make decisions and keep people informed ahead of time as much as possible. >> Miss um madame president this is just for discussion today but I do have a question for next month >>
184with that. No, I I I understand. I'm I'm saying do we have the this is for discussion this time because it is not a policy. It is merely opening up the subject matter to having something brought to us in the future, having the possibility of going ahead and voting on having it looked at now to get the process going even faster. >> Are you saying we're going to have an executive session to go over all of this or instead of in a board meeting? What do you say? >> So there there are two different things that have to take place, Gloria. We need to determine that we want to start looking at this and then whatever is found out. So we hire a demographer. We do all of those things. Then we vote on what
185those results are. But that does not take place at the same time and it would not take place in executive session. This is all public. >> Okay. Another concern. We're talking about all these changes and how it's going to affect us financially and how we have to budget and how we have to use our money. And then at the same time, you're telling me, oh, we going to hire somebody to try to show us how this we to me, we need to focus on prioritizing our spending. So when that's a red flag when you start talking about, oh, we're going to hire somebody to work with us on this, we need to focus on how we spend our money. We we we he just gave a report about how we're going to be losing funds.
186So why would we hire somebody and spend this extra money to do this? So this is what I'm saying. We need to prioritize our spending. >> Miss Gloria, >> you know, >> that's my that's my >> I understand what you're saying, too, but we will not make a decision final until December when they have all the evidence. But I do feel like we do need to hire somebody because if we do want to make our middle schools attractive and we want to have a STEM school, we want to have an arts and school or we want to have this school, we need somebody like this to help us get our information to see what our community and what our kids and our families need and want. >> I understand what you're saying, Terry. So I
187think it it has the potential to grow our numbers. >> Can I just say this one thing? I understand what we want, but he just said that because of changes that are occurring with and money that we're losing, we can't just go with everything we want. We have to prioritize our spending right now. And I'm just saying we have to take a look at what's what's most important and what's least important. All of it is really important, but we just have to prioritize because on a on a normal, you know, year without all these changes, tell them we would be able to do whatever we wanted, right? But now he is saying that, oh no, it's going to be more changes. So why are we adding more cost when we going to have to lose
188some of the it's just >> so um this is a discussion item. So >> this is a discussion item. So, um, let's think about it and then let's talk with Matt and, uh, Marcus and Dr. Hansen as we are figuring things out. I do want to say though, I was my first year on the board was the year we pulled the fifth graders from the elementaryaries and put and we had the intermediate academy separate from the middle school and then we had the high school. And I can tell you, we lost parents that year. We lost a lot of parents because there were so many parents. And you're right, they didn't want to put them on the bus with eighth graders because there is a big difference between a fifth grader and an eighth grader.
189Um, and we lost a lot of parents then. And I can see it's saving us because when you're looking at that one chart, it you were looking at it a little bit wrong. It was the diagonal numbers that you should have been looking at on it. Um, and you could you and you can still see where we were losing from fourth to fifth grade because we lost uh that one year it was like 80 we lost like 50 students basically. Um, where did Yeah, 862 to 825. That's a lot of kids right there. Um, so I I that was a tough year. The state lost well they misplaced or whatever $356 million and we had to lose it was up to us to lose 4 million and it was closing those two schools that that
190we went with and that's when we changed things. But then we also learned from that we learned that keeping those two schools separate, the two the intermediate and the middle wasn't quite the best way. So we threw them all together as one school. It made it a little bit better, but we're still having the same problem. We're still having a lot of those problems, and those fifth graders are still losing out. And I think pulling them back to the elementary school is a good plan. Um, and I I really think we need to look at this. I mean, what this is saying, we are not saying it's going to happen. and this is giving we will be looking at it and we will be taking all these months to check and see what if this
191is the right thing for us and maybe one part is and another part isn't but it's something that we really do need to look at. It's just something that needs to be done. Um, and it's probably needed to be done for a couple three years, but it's something that's hard to do because when you start talking redistricting, um, and moving kids from one elementary to another elementary because you're going to have kids that are have been in maybe Liberty Park for their kindergarten, first, second grade, and then they're going to have to go to LOL or Hawthorne for their fourth, fifth, sixth grade or fourth and fifth grade. And that's that's the tough part too is because they've built a home in that elementary school and now they're having to go to another one and
192it's always hard to do that. And so it's our nature to put that off as long as possible because we know that's a tough thing. But at some point it comes a time where we have to for the good of all of our kids we have to start looking at that and I think it's now. So, um, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, but it's time to look at it at least. >> Madam President, Miss Gloria, I'm sorry. Madam President, did you put a motion on the floor? I thought I heard you saying something about a motion and I just want to make sure if you were entertaining a motion that's not lost in the translation. So, can you clarify because you kind of >> I was asking if she >> Yeah, I'm
193so sorry. I was asking if there would be any interest in putting forth a motion as to having the district start looking at this now buy them another month because as Marcus said we would need to make a decision by December. >> Um wait a month >> um I I'm asking if people would like to entertain a motion. Yes. >> I Yeah, we have a couple more comments. Can I just Okay. I you know what I agree with um you Julie saying that definitely taking a look at putting the fifth graders back. I have no qualms with that. What I do have a problem with hiring someone. We have a lot of intelligent people in our system. You know why we have to go hire somebody another brain and spend all that money >> to
194try to have them to come in to help us with this. We have capable people and that's money. That's what my concern is. We don't need this Gloria if I can. We when the when I don't know if you remember when we were meeting to put together the strategic plan and meeting with Ford and we broke into the different groups and I was on the um family and community relation group and one of the things that that group felt very very strongly about was the need to bring in a demographer and it covers several things. First of all, we don't know how many fifth graders are going to be in the area between Washington and Troy and Franklin and Post in 20 years. A demographer, well, in five years, a demographer has that has the
195knowledge to be able to put something like that together. We don't know how many students are going to be in our district that don't speak English as their first language in 10 years. A demographer can help with that. They can help us make sure that when we draw the lines, we're drawing good lines that will last a long time so that we're not doing this again in reverse. Very. And I I don't think we're discussing spending a ton of money, but it it it's not something it to be frank, it is not something we have anyone in this school district that can do, which is the reason that we brought it up for discussion, whatever that was three or four years ago even. That is a it is a very specific scientific subset unfortunately. >>
196Okay, let me let me just say for let me say this. This was just supposed to be a discussion. We're not supposed to be making a motion to do anything to go anywhere for any approvals right now. He's got he's already mentioned that some of these numbers here are numbers that were I wrote down here samples because the for example the 60 the 632 and 625 I think you had as a capacity you just said that was that was to me that was just samples you said that wasn't an exact number and there were other areas in here and in in the discussion that were not accurate you had you got more work to do >> and I don't think we need to be making a motion to to approve it you got work to
197to to get us to where we think our biggest challenge is going to be transportation. >> So, I I think there's more work to be done. >> And I don't think >> I apologize. I was not suggesting that we vote to redistrict today. We do not have that ability or that knowledge. But if we want to start the process to have the district look at it, >> yeah, >> do we really want to wait a month to even start the process? >> Madam President, I I I agree. >> That's my question. And and it goes along with what Mrs. uh French was trying to say as well. And that is M he's got to go look at this stuff. He's got he's got more to look at when when we can we can say that.
198Go ahead and go look at it. But we're going to have to come back together later after he's got some more defensive numbers before. >> Right. Yeah. No. No. 100%. I'm saying let them go look at it. I apologize if I'm not being clear. So, Madame President, I make the motion to allow the team to start looking at redistricting and everything that's been presented today. >> Is there a second? >> I second. >> And and can I make a comment? >> I'm seconding that we are going to go look at it because that's what we're trying to say now is we're by doing this motion if it passes it's giving them permission to start looking at it. No decisions will be made. They're going to go look at it. They're going to figure it out.
199Then they're going to come back and say, "Okay, we've looked at it. This is what we see about transportation. We've looked at it. This is what we see about redistricting. We've looked at it. This is what we're going to see about this and that and the other." It's we're not making a decision today. The only decision we're we're making today would be to go look at it. >> So we usually when we have discussion items, we don't we just let them talk and they sit down >> every once in a while. >> Why are we Why are we trying to make a motion now? That's what I'm saying. This is different. We shouldn't even >> because this is on such a >> apologize if I may. is because we want to be able to start
200in talking to our families and and make sure we're bringing them in and we want to give that conversation as much time as possible before we have to make a decision. We need to make a decision as Marcus said really in December. And so the earlier we can start talking to our families, the earlier we can start engaging them in the conversation to find out what their wants and desires are to have those community forums. If you were in the district last time we redist Like Marcus said, we had several community forums. I attended, I think, two of them as a parent. We want to give our community as much time as possible to offer input. >> And I would just add to that part of that engagement and dialogue. We have to provide some
201information. We have to provide data. And that's why going through this process and being able to continue to flush out exactly where we stand, what are the trends, and even potential concepts of what that redistricting would look like. That's what we would have to present to our parents as part of that community engagement. Now, after going through that, they may say, "We hear you, but you know, my I don't want my kid to leave. I don't want my kid to go anywhere." But in order for us to even have that discussion, we we just can't go to them with a proposal. We have to go to them with accurate information. Um and you know, as we recommended, bringing in a demographer that's going to help us take a deeper dive into exactly um what this
202would look like if we if we go this route. Um, I think that with all this discussion that we've had on the board, my recommendation is that we have some kind of executive session or something. >> We can't do this as executive. It's breaks the open door laws. >> We We can't have an executive session on this. >> Okay. So, because I'm trying to think how >> we can have a work a work session. Okay. Whatever. Okay. Work session. I'll change that. We need a work session where we can come together as a board, get a better understanding, give our views and things like that before we take any kind of vote to move forward with anything. >> Miss Gloria, I'm sorry. We have a motion on the floor that's been first and second. So,
203we have to go through and fulfill this before any more motions. Either the motion is going to go through, it's going to be withdrawn. So, we can't put another motion on the floor right now because one has already been made. Okay, we'll vote on that and then I'll put the motion that we do a work session. >> You cannot put the motion. You have to wait a minute to see if this pass or wait until after this one. Okay. >> Okay. And we can and we can do both, Gloria. There there's no reason we can't. But is there any further discussion? >> Okay. Hearing none. Kevin, >> I don't know. Did someone have discussion? I heard something but I couldn't tell. >> Nobody. Nobody said anything. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I feel like right
204now um that we I I'm having a discussion because at a point, >> okay, >> we want to make sure that this is just moving forward. That is the only motion that I made is to continue moving into looking at the data. That was my motion. seconded by Julie. In our discussion, we did say that we were going to have a study group to go through this or a work session to go further into what we have as a board. But right now, we're just I'm asking I'm making the motion to let the district keep going forward into going into finding out more information. Oh, I think that that should come after our work session because after we talk about it and we get a better understanding, then we can vote about moving forward for
205them to go into, you know, gathering more information. I think you're you're putting the hearts before the car. >> All right. Um, I'm going to withdraw by motion. >> Okay. >> Sorry. And then I want to make a motion that we have a work session so that we can discuss this and uh then we will come back and then we will vote on moving forward. >> Can I get a second? >> Is there a second? >> Madame President, did you um she withdraw she withdrew her motion, but did you >> I I heard that. I asked Yes. >> Did you kill that motion on the table? asked if there was a >> Yeah, I asked if there was a second for Gloria's motion. >> Are we on Terry's or Gloria? I'm I'm confused right now.
206Are we on Terry has >> Terry withdrew her motion that it doesn't exist, >> right? >> Okay. >> So, there's no motion on the table. >> So, there's no motion. That's I just wanted to make sure that everybody has that understanding. It's a lot of talking and motioning back and forth. So, we're all clear. That motion is dead. So now it's back into your hands. Madam President, can you instruct us further? Thank you. >> I made a motion. >> Yes. >> Right. Gloria made a motion requesting a work session and so I asked if there was a second. >> Have to talk about this. Well, I mean, >> we should not even >> Gloria just because it it >> not even be there. >> Can Can I need to we if >> Can I make
207a motion? >> Can we get a second? >> I'm not going to second it. >> Well, if there's not a second, then there's not a motion. >> Then then I'm going to make a motion. I would like to make a motion that we move ahead with this process which will include a work session with the board. >> Is there a second to that? >> I will second it. >> There's two seconds actually. >> Did some I couldn't. >> I second. >> Okay. Can Thank you, Howard. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Hearing none, Kevin, can we have a vote on Julie's motion? >> Miss Lana, >> abstain. >> Miss Terry, >> yes. >> Miss Julie, >> yes. >> Mr. Howard, >> yes. Miss Gloria >> abstain >> and I will be a yes madam president.
208>> Yes. And that motion carries five days and two abstensions. Um and we will get that work session on the books for probably late July or early August. I'll check with everyone's calendar and come up with something. Okay. And I do believe with that I've been having a some internet because obviously I've been obviously cutting in and out for which I apologize. With that we are at closing comments and Kevin I will start with you. Well, first and foremost, I think we have to say that um we have an action board and we take our job seriously and we uh we work things out. So, as you can see here, we just don't uh can't say a board meetings are boring and we do nothing but just agree, agree, agree, and sign, sign, sign. So,
209we work it out. We explain things out and it is a lot of things are complicated. So it goes back and forth and once we get a clear understand everything we can move forward. But the biggest sign is we do work here and we get work done and nothing that is easy is ever worth doing. Miss Triplet. >> Thank you, Madame President. Um, thank you, board, um, for a discussion. Thank you, coach. Um, bringing it in. We do like to do things decent and in order. Um, I think all um, subjects are not just a rubber stamp. So, um, I do appreciate that about the board. we will get it together when everyone has a clear understanding. Um, I would like to say Julie, I will I serve on the Marian County Youth Violence Prevention
210Coalition and we do distribute gun locks and we do have someone that trains um we do training for gun safety. So, if you are interested in having the coalition to partake in the safety um forum, please get with me. We would love to help um support in that area. Parents, staff, please be vigilant. Our babies are in a war zone right now when we bring all of this together. We are losing them daily. So, let's please be aware. Look at the warning signs. Reach out to help. reach out to MCRC if you have a student that is exempl exemplifying different behaviors. Um even in the recent killings um we've lost a war a warrior. So let's continue to just be vigilant and love on our babies. Please, please, please. We don't want any more deaths.
211We have big events coming up this weekend with Black Expo and um the W Nva. Um let's bond together for whoever you serve and pray to or whatever your form of higher belief that we put a protection around our babies in our community. Um they're struggling. They need us. They need us as whole adults, not half. So, I extend that to you and as a staff, reach out to us if you need some self-care or some additional mental health support so you can be whole so are you're able to be a whole person to our babies. Enjoy your um the rest of your night. Thank you, >> Kevin. I really appreciate what you said and same with you, Lanna. Um, I know that we are in federal dollar crunches and things like that, but we,
212like Kevin said earlier, we have weathered the storm before and we will weather this one. I'm really excited with us looking forward for our district to make sure that I know we have teachers um that believe that maybe some of our kids do need to be in the fifth grade or in the elementary schools, too. um giving just the opportunity to relook at all of our district. Um it's going to be educational, I think, for us as a board and for our community. But thank you everyone. I look forward to seeing everyone um staff and um at the kickoff on Wednesday. Um I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer. Thank you very much. Um, I would like to just go back and reiterate on the safety fair, just a short thing. Um, we
213definitely are trying to protect our kids from guns. I mean, I saw enough kids getting shot. I was tired of it. So, I texted Tim and I said, Tim, I can't take this anymore. I want to do something about it. I want to do a safety fair. I want to include this. Is that okay? In the meantime, Tabitha Jackson was sending an email to Tim saying basically the same thing um where her kids were actually in classes or in the same school at least with with um one of the families. Um, and so he put us together and we took off with this and we are running and we're not stopping until October 25th at noon plus cleanup. So, um, we this is very important to us. And if you have any suggestions, thoughts, just
214email me. And, um, it's it's not just a gun, but it's also every other aspect of safety. We've got a nice big plan. So, um, thank you. That's it. Welcome back to school. If you're a uh a gun owner, um please secure your weapons so that they don't begin so they don't so they're not in in contact with kids. And if you're a gun owner, um you are responsible and accountable for uh how that weapons being used. Um, just want to say u enjoy the rest of the summer and u we've got first day coming around the corner. >> I'm going to shoot back in here real quick. I just want people to understand we're not advocating taking guns away from people. Um, ever there are quite a few gun owners out there, I'm sure,
215in this room, let alone the community. We are just advocating uh safe storage of them so that our kids don't accidentally pick them up and a 5-year-old shoot a three-year-old sibling. So, well, this has been a very interesting evening as you can see uh as it has been said that we are really involved in what we do and we really care about what we do. I must apologize for all the discussion and holding you here so long. Uh I really apologize. Normally uh when you see on your bulletin it says discussion, usually we let the people come up and discuss and then we don't give a comment. We might ask a question or two, but we wait and maybe have a a work uh work session or something to discuss it. But tonight we did
216got into it. I guess comp um we hadn't been together for a while so we just all started talking and talking but normally we would just let the person talk and then we would come together in a session and discuss it. So I apologize because I I don't like having to get into these kinds of discussions you know uh at our board meetings. So, I apologize for all of us. And um hopefully moving forward, we will do that in the future. If we have, you know, concerns and stuff, we're going to immediately say, "Okay, I think this this calls for a work session." And then that way we won't have to bore you with our conversation. Um, I would like to also say in regards to uh all the violence with our young people, I'm
217a uh not only a retired teacher, but I'm a retired school counselor and I went around to different schools developing programs to teach our children. You know, our kids are used to watching video games and in the video games it's a lot of violence, shooting, shooting, shooting. So they tend to remember what they see and they need they tend to act out what they see. So it's going to take a lot of talk and a lot of retaching and and focusing on nonviolence. We had a program that I started uh with all of my middle schools and high schools and elementary schools and it was called project lead. That means uh legal education to arrest delinquency. And this program came from Purdue University. And what it did, it had law enforcement, judges, juvenile centers, um,
218gun control people, everybody we could think of that was related to violent act. They would come and talk to the students. They would talk to them about guns and how to uh, solve their differences. They would talk to them about consequences. We even took the kids to jails. We took them to courtrooms and everything just to see people that were in trouble because of guns. We wanted to make them aware. We even took them places where uh people were locked up and the some of the prisoners talked to them and said, "Hey, this is not the way to go." So that's it was great education and at that particular time, yeah, we had incidents, but you never saw a lot of this gun violence on such a large scale as it is now. And I
219think that it worked. So we need to try to get back to that. So as we were sitting here talking about what can we do, my mind started going back to the old days when we had that legal education to arrest delinquency. So that's something that I'm going to try to work with uh our board and superintendent to see if we can get that going again because our children are definitely worth saving. So, I just thank you all for coming out tonight and you just have a safe travels home and we look forward to seeing you at our next session. Hope we didn't scare you off. Thank you. Bye-bye. All right. And then finally, um first of all, I would like to thank the technology department. It is um somewhat surreal that although it is
220I think 10 o'clock there, it is two in the morning here. Although the sun is shining brightly and I have been able to participate. So I want to thank technology for all that they do in making sure that that can happen. Um and I also want to say thank you to Leanna. Um, we've been discussing gun violence a lot, especially in the closing comments and our opening comments because of current events. And last year, she really spent a lot of time turning her focus onto mental health. And it is important to remember the connections between mental health and um, gun violence, whether it is against oneself or one's others, and that those lines are drawn very strongly. Um, as she said, if you see something, say something. Keep an eye, look out for warning signs.
221Um, that is just as important message um as all of the others because they are so carefully intertwined. Um, and so I just truly hope for safety for all of our babies and for all of the children um in Indianapolis over the next several weekends as we have all of these big events taking place. Um, keep an eye on everyone and take care of yourselves. And um, with that, our meeting is adjourned. We will see you next month. Thank you.