001good evening everyone good evening good evening thank thank you all for coming and all the people watching virtually thank you for signing up um a quick run through of the agenda just uh brief introductions and then of course Dr Phil he talks he gives us amazing talk he's been with us before and um then we'll have a quick break Dr Windam goes after that and then um our current executive board members Valerie and um Vicky will be talking about uh advocacy in real life kind of um suggest suggesting of um with suggestions and how can be better Advocate and learn from the prepandemic founding members which that's why we appeal to all of you to come and meet with us and then at the end we'll have know kind of Open Session questions and answers
002and all that so thank you so much for coming um we um first of all I the slides were a little backwards I didn't change them in the last minute so I'm Rahul Rahul sarar the current president of the oral Advocates and I have an amazing committee to work with and this committee put together this event and we've been working on it since August the idea came up and then we tried uh like a alumni Union didn't quite work but um Todd singer vice president he is dealing with a family uh lost in the family and he couldn't attend uh Vicky maanta Vicki then we have uh Brad Brad um is our Treasurer he was here to drop off a check and um course in in keeping in um with his role Valerie dier member
003at large and uh amazing person uh and also aka the mother of Daniel rer for those of you who are in the band drum Master Daniel rer yeah amazing yeah um and then we have executive committee members uh at at large basically we have um bookie bookie has been with us for a couple of years and she the reason she is in Brackets is because she's on sabatical for about six months she's got a course going on uh Laval um he's not with us today and then Dr Angie Ridgeway uh yep and um predecessor amazing uh President we needed two people to fill a role remember last year we had a co-presidents uh and of course the Avon School Corporation Representatives on our board Scott Windam superintendent and Sheila Sheila Sheila Glass and uh she
004does an amazing job talking to our class about finance and so on and so forth so um and we have many um acsc community members I know who have signed up virtually thank you all I mean without you all we wouldn't be here without uh you know in this nice room that they generously allow us to use and um and they do an amazing job don't they with the teachers staff uh admin uh administrative officials and above all the students right they are doing an amazing they do amazing things right Al together so can we have a big round of applause for the Avon com Corporation for which we are working towards their um you know success okay uh oh before I go now so that was um the committee now who are all of
005you we had a total of about uh 70 people sign up um virtually we had um 21 people virtually 46 in person okay so I I kind of broke it down by class year and um those of you who were pre pandemic um you didn't you weren't uh uh familiar with the class concept because we didn't have that it was primarily advocacy and uh Dr hornman Who is also uh attending virtually was uh The orial Advocates was her idea when she was uh had just taken on the role as 20 uh in 2012 as a superintendent she was coming off a failed referendum uh it was it was terrible right so then she had this idea how do I get the community involved and that's why we are all here and um if uh I
006was thinking about this if you were to give a little prize for the most the class with the most attendees then probably a class of 2025 which is current class would be the winners however here's the thing I think the award we don't have one sorry but maybe next time we'll go to the prepandemic class the founding members and um it's amazing we have uh we had 12 people sign up nine in person three virtually and that's amazing considering that you have been um we had some who just recently left our executive board but I mean uh many of you haven't even seen I've heard about I've heard your names and all that so if I could have you all stand please all who are with the yeah so um Dr hornman obviously was the
007person who came oh please please keep keep sing sorry sorry um Carrie uh um christe sorry Christy kry you do an amazing job with the pantry and of course with Barbara doll alongside you guys do an amazing job and uh anyone of you who are familiar with the merily my pantry we were um my family my wife Amy and I will attest to the fact that we were also beneficiaries because we had a tough patch so thank you for everything you do um Sarah parent school on the school board and uh Jennifer Jennifer Mills recently just uh last year I think you had uh other like a job and other things so uh Dena Dina okay she was on here Stephanie bod and thank you uh Amy M marahas oh sorry I did I M
008yeah sorry I I knew I would watch that one uh Barbara doll of course Rosie blanket ship and Scott Scott CL so thank you so much without you guys all the work that you did to found form the organization we wouldn't be here secondly we all and the whiter Community owes you a deep debt of gratitude why anyone referendum the 2018 referendum I have heard stories I wasn't around but it was absolutely amazing what you guys did and you know we are so grateful to all of you that's why I wanted you all to come just to give you a round of applause everyone please thank you so much thank you very much we'll need your help because we have an upcoming referendum so we will need your help so all right um then we
009have just a quick statistics uh 2025 would have been the well the uh in terms of people signed up total 17 2024 uh 7 2023 4 2022 3 uh excuse my voice I just got from back from India and if you're familiar with the pollution in India it's been I've been struggling with that so plus emotions so um acsd we talked about PTO we have three um two P members here are we uh yeah okay there they are um as you will hear later on we have some plans to extend our reach to schools and that's why they have both been very generous in uh their time to come here spend time with us we that's something we'll talk about um icpe uh Kathy Kathy FAS Rose icpe president is watching us virtually and thank
010you we are trying to align with uh like-minded organizations so she said she would would come obviously to hear Dr Phil but uh yeah thank you all thank you all for the amazing stuff you have done thank you for coming it's two hours and that's a lot of time I know you you could have done better things for for guests who may have not been uh familiar with the oral Advocates we essentially are basically accentuating what the mission of Avon Community School Corporation is uh mission and vision kind of the same thing um we have the uh U the the what is it the horn or uh the the mic or loud speaker because that's what we are doing we're trying to convey all the good stuff that the Avan Community Schools have done and
011um guiding principles basically five fundamental principles community in today's day and age uh the Zeitgeist of the times the spirit of the times is disunity Us Versus Them social media divisions and all that but we really believe that education transcends all of that and we really try to uh make sure we are respectful to all opinions and correct them wherever there are misconceptions uh we communicate with the officials and um we have a lot more coming up Jennifer and Sarah you both were um very instrumental in communicating with officials along with others uh truth and trans transparency inclusive membership we do not have any exclusions as long as your principles are aligned with the school corporation and public education we are all for it um quick history 2012 the idea came up with Dr hornman
012oral Advocates was formed in 2015 this is the 10th year we are entering the second decade um now before the pandemic we had 56 members 61 perspective this is based on the database we have currently we have 103 additional members in the class format Dr Windam after the pandemic he said how do we reinvigorate The Advocates and started the he had another idea which was knowledge we have to disseminate knowledge to our community which is where he came up with the brilliant idea of having six in-class uh sessions and visits to the schools meeting with legisl legislators amazing stuff so we've had as you can see the first group was 14 members Drew to uh by five in 2023 then 32 and 38 and uh it's an amazing people who hear about it are um
013and and join they hear some amazing stuff okay uh the why the why why do we do this why do I do this well Scott Dr Windham would uh in in the classes we would go through there was a lot of information coming uh we would he would talk about what um Public Schools the the disparity in the standards and regulations that public schools are held to versus charter schools and private schools this is not a hallucination the slide I have up there is not a AI hallucination this is from our Indiana code website and here's a language a nonpublic school now this is about esas a non-public eligible school is not an agent of the state of government uh federal government and therefore the treasur of the state state board Department Etc may not
014in any way regulate the educational program of a non-public school including regulation of curriculum content religious instruction activities classroom this is in our Indiana code and an accredited non-public school that is an Esa participating entity May provide for the educational needs of student without government controls ladies and gentlemen fellow taxpayers I have a problem with that my tax dollars going to an unaccountable school and entity and that is not acceptable and I'm sure it is not acceptable to all of you here and everyone watching with that I will hand it over to Angie who will introduce Dr Phil DS who you've been dying to here so I'll stop talking and Dr Phil DS thank you and welcome back uh Dr DS I think it was 1819 when you were here before and I was president
015of the Avon orial Advocates at that time that was a big year we had eight programs that year was it was a busy year but we are delighted to have you back it was uh such a great talk and I know even more imperative today in the um uh funding climate of Indiana schools so Dr down started his career in education in 1989 at Fort Wayne Community Schools teaching social studies and language arts he then um moved on and with a a stop in between and became the assistant and then the superintendent of schools for Southwest Allen County from 2010 to 2021 after his retirement from public education but not yet retired he is now assistant professor at the Frank school of education at try University and his um impactful scholarship and study work is
016around the impact of Indiana's Choice scholarship program and its impact on the funding of public schools thank you again so much for being here my pleasure I I've got a mic so thank thank you all for coming um my uh my history with Avon is always finishing right behind you in the band contest I got to put that out there for Maggie right off the G right off the uh the GGO um so to really understand how this works I I apologize but I I'm going to back up and kind of just go how go through how funding Works in Indiana Indiana has a siloed system of funding it is possible to mix some funds in that Silo but it is very very difficult and I'll kind of lay this out so that you can
017see directly how the voucher program figures into uh impact school funding understand that what you're going to feel is kind of like this right now um but I promise I I I will not go too much into depth I'll try to make sure that it all makes sense um or I can just push the button yeah there we go maybe I'm just too far away so okay uh think about uh think about this in the revenue is taxes we're talking taxes right so you pay property taxes here you also pay income tax sales tax you pay federal taxes as well each of those goes off and comes back with services for you and as far as we're concerned with the schools you have property tax that pays for stuff unless you have a referendum in
018which case it can pay for stuff or people and you have your income taxes that go off to the state your sales taxes and those come back to you as people and it's separate unless you're the superintendent you're paid out of property taxes it's about five years ago right they changed that so and then there's federal taxes that factor in this as well but it's a pretty small amount and we'll get to that in a bit but we're going to start with property taxes just so you can understand that this is your biggest bang for your buck because you pay it here based on where your house is and the services that are being provided and they stay here so these this is a list of some taxing entities that could be levying a tax
019on you and then in return providing you service services so with school districts it's obviously the stuff again some of you I believe live in the town of Avon you would have Avon taxing you school districts have two funds that use property taxes there's an operations fund and there's a Debt Service fund anytime you accumulate debt it's paid out a Debt Service state law says that we have to pay that first and then operations comes after that if you have a referendum and you do that is also out of your property tax taxes with an exception we'll get to in a minute that makes it interesting think my battery is low so you've heard of the property tax caps in the late a Indiana passed property tax caps where they capped the amount of tax
020you could pay on your Homestead at 1% of the assessed valuation all right other residential agricultural lands Tech a little higher the line but what we're going to talk about are are your homes so here are two tax bills one in Allen County and one in Avon we'll take a look at Allen County here first all of you have one of these if you own a house and if you look on it down here at the bottom you can see a list of the different agencies that are levying attacks on this property and the top the bill is $453 now if you go up to the top you'll see the assessed valuation which is it says number two right there and you can come down there's a homestead exemption deductions there's some exemptions and it
021gets down to the bottom and it says the property tax liability is 3,916 you come down over the big bar you can see there's a $700 charge on top of that that's the referendum if you pass a referendum you agree to pay beyond your 1% cap now that Bill is not capped so it's added onto the bill it gets there it's under the 1% so that person pays all of it notice though that what they pay the $3,913 is less than what the taxing entities are asking for and that is not uncommon that's when you hear people talk about uh uh a circuit breaker or a tax cap loss that's what they're talking about those people ask for that money in their budget but you aren't paying whatever that difference is okay now we go
022back let's take a look at an Avon one again same sort of structure you can see there's a Corporation total in there uh the school they're asking for $3,000 from this home there's a referendum of uh it looks like $430 on it maximum bill is 392 everybody was asking for five you guys have more cap loss than for wi Community Schools which is the other tax bill does that make sense Scott the life you're living so here's the impact of the tax caps all of those entities have to manage their losses okay and they all watch each other are you raising your tax rat are you raising your tax did yours go down I can raise mine there's all of this infighting and washing now on the taxing side of this rather than on the
023homeowner side the impact of all of this this is a lot to digest and I'm going to go fast don't worry it's not that important in the big picture but the new system makes it very easy to know the maximum bill you would pay you take your AV you figure 1% you know what the most you're going to pay and then if there's a referendum you can add that on if you want all right but it's difficult for Avon to know what tax rate they should be asking for because they don't know how much they're not going to get so and additionally that dgf you see that that's the department of local governing governance Finance they get to approve or not approve your tax rate and they use an old formula from 1972 called The
024Five-Year growth quotient thanks to Governor Otis Bowen um this taking you back um to determine what that what your rate can be it can't go up too much um and so now that's why there's now there's this compete between the entities for this loss right and what's happened as a result of it is you see an increase in the amount of General obligation bonds the issuing of debt that gets paid through Debt Service to try to offset loss in mostly operations that tends to be where this hits transportation is another part of that that can get hit um and it's also changed who fights over property o over property taxes and why in the old days when a city wanted to Annex the taxpayers would go nuts because they didn't want to pay more taxes
025under the new system taxpayers go I'm capped I'm probably already at the cap maybe I'm not so it's changed that and here's my example of this foreign Community Schools five years ago I think uh wanted to Annex ground just north of Fort Wayne in What's Perry Township part of Northwest Allen County Schools Carol high school they finished behind us in the ban contest so the um the city went to Annex it taxpayers were like we're already capped we don't it's not GNA who cares it was a big deal though in Perry Township because Perry Township had a volunteer fire department that was funded through taxes and these coming into the city would no longer be paying that tax to them they would be part of the city part of the city Fire Department the loss
026of that Revenue was going to basically put the Perry Township Fire Department out of existence and all the schools in Northwest Allen that were in Perry Township were not getting annexed so there would have been no fire coverage for the school and they couldn't have raised more money because the dgf has a growth it was it was this huge crisis and eventually everybody settled down the city did not Annex it but it gives you an example of how it used to be taxpayers would throw up but it it's changed now the new fight for taxpayers is the new bullet point here is over assessed valuation since covid there's been an increase in the value of property which means your 1% goes up and that's what you hear the complaining about in Indianapolis about property tax
027um relief now could be argued that if you go and look at your tax bill and compare it it's how much money is that really and is it a big deal de that's the big question and there are some people who think it is now the referendum again to go over this again it can be for stuff people or safety it's voted on by the taxpayers that will pay it you pay it even if you're at the cap and it's for a fixed project like a building with usually a 30-year kind of a mortgage payoff thing or if it's an education fund or safety with people it's an eight-year referendum which needs to be renewed eight years later which is two years from now yeah so you guys have one coming up the thing to
028remember about this this is the one where you get the big bang for your buck it stays here whatever it is you raise we'll stay here we'll get used here looking across the country just as a just as a point to make here Indiana is one of the lowest property taxed states in the country you may surprise you to see California on there I have firsthand notice or knowledge of this my son lives in California and owns a house here's how California is also capped at 1% that's 1% of the evaluation of your house when you buy it and then it stays there so somebody buys a house sits on it for 20 years and sells the house it's a surprise tax bill for the next for the next purchaser but uh so anyway anyway
029but that's that's if you take a look Illinois look at Illinois talk to anybody you know who lives in the neille area about their property tax bill and it's three four times what we pay it's crazy but their funding school funding is very much tied to that as ours used to be back in the day so where does the money for schools come from back in the day it was a hybrid this is up until about 2009 and 10 that was property tax and state taxes coming together to fund schools when they capped the property taxes they knew there would not be enough property tax to fund the schools so they raised the income tax and and the sales tax and that generated the revenue to fund the people in the state taxes so we're
030going to start talking about state and federal taxes now and as we get into this it's important to remember we're no longer talking about just Avon we're talking Statewide and big numbers are small and small numbers add up remember after covid when there was the big story that the state had budgeted $5 million for Afterschool tutoring right my God that sounds like a huge number surely we'll be able to fix everything Until you realize there's a million kids so it's five bucks a kid that's not going to be a lot of tutoring so always keep that in mind when you're thinking about State numbers is that there are a little over a million students we're talking about so if you go to the state budget website they have the budgets going way back and in
031Indiana we do two-year budgets you elect a representative to go for two years to the state house the first year they write a budget and pass a bunch of laws the second year they fix problems with the budget and the laws they pass the first year and the senators get elected to do that twice in a four-year cycle is how that works all the budgets then show up here on this web page you go to here's last year's budget bunch of lines third one fourth down as past you click on that link and it opens that as p and it opens up this page that has all the data you would ever want including spreadsheets Galore if you're into that sort of thing this is a great place to go and play around um so
032with that you can find out where all the money is coming from and where it all goes so this here is a py graph of the two years we're finishing up the second so the the one on the right is the Year we're in right now 24 25 and you can see three distinct colors the yellow color is broken up down here the red is broken up there and the blue broken up on the far side yellow is federal so let's take a look at this this is the money we get from the federal government red is Health and Human Services there are categories in the budget and they consistently use the same color all the way through this so as you can see blue that's education so we're looking for blue what we get
033from the feds is all the titles Title One title two title three those sorts of things and special ed all right that's it that's what comes through and it's about2 billion a year so it's a sizable amount of money Title One you guys know what title one is that's how with poverty title two is Staff Development there's there's things like that but it's primarily special education and title one so we come back we go to the red section this is what's called dedicated funds the state will occasionally pass laws that raise revenue for specific or dedicated purposes big yellow is the most famous recent one the gas tax for transportation remember that was a like five years ago that was a big deal deal that so when they pass that law it creates that tax
034that tax comes in and it must go to that purpose you'll notice blue that is Lottery and license plates and that money goes into the teacher retirement account not a lot of money coming out of this which brings us to the main event the general fund this is where uh the rubber hits the road really as far as the budget is concerned the feds and the dedicated stuff is all lined up and has to be what it has to be this is where the legislators have discretion okay and you can see that each of the categories obviously blue is the biggest one blue is the biggest one so where does the general fund come from the bright red at the bottom is sales tax thank you Amazon um the brown above it that is your
035individual income tax the green is corporate income tax the little purple line is gaming and then other revenues and then the last little orange thing says unforeseen revenues and that's basically leftover money from the last year so as you can see the general fund is primarily sales tax and income tax now here are the different categories um construction distributions General government and it goes all the way across to the fiscal year and the size of the general fund right there education's here the yellow is a line item inside education that I've pulled out and it's the tuition support line item that's the line that pays all the people in all the schools in the state of Indiana all right that is the biggest expense that the state has so let's look at this the rate
036of change from January of 2010 to October of 2024 the CPI rate or the rate of inflation was 45. 68% what that means is you if something cost $100 in 910 it costs $145 today okay so the next line over is the general fund in that same period of time it's grown 66% okay it has grown much faster than inflation in other words Indiana has more money today to spend than it did did in 910 you look at education that's K or prek through college that's at 40% so it's behind inflation and if you look at tuition support it's 41.46 per behind inflation now I will tell you that that's an improvement over what it has been some of that is due to the voucher program you'll see that showing up here in a little
037bit so to sum this up inflation at 45% the general fund at 66% and tuition support at 42% now what if there are fewer kids enrollment fluctuates according to the census Indiana is shrinking in schoolage kids we between the two censuses from 10 to 20 we lost 15,000 students so we're shrinking so theoretically it shouldn't be keeping up with inflation right there's fewer kids so let's think about this here's the enrollments since 20091 in 910 there was 1, 37,000 students in public schools in charter schools public and Charter Schools today there's 1 million 6,500 kids 6500 kids the difference so that that has shrunk but the difference is the number of voucher students that have been added and today with voucher students there's 1,812 78 so there are more kids today being funded in the
038tuition support line than there were in 20091 that but buget has shrunk so to compare apples to apples let's take the budget and just divide it by the number of kids now don't get confused into thinking this is how much money each school got there's a funding formula we'll talk about that in a little bit but we can compare per student how much is being budgeted and then compare that to inflation so in 910 $6,200 per student this year it's 8458 per student but with inflation it should be $9,200 budgeted per kid on a per student basis which means it's $63 million behind what it should be if they were keeping track with inflation and I've had legislators say well well I know a lot of people who their income has not kept up with
039inflation and I remind them that inflation's an average and what you're saying is that it's okay for teachers to be below average so if the allocation per student had kept up with the general fund Remember That Grew at 66% there'd be $10,000 per kid today so the money's they' they've got money they're making choices about where and how to allocate it now how does that money get to your school every September there's an ADM count and on that day the state computers count up all the kids the student numbers associated with your schools and then they begin to compare with all the others and if a kid is listed in two schools they call and find out who really has them because kids move and nobody takes the number off until they're made to take
040it off because the numbers are dollars so the count then gives you basically half the year's funding and then we do it again in February because people graduate people move yada yada so each student is worth a dollar amount based on a formula the school gets the value of each kid enrolled vouchers are 90% of the value of that student at their school so if I'm an Avon student and I'm worth $7,000 if I go to a private school they get 6,300 is that 90% something like that it's 90% I taught social studies I didn't teach so each child how much is each child well there's a basic grant for everybody and then there's a formula called complexity which determines the amount of uh it's a socioeconomic indicator basically and that increases funding for schools
041that have a lot of kids in poverty then if you're a special education student depending on your D designation you get a amount of money from speech which is very in very small amount of money up to severe and profound and emotional disabilities that's a much larger number there need more people um additionally there's Perkins grant money which is some of it is federal and some of it is State those are for your vocational t uh classes and then uh honors degrees but that's going away now isn't it is that part of foot's yeah yeah this yeah yeah again it's always forever being tweaked but based on this factors are put together and you get to total up based on all the kids that you have in your District okay now how's it spent when
042it gets here well first of all of all is your enrollment growing this is a big problem in rural Indiana because let's say that the increase in funding for this year is going to be 2% but your enrollment is dropping 4% well you're either going to have to cut teachers not do AR raay and as this happens and programs disappear students leave because they don't get this and you see some of the death spirals that you're seeing in some of the rural communities right now so that's a problem when we have students that trying getting ready to go out and look for work we go through this list with them take a look is the enrollment growing or are you going someplace where they're going to have to start laying off and if you're a
043rookie guess who's first so be aware the teacher contract that gets bargained out of this money basically a rule of thumb is across the State teachers salaries end up being about 50% of this money 15% of it goes into benefits for everybody so if you think about it about 45% of this is in the classroom with those teachers then you have building level administrators you have classify contracts for your aids your secretaries um and then the school board philosophy how much money do we hold in reserve or rainy day and that varies across all 300 districts in the state I've seen districts where two months is enough and I know districts where they want a whole Year's worth sitting somewhere right so all of this then is how it gets divided up and you will
044hear legislators say well teacher pay is a district thing it's up to the district keep in mind that the district gets a pie and it's about dividing the pie up if the pie is shrinking there's not much you can do to create more money for those teachers they'll tell you pass a referendum and then every year make it more and more difficult to pass the referendum so just be aware that that sort of whack-a-mole game is going on every year so here is in a little bit the first runs will come out and when these things come out Scott will be very excited all the legislators come running they'll run this is from the budget and it's basically they've run the formula and you can see on here here's avons from two years ago the
045numbers you're looking at there's all this stuff up here but really what you're looking at is right down here 7910 and 8,040 or 74 that's the ballpark guesstimate of what an average kid at Avon is going to bring to Avon in the percent is the percent increase from the year prior so if I'm a teacher and I'm bargaining I look at the first year and I'm thinking 7% raise right and then I look ahead and think oo 2% raise maybe we do some defer maybe we there's all the strategy that goes into bargaining he starts thinking about okay classes how big are my class sizes going to be how many teachers do we have are we growing or are we shrinking because this is based off a guess on enrollment and how often is the
046guess right Scott never so that's why all you look at is the per student number and then look at your enrollment numbers and try to figure this out now at the bottom of the list is this line This is the choice scholarship Line This is the voucher program it's in this budget and it always has been it's not a separate place it's in here and the money is coming out of tuition support it's coming out of tuition support you'll notice they don't Factor complexity in because they don't know what the complexity is because they don't know who's going to take this so the number down here at the bottom the 6,225 the 6,366 that's a guess that's even worse guess because they don't know if the average is going to have a lot of complexity
047or not except they've done this a number of years and they've figured out that it isn't a lot because when you see the average voucher amount that comes out in the report it's pretty close to this yes so the increase in the voucher program there 88.5% increase was bigger than the Avon increase that was very stud of you to notice and I think it's the same then in the second year 2.3 or was it something in that range yeah it's different and every District's different because of complexity and all these other things um I'm going to guess Avon does not have a high High complexity number which means maybe you didn't grow as much due to complexity I'm not sure how they calculate it the formula is one of those things that who knows BEC
048and you'll like for instance when this came out for the first time ever there was a huge fight because it was so bad for schools I've never we've never seen this happen there were three conference committee meetings to try to resolve the budget problem the last time remember that that that was so nobody knew what was going on for a while but yes it's a big it's a number that uh in the formula in the formula now here's a question let's think about this this is a tax break for these people right let's calculate how much of your income tax actually comes to Avon because you can do it we can get a good close enough ballpark let's assume you have a taxable income of $200,000 okay the tax rate in Indiana is 3.1% so
049the most you would pay if you don't take any if no deduction whatever would be $6,300 in income tax everybody with me so far so if we know that tuition support is 38% of the general fund 38% % of your taxes is 200 or $2,414 going to tuition support okay thank you on behalf of the teachers of Avon now dollars follow the student Avon's enrollment is 01962 per of the state's enrollment and when you do that math $26.46 of your tax taxes comes back to Avon to then be divided up among the teachers remember big numbers are small and small numbers add up so this adds up big and here's the deal you're giving more money to IPS it's all based on the size of the school because it's following students right so you'll give
050a few pennies to the south atams of the world you're given $26 here the voucher program is the largest program in the state and $125 of your taxes is going to the voucher program so as I said before Indiana is shrinking in children that are school age but the voucher program has added 44,000 more students and even at 90% of the funding that is a dramatic increase just today a post came out on Facebook bragging how the voucher program saved $77 million what that 77 million is is the 10% that wasn't covered it they're saying if they were funded at the whole rate it doesn't save money if you're adding more kids so think about it this way here's the pie in 20091 and we've got kids all getting a you know nice chunk of
051pie through inflation it shrinks but we have more kids so they still should be getting a decent size of pie right there's fewer kids smaller pie the problem is we've added more kids so I don't care if it saved $77 million because you're not getting full price you are still costing Indiana on a per student basis money everybody's getting less this is like if you have a set of golf clubs and you see at the store a brand new driver on sale and you buy it and you bring it home and you put it in your golf bag and you say to your spouse honey I saved us money so again funding's a pie Pi's smaller due to inflation smaller Pie has more kids eating everybody's pie is smaller so what's your share of the
052cost of the voucher program eight years ago I started tracking this because I got angry that nobody could explain it to me my wife calls this my second dissertation so this is just eight years but I've here's the snippet of Hendrick County and I've each year I can calculate you take the value of the voucher program and divide it by the number of kids in the state get you a number and then you multiply your enrollment times that number that's a ballpark idea of how much money you could get right totaled up across the way Avon $47 million in the last eight years that could have been here you can see Northwest West Hendricks at 8 million South Harrison etc etc right there this year eight almost 8.3 million this year Scott could you use
0538.3 million thought so now if the voucher program did not exist and we funded the 1, 6,537 students at the 09 rate relative to inflation the current budget would have more money in it than we needed half a million dollars if they had never started the voucher program and just maintained inflation education would have less money in the budget it would have saved money and we would have kept up with inflation on a per student basis this would have been $565 million or $565 per child more which is about I think it's $6 million for you guys yeah about $6 million just right there how much do you get per year on your referendum 13 yeah so half of that is unnecessary if there was no Voucher Program I just want to say in Southwest
054Allen our loss was almost identical to the to the size of the referendum so they could do this and it would save the state money so let's let's talk about voucher schools here in 2011 when the program started there were 291 accredited private schools these are the OG private schools their cumulative enrollments in the 15 years since then are only up 2,000 students and I say this because we keep hearing how there's this Exodus from the public schools to the private schools and anybody who lives in a big area and went to Catholic schools as I did knows it's the same families going there I went to school with them so of those schools 129 of them are actually down in enrollment there are 94 more schools today that have sprung up and the percentage
055of the students in those schools taking the voucher is rising so here is a this is a school in the Indianapolis area and I couldn't get the numbers bigger because I'm not that techsavvy but I will tell you at the top they're enrollment in 2011 was 528 today it's 429 since I've been tracking in 20,000 in 2018 34% of the school students there took the voucher today it's 83 so fewer kids but they're all taking the voucher here's the number of schools on there we go 291 in 2011 and then 266 s 24 of them dropped out of being accredited but then the next year 59 anybody know what happened that year the state dropped the requirement to say where the money was going in the first year to get this passed they promised that
056they would have the schools report how they were spending the money and in the next bium that got dropped and you'll notice 59 schools jumped into the program that number has stayed fairly consistent until the last three years and in the last three years the minimum income has gone way up and so more people are able to get in and you see a lot of schools jumping up here in the last few years some of which are Charter Schools who've lost their Charters but new schools hey so at this point it's important to say that there is today no no oversight of the $500 million that are going to these 373 schools and I want to talk now about what I learned growing up in Catholic schools we were taught to avoid the occasion of
057sin I used to talk about the occasion of sin keep yourself out of situations where you would be tempted to sin coupled with this was a story my dad used to always tell me my dad was a political scientist and so he studied people's motivations a lot and he would always say that locks on doors are not there to keep thieves out thieves are going to get in they're going to find a way to break in they're going to take what they're going to take the lock keeps an honest person who is tempted from doing the wrong thing this is the same thing that oversight of public schools and public tax dollars does it's a gift that keeps us honest so every two times a month when you're having your board meeting remember it's a
058gift that you get to go and you get to show everybody how every penny is accounted for and your capital projects plan for three years out where you plan what you're going to do with the taxpayers money three years out that's it's all there to make sure you all know what we're doing with your money right that matters this is why people get caught here pay attention to this how often it's athletic department money because that isn't supervised by the state that's a local supervision thing so the state oversight is huge talk to anybody who does the auditing for the state and they'll tell you all the people they catch because it's public record they can do that they all used to work for private firms and could never talk about anything so then they
059get to doing it for the government and all a sudden they're all chatty chatty chatty so remember this is a gift so I'm going to end with this the state puts out a list of the top Appropriations number one at the top is the distribution for Te tuition support the voucher program by itself would be the fifth largest expense on this list it is the fifth largest expense in the state and no one knows how it's being spent now however you feel about vouchers and whether that should exist or not if we get to the point where I'm where we're all fine with that that's fine fund it fund it and make sure they have to account for it that's it that's a conservative hooer opinion and I don't see why they can't do it
060but this is it and there is active lobbying against this by the private schools that is the end of my talk so thank you anybody have any [Applause] questions any questions yes sir Larry dor Larry dor yep funny at the same time right yeah yeah supposedly one of them was locked up in South Bend somewhere I don't know but I I remember hearing that too so yeah any any any other questions yes ma'am it's like family 400,000 or $400,000 yeah yeah it's it's it's a it's based off of the federal poverty line and I think it's 400 time it's 300 300 times that I think it's 300 times the federal poverty level right yeah and how much of your taxes actually come here right um well the statute is being used to say well we're
061a private entity and you can't can't do that uh that's a good question um I think you know I remember growing up in the church bulletin there was a listing of the funds that seemed very uh sparse and and was just kind of General nothing like what you get two two meetings a month the gift that Scott gets twice a month um here so I I I think there's a lot of not wanting to you know yeah you'd have to ask those I I I don't know five well why did they you have to ask the legislators yeah yeah Lobby is for the private school schools are there hard um there's a lot of money behind the choice stuff and a lot of it makes its way to to campaign coffers and so that that
062just is and and to in I want to give a a a a break to some of the legislators if you're on committees that are not education you're dealing with complex crap thrown at you all the time yourself and so you are dependent on the people in other committees giving you information and being honest with you about it there may be a communication breakdown there um I a lot of people actually don't know and they will spout things out which is over the eight years I've been doing this every time I get one of those spouts I start investigating and I end up with an answer that they were not right but um yeah it's not a separate fund it's tuition support it doesn't save the state you've added more kids to a smaller pie
063it just the math I'm sorry that's it's just not true and they can never explain to you how it is when they're like the 77% there's no math behind that claim but I I just know enough to know that's what they're talking about is the 77 million is that 10% of the voucher program that because they're only at 90% the private schools the the private private schools those are all I don't know if any of them are for-profit I know like canbury does not take the voucher in for Wayne I don't think Park tutor does down here I don't think they do I think it's primarily religious based schools um and they have a tax exemption and yes to be ACC to get the voucher you have to be accredited and to be accredited you
064have to take the testing right and take some of that stuff but um no no no because they're voluntarily doing it no no we just have to take they just have to take the test yeah yeah but here here's the thing is no school is better than another school based on the type of school it is all right public school is not better than a charter it's not better than a private an individual public school might be or the individual charter school might be but in general what is a good education I mean you know it's Community it's all the things that I'm sorry this seems to be kind of cutting into but yes no right because the argument shifted away from poor kids getting getting away from Bad schools to families wanting to have
065a choice in the type of education and we should all have a choice well I mean it'd be nice to be able to pay tuition and have a boat on the weekend yes ma'am I'm not even messing with that that's a that's a okay sgo these are the other ways that money comes into the into the private schools that's not tax dollars that's tax credit and so that doesn't even make it into the coffers you can get a tax credit for making donations to Scot scholarship granting organizations that's the sgo and then that money goes to pay scholarships for students to go to private schools that is I don't even know where to how to start looking for that but I guarantee you there's big money there's big money that I know Karen Francisco when
066she was the editor at the Journal Gazette was was trying to track that down and there have been people who've been trying to do that but those are essentially the the statute you created them but they run as separate little their own little foundations and it's a sweet gig I'm not sure what the credit is but I how much it is 50% up to amount or yeah I don't know there you go you can start your dissertation um other question was there another one over here or yeah this is this is just the general fund this is just the tuition support that's all I've been tracking because it's to me was the one that was like it was hitting me that sort of does but it's a lot harder to track down y it comes
067when I fill my taxes out there's the deductions for different credits and if you make a donation to one you can claim a credit yeah is it yeah so it's not yeah but either way it's a it's it's credit so it's not a deduction it's a credit so if your tax bill was 6,300 and the credit is $200 your tax bill is now $6,100 a lot of the universities have them I mean if you donated you donate to Purdue or any of those places you get to deduct I think it's up to $ thousand dollar as a credit or something like that so private schools uh in a geographic area will have a public school as what's called an Lea a local education agent um and if there is a student who is eligible for
068title or for um uh special ed services that funding comes through the L a and then the Lea hires the AIDS in that school to take care of that we've tried for years to Lobby the legislator to let them handle their own special ed and they always go down and argue no we don't want to I I don't know why but I'm just telling you what I have seen Scott can verify this it's the it's the same and when I was in Southwest we had four private schools in our district one refused to take any government dollars period it was great I'd go down there they'd sign off a paper I'd say hey Gods speed see you later the other ones all wanted every penny they could get and they would would sign up and
069so and that's interesting because their expenses have to come through your board and often let's just say they they are not used to the same level of scrutiny about what should be claimed and what shouldn't be claimed so so yeah just [Applause] different so if if any of you want to talk to Dr Phil he'll be around for some depending on how many questions you have thank you so much my pleasure my pleasure go Orioles go Orioles minutes thank you my pleasure yeah I'd be happy to by the way that's your and that's mine just so you know I mean there's no idential numbers now you done it for me so are you PowerPoint or are you PowerPoint I will convert this and just email it to you can oh yeah so we made it
070thank you for your help whoops e e e all right I didn't look at my clock so I'm going to trust it's been five minutes I think most of us are back so we'll get we'll get back together here going again so uh Phil and I I did not I didn't uh see Phil's slides before uh hand so but you there is some overlap so he uh this is helpful what they asked me to share with you is some updates on some of the bills that we're watching really closely um and I've got a little bit of background information that's going to dovetail really nicely with what Dr DS shared so a few um updates this was the best visual I could come up with um I really uh and I liked his V I
071like the fire hose I may switch to that one um I believe our schools are a lighthouse for a lot of our families and a lot of our kids and um um a lot of us move to our community for the schools how many moved to Avon to to have your kid and Avon schools we did my family did we were already in Hendricks County but I wanted to move to Avon for the schools and that now my old my youngest is a senior so we've gone all the way through Avon schools I said I was going to set my timer hold on otherwise I'll start rambling um they've got me yep um so one of the things that I feel in this legislative session is the waves are intense th this legislative session is
072probably one of the most critical I think uh probably of my career not a superintendent of my teaching career 25 years so there are a lot of bills being considered that are waves crashing on the lighthouse so I often feel my job is to be the calm so I want to keep our teachers calm I want to keep some of you have reached out to me and have said what about this bill what about that bill and I go it's early most of them are going to die and I I really try to be the voice of calm this legislative session is going to be really intense so all of us have to be geared up because the the waves are strong my strategy for coping is I often uh go out into classrooms and
073I I was today was one of those days where I was like all right I am stressed the waves are intense so by the end of the day I visited four classroom at Hickory Elementary and I felt way better about about things but when I go see what our kids are doing what our teachers are doing they're incredible and so our job as advocates is to try to stem all those waves that are coming at us nationally from the state all these different things so that our teachers can be amazing our kids can be amazing and uh the things that are happening in our schools that just make make me so proud as a parent as a community member and as a superintendent so one of the things that we have really focused on and
074we've got two school board members here we have continued to drop our tax rate so one of the things Dr DS was talking about is all the local entities now are fighting over the 1% right it's very easy and you'll often hear the legislators say well schools just keep their their tax rate steady they just want to gobble up more and more maybe that's true but it's not true in Avon we have been dropping our tax rate steadily so you can see even with all the construction that we've done as a growing School District High School project new Middle School all the work that's happening right now to serve our kids better we've been able to drop our debt service rate 21% and our referendum rate 32% so we are continually trying to be good
075stewards of the tax dollar and serve our kids in a grow Community as effectively as we can this is our tax rates going back to 2011 so 2011 is as Dr down was Downs was saying that's kind of when the state changed the funding formula for schools you can see our tax rate spiked in 2019 the first year of the referendum our tax rate this year is the lowest it's ever been since 2011 so we have continually tried to drop that tax rate over time um and serve a growing student population Dr DS was talking about uh per student funding this is a chart that we've often used you some of you have seen it when Sheila has shared it this does not include some of the special ed funding so these numbers are a
076little bit lower than what he shared this is just the base funding that we receive for uh our students you can see that in that 2015 to 2019 time frame on average we were only getting about 1% increase per year from the state I remember and uh he said Dr hornman is watching online in 2017 Dr hornman and I went down and we met with Senator Ryan michler he is still in the Senate one of the most powerful people in the Senate and we went through our funding challenges in Avon schools and Dr michler or Ryan michler at the end of that conversation looked at Maggie said Maggie if you want better than what the state's providing you're going to have to do a referend that was the solution you you're going to have to
077do a referendum that was pivotal for us because Maggie and I came back and in the car were like oh my gosh do we need to do a referendum do you how are we going to do it I mean it was a a huge conversation but when the state was only funding us at 1% well below inflation we knew we needed to do more now you can see in the last few years funding got better better than inflation and then in 2025 we're back down to that 1% increase again so I wanted to talk a little bit about yes sir yes well because when you add in the special ed that got it a little bit higher yep so I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the bills that we're watching because
078several of you have reached out and said should we be talking about this one some of you might be coming to a coffee that we're going to have this week with some of our legislators so these are some of the bills that I'm watching the most closely one is uh 101 remember if um in the house and in the Senate the bills that are ranked 1 through 10 are the most important so 101 is always the most important bill from the house and that's the budget it's the number one bill we haven't seen it yet but what they're saying is it will have 2% increases for K12 for the next two years by the way I did I do have copies here so don't feel like you have to write this down uh you can
079grab these when you leave if you want some of these um we will eventually get to that run that Phil was talking about that breaks it down to Avon specifically I'm always really skeptical when they s send say on average 2% because I know a chunk of that's going to go to vouchers or to other schools so I'm always looking at the the Avon run and we just haven't seen that yet unclear what the financial impact will be of universal vouchers uh Phil talked about that on each of these slides I tried to give I originally called these talking points and then I said okay some of these are pretty biased so I labeled them windom's talking points uh because these are this is how I would Advocate but you need to decide maybe you
080disagree with me and that's okay let's have that conversation but I wanted you to at least know how I'm thinking about some of these things you can decide if this is the right talking point for you but this these are the talking points for me we've always said our request of the legislators is fund to inflation inflation right now is about 3% so if they fund anything less than 3% that means we we are not keeping Pace we're going to have to make Cuts uh we continue to see significant needs and special education and multilingual education for more funding uh fully fund textbooks curricular material materials that is something the state took over said hey parents you don't have to pay those textbook fees anymore wasn't that awesome that was great except they still have
081not funded that to schools so schools are eating the cost of that so that's $483,000 this year for Avon schools because the state isn't funding it um and then as Phil said um my talking point to our legislators is always I am not afraid of school choice I'll put our schools against anybody in a competition I am not afraid of competition if we're all planned by the same rules so if there's going to be increase in voucher funding I think it ought to be tied to accountability as we've already talked about um 1002 is a bill um that is about deregulation a couple of you have emailed me about this bill this is a pretty positive Bill representative sterwald has been working on this the last couple years we actually had conversations with him a
082couple years ago about this and what he is so good at is kind of seeing the long game um and it didn't lead to anything in the last session but this time it's 10:2 which means it's the second most important bill in the house um and so really what it's trying to do is remove some of the regulations for public or for schools this would be a great opportunity to thank representative sterwald we often don't take the time to thank them for the good things they do because we're always saying we want we want we want um there are some concerns in this bill um so I put them in here removing requirements for the state superintendent of Public Instruction the charters there's some Charter School language that's concerning um but by and large the
083focus is on reducing administrative burden that's always great my talking point back is always whatever regulations are left ought to apply to all I always bring my prop This is Indiana Public School law it is very fine print I'm this is not like the large print edition this is small print so if they could reduce this that would be fantastic I've got it all memorized yeah um but in my opinion every school that takes public tax dollars ought to have to abide by every part of this and that's just not the way the system works um okay Senate bill one this means this is the most important bill in the Senate property tax relief and it is basically Governor Braun's propo proposed budget and the Senate uh put it out as Senate bill one I
084watched Governor Bron's State of the State last week and I put this quote directly from his speech all governments need to do more with a little less this is from the State website of the impact of Senate bill one to HRI County they don't have it broken apart by individual taxing entities it's just the total for the county the total for Hendrick County and the first year 2026 is $44 million to local government so that's your roads your police your fire your library your schools year three goes up to $67 million so we have not been able to get a uh list of the impact to Avon schools the estimate that we have been told would be cost equivalent to the entire transportation department and half of our custodial department so when they say local
085governments you got got to tighten your belt local governments you got to do more with a little less we're not talking a little less we're not talking tighten your belt we're talking massive implications for uh all governmental entities but uh specifically for us so we have heard there's another version of Senate bill one that might be coming out this week so we're hopeful that this was the worst case and maybe things will get a little bit better in the next round this is the biggest wave that's crashing on that l Lighthouse uh because this this is drastic if you've been in some of Sheila's Finance presentations you know every year uh because of tax caps going back to what Dr DS was saying on average there's about $6 million that we don't collect you know
086he was showing those tax bills there's about $6 million that we don't collect because of property tax caps over the course of of the last 15 years that's over $100 million that we have not been able to purchase the bus do the repairs that we need to do this is the system we've figured out how to live in this system but there's no way to absorb an additional amount as significant as what Senate bill one proposes the other thing I wanted to talk about is Senate bill one and Senate Bill 8 I'm going to look at my time I have three minutes uh we were talking about referendums and Dr down said they they uh emphasize legislators have often emphasized if you need more ask your community for a referendum and then they make it
087harder to do a referendum so these two bills Senate bill one and Senate Bill 8 both talk about referendum timing so you have on your table our latest referendum progress report so if you don't have this take it with you because this is a great thing to carry around so if somebody says what does that school do with those referendum dollars this can tell you exactly how many teachers we fund how many clubs we fund how many support staff we fund the front page really tells you everything that we do uh with the dollar then the back page really talks about some of the impacts Avon High School being National Blue Ribbon School one of the only one in the in P the only public high school in 2023 um talking about uh over $3.8
088million our kids earned in scholarships because they're able to take more rigorous classes um at the at Avon High School more AP classes those kinds of things so this is a great document to have to summarize the impact of the referendum both of these bills though are re would require a school district to do a referendum in November it would eliminate the primary as a possibility for a referendum so I want to explain that to you so right now our referendum was passed in May of 2018 so we would need to do uh the school board would need to decide if we're going to do a renewal in May of 2026 that's eight years that's what state law has said all along the reason we went in May 2018 is the reason a lot of
089schools go in May because that coincides with the school calendar we knew if that referendum passed in May of 2018 we were adding teachers that next school year if that referendum would have failed we were cutting teachers that summer that was that was what we were going to have to do May coincides with the school calendar November does not coincide with the school calendar so in this bottom half you can see I said well what if we had to do a November 26 referendum and what if it failed that would be horrible for our school district but what if November 2026 would be the election December of 2026 our referendum funding is done because property tax funding comes at a calendar year so at the end of of 2026 that referendum funding is gone well
090we still have a half of a school year that we have to pay for those teachers and those staff that are on the referendum and we have no money coming in to do that so that's about a $7 million impact state law indicates if you're going to reduce teachers you're going to eliminate positions you have to notify them from May 1 to July 1 that does not match up with a November referendum so this is why the you know they keep saying the legislators keep saying there's more turnout in November well that may be but November referendum does not match up May is what matches up with a school calendar and with state law as we're making decisions about Staffing for the next school year this is another hug huge wave that we've got to
091be articulating to our legislators so my talking points for Senate bill one um I love your visual of the map so I'm going to steal that from you um Indiana already has some of the lowest property taxes in the country uh we are currently not collecting about $6 million a year because of tax caps my talking point to our legislators is always local control the people who are most closely elected by their constituents wrap it up wendam for a conservative state that favors local government the people most closely elected by their constituents are the school board if somebody doesn't like what's happened in our schools they can go talk to them at Kroger they know their email addresses they're going to see them at the soccer game that's the power of local control not decisions
092being made from the big government which in this scenario is the state so I I always advocate for more local control they know their communities the best they know the the the needs of their constituents the best Senate Bill 8 I'm not this uh basically uh reiterates what I already put on Senate bill one but it has some language uh about the November referendum it also requires a gap year so if a referendum fails you have to wait two years before you can go back to your community again so again trying to make it harder to be successful um then the last bill I wanted to highlight is again about Schoolboard um this is Senate Bill 287 and 1230 this would require Schoolboard candidates to declare a party um stick to stick to the notes
093Scott schools are nonpartisan and um one of the things that is a a point that I didn't think about with this is it Al this also limits who can run for school board because federal law says if you are a federal employee you can't run for a partisan office so right now if you're a federal employee you can run for the school board because you don't have to declare um but we the focus of what we're doing in schools is not partisan it's about what's best for kids it's about what's best for our community trying to boil it down to an r a d or an I just does not capture what we're what our school board is so great at doing which is providing great leadership great governance for our schools so I listed
094here what I would suggest are some calls to action I don't think these are like three alarm all alarm fire call to action do it tonight those will come uh but these are things if when we're talking about a meeting with our Representatives this week uh or if you are so inclined to reach out to some of these individuals that have sponsored these bills these are the contact information for Senator Holdman Senator Clark Senator Buchanan um one of the things they've said is that sometimes these bills they'll do kind of a straw pole of the Senators so while Senator Clark hasn't been asked to vote on this bill yet because it hasn't come to the floor of the senate in a caucus they might say how are you thinking about partisan Schoolboard elections and if
095nobody has said to him what what's there concerns about this then he may not have enough information to to advocate for that on a straw poll even if it hadn't gone to the floor of the Senate yet so these are these would be great talking points on these three bills um just to to kind of reach out and share your opin there will come a time in this session where we send out the alert please call today please do this today um that will come and it's probably going to come multiple times because there's so many bills that they're considering that are going to have drastic implications on us but we couldn't do it without all of you and I really think about when Maggie started the advocate she said she knew she couldn't do
096it alone they hear from superintendent all the time down there they hear from lobbyists all the time down here they've often said they don't hear from the normal people so we need the moms and the dads and the grandmas and the grandpas and and the aunts and uncles and the community members to say here's what a here's what public education means to us here's what our schools mean to us in our community um and and be able to advocate for that so it's not just always coming from from a few people that they hear from all the time so thanks for all that you do and I think I turn it over to R yes it's in the top 10 it's Senate Bill 8 so if it's in the top 10 there's a real passion
097for that bill to have support if it's in the top um well no but I I always look at the number of the bill because the number of the bill tells you a lot and the other thing that we have seen in previous years some of the most concerning legislation in previous years has come out of the house and then it got better when it went to the Senate the Senate has has helped us more these some of these most concerning Bills starting in the Senate concerns me because we're going to then have to rely on the house to to um help with some of those and we've got to you know I I appreciate representative sterwald he always always listens he works behind the scenes very well um to help us so that's where
098we're just going to have to be able to um leverage those those relationships because in the past we really needed the Senate to help us quite a bit these bills starting there concerns me oh yes so I a senate in the group me if you're in this year's class I know I got my mailer from Senator Clark um they have said before they only get less than 1% response to those mailers so every time I get one I try to take a picture make my kids fill it out uh that that are registered to vote um you know and my wife who doesn't care anything about uh politics I'm like you got to fill this out sometimes the questions really frustrate me because they are very slanted questions um they always have an open-ended at
099the end and actually Senator clarks's I thought was one of the better ones because it allowed you to prioritize so you could say I think education is number one or I think education is number 10 you could move them around I'd never seen a survey that was that way so I felt like his was a little bit more um user friendly but there's always an open-ended that and they they look at those um and so that's a really important thing to complete yep yep very much yep Y and he's asking really good questions Senator Clark is asking really good questions uh you know he as a new Senator he's drinking from a fire hose too everybody's coming at these these representatives for lots of different things and so I appreciate Senator Clark that he is
100asking questions to try to make sure he understands as much as he can about all these different issues that are coming before them so if you have questions about the legislative session don't hesitate to text me email me um usually right now I'm saying it's okay uh you know we're we're tracking this but like I said here come March things will start to get really active so all right R all right e all right so I'm just going to go through I don't know how many of you were here when um Dr hornman spoke to us um last session but this just kind of goes through some of the points that she talked about um and things that she in the F referendum that we had um and I mean again we're all a team
101and we just have to band together as a team essentially um and the the biggest thing is to be civil in all of your you know encounters with people if you um you know encounter someone that you think is giving you misinformation um you know frequently you can just say you know what I'm not sure that that's right and then that's when I just text Dr Windham and I'm hey Dr Windham can I have this information or you know he is very good about giving out his cell phone number and you can have them text him directly um I'm sure all of you are on some sort of social media and we know how kind of out of control that kind of gets so um I try not to engage in any of that as
102much as I possibly can every once in a while I just you know have to say well that's not exactly true and then that's all I say but and I move on from there so um okay so just some other things that you can do um there are some um breakfasts with the legislators that they have um I know February 17th March 17th and April 28th there are free breakfast that you can go to um they're from um 7 to8 in the morning you have to sign up just because it's apparently a very large um Gathering so but if you're interested in doing something like that um that's definitely something that we would recommend then um once Dr IND Windam starts sending out the call to actions you'll get an email from me um and
103it'll probably go out on the group meting text that we have as well um and usually when you get something like that it needs to be done fairly quickly so um whether it be a phone call I think they phone calls are usually the best at that stage um and they'll have somebody just answering the phone I always say I'm an orial advocate and this is my concern and they'll pass it on um for you so if we can get all those phone calls and get them inundated that would be a a positive thing for our district so um if you want more information um you can go to the Indiana Coalition for public education website they have a lot of really good talking points and a lot of effective um information on there that
104just supports public education in general so um and then my last little bit is um my other hat in life is I'm an occupational therapist and I own my own business and so just to kind of give you an idea of how crazy things get and how there are no checks and balances is that um there's something called the um education savings account scholarship account and um for families that may homeschool their kids they and the children have an IEP um they can have this Esa which is just a money attached to a child essentially um and then you use that money for therapy for your child or any type of um School needs that the child may have um you can actually buy a big screen TV and say that you need it because
105that goes along with your child needing education um so I actually provide services with the esa account um from my own business and what I have seen is um astonishing to say the least um it is the only service that I provide that no one has ever asked for an evaluation no one has ever asked for a therapy progress note um I actually have been paid twice for one visit and called the state and said hey I got double paid and I don't know what to do and they said well you can write us a check or you know it's already out of their fund and we don't really know what to do once it's already out of their fund so um the other thing that I found very interesting was that this is through
106the treasury Department it's not through anything to do with education um so it but it has zero checks and balances and so again when you talk about voucher programs it's I I live that like real life I'm like this is astonishing I mean I'm not even a provider for insurance and I have insurance companies that call me and say hey I need this and I need this and I need this and I have never as a medical professional seen anything with no checks or balances like that so just and Things Grow exponentially this program started out just for people who had IEPs now it includes their siblings um we just got an email as providers saying that there are 600 people on the waiting list for this program so it's another program that the state
107is growing and growing and growing um the other thing that I am concerned about too is is that um when you talk about special education um there's a big threat to um ABA services for kids so they're they are taking things away from even those kids so um so it's you know it's a very volatile moment in in in the medical community as well so all right Valerie yeah so if you're in the well if you're in the public school your services your your therapy services are tied to the public school oh yeah the therapist in school oh yeah yeah yeah oh definitely yeah yeah thank you Vicki so I'm gonna talk a little bit about just kind of what advocacy looks like on the ground how do we engage in our community to best
108advocate for our public schools and the first thing that you can do is be informed information is our absolute best weapon think about how much information you got here tonight that you didn't know $26 $26 I had no clue think about the shrink flation of that pie I didn't know that be informed the second one is be the go-to person when somebody has a question you know what I got the answer for that be the subject matter expert on all things public education whether it is public education funding or if it's what's happening in our schools or hey did you know that they're cutting out this program at no they're not really it's just your kid know your audience know your audience going back to Vicky's um comment about social media not everybody is ready
109to hear the message don't engage say your peace and move on or know that no matter what you say they aren't going to hear it so move on because if you engage and then they engage and then it escalates who looks bad because I promise you they already look bad we have a brand The Advocates don't act up we are positive and so when we engage who looks bad and it's not just The Advocates it's the school corporation Dr wendham looks bad Sheila looks bad bus driver who has to have all of our kids on his bus looks bad no where to engage the socials ain't the place the unsocial media is not the place it's the conversation at Kroger where it's oneon-one where I can look you in the eyes it's the conversation in
110the church parking lot it's at the soccer field where you have the opportunity to actually get a message across to convey legitimate good information when in doubt ask don't just pull it out of the air I have texted Dr wendam I have emailed Dr wendam I have called Dr wendam I'm sure he's like oh here she comes again when people have come to me with questions the day that we got the snow somebody's kids didn't get picked up and somebody asked me hey why didn't the school bus pick up my kid I don't know but I tell I can tell you who does know why don't you talk to the director of transportation and they can give you an answer I promise you he would rather give you an answer than you think that he
111has something against your kid and the message I got back was we really didn't mean to not get your kid but we were short on drivers and we couldn't get into some neighborhoods and we couldn't get the information out ask the person that knows and then the last one remember it is absolutely okay to disagree it is not okay to disagree disagreeably it is perfectly okay to say I'm sorry I don't agree with you I don't see it that way and walk away because we're real protective of this brand because you know it'd be horrible if Dr wendam called representative stalt and he said o do you know what I heard about the Advocates truly we're kind of like EF Hutton when we talk people listen now I'm I just told you how old I
112was I am let's keep that up it's tough times in public education when my family moved here 22 years ago my husband was an Army recruiter and see he had access to every single test score of every single high school in this nation and we moved where we moved so our kid could go to Avon and I have that one's gone and we had another one 18 years later and he is thriving at Avon High School and he says I don't think I could do well someplace else because this teacher talked to me and this teacher took care of me and this teacher listened to me starting with his kindergarten teacher what we do matters what they do in those schools matter and we have to protect that and how we do it is by
113drinking from this fire hose of information because it is a lot asking the right people the right questions at the right time and when those call to actions come out answer them all that wrap up uh um quick outline of future goals that we have we need see all the information that all our different classes are getting we need to get that out and we're looking at newsletters we are uh thinking of a newslet subcommittee which actually Valerie and Ola Nik is um on that committee as well uh I think she's watching virtually thank you both and we are looking forward to something happening there our website is a work in process we we actually have my son put together a little website yesterday uh you can check it out it's it's totally working process
114nothing uh uh major in there social media we have uh one person doing social media right now and uh we could really use some help and for that we have volunteers who have actually come forward which is great um the intelligence gathering data Gathering and research monitoring education use so all the data that is floating out there on different websites uh we are planning to get all that if if and this is where when I sent out the email to the uh founding Advocates we really could use your guidance and help in in kind of finding people who can actually do that uh Dr Phil had some Amazing Ideas we'll share with the whole group um for for the next referendum you all had a successful referendum on your watch we are determined not to
115have a failed referendum on our watch what will happen we don't know we'll see uh we are thinking of the GB meeting on a regular basis on annual basis where we can all get together and discuss have you know um good discussions and and ex exchange ideas good speakers uh this is one idea which actually Valerie came up with uh PTO we need to get our message out to schools so we are looking at collaborating with cedar and um uh River birs and uh the P presidents are here thank you both for coming really appreciate it and we actually have a class member 2025 class member who's the PTO I think the president of maple so we'll have three PTO that will oh Amy aren't oh Sher okay oh Cheryl oh I okay all right
116good old Cheryl so yeah we have these in inroads into the PTO so we'll be working on that um legislative breakfast like Vicki mentioned at school board meetings we started our uh myself and vice our Todd singer Vice President we attended our first ever legislative breakfast it was quite an experience um not many questions you know not many questions but it was good to hear them and get some of their viewpoints it was really eye opening um and one fact which was shocking was Indiana is the number one in the country number one number five in human trafficking did you all know that nothing to do with schools but I I that was astounding which is um and then we are working to uh we're working on alliances with other like-minded organizations ICP is is
117uh organization we are uh working on in fact class of 2025 members March 6th um Kathy F Ros will be here to talk to us so she's the president of the ICP and uh probably watching us virally coming up F 17th there's a um ICB event and uh they have invited us to come and maybe talk very uh briefly about orial Advocates because they like that model and ICP is trying to get this model to other school districts and which is great and so we are we are walking in the footsteps of Science and we want to keep that work up and Spread spread this model to other school districts so they can also achieve the same goal and that is saving public education Equitable public education for public schools private schools Charter Schools they
118should all have the same standards like Dr Windam always says that is what we are working towards um so if you can come great um any ideas and suggestions that yes awesome yeah you do amazing work and absolutely thank you for bringing that up any other suggestions ideas Sarah and uh our two school board members I'm sorry I Jennifer that's right Jennifer there any ideas how how we can help you with your jobs and I mean support pressure um I I think you covered it well by saying the accurate information and getting it out because there's a lot of um parents and taxpayers that are not connected to our schools for whatever reason um and so we need to make sure they have that information because it does impact them they may think it doesn't
119but I just want to say the whole participate you know participate in whatever you can whatever you're available to do we as advocates we haven't gone to any school board meetings it's like wait a second that's not right so we'll be doing that but you're right Sarah that is something where uh the the gold cart for seniors and and you know that's an we have neighbors who are not don't have kids going to uh School the A1 schools but I have to talk to them about the gold cut I didn't know about that was Dr Windam said so the without Education Without education of any type the communities will not Thrive will not Thrive think about what happens when you don't have good education you know kids don't come out with productive degrees or or
120experience what do you think happens they end up doing things that we all don't want see them doing so education is important but it's public private Charter religious it has to be all under the same standards everyone should be under the same same standards and accountability is something we are we demanding that that is absolutely nonsense that that happens any anyone else I want to say just stay stay on top of those um bills about the timing of referendums and anything related to restricting referendum um because it's happening because we have been successful and um um so make that make noise now for those get um your opinions out about that immediately and stay on top of it and watch like watch if they proceed in committee and all that anyone else yes now that
121I had a moment to think about you know what else when we start to gather members for the political action committee for the reference R renewal please volunteer do not be intimidated there's no job too small um everyone in this room would be wonderful we will need all the help we can get so start thinking about other people too like we we just have to we've got to organize and we we've got to get this ped so anyone else well thank you all thank you so much for coming thank you for sharing the evening I know two hours is a lot of time especially for the class of 2025 you have another 2hour session coming up on the 18th so amazing all those who showed up from class of 2025 thank you so much and
122all the prior Advocates and you're always an advocate but pre pandemic advoc thank you we we really could use your help and we will be calling on on all of you so