001girl yeah well good evening we're going to get started at seven o'clock thanks for being here coming out on a cold night I know there's a lot of school activities going on at different places tonight so appreciate those of you that were able to be here and learn a little bit about how we're accommodating growth in Avon schools we're also live streaming this on our YouTube channel so all of the information that you're going to see tonight is on our website we've done some short videos going through this presentation but really appreciate you being here and giving us your input on growth models as we look ahead to the future of Avon schools my name is Scott Windham I'm superintendent here in Avon and I've got a couple people that I'm going to introduce that
002will help with this presentation as we go through so Dr Dustin Lemay he's one of our directors of teaching and learning Carrie alday director of teaching and learning and then Dr Michael Sullivan assistant superintendent they'll all play a part in our presentation today so with that we will jump in and get going the goals for our president station tonight are we'll review updated enrollment growth and demographic information about projected future growth for Avon schools we'll review three models that we've developed to accommodate enrollment growth none of the models that you're going to see will take effect until the 25-26 school year building buildings takes time building schools takes time so in general they say it takes about two years to build a school or add on to a school renovate a school those kinds of
003things so we've got to give ourselves time to go through that process so we would be aiming for the 25-26 school year before anything would take effect and you'll see a little bit more about that timeline in the future uh in a future slide we have three strategic goals as a school corporation number one is improving student achievement number two is creating opportunities for students that develop critical thinkers and number three is to support the whole child and what we want to make sure we have is spaces in our facilities and in our buildings that accommodate those three goals that have been established for us by our school board these goals really Drive everything we do and Facilities do play an important part in what our teachers are able to do on a daily basis
004with their students so if you're like me when you um your your first place to live as a family may be in an apartment that was my my wife and I when we got married we lived in a park in an apartment that's where many of us start our families and then over time maybe you decide it's time to find a home your family's starting to grow you decide to find a home and hopefully uh looking in a great Community like Avon what ends up happening and maybe the family just keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps growing that's what is happening in our schools right now we just continually are adding students and continuing to grow in a home what you might do as your family grows is you might convert the office into
005another bedroom you might Park your cars outside so that you can use the garage as living space you maximize every nook and every cranny and that's really what we've done in Avon schools and you'll hear a little bit more about that as a family many times our goal is to pay off our house be debt free our kids go off to college our kids leave the home and and we no longer have that debt that's really not a possibility in a growing School District where students just keep coming and families just keep moving to Avon and many moving here for our schools so as a school we need to to continue to have space to accommodate students and and serve the growing numbers of students that we have I'll say this again in the presentation
006later most school districts in the state of Indiana are declining in enrollment we are we are one of the few that is growing in enrollment these conversations that we're having even though they're hard to talk about change and to talk about change possibly changing the structure of our school district as you'll see in a couple of the models those are better conversations than what most communities around the state are having which is our declining enrollment cutting programs cutting teachers consolidating schools those are really really tough conversations we get to have growth conversations and so uh that and that's just a testament to the hard work of our teachers and our staff that have made our schools a great place that people want to continue to come the last time that we built a new school
007and we opened a new school in Avon was River Birch Elementary River Birch opened in 2010 so over the course of the last 12 years we've grown over 2 100 students in that time since we built a new school so our school board has been very strategic over those 12 years to allow us to delay the need for a new a new school some of the strategies that we have taken to go 12 years without building a new school are number one expanding our smaller schools so over the last few years we have enlarged Sycamore we've enlarged Hickory we've significantly expanded Maple we renovated this building that we're sitting in tonight White Oak White Oak was built in the 1960s and really couldn't function as an elementary the size that we wanted our elementaries to
008become and an elementary of today's standards with as old as it was so what we decided to do with this building was make it a preschool Center that got preschool centralized in one building and freed up classroom space in our elementaries that were being occupied by preschool programs um so we've also redistricted some new subdivisions you'll hear a little bit more about that in just a second we've repurposed space we're maximizing every space possible that we have um there is lots of information on our website about Avon High School and the project that's underway at Avon High School that will grow that building to accommodate about 4 000 students plans are already underway for the expansion of pine tree that would be very similar to Hickory and Sycamore and we've been able to do all
009those projects with no increase to the taxpayer and no referendum funds and those are some of the key things that have allowed us to go 12 years without building a new school I'm going to let Dr Sullivan talk a little bit about our enrollment growth and some of the forecasts that we have as we plan for the future thank you Dr Windham uh this slide just confirms that Avon schools is the third fasting growing District in our state we've added 536 students from 2019 to 2021. this colorful slide shows the areas we've redistricted if you can see the four circled housing developments they have the students who attend schools that are outside of their natural boundaries this is because the boundary schools are at capacity this means some students that would normally attend Maple will
010attend Sycamore and three housing areas that would normally attend cedar or hickory are now attending pine tree because Maple Cedar and Hickory are at capacity and Sycamore and pine tree have space to further illustrate our enrollment growth this map will show 12 new housing developments that are in progress there are three that are in progress in River Birch's boundary two within Maple's boundary one in pine trees boundary three and Cedar and three in hickory's boundary so again a total of 12 new housing developments this may be a familiar slide that shows our projected growth if you look at 2223 it says that this year we should have ten thousand five hundred and twenty students actually we have about 120 less but this is an aggressive forecast you can also see that by 2627 we will
011have eclipse the 11 000 student Mark and by 3132 will have more than 12 000 students this slide shows how we're currently capturing more space by using Portables at East West Maple Hickory pine tree and Cedar thank you so if you've been around to Avon uh over the last few years we redistricted when we enlarged Maple Sycamore and Hickory so that was going into the 2020-21 school year redistricting is not an exact science we have a large committee that's made up of principles and parents representing all of our elementaries that helps us redistrict you can see on here where we estimated uh enrollment to be at all of our schools our k-6 K4 schools excuse me when we redistricted and what their actual enrollment is so you can see there's some schools where we have
012grown more than what we thought we were going to grow two years ago Cedar Hickory Maple being three prime examples that have grown significantly faster than we projected they would grow during redistricting you can also see pine tree we underestimated the enrollment at Pine Tree which is why as Dr Sullivan shared we've redistricted three new subdivisions to go to Pine Tree in the near future as homes are developed there in some growing School Districts The approach that they would take to enrollment growth is to just make class sizes larger so instead of having 22 or 23 students in a classroom you might have 25 26 27 students in a classroom that is not the approach that we are want to take in Avon because our community supported a referendum in 2018 and one of the
013primary focuses of that referendum was reducing our class sizes so you can see on this chart we've hit our class size targets at the elementary Intermediate Middle School level exactly or under where we projected that they would be as a result of the referendum and we've been able to do that and decrease the referendum tax rate since it was approved in 2018 so the voters approved a tax rate of 35 cents in 2018 but our school board has never taken the full amount of that tax and it actually has decreased every year since the referendum passed to where the rate that we as Washington Township homeowners were paying in 2022 is 29 percent less than what the voters approved in 2018. so we don't want to give up on our focus on class sizes because
014we're seeing the benefits that that has on students in many ways but one of the ways we're seeing that is in our academic achievement if you've been around Avon for a while we had a failed referendum in 2011. from 2011 on through 2015 2016 2017 2018 our class sizes grew larger and larger and larger to where classes over 30 was the norm in many places and as our class sizes went up our State ranking which is what this shows this shows our State ranking in the percent of students that passed both English language language arts and math as our class sizes went up our State ranking went down down down until we hit 55th in 2018. in 2018 the referendum passed our class sizes improved and you can see we're on a very positive trajectory
015over the last three years as a result of the hard work that our teachers are doing and the benefits that they're seeing in their hard work with our students in reduced class sizes so again we don't want to give up our focus on great class sizes for our students so we've been working over the last few months on okay how many classrooms do we need what does that look like so you can see on this chart we've broken It Out by Elementary intermediate at Middle School we've looked at how many teachers are teaching right now in Portables you can see we have 12 teachers teaching and Portables at the k-6 levels we've also looked at how many repurposed spaces do we have so things like an art room that's being used as a classroom or
016a stem lab that's being used as a classrooms that weren't originally intended to be used as a as a grade level classroom we have 18 repurposed spaces being used right now then we looked at what are the classrooms that are needed by 2627 looking at the demographic study that Dr Sullivan shared so you can see by 2627 we can expect to need about 22 I'm sorry 20 additional classrooms just for growth based off of the demographic study so total by 2627 we know we need about 50 classrooms based on these different factors so again looking at the demographic study if we go out to the the final year of the demographic study that's 2031-32 we would need about an additional 66 classrooms total to accommodate uh the growth that we're seeing and the growth that's
017projected in our demographic study so the big question is as we look at the need for more space it's not as simple as just saying we need to build another Elementary because actually our intermediate schools are probably some of our most crowded schools right now it's also not as easy as just saying we need to build a new elementary and a new intermediate because our middle schools are almost out of space so we really needed to take a step back and say how do we want to grow as a district how big do we want our intermediate intermediate and middle schools to become and is now a time that we look at reconfiguring our schools to allow us more capacity moving forward when we talk about school construction I'm going to give you a brief
018summary of school Finance but when we talk about school construction we are talking about the school's Debt Service fund the school and the school board oversees multiple funds to operate our school district The Debt Service fund is essentially where school districts pay for their mortgage on buildings and pay for debt that has been issued debt in The Debt Service fund is is a result of the taxes the property taxes that we all pay that live in Washington Township we are able in some communities when they start talking about building a new school or renovate significant renovations to a school they might also be talking about a construction referendum we don't need a construction referendum you can see we have a referendum fund that I referenced earlier it is a separate fund that's specifically for teachers
019and educational expenses we do not need a construction referendum and we won't be using any referendum dollars for buildings because our debt service fund as you can see on this slide this is our debt payments as a school district over the coming years we're seeing some Cliffs where debt starts to fall off we can issue additional debt out of our debt service fund to fund any of the models that you're going to see so you're going to see three different models we can fund all of those models out of our debt service fund with no impact to the taxpayer so you'll see these visuals on each model that we can do these any of these three models we can do with no impact to the taxpayer and and we can do them without any construction
020referendum funds being needed so I'm going to touch real briefly on the three models you should have received a handout that has the three models listed on them if you're here if not they're on the corner of that table I'm going to go over them real quickly and then our team's going to go into more detail on each of the three models so in model one we would maintain our current structure but in order to accommodate growth within our current structure we would need to build a new Elementary School a K4 Elementary we would need to significantly expand both of our intermediate schools and also expand our middle schools in model 2 and model 3 we change the structure of the district and that we no longer would have intermediate schools so that's why you
021don't see anything in in those columns so fifth grade in model two fifth grade would go back to the elementaries we would need to build a new Elementary School East would become an elementary school a K-5 Elementary West would become a six eight Middle School in model 3 fifth grade would also go back to the elementaries but we would we would do it in a different way in that both East and West would become Elementary serving grades K through five and we would need to build one new Middle School grade six to eight and then South and North would also be grades six through eight as well so we're going to dig into those three models in a little bit more detail here and Mrs aldays going to talk with you about model one thank
022you okay so model one as Dr Windham said is really keeping our same structure so we would be keeping with K4 elementary schools we already have six and we would be building another one to make seven k-4 elementary schools we would keep with our two intermediate schools grades five and six we would just expand both of those and again we would stick with two middle schools serving grades seven and eight but those would also be expanded all these models that you're going to see tonight you'll see there's positives and there's challenges to each of the model I don't know if there's any one perfect model it's just looking what's the best one to meet our needs so when you look at model one when we think about some positives first of all it's it kind
023of keeps our same structure and so it the least amount of change across our district when we think about our two intermediate schools I mean this one preserves them and we know our teachers have worked really hard and have built great educational experiences for our students and really those relationships with students and parents um when you look at these different models and that some will be constructing a new Elementary School some will be a new Middle School the most the most cost effective school to build in these models is an elementary school um so those are the positives of this first model some of the challenges is any time when you think about switching schools as transitions transitions can be hard for kids and for families and so the intermediate model creates another transition inside
024our school district additionally when you look across our conference around Central Indiana schools have different structures but a lot of the structures you see around Central Indiana and Indiana as a whole are middle schools serving grades six through eight and when you have sixth graders at the middle school it does give them additional opportunities for extracurricular events like they can participate in sports and um clubs and so the sixth graders would have that opportunity the one piece when I talked about like our teachers have really worked hard to build relationships it's also a lot of work if you think about an intermediate level and our Middle School each school year they're having half of their students leave the building and another new half join so every year they're getting a half of the new students
025if that makes sense so like if our Intermediate School serves 800 kids every year they're getting new fifth graders and so they're getting 400 new students every single school year and that's 400 new students and families to try to get to know to build those positive relationships which we know are such impactful in education um another piece with all a challenge is when we look at curricular resources in our standards a lot of our curricular resources are built like companies building for kindergarten through fifth grade and then sixth through eighth grade and so an example what we're living right now is math in our intermediate school right now we use Bridges math which they stop at fifth grade and so fifth grade uses Bridges and then sixth grade in our Middle School uses CPM for
026Math and it just creates some disconnect it's not impossible it's just a challenge um another piece would be um because we have a great um you know as we're known in Avon for our band choir and Orchestra and all of our sixth graders participate in that because of that we almost run two schedules at our intermediate schools because we have um fifth grade is more like an Elementary schedule because they have the typical related arts going to music art PE where at the interim at sixth grade they also have some of those plus they go to band choir band choir orchestra each day um if you've been at East and West during arrival and dismissal you know it's a busy place we have lots of cars in there it's a it's a tight footprint I
027mean it's manageable but it's tight and we have we're utilizing almost every space but you will see um soon that we do have space that um to increase the size there so with model one you'll see the slide for each of the models this shows um kind of what some projected enrollment would look like in this model so again if you remember K4 we would have seven k-4 schools we would have some schools that would be six section schools and what that means is if you think of first grade we would have six sections of first grade and so on so we'd have four six section schools and we would have three five section schools um and you'll see and you see that projected enrollment overall it just varies kind of school by school and
028then you'll see 3132 we get almost up to 4 000 students across those grades so about a thousand a grade level or I guess a little under that I'm sorry that's five grade levels and then at five six we would stick with two schools and by 26 27 we would be looking at about 890 students per school at the intermediate schools and by 31 32 we would be approaching that 920 Mark based on our projections and in this model looking at grade seven eight at the middle schools I'm around 26 27 we would be a little over 900 students in each of the middle schools and by 31 32 we would already um hit that 1000 student Mark at each of the middle schools so this is a rendering that just shows like this addition
029we do have the capacity to do this model on this current uh on our current land of the intermediate schools so the turquoise in this um this drawing is Intermediate School East and that's the existing building and if you see this darker blue section and that darker blue section is where the additional classrooms would be built if you think right now where those Portables are at the front of the school that's where this Edition that's part of that where that Edition would happen the yellow school is West and you can see that brighter yellow towards the bottom of the slide and that's where you would see those additional classrooms and events on both sides of that and that orange color in the center of the school is where in the media center that we would
030maybe add look at a second floor added there to add some additional space and classrooms there so again we have we wanted to make sure we have that capacity which we do it just makes a tight footprint even tighter this slide really just illustrates when you look around our conference around Central Indiana what I mentioned earlier that schools have different structures and so some have that sixth through eighth grade structure and you can see those schools those districts listed and approximate student population that each of those middle schools again some have 7 8 and there's a few that have fifth through eighth grade and one in one building and so I think part of that goes back to what Dr Windham said earlier we have to say like how many students do we want at
031each of our middle schools like what are we comfortable what's enough enough what's not what's too many um students at that age group and this um this slide here shows like in any of the projects as Dr Windham said we have the capacity with um not there with no impact to our taxpayers and not using any referendum funds to fund these when you look at these numbers I mean these are large numbers um you know anytime you're hitting over 100 million that kind of makes you stop I mean School construction is is a big piece and that's a lot of the reason why we have not built a new that's not our first thing to go build a school where we've added on and really been thoughtful about our space but it comes a time
032where we do need to build a school so you'll see the estimated costs for building that elementary school on here um the additions we we would need some addition to some of our k-4 schools which that's pretty minor in the big scheme of things and then with the expansion at both East and West would be and the middle school expansion so again but it we CA it can be done and this last slide is just like a different visual way to look at this if you look at like the yellow at the one end of The Arrow that's ultimately where we're getting kids at the high school we'd have one high school in this model we'd have two middle schools two intermediate schools seven K4 elementaries and the one we didn't talk about was we
033would stay with the one um White Oak Early Learning Center for preschool so that is model one in a nutshell and Dr Sullivan is going to talk about model two thank you Mrs alday so while Mrs alday spoke to you about how model one kind of keeps our structure pretty much the same model 2 does not so I'll try to go slowly enough so I can give you some time to process but kind of talk you through what model 2 is about um this slide shows you that model two there are no intermediates all elementary schools are K-5 and all middle schools are six through eight West is converted to a middle school and East is a K-5 Elementary School this means we have eight elementary schools three middle schools a high school no intermediates
034positives as Mrs aldays spoke about um there will be one less transition if we went to this model with no intermediate schools more time for middle schools to build relationships with families curriculum alignment as she said usually curriculums are k-568 and then your high school more extracurricular opportunities for Middle School students specifically sixth grade students East-West traffic would be similar to the current structure some challenges impact on the feeder system we'd have 8K fives three six through Eights East will still need kindergarten classrooms and a playground up update West would need additional classrooms and flex spaces there'd be some crossover between elementary and middle school for example the elementary middle or music classroom and band and Orchestra space would be shared baseball and softball for South and the new Middle School would be at a
035separate location west and south will share a football stadium and track in this model you can see by 2627 the projected enrollment for all eight elementary schools would be 4 695 students by 2031-32 all eight K through five would have a projected total enrollment of 4 825 students for the Middle School projected enrollment for 2627 would be 27 2730 students over all three six through eight middle schools which is an average of 910 per School about 3132 there'll be a projected enrollment of 2965 students again over all three middle schools with an average of 988 students per School this slide gives you an opportunity to see what East and West would look like once the conversion took place one of the things to look for is if you can see the thick black line that
036kind of separates underneath the six kindergarten classrooms that are in East you can see where East and West would be separated so after noting the thick black line of divisor two schools East would have six kindergarten classrooms that are in gold West would add new or seven new classrooms West would expand the main office and the kitchen they'd add a gym a locker room and a new restroom this slide highlights the additions to West including the new practice field and east's new playground the tennis course will be rebuilt and parking will be reconfigured and expanded this slide shows a possible location for the new Elementary School our school board has been has had the foresight to buy land north of Sycamore for such an occasion we own more than 38 acres on Dan Jones again
037north of Sycamore another possible location for an elementary school the school board has purchased already in 2009 is at Whispering Pines where we own over 32 Acres this live shows the cost estimates for model 2 and reminds us that all these models can be built with no impact to the taxpayer and no current referendum funds being used again this last visual of model 2 shows how white oak element or Pre-K feeds into our eight elementaries our eight elementaries feed into our three middle schools and our three middle schools will feed into our one high school Dr Lemay will talk about model three thank you Dr Sullivan as we take a look at model 3 like model 2 it does transition our district away from the intermediate model I did have the privilege of being a
038principal at our Intermediate West for nine years so as we look at this model what we do is we convert both East and West to elementaries and they would be K-5 and then we transition and for the middle schools we have current our two current middle schools north and south and then we add build a third middle school so some of the positives will go with the positives and challenges so the positives against a lot a lot very similar to model two um we do have uh elementary students though on the shared campus so instead of uh having middle school and Elementary share one campus this model has just elementary students on the East-West campus it would avoid the need to build an elementary school at this time there would also be less construction needed
039on the East-West campus as a model two we also have additional opportunities for extracurricular activities at the middle school and we also have more space for those extracurricular activities in this model it also maintains the property on the north south of our district for future elementary schools if needed Dr Sullivan showed you where those property or property would be near Sycamore and uh in the Whispering Pines area Mains obtains those properties for future growth for elementary some of the challenges at both East and West again they'll both still need work uh we need to accommodate kindergarten we need that space so that will need to be addressed at our both east and west and you know even when you look at the outside uh The Playground now that we have for East and West is
040not appropriate for a younger students so again things will need to be addressed to accommodate East performing arts space that we've worked on could be underutilized so we'll have to get together and find what's the best use for that space and then we look at baseball and sophomore Fourth South would be off-site so that's a a challenge for South and then uh in this model the cost to build a new Middle School uh is is greater than it is to call the cost to build an elementary as we look at this slide it really is identical to the slack Dr Sullivan shared in both structure and and and a number as far as the population in each model and each year and and K5 we do have eight schools six of the elementary schools K
041through five eight six would be existing and then East and West would become the seventh and 8th 8th Elementary and for grade six through eight are middle schools we have two existing north and south and then the third one would be uh our new Middle School this slide again it is hard to uh to see but if you look at that again that dark line that kind of goes through the middle so if you look to the right of that that is East uh and that would be our K-5 Elementary uh and and you can see in the yellow those would be six additional classes for uh kindergarten uh and then if you look uh down to the right of that dark line that would be uh the West Elementary uh named to be named
042later we might need a couple more tree names uh in the blue would be additional kindergarten classes and then if you can see those classes that are outlined in red those are already existing uh but those would need to be converted to Elementary or kindergarten classes as well so as you can see as we've looked at the other models for the East-West campus much less construction needed to convert both of those to K5 Elementary so we said just like uh for our elementary schools again our school board has done a great job of acquiring land for for future growth and Now's the Time we will need some of that land uh we we do have land that will accommodate uh a middle school a middle school takes more land but we have uh almost 80
043acre acres and that's near the Prestwick area so again that not only accommodates the schools but it accommodates the athletic facilities and all the other facilities that go along with a middle school and again like the other models we break down the cost you can see the cost for the additional K-5 classrooms what we'll need to address uh you know in all of our elementaries uh several need uh touch-ups the transition of intermediates uh both of those to K5 elementaries that has a a little bit more cost still have some expansion needs at our middle schools and then uh the the most significant cost would be adding a new Middle School and then this slide does again a great job just like the other two that shows the flow from White Oak when students enter
044our school district and then as you look through there they work through the eight uh elementaries and then in this model you see the the three middle schools the existing north and south and then the new middle school and then finally when our students get to Avon High School thank you so as we start to conclude here you might be wondering well why didn't they think about this other option for school construction and chances are we probably did so over the next couple of slides and again this is all online we summarize six different models that we've tossed around over the last few months and then we also tried to give you a few reasons why we didn't feel like those options met the needs of our students long term the way that the three
045that we delved more deeply into did so you can see uh and look online to get a little bit more information about these things like well what if our elementaries were k-6 what if we converted West into a K-5 and East into a six eight so we tried to summarize some different scenarios that we have played out over the last few months and again give you some explanation as to why we did not recommend those as we've talked about all of these options would have no impact to the taxpayer and no referendum funds as I mentioned that nothing would take effect until the 25-26 school year so we've essentially got two and a half school years um before these changes would take effect so we know that there are questions that our staff have we
046know that there are questions that our parents have that we would be working on over the next two and a half years to get answers to so things like what would the feeder system look like what elementaries would feed to three middle schools how how would that look we'd have to figure that out what's the Staffing differences between intermediates and Middle School models what does redistricting look like for our students as well as our staff that could could be impacted by redistricting what would each of what would the models mean for school start and end times and for transportation we'd certainly need to study that and look at different scenarios and then also some of our teachers have had questions about just teacher licensing is a little bit different from fifth grade to sixth grade
047and we would certainly navigate that the way that many other school districts have navigated that our timeline we are at our final Community presentation in this format next week we have a couple of gallery walk presentations that will be in this same room where we will have some of the Architects that have helped us develop the models that you've seen here some bigger posters spread out around the room so that if you're really curious about what the different models would look like you can come and spend some time walking around and seeing what those would look like and give us some feedback based on those floor plans because we know that they're a little hard to see just crunched onto a slide so we've got a couple of those for our staff happening on the
048fifth and sixth and then one for the community the evening of December 5th our goal being that the school board would vote on our future structure at their December meeting so that we can get started in 2023 really digging into the design process the financing process and all of those things so that we can hit the timelines to be ready for the 25 26 school year basically also we can serve more students kind of going back to where we started we're in a community where people continue to want to bring their children to the great things that are happening in our schools every day and and we're honored to be working in a growing and thriving community and a growing and thriving school district and it's it's great that we need more space to serve
049more kids we will wrap up now and do some small group input sessions here for those that are in attendance if you're online there is a survey you can take a quick snapshot of this QR code that you can also access this survey through the website directly we've had great participation so far in in the survey where we'll ask you what what's your most important factor that you value in this conversation and then also what are some of the strengths and challenges of the models we've listed several here but I know there are some others that that maybe we have we have not listed that are important to you so your feedback will really help us and and we'll get all of that shared with our school board prior to their December meeting so with
050that we'll stop the live stream and we'll move into our small group session