001thank mrs. lenhardt members of the board I'll remind our audience here tonight as well as our audience at home that this special board meeting is being live-streamed this is the third of a series of public meetings during which dr. Wyndham our assistant superintendent for business operations and dr. McMahon our assistant principal superintendent excuse me for k-12 learning have been presenting to the board consideration for a future project that involves some significant enhancements for KT for elementary education specifically we're solving towards making a more equitable learning environment and a more equitable educational experience for all of our students in addition to this board meeting being live-streamed it's also being recorded so that folks who are not able to watch it tonight can watch it at their leisure at home at a later date at the conclusion
002of the meeting we will post a survey link so that our patrons and our staff can provide some questions that may not get clarified tonight and in the next several days we'll begin an FAQ frequently asked questions that will constantly be updating thanks to the input of people who respond to our length so with that I'd like to turn the meeting over to dr. window Thank You dr. Horne and members of the board we're going to present to you on very similar to what you have heard in the previous two meetings on our elementary program and district facility update for the community that is viewing this livestream there was not a great way for them to see both Mary Ann and and me as presenters and the screen so we were very pleased to tell
003mr. Brahmas he could focus the live stream on the screen so they can get our audio but not necessarily see us we were fine with it so that will ensure that the the viewing audience can see all of the information that's on the slides so our five things that we are going to spend this presentation focusing on number one is reviewing the current status of our facilities we've been working with the board since January about our facility needs across the district as well as how those facility challenges impact the equity of our elementary programming so we're going to spend significant time this evening addressing those two challenges we've also spent time since January reviewing preschool and how we can address as we think towards a long-term facility plan how we can address the needs of
004preschool in Avon Community School Corporation finally we'll also talk about a comprehensive plan that addresses our facility and programming needs and what financing options we have available to accomplish those needs with no impact to the taxpayer and a timeline that will guide us over the next couple of years so the board has been discussing various pieces of information over the last few months that have all come together in this presentation one of those is the demographic study this was completed by dr. Susan Brevig she completed a demographic study for the school district in 2015 and then the board engaged her this past fall to do an update of her study since a lot had changed in Avon over the last four years so dr. bread Vic's full presentation to the board occurred in February it
005was live-streamed and is still available for those in our audience that may want to see her full presentation and her comprehensive analysis we've condensed it into a few slides dr. Brad Vig presents three different enrollment forecasts a low a base and a high she defines the base forecast as the most likely so for our purposes that is the the forecast that we have analyzed in in the most detail so some key findings from the demographic study are that without residential building and or housing turnover our enrollment growth will stall her base forecast for next school year the nineteen twenty school year is growth of just 22 students her base forecast does however say that the largest growth that we will see over the course of the next five and ten years will be at the
006middle and high school levels so the implications for us that guide us as we think about facility needs is that based on these findings our anticipated growth can be accommodated through additions to our existing buildings there is no foreseeable need to build another school that's contradictory to what some people think when they drive around the community and see development happening and and we regularly have community members that say when are we gonna need to build a new school so the question often is well how can it be that this this is her these are her results that she has found part of that is aging in place that avons a great community and as our as our children age and graduate families decide they still want to stay in their home and and be a
007part of this community while their kids are no longer in schools she also analyzes birth rates and it's also important to note and you'll see this in the next couple of slides that we are graduating a very large class so we're graduating a class that's about eight hundred and twenty students and our kindergarten class with class sizes are typically much lower this year's kindergarten was 625 so right there is a decrease of about two hundred students just with a large senior class exiting and we can project will be a smaller kindergarten class coming in so the next few slides go into more detail on the demographic study and again this is a page from the study that focuses on her base forecast or her most likely forecast we boxed in red what she projects for
008next school year so you can see at the top of that is the plus 22 that she projects over the entire district a plus 22 then five years out we boxed that in in blue just so you could kind of see that benchmark in time and then ten years out we boxed that in in green what's important to note is that as you go out beyond three or four years projecting demographics is is challenging which is why the board had her update her study that she completed in 2015 we asked her to do that again in just because a lot can change so the farther that this study goes from when she conducted it it's just important to know that will will need to look at those projections but this is based on on really
009solid statistical analyses that she completes this is where you can see overall she's projecting growth of just over a thousand students over the course of ten years 1055 students across our district over the next ten years specifically highlighting here that you can see where she projects our younger grades will grow but they won't grow nearly as significantly as our upper grades so this is where you can see it the younger grade levels K through four K through five class size of classes that continue to be in the high 600-700 maybe low eight hundred range versus at the high school level where we start to ten years out you can see that every class at that point at Avon high school is over nine hundred students that's where again she highlighted for us that the growth
010that we the most significant growth that we will see is projected to be at the middle school and high school level another just interesting tidbit as we kind of break apart the slide a little bit as focusing on kindergarten growth so here you can see that next year she projects we will be at six hundred and forty-five students ten years from now she projects six hundred and seventy five students so growth of thirty students in kindergarten over the course of ten years very sustainable enrollment growth that we can certainly handle with our existing buildings when you think about that in terms of we have thirty kindergarten sections across the district now of course they're not all going to come in in just the right spot but easily easily managed enrollment growth at the k4 level
011as we think about this example just specifically of kindergarten looking at the k4 thinking a little bit broadly about the k4 enrollment here you can see she's she projects a hundred and ninety student growth at the k4 level over the next ten years again just for comparison we have a hundred and fifty four sections of kindergarten first second third and fourth grade so that's growth but that's growth that we we believe we can handle as we talk about moving forward with a facility plan knowing that our existing school footprint structure can meet the needs of this enrollment projection and again here we've already already highlighted this just looking at the high school as we think about class sizes that will continually grow over the next ten years so when I go back a slide why
012are we emphasizing this information so during the referendum one of the things that we heard from our community was concerned that we would ask the community for operating referendum and turn around and ask for a construction referendum to build a new school simply not going to happen we do not need to build a new school we as we look at this plan that we're going to talk with you about and what if the high forecasts were to come true and and higher than her base forecast we still believe and we still look at the footprint of our schools and know that we can meet those that enrollment projection even on the high end by doing some work within our existing schools so as we think about the yes there will be more kindergarten students eligible
013based on birth dates for two consecutive years by a month and so this may be slightly understated that there would be no way to correct for that because these are children that we don't have in our system yet so like count them but so for this coming school year it's adjusted by one month and the students still have to go through the early entrance appeal process and so they still have to make the qualifications so simply having the birth date only gets you into the testing situation but you still have to pass those assessments at the level that would put you into kindergarten under the early entrance appeal process so it won't be 1/12 of the number of students increased but we certainly do anticipate that we will have a handful or more students joining
014us this year as a result of the change in law and then the following year it goes out two months but that over tenure horizon that understatement that's correct so as we shift our focus a little bit to the status of our facilities it's important to know that we continue to be impacted by property tax caps we are estimated in 2019 to be impacted by over 6.3 million dollars as a result of property tax caps those are funds that as a taxpayer we get to keep which is great but that has an impact to taxing entities particularly the school those are funds that pre-tax caps we would have used to maintain our buildings repair our roof repair replace our carpet work on our HVAC in a building those are things that before tax caps could
015be managed within the annual budget in some in many cases of the school district however since 2009 we have been impacted by over sixty eight million dollars as a result of property tax caps so while tax caps benefit the taxpayer certainly they've created a situation where many items that we use to maintain as a part of our budget now we have to look at through the issue the issuance of debt or larger projects that when you're updating a building you do some of those other maintenance type items as well one of the strongest assets that we have as a community is that the investment that we've made in our schools in our buildings and so part of what we have been focusing on in these presentations is how do we protect the investment that our
016community has made in our schools and look to the future to continue to serve the students of a bond so another area in addition to the demographic study that the board has engaged outside expertise to assist us with long-range planning has been in a facility study and that studies being conducted by performance services performance services is the contractor that renovated middle or intermediate school East we have had facility studies done in the past but we felt like this was a good time to update the study just because our buildings have changed the needs of Education have changed and so bringing that facility study alongside all of the other in information that the board has considered in the last few months is really important so the board heard preliminary information about the demographics or the facility
017study in January and then we'll hear the final report On June 3rd however we know from talking with performance services the top priorities that are going to be identified maple elementary white oak elementary and then again some of our older buildings that need infrastructure work heating cooling those kinds of things will be at the top of their list so we have been operating under those top priorities based on the facility study knowing that more detailed information will be coming on June 3rd in a board presentation so as we shift to talking about facilities it's it's always helpful we thought to look at some pictures to get an idea of just how different some of our older buildings are in terms of a learning environment to our newer buildings so we're gonna highlight a few pieces
018of information about both maple and white oak Elementary maple was built in 1971 so and while it has had some updates since then you'll see that the building structure is largely unchanged needs updated significantly and does not provide an equitable learning environment as students in our other buildings experience this is a picture of the gym at maple elementary it's our only gym that doesn't have the traditional wood flooring however more importantly is it doesn't have any bleachers and so when we talk about the community using our building parents coming to convocations Saturday basketball games all those kinds of things our parents bring their own chairs or our custodians if it's a school event roll out all of the chairs for our parents and for our community to be a part of events that are happening
019at maple elementary so this is a gym that just simply is not equitable to any other school in a bond the cafeteria at maple is really in an ok shape the challenge with the cafeteria is that it's small so as we think about maple serving 300 350 students this cafeteria is fine for that however as we think about maple being expanded in the future we just can't lose sight of these parts of the building that if this building were to grow in size we need to also account for a cafeteria space that can accommodate more students than it does right now the outdoor learning center is really a treasure in Avon schools and that it's a seven-acre of nature area located just behind maple that's used regularly by our students and by our community during
020the 1718 school year seven thousand six hundred and sixty nine students went through the outdoor learning center and over 1,500 adults visited the OLC and we had over 2,000 volunteer hours logged from our community members that see the benefit of the OLC prior to this school year the OLC had a classroom in maple that could be used for instructional purposes could be used if the weather didn't cooperate but when we were able to hire additional staff to reduce our class sizes at the start of the school year we needed that classroom space so that's when gen Davies who oversees the OLC got moved into a custodian custodial closet and so not only does she not have adequate storage there is no facility for students to use if the weather is not cooperating there's no restroom
021facilities for students to use near the outdoor learning center so those are all things as we think about what what maple would need moving forward the OLC is an important part because it impacts all of our students even though it's housed right behind maple the other piece that's important and Maryanne will highlight this a little bit later in the presentation is just how education has changed since maple was built fifty years ago so fifty years ago you didn't have to worry about laptops well those three carts in the left picture on the on the left side of the screen those are laptop carts that are sitting out in the hallway so certain certainly not a secure location for us to store technology but it's the only option that we have you can also see in
022all of these pictures desks that are lining the hallway because students need small group intervention space there is none of that within the classroom or outside the classroom other than desks lining the hallway the picture on the right and there's multiple examples of this coming up is simply where they've captured the space at the end of the hallway to become a small group intervention space so in this picture on the right there's a couple of chairs with a white board and and bulletin board behind it that they use for small group intervention but certainly not an ideal learning environment lots of distractions that happen for our students when you're trying to get intervention in the middle of the hallway maple also how houses in addition to white oak and pine tree our preschool program the
023picture on the left is right outside our preschool class one of our preschool classrooms and of course they have a Meads with gross motor equipment recess equipment physical therapy equipment and they don't have adequate storage so those items line the hallway outside of the preschool classrooms and then on the right is another example where they've captured the end of a hallway to to create a small group intervention space to meet the needs of our students shifting our attention to white oak white oak was built in 1961 so it's almost sixty years old needs significant infrastructure work as well as significant reconfiguration of space to meet Avon standards for today's students as we talked about with maple it was simply designed in a different era where a lot of the the needs that we see addressed
024and our other buildings are not addressed at white oak so in this picture again on the left you can see an area that we've captured for small group intervention so that big black cabinet along that wall is technology equipment that I'm sure is not intended to have students working in small group right alongside of it but this is the only option that white oak had to create a small group space off of their media center there are no other spaces for this to occur to occur then the picture on the right you can see additional deaths lining the hallway as well as a student's wheelchair there's just simply not enough space within the building to house storage or small group intervention the picture on the left here of white oak is a room that was
025originally designed to be a custodial closet there's a utility sink at the far end just to the left of the doorway that's what it was originally intended to be but now you can see that it's become a little bit of storage a little bit of teacher workroom there's a smart table that blue table is as a technology table that students can interact with there's the copy machine paper cutter all those kinds of things that we have crammed into what really was originally intended to be a custodial closet and then the picture on the right again is two laptop carts that are in the main hallway at White Oak because there simply isn't any space to store laptops in a more secure location here at White Oak again at the end of one of their hallways
026we've captured two spaces to be small group intervention and portable walls that are used there to try to minimize distractions but as you can imagine trying to have two small group intervention groups going within the traffic of a hallway is certainly not ideal it's something that we we need to address and as we think about the investments that we have made in white oak and maple that's where we think and we can shift our thinking to how do we create an environment for our students at white oak and maple that prepares them and is equitable to the experiences that students in our other schools are receiving and with that I'll hand it off to Mary Ann thanks dr. Windham thanks members of the board excited to kind of piggyback off of Scott's comments and talk
027a little bit about the evolution of educational needs really since white oak elementary was built certainly at the educational landscape has evolved in several areas and so those are listed here to start our discussion first of all collaboration that's one of the things that we've really been emphasizing with our board is the importance of collaboration between teachers and students and in a moment I will show you a picture demonstrating this but for right now I'd like to really stress the importance of teacher to teacher interaction we've been really fortunate to have delayed days in our calendar most recently and those go a long way to really provide that collaboration time between our teachers to work on equity in our schools and between our programs and so that's just been a very valuable time and one
028way that we're looking at program equity in the district we know that every teacher has their own very distinctive personality and the curriculum and materials of what students receive should be more similar than different as we work towards that common programming across our buildings and departments and so that collaboration time is something that has certainly evolved in the last 50 years secondly we have instructional coaches in order to both the educational trends it requires considerable amount of work by our educators to stay informed and up-to-date and the best educational practices and we know that job embedded professional development has a deeper and more significant impact on our staff so to that end we are very grateful to have the instructional coaches post referendum to have at least one in every building to help support our
029teachers in their professional growth technology in 1961 versus today in the classroom is literally literally comparing a piece of chalk to any device that connects to the Internet so you want to talk about evolution things have certainly changed in that area of technology and it continues to evolve and it certainly is not going away we have to continue to work on where technology tools fit into the curriculum in a developmentally appropriate level and this is a constant part of our conversations in dialogue that we have here at work next we have an area that there's collaboration that's outside resources and services that were scarce or maybe didn't even exist 50-plus years ago in our community our connection to Cummins behavioral health is a great example of this additionally the role of our occupational therapists our
030physical therapists in our speech-language pathologists to benefit students in the school environment is more prevalent as our community has grown so has the need for such services given our great success with counseling grants as you are aware or bringing in even more resources and as a school Corporation we're striving to develop systems to utilize every resource appropriately and to their fullest potential finally we have school safety that is very different from 50 years ago school security continues to have a major place at the forefront of our actions as our school safety committee and community safety partnerships are constantly examining our buildings and practices through the school safety lens so how we do school now has evolved from from the facility lens many of our buildings weren't designed or built during the time when these needs
031were even conceptualized let me pause for a minute and share a slide of a picture that sort of the side by side of classrooms then versus classrooms now if you will on the Left we have some traditional instruction we have students in rows most of us as adults participated in this type of education when we were children the teacher is more of the sage on the stage the students are relatively quiet and not really having much interaction when with one another on the right is an actual picture from one of our schools this happens to be river birch Elementary I believe this picture was taken about two years ago here we have a teacher it's a male teacher here mr. Coppedge and he is in deep dialogue with his students they are working together to
032build authentic academic vocabulary and he is able to check for each student's understanding in an authentic learning setting teachers through our instructional coaching cycles are learning to ask levels of questions that are differentiated based upon individual students and additionally in today's classrooms were trending towards more pushing versus pullout services and what I mean by that is in the classroom on the right you may also see in an instructional assistant working with students with special needs or students needing support as an English language learner or even receiving authentic speech therapy during a classroom during instruction so we encourage our teachers to interact in small groups of students to gain a deeper understanding of their learning and differentiate their struck instruction to meet students needs what do I mean when I'm talking about differentiating instruction well there
033are three types of ways that this might be happening in our classrooms number one teachers might determine that they're going to differentiate the content or what the students need to learn some examples of this might be to chunk lessons in smaller pieces or compact curriculum for our more advanced students they might differentiate the method or how students learn perhaps they think students will learn best using a stations approach maybe it's one on one maybe it's a small group maybe it's using technology or maybe it's an independent study they may also determine that they want to differentiate the product or how students demonstrate what they have learned so options for products are given for student choice and typically a teacher would utilize a rubric to determine the important attributes of a project regardless of how it
034is put together at the bottom line there's no more teaching to the middle a one-size-fits-all instruction in our classrooms that you see on the left more and more in our classrooms you will see teachers working alongside the students to challenge them and to help them grow dr. Wyndham and I visited all k-6 buildings and toured with the principals to look at their programming emphasis to connect this to the piece of how they are able to create collaborative environments have adequate student interventions and therapy spaces and the ability to meet the needs of technology in their schools as they stand presently frankly we saw variances that logically made sense based upon when a building was built in many places our schools have done their best to repurpose space to be functional for example the room originally
035designed as a classroom is now a computer lab or a therapy space but our our ideal space k-6 is certainly now at Avon Intermediate School East this particular slide is a floor plan for Intermediate School East and as of January they now have been redesigned and are in a way that is more aligned with today's school programming in the red circle you will note as central communication hub including the surrounding innovation space in the past you may have known this as the media center or library it is much more than that now it allows for both incidental and planned communications between and among staff in areas for deep student collaboration work to occur it supports the technology use in highly flexible spaces for stem or any type of group projects that are happening in the
036school in the back of the innovation spinner Center there is space for instructional coaches to collaborate as well as grade-level team rooms for teachers to have grade level meetings and work on programming the classrooms themselves are created in pairs of classrooms and you'll note between each pair of classrooms there's a collaboration space where students can again work on projects or have teachers assign them to work for any type of intervention that they might need one of the neatest things about Intermediate School East is because it is a one-to-one school they no longer have the use or need for computer labs and so it's been redesigned differently given this time around this particular site is called a referendum class size target chart and so let me start by saying after many years of having over 30
037students in a classroom we couldn't be more grateful to our community to support the referendum and now have class size targets this year that have made a difference for our students and teachers this chart gives a mathematical look at how we can now monitor class sizes across our k4 schools in particular with a goal of 22 students in kindergarten and 25 in grades 1 through 8 staffing is now more predictable at the bottom of this chart you can start to see the variance in number of sections we have per grade level per school it starts to tell a story our smaller schools white oak pine tree and maple currently have student enrollments in the mid 300s this does not include preschool our medium schools hickory and sycamore are around 500 ish students with four classes
038of each grade level per building we then have our large schools cedar and river birch with five to seven sections per grade level right now river birch Elementary is our second largest enrollment school in the district when you have a range of three to seven sections it impacts the programming and therefore the equity across our elementary buildings two quick examples of this are number one if you have a school counselor at White Oak they are currently serving seeing 352 students one counselor at river birch has over 800 that's where we start to have our equity and programming discussion additionally we have an art music and PE teacher at every building and we are so proud of that but when you have 800 students they cannot have the same number amount of time in art music
039and PE one way we've tried to counter that is by adding an innovation specialist to Cedar in river birch so while that's a wonderful way to increase some time in the related arts it now creates an inequity with all the other buildings that do not have an Innovation teacher in their building the next area that I would like to talk about in terms of programming is our preschool space challenges across the district first let's review let's review some definitions seedlings preschool you may have heard of it it started in 2011 and we have offered this as a community preschool to our public parents pay for their child to attend and this year it was five thousand eight hundred and eighty three dollars per student for their child to attend this preschool program a community preschool
040is not required but offers compliance with requirements for students with disabilities to be with non-disabled age-appropriate peers in the past we partnered with community preschools to offer this to our students because it is a state required compliance measure on which we are tracked note that seedlings teachers at this time are not paid as classroom teachers the second type of preschool we offer is developmental preschool and this one is required for students with disabilities our staff have to make sure services are in place by a child's third birthday so we may have two year olds soon-to-be three-year-olds start into our program our special education director advocated for two primary things as we have fight about our preschool spaces number one all preschool be located in one building why because it increases the collaboration and it is
041more efficient with shared resources we also know that early intervention is the key that's what developmental preschool is all about with early intervention comes a lot of resources to support students again the SLP is the OTS pts and specialists having them all together allows for more collaboration the second wish has always been to keep our seedlings and developmental preschool programs together students with disabilities need exposure to non-disabled peers the reality is preschool has been our most transient program as we try to figure out each year where there is space it has been located at hickory maple white oak pine tree and cedar none of our schools with the exception of hickory had any rooms designed for any preschool spaces when the classrooms at Hickory were designed we only had the developmental preschool at that time
042just second semester we had to make the decision to add one section at Pine Tree Elementary because it's the only school that currently had some space which has spread that preschool program now across three schools the number of preschool classrooms that maple and white oak has been a difficult space issue at our smallest buildings yet as we have worked through difficult financial years it has made sense for these programs to be at maple and white oak we needed more students in these schools prior to the referendum white oak and maple were only two section schools maybe a couple of three sections at certain grade levels the referendum allowed us to reduce class sizes and add sections back at maple and white oak which has meant not as much space for preschool this current school year
043which is a great problem so everything that we've reviewed up until this point has really been part of what the board has been processing going back several months so we we summarized these as the decision drivers that that would lead us to determining a long-term plan to address all of these different items that we've been discussing things like the demographic study the impact of property tax caps on our facilities the evolving educational needs and the programming challenges that Mary Ann just talked about as well as a long-term plan for preschool so these are the five things that really we kept coming back to to look at how do we come up with a plan that addresses these various areas and sets our district up for success as we look to the coming years so that's
044what led us to this plan which is Mable maple elementary being expanded and white oak being designated as a centralized preschool so in this plan maple elementary would be expanded to be similar capacity to river birch and cedar this would some of the programming impacts that this would solve to is that it would establish improved can assistance II in our k4 building size so going back to what Maryann was discussing through this plan all of our buildings would be in that 4 to 6 X 6 section range with river birch maple and cedar that would be that could be five to six section schools Sycamore pine tree and hickory could be four to five section schools this would provide significantly increased opportunities for our preschool children however it would require a boundary adjustment for the
0452122 school year so we'll go through the timeline towards the end of the presentation but this would be to full school years from where we're at today for this plan to be implemented and it would align the district with 3 K 4 schools feeding into eat each intermediate and I'll show you a slide in just a moment to capture that for the boundary adjustment it is important to note that we have not redistricting opened in 2010 so for a district that has grown over 1500 students since 2010 to not have gone through redistricting and that amount of time is very significant when we talk about the feeder system this is just a visual to highlight for you the the how the feeder system works in Avon this was implemented in 2015 as a very strategic
046approach to supporting our students in that students from river birch Sycamore and maple on the north side of 36 all flow to intermediate East then to middle school north and finally to the high school same thing on the south side Pine Tree Hickory and cedar feed to West and then to South white oak is currently split where half of White Oaks fourth graders feed to the north side of the district and half feed to the south side this was really important for us because we like the intermediate concept but we also acknowledge that that creates another transition for our students so what this feeder system allows is that students can flow with a cohort all the way through their school experience based on whether they live on the north or south side of the district
047this is important because students and families develop relationships that can matriculate through their school experience and it also is significant for us systematically that prior to this being implemented counselors special education teachers at intermediate East for example would be collaborating with all seven K fours because they were all feeding to both East and all West now Intermediate East can focus on four buildings and when this plan is implemented they would only be focusing on three buildings knowing that all of the students from each elementary would be flowing to either east or west it's also important to know how we got to the situation that Maryann was describing with very large and very small schools in this district when we built cedar and river birch they were designed as larger buildings that could accommodate seven up
048to 750 students now you saw a river birch is already over 750 students but that's what it was designed for our board at the time knew that we were a growing district and it made a lot more sense to build larger buildings than multiple smaller buildings also looking at how long it's been since we've restricted building those two schools to be larger is part a big part of why we've been able to go this long without a boundary adjustment or a redistricting going back to the project at maple and white oak from a facility standpoint this project would require significant increase in classroom space at maple as well as small group intervention space that we've been talking about space designated for the outdoor learning center Innovation Center spaces as well as teacher collaboration as an
049gym a larger larger gymnasium and a larger cafeteria White Oak would also require some renovations as well even if it's going to maintain as a K as a preschool in that it's a 60 year old building we need to do some infrastructure work it will need adequate restrooms to be a preschool Center as well as play and therapy spaces designed specifically designed for three to five year olds one of the factors that we looked at when considering this model is that if maple and white oak were going to continue to be k4 buildings they were both going to require can't work they were going to require not only the facility work that needs to be done but also all of the programmatic piece that we know those buildings are lacking so in working with the
050board over the last few months we came to see that we could spend significant money at both of those buildings and address the facility needs but we would perpetuate the programming impact of small schools and large schools versus this plan which says let's put significantly more renovation into maple some some renovation into white oak and in that we can address both the facility needs and the equity and programming piece and now Marian is gonna talk about what that would do for class size so in order to accomplish this there would need to be a boundary adjustment as dr. Wyndham mentioned and so this is just a conceptual update of the referendum class size chart that you saw earlier with target enrollment projections for what would then be six K for elementary schools these projections will
051be needed to begin the 2122 school year and so in order to have more consistently sized schools we would look at the class size targets to create four to six section size schools with Hickory Sycamore and pine tree being at least four sections cedar the newly designed maple and river birch would be five to six sections these are conceptual because the work to address boundary adjustments will need to take place in that fall and so we would have to look at the enrollment numbers closer to that to make really good recommendation this model does take into account however the expected growth based on the demographic study which says we will not see significant enrollment increases at the k4 level in the next ten years however dr. brother did give us some different trends and she
052said you know if we did see that the enrollment trends were higher than projected we would still had the capacity to add classrooms to Hickory Sycamore and pine tree should a need arise even with any future additions these schools would still fall within our four to six section model so even if we trend high on enrollment will not need to build a new k4 building we would be able to in direct address enrollment with the 6k for buildings having the opportunity to support the needs of both the community and developmental preschool at one building would be the best and most efficient use of resources many of these students require special therapies require an equipment that is difficult to move so instead of therapists traveling among three buildings we believe students will get more service when
053everyone is located together in one building it is not our goal to compete with community preschools is there will always be a greater need in the community than we can provide however this plan would allow us to expand the number of sections of preschool to accommodate more students we have had to turn away many families for the past several years and given more space we would like to provide more opportunity on this slide are some other communities that have gone through similar conversations to develop centralized preschool programs in their districts so this isn't a new idea just one that we haven't had the opportunity to explore until now so as we think about this project and financing we're going to shift now to talking about what that what our financing options are as well as
054talking about the timeline so this slide shows the school districts debt payments each year and you can see where there are some years coming up where those payments decrease and we start to have debt falling off in other words we start paying off some of our buildings or our debt payments decrease at those times we can structure our debt in such a way that debt for this project can be issued and still maintain a steady test steady debt payment over the course of time which keeps our tax rate steady so that there is not an impact to our taxpayer so by doing this we can replace the debt that's falling off and there would be no impact to each of our taxpayers so the question might be asked it's great that taxpayers won't be impacted
055but why not just let the debt fall why not just let let our payments decrease I would go back to we're talking about buildings that are 50 and 60 years old to neglect them further would be irresponsible as we are charged with maintaining the community's investment that they've made into those facilities we know that these buildings aren't meeting the needs of our students and that we have been unable to perform some of the items that we need to because of property tax caps the other issue is that because almost all of our tax payers are at the tax cap if we decreased our debt payments those funds would get absorbed by all the other taxing entities so still the taxpayer would be at their tax cap and the savings by our debt payments being decreased
056would be dispersed between all of the other taxing entities so again it wouldn't help the taxpayer and we would not be protecting the investment that has been made over the last 50 and 60 years into maple and white oak so as we think about the timeline that we that has got us to this point and what will guide us moving forward in October the board heard from dr. Brad Vig about her demographic study in January we had a retreat with the school board focusing on our facility needs equity of programming preschool much of what you've reviewed tonight we also had a school board working session with principals where the issue of equity across our buildings came up finally in February dr. Brad Vig presented her final demographic study to the school board meeting which as
057I shared was live-streamed and is still available April 22nd we had a working session where we we where we reviewed the timeline and also discussed various construction models and then our first presentation of this information was at the May 6th school board meeting starting right after that on May 7th dr. Horniman began her faculty meetings at each school starting with white oak and maple so that they could hear at first where she reviewed an abbreviated version of this presentation with each of our schools then on May 13th the school board met with the administrative team again and then tonight we're doing this again to be live-streamed moving forward on June 3rd the school board will have its regularly scheduled meeting where we'll have the facility final report the facility study final report from performance services
058and share any additional information that's needed for this plan as we think about the next two school years really a 1920 so the next so next school year we'll start the planning process of these projects getting feedback and input from all of our staff at maple and white oak about what those buildings should become looking at the scope of work and the debt issuance process and planning for construction then the 2020 21 school year in that fall we would want to do boundary adjustment work we would have two more years of enrollment data to see how our enrollment is coming in based on the in comparison to the demographic study we'd also be able to survey staff to determine assignments for the 2122 school year when we think about maple needing additional K for teachers
059and white oak becoming a preschool that would also give time in the spring for transportation to do their amazingly complicated work of getting all of our buses routed to the correct locations and study preschool what do we want preschool to look like long term in Avon when we're no longer restricted by space then finally in the 2122 school year maple and white oak renovations would be completed by the first student day as well as implementation of the preschool center and new k4 boundaries as well as some of the other infrastructure and were white oak repair work that we have talked about we know that when performance services presents to the board on June 3rd that there will be many other things that are listed as priorities that we have just not been able to maintain
060at the level that we would like we've spent the majority of this presentation talking about maple and white oak but there's a whole list of other things that we know will be a focus of their work on June 3rd and that will guide us talked about south we've talked about Sycamore we know that space as we think about the demographic study and the high school being the air the building that's going to see the most growth that there's space at the high school that we can repurpose and reconfigure to gain more classroom space a prime example of that is the Advanced Learning Center Media Center that is no longer used as a media center that we could capture some space there as well as the High School Auditorium I've got a picture here it's easier
061to see on that slide than it is that screen with ripped seats it's just an auditorium that gets a lot of use by our community and is 20 years old and it's fine if you go in and the seats are filled but if you go in when the seats aren't filled you can really see how much attention that auditorium needs to meet the needs of our students in our community so things like that that we just need to update as well the other piece that we know will come up that Mary Ann has highlighted and will come up from performance services is that equitable learning environment at our other k4 so if maple is addressed in renovation we know that our other K fours need additional work to have that equitable learning environment similar to
062East as well as work that would need to be done at intermediate West as we think about buildings that have the capacity to be expanded in size so Mary Ann said if our enrollment projections are more significant than projected we would consider classroom additions at Sikkim Sycamore and Hickory and so those are things that as we think about long term not needing to build an additional school but those are the first two K fours that we would look at expanding as well as maple and white oak project that we've been discussing and also just looking at enrollment projections at the high school and seeing if we need to do additional work at Avon high school over the next ten years as we compare how enrollment comes in to the demographic study so in summary this
063plan will address that the long term facility needs that we have highlighted for you it'll support our current enrollment and allow capacity for future growth without the construction of a new school it'll provide equitable program across our K for schools it'll provide a long term high quality program for preschool and it'll meet our facility needs with no increase to the taxpayer as dr. Horniman shared when she started this presentation we do have a survey that is available it will be available following this presentation where community members staff parents can indicate any questions that they would like answer so that we can generate a frequently asked questions document that will be updated on our website and with that we're glad to answer any questions a couple of things I think one of the thing one of
064the reasons why we indicated a preschool study is really important is because each of those districts each of those districts listed here does preschool in a slightly different way every district kind of has their unique spin on how they're going to do preschool to what level their community preschool and their developmental preschool are integrated and those kinds of things and so I think that year where we really study preschool will be when we really dive in to each of these other districts and just and look at how do they do it and how does that compare to what we currently do or what we see that we want to do in the future I do think that the most significant benefit is that those that have as much collaboration as possible between community preschool and
065developmental preschool it's just like what we talked about with inclusion at the k4 k12 level is the more exposure that students have to their non-disabled peers the better that is for everyone I don't know if any of them have gotten to that level of analysis yet some of these are very new a Franklin Township is relatively new Plainfield Brownsburg have done preschool and community preschool like we have in multiple locations but only in the last couple of years have they brought it under one roof so I think some of those things will be coming but I'm not sure if any of them have done that level of analysis yet they also tend to kids that have had a preschool experience in general compared to the students that have not had any preschool the only thing
066I would add is that we know that the efficiencies of time and having your staff in a centralized location translates to more time servicing students versus traveling between schools I have a question what would happen to the stand that is good so we've had a history of opening buildings and we have a process that I believe our superintendent has been really integral in creating they served us well we actually have every teacher that has a certification in that area so every case six teacher because we're talking the elementary program and that's the typical license would have the opportunity to go through the process to rank their preferences do they want to work in a certain school do they want to work in a certain with a certain team with a certain grade level they get
067to kind of give their two cents if you will and we have a process that has served us very well I think ninety-eight percent of our teachers have gotten their first choice and when you think about the magnitude of what this process is we're very pleased with the outcome of that so we would follow a similar process again Scott even know the answer unveiled right now how much buildable space is I can't answer that in terms of acreage but what I can tell you is that as we have been working with performance services on their facility study and looking at what we know we want to accomplish and we looked at the footprint of maple and the footprint of white oak maple not only in the way that the building is constructed and that it
068already has wings whereas white oak really only has two corridors when we looked at that footprint there is certainly more capacity to expand maple than there would be to expand white oak and so also when we looked at the overall parking lots structure traffic flow all those things that we would take into account with this because this this is a busy intersection here and so that that traffic flow issue even played into our analysis as well and looking at what we could accomplish in this structure gave us much more flexibility to address some of those things than if we were to do it vice versa does that answer your question two and a half times its present size then you have to start really practically thinking about where does that construction go and of course
069on the south side there's no place for it to go because the outdoor learning steps there there's got to be aggressive on that building and there's also no side yep there's expansion Carl increases their stream is here yeah playground this year so there's really not a lot of room to go toward the east so it almost seems that what you would take is that full parking lot that is to the north of maple I mean I realized we haven't even seen construction plans yeah but practically speaking that's the area that you would have to move into or if you went to the west you're going to take that a dish that what I call the outdoor learning center and annex and you'll start to encroach on White Oaks playground so it seems feasible that it
070would be in the front but then you'd have to account for parking yeah and and and like you said you know we're at the very beginning stages but we have had those conversations as we looked at this plan okay let's think about this from every angle some things that we gain is when when white oak becomes a centralized preschool right now white oak and maple operate on the same schedule each day and so there are some things that can be gained by okay preschool we have some more flexibility with the schedule there they are divided in that four developmental preschool there's an AM and a PM sections you can kind of split that enrollment up over the course of the day versus a heavy load at the beginning and the end of the day so
071there are all those kinds of things that we have kind of laid out as we have started to preliminary preliminary kind of map this out but I do think you're right that that parking lot area to the front of the building or going to the west as most of these really the options that we would have to look at expanding that potentially some behind maple and we think about outdoor learning center space we would want that to be potentially you know kind of off the back cafeteria type area we're closer to the outdoor learning center so that there could be some things that would happen to the south we would just need to be really thoughtful about that vacations but why don't parents in a cape for school are waiting to pick up and they
072they spill out into this express lane right here yep because between our buildings so a hundred percent of those students except for developmental preschool we done right but that's presumably not even going to be half maybe slightly less population so you've got to think traffic you know I would think for all those parents that will they can't just pull I wouldn't imagine in preschool can't pull up and park you have to park many of the students in the seedlings preschool are there actually before and after program as well so it's not a hundred percent of the parent so that helps as well yeah cuz they could drop off as early as 7:30 traffic so until our numbers expand right now there's what about 150 total preschool students and so probably 70 of those are divided
073in half for developmental preschool so 35 and 35 on buses in the morning and in the afternoon that's not very many buses and then maybe these students are in that drop-off pick up at varying times based upon their childcare because some of them do state before and after program for those services so it is pretty spread out it's actually I would and this is a guest but I would imagine it's less car traffic than Kurtis at the current white oak we may have we could be spread out with the renovation of the preschool hopefully to occur about how many students would we be able to then accept because I remember you saying that we've had to turn away because there's no room we'll be able to step board and what we have now right absolutely
074the whole time one of the greatest pieces of this is there will be opportunity to increase the sections based upon the demand in space okay the full-day community preschool the seedlings did you say teachers were certified or not certified for that we are fortunate that our teachers are certified however they they're not paid on aid all right thank you very much for this even though this is probably really our fourth time Morin have greater greater appreciation who are all that's gonna be going on into this plan over the next couple years and it sound I feel like this is a plan that we can really help meet our community's needs yeah and yet we're thinking about that and so this is a good plan going forward to meet a lot of the deeds at the
075same time we're meeting older building needs and so that's nice for the taxpayer that we are not preparing a lot of buildings and doing this on top of it so I like the process of both