001Me too. I'm all ready to go back on something. Good evening. Thank you for coming to the Newport Board of Education regular meeting. May I have a roll call, please? Here. Here. Here. All right. through all join the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic indivisible and justice for all. Let's see. First on the agenda is uh recognitions. Madame Chair, this is our favorite part of the meeting where we get to acknowledge and recognize our teachers and our students. So, we'll have the primary first. I will start with our student of the month. This is Carter Turner. And uh Carter is in Miss Mariani's class. Uh Miss Mariani said, "Carter is a delight, very kind, and he is always a friend to others."
002Uh he's made many friends this year, and he's very liked by his classmates. Carter is a very hard worker and he can do his best effort. Uh he's a great example of what a second grade student is and he's been so much fun having him in class and amazing senior. So please congratulate Hey, Carter. Go ahead. I'm going to get Okay, we're going to stand up here, buddy. And then uh you're going to be front and center right here. We're all going to stand here right there. And all of us at the same height as you going to stand that Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. For a teacher of the month of Kathy H. Kathy, please. Kathy is a reading and math extension teacher at the primary school. And Kathy is Thank you, Kathy.
003And Kathy's been in public education for 35 years. And 27 in Kentucky. Is that correct? Okay. And this is her last full year um public education. and she has to come back next year for about two weeks before she can retire officially. So, she'll retire on the probably the first week of September. So, uh what I think is amazing about Cammy, so um you know, she's kind of give you a little she's round and third at home obviously in terms of her career. Um she is still very eager in terms of learning new strategies and just working incredibly hard for her students. Um obviously she could coach right on into retirement. She has not done that. Um she is doing every everything she can to help her kids. Um Kathy's also really flexible. There's times
004you guys know when we don't have coverage uh for classrooms. Um Kathy does not hesitate just jumping in and just doing whatever is best for kids and what's best for kids or best for the school. And you guys know that there's just content. We we need that that we just have to cover a class and Kathy does that for the school and for the kids. Um the other thing is is that um she builds great relationships with kids and I talked about this earlier. Uh we have one student at the end of the day he needs a little special treatment during dismissal. He sits on the bench um and you need somebody to sit with me during dismissal. Um I did not need to ask Kathy to do that. She saw that need and said
005to him every day, ask him ask him how his day is, what's he going to do after school and she just sees that need and she develops all those positive interactions and relationships. I want to thank her for that. So, you leave. Well, I raised you by everything you said about you. I taught you to those things. Yes, you did. Thank you very much. Thanks. All right. Good evening. We will start with our student of the month which is come on up. He is as tall as us, Miss Payne. So Keith is a sixth grader at the intermediate school. So this is his first year with us and we have been blessed with him. It has been a great year. He's been an asset to our school. Miss Cochran says, "Overall, you're an amazing student.
006He's helpful with students who are not on grade level. He's always offering to help students and teachers. He's an amazing role model for all students, and I'm very thankful to have him as a student, and I'm proud of all of the progress that he's made here at Newport. I will say he will help every student no matter what. He will help them in the hallways, um, showing them what the expectations look like. He is always willing to help third graders, fourth graders, anybody that needs it. So, he really does go above and beyond. And I am very appreciative of not only him, um, his family, too. They're very supportive of us and our school district, and they have, um, volunteered, and I think it's a team team effort for all of us. So, it's been
007great to have them as part of our school district. Congratulations. Got to stay a while to a senior, right? pay wild. Exactly right. Great job, buddy. Yeah, good job. And our teacher of the month is Miss Emily Kenner and Jack. Got it. And come on up, Jack. We're so Miss Kenner is a third grade teacher at the intermediate school. Um Miss Kenner has been with us oh six years. Um and she has done anything and everything. Um she has been fifth grade, she has been fourth grade, she has been third grade. She can teach reading, she can teach math, she can teach science, whatever you need. Emily Kenner is can do it and do it and shine. Um we just got our I Ready results back for spring and her class made 181% growth and
008she she really is an incredible teacher and she really can do it all. Um you know I'm thankful for her leadership too within our building. Um she helped our teacher, she helped us as an admin team. um you know, she's really great with the kids and their relationship piece. U Miss Kenner I'm extremely thankful for. We speak the same type A spreadsheet data uh language. So that's helpful. Um so we we share a bond, a special bond, too. And it's great to have Emily and her leadership and leading houses this year. Um she's phenomenal and we are very very blessed to have Miss Kenner with us. Good. How are you? Thank you. Well, I saw the back of his title. I know. I t back there. Yeah, he came to support. He's another. Congratulations. Congratulations.
009Good evening. We'll start off with uh our high school student of the month, Kelsey. This is what our staff had to say about Kelsey. Kelsey Turner is such a hardworking, dependable student who comes to class every day with a positive attitude and a genuine eagerness to learn. She stays on top of her work, ask questions to stay clear on the material, always puts her best effort. What really stands out though is how kind, respectful, and considerate she is to everyone around her. She's not only a great student, but also a truly great person to have in class. I'm lucky to have her this year and excited to celebrate her. I'm trying to hide. Congratulations. Our teacher of the month is Holly Sulliv. Holly couldn't be here tonight. She has a small problem. She has kids
010involved in like four or five different things. I think she had three practices to go to tonight. Anyway, I'll read about her. Uh this is Miss Sulliv's first year for us as a high school science teacher. She has been an incredible addition to our department and a true team player. Whether it's jumping in to support a colleague or helping brainstorm new ideas, she is always willing to lend a hand. Her deep experience and strong content knowledge make her an invaluable resource and we've appreciated the way she helped us think through how we can teach our subject more effective. She consistently holds high expectations for our students and brings a level of professionalism, dedication, collaboration that strengthens our entire team. We're so lucky to have Thank you. On to the boring stuff. No. Oh, well, we
011have Steve Crawford here. He's going to give us an update on our insurance. How are you, Mr. Crawford? How are you? I'm good. Appreciate that introduction. The boring stuff. My apologies. Can you hear me? All right. You're good. Right there. So, um, Superintendent Watts asked me to be here tonight just to give you guys an update on the insurance. I think all of you were here last year, but I'm not sure when we made that decision. I don't believe she was. So that's the reason I invited you to give a little background on our new program and give us an update on what what how is it working because it's so new. Good. So I'll give a little background on how we got where we are and then update on how the program. So unfortunately
012in the state of Kentucky talking about insurance other than workers comp and student accident cyber it's a little bit complicated. There's really no competition. There is competition on student access. There is competition on cyber insurance and there is competition on workers. However, on the rest of your stuff, reliability buildings, Liberty Mutual have become really the dominant player. When that happens, they dictate pricing which many times in our opinion is unfair to the clients, the school districts to perform well. This has been going on for three or four years and despite our last efforts, we're not making much headway for them to to get them to cut the rates on districts like yours who have not had claims. So over the last two years, we put together a program called Bluegrass Risk Management School uh to
013offer an alternative to living. And I brought with me just maybe as a little bit of a refresher of what we presented last year, a summary of what Liberty Mutual is offering, what the alternative would be. Hopefully some, if not most of you have this, but right What's it what is it called against the blueg grass blueg grass risk management? We refer to it as a pool, but really what it is is a group of likeminded schools coming together to buy insurance together. So, it is a pooling arrangement, but it's it's fully insured. I can go into detail on that if you have questions but let me back up a little bit again. So what we presented is what liberties mutual renewal is going to be what we presented last year which is that first
014column. If you just focus on that top box where the total is 521484 that's what your renewal was prior to last year. They were going to raise you from 521 to 613. Unacceptable. We came up with this alternative which ended up saving you over $50,000 last year. The good news is you have we we presented this to 40 districts that we worked with in the state. 27 of them qualified for and agreed to get into the pool. The good news is we saved $1.5 million for public schools in that first initial offering sitting as of today wood. But in addition to that savings, we have a million dollar reserve which is way ahead of projections. Yeah, everybody has done very well. No more storms. As you all know, storms are the nemesis of any property
015service. So, um, we presented it as an alternative. It didn't matter to us. If you wanted to stay with Liberty, that was fine enough. Um, but it didn't make sense in my opinion for you not to do what you did. And it's paid off. So this group as we build we we are talking to 13 new districts some of which we talked to last year that where the savings maybe wasn't enough or they weren't eligible uh to get in. So our goal is to try to get to around 40 by year end by July 1st. I don't know if we'll get there or not. We don't really have to. We have some other districts we've identified they're good prospects and so we're hoping to get another 10 Liberty Mutuals if you were was still a
016Liberty Mutual addition that you increase the last year they're they're increasing again 15% this year we just kind of correlate going forward. We're anticipating about a 9% increase this coming year in July. So parlay is probably like a 165,000 savings 256 but the do some of the deductibles had to change as a part of this mutualist changing those changes as well. So every district across the state is taking on a higher deductible for wind and hail. It's not just true in schools, it's true in just about all Florida property risk. Um and we hope at some point that'll get better, but right now unpredictability of storms driving insurance companies to the point where they they aren't sure what the right price. And when insurance companies become unsure, raise So that's a pretty good overview of
017where we how we got to where we are and where the pool is right now. I see a question. Yeah. Question. If if um if if the other 13 districts do come on board, does what does that do to our cost? Will that lower it or raise it or ultimately yes. the larger the numbers are. I don't know that it'll do anything this year, but ultimately what are the real payoffs? So, let let me back up and give you a little bit of history. Public schools really public empathies 85 to 90% across the country buy from ar 15% or less across the country. Kentucky because of bad experience with a company called Kisman went bankrupt some 10 12 years ago. They didn't have they had no other alternative. Like I say, Limited Mutual was pretty
018much gone. So the real payoff long term with this group is you build up those reserves. For example, we did this in Ohio 130 some schools in their their reserves right now sitting $50 million. Last year they decided to pay out a million in dividends to that's the payoff. you start getting dividends and then ultimately yes it will impact the rates because because you can carry higher deductibles and therefore lower rates you're paying that out of your reserve it's a long-winded answer but probably what was a simple question that make sense so again this is a longterm play this is not something that we intended any This is something we go to Ohio see what they come we anticipate something similar. Does that make sense? My is there something I'm not telling you you like
019to hear? So again we feel really good about what we've done. feel really good about where we're going and we are being we are being selective in the sense that we want school districts like yours that have not had much fun right well managed and again we know storm we're not thank you this is what we needed um the update, you know, because it was new and we, you know, want to keep tabs on how it's going, is this the right decision for the board, things like that. So, having you come, you know, give us update helps us make those kind of decisions. Anytime. I'll continue to work with him to get actual numbers as they become available. Okay. Well, thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Now, we'll have that break. and we'll
020resume our meeting, right? Yeah. back. There he goes. All righty. Miss me to order. Next on our agenda is comments. Uh first is Andy Bernett. Bernard Bernard. Okay. Um going three minutes. Hello. My name is Andy Bernard. Um I'm here today on behalf of the family nurturing center. Uh family, as many of you guys know, uh April is child abuse prevention month. Uh those of us at Family Nurturing Center pride ourselves as being advocates in the community uh to end the cycle of child abuse and create safe communities for all of our children. I'm here today um to present some information about some programming that we offer um in schools uh all free of charge throughout Northern Kentucky um in hopes that we can create a dialogue with you guys um to bring these programs
021out to your schools uh and create these safe uh environments for all uh children in Kentucky. We hope that through creating a partnership with you guys um we can help stop this uh the cycle of child able to prevent I have just like a couple packets with some information. I don't anybody want to um you know and then the board can look at it and pass it around second. Yeah. I think after or we can look at it. I want to be looking at my pres. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much for um coming and presenting this information, this packet. Uh definitely something we will share. We have our DPP back there, Jennifer Stewart. She director of PU uh students pupil personnel and so she's involved in a lot of that
022uh activity. So we'll make sure that she's aware. We'll make sure that the superintendent get this information um because we are all about resources for our family and our kids. So thank you for taking the time to come and sharing this information with us. Thank you. All right. Next is Oh, to my surprise, Esther Bax. I'm just going to start spending all my Wednesdays with you. Oh, come on, dude. Thank you so much. I'm so excited already. All right, I have a few questions for you just simply because I feel like they need to be brought up again. One, why can't we get you all into the building? We need you to come in. We need you to see what's taking place in our building. Yes, I realize some of you have crazy busy schedules
023and I know that Dr. Curl is probably running around Zagger unless they're playing. Um, and just we really need you all to come in the media. We've invited you before and so far I haven't seen any of you in the building. Now, I've been in the building. I probably haven't been there this year, but I am usually in the building. I'll come in again. I'll just put it on my calendar because when I get home, you know, if it's not on my calendar. So, but I'm going to make a note to come and visit the high school. Matter of fact, that new app keeps us updated on your activities. So, we got very excited about that. Uh, so Family Fun Life was at the primary school tonight, right? How to go? Primary school was tomorrow
024night. Tomorrow night. So, it was tonight. Right. The intermediate school. Oh, intermediate. Okay. So, and the high school is having something uh in the app. So, our apps pop up and tell us and it's all on my calendar. So, I'm going to do better. All right. I can only I can I can say that I hope to be there on Friday. She's at work. Awesome. Yeah. So, you know, but we'll try to make the after school nightly events, but we can we can do that. That would be awesome. I have a question for you. Sure. So you extended the invitation to come visit your school. Yeah. Are your flexible schedule is your schedule flexible for us to come in and you can come in my classroom anytime you have like a flexible schedule. We want
025to come in. You can come in and I'm sure administrators I think we only have here. You don't mind when they come in, do you? I think So, you know, you can show up in my classroom anytime. It might be a little crazy busy. I might be trying to teach them to do a push-up, but you would welcome to come in and just, you know, have fun. I would interact anytime you want to. Please, I don't think anybody would be upset to have any of you in our classrooms. It' be nice to be able to see what's going on and what we the good things we do have going on. One of the things that I'm really concerned with is allocations and and people's livelihood. We're getting down to the wire and people are going
026to leave because they don't know whether to stay or not. Some people have already made the decision to leave and they've gotten jobs elsewhere. So waiting till the last minute seems like it's it's getting messier and messier and and my fear is that if we wait much longer the people that do apply may not be quality. That to me is scary but and I I don't know how I'm not a math person. That would be um my sidekick. She is a math person. We um Yes. So, you know, a lot of the things with budgeting, I guess I'm a little off as to how we got from having a surplus to being so close. And that scared me a little bit, but hopefully we can come out on top of that and be able to
027fix it. I'm not sure how yet. I'm not sure how we do fix it, but we're working on it. We're having meetings. Mr. Miss Snap and Mr. Turner are meeting regular with Mr. Watts. We had a meeting with him yesterday. I just explained to the the board we got an update yesterday. So, we should have some final decisions very soon. So, you all should hear something very soon. That would be amazing. Thank you. We know teachers are scared today. I understand. We have more that would come to the board meetings, but they're honestly afraid of retaliation. They're scared of death. They don't know how it should anticipate. So, and maybe being in the buildings will help with that. Thank you. Thank you. And hopefully next time you won't dread me, you won't dread see me
028come up here. Yes. We go way back. So, all righty. Next is uh Miss Bravo. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Brao. Um I introduced myself last month and I'm going to be a little more brief and a little less formal this time, especially a lot of what I was going to address and already discussed um with Miss. But when I was here last month at the board meeting, I wanted to present to you my concerns about the curriculum department's report and the usage of educational epiphany as well as some concerns about communication. And I highlighted in my web comment that I was when I received feedback um from my weapon that was reported and observed by Dr. Dicki and I still haven't received that. And it was also indicated in last month's report that was given to
029the board um that teachers have received feedback from the curriculum department as well as from our instructional coaches in the building. That just hasn't happened. Further, there's no information in the report from last month or this month regarding the future use of educational program. And so I'm just a little bit worried about what that means for the future and how we intend to continue using that or not. Um, next I wanted to briefly also address some of the communication that I had discussed last time. Um, unfortunately, I know we have to walk home personally. The thought hasn't been shared with anyone, and I don't expect anyone's personal business to be laid out on the table, but he was expected to be in our building last Friday for one of his monthly office hours off hours.
030And I stopped quite twice into the room where he usually worked, and he was not there. We didn't get an email or any kind of comment saying that he wasn't going to show up. And if I, as a teacher, just chose not to show up to a place where I was expected one day, there would be consequences for me in that scenario. I'm expected to report to anyone that I'm not going to be present in a situation where I'm expected to be. Um, so that was a little disappointing. And also to echo what Miss said, I'm still very concerned the lack of clarity regarding the upcoming school year, the overall general fund budget and staffing allocations for the district. And I understand that this is a huge undertaking. And please know that I appreciate all
031of you members and your dedication to this project. But I believe I speak for many when I say that we are truly worried. We are worried for the future of our schools. We're worried for our careers, for our livelihood, and what that means for our family. I personally, I'm gonna get real. I just went through a divorce this year. It's finalized next week. So, I am now a single mother. My livelihood is the only thing keeping me and my children. It means a lot more to me now to make sure that I am in a position where I feel safe and comfortable at work and I'm not worried about cuts that would affect being able to provide for my children. Sorry, we didn't show up. Um, okay. We're worried for our mental health if and
032when changes need to be made, moving staff from different grade level bubbles or building and included with that. I just found out that the EAP is no longer a service through the Newport school. And I found that out through the EAP services themselves. Again, communication was not made with staff members that we lost that benefit. Um, I was informed the day that I was supposed to have therapy appointment that I no longer qualify to go receive that therapy, which now you know, but I just laid my whole life out on the line. You know why I'm there. Um, so I just I ask you to please continue to work with urgency and do not give up. Provide the community with the answers that we're asking to the questions that we are begging for you to
033solve. And I know it's a lot of work, but it really matters. So, thank you for what you're doing. Please don't quit. Thank you. Thank you. Right. And the reason we can't comment because when you all talk about personnel, the board is not authorized to have personnel conversations. So that's the reason we hear the comments, but there's a reason we cannot respond or answer questions. Just so you know, we're not ignoring, we hear you. But we have to be careful as board members when matters involving personnel is put on the floor. Thank you. All righty. Next on the agenda is the treasury or the minutes. Okay. We have the March 26th and April 16th uh minutes. Any questions, comments regarding the minute? If there be no questions or comments, um, I need a motion to
034approve the minutes. It's been moved and second. All in favor? Okay, next we have the treasures board. Missnap evening question that answer. Um, I did want to know why this card was charged since she left. Um, that card, the district card, and we use those for charges. So, we're kind of open right now to make sure that they're all going to be tak she's she's not in possession of the card. Correct. That's what needs to be on the record. in my possession actually literally just we have to make sure that all the charges are transferred to be denied services or anything like that for that reason. So they're trickling in a question on page two of the report. Um there are categories about uh rent for our buildings and rent for our buses. Do we
035are we allowed to rent out our buildings and our facilities and buses? Oh, under revenue. Um I'm not really sure about I know that Dennis could probably answer that. What was your question, Dennis? The question is about our facilities. Do we rent out our gymnasiums or facilities? And we recently have um a rental agreement with the Army to use the stadium for a couple days in June. So, yes, we do have a board policy that allows us to rent out our facilities. Okay. Yes. And the buses. But typically for our buses, it's been a uh a neighborly agreement because we're constantly working back and forth. A lot of the independent districts, uh we're in the same situation where we have just a limited number of buses and we will help, we will help Fort Thomas
036and vice versa. So, uh we typically don't take advantage of rental. It's it's an agreement that we're there for one another and it's worked out great to our benefit over the years. So, uh but yes, definitely we can rent out our facilities. Um, technically you can do the bus rental. We typically don't do anything like that um with anything outside of a school district and it's just a matter of taking care of one another as the year goes on. Yeah. And we do our football field as well. Yes. Thank you. Good question. All righty. Any more questions uh for Miss Matt? I was wondering why we spend more on admin and instruction support why we spend more business support instruction. I'm not sure if she can I was just bringing it up because I know
037the person answer. Um, so I was just noticing that there were more I don't think I'm going to be able to find it right now, but that would be something that I'd be interested in just as far as you know position allocations. These were salaries for the admin and the business support services instruction. It was just to me that we want more instructional Thank you. All righty. Any more questions for um Miss Nap? Um the logic for 2025 for St. Term that Jimmy confusion for um sanctu why we cover that for the private school. I know that why do we cover that? I know that we are legally responsible under federal law. It's title one. So if a student lives in Newport there's a couple things going on. lives in Newport and they go to
038a private school regardless of where that is. If they are free and reduced lunch, they generate funds for those private schools. So then that requires me to meet with representatives from the private schools to determine if that student is at risk and if so, what's the plan to close that achievement gap? So uh we meet I'm actually getting meet within the next three weeks because we have so many private schools students at this time. Um it's a private school consultation agreement and so basically what happens is earlier in the year they said yes we want to participate and they met those timelines. I contact the dascese of I contact and all of those private schools and all of the homeschools to see who wants to participate. Um once I get all of those students information
039back on free and reduced lunch, then I personally reach out to those schools. We will sit down, have a meeting together. We're going to look at their students data. We're going I and that's my responsibility, not theirs. It's my responsibility to u identify those kids who are not on grade level and then as a team we make a determination on how we're going to close that gap. And for that particular um in the past they hadn't necessarily went to professional development or went to conferences during that time period when the public schools really got into confusion and is when Newport Independent itself was actively contracting with NWA. That fusion conference is is more than NWA. Um you're going to see a few other things. So next month we'll have some charges there for some flights
040and some travel. Um that's money that that's federal money. That's not local taxpayer dollars. That's not state local funds. Those are federal funds. So obviously if you pay federal taxes you have some piece of that. Um so that money comes in and I automatically have to set it aside. Okay. Okay. The extra piece to that is it's not just about where kids live. It's also about where that private school is located. So there are different federal requirements for schools that are private that are located within your school district boundary. Okay. So that's that's another piece. So for right now, I hope I don't forget anymore. We have Holy Trinity, we have St. Theres, and we have MTC for the current fiscal year. That's the same as what we had last year. In my report, I
041believe it was either last month or the month before. We do have this next year addition private school. But that's something I'll be bringing those agreements to the board for you all to look at. I know it sounds like over the past couple months the board might want to be doing something different as far as our title funding and what what the priorities are. U but all of that information will come back to the board. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. You have any more questions? Um I was just And this isn't really from a snap, but I was just wondering how the kids were chosen to go to Disney if it was like um expectations they had to meet or you know how they were chosen out of the whole population of the
042high school or whatever to go. Is somebody from the high school here to address that? That would be a question for because it was I think it was frisky. Was that the frisky? So service center. Youth service center. So that would reach out to Yeah, just send her an email. I'm just I understand and she would be able to answer that question for you. So just send her an email. Okay. Okay. And that was all that I had. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else? Yes. that had the same time. And um just for the record, you know, we all and many our training we're told to we do this pre-work. So we look at all these documents typically starting on a Friday or Saturday and then we meet with and call the different ones because we're
043at our training they tell us to do that otherwise these meetings would be lasting hours if we didn't do some of the pre-work. So I think I was on the phone with Miss Knap today for about an hour and a half, you know, asking questions, going through this and going through that and and so uh oftentimes, but I was sometimes like Miss Stuff and I couldn't get to her and I would have to ask these questions at the meeting. But it it works well if the majority of us do the pre-work. If there's one or two of us that didn't get an opportunity um to do it, then this is the platform to do and ask those questions. So, thank you for asking us questions because it's good that uh the public knows that we
044looked at these documents. We asked these kind of questions so that we can learn and understand how things operate. All righty. So, I need a uh any questions regarding the bank reconciliation statement to accept the Okay. Um, I've got a motion to accept the financial report and file for audit. I need a second. It's been moved and second. All in favor? And now I need a motion to pay the bills. All right. And I had a lot of questions. One of the questions that I, you know, asked him about, you know, because we paid the city to collect our taxes and it's a percentage. So when you see all the money that we pay them to collect our taxes, you know, we, you know, you go, "Wow." But I did, we researched, she did research
045and other districts do the same thing because for a school district to collect itself, it's monumental. And so most districts do what we do, but it I found comfort in knowing that that's pretty much the standard operation, you know, but we would probably have to hire a whole another uh accounting staff to just to collect the taxes for the school district. So, you know, those are the kind of questions we ask when we're looking at these fields. We want to know what's what's going on, you know, and sometimes we remember what we saw last month and sometimes we don't. So, but thank you. So, uh did I get a motion to pay the bill? Yes. All right. All in favor? Right. I very good. So, uh all the other information attached is for information only.
046Um, anyone have any questions about the expenses and the March monthly financial? Um, I had some questions, but Miss's going to get back to me on that. Okay. Yeah. Very good. They're vendors, but like I don't recognize them from previous, so she's going to get back to me on what they were just so that I understand? Yes. Very good. Because there's so many codes, so you can't really look at the report and figure out what it was. And some of the names help you. Yeah. But others do not. Cuz I had a question about the Amazon capital, you know, and she explained that to me. You know, that's the account the schools use to order their supplies. So, right. Very good. All righty. Next is Student Learning and Support Services. Um, Miss Payne, Madame Chair,
047board members, I gave you a single page handout um to discuss the KYC25, which is the Kentucky Comprehensive Literacy Grant that we did receive. So, we're one of 39 districts that received it. I gave you a little bit of history on their overview that the state actually received five 54.9 million for five years. Um, and they were to allocated to different schools that apply for the grant. So the award of the for the grant can be anywhere between$1,65,000 and 1 million 1.56 million. So, the actual grant that we received because we're a smaller district was $1,65,000. Uh the focus of course is on literacy and on community engagement. So, I also put the core goals of the grant on there that to provide uh curriculum for literacy uh whether it's core curriculum and our supplemental
048curriculum. is to support struggling readers in closing the achievement gap. Uh it's for professional development that's specific to the supplemental uh or and our core resources that you use and for family engagement to increase uh literacy and development with at home. You flip it over on the back. Um there is funding allocation. So the funding is not you can't they determine how you split it up. So 16% of the funding which is $170,000 is for birth to age five. 42% each for the elementary which is K5 and then 42% for middle and high together. So that's uh $447,300 for each of those levels. The timeline that I gave you is uh up in the air still a little bit. This is the timeline that they reported to us once we receive the grant. We do
049have official welcome meeting on May 2nd that uh superintendent and myself will attend. It was supposed to be at the end of this month, but because of the flooding and tornadoes, they pushed it back to May 2nd. So, I'll bring you an update to this after we go to that meeting. Uh, so those are the dates for access to the money. So, and when I say access to the money, I want you to jump down to the bottom where it says limitations. So, one of the limitations is that it's guaranteed for the first year only right now. So, because it's federal dollars, so with the things that are going on in our federal government, nothing's guaranteed, but they do have this batch of money in hand right now. Okay. So the June 1st access point
050will have $213,000 available. We won't know about the second access point which is in Sep until September. So that's for the October 1st in 2025. So we don't know about that access to those funds. But each access point those five access points every year will be the 213,000. Okay. Okay. So that's kind of the limitations. And also when I say access, it's not a dispersement. So we don't receive $213,000 in a check. It's reimbursement. So what we do is we create the POS. KDE approves them and then we purchase and they immediately guarantee the money because of the process they have. So their approval guarantees reimbursement. I know uh uh chairman chairperson Malone asked me that in the past with some grants reimbursement is slow or you may not get reimbursed but this is a
051guaranteed reimbursement. Okay. Because you have to have approval from KDE first before you make the purchase. So So they have to approve your purchase. Yes. Before you make the purchase. Yes. So that's why it's guaranteed. Okay. So it does have to go through a process after the virus. It will go through a process on the front end. So once we have access once we have access what's the process going to be to determine say for example the birth age 170,000 what's the process going to be to determine what we actually use that for? So we had to submit a budget. So a budget of how we distribute that whether it's for actual materials where our core wonders program or whether it's for supplemental materials or whether it's for um benchmark assessments or any other type
052of assessment that it's already budgeted out for. The only thing they leave up to us is who and what. So if there's so much budgeted for curriculum, they don't tell us which curriculum to use. It just has to be one that's okay to use this which wonders is what we use is okay to use this. So we would use it for something we're already doing that stuff. No. No. So what I So it would help with our general fund budget because something that we already budget and pay for we didn't pay for. This is stuff we do pay for funds. I didn't go back in. Yes. Once we get the reimbursement, right? And then I do want to say the other limitation that's at the bottom that they had some uh specifications for anything that's
053mandated already by KDE like the K3 poor. So with the new law uh uh helping to advance reading by third grade. So they're saying since that's already in place then they won't provide funding for the resources for K3 but they will for 412. And this will not fund any newly created programs. Anything we might come up with like a prek program or anything like that. Can we anything that's supplemental? Okay. Supplemental. Do I have any more questions? And I'm also going to go if you don't. Yes, ma'am. Okay. It says from birth to age five. And I know we have that born learning um at the primary. Anybody from the primary? Matt, we can talk about I work with the family resource and youth service centers on the district contact for that. Um we no
054longer have born learning at the primary school. Okay. Because that funding source has went away. Um, so in turn they do other programming that services that population. That's identified because as part of the family resource youth service center grant, they have a component that works for birth to three year olds and then they also have early childhood that deals with uh preschool age students. Thank you. That leads to my question. So this says zero to five. So would that be able So and some of the things that they do you would be able to get reimbursement for that? So, Miss Molly um takes the lead on a lot of things as well as well with Nikki Kaden. Yes. Um to come up with those programmings and to service those students that aren't school age. Okay.
055Right. Thank you. Actually help us to expand that. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Because there's a lot of things going on about, you know, uh kindergarten readiness. Um, so the city is having meetings, you know, um, there is a program in Coington called Read Ready Coington, but this, and some of you have probably heard about it, but it's a community-based um, program that helps the community get involved uh, with helping kids, you know, with reading and learning. Um, so I'm excited because it's not a something that the school is responsible for organizing. So it is community based community partners and so they're working on initiative for read ready newboard. So hopefully you know that will be something that will come in existence and provide the support that we need you know and give the community another
056opportunity to get involved and support the schools. So thank you. Any more any questions about the grant at this time? All right. Thank you. I'll ask you to also look at the uh curriculum board report because I have an update because I have the numerousy grant on there and we did not receive that grant. We found out about that this week. So, we weren't one of the schools that did receive that. So, I did want to give you that update because I had it pending. We did receive it. We did not. We were waiting to hear but we did not receive it. And I see you have some upcoming grants opportunity. Yeah. One is u a tribal grant. It's for $3,000. Uh I submitted that today. The deadline's tomorrow, I think. Okay. Um so we'll
057we'll hear about that in the coming weeks. And then solely for uh educators to travel to other districts or other schools. It's only it's $3,000, but it's for somebody's doing something innovative at another school and you want to send a teacher there, it'll pay for their mileage or pay for their time if it's after school. Okay, very good. We have any questions? So, I wanted to say thank you for the feedback on the programming that you offer with the percentages of satisfaction like that, right? Um I did want to ask what role um the curriculum department has and implementing experience in implementing trainings for what in particular at the at the schools? Well, it varies. So, it it depends. Uh Miss Brown is our PD coordinator. So we do district trainings but the schools also
058set up training that they have that are dependent on what they do in school. So there's trainings for maybe for the core resource. So we will be responsible that. So for the wonders program that we use but there's teacher training for that that's set up in the curriculum part but like uh match building did the UFly program which is part of the science of reading. It's like an Orton Gillingham program that's free. Uh he set up that for his school. So he worked along with the co-op to bring in trainers to work the school. So it varies depending on what it is who sets up the training or who even provides the training. So who provides these these types of trainings? Is it an outside source or if there aren't you talking about structure training
059like in in your report it list several different trainings that occurred on different dates. I'm just wondering were those outside sources that came in were they provided directly from you brown led by teachers in the district. It depends on which training it is. It's led by D. It's led by very sometimes we bring people in. Sometimes we do the training like for the belt team trainings. Uh Miss Brown does those trainings and then the teachers do them with the staff. Just depends on which one it is. Does the high school still have PLC's, professional learning communities? Do they Yeah, they Yeah, that that's not necessarily training. That's where they meet. Okay. Student data and lesson plan. Okay. So any formal training happens either at sometimes the faculty meeting like the belt teams or it happens
060in the summer or it happens like they do champs training when we came back from uh after Christmas break at NIS. So it happened at various times. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Next we have DPP. Madam Chair, members of the board, Miss Payne, you have a copy of the DPP of student services report for the month of April. And Mr. Curl or I apologize, Dr. Curl, I added this for you specifically. I did go through and run the superintendent annual attendance report and um with leaving the year open and applying our five low attendance days, we would be at 95.4% attendance rate if the year ended. Uh we we still have about 20 um back up here. We still have today was we have 25 days remaining. So tomorrow going to be 24 because we're
061going to hit that goal. People in this room are going to make sure that students All right. While not included in the report, we did get some updated information um already this week with it only being Wednesday. Mr. Rectton, who is our 21st century and out of school director, uh did receive notification that we've received the 21st century grant for the primary school. Um, we cannot thank Partners for Change, which was originally coming to Partners With Enough. They, um, pulled together, met with Mr. Rectton multiple times last year knowing we weren't going to get those grant funds, but knowing that, um, as hard as our our teachers and our staff were working, we were seeing changes, we were seeing increases, and those are things that that we want to continue to support. And so that
062organization um pulled different grant funds together that they had and uh and were able to work uh with with Mr. Rectton and others. And so we did have a program um this year at the primary school. So next year uh we will have those 21st century grant funds up. So that that's good information. We will still have the intermediate school and the high school program as well. And uh Mr. Beckton and his team are excited. They've got a lot of great ideas. They will be attending training. There are two different days next week. One day for elementary, one day for middle and high. He is going to attend both days with his staff. I am attending just the first day. Um I the second day is on a Wednesday and our court leaison let me
063know earlier than I'm at court on Wednesday. So I'm gonna go to the elementary one um and just support our staff and then 21st century there's so many different rules to it. But again um cannot speak highly enough of the work that they have done. Um I did meet not just myself u Miss uh Mr. Orsina from the high school and I'm forgetting Miss McN and um Mr. I say his last name wrong tuning. Mr. Tuning is working on a grant. Uh we talked about uh the city of Newport, Mr. tuning and then Renew Court working on a grant and um it's going to be it's a rapid response grant and so our request and and our data when we met um we are requesting $50,000 be applied specifically to a school counselor position within
064Newport Independent Schools and then based on our data um and and the purpose of the grant it would specifically be at the intermediate tool to cover staff that they already have. So that that was our request. They are working on it. We are supplying them with information and with data and honestly cannot thank them enough. They reached out to us with the opportunity. And so that that just speaks tremendously towards our community and our partners. So they are they are showing up for us. They are reaching out for us asking us what we need. Good. That's good to hear. Thank you for that. And that's a city applying for this grant. Uh Mr. Tuning works for the city. You talked Josh Tunn. Yes. He works for the city of Newport. And um he when he
065shared with us um spoke very highly of their new city manager and the expectation that that you know working with the school school working with the city. It was a great meeting. I'm sure Miss Fox could add to that. great meeting and we really tore into the data and uh said this is where we are in the district. Here's where our primary school is, our intermediate high school. This is the work that the board committed to over a course of five years. These are the increases we have seen. However, in the state of the world today, these are our concerns and these are the two grade levels where we are seeing significant spikes in um just concerns for their social emotional safety and well-being and and we want to rapidly respond to that um because
066we are seeing it in in other counties and other communities and we want to keep our kids safe. Um but again, thank you um to those individuals. They are working on that grant. Regardless of whether we we get it or not, we obviously want it. But I think the best piece to that was the experience itself was being able to sit down and have this open and honest and saying, "We're here for you. You're here for us. What can we do together?" So just an amazing. Great. That's good news. Can you give me any idea of the timeline back? Yes. Uh the grant itself uh is due I believe April 30th. So we will know it it's a very quick turnaround and the purpose of it is to rapidly respond to populations and I would
067say whether it's a health concern or or maybe um a special population that currently might not be eligible for federal funding to assist. So that's the purpose of this grant is is to get you targeted populations and for us it was it was mental health and it being health related. Yes. Any questions for Miss Stewart? Just thank you for what you're doing. Yes. Thank you. All righty. We continue to move on. We have facilities and transportation, Mr. May. Oh, this is our distinguished administrator. Thank you to Miss Michaels for nominating him. She did a great job on the video, although we didn't get to see it because they had a stage. We didn't see it. Yeah. But we did hear the wonderful things that she said about Mr. Mains and all that he does, you
068know, for the districts as facility director and and his experience as administrator. So I just wanted to give him that shout out here. It was we was very proud. Um but talk about that more in the comments. I appreciate that there were others. Uh good evening. In uh new business this evening, I'm asking you to once again approve the district facilities plan. Nothing has changed with it. The only thing different is we have had the public hearing. Uh Mr. and I uh held a public hearing. No one showed up. So, we still went through the protocol of uh uh what we needed to to do uh so that we can now send that off to Katie. So, what you're approving tonight is the public hearing report, which basically says we we did X, Y, and
069Z, and no one showed up. So, uh other than that, I I don't think I have anything else in the approval. uh section this evening. So, if you have a copy of my report, do you have any questions? I didn't see a dollar amount for your your AED grant. Oh, well, that's great news. So, yes, I put it in our safety section. So, Le No, they're about $1,200 each. So, um Leanda brought it to Well, it was an email that went out a long time ago, but Miss Simpson did the work with it. um we work together in terms of u you know what our need is and have to be inventoried the AEDs in our district. Uh one of the areas that I wanted to uh get addressed moving forward is making sure we
070have AEDs on our school buses. And for the audience, the AED we have people that are watching online and so you I try to make sure that they understand what the acronym stand for when they're watching. So automated external diffulator. what I always I know what they are obviously but they're about $1,200 each. Uh so it it was a significant amount of equipment coming to us. So we're going to make sure all of our buses uh have AEDs on them. Uh the ones that we currently have are still completely functional. Uh but what they're trying to do is uh you know for districts that have AEDs that are 10 plus years old uh you just get some newer inventory into the school district. So uh we were one of I think 30 something district. So
071it's it's significant. So we'll uh we'll get those in and then we will meet with the schools and figure out our need to disperse what we have. Yes sir. Our drivers will be trained. Yes. Actually, they are already all of our staff um has a a training um not always a hands-on. We all have a video training and you know the importance of those machines is that uh there are voice instructions so that just about anyone can operate the you know when necessary. Uh but yes, uh when we do our 8 hour update training for our bus drivers every August, um yes, we will get into actual hands-on uh demonstrations and trainings for our bus drivers, but all of our staff has a video that we watch each year for the AES. This is just
072an aside, please. I said this is just an aside. Yes. What's our processes for checking the defibrillators to make sure they're working? I have a monthly checklist. that custodians complete each month and their protocol is to go to every machine. There's a button on there where you check the batteries and you check the dates for the pads to see if they've expired. So, as soon as we know that any of them are about to expire, they let me know we order the new pads or we go get new batteries. So, yes, it's on it's our monthly checklist for our state. Um, so for your new business that that you're going to discuss, uh, the the plan, uh, so refresh my memory. That's like the wish list, right? Yes. Okay, that's that's what I'll do. Um,
073and then you have one here that you'll let us know about the tank contract next month. Yes. Um, have we considered uh doing our own funding, the same fund? I have, but I that's a decision for Mr. Watts and that the board wants to pursue that. Um, I know Mr. Watts will be back tomorrow and I know there's still decisions that need to be made on a lot of things. Uh, that's definitely something that can be on the table. It's just a matter of that's the direction he wants me to Sure. Right. And you as the board for us to consider if we need to uh make changes to our transportation and so forth. And and and just as a history, the tank was added to accommodate the students and the schedule that we have.
074We didn't really have enough buses at the time. So we added tank um to make sure that we could pick up all our pick up our students. Sure. And so, uh, if we remove tank from that schedule, that changes the bus route, right? Yes. And it would involve the school time. Correct. Yes. So, it's not it's a lot more to it than if we take the bus out of the rotation. We have to they have to do a whole new route and my understanding is that it might affect school start time or Yeah. So it's a lot to so that would be a conversation so that we need to have if it's something we want to do because it's just a lot more to it than just Sure. All righty. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
075you Mr. Special education chair members of the board have report questions. I just wanted to say thank you for the detailed uh report about lots of them. That's just near and dear to my heart. So I I thank you for that. Yeah, mine too. I think the numbers are starting to show that there are more people on the spectrum than people ever realized. Of course, it is And I really like the pictures I saw for, you know, autism awareness and all that because it was a really big deal across the country. So, and that was good to see um that we're getting more comfortable with having these conversations in our community, you know, so that they feel like a part of the community, you know. has done a lot of work to ensure that we
076have the educational environments and supports for our for population both personnel with our sensory motor rooms expansion occupational therapists. Um those services absolutely support our student needs and we've been able to u at this point keep up with demand of services that is the student. Any more questions? Thank you. Very detailed report. Thank you, Madam Chair. That answer reports for student finance report. Okay. All right. Uh next we have there's no old business, new business. Uh we have the personnel report. Um the number two is the request for uh emergency certified substantive teachers. And my understanding is as we have been as Miss Plusman explained, this is something that the district puts in place in the event that they need to hire um a a substitute teacher. They need to have this on hand so
077that they're not screwing around at the last minute trying to get an approval because we, you know, can't have a board meeting in the middle of the day or eight o'clock in the morning. So, this just gives them that latitude. And this is for the 2526 school year. And any questions about the RB? I think most of us have had our our questions answered. Um, is everybody comfortable with approving this? Any questions or concerns about this IRB? Oh, I use the acrony internal revenue bond. It's industrial industrial revenue bond. So, sorry about that. So, um, I've had a lot of conversations. I talked to uh Kim, she's been in touch with uh Brandon. Uh he has reviewed this uh contract and um the concern for the school district is how this will impact seek. And
078so um those are the things that we factor in when we're looking at these things. We look at, you know, how this project is going to impact the city of Newport. We look at the jobs it will bring. it will bring you know the value of property. So all of that taken in consideration when we're looking at these um industrial revenue bonds that are come from the city. So um I think most of you have had conversations individually. So um I my biggest question was is the taxes just on when they redo the the ground or is it the whole thing? And I was told it's the whole thing. It's the whole thing. The whole project. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, and we we come out ahead, I think. Yes. Financially. Yeah. Right. We do. Right.
079All right. And Mr. U mains explained the facility plan. So, uh if there's no more questions, I need a motion to approve consent agenda items 1 through six. So, move. It's been moved and second. All in favor? Righty. Any more any board comments? I would like to say to Mr. Dennis Mans, I want to thank you for all of your hard work that you have done starting the stadium, getting the plan for the stadium, getting the people in for the stadium. It it is absolutely I mean absolutely been wonderful knowing that after 40 something years I was a kid in that stadium graduating and you ride by and it's amazing. I know you're not done yet. So when the stadium gets done we're going to get on a yellow school bus and go find you
080bring you here and and that stadium to you Dennis because I know it has not been easy. Yes. I know it's been a journey and I know we're not done with the journey, but so far you have done a phenomenal job and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because I tell all my friends we got a new stadium. So Dennis and the school board, I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I also want to give a shout out to our other two teachers who received that golden apple award. uh Miss Angela Kennedy and Miss Kyber who Barbara I remember Barbara but I could not remember her first name but it was a wonderful event you know it was very nice you
081know and they do a against all odds you know recognition of students who have gone through some of the you know very tragic things you know one young man battled cancer another young lady, their house caught on fire and they lost everything. But these students stayed on track with their education and and had high scores. They were honoral students and so it's it's just a nice event. I got to sit with uh the high school group and it was very lively and funny, you know. So, but it was good to be there to have that connection and enjoy each other at a meal uh at such a wonderful event honoring and recognizing the hard work of educators. So, that's the reason I like to go and support it because you know educators work hard and
082it's good that someone takes the time to recognition was there and gave words. So, it was really a very nice event. It was I believe Mr. Davidson's first event. So, what did you think of it? I love I love it. It was u It was really a celebration of all the things that everybody in our schools are doing. It was appreciation and celebration of all of you guys because here a lot of you are sitting here. You've been at work all day already and you're here at this meeting and we know that a lot of teachers don't have lives. A lot of employees don't have lives that that permit them to come to these meetings. So, we know that as you're here, you maybe not as a verbal commitment represent these other people, but you
083are representing everyone who's in schools. And we appreciate all the stuff that you do and all the hard work that you put in. And something else I want to say tonight, too, I'm appreciative that our city is is uh actually helping us with the grant. And I hope this is the beginning of a cooperation, long cooperation with our city government and our our school board because we are all in one community. This is we are in this together. Period. And it is a fight that each and each one of us has to bring to the table because it's about our students. It's about the future. A lot of us won't live to see what some of our children do in the future, but they're going to do tremendous things and it's because of all of
084you. And I just want to say thank you. It it's a it's a tremendous job that you guys do. It's not an easy thing that you do and you're here every single day with your hearts and with your commitment. And I just want to say thank you very much and thanks to the city for helping us. This is a commitment, something we have to do in the future. Thank you to everyone. Thank you. All right. I don't think I can really follow that. I know, man. I got mine out first, right? But I just wanted to extend my deep students because it's not an easy job to do it anywhere and really truly not. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, with that being said, uh I need a motion to
085adjurnn. So, move. Did you see how they hesitated? They don't want to go home. Move the second. All in favor? All righty. Let me see. Got it on my calendar. Go to the high school. And tomorrow night at the intervening.