001Let's begin with the pledge of allegiance. Yeah. Yeah. is going to do great. Okay, it's on you. Start when you're ready. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Good job, guys. We'll take a moment for silent reflection. Thank you. Okay. Item C, meetings to note board faculty meeting April 9th at 7:30 a.m. at Alter Brown Elementary School. Four or more board members may be in attendance. Also, the Garden City Area Chamber of Commerce annual banquet, which is April 24th, that's 6 p.m. The Garden City Community College Konos Stoa Arena. Four or more board members may be in attendance as well. On to item D, approval of agenda with the following amendments.
002D1, additional certified personnel actions for approval item F3 and D2, item add item and K2, executive session, preliminary discussion relating to the acquisition of real property. Mr. President, I move to approve the meeting agenda as amended. Been moveing second to approve agenda. Is there any discussion? All in favor, raise your left hand. Both same motion carries. Item E, delegation of public comments. There is none. Okay. Move on to item E1, recognition of the Garden City High School girls and boys wrestling teams. Matt Byer, athletic director, Garden City High School. How are you guys? Awesome. So, um it is my honor to uh present we had another real successful winter season. Uh we got our boys were the 2025 state runnerups and our girls were the 2025 state champions. So, what I'm going to do is
003I'm going to turn it over to coach Lapin and let him uh talk to you guys for a few minutes and he'll introduce the teams and um you guys can recognize him there. So, all right. Here we go. Thanks. Y All right. Thank you guys for having us. Um, as coach Byer just said, I'm just going to go intro introductions here. We're missing some of some of our boys tonight. Um, they're all out of order, so it's going to screw me up. Great. Our first one was finished third in state for us, and he actually just signed to go to Cloud Community College this morning. Uh, Logan Avalon was three-time state qualifier for us, uh, and medalist last year. And then Isaiah Ayala was a firsttime state qualifier this year. Uh JT Hill as a
004freshman state qualifier for us. Uh Sergio Sanchez uh state qualifier and Saving state qualifier. And then Braden Pacheco uh was a four-time state medalist and this year finally got his elusive state championship. That's our boys team. Um our boys team as coach said we finished the state runnerups. Um, we won whack. That was our fourth in a row. So, this class has never experienced a whack loss. Um, we won Newton. We're 15 and two in DS. And again, state runner up. So, that's our boys team. our girls team. They figured it out. They went they're going away. So Nicole Brago uh sophomore and she finished third in state for us. Kyra Aosta finished third in state for the second year in a row. MJ MZ was a state runner up. Marina Lera a state runner
005up. Crystal Lera was the state champion this year and she's only a sophomore. And then Maya Tarbert was the state champion. Uh that was her third state title. So big things for her. Alexia Serrano finished fifth for us. That was her second state medal. And then Maggie Guzman got her first state medal, finishing fourth in state. Aaliyah Garza was a state qualifier. Olivia Dunlap state qualifier. Mary Condo, state qualifier, and then Eleanor Crotz over there hiding on the end. Um, our girls kind of set the record books on fire this year. They weren't touched very much. I think we won every duel, finished 4-0, won our first WAC championship, and that says a lot when we're competing against Dodge City. Um, they're ranked in the top 50 in the country. We beat them in a
006duel and beat them all every tournament except one when we were missing some kids. Uh, and outside of that, they won everything they went to down to Tulsa, the Kansas City Stampede, and regionals and state. They also finished the season ranked number nine in the country. That's our girls team. introduce my coaches, our boys head assistant, coach Kevin Perez, our girls head assistant, Anthony Calderon, and Tyl Beier over there, coach Joe Bach, coach Eli Coach, and Angie Serrano. Um, fun fact, Angie was our first girl state medalist, so it's good to have her back on staff with us and getting some females in there. Um, this was an incredible year. We spent a lot of time doing a little extra with our kids. Uh we took trips down to Oklahoma State. We did morning practices,
007spent time working on mindset with the kids, just every little thing we could just to try to make them better wrestlers and better people. And I think it started to pay off. And we're hopeful that this is just the beginning. How how many of you guys how many are seniors? Our boys team will graduate nine seniors off our starters and our girls will only graduate three. So there's a good possibility we could do even better next year. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Let's try to get a big too after shake hand over it. Hey, let's get in the house. All right, ladies. Do me a favor. Everybody's gonna have to take me all the things jump out here too. So we try to get like a sority pose. Here we go. Let's go. Like three layers.
008[Music] Josh is being two. Yeah, Josh. So fresh be good. Thank you guys. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item E2. J K Jared Spencer, career specialist. All right. Um, good evening members of the board. Um, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Natalie and I am the regional manager here in Western Kansas for Jobs for America's Graduates Kansas or Jack K. For those of you who are not familiar with our organization, Jobs for America's Graduates is a national nonprofit organization that is committed to helping students achieve successful futures. We understand that a successful future can mean many things and success is defined differently for each student. We give our students the opportunity to explore all different pathways from secondary education, military service or heading
009straight into the workforce. We focus on what we call the JAG advantage which is compi comprised of the three pillars of JAG. Trauma-informed care, project-based learning and employer engagement. Our trauma-informed care techniques are focused on creating a safe, stable classroom environment. Many of our students come from difficult backgrounds. So, we strive to create a supportive environment for them to thrive. Our project-based learning practices give our students hands-on projects with student voice and choice to help them master the 37 core Jack competencies. We want our students to invest in the lessons, giving them ownership of their choice and projects. And finally, we work hard to provide meaningful engagements with local employers and organizations to help students find their path after high school. We dive into learning about careers they already know that they want to pursue,
010explore careers that they didn't know existed, and research careers that they didn't think were attainable at first. We give them the opportunity to learn and support them in carving their path after they leave high school. We also focus on real world scenarios and perfecting those desirable soft skills that employers time and again say that they want to see more of. Financial literacy like building a budget and learning how taxes work. employee agility skills like creating a resume and how to communicate professionally and car character development like how to effectively work in a team and developing healthy concepts for work life and home are all competencies that are covered in Jack. How I like to put it, it's the class that we all wish we had in high school. I have provided you all with your
011district report. Another thing that sets Jag apart from our other from other programs is our 12-month follow-up program. When students leave high school, our career specialists, like Jared here, guide and mentor our graduates for for a full year after high school, acting as a free life coach and cheerleader. They help them navigate the waters of the real world, provide guidance, and support them on their path to success. Our performance outcomes that you see on the report here are called the six of six, and this is how we measure success in JAG. We also look at reducing barriers to success like chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10 or more days in a school year. Statistically, being in JAG has shown to help decrease the number of absent days by teaching the students the importance of showing
012up to school and demonstrating commitment for their future. The report before you shows the numbers that we have for our latest completed follow-up group, those who graduated in 2023. After looking at the performance outcomes for our students who graduated in 2024, which will be completed at the end of next month, I am proud to say that both programs, Garden City High School and Garden City Achieve, are on track to receive the six of six award, meaning that they met or exceeded all of the performance outcomes set by Jack National. All of this to say thank you. Thank you for your continued support of the program and for providing us the opportunity to speak about this amazing organization. As we continue to grow and hopefully add more programs in the future to Garden City, we hope
013that you will support our mission that every student deserves a successful future. Thank you. And just to add a little bit more to what she had, uh again, I'm Jared Spencer. Many of you know who I am. This is my second year as a JAG career specialist. It's been a lot of fun uh being in the high school and and having that opportunity to do that. And so I do thank you for uh keeping that program uh afloat there at the high school as this year we moved to from below the concession stand in the red basement to up in blue academy. And so there's been a lot more exposure uh to be able to get in involved with kids. And my personality is the one that I love to be involved with kids. And
014I also do some lunchroom monitoring for two of the different uh lunches to get to know the kids that way. And that's really helped also boost our uh enrollment within that time. Uh we have we've had over about 65 kids within the program over the past two semesters this year and that is up from from last year. you know, as she said, and my some of my speakers have also said whenever they come into the program and speak, which is uh we've kind of excelled in that being in Garden City and having the opportunity to have uh outside speakers come in to our program because of being a a sizable uh town more than some of the other places like Lake or Ulysus. So, we were supposed to have about five employer engagements per semester
015and I think I'm uh close to 20 or or that for the year uh so far because we because of knowing people that I know and also being able to have people from the the community as well. But one of the things that they do say is that I wish I would have had something like this in high school to be able to have to be able to have this exposure opportunities to be able to uh have some realistic applicable aspects uh to things. We do a lot of the same program or same schedule each week. that helps with some of the kids to be able to know there's consistency involved uh with that that they know that they can have Wednesdays to work on things uh so that they have a test or something
016else they may put off uh for example that they have those on on Wednesdays and so this week we're we have the opportunity a lady came all the way from Witchah to do what is called a a PBL or project-based learning uh an employer engagement that we're looking working on financial literacy with that that's one of the the three sides of ours is financial literacy. So it really fits in with the new uh curriculum. I know we have financial literacy as a class but we do emphasize that within JAG as well and have been since its beginning basically but she is uh a real estate person from Witchah and so she's doing actually four different days of of uh financial literacy. Today we talked about loans and autos and and they got to pick their
017car and how much they wanted. Some uh I think the most expensive car that somebody decided they thought they were going to be able to afford was 92,000. Um I think the least was maybe in the 11,000, but somewhere in there they they've got a rude awakening when they found out what that payment was for $92,000 car even with putting about $6,000 down which uh within that. But it is something that I really enjoy having uh an opportunity to encourage the kids, mentor the kids. I just talked to one of my kids that I follow up with and and she was saying we follow up for a year. He works at at Walmart and he was saying I said, "Yeah, I only have, you know, about a month left." He goes, "Oh, really?" I said,
018"Well, you can text me anytime." But he uh just enjoys that from last year, that opportunity for me to connect with him on a on a monthly basis. So, it is a lot of fun and I hope we keep it around uh for many years regardless of if I'm a career specialist or not. Any uh questions from anyone? How's this com is this funded by? It's TANF grant and private grant. It's a statewide we um a state it's based out of Topeka is where president is at and each as you know each school also puts in you know there are certain amount to keep it going within the the school. Yeah. But we have a and I don't know the the data on how many private but I think it's about half and half close
019to half and half. Um I think it's similar. Yeah. So we have a lot of um grant funders in like Honeywell um John Deere um even Taco Bell um we have a lot of of really great um grant funders and then we do have the the TANF grants which is funded through DCF and then we also and the governor is a a big um proponent of JAG and so we were just um approved in the budget them and um just a couple weeks ago. So, and it's very well bipartisan. It was started in about four over 40 years ago in Maryland and then just kind of spread throughout the United States over the last 40 years. And I will say, so JAG is a national nonprofit organization. There are 39 state affiliates. JAG Kansas has
020been around, this is our 12th year. For the last 10 years, JAG Kansas has received that six of six award statewide, and we are consistently in the top five performing affiliates in the country. You said you had probably 20 employment engagements. Is that what you call them? Okay. Expand a little bit on those. What do they look like? Are they are they all they do they come in? Do the students go out? Is there It can be a combination of both. Um primarily they they generally come in and talk about their like their pathway to their job. Some of them, you know, just the other day I had a Wheatland lineman uh come in that had gone to college, but he gone to a few different colleges and didn't work out. So we have some
021of those and we have we've had cosmetology, we've had uh accounting, we've had different types of I mean just kind of across the board uh of various kinds of people and I try to get both from the the contacts that I have and just try to vary it up a little bit so that we have you know different ones that kind of meet their needs. uh some a lot of times I'll ask them what their interests are or we find out what they want to do and so we try to sometimes match that up as well. Uh but you know it's good to be able to kind of understand you know not everybody has the same uh pathway into where they got uh even myself I've you know started out at at assistant athletic trainer
022and teacher at the college it was my first job you know went around I've been in ministry been in corrections and now back teaching you know here. So thank you. Now the numbers of students that you said 65 per semester getting involved in this is that yeah we we we want to be between 55 and 60 is our main goal in JAG a Jag goal per semester and it's all voluntary and you just recruited openly it is an elective on the master schedule okay and they can take it multiple semesters it's actually encouraged to take it multiple semesters there's you know uh certain scholarships that are kind of just for JAG students that are out there and so it'scourage encourage they can take it from freshman year till their senior year if they wanted to
023for all the whole time. And the idea is the classes are smaller. Um so usually 15 to 20 per class across three to four classes. So um hitting 60 um where Jared is is maximum capacity for us which is fantastic. Are you having to turn anybody away yet? Uh just a little bit at the beginning but not so much. uh this semester we had some uh college or early grads and so our numbers dropped a little bit because of that and so yeah and so uh you know looking for next year hopefully we are residents building hopefully it will be a a waiting list for things questions right outstanding thank you thank you very much you Okay. Item E3 is building presentation for a elementary school principal Karen Mur. Here's the clicker. Okay, there it
024is. Good evening, members of the USD457 Board of Education, leadership cabinet, and valued members of our community. My name is Karen Merl and I am the principal at APE Elementary. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. This year, our theme has centered around sports. One school, one team, one dream. And like all great sports teams, a pubert has had much to celebrate as well as some areas where we continue to grow and learn. As we stand at the end of our season and are looking to the end of our academic season, I'd like to offer you a report on the state of our school. Not just as the principal, as I brought some key players from our team to review our performance, highlight some of our victories, and share preparations for the
025next big game. So, I'm going to apologize right now for all of the cheesy sports puns that you could possibly find, but I couldn't help myself. So this year, our school came out of the locker room with energy, focus, and a playbook full of strategies designed to support student success. We've been running fullcourt presses on literacy, launching Hail Marys in social emotional learning, and calling audibles when needed to make sure no student is left on the sidelines. Our wins so far are academic growth. Our team, students, teachers, and support staff have shown growth in reading and math scores in certain areas. We're moving the ball down the field, fine-tuning our playbook with purpose and precision precision as the teachers learn about their students. Culture and climate, another victory of ours. School spirit is strong. Our
026hallways echo not just with cheer, but with collaboration. From studentled initiatives to staff appreciation, we're building a team culture where everyone feels like like the most valuable player. Innovation. We've added some new classrooms, refined our wildly important goal tracking and integrated studentled discussions like a wellexecuted game plan. Our students are more engaged than ever and they're gaining the skills to play and we win in the game of life. Julisa Flores, my admin intern, I have to always think about which name it is because it's changed like three times since I've had one support. Will now share a little bit about our coaches and our staff who are in front of our students every day as well as highlight some of our team stats. Good evening. Um, as you guys are looking at the slide a
027um on the screen of who's on our team, I want to share some fun facts about our school. We have over 280 students that go to school at Eubert, 146 girls, 135 boys. This year we have three teachers that are from the Philippines. We have about 725 school lunches that are served every week. We have 90 fifth and sixth grade students that attend our school. We had a family event night this year where we had 120 students attend um a movie night on at Primrose Stadium. We also added a classroom um that we'll share with you in just a little bit. Um something else that's unique about our school is that we have the newcomers program which houses students that are in second through fourth grade um and are new to our country. So we
028have um different languages that vary throughout the school year depending on the students that are in the program at the time. Um we also have four staff members who have worked um at a pubert since becoming a pubert that moved over from Garfield. And then we also have four staff members who were former Longhorns that are now working at a pubert. Up next are goals. All teams have lots of goals. Um, we started the year with two different goals for the different grade levels in our school. Because we're a Ksix building, that tends to be a little bit unique and we try to capture as many grade levels and um, academic areas that we can. While we have fallen short on our current benchmark assessments um of showing what we want to, we are awaiting
029our results from state assessments and continue to work on progress monitoring to meet those goals. So, I'll let Julisa share those goals with you. So for kinder through 2 grade, our wig this year was to get 80% of our kinder through second grade students to meet phony and fluency benchmark on fastbridge early reading or to show typical or aggressive growth on their individual growth um goal at the end of the year through the implementation of highquality structured literacy instruction. for our third through sixth grade wig. Um we wanted to see the number of students in third through 12th grade, but we have sixth grade achieving levels three and four in ELA math and science and that they would increase by 10% on the CAP assessment by ensuring that teachers are implementing rigorous grade level content
030standards and holding students to high expectations. So, it's my favorite highlight reel of all sports is coming up tonight. I hope you all make it home to catch one shining moment with NCAA. Nobody cries like every year like I do. I cry every year. So, I have some data highlights that I would like to share with you. Um, our highlight reel, if you will. Um, through testing season this so so far. We know that we have we are just finishing up state assessments in math this week. We'll do science next week and our second graders will get a chance to take their int their intram or their practice state assessment next week. But we do have some things that we um are celebrating and and moving our students. The first one was that our cap
031students, our students in fifth grade that took the science assessment met our wig last year. So our students grew by 10% in the area of science which was a a huge win for us and celebration. Um and so that was exciting for us. Our second grade fast bridge data this year 68% of our second graders have shown typical or aggressive growth from the fall to winter on a reading. In kindergarten fastbridge, 56% of our kind kindergarten students showed typical or aggressive growth from fall to winter in their early math assessment. Uh something that's also really exciting, I don't know that I in my time at a pubert have ever had a a class reach anything in the 80s. And our first grade Basbridge math data, 83% of our first graders met benchmark on the early
032math assessment um in the winter. So hopefully we will maintain that and maybe even show some more growth. Sixth grade fastbridge um 62% of our sixth grade students show typical or aggressive growth on a math uh which is promising. And then second, third, and sixth grade fast bridge. We have spent a little bit of time practicing fluency in our math fluency in our building um this year. And in those particular grades, depending on which you look at, 50 to 70% of our students are showing um growth in math automaticity from fall to winter. So, we're excited about those data pieces. No season is without tough competition or challenges. And while we can see some growth, we're still battling um some some things such as high staff turnover and closing the achievement gaps. We're trying to
033think of these things as our top ranked opponents who we haven't beaten yet, but we we will. We want to. We've studied the film. We know the playbook, and we're adjusting our game plan accordingly with targeted interventions, progress monitoring, and dedicated coaching for both students and staff. Jenny Burstrom, our instructional coach, is here to talk about one way that we're trying to beat our challenging opponents. So, one of the things that our students are really excited about this year is the wall of fame. We started it last year and we've continued this year and the purpose of that wall is to encourage students to focus on their their skill area of need at that time. And when you're looking at the K12 students, they've got a lot of areas that they can work on and
034progress through. So, um, we've been really focusing on students having the skill that they're getting in interventions. We send home practice pages that their parents can use to help them practice at home so that the kids can see growth and they get to be on the wall of fame once they hit benchmark. Um we started that in the winter and then the students if they hit benchmark during progress monitoring then they can um add a star to their name and then if they pass um they pass one skill we might move them to a different skill they get another opportunity to get another star and the kids love it because every two weeks if they got on the wall in those two weeks they get to celebrate with the principles. So, it's really encouraged our
035little kids to look at what their um their areas of need are and focus on them in both reading and math and get parents on board so that the parents are helping at home to support what their kids are doing. Next up is the transfer portal. I'm not sure what side of the coin you're on when you think about the transfer portal and what it's done to college sports, but this January, we dialed up USD457's transfer portal um to do a little shuffling and transfer um to open up a classroom that was needed in the district. Emily Arlano and Heidi Kundiff, teachers in the rainbow bridge room are here to talk about the room made possible with the district transfer portal and the efforts of several departments districtwide to make that happen. We don't have
036slides for you but we have pictures. Um so the room um the rainbow stands for really amazing individuals who need better support and structure. Only then will they be successful and the bridge part is because our goal is to bridge them back um to the gened setting um more and more as they're able to be successful in that setting. So that is what the rainbow and the bridge arcs stand for. Um and then on the pictures um we included um our morning mantra. Um so it has um different little positive sayings that we go through with the kids every morning um just to encourage them to get their brains and their hearts thinking positively to start our morning off on a good um start. And then this next one is just pictures of um independent
037work areas. Because of how our classroom is set up, our students need more support. Um right now we're working in using some of the structured teach um and things that we've learned at trainings through TAS that the students um currently if they weren't able to complete tasks or academic work, we are using the test system to help them be able to do that. So, as a student gets, we start kind of with games and things that they like to do, and we put them in the bins to teach them how the system works. Um, the students then match the picture, do the task, and then it goes into an all done bin. Um, and then they work through the system here, and they're each each of them have their own space. Um and then through
038the year as they progress and being able to accomplish tasks um we start pushing in those academic um that are a little bit higher for them to do um so that we're still meeting the grade level that they need but also doing it in a different way that they struggle with before in the gener. Um and then this is just a little picture of different tests what it could look like um with our youngers. We do a lot of onetoone correspondence, being able to count, match numbers. Um, beginning sounds is a big goal for our younger ones as well. Um, so just what you see here, things that we've already done at direct instruction with them one-on-one or in small groups. And then once we feel like they've gotten close to mastering it, it can
039go into the independent workstation where they can work on those skills um with support standing close by in case he's got questions. Um, lots of color matching. Again, some of them, depending on their level, some of them are able to read. Um, some of them need help reading, but then they're able to complete the tasks that other students are doing in the classroom again, just in a different way for them. Um, the classroom also has a lot more flexible areas than a traditional gened classroom. Um, so we work on lots of different things. Um, there's a life skills area, so we cycle out different life skills that they're going to be needing to know um, when they leave the school setting. um a lot of them struggle with fine motor tasks. So that's why traditional
040paper pencil things are very difficult for them and they have a lot of refusals. Um so we work on a lot of different skills in the fine motor area just to work on strengthening that so that it's not so difficult and they don't want to refuse those tasks so much. We also have a leisure area because a lot of them um just need a lot more breaks than they can typically have in agenda setting. Um so we just have that built into their day so they can have a space where they can take those breaks. Um and then we also have a sensory calm down room. Um so when they are getting over stimulated um or overwhelmed they just have a space where they can take breaks. Um and it's just set apart. Um it
041has some Palmer lighting. It has some blue strip um rope lighting. Um so it's just a lot different space than a typical gened setting um that just meets their needs in a lot um a way that's more appropriate for them. And then another thing that makes our room special is all of our students do have their own individualized schedule. Um so the schedules help them see what is happening throughout their day. It also kind of takes away that anxiety of wondering, oh, when am I done with my day or when do I get to go to lunch? Um, that's all here for them. Um, the students have gotten really good at being able to manipulate their schedule. So, we do use a first then card over here. So, they can look at it and see
042their whole day, but then also when it's closed, they see their first and then their next thing that they're going to. Um, and it's helping them become a lot more independent with the things that they need to go to. We can also track behaviors and kind of see what areas they struggle to go to and how to help them kind of talk through when those times come. Kind of remember we're going to this place. Let's, you know, keep those rules in our head. Um, and then the other part that we've added too that's been cool is um once they complete their task, we do have an all done side for them. So when that task is complete, they put it over here and they're actually helping reset the schedule for the next day. Um, so
043that helps us out. That helps us out too. but then again gives them more responsibility in what they're doing in the classroom. And then this one on the side, you can't see it very well, but it is um little tokens. Every single day they get to come in and depending on how many tokens they earn, they get a prize at the end of the day for whatever bin they earn. So, kind of just a motivator for them to keep making good choices and completing those tasks. um even if they're not wanting to go to the different um work stations throughout the day, um reminding them that they have an incentive to keep trying their best um with the little tokens and the prize um has really been beneficial for them. Just as every uh football
044team has several teams within the team, our school does too. One of our teams that is new to our building this year is the student lighthouse team led by second grade teacher Madison Ayala. So I'll let them take the floor. I'm Madison Ayala and I'm the sponsor for the student lighthouse team. Uh this year our team is meeting about every other week on Wednesdays to share our ideas for making our school a better place. Um, as a team we have an academic goal, a culture goal, and a community goal. We have completed two of our goals so far, and we're currently working on our academic goal. So far, we have participated in the GCHS homecoming parade. Uh, we held a community blood drive and we raised funds to create an indoor recess area for our
045younger students. Uh, I brought most of our student lighthouse team. Um, and I'm going to have Nehemiah share a little bit more about our indoor play area that we built. Uh, the indoor play area that we built was to help little kids because usually when we had indoor recess, it would be a problem because we would have to split the gym and the older kids would like kick the ball and it could hurt the little kids. But instead of doing that, we did a fundraiser to help us create our indoor play area for the little kids. is K through third and all the little kids could go play there for like it's not a bother with all the other students and they don't get hurt. Another special team in our building are the action teams
046set up through the leader and me framework. sixth grade teacher, Rosio Garcia, who is a member of our building leadership team and the leader of the culture action team, will share a little bit about our action teams. All right. Um, so my name is Rosio Garcia and I help lead the culture team at a pubert. A couple things that we've done is create an emotional schoolwide emotional bank account where classes are buddied up and they send notes to each other each month and they participate in buddy activities. Um, another thing that we've done is every month we have a an assembly that focuses on one of the five paradigms of leader and me. Uh, these assemblies are led by students. uh the students not only present but they also participate in games during the assembly
047and they help make the videos that we present at the assemblies. Um and then we also invite community members to come and share based on the paradigm that we are covering. We can think of no better way to end our presentation than with a player meet and greet. We have several of our students or our players on hand who are here to share their playbooks or their portfolios with you. So we have um we have Gage Parker is in fourth grade. Mia Sanchez is in first grade. Noelli Ruby and Gabriel Rodriguez are in sixth grade. Emma Hawksworth is in uh second grade and Bellamy Soraniano is in first grade. They have their portfolios and they would like to show you some highlights of them. You also have a golden broad paper in front of you
048that has some questions you could ask your students. Make it easier for you. The holidays I celebrate are bottle. It's a learning game. So the circle for you and I celebrate with my something like that. What's your hopes for the future? All right, join it already. You started following up. It says tonight sheets. So are these ribbons that you color in? Are these different achievements that you've done? monitor. Which one's your favorite? Right. Right. You did a good job. Interesting. What's your favorite? So we have like these mail and then you'll have to Do you have any symptoms? Very nice. Nice to meet you. You like it? There's two business. Thank you. You did a very good job. The playoffs are coming. As we head into the final stretch of our year, we're not easing
049up. This is when champions are made. We're doubling down on sound teaching strategies, fine-tuning our ES our SEAL supports, and preparing for the end of the year assessments. Like a team aiming for championship. Our ask from you, the fans in the stands, we need your continued support. Like any great team or franchise, we thrive when our fans, our board, our families, our partners cheer us on, invest in our success, and help us expand our roster with the best talent and tools. We are going to keep this momentum going, working to be the best school where or the school where every student has the opportunity to train and grow and to win not just in the classroom, but the game of life. Thank you for being a part of our team. It's time for us to
050get back to work and finish our season strong. At this time, we are happy to answer any questions, but before we do that, we're going to do the Longhorn battle cry. Are you ready? All right. One, two, three. We are optimistic, respectful, never gives up, successful. We are the law. You have any questions for us? I have a couple questions about the rainbow bridge room. Okay. What uh what what is there students from all grade levels within that classroom? Kinder, second, and third is what we have right now. Okay. And it's new for this semester. Yes, we started in January. How is um like the what that classroom um is is it how does it comparing like what what is in that classroom compared to like the rise room, leave room, the behavior classrooms, those
051sorts other other things we have in the district. you guys want to answer that or um so it's a little bit different than some of the classrooms that you mentioned because of the academics have to be closer to so like the academics that we have are approaching grade level or on grade level or above and so we service more of the social emotional aspect of it getting them into actually following through with tasks and completing work um but yeah we are not um it's different because of the academic part and where the students are So the kiddos in this classroom are are kiddos that like like as Arlano said that are that are closer to grade performing at grade level but they really really need a more structured setting, more structured environment. They they struggle
052without that structure and so like a regular classroom just becomes overwhelming for them and so their goal is to try to get them get them some skills in there and help them so that we can gradually reintegrate them back into the classroom. That's our goal. So, will uh students for this classroom, they could come from any building in the district? Yes, sir. Okay. How many students are in there right now? Um, currently we started with five. We know that we're already getting more. Um, we have nine right now that are coming. We're still listening to other meetings to hear other needs around the district to see who would meet the needs for our classroom. Other questions? Outstanding. Thank you very much. Good job. Okay, move on to item F1, the consent agenda. Sorry, item F1.
053Mr. President, I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. I'll second. Move and secondly. Any discussion? All in favor raise your hand. Oppose. Same. Motion carries. Okay. Item G, board reports. I will start with G1, press box update for Horus Good Middle School and Kenneth Henderson Middle School. Brandon Anderson, director of plant facilities. So Brad's going to come up and be hooking up his computer for item two, actually G2. Um, got a little bit of everything to throw your way this evening. I appreciate that. Uh, or your your time tonight. I will try to get you out before the one shiny moment or maybe halftime, hopefully quicker. But I do want you to know up front, all four of these items we're going to discuss are discussion items tonight. Um, but more than anything,
054especially the first two items, I want to hear your feedback after you absorb it, after you think about it. Um, because these are ideas we're talking about internally, staff, is the first item I don't believe is going to cost over 20,000, so might not come back to you. But I want your feedback because these aren't projects that we are dead set doing. However, we're in the process, especially with the first item. We're pretty far down the road. Second item, uh, we're still brainstorming. So, the first item on the agenda though is to talk about the press box update at Horus Good Middle School and then add Kenneth Henderson Middle School in here as well. Um, one of the first things and when I went and toured Horus Good, uh, Principal Springstston mentioned that he was
055concerned about the press box on the north side. Uh, we went up and looked at it. I was concerned as well. We did have a structural engineer come out and look at it. Um it's basically in the state that it is probably needs to be condemned and not utilized. So we're at a crossroads where we can do one of two things. We can do some substantial upgrades to that press box uh which could also trigger us to do some substantial upgrades to the ADA compliance on that entire north side. Or when we went and visited with Mr. Springsteen. One of his ideas was how about we use the south press box uh for that. Um and so that is the item that we have pursued and are looking at. We're still getting some hard cost
056on what it's going to take to do it, but the concern was everything that's a turf field. Everything's rerouted and encased in the ground going to that north press box. So, we brainstormed within staff meetings. Um, the scoreboard that's there, we did get with Dacttronics and found out that instead of having a hard cable to it, we can actually run that wirelessly. We would have to upgrade that system. That would cost uh about $4,500 to upgrade it to be able to run that scoreboard wirelessly. Uh, also at Horus Good, you have four big speakers all the way around the stadium. Um, visiting with an audio technician to look at taking those four speakers down, taking half of them and putting them on the south press box and updating the mic and then being able to
057have speakers then from the press box. Uh, the good thing about that is we would not need all of those speakers. So we could take those other two speakers and retrofit fit them at Kenneth Henderson. Do the same upgrade to their press box. From a sound standpoint, we would then put are considering putting the scoreboard that was down came down from the old high school up at Kenneth Henderson. It can be run wirelessly as well. um that charge would only be $2,500 because that's a newer uh scoreboard that was taken out of the high school. So, in the process of taking care of the condemnable north press box, we would be utilizing the south press box at at horse good. Um updating the sound or making the sound attached to the press boxes at both
058of those stadiums. Uh, and then having both scoreboards be wirelessly controlled and have that ability. We would then take the scoreboard down at uh, Kenneth Henderson and keep that in safekeeping or go ahead and put it up at Pinrose Stadium at a Hubert so that everyone would have a little bit of an upgrade there uh, as well. But that that's a project that we think is going to be between 10 and $20,000 total to do all that. wanted to run that by you and then obviously we would uh be demoing that north press box. Uh we our staff would be moving uh the old high school scoreboard into KH and putting it up. We would work with Dacttronics. We've already got hard quotes on that. I'm still waiting on the numbers from on the audio
059side, but I don't anticipate them being uh pushing us up above that $20,000 figure. So that's item one, G1. So questions on that particular item. The press box at Kenneth Henderson is okay because I remember there was some bleacher concerns. I think we fixed that. So the bleachers are new on that home side. Uh we we'll look at the press box as we do it. It might need to be short up just a little bit more than anything. Possibly hold those speakers. That's been one of the cautions from the audio guy. Uh but but yeah, it's in good enough shape. Is the reliability of the wireless control, I mean, is that a good thing? I mean, have we seen it proven other places? I mean, I know the company offers it, but is it it's
060it's where the industry's trended, too. Okay. Um and that technology for it to be wirelessly. Okay. Is and it's so much easier because then you don't have to worry about tension or routing. So, yeah. Everything we run at the baseball city now. Okay. Any other questions on how G1? Brandon, what about the control on the old high school scoreboard? We were told that the control computer or something with the control was pretty shaky as well. We replaced it. Will we need to update that or So, part of the issue was the video board. I think the bigger part of the issue was the video board with that uh all in that one system. I don't know those details for sure, but I believe that was the biggest issue that we had. Brad, you may be
061able to offer more. So, make sure you separate the scoreboard from the video board. They're going to take the old scoreboard that was on the bottom of the high school, move it to KH. The video board piece, we're only using the scoreboard portion. Yeah. So it works good. The issue on the north side isn't the grand stands. It's just a depressed box that sits on the grand stands. Correct. The grand stands are fine. There are some there are some ADA issues with the grandstand that ultimately if we were to do some substantial upgrades we would have to touch. Um, and there's probably, and I mean, visiting with with uh Clark with GMCN, uh, I think we would probably be okay uh, making some upgrades to the and and still being able to be ADA compliant
062because he talked about offering a similar view. You could put a camera up there and then put a TV down by the sideline where a handicapped individual could sit and be able to see the same view from that to possibly um get us by and in and being compliant. But but there are some some concerns on that North Stadium more than just the press box, but the press box is the most pressing. I know we spent a ton of money and got a lot of work done to get the field in playable, safe condition at Cage. So, I think it's worthwhile to continue that. We spent all that money to make it nice, just keep making it better. So, is the the press box on the south side large enough for coaches and all during
063game time? Yeah. So, it it's just a a bit smaller than the one we have at the high school, but it's very similar in size to the one we have at the high school. And um they don't have to do all the stuff that they do at the high school. It's a very very high-end one. It's it I mean, it's a nice press box. Has seen very little use, but it's got three areas. I think it would be sufficient. And it was actually uh the AD and the principal. It was their idea and they felt comfortable that that would be sufficient. We use the lights at that stadium. We do from time to time. Not a not a ton, but we we will use them from time to time when it gets late in the
064season. Did you mention I I didn't hear you, but did you talk about the controls for the lights and how's that affect? But we haven't we haven't broached that and that would probably have to stay under that set of st the the north set of stadiums. We might be able to move the switch down. Any other questions on G1? On item G2. So G2 is uh a bigger brainstorming effort. Um Brad's going to bring up a zoom in uh at the football stadium one and this these these both these projects came about when we did our initial tours and then uh over the Thanksgiving break we we staff went and toured as well. Um here at the tennis courts, uh between the two tennis courts on the right side is a vegetative um landscape area
065and then to the north of all of those tennis courts is a steep sloped area that has landscape going down the hill. Uh there's a landscape area to the left side as well. Um, and if you go up there and see, may or may not think it, but there's a lot of water that rushes down all of those tennis courts, and I think it actually comes to the concrete in between and rushes down that slope. If you go look at the slope, um, the erosion issue is the biggest concern that I've got. There's about three areas of heavy erosion where water goes rushing down, spills onto um the next level, and ultimately it goes to the right um and and is supposed to collect in the drain. Uh yeah, there that Brad's zooming in on.
066So, um you've got that area that we often have to clean out. We have already run a concrete apron on the right side here as he moves his cursor uh right there. But if we still haven't addressed the water issue and erosion that goes north and and the other part is also the landscaping issue. Uh landscape was put in 13 years ago. I don't know how often or or vigilant we've been in in making sure that stays trimmed back. Uh but it's it's pretty overgrown at this point. Uh is what I would say. Um I guess my ideas are erosion is a concern of mine. We also have had kind of a mice infestation in the concession stand uh that we've had to tackle a time or two. Uh I think that is not a
067great thing to have a habitat there close. Um Mr. Norby's in the back. I know he likes the snake habitat that's up by the high school, but I know the AD uh saw a snake here uh last year. I haven't seen any snakes or you guys probably wouldn't see me still here. So, I'm going to imagine that there's no snakes there. Um, but an idea that we're tossing around and and there's some other ideas maybe to make this a hardcape. Um, you could go in in that area and put maybe three concrete steps um in that area that goes from the tennis courts down to to the pole vault jump. and you could slope them where they'd have a back drain and be able to push all that off to the east and head towards
068uh that collection area where they're supposed to be. For the collection area, we've kind of been talking uh actually um go ahead and pull up the uh component in the middle of uh Ken Kerr actually came across this and and threw it to me, but um it is an erosion sheet. Basically, it's it's a it's a plastic sheet that you fill with concrete and it creates an erosion barrier. Um, in this instance, it it would just be laying over the ground. It would it would you would get the ground laid out like you want it. Uh, and then put it down. But it'd be similar to the pictures that you see on the left of the screen once it dries. Um, and then you you the plastic then goes away and and you end up
069with an area where hopefully you get it all hard surfaced and you wouldn't be collecting a lot of dirt as that water comes down and then it would directly go into the to the to the drain. Here's another one. If you scroll down, you can see a picture or two of this down the side of a bank. Um, this is an idea that I just visited with um GMCN. And I told him I wanted to kind of be thinking through the thought process of of if this would work. Uh the one thing though that came up at our last department head meeting is we have to run a crane down there to get to the scoreboard once in a while. So this may or may not work. Uh the last one is for an erosion
070control. It's an actual uh cement blanket. Um and this is pliable until you roll it out. This is a it's got volume as well. You roll it down and then once you wet it down, it hardens um like concrete. So, those are ideas that are early in our thought process on on what and I'm thinking of that area down there by the collection and the drain on what we would do. Um I think these would be more economical than putting solid concrete all the way in there if you didn't have to do it. Uh but it wouldn't be structural. I mean the the crane does bring up an issue and we'd have to keep anything heavy off of stuff like this because it's obviously not reinforced, but I believe it could serve that purpose. Um
071so those are some ideas we're thinking about. We've just visited like I say Nick Neichek and I had this conversation last week about possibly what to do. I guess the biggest question I I in my mind with you guys as the board from an aesthetic standpoint, would we be okay with losing the landscape or is that a do we just need to bite the bullet and go the other direction and and cut everything back and keep it maintained and and deal with the erosion in another manner? How how big is that? We talking how big? How wide? Yeah. How th How long? How wide? I'm going to guess it's probably 20 foot deep by what is a football field? 54 yards wide. So, it's probably I guess it's around 10,000 square ft. That's sitting south
072or north of the tennis courts. So, just a little back little backstory on this. Um probably eight years ago, um the board approved to go in and and stair step, if you guys have been up there, stair step where it's it's over the the top that green area over the top of the long jump, triple jump that's now pole vault. Um the problem we ran into then is we couldn't find anybody to do it. And so we tried for about two years to find somebody that would actually come in and do the lands the actual landscaping to do the to do the uh block and brick work and we just couldn't find anybody to do it and then CO hit and it just kind of went away because we had other priorities but originally that
073was the plan after we figured out that the drainage was bad and it the problem everything washes to the right side over there to the east but we do get a lot uh a lot of of stuff washing down on the left side of what is now the pole hole triple jump area and so that that gets filled with mud and baked with mud and dirt and and filled with water. So trying to trying to figure out a way to keep the water out of that's always been problematic for us. Go in with like color concrete, too. Yeah, you you could dress it up and that's that's something we could take a look at. Um, simple and easy and long term. Yeah. Yeah, I think concrete looks better than unmaintained landscaping. I guess aesthetically I'm
074I'm probably not in favor of seeing all that concreted even if it is colored. I just think that's going to look the best over time. I think um I would like to go kind of look at it myself, but I know I'm I'm thinking more like a large rock like kind of like a roof rapper like what you'd see under a bridge abutments. You know how they how they rock those with larger rocks to keep it from eroding? Something of that sort may look better on there than just a you know solid concrete or even stairstepped concrete. But again, I mean, that's you would you would uh like the rocks around paro like bigger. Yeah, I'm thinking like six or eight inch diameter rocks, you know, something of that sort to to just to fill
075that whole hillside in with. So the other thing too and and you bring up rocks. I guess my my concern when you go talking about anything that um children can grab a hold of and chunk uh makes me a little nervous and we we've got pearl all the way around the high school. Um or maybe I hope to be looking at at some ideas on on how to handle that too. uh inevitably we we seem to throw one of those rocks up on an annual basis and knock out a window uh on our side with with staff. Um so how difficult is it to like mitigate the drainage issues landscaping that doable? We can look at what options there might be for that. Uh, from an erosion control standpoint, I'm sure it would be have
076to be some kind of a mat that would help slow that down. Um, you might have to lose some of the concrete. Maybe you put a trough on the bottom side to catch it and shoot it to the right like you like we were talking about. There still would be some dirt and debris that you'd have to deal with. still brainstorming at this time. Uh but but it's just one of those things that every time I go, it's something I wished I had a solution to. Um but I don't it's not one of those things I don't want to I don't want to go do that and then ask for your permission later. I I I kind of been enjoying this job. So I want to I want to make sure that we are doing
077this uh as a team and and have what's in the best interest of the district there. So happy to visit with any of you, follow up with this, or if you'd like to meet us up there and look at it, as long as more than four of you don't show up, I think that'd be fine. Any other questions on this particular item? Item G3, Honeywell Energy Saving Project. So all of you I think are at different levels of knowledge on the Honeywell project that we have that's effective in the district. Uh the lighting retrofit as well as the sister schools the VRF systems that were put in at those five campuses. Um and it was cage part of this the lighting I believe the lighting. Okay. Um, but the best way we feel like was
078to get uh individuals from Honeywell here and and and stand in front of you the sheet. You've got a sheet in front of you. Uh, but I'm going to quit rambling. I'm going to introduce Jordan Bali. Close close. Uh, senior account executive and Slenda Kenny who is the advanced systems engineer um for their presentation. Thank you for having us out this evening. We're very happy to be meeting with you and talk about this exciting project. Um so again, as uh Brandon had mentioned here, we understand that there's varying levels of knowledge about the project. Um some of you folks may not have been around um when this contract was executed, but uh just a brief summary for you. The district signed a contract with Honeywell back in April 2022 um to implement some energy efficiency
079and operational efficiency measures uh across uh your your portfolio buildings. Um the the total price tag for that project back in 2022 was uh 17.7 million. Uh portion of that was funded by your ESSER funds. Uh that was to the tune of about $3 million uh contributed from ESSER. Uh there was some capital contribution from the district at that point in time for uh about 2.6 6 million and then the rest of the project was funded through uh what we call energy savings performance contracting financing. So if you're not familiar with that model of procuring construction projects. Essentially what it entails is Honeywell acts as essentially a a design engineer uh general contractor. We bring in a multitude of partners to implement any number of energy efficiency measures. Uh the goal is for those measures
080to save you a minimum of 20% on your utility bills moving forward. and also introduce some operational efficiency uh savings as well. Um so what that allows you to do is go out and essentially get um you know a financing whether it be via tax exempt lease or a bond. I'm not quite sure how it was sold back in 2022. I was involved in the sale but it allows you to get a a cheaper rate on the money. Um and then again you are paying that uh loan down with the energy savings that you're seeing in your uh operational budgets from utility savings. So the goal is that the savings would outweigh your payment on any given year. Uh and Honeywell guarantees those savings throughout the entire term of the contract. So let's say in
081year five all of a sudden your utility bills skyrocket and you're not hitting the savings that we're guaranteeing for you, we actually have to cut you a check for that shortfall. Um so that is the benefit of implementing a project like this through Honeywell rather than just a traditional bid and spec approach uh for construction projects. So um to summarize uh this project touched about 16 of your facilities um five of which were um kind of the focus facilities that's Bernardine Sids Charles Stones uh Victor or Ornelis uh Edith Sherman and Florence Wilson all five of those buildings had um the heavy HVAC improvements. Um essentially what that entailed was uh demolishing your existing traditional fourpipe HVAC system and implementing uh VRF uh systems from Samsung. Those are variable refrigerant flow. Happy to go through
082the the litany of benefits that you get from those systems, but the the long and short of it is you you get energy efficiency and operational efficiency from those systems. Um it's it's the newest, latest, greatest technology for for HVAC. Um in addition to the HVAC improvements at those five buildings, you did have uh lighting upgrades at 14 facilities. Um, so that, you know, traditionally entails replacing your existing lights with LED lights and then implementing some lighting controls for occupancy sensors, daylight harvesting, stuff like that again to drive additional energy savings. Um, and then the third item uh would be upgrades to your building management system and that was specifically focused on those five facilities where we did some HVAC work. So uh with that building management system, your facilities team uh should have better
083visibility to what's going on in your buildings. Um, I mentioned guaranteed energy savings. Uh, as part of our program, we actually do postinstall measurement verification. So, uh, that's what Saglund's team is responsible for. She is our measurement verification specialist for Garden City. Um, and with your contract, you have a 20-year guarantee. So the the school district is actually cutting a check to Honeywell for each year of that guarantee for Siglinda's team to to perform measurement verification services and make sure that you are getting the savings that we guaranteed for you. Um and with that we deliver uh performance year reports each year. Um uh as far as the energy savings that's pretty straightforward. You see a you know a reduction in whether it be your electric bill, your natural gas bill. uh for some of
084the operational savings that we guaranteed um that included material cost avoidance for replacing uh lighting lamps and ballasts. When you upgrade LED, you'd have to change that stuff out less frequently than you would with traditional lighting equipment. So, you have some material savings there. There was also some uh labor and material savings that we had identified for the HVAC uh improvements because you're going to have components that are failing less often. You don't have to send the team out as often to to make repairs. Um, all said and done, the energy savings that you should be seeing in performance year 1 is uh in excess of $230,000. Uh, the operational savings in performance year 1 should be in excess of 13 $183,000. Um, and if you take that across the entire 20-year period, uh, the
085guaranteed energy and operational savings combined is in excess of uh, $1.7 million. So that contributes quite a good chunk of the funding to this project. Um the goal for the district at that point in time was to have a budget neutral project that didn't necessarily generate additional cash flow but allowed you to tackle as many of these projects as you possibly could uh without having to increase your your yearly budgets. Um that's about all I had for my portion. So I will kick it over to Siginda to talk a little bit about the building modeling report and the post install conditions report that were uh very recently submitted to the district. and then she can talk a little bit about what's next as far as uh measurement verification milestones and how often you'll be hanging
086out with her. Hello everybody. Um well so the post install conditions report which you've all hopefully seen electronically had uh was where we went through all of the work that was done in uh most most labor intensively going through the line by line to make sure that the lighting scope as installed matched the savings that was originally calculated and putting that all together. um and calculating over the scope over the span of time that the installation was taking place uh how much was the savings during that period. So that was over and above the savings that that Jordan was just mentioning. Um and we were very conservative in those numbers as well. We didn't actually even look at what the operational savings would be during that period. we were only looking at the the energy
087savings and um so the that that 12 month period from when the lighting was completed until all of the HVAC and everything was completed um comprises the majority of that savings and the the report showed $142,000 savings in electricity primarily from the lighting during that period. Maybe maybe explain that a little bit further. So, traditionally, we don't start the clock for performance year one until all of the projects are completed, commissioned, and everything's ready to go. But for something like lighting, where you can run into a room real quick, get all that upgraded while all the HVAC work may take weeks or months to complete, you're noticing those lighting savings immediately. So, we call that your initial construction period savings. And uh the number that you see in front of you was uh to the
088tune of 142,000 of construction period savings that weren't already included in your guarantee. That was just a little bit extra off the top. That's right. Yep. There you go. That's right. Um as part of that um post installation conditions report, we were um asked to work with uh the building modeling contractor at Icon, who was a contractor that was already engaged with the district. and um he generated buildings for uh models for the buildings that had the intensive HVAC upgrades um with the idea being for you to have a solid um electronic version to to model that building's energy usage going forward. Um unfortunately the after three iterations and many months of back and forth with them uh I think the variable refrigerant volume systems are a little bit complicated and we're separating the ventilation
089from the heating and the models still didn't look convincing to to our engineering minds looking at it. It showed for example um in two of the buildings that the gas consumption would actually be increasing. and we said, "Well, we know that's not right because we've just removed a bunch of gas consuming equipment." So, we decided to make sure that we validated those models with the actual utility bills. So, we requested and um analyzed 2024's utility bills and were able to put all all of the comparisons between the models, the savings um calculations that that Honeywell had put together and the actual from the bills. And so, that's what's in that other report that came at the same time as the post installation emissions report. um the the measurement verification period um I know uh there
090were some people who were asking why it started when it did. So the the general procedure would be to take the last project acceptance date which in this case was the end of the the HVC project. Um the work itself was substantially complete actually in October of 2023, but there were commissioning issues and things that drug out through April of 2024. So the last um acceptance report that we had or acceptance signature date we had was April 16th of 2024. So we're starting the year 1 guarantee uh May 1st, 2024, which means we're almost at the end of that period right now. So, this will be ongoing. Those will be the anniversary dates for the remaining 20 years of the guarantee. And you'll see me my face every year if you want me here. And
091uh and uh let's see any other questions on that. I think the one thing I might add, um I I know Brandon's getting ready to talk long range planning. Um, so if any of these projects that he's going to be speaking to in his presentation um have a deficit for funding, um, if there is a a struggle to come up with funding for some of these high priority items, um, we'd be more than happy to look at a second phase. Um, as part of that process, getting this first project started. We always offer to our customers free, no cost, no commitment, no risk audits. Uh that involves our team and you know a few engineers coming out to the site taking a look at the the buildings you want us to take a look at
092analyzing your utility bills and figuring out if there is a potential self-unding project there. Um it's not always the case. Some of these needs that your district might have might be more capitalally intensive than the savings that they would provide. Uh but again it doesn't take it doesn't hurt to take a look. So I encourage you to uh continue to leverage us as a resource. Um we are here to be your your long-term partner for these projects. So, I I want you to uh feel comfortable reaching out to us if you have any questions about stuff that you're working on um or identify any challenges in your funding. Um so, you you do have Cinda's contact information on there because she will be your main point of contact throughout this MV period, uh but I'm
093your local point of contact from the sales team. So, should there be anything that you need, whether it be M&V, uh something not working correctly or you just quite frankly can't get a hold of the person you need to get a hold of, please reach out to me. I'll give you guys some business cards after we finish here. And and for the folks that weren't involved in the development of the contract, initial contract, if you want ever want a to do like a mini workshop on how the savings were calculated or any of that, I'm the person you reach out to. I'll set that up with you. You mentioned guaranteed savings of about 11.7 million over 20 years. And you also mentioned if energy savings aren't met that Honeywell Yes. makes up the difference. Is
094that evaluated and uh paid if needed annually or at the end of the 20-year period? It's evaluated annually, but for example, if you had a um let's say you had excess savings year 1 through three to the tune of $10,000 each year. Uh if there was a $40,000 shortfall in year four, we would only need to cut you a check for 10 grand, the difference. Um so the it's it's looking at the total term making sure that we're hitting that number but it's evaluated on a year. You look at it annually. Would you look at the accumulation? Yes. To that point in time. Yes. So the same example would be true. Let's say if year one you had a significant shortfall but then in years 2 through 20 we were exceeding it. We'd need to
095cut you a check in year one but then we would hope to recoup that in those future years. So again it's looking at that total number but it is evaluated on a yearly basis. You'll see how you're performing year-over-year. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. Item G4, long range facilities report. So certainly um this took us an hour and a half to present the other night. Uh but we wanted to at least offer you the information that was shared. uh with our long range facilities committee. Um we held that on March 26th. Uh we had I felt like very very good turnout. I know the room was full. There was about 20. Um was there all our committee there? Do you know? I think you're right. So uh good good turnout. um the presentation
096that I gave and and I think Brad's going to pull it up uh was on on here and kind of at your pleasure, but I was going to just go through the presentation. You've got the list of um each one of each area broke it out by area instead of offering one that had everything in it. And I will tell you that we got some feedback in this particular meeting where I want to go back and look at uh roofing and possibly some HVAC projects. Garfield was moved up. Uh it was the next roof on the project. So it was brought up at the end of the meeting that you don't have a roof on the on the plan for next year because we moved Garfield up. So, I think there may be the ability
097to possibly l move Garfield's Hback down um and move possibly VO's roof up. Um so, I want to look and finalize before we bring that plan back. And I'd like to bring that plan back to you similar to the way we did um the other plan about 3 or 4 months ago. But this is just a review of that committee meeting. Um, and and certainly I can go as quick as you'd like or or what I'll do is I'll go through it pretty quickly, but if there's anything that you want me to stop and answer, uh, there was two board members there that that night as well. I probably should just have you guys tell me what you want me to talk about, but uh, real quickly, we started off um, I brought all of
098my department heads and and mentioned that obviously we couldn't be successful as a department without them. Uh, they all got up and spoke. I do want to go ahead and recognize that one of these gentlemen, I guess because I made him speak at the meeting. Uh, but Ken Kerr, who's been with the district for 38 years, has also made us aware that he plans to retire at the end of May. Um, got to figure out a way to extract the rest of that knowledge out of him. An incredible individual that's done a lot for this district. Um, he's on speed dial for everyone in this district. Um, so kind of starting with a sad note, but Ken did a great job talking about uh his career with the department. Um, he talked about maintenance. Brad
099covered custodial as well as the assistant maintenance. Brian Knight spoke about grounds and then Ken Denheart, who's been with the district for 43 years, uh, spoke about warehouse. At the end of this, I want Brad to do a quick demonstration. We're changing from TMA to FMX. Uh bigger picture. Brad had saw this because it had a mapping feature uh when he went to the state plant facilities meeting. Uh but he liked it even better the more we looked in it. Is it was more user friendly. Uh it's more up to date. I believe I can use it. TMA is a little bit frustrating. It's a little older, a little more archaic. But the other boil down factor was TMA we renewed if you remember that for one year per 67,000 FMX is going to cost
100us about 12 $12,000 on an annual basis. So I want Brad as we end this to do a quick uh presentation on FMX. We talked about current versus future operating systems. Um having Honeywell here tonight. I think Honeywell has a program. Uh, another group CNC has a program where you put all of your system under one umbrella. Right now, we're under about seven different ways to get in and access our systems. Um, so I think it might be beneficial, especially losing the knowledge that we're losing with KIN to look at um the affordability of something like that districtwide. Um, a true longer range structure and vision. So, I visited with Nick with with uh with the architect firm and talked about maybe bringing a consultant or a professional in to discuss with us future planning
101for our campuses and moving forward as a district. And so that we can get a true 25 to 50year plan as we look at population growth and and progress and trends uh with our community and holistically wrapping that all together um with the structures and the infrastructure that we have and how that would work. Uh and then my goal is is common sense efficient economical uh long range projects. The next page setting long range facilities priorities. um what affects the learning environment, what gets the taxpayers the best bang for their buck, maintenance versus replacement, uh what's cost effective. I equated this to if if I'm in a city manager's role and I and I fix five water leaks on a 100 foot line, a water 6 in water line, maybe I need to consider just
102replacing that 100 foot or 6 in water line. And so looking at at things in that manner, uh tracking school condition and lifespan, proactive preventative maintenance, not reactionary, long-term viability and proximity of campuses to population growth, which I mentioned earlier, uh giving board and taxpayers unbiased facts to make best decisions, hard and honest conversations, and the fact that we're better through uh better together through those tough communications. The next page was the long range plan. Um, like I said, you've got each one of these in your packet. Uh, roofing, HVAC, electrical, flooring, grounds, and envelope. You've got each one of those individually in your packet. I've also got one that where where we brought them back in and integrated them together uh in one plan, but I'm pretty simple. it made it more sense for
103me to pull them out individually uh into each one of their priority areas and obviously then continue to engage with our experts. Um GMCN was at the meeting, ICE was at the meeting. Um we were already used or I've already used and gained a lot of respect for our local contractors and and bringing them on board with the buildings that they've got as well. individual building assessments. Um a road map to plan for future projects. Uh recording ages of updates, projection for when replacements and updates are due. Uh and this is an assessment process that was done two years ago. Um I can email it out to you that the one that was done two years ago. Brad and I individually did the two assessments. The one thing that I found in doing that assessment,
104and it goes through a a lot of different areas on every campus, is it's somewhat flawed. Uh I feel like it's only ranks them from one to five. I think we need to spread that out just a little bit, but at the end of the day, it still would helped us be able to focus on where the flaws were in each one of those campuses. Um, and so we've got the 2023 one to go off of this one, but I would like to take a look at it and make it even better or maybe spread the numbers just a little bit better so we can dial in in those particular areas uh what needs to be done. The next page is was the 2024 uh completed projects. Um we had estimated the cost at 3,76773
105uh and it came in the actual cost of those projects was 3,592 987. Then the next page was our current 2025 projects where we're at. We had budgeted 4,623. Um there are a few of these projects. Uh for instance at Plymale the roof replacement, we didn't do that. We just did a repair. Uh so you see the actual budgeted figure versus the actual cost that that's going to take uh the HVAC replacement at ply mill. We went through those units and only had to spend $2,000 to get them up and going. We had one heat exchanger that was out. Um other than that, they're they're running well. Um and then another positive to the estimated cost versus actual cost are items like the Bernardine sits roof that we had budgeted at a million 155 and
106it only the total cost of the the roofing contract plus the the uh architect fee was 53669. So um car build also the roof came in under budget. So I'm I'm short. I know I didn't spend enough money this year. Um, and I'll work on that for next year. I apologize. So, uh, the next page was the 2023 energy energy savings contract. U and, and that was what Honeywell followed up on. So, that's a page that covers that. Um, the next page is the 2026 plan projects. And this is the one where uh, a gentleman in the crowd who was in the roofing business also happened to mention that, hey, there's no roofs on this one. So I think maybe we might want to re-evaluate that. One thing that we do have on there is
107a Hubert. Um still want to tackle that HVAC situation there. Um and do it in the same manner that we did the HVAC units at uh Horus Good. Uh possibly bring a consultant in and ICE and and take a common sense approach to what works for that particular building and figure that out so that we can get that building upgraded. Next page, input from principles. Um, I've committed to bannual visits with campus leadership uh and head custodians and and if you're not aware, that's how we communicate with the campuses is through the head custodians um to review needed projects and current work orders. Um we just put out today a poll trying to get and recruit employees for our summer painting crews. Um some of our projects we'll do inhouse. Uh, and the rest of
108this I did mention some projects may need to be completed in future bond projects. I know that's not always a great topic to discuss, but we we talk about Kenneth Henderson and the need for expansion there. Um, you know, some athletic facility areas that I've been talking with the athletic director about. And then obviously the high school that we're talking about a large substantial building that still seems new in a lot of people's mind, but it's 13 years old that we're going to eventually have to start making some progress on that, especially if you think about where we are with insurance and and what they think about 15y old roofs and where that's kind of put us. So that conversation might might need to be had. Uh and then I just opened it up for
109questions from the committee. um not a lot of feedback, but some good feedback mainly about uh FMX. And so I want to turn it over to Brad for just a minute to talk about FMX and and give you a little demonstration of where we're we're at with that. We're still building it out. We went ahead and moved and are moving, we've ended our agreement with TMA. Um and that'll end at the end of this actually July. I don't remember when that date was. Maybe it was in August. We actually uh but we hope to be rolled over to FMX by the time that our TMA contract expires. Um and so with that, I'll turn it over to Brad to demonstrate our FMX. Okay. So, like Brandon mentioned, uh TMA was a great product for us
110for 20ome years within the district. I got introduced to FMX when like I said out of the conference. Um, it allows us to simplify things and it also allows us to track the things that we need to track. When we're looking at long range planning, we always want to make sure we're tracking any costs that are associated with our assets, with our equipment, whatever it may be. Within FMX, it allows you actually can I move this over here? Yeah. Reach so I can face you all. I don't want it back. Okay. So, like I said, we want to be able to track our assets and make sure that we are associating all of our costs that we may have with the equipment. Um, within this, the first page you open up is a calendar view.
111This allows those items that maybe need to be done. Uh each technician will have their own page to see, but the uh admin team or whoever the warehouse supervisor, they'll have all of their associated um employees on there to view their calendar to kind of see how items are going throughout the week and throughout the month. So, this allows us to be able to see when we have certain items that are due. For example, I've created a few test items for you to see um that are due this Thursday. For here we have a preventative maintenance which is a filter change. It's on a weekly. It attaches how many filters those technicians will need so that they can grab them right from the warehouse and get on the road and get things done as quick
112as possible. The accountability to this is when they execute the job, they can make comments, they can make um work orders. So they find a metal brick and they're allowed to make a work order to help make sure we're getting all those costs on our machine. Uh it will remind you. So, it's not going to let you just keep putting those work orders in the back and not worrying about them. It'll keep bugging you after it reaches its due. It also gives them step by step how to get through. I can zoom this in so you guys can see a little better. It'll give you a step by step. So, if we send a new employee up there, they're allowed to do this task without having someone there to hold their hand or get them
113through it. So, um, so like I said, the calendar within itself is a really cool feature. Uh, within the within the to-do list, this is just like your calendar but spread out. And then also on preventative maintenance, it's going to show you here all the tasks that are due. And these actual ones down here below the test one here are all actual true preventative maintenance items that we need to attend to as they come up on their due dates. So as you can see we started staggering all of our quarterly rooftop filter changes which is you know it's a very important task to do so we can prolong the life as best we can on our equipment. But within this we not only have all the information I clicked back um we're allowed we're able
114to attach any attachment. So if we have any kind of documentation whether it be a user manual maybe it's a um sorry it was on here. There's a user manual. You can attach pictures anything you want to do step by step you're allowed to attach it here. And then you can also put on there any you want to have followers. So pin cur which won't be here for much longer but anyone that's in that role will have that chance to see hey this isn't getting done they can go out and bug them make sure they're getting it done or they can follow up and say hey great job getting that done on time. Uh one cool thing I guess another cool thing is FMX maps. So this is what kind of drew my attention when
115I was walking around the booths looking at the different items they had. Um, if this loads here, this takes not only maps that we can import for like our blueprints in the buildings, we can also do geo maps, which would be like satellite imagery. And then we can also just attach a photo. And I'll kind of show you an example here. This would be for example a blueprint of a hubert upstairs. So it shows all the the spaces that are in there. Clearly defines the numbers that we operate on. So technicians are easily able to identify maybe they're not familiar with the building. They can get in and realize, okay, I'm at the top of stairs. It's the first room on the left. Within this though, it's not just showing you where things are at.
116You're able to add pins, different equipment. So if I have I have a piece of equipment that sits right in this room, I can mark it right there and give it a pin name. Whether it be custodial equipment, HVAC equipment, if it's an electrical panel, whatever it may be, water shut off, anything can be put in here, put a symbol on it. You'll be able to click on that t or that item once it's in there, and it'll give you a detailed page of when it's serviced, what's been done to it. Um, a goal of mine is to have QR codes above each doorway. So, a technician or anyone can go right up there and scan it and see what all is in that room, what's been done in there. The whole history of the
117room will be there. Um, another example of the mapping. So, this could be used not only just to help maintenance site out if any emergency personnel need to get maps of a building quickly. We can provide this access to first person or fire personnel, first responders of any sort. Let me see. But then we can also look and see this is a pin ball to brown with all the HVAC units. As you can see, as you're standing on the roof, you'll be able to scroll over each one and find out exactly which unit you're standing in front of. This here is one that I did for fire extinguishers. So, every year we're required to have annual inspection of our fire extinguishers to make sure they're compliant. This allows anyone that may be new to the
118building, maybe a new head custodian that's supposed to go grab these out, they're able to pull this map up and find every fire extinguisher, where their location is, make sure they get them out for the the annual inspection. So, the other key thing and and as as we talk about and and maybe you can real quickly, but I I want to also uh not take a whole lot more of your time, but this will give us the ability as our head custodians uh are doing filling out work orders. We're going to issue them tablets and not only will they do a work order just like they always have and and the work order will actually we'll be able to customize it and ask them some questions on it. Like for instance, if it's an HVAC
119unit and it says, "What is the thermostat setting at?" and it says 72, then it'll say that's within the range. Please don't submit this work order, which was something that Kim Kur liked. Uh but the other part of that is that you can take a picture and make an attachment of anything, a water leak, a hole uh in the roof or or something that they see outside. So we'll see real time. So, our technician will be able to push on that picture and say, "Okay, this is what they're talking about." And there it is right there. So, uh, also with that work order, we'll be able to attach the head custodian and the principal. And if there was a teacher that made it, the head the principal could also make them aware the status of
120that work order. That was one of the concerns that that I heard quite a bit when I was touring the district is, well, we we drop these work orders in and they just fall into the the black hole and we never hear about them again. So, not only will it remind our technicians, but it'll also as we make updates, it'll remind and let those head custodians and principles know what's going on with those particular work orders. So, but that that's a technology that u it was it sounded too good to be true. The price was really really good. It's more userfriendly and it's got the mapping system. Plus, we think it'll it'll grow into something that that we all like and can customize. We can continue to customize it as we grow into silk. And
121we've only been with this for what, four months now? Yeah. I've already seen several updates. They're very responsive on, "Hey, we'd like to see this." If they get enough inquiries about it, they're definitely willing to say, "Hey, let's entertain this and see what we can do for it." But it's very fully customizable. It allows us to actually truly track what we have for our buildings and get cost on them so we know where we're putting our money in. So, real quick display of FMX. Uh, but with that kind of sums up or or this agenda item, uh, what questions do you all have? This help you also with ordering like supplies of what you need and all of our inventory will be in there and a picture of it. Leanne's working real hard at making
122sure we got a picture of everything, too. Okay. So, like one other benefit back to this is before in team A, we're not allowed to assign work orders to our head custodians uh because they are a requesttor in the sense that they're putting in the work orders for our buildings. Within FMX, we're allowed to assign work orders back to them. So, if I'm requiring my custodians to do a monthly custodial equipment like evaluation, make sure their tanks are cleaned out, they're replacing the pads, the squeegees, whatever it may be, we can now assign that back to them and hold them accountable. I'm assuming you can pull reports by building and stuff. Any information you put in, you can pull in an Excel format or PDF, however you want to see it. I know we went
123through a lot in just a little time, but any other question? And just like on any of the agenda items that we've discussed tonight, uh we'd love to visit more if if some questions simmer up after this or or evoke some thought after this. Feel free to call if needed. Uh one question I had on the electrical breakout of electrical facilities plans. Um you know, clocks, fire alarms, no problem. We have a plan laid out um building access control systems either building on the infrastructure we already have security on that side of it. Well, I'll tell you where we stand with that is is we kind of were taking strides for that and contracted with two with SWC to put into one of sits and and one of Florence Wilson. Um Casey with technology has
124been supervising that because that has actually kind of trended away from as much of a maintenance issue, more of a technology issue. Um and so we're we're waiting for those two projects to complete. Um and I think can be honest with you and tell you then we're we're going to kind of take a wait and see attitude and figure out where we want to go. I've also visited with Casey about if this isn't the direction we want to head, what other direction should we be looking at that makes sure that it integrates and sets well with our current technology that we have so that we're not just adding another piece of technology that has to be maintained. So, so that conversation is internally going on right now. Um, but just like we've talked about, there's
125been a lot of transition and change with the Honeywell project, getting everybody up to speed. There's been a lot of transition and change on that on that project, which is security, intercoms, bell system, u, and clocks all kind of integrated into one system. So, not a very great answer, but but that's kind of where we're at. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I don't have a question. I just have comment. I sat in on the committee meeting and I thought it was very good. A lot of people from the community that really complimented Brandon and his crew on how far we've come as far as a road map and planning and so I thought that that was very nice of them compliment all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Item G5, finance update. Yes.
126If I go long, it's Brandon's fault because as he talked, I just kept thinking of more and more stuff to say. So, um, this is not mine. What else do I need to do? We're going we're going backwards. Is that it? Okay, perfect. Okay. Okay. So just uh part of the board policy where I give uh around quarterly updates. Um it's just that kind of time. So okay. So uh what I'm going to go over is I'm going to touch on the investments and interest that we've got going on right now. Some of the challenges that I see in the near future, some of the potential high dollar expenses right now. Um just kind of a looking forward at next year and some of the numbers that I'm projecting to have. Um we're going to
127talk a little bit about the Growwell option that we're looking into. Um some ongoing expenses and then just wrap up if you guys have any questions. So this year I became a little more aggressive with investments. Um at the bottom you can see that fiscal year 23 we had um just under half a million dollars in interest for that year. Um, last year I started to to do a little bit more investing and got it up to just under threequarters of a million. And then as of the end of February, we're almost at 1.2 million. So, um, interest rates have helped that out also, but as you can see above, I've looked at, um, I've invested a lot more of the district's money in CDs and T bills and have um, I feel like done
128a better job the longer I'm in the position of vetting out the best options. um looking at short-term, long-term um also making sure that I ladder those so that money becomes available when I need it. Right now there's a lot um invested um that top one's going to come uh and mature the end of May so that it frees up money for lumpsum payrolls. Um so just trying to be strategic in what I'm doing there. Um some of the challenges that um I'm not worried about, but I'm worried about uh declining enrollment. If every student that we lose on average is about $8,300 and that's based on fiscal year 24 numbers, um what an average student is worth. Um you guys have seen it the rising insurance cost with property and casualty um going from
129EMC uh to the pool. the pool uh if you'll remember right is uh runs fiscal year and they've already projected that that's going to be a 3% increase from what we just signed up in January. So they gave me that information at my very first meeting right after we agreed to go go with them. So um health insurance is obviously always going to be a concern. um aging facilities um whether it's our roofs, our HVACs, intercoms, clocks, cameras, Brandon um and the long range facility comes into play there and we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit. Um this year we did the intercom clocks and cameras at Florence Wilson and SITS as part of the SWC project. Uh Florence Wilson was around 192,000, SITS was around 240,000. Some of that was
130funded with the safe and secure schools grant which um we've been made aware is not going to be an option moving forward. Um we plan to look at Horus good next. It wasn't necessarily the next one on there. Um but after on the original um schedule we had but then uh in talking it over we feel like horse good probably has the biggest need right now. Um, we'll talk about some large expenditures that we've got coming up and then always worried about com being competitive in our salaries and our benefits and it it gets difficult. Um, we want to raise our base to recruit staff and and then we get um feedback from people that have been here long term that we're not doing enough to retain people. So finding the balance to recruit and
131retain um are not only certified but our classified and admin as well. Um and then also age plays into that. A lot of the younger teachers that we're hiring are still on mom and dad's insurance because you can be on that till you're age 26. And so to them they just want to see it in salary whereas maybe somebody that's got a family is is more concerned with the French benefits that we offer for health insurance. So again, just finding the balance that works for the majority of people. Uh fleet management and maintenance is always a challenge. We have uh roughly 50 buses and uh 30 vehicles, whether they're the the transits or the Suburbans or or our cars. So just maintaining them and keeping the fleet new enough that you don't have a tremendous
132amount of repairs. Federal funds, um I think just the uncertainty of federal funds right now is a little bit of a challenge. Fiscal year 24, we got almost 14 million in federal funds. 3.3 of that was Esser. So, we're still looking at over 10 million that we rely on federal funding for. Um, and then the the loss of ESSER is is definitely a challenge. We've been able to maintain some of the positions that were esser funded. Um, we've got a couple proposals to look at again for next year of some um like a healthcare position that was erded and then KDHE grant funded. and now we've lost that grant. So, just continuing to see the effects of losing that ESER money. Um, the Bay Bridge forfeite account when I stepped into this role, I did
133some digging and found out. Um, so the district puts in a $100 match for certified staff or 50 for classified staff. If they give 50 in annuity, the district matches it up to 100 for certified staff. So the vesting schedule on that is after you've completed five years, you start to get vested on the portion that the district put in. So every employee that does this has basically two accounts. Their own money, it's always their money, the district's money where they actually have to earn it over vesting. Um so after 15 years, that money is completely theirs. Anybody that leaves prior to 15 years, that money that whether it was 100% of those those funds or 10% of those funds that weren't theirs went into this forfeiture account and the district wasn't previously using these.
134So I inherited aboutund or $850,000 that in this forfeiture account and found out that that money was going to be lost if we didn't start using it. So um we could only use it for the same purpose and so I have even since I was in the payroll department started using this forfeiture account and that money is coming to an end. So we started with about 850,000 it's roughly around 50,000 a month. So we made it almost a year and a half where it was not coming out of current district funds. So that's going to be a challenge moving forward putting that back into the budget. And then I mentioned the safe and secure schools grant going away. It's not going away completely, but they've changed what you can use it for. You can you
135can no longer use it for the like security in the buildings, but um it's strictly for AED machines. And we just bought um AED machines. I worked with Michelle Schaw this last year and we've got them in every building, but we are going to look and see if maybe the the high school needs one in each academy. maybe maybe we need some like at auditoriums and like more facilities. So, we will continue to look in that and see if we can utilize that grant um the best that we can. Some potential high dollar expenses. Some of these are just maybe some of them are more definite. Um just the retrofitting of facilities if reconfiguration would warrant it. Um tailoring those buildings if if sits and stones became elementaryaries, would we need playgrounds and things like
136that? Those could be potential high dollar expenses. ELLL curriculum is coming up. Uh we're looking at 1.2 to 1.5 million. That'll come out of next year's budget and then be implemented in fiscal year 27. It's one of the bigger implementations that we'll do and we do have um more than that in the textbook fund, but it's going to hit and then again just have to build that textbook fund up for the next one. Um, we have also been informed that Skyward, our current software that not only um like my my office lives on it all day long, but teachers use it for grade books and parents even. Um, we either have to upgrade to their new version or we have to find a new software. Um, we are uh Casey and the technology crew, they're
137vetting out. There's about three options is all we have and we're the hope is to get decided on something later this spring to have it for next fiscal year, not necessarily utilizing it for business, but to have it to start playing with and start putting our information into. And then fiscal year 27, we would go live with the new or the upgrade. And then um and that 160,000 is just very rough. That's what we paid for Skyward this year. So, I'm sure it's going to be more than that, but just to give you an idea. Um, Growwell, we'll talk a little bit more about um, but we're looking at the possibility of a three-year contract with them for our employees to have a clinic model. AH expansion may or may not be tied to boundary
138changes and reconfiguration. Um, and then like whenever the board is is wanting to if they still want to move forward to making equalized middle schools, that's obviously going to be a high dollar expense. We we've set money aside in capital outlay and then talked about maybe doing a lease purchase for the remaining of that, but that's obviously coming up. And then another one that we've started to to talk about is uh transportation fuel tanks. So, uh, the three of us have met with Eric at, uh, with Huell and that option would be we own the tanks and that's around 236,000. The other option we've looked at, we've, uh, visited with Ryan at Konesoga. They own the tanks. Um, we just contract the fuel. And so, he was thinking roughly around 10 cents of a gallon
139above delivery costs on that option. We use around 80,000 80,000 gallons of fuel a year. So around $16,000 savings on that option. So if you look at if we own our own tanks, the 236,000, we wouldn't pay that extra 10, we're currently paying 30 to 50 cents on top of delivery. So, if you look at the option where we own our own tanks, then you're looking at saving that much and you're probably going to um break even on the cost of the of that 236,000 within 10 years. And that's assuming no big repairs on those tanks. Whereas the other option, they're going to pay for the repairs, the dispensers, all of that. But at a minimum, we'll need to do a little bit of construction out there with some concrete um making lanes, bus, a
140bus lane and a car lane. We're going to need security cameras to make sure that those tanks have um eyes on them at all times. So something we're in the beginning stages of looking at there. Um looking forward, this year's current base per student is 5378. um they're projecting next year to be 5611 and up until last Thursday they were projecting that that 5611 was going to go down and last year or last week on the legislative update they actually think that it may increase. So that was some really good news. So hopefully at a minimum 5611. So the projected new money with stable enrollment we're looking at is a little over 1.5 million in the general fund and just under half a million in LOV. Um, and again, the average per student last year
141was 8,300. I'm guessing it's probably going to be pretty similar. So, some things that we've talked about that we're doing to try to grow funding is the ESOL um program that we've implemented. It was wellreceived. So, we're paying the cost of the two classes, the um cost to get it on their license, the cost of the test, all up front, so they don't have any out of pocket. the first um section filled up before they even got to all the buildings to try to promote it with 25. So that's going to be helpful. And then I think for the fall we're already over halfway full for that. So that's going to be very helpful in our ESOL funding. Um that 395 is what each student. So you could take that times the 5611 next year
142and that's how many additional how much additional funding each student could bring in if they had ESOL minutes for the entire day. So it's prrated on how many minutes they're with a certified staff member. Um kind of the same thing with CTE. We're just really trying to grow our CTE funding. It's the actually the highest waiting in the school finance formula at 0.5. to do that. The main thing we're doing is we're bringing those introductory courses down to the middle school level so that all classes at the high school can generate funding for us. Um, grow well. So, we've talked a little bit about it. They've presented to us. So, I put in um a proposed timeline if we as the board uh chooses to move forward um looking at um a first read at
143our next board meeting. Um and then taking it to the insurance committee the last week of April and if it keeps furthering along, we would bring a vote to the May 5th board meeting. Um I'll switch over to the side. Um, so Growwell projects cost savings for us and I just like in percentages. So I I needed to vet it out myself. I needed to get my actual numbers. So what I did is I went back to uh 2023 and 2024, pulled actual expenses for the different categories um that Rowell can help us with and came up with these cost savings. So work comp, we can send all work comp there, but they're not going to be able to treat all work comp because of broken bones and things like that. So the non-surgical work
144comp that I'm projecting we could save is over 31,000. Um I'm going to skip office visits for now. Labs Growwell projects at 44% savings. And so an average of the last two years we would save um just under uh 235,000. ER visits at 35% is at 81. 100% I don't have it but on there but 100% of our DOT physicals could be pushed to grow well and save us around 8,300 and then um I didn't think about this until just this week but I really I pulled our usage on Optum which is our EAP our employee assistance program and the utilization on that is for counseling services um there are other offerings like legal um things but that is that's not what our employees are using it for. They're using it for the mental health
145counseling component. And I met with Carmen last week and um uh he presented a mental health component that I think we would be able to eliminate optimum and therefore save another 25,000. So back up to office visits um Brwell uh their projection was 65% in year one. I was like I don't know like this is just me flying blind. I wanted to figure we had to have to break even. So I set up a formula and we have to have 50% in order to break even. So anything above and beyond that then we're that's when we're going to start to see our return on investment. So when I did that I felt a lot more comfortable um because overall my number one concern is employee buyin. This model works when people use it. Um, so
146just making sure um, Growwell has been um, open to going out to buildings. um they plan to be at our if we proceed there, they plan to be at that back to school inservice and set up like we talked about maybe they're in a classroom and it's a breakout session where employees can come ask questions one-on-one or in big groups they can do presentations but they're ready to start um helping with the marketing on May 6th if that's the way the board votes on May 5th. um they uh in this in the proposed timeline they would start seeing patients and continue their marketing in August um but not our contract would actually it's kind of like a trial month um to get people accustomed to going but then in September our contract would start um
147some additional savings that um other than the chart that I see um the employees are not going to have to to pay a deductible or co- insurance when they utilize this so employees are going to see savings straight out of their pocket. Um, and and tied to that, I would like to look at uh an option on our health plan of raising the the the deductible a little bit higher so that the per premiums can be maintained or even maybe go down hopefully. Um, but with higher deductibles, um, I think that if you're using Growwell, you're not going to mind having a higher deductible because you're, you know, if you're utilizing Growwell, you're not going to be paying that. Um there's always obviously the the risk of uh things that they wouldn't be able to
148help you with and you're stuck with that higher deductible, but overall on the primary care I think they would they would see savings for sure. Um the other thing uh I checked into is they have the teaalth option and right now we have Teddoc through Blue Cross Blue Shield. So we still have to have Blue Cross Blue Shield. So I'm like, okay, look, I'm going to reach out and see if they'll come down on their premiums if we remove Teddoc since we'll have this other option and there will be um I did find out that there will be a reduction in our Bluec Cross Blue Shield administrative costs if we remove the TEDOC option. The other thing that we can do is um student drug testing. They'll they'll do that at cost and currently we're
149outsourcing that to Ailicare. So, we could bring that in and save funds there. As well as like our transportation, anytime they're in an accident, um whether it's at fault or not, they they're required to go do the drug testing. So, that would be an additional savings there. Um so, I kind of told you my concern was getting employees to buy in. Uh my second concern would be um just our like in a perfect world, we all start using them and save all this money, are they ready for us? um they have a a nurse practitioner ready to come on staff. Um and then I know that Marilyn doesn't always see patients, but she's willing to see patients uh more so if needed um while they adjust to our clientele. Um then the other my the
150biggest risk, so those are my concerns. The biggest risk um is just depleting the health reserve fund. and um we worked really hard to get back that back up because it took a a hard nose dive um with COVID and in the following years. So, I was able to stick quite a bit of money on the health reserve at the end of last year with some transfers and then the the other thing that gives me some comfort is the interest that we're earning. That interest can go wherever we deem it. Um typically it's been split between Capital Outlay and Health Reserve. Um but say like year one we don't get the buy in that we need I feel comfortable having those funds to supplant that but we have built that fund. Uh February of 2023
151we we were at 1.3 million. Uh February of 2024 we were at 1.1 million. So we went down and we are currently sitting at 2.89 million. So um we've done some really good work. IMA suggests that we have two to two and a half months of claims in in that fund. And I I roughly guessed around $300,000 a week. So, uh about 1.8 million. So, we are we're definitely where they they suggest us be. Um so, that will be coming back to you. Uh Carmen has provided the contract. So, um we'll get that to you guys for first read at the next meeting. Um, some other ongoing expenses that I just kind of felt like fun facts, I guess. Our fleet management is high dollar every year. I've worked with Shane this year on setting
152up kind of a a long range plan, much like the long-range facilities plan for the transportation department. This year, we bought the three Taho and the four all-American buses. Next year, we're projected to get three all-American yellow buses. And then in fiscal year 27, we're going to do one all-American and he would like to look at doing two all-American with air conditioning so that those buses could be used for shorter trips or for middle school events um when our activity buses are used. Um long range facilities plan, Brandon talked about that. We're down a lot this year just because of the A Hubert project coming in so high uh and pushing that in a different direction. We roughly try to stay I told him five million. He's a little over but I told him I'd
153work with him. Um so next year that 5.8 and then 5.4 the following year. 4 million of our capital outlay is um from taxes that we levy with our 8 mills and then 2.5 million is the 62% we get in state aid. So every year we're we're bringing in 6.5 million. So right there you can see between fleet management longrange facilities we're already at the six. So the rest is going to go um is is basically for like whatifs or eent repairs and then the other funds that go into capital outlay are strictly just transfers from funds left at the end of the year. Um our bond payment on the high school is um it it's it increases just gradually. So as you can see 7.3 million this year in two years it's 7.6. That
154um final payment is in September of 2034. The ESCO project which Honeywell talked a little bit about earlier um we initially uh um borrowed 12.6 6 million on that project after the 3 million from Esser and then the two and a half from capital and that was a 20-year lease purchase program. Um the fiscal year 25 I had a little bit when I was putting this together uh a couple weeks ago I had a little freakout moment because I was like we have not paid that and I got to looking and supposed to be paid in November and I was like we have not paid that 637,000. I just know it. I would remember that. So we go back and look. can't find it anywhere. So, I reach out and they're like, "Oh, no. You
155had enough in your escrow fund to pay that payment." So, that did not have to come district funds, uh, current year district funds. So, that again will be something that we pick up next year, um, around the $650,000 mark. That one does increase quite a bit every year. Um, the last payment in 20 um, 42, seems so far away, is uh, 1 point uh, 1.06 06 million. So it it gradually increases pretty steadily. Can I ask you a question? So you're talking about that's that's the projects at Honeywell. The honey wall. Yeah. Bas how does that track at least with the energy? I guess that is the goal still is you see that increase up to north of a million dollars. uh is it it's guaranteed to be offset by energy savings that like and
156I learned actually I learned a lot tonight from listening to them that that project I was not a part of at all. So um when she offered to sit down like that's something I'm definitely going to take her up on to learn a little bit more about that. Um because I I know we just provided all of the utility bills to them. So I'm anxious to see what their report brings back. But I I know the intent is that that is supposed to be paid for with energy savings. So we better start saving a lot of energy. Yeah. Yeah. Because I thought I heard him say something about the projected annual savings is like 240,000. Yeah. But it looks like the payment on it is well well over that. I caught that too. So that's
157why I was like I definitely want to talk to them understand that a little bit better. Um the bottom section I did uh more of a look back um u just to see just to show you the property casually. We've talked about it so much but that that just really is going to affect the budget when I build it next year. This year it's so high because if you remember we had a full year of EMC on the budget and then had to do half a year of the pool. So even if you avoid looking at this painful year, next year that 1.185 is with the projected 3% increase from fiscal year 24 to 26. It's it's almost doubling and that's just that's going to hurt a little bit. Um health insurance um when I
158when I pulled actuals so far this year were at the 9.1 and so you think you've got that that was as of the beginning of March. So you've got four months left. So you got a little over a quarter. So we're going to be a little bit we're definitely going to be higher than uh last year if that trend follows. And then another big purchase that just came across my desk that made me think I'll put that on there is iPads. And if we continue to go down that road, um we just uh got uh asked to get the card open for 670,000 for this year to to buy those iPads for next year. So I just bumped it up to 700 the next year. So, I know that was kind of a lot and
159a lot of randomness, but um just kind of things that I thought of as I put it together that I find interesting. Thought maybe you guys would too. So, you have any questions on any of that? Kind of off the topic. I'll put you on the spot, but are iPads still the thing or I know there's been talk about going to computers or laptops or we just Well, I actually talked to Casey about that today. I told him, you know, we did a study back when we first adopted the iPads and then I think 2018 19, something like that. Um Roxy Roxy kind of did another study to determine, do we want to continue with the iPads and the kind of the consensus at that point was yes, that's the direction we want to go.
160I told Casey, it's probably time for us to to look at that again. There's been a lot of changes in technology. Um, one of the things that he and I talked about today and he's going to reach out to Apple to kind of get some get some numbers from them, but um, like if if we go to laptops for all of the kiddos, Apple, um, has a guaranteed buyback that they'll do on on the laptops. So, basically, we would buy the laptops and then at the end of the whatever cycle that is, what, however long that that would be, um, they're guaranteed to buy them back at a certain dollar. And so he's gonna gonna kind of gain some of that information and we're going to dig into that. That's one of the things that
161I told him I felt like we needed to do in the upcoming year. So we'll kind of have an idea from Apple though. Most of the world don't use that. I I I he just said use that for an example. I I don't I don't think that that means we have to go with Apple, John. I I that was just an an option that he said that he knew that we could do. Um as far as that I'm I think we could look at PCs, too, for sure. I know that that that question or that conversation came up at the high school board faculty meeting. I don't know if it came up during the meeting or in some conversations afterwards, but um I I my takeaway was that um at least there's I think some
162that have an interest in using Chromebooks or PCs at the high school. So I don't know from a technology standpoint about managing two different platforms at the high school level versus yeah elementary middle school level but yeah I mean those things that we talked about you know one of the other things I I I've heard from a couple of you about you know the iPads going home at at fifth and sixth grade versus staying at school. So we talked about that. I think he's going to dig into a lot of that stuff and kind of come to you all with a few different options and a few different ideas as as we move forward. Well, and the management costs like on the on the Chromebooks significantly lower the last time that I checked. Significantly lower.
163So, besides the fact that a Chromebook is much cheaper than an iPad. Yeah. One thing I would say about Chromebooks is, you know, we get to the end of the four years and there's going to be no there's going to be no return on investment for those. $300 a piece. Yeah. Yeah. That that would be the only the only thing. So, but yeah, Casey, I think, is is is open to that and he recognizes that. So, what grade levels have iPads today? K12. Um, like if you're asking what grade levels take them home, I'm just asking utilize K12. K12 uses them. Do we need to do that or can we just go 912 with ECS? And yeah, I think I think we can definitely talk about what that needs to look like. Yeah. Sorry, I
164went down a rabbit hole. That's all right. How did the the survey that you did for the Grow Well, did you get good response to that? Um, it was all really good. Um, yes, I use it. Um, and until I asked if they'd forego salary increases for it. Um, and I, like I said, that's not a make or a break for sure for me. Um, it was just something I wanted to put in there to to see. Um, and I I'll be honest, I I thought about doing like an optin to where we only pay for the employees that are actually going to use it. And the more I thought about it, I'm like, we're charging the employees that are potentially the ones that are going to save us money. And that didn't sit well
165with me. So, um I just really think if we can get it marketed to our employees and get um I think some things that we have going for us is that it's it's established. It's been established um uh I've talked to the city. I've talked to um Dodge City. I've talked to um some another organization um and they they didn't have any hesitation in in recommending the services that they're receiving. Um, another thing I think we have going for us is uh the international teachers obviously obviously come over here and they don't have a provider. And then I've also heard that a provider is leaving town. And so I think those are all things in our favor um to get employees to use it. And I think um the best the best way we're going
166to grow it is just uh getting people in the door and then word of mouth um using it. A couple of the teachers that I talked to were even like, um, you know, I don't know if I want to leave my primary physician, but I've been to Express Ware seven times with my kids this year because I couldn't get them into their primary care. And so, I had to pay for that. And this I wouldn't have to pay for. So, and I've tried to uh make like people feel comfortable. I guess we're never going to force anybody. Um, you don't have to. Um, on the flip side of that, if if we're paying for them uh to have a membership at Growwell essentially and they're not using it, we're paying twice because we're paying for
167that and then we're paying right or that they do choose to go to. Um, but I I you're going to have some of that regardless. Um, another thing that I've had employees talk to me about chronic conditions and that they have they see specialists and I'm like, you're you're right and if you want to keep those specialists, that's great, but if you need lab work done, you can certainly utilize Growwell and go get your labs done for free. So, there's still some opportunities for even those different situations that are one-offs. So with your slide where you kind of broke down your potential savings, are you my understanding right you're anticipating if that utilization's around 50% year one the district will see a net savings of 720,000 by making the switch? No, that is I'll go
168back to it. Um, okay. So, those savings right there that I project we're going to save if if 50% of our office visits transfer and start using Growwell at that point, we're going to pay for it. We're going to like these savings listed are going to pay for the year that we're going to pay Growwell. Okay. So, that's my break even. So, the cost to enroll in Growwell is about 720. Yeah. Like 50% utilization break even. Yep. Okay. Yep. And that's the that's the basic the mental health component is um uh in addition to but it's by visit. It's just a set dollar amount per visit. Um and so you're only going to pay for what you use there. Um the drug testing uh back at cost is not factored into this. We're paying it
169now. So it's it's not really a saving. The savings will be that we won't pay as much, but it will be savings, but not um substantial. We don't have a lot of cost in those drug tests. But like I said, we'll uh get the contract that has presented over to you guys and I just encourage you to reach out to me or Marilyn I know is willing to answer any questions. Um just that that timeline is just so that we can really start um marketing it to employees so that when the new school year starts up we can really start to see the utilization. All right. Thank you guys. Okay. Item H, new business. H1, the board of education has asked to consider and approve the following curriculum council items. Deputy Superintendent Josh. So, kind
170of going along with what Jessica said with our efforts to try to increase our our CTE numbers. Um, one of the courses um that I have for for your um approval is um the veterinary science class. And so that's going to it'll be a two semester class. And so the first semester is really going to kind of focus on um the the care and management of large animals, health, um reproduction, breeding, and all of those things. And then the second semester um we'll focus on um anatomy and physiology um and and things like that. And so it would be a one-year class um a half a credit each semester. And then that would be that would fit into the CT pathways for um animal science for health and um related industry pathways. So um we
171would use current staff that we have. So there would not be any um any additional cost to the district to to add these to the CT pathways. um prerequisite would be that they would have to complete the uh animal and meat science class and then they would it would be recommended that they complete the introduction to aggra science as well. So questions I think agriculture is probably one of our biggest um CT pathways that we have uh at the high school and so I think this would be one that would be well received at the high school. I think uh you're looking for a motion tonight. If you want to that's great. If not, we can put it on the uh consent agenda for approval um later this month. Not a huge rush. So, whatever
172you all are comfortable with. Motion or we want it on the consent agendes presented. I'll second it. Move and seconded to approve item H1. Any further discussion? All in favor raise your hand. Other same motion carries. Okay. Item H1A. Oh, no we sorry. H2. The board of education has to consider and approve updated board of education policy IHF graduation requirements. So I'm going to um I'm going to let Mr. Norby help me with this one. Uh one of the uh this policy um has kind of come up through discussions. Uh this last year we saw probably the highest number of um junior graduates. Was it 74? Uh I think it was just under 70. Yeah. Last year 80 this year. 80 this year. So, um I I think with the with the uh with the
173addition of all the dual credit classes, with the um addition of zero hour classes options that they have um that um they're offered plus eighth hour um classes. Uh we would like to propose that um graduates from Garden City High School have to attend a minimum of seven semesters um to graduate um from Garden City High School. if they would like to graduate early, there's still opportunities because Garden City Achievement Virtual only require 21 credits versus the 24 Garden City High School. Um, if they want to graduate early, there'd still be an opportunity to do that with um um attendance at at one of those two building, one of those two programs, but we would like to recommend that uh um we go to seven semesters for for Garden City High School, starting with the
174current um freshman class. And the reason for that, if you look at the policy, uh the the freshman class is the ones that are already seeing some changes with their graduation requirements with uh the changes that happened last year. So, we we've already adjusted this once and so that would be our recommendation. Mr. Norby, is there anything you wanted to add? Oh, it just with things have changed so quickly with the ability for kids to get all different types of access to dual credit. Um, you know, and now online, you don't even have to step foot onto college campuses and you're getting dual credit and there's so many different ways. We don't want to shut any of those opportunities down, but it's so easy to accumulate some of those credits. Also, I think it was
175mentioned with the CTE, moving some CL classes down into the middle school for high school credit. That makes it even easier to accumulate those those classes. Um, you know, we're having in the last few years, as we mentioned, uh, as Josh mentioned, a lot of a big increase in the number of kids that are graduating. And I'm having discussion with families, you know, okay, they're 16, they can't really go get a full-time job in a lot of areas, uh, especially a lot of the the technical areas. Who's going to hire them for a full-time job? Um, some college programs won't take them until they're 18, especially a lot of our technical programs or medical programs. So, you've got a kid who's accumulated the credits at the high school and they've graduated, but now what? when
176the when the student and the family kind of get out into the real world, now what? And uh we just felt uh we we I think it's great that we're giving kids all these opportunities to do some of these things and to to get the credits and to have the different experiences, but I also think there's a maturation factor in there, too. And uh and I understand for some in their situation um you know they do want to or need to graduate at that time early. We've always had roughly 30. That's always been the number until the last couple of years and then it's gone to 60 and this year it's going to be 80. And so we just saw that all of a sudden this big increase and just wondering if that's really the
177best thing for kids. Now, some of them uh we're leaving the door open for some of those families that really do for different situations want to graduate early. And so those avenues are still there in our district through achieve and through virtual. But yeah, you feel this there's a lot of students that want to graduate early to achieve or to the virtual and do you think we have Yeah, I I mean I do. I I I think what it might end up doing is is a number of those students that really it may cause them a little bit of a pause to wonder is is really graduating in three years in my best interest. Um and it's it runs the gamut. We have some some students that have a lot of transient families and will
178move and just want to get graduated and be done before they move again. or you know, we have a student this year who is going to med school and wants to get into college as quick as possible so they can get a year start on med school 4.0 plus. So, I mean, we run run the gamut in things. Every everybody's got an individual story, but I do think that it might make some of the families and students kind of pause for a little bit of why am I doing this? Is this really the best thing for me? instead of as a couple of families I've talked to have a little bit of buyer's remorse and well they're 16 they graduated and now what are the options available to them when they leave is this align
179with the is there state standard on this or is just local no it's it's local control as far as what that is and and to make sure we're kind of in the right path I've done some surveys of different districts, uh, talking to different principles, um, looking through their handbooks and things online and really three and a half seems to be like we're proposing to go to three and a half years, seven semesters seems to be what is kind of it's what's normal out there. I talked to a lot of folks and and they're saying, "Really? You let kids graduate when they're three years?" Well, yeah. That's what our our policy has always been. So, has there been any thought about increasing the number of credits to go along with this so that they're not
180just coming to school half days? Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about some of that too and along with it. Yeah. Yeah. There has been some conversations about um haven't really settled on exactly what those things might might be. We'd really like to see some students take some more uh vocational career in tech kind of focused pathways and finish a pathway or something like that. I think that's one of the things too is, you know, when we have so many early grads, there's a lot of kids that are enrolled in CTE courses, but they never complete that pathway. A lot of those kids that are graduating early are not going to complete that pathway. And so, y they're missing out on the opportunities there, too. Is that breakdown of the number of credits and how we've got
181it structured that a local control element too or is there any sort of state as long as you're staying on the minimum have a minimum of 21 credits and so then and if you look at the look at the policy there it it outlines the the required so like you know three and a half of of ELA and and uh the oral communication those pieces those are required um but but the rest of that um they just have to have 21 with those courses included in their required courses. So like what's listed in the policy in front of you under achieve and virtual that's the state minimum the 21. Yeah. Less than 21. Yeah. So those are the categories for the state. Achieve is the minimum and then we have then we add in the
182the computer electives and some of those other electives in there we add in for the high school. Yeah, we used to have a higher number for graduation credit was 24 26 I think 26 and a half out of a possible 32 when we were at block schedule. We used to go to eight periods instead of we used to go to eight periods instead of instead of seven and then to get more efficient with hiring staff and placing staff. We went to a seven period day at the high school and when you went to a seven period day you cut out electives possible electives. So at that time y we cut back the number of requirements. So if you attend seven periods a day for four years how many credits are you likely to achieve? 28.
183So you can yeah if you fill your schedule you can out of the possible 28 we have them to get to 24 out of the 28 that used to be 28 out of 26 and a half out of 32 is when we were on the block schedule and eight classes at a time of our seniors are in the building all day long now in the spring semester not very many. Most of our students can pretty easily get the required credits for graduation in three and a half. So they in their fall they all take full schedules. They take English 4, they take their government um hopefully they're taking some of their exploratory could be finishing a CTE class, a math class, advanced algebra, college algebra, something like that. In the spring, we require students to
184take what they need to be eligible to to participate in activities, which is five classes, or uh what they need to graduate. And some of them it may just be a class year or two that they still need to graduate. Yeah. So that seven periods, that's not counting zero hour. It's not counting zero hour or eight hour. And that's kind of the the wrinkle that's happened over the years. Yeah, it's blown up in the last We have 200 kids, probably more than 200 kids in the building every day at 650 for zero hour and that enrollment has just exploded. Uh we're now offering government and uh computers class in addition to the normal PE things and English English three, chemistry. So, you know, we're providing a lot of different opportunities for kids to take classes.
185Um, and some of them are taking it, they want to take an extra band class, they want to take some and and this is a way to get a core class done in zero hours so they can get that jazz band in or they can get that theater class in or something like that. When would this policy need to be adopted to timeline wise to achieve the with the freshman class that you're targeting? Yeah. Yeah. So, we would target the freshman class. When would this policy need to be adopted in order for that to be feasible? I I would say sooner rather than later so that we can communicate that with them, you know, like in the next month or in the before the end of the semester. That would be my goal with would
186be adopted in the next month. Yeah. My my my personal feelings on it is I I like this proposed change, but I also think uh it would be good to relook at the number of required credits and possibly increasing that and because it's the same policy I was really getting at is is there enough time to look at amending that and adopting both in policy change or would you recommend doing this now and setting a a se a separate policy change later for if we end increasing the number of credits required to graduate. I think that's something um if we're going to add credits, I think we need to need to decide what those credits are going to look like. And so I would like to get some teachers at the high school to be
187a part of that conversation. So I would I would propose that we if you all are comfortable we we move forward with this piece and then we can talk about amending amending that next year. I mean that's something we can dig into. When you add credits, it is somewhat complicated. Not like not that we shouldn't do it or can't do it, but you're what Steve's going to have to figure out at that level is are we adding credits for specific classes? Are we going to add an additional math class or an additional whatever it may be, social studies semester, or are we just adding electives? Adding electives is an easy that's an easy out for adding credits once you start like we had to add personal finance as a as a a credit for our
188freshman for all our kids to take. So that's a a mandatory extra half a credit. I believe it's a half credit correct half credit. So it's a specific thing. So when you start to go down the route of adding credits, are we going to add specific things or are we going to just add add general credits? And that that is a pretty lengthy discussion when you start thinking about it that because I mean I I think the best a good way I'd like to look at it if we did that would be say we either went to 26 or 28 whatever we did to ask staff for a recommendation what what would be the most beneficial to our students like what do you think would be our goal is to prepare these students for life
189after after high school. So what changes would if you get were given an increase of X amount, what would you take time and get feedback from staff as to what those proposed would be? Yeah. And and what we're talking about with this change, 80% of our kids graduate after seven or eight semesters. So, we're talking about this change really addressing or taking a look at maybe the 20% of our kids that are graduating right now that semester early that after after three years. So, the the 24 credits that we do have works pretty well for a majority of our kids. And and if we do, my one fear would be if we do um add classes or required, how does that affect the how does that affect affect the 30 to 50 kids just about
190as many kids on the other side that are barely going to make it? And so, you know, I think you have to kind of balance that. I would say if we added credits or something like that are required to graduate, electives are the place to go because most of our kids are going to Well, I guess I have to load up on that other college class or that other welding class. We already have three and a half three and a half credits. So, three and a half years of English. There's not very much left to add in English speech too on top. Yeah. So, and we're kind of in our cores. We're pretty good there. Way to look at that from a postsecondary like success rate. I mean, when our students go to colleges or
191an area that they're failing in or not doing as well in maybe is a better way to Well, and that's that's one reason we kind of kind of looked at this. Um some of those kids that are graduating early, for instance, they're not able to get into some of those college programs. And so that does affect our post-secondary rate. Well, I want to go to I want to go be a welder, but I can't get into the welding program because I graduated at 16 or 17, and they won't let me in until I'm 18. And that does affect our postsecary. Uh but as far as what affects a lot of our kids success at the at the next level, what the information I get from colleges is is that it's our uh we're our kids
192are probably a lot like a lot of the other kids. It's that a number of them need to take a remedial class once they get in there before they get to college algebra for instance or an English class extra English class. Yeah. Other questions this was um there's a lot here. So if you have other questions um just let me know. If I don't have the answer, I'll go with Mr. Norby and his team and and see if I can get the answer. But um there are no other questions. We'll have this on the consent agenda at the next meeting. change between now and thank you. Thank you. Discussion. Jackie, you're up. tonight. Oh, team for a level of detail that you guys continually go through and and the foresight you're planning. Let's put it
193to the kids from Huber here tonight. I really appreciated their building presentation. Uh yeah, I want to congratulate again the wrestling, the boys and girls wrestling. Uh what they've accomplished is pretty amazing and and uh definitely worth recognizing them. I like the JAG program. I I've heard it a hundred times. I really wasn't up to speed on what it was and what it was about. Um so I I have a new respect for that program for sure. We were kids were great. Um I really did like the long range planning. Um I I feel like that started a couple years ago and I just feel like it's getting better and better and I I appreciate the financial update. you do a great job with that and you always dumb it down for me and I
194appreciate and then the grow well I I you know I I'm a 10year member of it I've seen the benefits of it I just hope enough people if they want it support it go it um I always enjoy the first part of the meetings where we have the presentations and it it's always exciting ing that we have one or two or three really positive cool things that we get to talk about before we get into the nuts and bolts of running the district. Um, I appreciate the presentations and I hope that the public that's watching online appreciates it as well that we are being open and transparent with all of our information. So, thank you guys for that. Lot of lot of information today. Okay. Uh again, everything you guys have all said, uh with
195state wrestling and even the JAG, I didn't had not heard of the JAG program, so I'm learning about that, asking some of those questions. But I definitely appreciate AP Hubert and the work that they're all doing there as well. Um some other things, I know we had some other state competitions that the school system participated in state robotics. I just know my son was there and so that was a good thing for the school system. We hosted well for that. So, I was excited to be a part of that there and see that go forward and uh there's just a lot of things going on that are good and so excited about the future and just appreciate everybody's hard work. And I know we're in the final stretch of the school year here and some
196it's been fun being at the door of the cage and hearing conversations and keeping them all encouraged. So, um we're we're there. We're going to get there. So, it'll be great. Mark. Yeah, was uh as as usual, I do enjoy the school presentations. Nath and I got to meet Gabe and talk to him a little bit. That was that was uh pretty cool. Uh congratulations to the girls state uh wrestling team champions and the boys runner up. Good to see that. Uh, I appreciate all the work there by Dash Brandon bringing the stuff from the facilities, Jessica with the with the uh financial stuff. Uh, yeah, we're in the fourth quarter now, are we? You all are. You all are. We're not. I'm talking. Oh, okay. But I guess I guess and and according to
197everything else, everybody said appreciate that. Yeah, I just echo everybody else. But I I do want to just congratulate the wrestling teams. Um that's not just a this year thing. That's been a very healthy program for a lot of years and we've had a lot of great individual wrestlers and individual wrestling teams. So it's it's really neat to see them have continued success. Um some of the some of the stuff that was presented tonight, you know, the ESCO, I'd love to understand a little bit more about it as well. Like Jessica is how they're truly calculating some of that savings. um because if they they're doing off utility bills each year is different based on temperatures, winters, different stuff like that. So um that's kind of tough to measure if that's exact way they're doing
198it. Um some of the long-term planning stuff um I sit in on that. I think that still opens a discussion to how many facility how many buildings we have and how we utilize those buildings based on cost of that and what the cost is to maintain some of those buildings. So anyway, it's all great information. Appreciate everyone's hard work. Uh all of that I really appreciate the board's comments. We have a a reverse job fair that is Wednesday morning from 8 to 10:15 at the Clarion Inn. And uh you haven't never been a part of that, but you might want to drop in if you get a moment. And that's Wednesday morning uh April 9th and some of our students that need some extra help are interviewed. I think the employers are there and the
199students are there and have a a colleague with them and then yeah, they get interviewed. So possible jobs they can hold. So that is another thing. Uh pastor on the end uh alluded to the robotics team state competition boys and girls wrestling. I mean to to win a state title is phenomenal and finish second consistently year in and year out is is is really difficult to do. Jag program is great. uh you saw some of the numbers that they have and number one engaging our students, enriching them, empowering them, getting them to graduate and then they help them for another year. So they do actually have a life coach for another year after they get out of that program. So it's not just uh it is still giving back to the student. Abe Hubert, those
200individual students that came and presented to us, lovely uh young man that we had was great and um very knowledgeable about his scores and his goals. Facilities, we're going to keep moving forward with that. Uh Brad Stop here, but uh Brandon, that was good. We've made it better. And I mean, we're going from good to great to elite with facilities and things move and and that is a moving target, but we definitely want to uh button up be buttoned up and and make sure we're doing the best with our facilities finances. Jessica's all over that. Um I I still have questions about Honeywell, saying that publicly on on what is the actual I want to see what the real number is with that, but I I know we will get there. the finances were in
201in good shape with that. If grow well is the way we decide to go, then that's fine. If it's not, that's fine, too. We'll just uh continue making Garden City better where everyone leads. And then our courses moving forward and getting three and a half years out of our students. We still feel that really is the best uh for the students and and and if another uh option is there, we we have that option for them and they can graduate in three if they need to. So if that's what they need, but three to have at least if not four on the traditional path uh we feel is better for everybody. But thank you all for your service. Okay. Next meeting of board education will take place on April 24th at 5:00 p.m. here in
202the board meeting room at the educational support center. We'll now move to item K, executive session. Mr. President, I move to go into executive session for 15 minutes, discuss negotiations for the 2025 2026 school year pursuant to the exception. Yeah. 15 sufficient. Okay. um for the 2025 2026 school year exception for employer employee negotiations under beginning at 9:05 open meeting will resume in the board meeting room at 9:20 p.m. I'd like to invite Dr. Get Josh and Jessica to join us in executive discussion. I'll second that. Move second. Any discussion? All in favor of any post. Same. Motion carries.