March15, 2023 MSD of Warren Township School Board Regular Meeting

001foreign thank you foreign thank you good evening we're going to now have the Pledge of Allegiance congratulations thank you we'd just like to welcome you all here we're going to get started right away with uh the superintendent's report good evening president Dorsey members of the board members of the community I've listed my activities for the last month there are a few that I would like to highlight I along with other Marion County superintendents met with Marion County Democrats and Republicans last Friday to discuss the devastating impact of House Bill 1499 and house bill 1001. as written Warren would be projected to lose over six million dollars in Lost Revenue over the next two years only second to IPS which is projected to lose over 15 million board we will ask that you join us in

002reaching out to our legislators regarding this issue and we have some language that we have um that we'll send to you today Warren hosted the Marion County superintendents as a part of this meeting Matthew Steward and Commander Ida Williams presented their take a stand for a safer Indianapolis campaign with us I will pass out a sample of what that campaign goal is essentially it's to connect the community with resources people and programs and they want to use the Marion County Schools to to assist with that safety related I thought Monday safety Forum was a powerful evening of testimony and collaboration around safety for our schools and communities we will continue to place a high priority on safety and engage with our parents and partners our next step will be convened our district Safety Committee which

003you will hear a little bit more about later this evening on March 4th I attended the waif worn arts and Education Foundation basketball tournament it was a great experience once again for our fourth graders their families and our staff I think Sunny Heights was our champion and principal Brooks was our Free Throw Contest winner I also attended the sectional boys basketball game that same evening and although we did not beat Cathedral very proud of Warren Central staff and our Warren Police for creating a great competitive atmosphere last week I spent some time in Columbus Ohio with Patel for kids and the Ed leader 21 superintendent Summit the focus of this Summit was centered around the science of learning the science of Hope and the science of belonging and as we think about the challenges and

004goals in front of us particularly attendance in K3 literacy the science of learning hope and belonging our foundation to those successes one thing that I couldn't help but take away was the science of Hope which requires goals Pathways and agency and when those things are not present we experience anger Despair and apathy and certainly the pandemic has put us in a downward spiral towards apathy and I think we've seen that with some of our students in their attendance so it's important for us to put goals in front of our students it's important for us to put Pathways in front of them and show them how they belong as a part of that work a couple spotlights that I would like to communicate to us coming up March 17th in partnership with the foundation and our

005Walker Career Center we have a breakfast scheduled for 40 of Our Community Partners March 18th I want to wish our 16th Street Soul choir students I don't know if they go by choir do they require yeah acapella group as they compete this uh weekend March 23rd we're having our Pleasant Run open house to celebrate their renovation completion March 27th we are inviting our faith-based leaders to Pleasant Run for a luncheon and I want to give a Warren well shout out real quick to our HR team this is hiring season we have some who are traveling across the country to to bring staff to Warren you'll hear about that tonight they just got here from from another event I want to give a Warren Wolf shout out to our elementary schools who are doing I read

006three right now with our second and third graders I want to give a shout out to Brian long who is the coach for our 16th Street Soul um singers he does an amazing job and Mr Dorsey if it's okay I need to tell a quick story I want to give a shout out to Ali Summers who is a first grade teacher at Pleasant Run Elementary and she has a new student this year from Haiti and unbeknokes to her and the staff this young lady has a prosthetic leg that she identified out on the playground and the prosthetic leg was made for her three or four years ago and no longer fit her so Ali Summers did some research and was able to connect the family with a prosthetic surgeon and once the story was told

007to the prosthetic surgeon he agreed to do it for free so he refitted her with a new leg and right before that happened and I didn't know they made these Mrs Summers went out and purchased a Barbie doll that had a prosthetic leg and gifted her that um there and I have some pictures I can send out to you but um Ali went above and beyond to to make this young lady feel she speaks four languages none of them are English but she is a delightful young lady and and now she feels more confident because she she can get around a little easier and that's my report this evening thank you Dr Hansen that was that was good that was really good hey uh we're gonna we're gonna start some things off a little just

008a little bit different today uh and from now on and that is we're going to start the spotlight right away so to tonight's Spotlight is uh Lowell uh Elementary School home of the fighting leopards that's too bad Miss Kim if you would this is right Christy's clicking for me um good evening everyone Dr Hansen Mr Dorsey members of the school board thank you for giving us some time this evening to share a little bit about we are not fighting we are going to talk about being kind tonight though we're going to talk about being present being Learners and being kind so we know we have three initiatives our attendance initiative our literacy initiative and we're going to talk a little bit about something that we do that aligns really well with our journey to graduate

009so we're going to start off with attendance we know that attendance is important we cannot teach children if they are not in school and so we have worked really hard this year we're trying to increase our attendance rate from around a 91 from last year up to 96 97 percent this year and we've been working hard with lots of initiatives and and really cheering on our students for being at school every day so we're going to go through a few of those we have low has a history of doing class meetings we've done class meetings for as long as I've been there and I've been there for a long time and so um so we always talk about what those expectations are and for all of the students at the class meetings we work together

010we're a team we want to make little the best school can be and the best way we can do that is by being at school every day and so attendance is a big starting point from the very beginning of the year trying to explain to students the importance of showing up so that they can learn and move forward um so we always start off that way we always kick off the year with an attendance contest as well and so this year um any student who was in school during our attendance contest for 96 percent attendance Raider higher got a low foam finger and let me tell you those are pretty popular and so they're all super excited when they got their foam fingers we also have attendance mentors we have students who are struggling to

011come to school every day and we have mentors in there in our our attendance core Club those were great touch points that we have with students at the beginning of every day at the end of every day we want them to know that we're happy that they're at school we want them to know that we miss them when they are not and so those mentors have really been a positive thing that we've started this year and we also do classroom attendance incentives if we see that we've got classrooms that have 10 days that the little sheet on the slide there is outside every classroom when students and that classroom has 10 days of perfect attendance they get a little prize it's all those lovely prizes that our parents just adore the slap bracelets the little

012toe tags but the kids love them and so we do reward them for being in school every day we try to recognize and acknowledge them we also attendance competitions we will have one when we get back we'll have the races on and when we get back for the fourth quarter to compete against our grade levels to see who can have the highest attendance rate and um go ahead sorry talking ahead of myself we also do quarterly attendance Awards these are awards that we also have done for quite a while um at the end of every quarter we recognize students who have perfect attendance those of you that have been around Lowell for a while know that we have our bucket hats and so students who earn perfect attendance for the nine weeks will get a

013pin or a button to put on their button hats and then each year they get to build those buttons and those hats become decorated and they get to take those home at the end of fourth grade we usually see them back on senior breakfast day we also will do random attendance drawings and prizes if we notice that we've got a classroom that's got perfect attendance or a grade level that has great attendance for the day we'll stop in we'll surprise them we've had fourth grade or fourth graders really have been leaders this year they've had several days where they've had perfect attendance so we've gone into the cafeteria and we've done some cheers with fourth grade we've taken pictures we've put it on social media yeah just to celebrate them and let them know that

014we appreciate them coming to school every day we also have our family liaison who's really working hard this year to communicate with families to reach out to families to see what is what's hindering them from being at school every day and to provide support as much as we can so that we can get our kiddos in and get them in classrooms um our K4 literacy again we are trying to reach that 50 or increase by 10 percent with our conditional growth percentile that has been a focus from day one that we've talked about with all of our teachers and our students we've got a lot of initiatives that we've worked on and things that we've done throughout the year to try and help parents and others understand our new way of teaching reading keep forgetting

015you can't read my mind we have brain-based literacy we are really fortunate in that we have a large number of teachers that are already trained or are currently in trading for brain-based literacy we have 15 teachers trained right now that's about half of our teaching staff in or in training in brain based our teachers are all in they love the training they are I am so proud of them because they are trying so hard to implement and learn new things we have veteran teachers that have been teaching for 20 years and this is all or more and this is a whole new style of teaching for them but they are they're excited about it they're trying new things and so we really appreciate their commitment to that program we had family literacy night earlier this

016year and we we went about a way where we kids had a passport so they got to visit all the different stations that we had each station really was set up to not only get students interested in what they were doing but try to teach parents parents some of the different ways that we're teaching reading this year so that they can follow through and understand because none of us were taught that way so we're trying to also communicate that with families so they understand when things are coming home what it is that we're doing at school we've also given many book giveaways well we have we have many classroom libraries are stocked and we've got a lot of books at school we want to make sure that our students have books at home as well

017and so we try to do book giveaways definitely before we go on break we do book giveaways anytime we have an event as well to try and build up those family libraries we celebrated read Across America last week and we had all kinds of fun things that the kids got to do the teachers read their favorite picture book to them we had guest readers that came into classrooms and read to classrooms with the students they were able to bring their furry friends so that they could read with their furry friend during the day and students also dressed up as their favorite book character that week on this next quarter we're going to try and do one book one school where we as a whole school decide on a book that we're going to read together

018and do some activities together with that we're hoping to have students help us vote on the book that we want to read together just as a whole school initiative where we're all reading the same book having some of the same conversations and activities and then for our journey of a graduate um we're going to talk a little bit about our little kindness and Justice challenge we have done this for many many years it really is a it's a national initiative that was initiated by the son of Dr Martin Luther King Jr the point is to carry on all the hard work that he has done throughout our country and we try and do our part at Lowell by doing kindness and Justice challenge every year to start it off we do a kickoff we have

019we we get students all pumped and excited because we want them to be invested in this we talk to them about it's their responsibility to show kindness and just acts they can earn a chain link and then we build those chain links together to make a chain of kindness outside of every classroom so one part of it is our kids will take a kindness pledge and then we look for them to do kind and just acts throughout the challenge and recognize them every time that they do that is one part of it the second part of it is really kind of teaching them how we give back to our community as well so we also do sponsor some charitable organizations and so we sponsored this year we sponsored the one Early Child Care Center we

020sponsored Riley Hospital for Children in American Heart Association and what we do for them you can go ahead we raise money throughout our challenge so that we can give back to our community and support those in our community who need it and with the American Heart Association we're really supporting people outside of our state as well and so ways that we do that we have a coin challenge some of our grade levels and kids get pretty competitive with this their corn jars outside every grade level so we tell our kids to grab underneath the couch cushions and find coins and make sure you ask your parents if you can bring any money in and um and they will bring they'll bring coins in every day to fill their coin jars we kind of compete and

021let them know who's got more coins and then they're able to bring those in Friday is Spirit day so every Friday students can participate in a spirit Day by paying a dollar we've had hat day we've had character day we've had gum day one of the kids favorites Pajama Day you gotta love Pajama Day slipper Day stuff animal day so lots of different theme today so that we can get students excited about participating and then all of that money goes towards our Charities and the staff we love our staff they love their jeans and so so they also pay money so that they can have jeans every Friday throughout the challenge all of the money through our coin challenge through our spirit days and through the staff Jean stays all of that money goes towards

022our charities in addition to that we do we try to highlight and do many different acts of kindness for other community members throughout our two months and Beyond we always we have also have a tradition where we write letters our students write letters to Veterans who are participating in the Honor Flight program those veterans get on the Honor Flight and go to DC and get to tour DC when they're riding I'm flying back home they have mail time and so they open up their mailbag and they read letters and our students have letters in those mailbags it is one of my favorite things that we do it never fails every single year we get Communications back from veterans that have read letters from our students and are so thankful that they got those letters and

023appreciative of that so our kids do a great job in telling our veterans thanks for their service we also do Valentines for vets so they will write cards and notes and letters to the veterans at the veterans hospital and we take those to the veterans hospital so that they can share those with the vets that are in the hospital we also try and support our Warren wrestlers when they go to State and so we have students who make big posters we had students this year that made a video cheering on our wrestlers and we get those to Jeannie Harris who then gets those to the wrestlers and so we also we tried to to teach the students that it's not just about us in our building but it's bigger than all of us and that

024we want to support everybody we were very fortunate this year in raising funds for our Charities we were able to raise two thousand dollars for the Warren Early Childhood Center over 2 300 for the Heart Association and twelve hundred dollars for Riley Hospital for Children on top of that we always challenge our students that we want that chain of kindness to go around the perimeter of our gym we have a really big gym now so however they were so incredibly close we had hundreds of Acts of Kindness that our students did over this this two months period this is our 19th year of doing our k j challenge we've supported many many Charities over the course of those years we've supported schools within our district over the course of those years and we've been able

025to raise over 75 thousand dollars to all of our organizations in the 19 years that we've done that so we are super proud of that and appreciative of everyone for helping out now we know that as as one school in our district we can do a lot however we feel that we would like to bring you in on our kindness challenge so I'm going to ask my fourth grade students to come forward please thank you so we are going to invite you to join our kindness challenge our students are going to lead you in the challenge we're going to see if we can do this they're going to read two lines they will pause we've practiced and then they will give you time to read those two lines which are on the screen Maybe can

026you click on the X I love it when I can tell Christy Hartman what to do with technology so we're going to let them begin we ask that when it's your turn if you will repeat those two lines be the kind of kid the kind of kid who's kind who does nice things and helps a lot and leaves no one behind the kind of kid who acts for kindness every day you ask for justice everywhere I promise I'm on my way just the kind of kid the kind of kid who's just I'll stand right up when things are wrong do what's right I must good job boys and girls you guys can wait right there for a minute okay um just one last um thanks I do want to shout out Miss Hartman here we

027have been fortunate for many years to um selfishly have Miss Hartman at Lowell and um and loved having her we'd get to share her with the district now which is a gift to everyone at the district but she does still help us immensely and has from day one with the kindness and Justice challenge she helps us organize it this is this is kind of our baby at Lowell it means a whole lot to us so I do want to give a shout out and say thank you Miss Hartman for all that you do to help us with the challenge well done and I want to say thank you to all of our students all of our staff that pitch in and really commit to this every year as well and parents who wouldn't be able

028to make this happen without your dollars and coins and and commitment to helping students and learn how to be kind and show other kindness as well so thank you parents as well thank you very much Miss Kim thank you Miss Kim thank you for bringing such such wonderful kids to us aren't they fabulous hey guys can you stand here I think they want to shake your hand we are going to give you a little we do a low pin a kindness and Justice pin for our hats every year so you're all going to get a pin for your hat but you know some of you have hats I'll work on that thank you foreign okay that was that was very good that was very good our next order of business will be um our Warren

029Central student representative who is not here today but Dr Hansen will speak in her behalf convey sends sir apologies for not being able to be here this evening but she did provide a report I'm reminded that one of the things that we try to instill in our students is voice and choice and convey is taking advantage of her new platform to express her advocacy for herself and for her fellow classmates good evening I hope everyone is having a great day I'm going to discuss some issues with curriculum Wi-Fi and positivity at Warren Central so Cafe goes on to share that they would like to see more current events in their discussions in the classroom as well as more advanced books and I will share with you board this evening that Miss Taylor principal Taylor and

030I spoke on the um concerns and ideas that convey has brought to us this evening and how that can be how they can collaborate at the building level to make some of these things happen there is a question about Wi-Fi in the building and I know I've had some conversations with board members around Wi-Fi with that our CTO Mr Schroeder and principal Taylor have had those conversations there are some capacity issues that we are challenged with is an old high school there's a lot of concrete at the high school which creates limitations on on cellular students do have access to the student Wi-Fi network so it's not as if they don't have it they're wanting it through their cellular phone or through through Wi-Fi um she goes on to say that they would like to

031see more positivity um in the in the school just around encouragement I think that speaks to the science of Hope and belonging that I referenced earlier um she would like to have more opportunities for her and her classmates her peers to express themselves she goes on with some ideas of painting and and how they might be able to add some vibrancy to the building um they are pleased with some of the changes that they are seeing in the building they are thankful and grateful that their voices are being heard they love Mrs Taylor as their new principal quote we feel she really cares and she interacts with the students on a daily basis no comment on that one here but that is her report for this evening thank you Dr Hansen um the next item

032on the agenda is the mayor's neighborhood of advocate and uh uh Brendan Brennan Edwards is also not here uh I think you're going to see pench it for him as well Dr Hansen will say a few words for him as well Brandon would like to remind everyone that the neighborhood grant program application is now open until Monday April 17th applicants May request grants up to ten thousand dollars the details in submission portal can be found in that all this information is is on our board Docs if you would like to submit a traffic complaint There's the link to do that I put in my Wednesday call today um this is good information for all of us Post Road from Washington Street to I-70 will start construction next week it is scheduled from uh now until

033November of 2023. they are completely rehabilitating and replacing Post Road it will never be closed completely Crews will work in phases to allow for minimal disruptions to the neighborhood commuter traffic should use the detour off a midhoffer to avoid construction which board you know that that will have implications on us for Lakeside the high school and the Early Childhood Center local businesses and homes on Post Road will remain accessible at all times Mr Clayton and our transportation team are aware of this they've already made adjustments in our bus routes as needed and we will continue to work with the Department of Public Works to hopefully stay a week or so ahead of it at least so that we can make adjustments and communicate to our um Community the impact that that's going to have and

034that is his report for this evening good thank you sir appreciate that the next item on our agenda is board correspondence uh Ms Rachel do we have any correspondence thank you next item on our agenda is uh business of citizens present do we have any green cards we do not okay okay good okay next item or our agenda consent agenda is going to approve all items on the cassette agenda which includes the following approval of minutes approval of the financial report payroll claim financial report claim register and electronic payments financial report years to date summary of fund balances a human resource report field trip requests we've only got one our JROTC kids are going to the leadership camp in Bloomington March the 27th through the 1st of April we're having to prove the permission to

035accept gifts and grants it looks like Brookview Liberty Park Lakeside and Warren Central High School received gifts and donations to the tune of about 25 24 000 dollars change orders that were change orders for each Ridge Grassy Creek Hawthorne Lowell Pleasant Run and Warren Central High School phases we had no contracts we had the use of a school property and there were a plethora of organizations that were going to be using some of our our facilities there were no special events and no conflicts of interest forms could I have someone to move to accept the uh consent agenda it was properly moved by Miss Miss Gloria yeah Miss Gloria and second by Miss Luciana any discussions all in favor say aye any opposed say nay because the agenda is approved there's someone oh it's going

036to come up okay good good the consent agenda is approved the next item on the agenda are reports we will have Mr Brian to talk about Investments on people with Dr tierna Anderson good evening president Dorsey Dr Hansen members of the board it's good to be with you this evening as we spend a little time just sharing with you some of our initiatives with regard to the key areas of recruitment and retention we wanted to just Express and list the key board goals that we in District administration wholeheartedly support as well and then some particularly around recruiting and retaining and developing you know top talent certainly with administrators and teachers but also with support staff and so um we are very involved this is a very interesting time to be in public education as you

037know you've probably heard me Express at the legislative forum and elsewhere the Dual challenges for Warren Township with respect to State and national teacher shortages as well as also the ongoing effort to attract teachers of color which greatly benefits our students and so we will do a little sharing along those lines this evening our colleague Pam Griffin regrets that she can't be here this evening but she's definitely here in spirit she's a very integral part of our team in HR contributed quite a bit to this presentation as well this evening but I also have here Dr Tierney Anderson who joined our staff right after Labor Day this school year and she has done a great job and so the three of us really really sink our teeth in this and and I think you'll see

038that even though sometimes you can be easy to be discouraged when it comes to this area with Recruitment and Retention it's it's also very exciting and a lot of times in public education we like to step up to these challenges and use them as opportunities and so we're in a time period where all things all options are on the table and so we are experimenting and innovating with all kinds of different things both short-term and long-term strategies so without saying anything more I want to turn it over to tyranny and take it away thank you Mr Simpson um president Dorsey Dr Hanson members of the board thank you so we have been really strategic about what we have been doing in HR this year I want to start with retention because if we start with

039retention you don't have to hire as much if you hire people you maintain where you retain them we don't have to always keep trying to fill positions and so I really want to start with retention we have been very strategic about placing weekly communication to leaders throughout our weekly announcements especially around creating a sense of belonging in buildings because when teachers have essential belonging when workers employees have essential belonging they won't always jump ship at the first sign of trouble they want to work it out because they feel like they're an integral part of our system new teachers have mentors and there's a full new teacher orientation we have done a lot about around teacher and staff recognition principals are with their new hires for 30 60 and 90 day plan to make sure they

040are onboarded properly and make sure they are creating a sense of belonging for our new staff as they come in and also this year one of the the new things that we have done is we created a state interview and we surveyed teachers who have been here five 10 and 15 years and so we wanted to know why do you stay in Warren what keeps you here and so and then what would you like to change about Warren because you've been here and you know us so we wanted to gather their input so that we could continue to grow get better and retain our staff and so that's a that's a huge thing that we've done this school year around recruitment we've had our own Warren Township recruiting events we had one in the first

041semester and one in the second semester we have increased our recruitment via social media using Instagram Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter we've been to various Career Fairs from Indiana State to IUPUI to all pretty much the local universities that have invited us but also sometimes we invite ourselves because we reach out to them instead of waiting on people to reach out to us we're being we're playing offense instead of defense and so being forward thinking we just came from one tonight actually um so yes so being very intentional and making sure we're in the right place at the right time um personalized notes and Warren swag to student teachers having to build a sense of community with them so now that they've done their student teaching here how can we get them to stay how can

042we they now become our teachers of tomorrow and communication to potential candidates whenever we go to a career event a teaching event I always follow up with emails to everybody that we spoke to so we have everybody sign in we have emails I create a newsletter so that they know what's happening in in Warren how they can Shadow if they have time if they wanted to drop in and be a Kelly sub so just helping them through the motions of how to become part of our Warren Family investing people with strategic Recruitment and Retention you know we have a goal of hiring teachers of color and so first semester we did have a virtual teachers of color listening sessions and all that information was mailed out ifs are emailed out to the various departments with

043their concerns or whatever feedback they had for them we had a book study open to all and that is going on currently it is the equity in social justice 50 by uh principal cafele each building we restarted their Equity teams really hard in December we're still setting the stage we meet pretty much monthly we're setting the stage and we're putting little increments in place now we're to the point where we are about to do our smart goals and then after we do our smart goals we're going to use a change method and then start to implement our work in each building in each team again we have the new teacher mentors recruiting we have been hitting heavy lately with hbcus I go to Central State tomorrow I have Jackson State next week we've gone to

044Central State first semester I did um Tennessee State also we and that was virtual and we also have done Kentucky state and again I'm still keeping in contact with all of those candidates and potential teachers that I've met along the way sending out those Communications to keep them in the know of what's happening in Warren creating HBCU Partnerships really trying to create a pipeline not only for the schools in our area with Central State and Kentucky state but even schools that are not in our area having us to be the go-to place for Indianapolis for their teachers IUPUI black student union they had a speed dating event and invited me there it was very interesting I've never been to a speed dating event in general but it was very good I just kind of talked

045to them about education what it's like to be a teacher what's it like to be a principal just about the education field and my journey in education so that was very beneficial professional learning we have the teacher Pathways and we've been having presentations for the teachers during the pathway time the leadership team book study Equity Warriors I've been leading we're on chapter four at this point team leader meetings at Porter Services making sure that they have a piece of our Equity too so we're not just focusing on school buildings we have to focus on our teams Porter Services maintenance those types of areas too because they need to be Equitable as well and so they need to be an integral part of the work in their division in their team the Lawrence sorry the Leadership

046Institute series of enhancing employee evaluation we really did a good job of trying to make our evaluations not be I got you how are we supporting how can we be helpful how can we you're a good teacher but let's make you better every teacher can get better so we really want to be strategic about using our evaluation to help teachers get better and then our partnership with Marion University where we have um teachers who want to get certified not teachers I'm sorry support staff who want to be certified and so how to partner them with a university give them some relief on the financial aspect of it and hopefully they come back and be our teachers as well re-examining and refining our practices we're looking very strategically at our rubrics that we have for evaluation

047new bus driver rubric new bus monitor rubric and they're also going through an equity lens in the process as well again our Leadership Institute series we have hard to hire stipends to provide a little extra incentive for those positions that we are having trouble feeling like multilingual Learners special education those types of things and also multilingual advertising how are we reaching out to those who don't speak English being intentional about what's out there so they have access to what we're doing in Warren as well we are creating um teacher we're creating HR Partnerships as far as Fellowship for black teachers and that's through IUPUI again Marion University we're creating a pipeline with uh sorry Kentucky State University really they're trying to send us some teachers they want some athletes from us so we're trying to

048build a partnership along the way Western Governors University who also gives our teachers a discount our sorry our classifies that discount discount if they want to be certified IUPUI black student union and the Indiana Association of principals hey I get to talk about salary and benefits yes well uh of course I'm one of the chief negotiators on the bargaining team and so we always strive to um to really do what we can to squeeze the blood out of this of the rocks to try and get the best Rays as possible for our people and um that also has to do with uh providing the best uh benefits as well this year we did increase substantially bus driver pay to be even more competitive also increasing matching bus trainee pay to the starting pay of the

049bus drivers as well and of course we continued on with our 250 an hour retention bonus through Esser this year into this year and extended it one of my as I say you know one of my favorite parts of this job is going to bat for employees behind the scenes with respect to benefits and retirement we continue to try and tap our vendors to better educate our employees on their retirement and their benefits this year in particular was interesting because we have steel benefit is our online enrollment system for benefits we started at July 1 with our new employees and then our this was our first open enrollment in this past November where all Warren employees had to uh luckily we were able to have in-person counselors and advisors to help with that since it

050was our first go through but to be able to finally as an organization our size to get off the paper and and fully automate benefits enrollment has been great and all things considered the first go-around was very successful so that is nice and it really does help people really see in addition to their salary the total compensation that the board contributes on their behalf for themselves and their families we also were able to piggyback off of what we agreed to and collective bargaining for teachers to all staff with respect to employer contributions to health savings accounts which is a big big plus and for those who didn't don't have a health savings account they got the equivalent in a stipend uh we've had a host of different stipends with respect to it attracting different uh

051positions um for instance one a big one that's kind of innovative was the uh using our Esser dollars to attract seventh and eighth grade math teachers in particular with a two-year commitment five thousand dollars per year for a ten thousand total two-year commitment we've also been making full use of the supplemental stipends that the board approved not too long ago for other positions involving special ed and you know math and science types of positions so we continue to uh the you know in bargaining we increase the uh the amount per hour for tutoring and um yeah so that's really the main highlights my part two yes uh so what I want to point out here is uh all the various ways that we have uh just been uh 10 times 10 ways with our communication

052uh one of the things that we've done recently is we've we've struck a deal with LinkedIn to um expand we've always had a LinkedIn page but was limited to just those who follow us but what we do with with the package that we have now um with LinkedIn we can um take the next step in expanding that and pushing out positions even more and attracting uh additional followers and uh so that that's a fairly recent development and um we are going to be pushing that pretty hard the rest of this year and going into the next year one of the things that's also new that was on my addendum and my HR report this evening was a teacher referral bonus um I failed to mention that but that that is a bonus that is uh

053250 dollar stipends for any employee except not including administrators who uh will will refer a candidate that we hire and so the there's a Google form where the Warren employee answers some questions with respect to who they're referring and then when they apply online there's a place where they can indicate who referred them and as long as those two things match up we can provide a 250 bonus and any more and staff who refers teachers that we hire can refer as many as they want and get as many 250 stipends as as they can as they're eligible for so um that's our one of our very very newest developments and we're going to start we're starting that right now um going into the hiring season so real quick I just want to reintroduce uh our

054our staff we have a great staff as you can imagine in HR every day we're facing and payroll we're facing all kinds of things just to kind of keep the district running on top of all the other Innovative things that we've shared tonight and that includes you know with payroll you can just imagine the hundreds and hundreds of bi-weekly transactions that get processed every pay period with just three people the district this size and we we administer all benefits every day that includes retirement we also deal with Ada FMLA civil rights all the alphabet soup of employment law every day workers comp unemployment insurance and so there's a lot a lot that comes at this but I will say that it tends to create a very tight-knit group when you're kind of in the trenches

055and just trying to you know to kind of keep things going it's it's a great staff to work with finally I just want to end on kind of a celebratory tone and what you see here are just some examples of uh through Linkedin on teacher folks who got hired and worn and how they feel about it so yeah um we'd be happy to entertain any questions right at this moment if you have any questions for us thank you Tierney I just want to say I really appreciate the efforts that are going into finding diversity for our students we really appreciate it or I do thank you I would like to say I am so happy Brian that you have um doctor what's your last name Anderson working with you and and as Terry said reaching

056out all over the place I think that we're going to see some great results so you're doing an awesome job I'm so excited you know when I heard all of this stuff going on I was like wow this is great I love I love checking in with Tierney every day because I continue to learn things from her background and experiences and having her on staff is just just elevated our game with respect to Recruitment and Retention and she's right you know a big Focus this year has been belonging there's no question about it we see it in the stay interview responses that we just collected that when employees tend to stay if they feel like they're part of a family and that they belong we had several comments about how I really appreciate my colleagues

057I like collaborating with my colleagues and so that that is a huge piece of retaining people um yeah yeah thank you yeah I do um Brian about um you could tell you guys would have put a whole lot of work in and a lot of effort in trying to and getting this thing moving forward and I just want to say I appreciate you and and Dr Harrison doing a fine job thank you you may have noticed recent recently I've noticed that Doe is really promoting this but right now uh pipelines educator pipelines is a big thing and that has been something we've been working on for years but that is that is short-term and long-term strategies multi-prong strategies to grow our own so when you saw those Partnerships with Marion IUPUI in fact we have

058a Marion informational session tomorrow and then the week next week IUPUI is coming because we like to tap support staff who have bachelor's degrees and want to teach um even with WGU our partnership at WGU you could be a support staff member and actually go and get your bachelor's and then and then work to become a teacher um but IUPUI is a district-based alternative certification program again support staff with bachelor's degree who want to teach have an opportunity but then also secondary teachers with an emergency permit it's a great option to get their ballot teacher license Marion University is a partnership where Marion Warren chip in a third of the cost each and so we have seven currently right now who are in various some are working to be administrators others are going through transition

059to teaching um so so we we've developed these Partnerships in multiple ways to tap people who are in our own Community perhaps even working as a support staff employee to become teachers for us and oftentimes they do make some of the best teachers those who those who are Warren grads or who are familiar with our community so did I or did I not hear you say that administrators and board members are part of that incentive they are not because they're already out there just beating the bushes and every day anyway and they do it because I I just like um to commend you for the hard work and one of the things that stuck out because sometimes we do forget about our staff that we already have because we're so busy looking for other people

060and they feel you know shaded or neglected so I really appreciate one of the first things you said that you're working on retention because that's going to reduce your hunt you know to be out into these schools and communities and I told Dr Hansen you might need a chaperone thank you for your great work thank you thank you I do want to ask one question in trying to retain um you know our employees one thing that I'm interested in if they are have some concerns or can they voice their concerns without feeling of retaliation or punishment I mean where can they go what can they do because sometimes you know employees do have concerns but they're afraid of retaliation you know or something bad is going to happen if they voice their opinion and that's

061not good you know so how can how are we addressing that that's a great question I'm approaching my 10 years in HR and I joke sometimes that sometimes you feel like a priest because people come and come back I'm very accustomed and so is tyranny in her short time with us and Pam as well we're very accustomed to people reaching out it's a big part of HR is meeting with people and providing a safe environment we will never condone retaliation in fact it's in our board policy you know anybody who comes who comes forward and complains shall not be retaliated against so so if we are in a formal investigation whoever is involved in that will have to be warned you cannot retaliate but we get a lot of folks that just come in who

062want to just get something off their chest sometimes we'll just ask them you know how would you like us to proceed some people just want someone to know and they're done some people do say you know I'm comfortable with you going to the next stage but we we do face that in HR all the time and so we try to make it very so we have to be very careful of who we talk to and make sure that we honor that professional confidentiality as well until it's appropriate to or until they give us the they allow us to go forward and try to sometimes that may mean like uh oftentimes you know managing people is tough but a lot of times in HR one of our big jobs is to work with our supervisors to

063help them just better manage people and we we talk about how HR allow us to be a support for you don't be an island unto yourself when you're faced with these difficult Personnel issues come to us let HR Support you as a manager of people because it's it is hard work and it's not always easy and some of these issues are extremely complex and fact sensitive and so that's where HR can be a strategic Department strategic partner with other areas of the district to help help figure things out that's what we do and everything's figure outable as Pam Griffin would say it will well any of the comments hey thank you Brian appreciate that that was great next on the agenda College and Career Readiness and counselors report Miss Laura Uber practicing I know you've

064got you've got it down I have to say you've got good practice uh president Dorsey Dr Hansen board members it is absolutely my pleas pleasure to be here tonight um as a proud foreign educator of 22 years to talk to you about our school counseling program and our College and Career Readiness activities that we are engaged in currently you can't talk about counseling you can't talk about College and Career Readiness without talking about the investment and the future of our graduates those jog skills our student achievement and counselors are an integral part of that every student's journey in Warren when you talk about counselors and career Readiness we're also talking about the well-being and safety and emotional health of all of our students so we appreciate your investment in those crucial areas of our students

065lives foreign so in my brief time I promise to be brief tonight I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our counseling program uh ideal counseling model we are recipients of the Department of Ed comprehensive School counseling Grant and then talk to you specifically about our K-12 College and Career Readiness initiative and Continuum and specifically Zello which is our new learning platform so we're excited to highlight we are very fortunate with your investment in our school counselors in this District I brag a lot when I'm outside of our community about our investment in the school counseling program and the recognition of the role that these counselors play in our student lives we have 37 counselors in the district nine at the elementary schools one at each Elementary we have 12 intermediate and middle

066school counselors at the Creston Stony Brook and Raymond Park for at each building one for each grade level we have 12 high school counselors at Warren Central with three at every grade level and department chair as well at our Warren Online Academy we have three full-time school counselors there one who serves our K-8 online students one who serves our freshman and sophomore online students and then one who serves our Juniors and seniors and then our Renaissance alternative school also has a school counselor full-time that serves the students 612. so what does that mean for us um over the past several years we've increased our school counselors significantly previous to that it was not unusual for our middle school high school counselors to have caseloads of over 500 students and so Dr Hanson when you talk

067about the science of Hope and belonging and those relationships that school counselors build it's very hard to build long-term lasting relationships with 500 plus students right so we are very fortunate our caseloads are much smaller than many of our counterparts around the city and so our average caseload now of our counselors in the district is a little over 320 students and while that is still a large number it is a significantly better number to work with students and when we have them over a long period of time we can build those relationships so we truly appreciate that ability to invest in those students in their journey and in meeting their needs as they travel from our preschool all the way through the high school so when you talk about school counseling program model we fit

068right in the middle of that journey of a graduate our whole role is to support our students and their success Beyond High School counselors serve three areas so we serve all students in academics social and emotional learning and then College and Career Readiness which basically is making sure our students are prepared for Success Beyond High School whatever that post-secondary goal is for them and so our goal is to serve all of those students in those areas we are recipients of the Indiana Department of Ed comprehensive School counseling Grant as a partner with Central Indiana Educational Service Center and what that means for Warren is we are going to have some specialized Support over the next year and a half as we continue to grow and improve our program we will have strategic planning based on

069our data and what our needs of our students are and looking at that in a much deeper level support for our counselors we're going to utilize the Indiana graduates prepared to succeed dashboard the new metrics that they're looking at and attack those areas that school counselors play an integral role in influencing those it provides leadership Network support as well as new counseling support as we talk about retaining and keeping our counselors here providing them with mentors ongoing and professional Learning and Development throughout that as well as continued education and work-based learning and career and I know you are familiar with our 3E grant our explore engage experience and all of these things that are coming together to align and make sure our students are the best prepared well-rounded healthy individuals that are going to go

070out and change the world as we know Warren does so one more visual here for you so when you talk about the counseling and the art Services you've got three columns you've got your academic your College and Career and your social emotional and those are the areas in which counselors serve our students and I know you've also heard of tier one tier two and tier three services so as a review those tier one services are those things that every student gets so in the counseling world that looks like for the social emotional those lessons that we do the bullying prevention child safety the academic planning that every student receives the [Music] um those things that all students have throughout the their experience K-12 when you get to tier two you're talking about small groups and

071services for some students so what that might look like in the academic is it might be small groups study skills working on organizational skills a social emotional might be social skills or dealing with grief in small groups or working with our 21st century Scholars on keeping them eligible for their scholarship throughout high school so they can be eligible for that to go on to college when they graduate and then that tier three level are those individual more intensive needs so that might look like Crisis Intervention students that need referrals for more long-term sustained Mental Health Services or that intentional one-on-one counseling that many of our counselors do at that High School level to get some of those students across that finish line for those credit recovery and some of those struggles that some of our

072seniors face so sometimes when I talk about college and car Readiness being a K-12 people will ask well how do you start preparing students for post-secondary and in elementary school and it really does begin there the ideas at elementary school is that we want to build an awareness we want our young people to know about careers beyond what they see at school what they see at home or they read in books we know there's just the vast number of jobs out there so the elementary level we're truly just hoping to exp expose them to as many possible careers as we can as we move into intermediate and Middle School we're going to start Exploring Careers a little more in depth we're going to start learning about ourselves what we're interested in what are we good

073at how do those match up to some potential post-secondary options for that as we go into High School we're really beginning career preparation we know that through our career center through the CTE programs and credentialing and many of the technical programs that we have students can leave High School prepared to go right into the workforce Workforce we have students that take dual credit that's preparing them to be successful in a four-year institution so we know that that High School level it becomes a much more individualized really more specific post-secondary planning and then we know that learning continues Beyond it doesn't matter how much preparation you have all of that we know how much learning happens when you finally get that job right so we know that that learning continues well beyond high school and throughout

074their career so I want to talk to you about Zello so we launched Zello it is an online College and Career Readiness platform we launched this in January this has been about a year in the works of researching and talking to other school districts different companies to find something that could engage all of our students K-12 so we launched this in January and I'm just really excited to share with you how that has gone since we launched in January we've had over 8 000 students in the district engage in Zello learning at least once many of them have been four or five times engaged in activities within the platform that has totaled over 38 000 separate logins into the learning platform K-12 just since January so I think that's a pretty good start and get

075some good momentum our goal was that our students would have three learning opportunities with Zella this semester K-12 and those would happen through their core connector SEL period through e-learning days and then through counselor classroom lessons so some of those have happened we still have some counselor lessons going on I've been in the buildings the last couple of days or the last couple of weeks and um I'll tell you a little bit the one thing I've observed when I've been in the classroom at the middle school level with the counselors doing some lessons with Zella as I'm walking around the room kids are on their iPads now they're five six seventh eighth graders they may not be following exactly what the counselor has them do right but in every classroom I've been in and they've

076been on their iPads I've not found one kid that left the platform and is on his iPad doing something else so I think that speaks really well to that it's keeping them engaged and they're interested in the information that's in there so been really excited about that so at K5 we're really looking at like I said the career awareness self-discovery and building those future Readiness skills at kindergarten through second they explore this delightful little Career Town with Detective Jill she takes them through they play a game and they're solving a mystery to find missing workers throughout the town in the process they learn about different jobs you'll see this little about me character that this theme runs throughout Zello K-12 but at this level again it's fun it's engaging every time my grandson comes over

077he wants to play that uh or that career game I have on my computer so his endorsement is good at third through fifth grade we start going a little bit deeper and so we're still building that awareness but we're starting to have the students think a little bit about themselves and what they're interested in and what their skills and interests are so you still just see this about me they have individualized lessons for each grade level related to work and learning and careers and interests and skills and goals and all of those things so at third through fifth grade we're talking about what am I interested in what skills do I have what I want to learn what subjects do I like in school and how do those relate to some careers down the road

078for me when they get to that career point you can see that in this they've they're checking out here a family doctor and then it gives them information and again these are just snapshots but they can take their different subjects and click on the ones that they like and they do well in and it will lead them to different careers that are related to that when we get to the 6 through 12 level we start going deeper and on a much more individual level so you can see here on their dashboard there's quite a bit more for them to explore we continue to have grade level lessons at related to like at this grade level they're talking about jobs and employers interview skills resume all of the things that you would expect to find in

079looking at that college and Care Readiness continuum but at the secondary level they start doing some self-assessments they look at their interests their personality Styles their learning styles they start to develop electronic portfolio they have careers identified goals and plans and one of my favorite parts of this is as they look at their plans for after high school they start entering their experiences so as they're going through high school and they're involved in JROTC or they're on an athletic team or they volunteer or student council or they're part of a club or they get a part-time job they start entering all these experiences into their portfolio and ultimately it helps them form a resume that they can then download as a PDF send off and it's one of the best resume builders that I've I've

080seen it creates a very professional looking resume for them when they're exploring Pathways the other thing I love about this program is it gives them every pathway there's not just one it's not just four year two year or that it this has options for them to look at military two-year apprenticeship entrepreneurship going straight into work and so if they don't know what they want to do they have all of those options which they can explore and see another thing that's great about this when they do look at a career it walks them through that pathway that you might follow the beginning entry career and then that might lead to this or you start with this and that so it's a very visual opportunity for them to explore those so finally at the secondary level when

081they do get to a specific career this is just a snapshot there's much more there available to them but it talks about the demand for that job it talks about their salary range it will tell them specifically in Indiana what the demand is what the salary is here locally it explains if that job is a good match or an excellent match or not a good match we have students that say you know I'm I want to be a nurse and they do the assessment and it says it says I'm a bad match for a nurse and you can take them back through and it says what you said you don't like biology that's probably why it's saying you're not a good match for nursing because there's a lot of Science and biology in that so

082that part for them to be able to go back and see why is that saying that's good or bad or not a good thing for me is a great reflective activity for them so I just wanted to finish up with this is a little um I know it's a promotional from Zello but I think it does an excellent job of summing up why these conversations are important it this aligns with all the things that we're doing creating those opportunities those Pathways giving students options to explore what's going to be the best experience for them in high school and and beyond that and so I'm excited to say that it's just the beginning because what will happen with Zello coming in the year to come will be there's a family portal that will allow parents and

083and there's children to have these conversations at home and they can see what their children are doing it builds year after year so they can see what they liked in fifth grade and by the time they get to high school has that changed it's in Spanish and English you can switch back and forth between the two they're working on other languages but it is very easy to switch back and forth to Spanish and English and just really excited about the opportunities that this is going to provide our students so I will share this and hopefully the sound will work [Music] an Engaged student is a successful student it's as simple as that you've got some kids saying I know where I'm going just show me how to get there and then you have students who

084don't think there's anywhere for them to go you have to be able to support both of those students and everybody in between get them to take a real look at themselves and see what that means for their future when you say to students to any student your life is not a one-size-fits-all thing let's take a look at who you are and how you learn and what interests you and figure out where that can take you and let's map out how you can get there you're giving these kids a real reason to care they see just how much possibility is out there that's when the switch flips and a student realizes they have a hand in their own destiny and that changes how a student's going to view school and learning and their whole story there

085is a difference in test scores in attendance is this positive culture around academics proof you can point to and say these kids have the confidence to tackle the next step whatever that might be what happens when students are investing in themselves it's remarkable [Music] so with that if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them for you question one [Laughter] I I think you're doing an awesome job but my question is how can we involve parents more in the decisions of their schedules because I do hear some parents saying say that the kids make out their schedule and then they're not happy with it so we know that students sometimes don't make good decisions and so it's important for those parents to be involved I know I was very much involved in making

086out the schedule during their middle and high school years so how can we do that inherent Warren but I hear parents say they want to be a part of that process absolutely and we we always know especially at those transitional years when they're moving from intermediate to high school and not that those are really important and we have increased all those opportunities to have families in the building and have those questions answered about what classes are and that and I think we continue to improve on that principal Taylor and Ms Sharon ring and I have had conversations about that exact thing in terms of when we're making decisions with students and having those conversations how we include parents if we zoom them in if we make those phone calls again I go back to that

087the the smaller caseloads allow that opportunity for counselors to have those times to have those meetings with parents but I agree we definitely need to continue to have that voice as part of those conversations they're crucial you said one question I thought there might be a second one counselors make out the schedules before they finalize those schedules get a signature from the parent you know so that you know that the parent has had an opportunity to talk to that student they do like four specifically for eighth grade those are typically our first schedules that they do they send that home with them and they share that information we send messages out in parent square but then they have that opportunity if there are questions or if parents look at that and think I want to

088make a change they have that window up until spring break to get with that counselor and make those adjustments yes they do they have access to this after they graduate I you know that's a good question I will have to find out I would think that they probably have access for a certain amount of time I know that the like many of the things like the resume and a lot of those things the profiles for like the student they can download that as a PDF so if it's something that they don't have access to everything so if I wanted to go in and see Tim Hansen's profile as the counselor and teachers can access this I could pull up your profile and print a PDF that shows your interest your favorited careers your resume everything

089that you've saved in there so students can absolutely save all of that do teachers or counselors have access to student information in terms of if I pulled all the kids who have this interest level or um career interest do counselors have access to that yes that's one of the other things with Zello that's amazing is the amount of data in the reporting and the ease of access to that so I can look at in a click of a button I can see how many people logged on at Lakeside today and then I can go and look and see who those students were I can sort by classes I can look at what it'll list what are the highest ranked careers so we've had conversations at the middle school and high school level of like career

090cafes right so bringing people in kids can have lunch with someone from a particular career well we can look at the Zello and say you know our eighth graders here's our top three careers our eighth graders are interested in let's bring some people in to talk to them about that so there's a wealth of data to the individual student to a classroom to the school level to the district and it's literally two or three clicks to get there and if a student is linked to a teacher in any way through Synergy then they have access to that and then if we need to expand that for like in the middle school for like our teachers of record our department chairs I can we can manually add additional students but it automatically syncs if they're connected

091in Synergy with the teacher they can see any student that they have I love it I just have to say real quick when we talk about the science of hope you have to have a goal a pathway and agency and everything was right there created the goal it created the pathways multiple and then how does the student play a part and I love it yeah and and the counselors have that opportunity to help provide that hope right and being able to have those conversations about this is how you get there like they said in there you know those are those are crucial conversations and I love that we can educate our families too when we have the family portal open up this fall to where I'm going to work with the Liaisons to make sure

092that our families are aware that they can log on and see what their children are interested in and have those conversations as well and they can explore with their child colleges and all of those things right there at their fingertips I have a question I'm sorry I know we're just rolling this out but our counselors meeting with our students our freshmans our sophomores and really building their schedule like one-on-one with the student and the counselor and are we looking at these Pathways and connecting our courses into their interest yes so all of our high school counselors meet with their students at least twice a year individually but they meet specifically in the spring to do that mapping out their post-secondary goal um they're you know they're required to have a certain pathway in high school

093as it is so making sure they're following those requirements and as we do this that's one of the things I'm excited about that they can now if you I'm meeting with a student and they're like well I have no idea not really sure what I want to do that student can pull up or the counselor can pull up their Zello account and say look well when you did this here's some things you said you were interested in let's talk about that so I make it like I said the ease of access to it and and that in the um it's just so user friendly it's been a great resource so far I just wanted to quickly um give some kudos to the high school guidance counselor I actually got a call this morning maybe yesterday

094morning from a guidance counselor at the high school asking about summer school enrollment for a class that my daughter needed so I mean they really are reaching out to parents and trying to make sure that they've got all of their eyes dotted and T's crossed so thank you yeah well thank you Miss Laura I appreciate your uh giving us our presentation I'm tempted I'm tempted to ask the question about you know um the grant money that's uh supporting all of this and uh I'm tempted to ask what that dollar amount is but I'm not going to ask that question and uh but I I hope that it can it can support the robust and ambitious program that we're going to pull out in Fall you said yes so this that's already part of this is

095ongoing that we've committed to the grant will add on to our ability to use this so the grant is actually going to allow us to specifically help our counselors utilize data and looking at needs and going through the steps to Shore up our counseling program in terms of being recognized at the state level as a model program so it'll just build on this we've got another comment uh first I'd like to say I really like I love this program and especially the data part how you can bring in people to speak to specific specific uh the the areas that the children are interested in but um is there also a way that you can possibly create data to have a version of your success students or Hall of Fame kind of deal even if the

096kids never meet them just to say well these are the kids that went to school so the kids can identify oh a Warren kid did this and I can do this and if you have this Hall of Fame kind of thing set up and they could have something to they can relate to you know because Unfortunately today everything is social media you got to do this you gotta do that got a Flash and all that kind of stuff so if they have worn kids right there well these are the engineers we've already produced these are the scientists we've already produced and something that they could see and relate to themselves you know and you could even track them well this kid went to this Elementary School this Middle School graduated from Warren and you know

097something they can relate to dude as a part of the Warren Family absolutely and we actually are also one of the other things that we are um engaging in that we've renewed is the student Clearinghouse which allows us to track students and where they go to school and where they're graduating from and that and we have found in the past several years that one of the most powerful presentations that we can give to students are former war and graduates that come back and talk to them about their experience at college or recently out of college and that so I think you know having been here 22 years I am amazed at the as we say the pride in this community and the the alumni and the number of people that stay connected to Warren and

098so I think that's a real asset for us that we keep in touch with those students I guess everybody else said something so I'll join in um great programming I like the way you had everything organized and set up but with our mental health funding a lot of Scholars have expressed concerns and I think we even heard last night about having a hotline or having a counselor therapist at school that's available um in the future are we going to make room for that um and I don't know the specifics to the funding that you're talking about but is there a chance to create that for our Scholars so they can mentally be prepared to be successful in this area so two things I would say to that is one we do have mental health services

099in all of our buildings so we do have licensed therapists that serve our students and in some buildings they have more than one like at the middle school and high school level so our students have access to those services our counselors make those referrals our family Liaisons can make those referrals our administrative staff so we take advantage of that I work closely with the their regional manager that oversees all the galley therapists in our school so I I know from my experience in Renaissance and at the high school for 18 years that there truly is that support for mental health if the student in the family are willing to seek that and it's very rare that we're not able to provide that because gallahue if for some reason they're not able for insurance or whatever

100they will make sure that that student gets Services somewhere right I know we have the therapists and counselors but what I'm asking like a crisis because we have those but just some of the students have expressed like you said it's an appointment but somewhere specific designated that they know that if they are really having a mental breakdown at that moment are their friends are aware of it like that designated place or counselor that's trained to be able to go to like in that moment for appointments they can't wait pouring a point and when we have a crisis situation I I was there at the the meeting the other night as well I want to assure you if a student is in crisis if there's any indication that a student is in an emotional crisis or

101a threat of harming themselves or that our staff K-12 are remarkable in identifying that they know their students they reach out to the counselors and that becomes an immediate priority that is nothing that's ever left all of our counselors are trained in crisis assessment we utilize the same training and assessment scale that our licensed mental health therapists do so they go through that training and renew that every year so we all speak the same language when we do assessments gallahue can also if for some reason counselor isn't available gallahue can do an assessment on a student if there's a concern for their immediate safety risk and that so we do provide a lot of support and counseling in that but I assure you in those moments if there's a student that's identified to be in

102crisis they will make sure that that student scene for our students to kind of know that right absolutely I know it's there but I guess my concern is how do we as a committee as a board in the excellent job that you do it's no good to have great Services if they if the scholars don't necessarily know how to get there and use it right no I I agree and we know I sat in a session today with the state of Indiana and we know that the mental health concerns of our youth are are concerning right I what I would add to that is part of that Grant and looking at our model is we're going to increase the counselor's presence in the classroom so looking at our role and so the goal is that

103those counselors are in those tier one Services more so especially at the high school level that students are seeing the counselors in the classroom more frequently than that again it's that awareness they're visible they're there they know who they are and that so but I appreciate I know I know where your passion and your heart is and that's we want to make sure our kids are taken care of and their mental health needs love it that's a great start thank you thank you Laura thank you very much great presentation very informative thank you the next item on our agenda is uh safety update Mr Marcus all right president Dorsey Dr Hansen members of the board and our Warren Family I want to briefly share with you the safety update for this past month our board

104goal continues to be to invest in the physical and psychological Safety and Security and well-being of all students and staff and our strategic Plan Focus is to invest in relationships with families in the community invest in efficiencies and environment so those of you that are able to attend our second safety form on Monday March the 13th and again we did not have the attendance that we we hope for um I do appreciate all the administrators board members building leaders that are able to attend and a few parents but overall we had 34 attendees if you recall our presenters Matthew Stewart which Dr Hanson I believe referred to earlier the partnership we'll talk about towards the end of the this presentation as well as our principal of the High School Miss Taylor Chief Woodland from Cumberland

105Police Department Miss Crystal Frazier judge Jeffrey Gaither Chief Pettis as well as Jesse Bingham senior and then I thought probably the highlight of the evening which has garnered some discussion just some references tonight is the the student and parent panel that we had there at the end I thought that was that was very powerful so some of the next steps that we we shared was um and if you recall there at the end I had to be pretty emphatic to the point that we're going to continue to offer those opportunities um not only for our parents and our students but opportunities for us to engage with the community and and have tough conversations specifically around school safety so those programs will continue we'll continue to form Partnerships you know as I alluded to earlier with

106impd the community engagement and outreach program I'm happy to hear that and that that's getting that's going to take off stand together for a safer Indianapolis presentation they had today as well as continue to work on our framework our safe School committees District safe school teams our drug free committees which will start this fall and create more opportunities for parents and Gardens to serve on safe School committees okay I want to give a brief update on where we stand with the my stop app so just to if you don't recall from the presentation that transportation did a few months ago the versatran my stop app is a an application that our parents can use to track their students location Transportation wise part of that each student will have a unique username and password for Safety

107and Security once in the app you have to you have secure access to information on where your school bus is located and the ETA at that assigned bus stop information is most accurate the closer the bus is to the schedule stop so we launched this app officially on Wednesday February 22nd couple days after President's Day at Warren Central High School we wanted to start with the high school simply because we knew that was going to be the most challenging some of the feedback that we received during this this initial launch which has been very positive and I want to thank the the work of Lamar and Logan on the website with that FAQ sheet that's that's come in handy as we refer parents that have questions but one of the reminders that we're sharing with

108parents and we share with our k-ray building leaders when they download the the parent should select after they download the app the Metro School District or Metro SD of Warren Township initially some parents selected just Warren Township but it's the Metro school district of Warren Township also school ID versus stn parents should use the nine digit stn as their username do not use the ID number again that's on the FAQ if parents changes if for for whatever reason if a parent changes the password which currently is the date of birth then they will need to contact my stop directly in order to recover lost passwords we would not have the ability if they change their password on their own um to recover because again that's something that they they set up outside of what we

109were able to provide so starting April 10th when we return back from spring break all elementary middle schools will will be on board and we will launch the the my stop app officially pre-k through 12. potential challenges some of which we've already worked through each student requires a unique username which is the stn and the password families with students and again this is important because I know some some of you will get phone calls families with students on multiple bus routes will have to use multiple logins so if you have more than one child in your household then they'll have to create multiple logins if they're on if you have one child that's on the elementary route versus a child that's on a high school route that makes sense poor GPS or sales signal can

110result in delayed communication leading to inaccurate time estimates so in other words what what we're telling our parents is don't necessarily go by the actual location on the app try to get your your son or daughter out there a little bit earlier because if you have any um any type of issues with your Wi-Fi connection and there's a delay then that Bus location may be just a little bit inaccurate so we encourage them to get them out just a little bit early but if that signals if it's uninterrupted then it should be relatively accurate the app is not a substitute again for the for being at the bus stops students should arrive at their designated times again I referenced the FAQ sheet which is located on the district website and then we also include our

111transportation helpline and email address which we we filled all those those questions I also want to talk to United briefly about the cops Grant those of us that have the opportunity to attend the school safety form about a week ago on that Monday they talked a lot about funding in the cops Grant but the community oriented policing Services Program was established in 1994 this Federal program was originally designed to assist with the hiring of police officers the cops office supports safe schools by providing Grant funds technical assistance and resources to help deploy school resource officers cops provides nine different grant opportunities annually and those application deadlines range from early March through May I just want to briefly share with you how we use our cops funding so we really focused on four areas with the

112the funding that we had this past year starting off with District radios and these are items that can be very expensive and we were able to through this grant we're going to purchase 30 District radios upgrade those with the the goal of doing 10 per year just so we can make sure that not only are we updating our radios on a regular basis but we're able to exchange out those that no longer work you can see the the grant amount as well as the the match we also focus on the high school specifically with the re-keying of Warren Central High School that has been a pretty comprehensive project we've been working on it all year just because there's so many doors as you can imagine in so many areas in the high school I want

113to give um I want to Steve Jewell and Josh prevos they receive they should receive the majority of the credit because they've pretty much gone through each hallway identifying security issues that we may have we've met monthly with the high school to make sure that the transition will be smooth and we hope to get started on this by the end of the school year because it will be a pretty comprehensive project and to change the locks at the high school that's a pretty expensive Venture as well so this grant has come in handy as well as upgrades Security Alarms throughout eight buildings upgrade those security alarms and a big thing is being able to expand our playground fencing we are currently targeting five elementary schools and we will Target other elementary schools specifically the ones

114we're doing currently doing construction at we'll Target that through construction funds as well so that's a point of emphasis to make sure you know that our playgrounds are are secure also something we're excited about is um you know the implementation of our stop to bleed program um with through Brian hr's good work on February 23rd we were able to get 23 participants certified previously we had 21 and we look at continuing to increase that number as well and as we as we're in the process currently of let's just stay totally redoing our emergency guidelines part of what we want to do moving forward is make sure we include those stop the bleed kids as a as a resource as well in those emergency bags so action items as we move forward continue with our random

115safety checks our bus scans our new safe entryways at the high school Career Center Lowell Grassy Creek Pleasant Run Early Childhood Center and soon at Sunny Heights or metal detectors and tradition dogs lock down drills we as Adrian pointed out on Monday night we just completed 16 of those here in the past three weeks our school safety framework our Vape detector pilot um our staff safety huddles at the high school and student safety campaign TV and radio ads at the high school as well Mrs Taylor's done a really good job of promoting the importance of a safe school and trying to get rally students behind that I mentioned our emergency guidelines revision our stop-it program which will roll out in the fall of 2023 we'll talk more about that at a later date um security

116camera upgrades and again our safety checks for our events extracurricular events at both the high school and the middle school can I answer any questions at this time I want to ask your Vape detectors do we have what are those what do we have can you tell us about those so we purchased we currently have two units and you weren't sitting at our table at we had a lot of talk about Vape detectors right but we currently have two units one's at the CNG the restroom at CNG and um I slips my mind right now where the second one's at but it's both both are in the high school they not only detect the smoke or potential smoke or substance that comes from Vapes they also serve as noise detectors as well we launched this

117about two weeks ago and you know what we're learning and I know this is Ken's had a big hand in this in technology as far as providing support but you know this is something that we've we've definitely received quite a few notifications not always connected with the use of Vape it kind of looks like I would say um like a fire detector type unit and you know it doesn't take long as we talked about last Monday for kids to figure out exactly what that is so you know we would hope in the future if this proves effective to to add to the um the current ones we we have in use I looked those up as you were talking about them it's also going to be very hard sometimes for parent or for us to

118really know who it was so how are we going to monitor that when there's maybe five or six people in the bathroom the alert goes off somebody's notified how do we know which person's responsible that's a great question so placement is important so we want to make sure the restrooms that we place them in that we have great camera accessibility and just like the I believe the the school in Rochester I think I think that's where they're from that spoke on this at the um the Forum it's important to have that because in the situations that say you have five or six students that walk out at one time you just you know administratively based on that Reasonable Suspicion you you know you have to question students accordingly and um and kind of go from

119there but I think the the positive in all of this is that as Miss Taylor presented the other day we know this is a challenge and the you know now that students know that we are you know taking actions to address this that hopefully that can discourage that type of usage in school thank you yeah we have we have concerns five through twelve and um you know that's why this pilot is so important because if this pilot proves to be effective then as we're able to get whether it's cops grants or Homeland Security type grants we can make those and we can make those Investments and you know um our students are ready for us to make those type of Investments okay good thank you next on the agenda is a legislative update Miss Julie

120okay I am going to mainly be talking about House Bill 1001 tonight I've first of all everybody except for Rachel got one of these booklets and she had one when she showed up to the workshop she had one so and I went through them and I xed out the bills that died at the halfway point so you'll notice that there's a lot of maxed out we're down to like I think 70 some bills yeah yeah so um anyway I also left at your spots to handouts and I'm going to kind of go over these so you know what they are um this first one here looks like this right here um this one is the money that has been um out there that's been in the bills as as to what you might get so

121if you look down the bottom this starts out with 2000 in the budget Year 2007 all the way down to current the 2023 budget proposed by Governor Holcomb on January 5th is next to last and then the 23 budget proposed by the House Republicans on the 17th of February is down there you'll notice that there's an increase for the fiscal year 24 of 697 million and for 25 178 million that looks like a lot of money as you look look through here but they've changed the way um there were House Republicans changed the way they um set up the line item for for K-12 so they changed the term from tuition support to student funding formula so we're not sure what that means what all have they added in there and and that kind of

122stuff we know that and that 697 million um a third of that it's K-12 it's not K-12 public education it's K-12 education so a third of that money is going to vouchers okay so boom you knock off um quite a bit right a third of the money right there which knocks it down to 465 million this is roughly this is just my number so it just gives you an idea and then on top of that there is an operations um money that's in there now it's a hundred and fifteen million so you want to pull that off also which takes you down to about 350 million and then um on top of that um textbooks are in there also so why I want to make I want to make it very clear we at Warren

123Township are in favor of free textbooks for our students our kids really need that and our families really need that so I want to make that clear but I also want to make clear the implications that that does to us as a district all right um in the um House Republicans budget they don't really tell you what that is they they're including that in that money but when we go back and we look at what the governor put aside for it it was 160 million so I'm going to use that number okay so that is an addition that in there that it doesn't have a separate line item to cover that money so it looks like right now that the school districts will be the ones that pay that money okay and that's 160 million

124so you said track that off we're down now to about 190 million um so everything eats away at it so even though the 697 million dollars sounds like a lot it it's not okay it's going down and and then you have to think about inflation on top of that okay so um the other thing about vouchers that is very important they have a third of the money set aside for vouchers um and they have been increasing vouchers over the last several years so when they started this in 2011 for a family of four to receive a full voucher you had to make forty two thousand dollars or less and if you made up to sixty three thousand dollars you got fifty percent of the voucher and up to 2021 which was the last last fiscal

125budget amount um 000 for a family of four is what they were going by so they were saying that a a family of four that makes 154 thousand dollars was allowed vouchers okay now that doesn't sound like um poverty anymore to me you know um they initially brought vouchers up to help families with poverty uh to be able to go to other schools at school of their choice if they wanted to this year they're moving up to 400 percent poverty level which is a family of four making 220 a year that that sounds to me like that family should be able to afford putting their kids in a private school if they want to um and so they're pulling that money away from public schools um okay so now I've kind of given you in

126this uh 697 million I told you that and included the Opera the operations is money that's going away from us so um and that's better explained probably on this other sheet so I'll wait till we get there but I just want you to know that the operations money is not only for K2 for public schools it's also for charter schools so there will be a lot more money a lot more people school districts schools that are utilizing that money so now if you go to this other sheet here am I doing okay Matt so far okay I've asked Matt to jump in if I start misleading you guys because he has this expertise he's gone to school for this and and he's got the isbo group behind him so he's going to help me out

127if I mess up all right so if you look at this sheet here this one here it shows MSD Warren Township on the bottom half fiscal year 2023 is what we're in right now 24 and 25 are the next two so if you look down at the bottom where it says total for this year we got 96 000 a little over 96 million dollars and then next year we'll get 98.8 million and the year after that we would get 98.1 million now here's how this the textbooks are going to affect us if you take that 98 816 568 and you subtract from it the 96 000 which we're currently giving that's about 2.8 mil approximately 2.8 million dollars that we will be increasing right and that's but of that one million dollars will go to

128textbooks which will leave us with 1.8 million so when you look at this sheet here and it says they're giving an 8.5 percent increase to um K-12 schools we will be getting a 2.9 percent increase that first year of which which is 2.8 million dollars of which one million of it will have to go to textbooks okay does that make sense to everybody is that good okay okay and then the year after that um we will actually get a little bit less we will actually lose we'll have 0.7 we'll go down negative 0.7 in the amount that we we get so um the operations so we get so much money right now because of taxes right and that goes into our operations fund we will still get money in there however it will be less

129if this if the Republican budget goes through it will be less um what will happen is that 115 million I told you about on this first page that goes towards operations that will be split between school districts and charter schools that do not make fourteen hundred dollars per student so they will then go up they will be reimbursed from that money to get them up to that fourteen hundred dollars and we currently are at Seventeen hundred dollars so we will not get anything from them but on top of that like I mentioned earlier we will not get our full amount that we would normally get through the taxes because they're going to start kind of a sliding scale down on that so it's Bleak we talked at our budget meeting about the operations and and

130where we need to work on that but it's going to be Bleak and it's going to be tight and and like Dr Hansen said um when you combine that along with 14.99 it's going to be devastating to our district so we will as he said we'll be losing about six million dollars so when you're sent the information on who who to send this to do please please please tell them that this is not good for our district okay um does anybody have any questions for me on that or any comments okay well I'm gonna with that note and that I'm gonna let you move on so just keep this in mind this is this is why we need to be very active in this area okay yeah okay you can ask me after if you

131want okay Julie that was good that was uh enlightening and uh it's gonna it's pushing us into being more interested in what's going on like that thanks for the legislative update thank you okay uh next I actually action our next agenda item is an action item we're going to talk correction correction correction correction do we have any yellow cards green and no we do not okay now we're back on track uh action item we only have one we're going to talk about textbooks Kate Europe thank you president Dorsey Dr Hansen members of the board I'm excited to be back with you it's been a quick month um first before I begin feedback is a gift and to miss King I appreciate the feedback and look forward to a chat curriculum is um I love fake

132curriculum feedback from students it's amazing so in addition to that I'm here tonight to seek your approval for the 2023-2024 textbook rental fees which includes our science textbook adoption for K-12 so moved I will second give me a second any discussion pause all in favor say aye uh well well we're able to do the electronic thing right aha the eyes of it it's approved thank you I deeply appreciate it and Mr Humphrey I just want to say Brookview Stony Brook foreign Central I'm very excited about the career in college readiness support we're working with with our students in conjunction with Miss book Wright so I won't say the class I will thank you next on the agenda we have discussion items and we'll start with uh school safety Mr Marcus thank you president Dorsey Dr

133Anderson members of the board for discussion proposed a revision of board policy 8400 the revision proposed for this policy changes the definition of training requirements for school resource officers or otherwise known as sros as per hea 193. the new definition of SRO requires the SRO to be a law enforcement officer with required training timelines established by state statute additionally in accordance with the superintendent's guidelines the corporation will establish a safe school committee for the entire District the state school committee will be responsible to develop a district in school safety plan and apply annually for matching grants or matching funds through cops and Homeland Security finally the board May seek resources that are available to provide bleeding control kits to the corporation so as I've gone through this as you can see we already have the

134majority of these things in practice in terms of just the standards and requirements we have for our sros as well as what we are our philosophy and our policy past practices as it relates to our safe School committees district-wise as well as within our individual buildings foreign okay are you working uh with Chief Pettis and and the officers on this safety you know with him being the chief of police you know uh is he in a vital part of this safety initiative that you're talking about absolutely I'm a little better looking than him but he's much smarter than me when it comes to police matters ma'am okay is he still here okay any other comments okay you're up again for transportation all right for discussion board policy 8600 proposed a revision for this policy incorporates

135changes to the definition of appropriate vehicles as created through ATA 1251 also the approved uses for appropriate vehicles the special purpose buses in transporting students for a variety of circumstances this revision will allow the board to enter to a contractual agreement with qualified contractor contractors for transportation of students or enter into a fleet agreement with a transportation Network company or an organization serve the needs of students with a developmental disability finally the board May authorize a use of special purpose bus on an appropriate vehicle to transport students supervisors extracurricular activities mckinney-bento and Career and Technical students again part of our current practice we do contract with with companies as it relates to the transportation of our mckinney-vento students and this potential policy would expand the ability to continue to seek those type of services as

136seen appropriate by the board I'm sorry who did you say we already contract through yeah we we work with some independent companies now we're currently in in discussions um uh specifically with our mckinney-vento land uh storm and and Chad as well as Mr Taylor are in that process right now trying to um build a relationship with some potential new companies any any comments thank you Miss Marcus next on the agenda reporting student progress Mr Ryan good evening president Dorsey Dr Hansen members of the board I have two policy revisions tonight starting with reporting in student progress which is policy 5420 this really is a simple language update really just providing a language that says we will create administrative guidelines around the reporting and progress for students obviously you know it it indicates that we give

137report cards and also indicates that we provide written notification of all standardized testing opportunities that our students have to our parents pretty basic but I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them second policy is policy 6250 ADM accounts for the purpose of State funding and the verification of residency for membership this is a language uh update adds a definition for intending and enrolled for ADM accounts it has changed a little a little bit over the years as you know we have two counts but a student must be both enrolled and attending for us to be able to count them for ADM meaning that if they're enrolled they simply have um obviously completed paperwork within our district but they have to be attending for them to actually be counted for our membership for the

138purposes of funding where that comes in I saw there was some language today legislative language about potentially pushing ADM accounts back to October which would um as a side note I think would hamper us in our bargaining ability just because of that timeline but that being said we work really hard to find students who may not have shown up or whatever in terms of that we can't legitimately count them for funding purposes until they actually start attending one of our schools the other part it specifies is just what documents we require for enrollment we can select no more than two or no more than three by policy and it's a simple utility bill a mortgage or a lease agreement for a standard enrollment there are Provisions for mckinney-vento where we don't um really we don't

139need any documentation for that other than we just doesn't even provide that long story short their language updates provided by idoe Guidance and happy to answer any question about those as well I'm just curious why would we even ask for those items then again maybe I missed it why do we ask for McKenzie vinto you said you know we don't even need to ask for that well we don't if if someone is homeless they're not able to produce a lease or um a utility bill or something and in fact those conversations need to be handled with care and sensitivity around those so our attendance officers at our school which are basically our administrators and then some of our attendance secretaries as well we've actually been providing training to help them interact in those conversations for

140some of them that get a little bit more sticky we found out after the fact a lot of times we call Mr Taylor to help us as our mckinney-vento coordinator as well it's important for us to collect residency information for our students to ensure that students who we do determine to enroll from outside of Warren Township follow the proper process and have the right meet the requirements that you as a board have set forth and we can legally permit someone to come in so students who have been expelled we don't want obviously to come in students who have been suspended 10 or more days students who have committed any violent Acts or and in one that's more commonly used anymore any student that has excessive absences we reserve the right to not allow in the

141Warren if they live outside of Warren Township boundaries especially everything going on with property taxes and that we're really focused on making sure that we support the students who live within our borders that they produce those documents they come in regardless of their academic or attendance history any other comments thank you sir thank you next item public hearing before commencement of collective bargaining Brian yes president Dorsey Dr Hanson members of the board I I have two policies with recommended revisions for discussion the first one is policy 31 20.11 that has to do with the two required meanings that we have to have one is the public hearing before commencement of collective bargaining the other one is the uh the meeting that we have traditionally traditionally that first meeting is usually before the August board meeting

142just prior to the other meeting is the meaning before ratification of the tentative agreement we traditionally do that after the wa has ratified it but 72 hours before the board is set to approve it the the added features really are just making sure that um we have an option to allow board members who attend these meetings to participate electronically and also then likewise affording members of the public the same opportunity to participate if we were to go that route it just allows us to do that typically we we don't but if we should ever do that that would be an option any questions okay the next policy is 3220.02 that's supplemental payment for teachers um as you probably recall in the recent past a couple of different times uh We've we've under that relevant provision

143of the Indiana code have allowed have have approved supplemental stipends for teachers uh that aren't subject to collective bargaining uh originally it was for special ed in certain stem positions but now it's for virtually any teaching position and so the revision that's recommended here is to just to Simply allow the superintendent to make the recommendation um to um to put forth approval for supplemental stipends for any reason for for any type of teacher licensure um it's rather than specifically tie ourselves by listing various ones so it's just any questions with that one any comments there oh so under the Indiana code uh again originally originally was just certain special ed and stem positions but they they've since revised it so it can conclude it can be a supplemental stipend for various types of positions like

144right now um we have supplemental stipends for core School psychologists but then very special ed resource teachers like the in the 5 8 and really in high school as well as like high school chemistry fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth grade math um there's a Stipe supplemental stipend for a physics teacher it's typically difficult to fill positions that are tend to be in special ed and math and science areas so that but the law allows us to uh to for the superintendent to put forth a recommendation for board approval of those stipends such that we only have to take a discussion with the Teachers Association it isn't subject to collective bargaining yes right and yeah so I have been before you guys two different times one with school psychologists originally and then another time

145with other positions um so those recommendations were put forth and you guys approved it correct any other comments okay thank you Brian appreciate it at this time we're going to have we give an opportunity for board members to make closing comments I'd like to start down there on the left side with Rachel if Jimmy thank you um so it's a combination of closing and opening so I've got a bit it's always good to see Lowell here um all three of my kids attended Lowell so it's always great to see updates from them um Science Olympiad placed second at regionals at the end of February and then at State placed second again this past weekend which was actually pretty exciting because we beat the team that placed first at regionals by placing second so that was

146pretty cool that in two weeks they put in enough work and um polish up their skills enough that they were able to beat that team um I attended isba's day at the State House as well as spoke at is icpe's billion dollar bake sale rally on President's Day one of the things that they had us gather information that they shared was that um how much money your district has lost to vouchers since 2018 and our for MSD of Warren Township it's 13.5 million dollars which is just a huge amount of money that you think that we could have put to good use um I attended Warren boys basketball senior night and the first night of sectionals as well as the launch for our Public Schools work we had a media launch Steve insky spoke at

147the launch so that was pretty cool I had the opportunity to be on Indiana lawmakers which is produced by wfyi speaking on book Banning and sb12 and I would like to thank Julie for being one of the kind faces in the audience I could look to when I got nervous because that's always important that you have someone to look at in the audience I learned how to drive a white bus so that was fun um and I I now have that ability and then it is robotic season so I have refereed and head refereed including an event that the digital goats were at but I will leave that for Julie and then I also attended the school safety seminar put on by isba as well as the community meeting that we had on Monday thank

148you Rachel Terry um just want to thank everyone for being here today especially love seeing the children um I love the chant I also wanted to give a good shout out to our wrestlers that went to state to our basketball teams to all of our kids who really have been excelling in their extracurriculars and just want to wish our teachers support staff administrators a wonderful spring break thanks Terry Lashana well everyone it's been a long evening I'm giving an update about wave and myself I'll start with wave we have only 25 seats left for the gala so if you have not gotten your tickets you better get them because we're cutting the numbers off we are packed this year in the gala is April the 14th I will use the word to say Social Hour

149starts at 5 30. and then the gala actually starts at 6 30. it'll go from 6 30 to 9 00 p.m and then this year is an after party so come prepared to have a little fun with wave we were able to give out two book vending machines PNC I attended the one at the early childhood education center in the president of PNC was there read to our Scholars and gave them books we also did a book vending machine at Sunny Heights and a really cool thing um Delta Dental donated um 25 000 to our dentist um department for them to get an x-ray machine one of the things that their instructor said is they still use the old school but when they go out into the field they don't have that experience of that

150modern technology so she thinks and she's going to verify that we will be one of the first schools to have that so I just wanted to put that shout out there I attended the safety meeting as well as well as working with our Scholars who have struggled with attendance but since they have started the attendance cohorts the attendance have improved and we have seen a lot of Scholars who they told me maybe been late one day is their thing but they've been coming to school more this safety meeting I also attended with Rachel and Kevin and um markets my brain is Sleepy um in the school Forum that was very good that concludes lashana's report and waves thank you thank you Lashana uh Gloria I just want to say ditto I I attended the safety

151meeting also and also our basketball games and everything was just awesome I just want to say thank you to everyone that gave a report tonight I think you're doing an awesome job keep up the good work and um you know we'll say go where and we are the pride of the East Side have a nice evening and a nice spring break thank you good morning I would you like to thank everyone for their participation and all those out there working that we haven't been able to acknowledge I know it's a lot of behind the scenes work going on and everyone doesn't get their name called so thank you for caring thank you for working God bless you and your family and may we continue to grow and be successful thanks Kevin Julie um yes I

152would like to spend a couple minutes talking about robotics imagine that um digital votes 829 had their first district event uh this past weekend and they were Runners up which is very good considering the hard work they were putting into trying to get the robot ready just the weekend before so they did a nice job and I'm very proud of those kids um and that's I'm gonna keep it short because I know you guys want to go home so I will see you after spring break have a nice one thanks Julie hey just want to say uh it's been a great time this last last month or so I have a great spring break meeting adjourned