Community Engagement Meeting #4

001[Music] good evening welcome to this meeting of the school board they've owned school board the third of our the fourth of our four community engagements meeting community engagement meetings at 6:30 and I would like to call the meeting to order and as usual the first thing we will do is say the Pledge of Allegiance so please join us thank you first I want to thank Kingsway for letting us use their facility and not just use their facility but have people on staff to assist us and make sure things run smoothly it's up if dr. Horniman has said they've been unbelievable in their cooperation so we really appreciate that I want to just give you a brief outline of how the game is going to go if you've been to other of our community engagement meetings

002of much like the last one dr. Horniman will give a presentation that will cover a lot of area a lot of picture where we've been where we are today how we got here what the change in state financing means for the schools dr. Wyndham will also give a part of that presentation that deals more specifically with the financial picture and then as we always like to do in these things we have a teacher to give a picture of what it means on the ground level and tonight we have mrs. Lori Rosemeyer from Intermediate School West and finally we will have our financial consultants involved mr. Caleb Moffitt is with us to give their brief input on where things are headed in the future there's a lot to cover tonight after the presentation we'll break down

003into rooms so that we can get the input from you we have had a fabulous amount of input comments questions after these things the administration is working hard to respond and answer to questions that be online the comments we take all that into account this is an ever-shifting picture as we learn from you the things that you want to prioritize for your schools and since there's so much to do without further ado I'll turn it over to dr. Horniman thank you Thank You mr. McDavid and welcome I have to begin by saying welcome to all of you and welcome to those who are watching the livestream or will be watching this later when it's recorded but first and foremost we must thank the staff and members of Kingsway Christian Church we sought a venue and

004outside of our school system because it was sent to us that maybe people would feel more comfortable coming to a place other than our schools and Kingsway immediately welcomed us with open arms and they could not have been more welcoming as I know you felt when you arrived today as we said this is the fourth community engagement meeting to discuss the financial challenges that our school district is facing for those who are watching online it may be frustrating you may wish you have the PowerPoint and you may be wondering why we haven't posted the PowerPoint it is because it is simply still in draft form and is changing literally by the hour but rest assured that as we move forward all documents will be posted online for you to see at some point in the

005next few months everyone in this audience will be asked why to say buy me more money our other school districts facing the challenges we have we are what has the school system done to avoid asking for a referendum and we want you to be knowledgeable we want all of our taxpayers to be knowledgeable so tonight we're going to answer the question of why is it different in Avon than in some other districts we'll explain what a general fund referendum is and how it works and perhaps most importantly we will explain three different budget options that we are presenting as for consideration finally as mr. McDavid said for those of you who want to and are able to stay after the presentation we will break out into small groups in the classrooms down the hall to

006our right there'll be people directing you there'll be an administrator in every classroom and we'll try to get groups of maybe ten or so to simply record what it is that you are your impressions of what you've heard tonight you know it can be difficult in a big group presentation to walk up to a microphone and say what you believe or ask a question but by doing it this way we will hear what every single person in the audience thinks and what they have to say because at the end of that twenty minutes we'll come back into this facility right where we are and each of the administrators will report out what they heard at their table that way you get to hear what you said and you get to hear what everyone else said

007now one of the things we learned Thursday night there were some easy questions a question that we could have answered right then but we were furiously taking notes and nodding our heads if it's a simple straightforward question that has come up in our administrative groups we'll answer it on the spot many of the other questions were far more detailed and we posted this afternoon at about 4:30 we posted a QA from Thursday night so you can go ahead and see that let's begin thus far we have held three fairly well attended community engagement meetings they started in November and they were recorded and they are still available for viewing on a dedicated web page the small group discussions have been very very interesting and as I mentioned some answers have been posted we have reviewed

008our funding challenges we've emphasized how we have been efficient with your taxpayer dollars we've heard from our teachers and most importantly is that last bullet here we've received input from the audience about what your educational priorities are and possible next steps now at the very first meeting back in November a community members stood before the word referendum had ever been mentioned and she asked what's a referendum how do they work who else has done them in the state of Indiana we want to explain that referenda have been established back in 2008/9 by the Indiana State Legislature as a way for schools and other taxing entities to ask their public for additional dollars in support we can ask for a construction referendum to build buildings or renovate buildings or we can ask for a general fund

009referendum that's what we're talking about tonight a general fund referendum in a nutshell a referendum is a question for the public on a ballot asking the taxpayers for their support if the public approves a referendum they're saying that they will support paying more than 1% that they currently are capped at in taxes on their homes so it's a property tax it is outside of the 1% that we currently pay or our home property taxes even though it's a property tax the school board can determine that it can be used for operating or general fund needs specific aspects of a referendum are that the board must adopt a resolute in public at a public board meeting months in advance of the referendum our board has not yet passed such a resolution we do anticipate that we're

010headed that way and we have a special board meeting scheduled for a week from tonight Monday January 29th at 7 o'clock at the administration Center and that is where I believe the board will be passing a resolution however they didn't want to just pass a resolution and tell the public what we're going to ask for they wanted to have input and interaction with the staff and the public now the second bullet on this slide emphasizes that the laws have changed in the past several years about how referendums can be conducted there are legal restrictions on what the school can and cannot do what we can say when we can say it and even where we can meet the school district in a nutshell may not promote a referendum using school email school facilities or school

011materials once the board passes a resolution we may not spend taxpayer dollars to promote a referendum we'll talk a little bit more about that a few minutes we've learned a lot from other districts that have passed an or fund referendum and we realize that a successful referendum requires a sophisticated political campaign a political action committee will be formed it will include hundreds of volunteers people just like you our students our staff members our community members our parents people who are responsible for promoting the referendum the pack includes share people a treasurer several violent arts ever coordinators and lots of us anybody can donate to the PAC now why would the PAC need to fundraise well to pay for printing mature printed yard signs anything that promotes the referendum they will need to raise funds to

012do that all will be invited to participate in the pack and training will be provided now the board also has a decision to make about whether or not to put a referendum on the ballot in May or November popular wisdom says November is easier we can't wait we need relief before the next school year starts if we're going to support our students the way we know they need to be supportive if the majority of people who vote that day agree to support a referendum there's agreement to pay these additional taxes for eight years that is how long a referendum lasts those funds go into a separate budget and each year in public the board will again talk about how those funds will be spent and we can only spend referendum funds on exactly what we

013promised we would spend them for so people said well what happens after eight years well we don't have a crystal ball we don't know what will happen in the next eight years but in many communities there is another referendum campaign and a referendum gets renewed sometimes for less money sometimes for the same but it is through the same public voting process now another question I'm pretty sure you're going to be asked as well you know a district needs to live within its means what have they done over the last six years to be efficient with our dollars you know in my business I have to live within my means well we've reviewed several of these items on the next two slides but I'd like to highlight a couple of them for you because I feel

014very confident that over the last six years we have done everything possible to avoid this moment we have become way more efficient in how we spend our money we heard from our community six years ago that we needed to do some we have also become very creative in generating additional revenue for our district a couple of examples back in 2015 we convened the efficiency task force a 28 member community and staff task force that helped us identify ways that we could save additional funds and as a result and this is in the Q&A that was posted this afternoon as a result we were able to generate more than $350,000 in savings by changing bus routes by combining bus routes and by changing the way we transported students a better example that seems to resonate with

015our business community is how well we've managed health care costs the second bullet emphasizes that in 2016 and in 2017 we did not raise our health insurance premiums one penny for our employees and this year in 2018 we did have to increase our health insurance premiums but only by 3% I always asked whenever I speak can you identify a business and a bond that has been able to enter their healthcare costs so well and I never yet have had anyone come up and asked me I have lots of people come up and say well how to do that and it's not magic by any means we work very very hard to help our employees become educated healthcare consumers we have a wellness clinic as part of our partnership with Hendrix Regional Health that our employees

016can use at a much much lower cost than if they went just to the urgent care or the emergency room or their doctor we have also as I said become very well educated about what we can do to make sure that our health insurance costs are contained but that's one of the ways that we work very hard to keep our or budget in check as you can see we also have some amazing partnerships as I mentioned Hendricks Regional Health anymore Automotive Group which over the next 10 years will bring more than 2 million dollars in revenue to our district that we wouldn't have other than that last year we made a strategic decision to do some limited open enrollment where we accept students who don't live in Avon Community Schools to come to our schools

017many other districts in the area in Indiana have been doing this for years now we wanted to keep it very small and very limited because our goal was to bring additional revenue that follows those students but only accepts students at grade levels and in schools or by accepting them we actually were able to use those dollars to drive down class sizes so we only did this at the k4 level and it grades 9 10 and 11 we added just 63 students last year but that brought us three hundred and fifty thousand dollars which helped us hire a number of teachers now you can imagine at Avon high school a school of over 3,000 when we add 30 out of district students the effects are not very significant and we don't feel that at the elementary

018level we spread them across all seven buildings because we get to decide which building they go to and we did that so that we could make sure that our class sizes were actually getting smaller you can also see from this list that we thought after grants very very hard we compete part for competitive grants and we've had some good success additionally we are constantly renegotiating terms of contracts and services for our school districts again to be the most efficient we can be with your tax dollars now as taxpayers you don't pay taxes just to afford the schools you pay taxes to support all of the taxing entities our wonderful Avon Washington Township libraries are department or fire department or town or Township and so I'm very proud of the fact that we are one of

019the few communities were kind of the only community we know of in the state of Indiana that has established very strong relationships with the other taxing entities to constantly figure out ways that we can be more efficient with Washington Township taxpayer dollars so a couple of examples that are up here for example we share fiber optic cable with the Washington Township Public Library because as a large school corporation with many many buildings we can provide that fiber optic to the library they can get much more bandwidth for much less than they were previously paying obviously library pays for that we don't pay for the libraries but they can get it through us from a much better price another example is that recently Avon Washington Township and that's our wonderful fire department employees as well as

020the department employees for the township have started to use our wellness clinic thereby helping them manage their software or excuse me their healthcare costs a third example would be that we purchase a lot of fuel we run a lot of buses and we have lots of needs for fuel well our town and our township have a cooperative agreement that our school board approves every year we don't make any money off of it but we don't lose any money and they're able to get their fuel from us again if they were buying their fuel without the benefit of the big public school consumer you would be paying a lot more for the fuel for police department cars and for fire department cars etc there are many other examples here and in fact when we meet again

021because we do meet by monthly when we meet again we're going to put out a document that lists everything we've done since we began meeting as a group those meetings are not just attended by the town's Township librarian school we're very fortunate that representative gregster wealth and Senator Jarno crane also come and attend our meetings because they're very excited about what a community is all working together for the benefit of its taxpayers they're very excited about that model and it seems to get back out in the attention of the governor and many of our legislators now I can predict another question you're going to be asked between now and May 8 and that question is well they seem to be fine to me school poor person seems to be going on pretty well when lots

022of state championships it's safe my kids are happy everything seems to be pretty good and why and have its name do we need to spend more money and I'm not proud of this slide but this slide tells part of the reason why we're not really doing okay because this slide demonstrates that we have only managed thus far on the backs of our students and our employees you can see that this the blue bars on this slide represent the enrollment growth which has been significant in our district since 2009-10 you can see that we've grown from 8180 for students to 9527 students an increase of 1343 students the red line represents the number of teachers we have and you can see that in order to manage our growth without funding from the state that has kept

023pace with inflation we have today compared to 2009 1343 more students than eight and a half fewer teachers six fewer administrators 20 fewer custodial and that's all we could show on a simple slide that really tells the story but our valuable support staff our custodial staff our maintenance staff our food service workers our secretaries our teaching assistants in every category we have become more and more lean it's a little different a little difficult to quantify those support staff cuts because some of the work ten hours a week some work 20 hours a week that you can rest assured and we are as lean as we have ever been from a staffing perspective in fact we are now cutting to the bone you also know if you have a student in our elementary you know that

024we were fortunate we did add 18 and a half teaching positions at the start of this school year those are represented on the far right by a dotted line the reason those are represented by a dotted line is that we went out on a financial limb to do that we simply could not see having 30 or 31 kids in a kindergarten or first grade a second grade any longer so we went out on a pretty significant financial limb but I don't want someone to just glance at this slide to think oh great the trend lines going up things must be getting better they really aren't we went out on that limb and we didn't do anything for class sizes at grades 5 through 12 we went out on that limb because we knew we were

025heading to a referendum we knew that we were going to be asking the voters at some point in the near future to help us stay on a path of steady restoration and on a path to not just restoration but improvement what if people don't go to the polls on May 9th if people actually be engrained in my brain if people don't register to vote by April 8 we don't stand a chance because if this referendum does not pass we cannot maintain where we are today we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment pardon me many of you have seen this sobering table before I didn't have to give a drink of water thank you many of you have seen this simmering table before it compares the salaries of a bonds veteran teachers to

026those in our conference in neighboring schools this is a slide that keeps me up at night because we know that a quality teacher is the number one factor in student success no other variable not poverty not intelligence not buildings not particularly teachers have the biggest impact on students lives and learning we must retain our fabulous teachers with competitive compensation and reasonable class sizes we know that right now our veteran teachers in whom we have invested so much and who have invested so much in us can go to any one of these other districts and earn between five to eleven percent more annually those of you who've been around for a while know this wasn't always the case there was a time where we had done we led the pack we don't need to lead but

027we sure need to be more competitive it didn't we didn't get here overnight and we're not going to get out of this situation overnight but if we have a referendum for eight years and we can make steady progress each year on improving teacher salary we ought to be able to help close these gaps retaining teachers is our number one goal but we have a teacher shortage in Indiana and we also have to attract great new teachers as you can see on this table the first year teacher will do better at Brownsburg Wayne Zionsville and Plato now you might be wondering what about our great support set our custodians our teacher assistants they are extremely important to us they make our schools work but right now as we've done the research compared to these other school

028districts on the whole we are competitive with those positions however we can't lose ground by our support staff either now school finance is pretty complicated I've learned a lot in the last six years but nobody explains it better than our Director of Finance dr. Scott Windham and he's going to share some important information with you so as Maggie said we know that you're going to be asked why are we in this shape why is it so tough financially in a bond so to answer that question it's important to understand some basics about school funding this slide highlights the two main sources that all public schools in Indiana have access to for funding the education of their students on the left-hand side of the screen you can see state funding the state provides funding to schools

029that goes into the general fund and the general fund pays for the majority of our salaries and benefits our supplies professional development substitutes utilities the majority of our operating expenses as a school district are in our general fund and so we're only able to make those to pay those expenses as a result of the funding that we receive from the state of Indiana so when funding doesn't keep pace with inflation that hits us signal on the general fund you can also see property tax funding property tax funding comes from those of us like me that live in this community we pay our property taxes and then those property taxes are divided up between the taxing entities that Maggie mentioned the library the police fire public schools schools are restricted in how we can spend property

030tax funding so we can spend property tax funds in debt to pay for the debt and a mortgage on our buildings for capital project expenses such as technology our technology staff building maintenance and repairs and our insurance on our buildings as well as the cost to transport our students so bus drivers bus assistants fuel maintenance serve and repairs on buses and occasionally we need to replace buses those are all expenses that are paid for through local property tax funds so what makes us so unique in Avon is how significantly we are hit on both sides of school funding that makes us unique compared to just about every other school district in the state and we'll get into more in detail about that the other piece that's important to know is that prior to 2008 and

0312009 the local school board could raise additional funds through property taxes to address educational expenses so if the school board wanted to address a class size and hire more teachers they could increase property taxes to generate additional funding but in 2008-2009 when the state legislature said funding for educational expenses came from the state they eliminated that possibility from local school boards in place they gave local school boards one option and that is for in them the referendum is the only mechanism that a school board has to generate additional funds to address educational expenses so the legislature said to school board to local school boards if you need to raise more funds for your students you need to ask your community you need to ask your voters to support additional funding so I mentioned just how

032uniquely we are hit and Avon on both sides of school funding we're gonna go into that in a little bit more detail so this chart summarizes property tax cap impact for 2017 property tax cap impact means as Maggie said for homeowners we know will we will not pay more than 1% of the value of our home and local property taxes and that's great for us as the taxpayer because we get to keep more of our money however that has an impact on the taxing entities that month that is money that the taxing entities don't get to collect so what the state does is put together a report that says for each entity across the state here's what your tax cap impact is so you can see that in 2017 our impact is six point nine

033million dollars that's six point nine million dollars that we cannot collect because of the property tax caps so if you look at other school districts that are listed on this slide you can see that there are only seven school districts that are more significantly impacted than we are in Avon by property tax past if you look at that list you can see that those are very different communities than Avon there many are larger more urban school districts very Wayne Township Muncie I yes those are districts that see even more significant tax cap impact then if you look below us you can see the districts that we most often compare ourselves to these are the districts in our conference in our County that we compete against and you can see that Noblesville and Brownsburg while they

034are the closest to us we are hit twice as hard as those districts in terms of property tax cap impact go all the way down to Plainfield we are impacted 17 times more than Plainfield schools because of property tax caps so you will be asked why is it Plainfield in this situation this is a major part of the story as to just how significantly we are impacted in a bond and that's just a property tax cap side of the equation when we talk about state funding we've added that to this slide the other part that makes state fund mix school funding so complicated is that every community is impacted differently by property tax caps and every school district is funded differently when it comes to funding from the state the state has a complicated formula

035where they decide and they determine how much funding each school district will receive and it's different so you can rank number one to number 368 in terms of funding we rank 339 in the state in the amount of funding that we receive per student from the state of Indiana so if you look at this list you can see that Gary for example is significantly impacted by property tax tabs 19 point five million dollars however they're the sixth best funded School District in the state of Indiana so they can certainly make up for some of that impact by being so well funded go to Wayne Township I use Wayne Township just because there are neighbors you cross raceway and you've left Avon and are now in Wayne Township yes they're impacted just under thirteen million dollars

036by property tax caps however they're the 63rd best funded School District in the state what does that mean in terms of dollars if we receive the same funding that Wayne Township did we would receive eight point five million dollars more just this year into our general fund we don't begrudge Wayne Township the funding that they receive we just believe that all public schools ought to be funded adequately we are not so the key point from this slide is that there are really only two other school districts in the state that are impacted so significantly on both sides of school funding and we've marked those with a narrow Franklin Township Westfield Washington and then us we are the three school districts that see significant property tax cap impact and are among the lowest funded when it

037comes to state funding that's what makes us unique so when you're asked that question this is important to understand just how significantly and how uniquely we are impacted the other question that we have been asked frequently is so what are other school districts doing so you can see we've added a final column to this slide to show that many of these school districts have taken the only mechanism that the state legislature allows which is a referendum and presented that to their voters so you can see Wayne Township recently passed a referendum IPs and Anderson their school boards have both determined that they will be placing a referendum ballot on the maine 2018 election you can also see Westfield Washington who I said is similarly impacted to us by on both sides of school funding they

038are into their second referendum so they passed one in 2010 referendum and then they have renewed that referendum so they're into their second and others are marked with an asterisk that have also gone into renewing a referendum so this list compares a smaller segment of school districts across the state but it's important to know that across the state since 2008 ninety five school districts have placed a general fund referendum on the ballot for their voters so we've listed those here and again if they're marked with an asterisk they have pursued multiple had been successful with multiple referenda if you were at our first to community engagement meetings you know that we had Realtors that stood up and talked about how a successful school district directly impacts home values so voters in these school districts many

039of whom of course wouldn't have had children in schools recognize that a great school district thatif it's all taxpayers we also know that this can be hard to read so we created a visual to outline where across the state general fund referenda have been successful and you can see that particularly around the Indianapolis area there's quite a concentration of school districts that have pursued a general fund referendum because of the inadequate funding that is received from the state of Indiana and again this is hard to read as well so I'll list a few Westfield Zionsville Carmel Hamilton Southeastern Noblesville Speedway Wayne Township Decatur Washington Township Perry Township Beach Grove Mount Vernon West Lafayette and Sheridan and that's just to name a few these school districts have has been successful in a general fund referendum now

040we know that maintaining financial health is important to the stability of the school district we believe that part of that financial health is engaging highly respected outside advisors who assist us with long-range financial planning Avon schools as well as many other school districts and taxing entities engage unbought as mr. McDavid said to provide us with that analysis unbought has worked with more than half of Indiana's public schools and many around us Brownsburg Danville Wayne Township Carmel Tombaugh also works with several taxing entities near us including the town of Plainfield and the Avon library and provides similar financial analysis for them if you were at our last meeting on Thursday evening you know that mr. fletcher a partner at non law presented their analysis he was unable to be here today because of a previous commitment

041but he and mr. Moffatt have been involved in analyzing our financial information and so mr. Caleb Moffitt is going to come up and share a brief summary about their analysis [Applause] the 389 arts in Managua has been working with Avon schools team for a number of months developing revenue and expenditure forecasts based upon enrollment trends and student needs depending upon growth a month's annual expenditures could exceed revenues as early as 2020 and then cash reserves would begin to diminish as well personal programs so this was resolved in a month schools operating a less imprudent level according to industry standards and state of Indiana the main factor contributing to this is that state funding is not keeping up with the rate of inflation so without consideration of a referendum due to the state funding not keeping

042up with inflation Avon would be faced with more unstable financial situations putting the existing educational programs everest an operating referendum is the one option Indiana public schools possess to generate additional revenue to support academic and operational needs so in summary for Avon to remain financially solvent additional revenue sources such as a referendum are necessary in order maintain predict reserves and maintain the existing programs based upon the projections we thank you Thank You mr. muffin during the course of meetings and interactions with parents and community members we have heard you loudly and clearly you acknowledge that home values are highly correlated to a quality public school system and you said we cannot let the quality of the school system erode you've been also very clear with us about the priorities of a general fund referendum reduce

043class sizes add support to help our students succeed and give them opportunities to have a full comprehensive education and retain our great teachers now something that we have not mentioned up to this point and the last two community engagement meetings and we've gotten some feedback on it so I want to address it tonight you can be sure that we'll be putting some very specific objective measurable information out there one point that I hate to acknowledge is that our performance as measured by standardized test scores has declined over the last several years specifically since 2012 what that means is when our class sizes started to go up in 2012 our performance on ISTEP started to go down at that point in 2012 we were ranked none in the state of Indiana when it comes to performance

044of public schools that has gone slightly down every year to 16 to 23 to 26 and this year spring of 2017 we are 42nd in the state out of all the public schools now we don't think that standardized tests are the only thing that matters but we do know that they do matter and we do have to acknowledge that there is absolutely a correlation between the time and our class size has started to grow up go up and our standardized test scores we've started to go down so when we talk about providing additional instructional support for our students if so that they can succeed all across the curriculum the other thing that we have done at each community engagement meeting is that we've heard from a teacher and one of our finest is here tonight

045please help me welcome Laura Rose Meyer from Avon intermediate rest good evening my name is Laurie Rosemeyer I'm the teacher Nevada Intermediate School West I have taught many students in my tenure and I'm now having the privilege of teaching the children of my former students now contrary to what you might be thinking I have not been here since Avon was known as smooth spell and if you didn't get that reference go ahead and hook up your Avon history yes things have changed since I started teaching a vine in 1982 but one thing has remained steadfast our district has worked hard to meet the needs of all of our learners by sticking to that goal our students have achieved great things academically in the extracurricular areas and in their lives our school corporation has helped build

046this community into one that is strong one is respected throughout the state and even the nation I've always been so proud to say that I believe on teacher because we've been known for our high expectations compassion for our individual learning student learning needs and our successes in and out of the classroom my son's attended Avon through the eighth grade and two of my school-age grandchildren are a Hmong students now I care about this corporation I care about its students and its teachers and I care about this community as a veteran teacher I would like to share three things with you first our students and our teachers need and deserve smaller class size we want to be able to connect with all of our students our families we want to make a difference in their lives

047we want to lead them down the path of success but it's hard to do with the number of students that we have think about your own families when another child is added it's more than just adding one more imagine then how it feels when classroom size goes from 24 to 28 to 32 or in some cases even more this concern does not just apply to the classroom teachers special education caseloads are overwhelming instructional assistants are being pulled in many directions and band choir orchestra art and PE are overflowing with students and the stuff associated with those classes class size is a real concern when dr. lemon and I have talked about compensation for teachers I did tell them that it's heartbreaking for me to know that some of our finest teachers teachers who are making

048a difference in the lives of the Avon students have already made and may make the choice to leave Avon because other corporations offer better salary and better benefits we need to be our compensation needs to be in line with school corporations that are similar to ours we want our great teachers to stay at Avon also as you know being a part of the group a club a team an activity is so vital kids and adults need that feeling of being a part of something in the current situation we're having difficulty providing enough opportunities for our students teachers are already being stretched to the max with little or no compensation we need additional extracurricular activities for kids led by teachers in conclusion I know that my former students have made the choice to live in Avon

049with their families because of their school experiences that were so positive it only makes sense then that if we want to continue to be a community that's respected we have to make our schools a priority thank you thank mrs. rose mark before we get to the items that we have prioritized based on our work with administrators staff parents and community I want to remind you why I say that we have to pass a referendum just to stay where we are today the reason I can say that with such confidence is that the state funding formula is set every two years it was sent in May of 2017 so we know exactly how much we're going to get in 2018 and in 2019 from the state we work very hard our oil advocates and we work

050very hard with our legislatures during those budget sessions to try to advocate for public schools this year 2018 we know that we're receiving 1.3 percent more than we did last year and we already know that in 2019 we'll receive one point four percent more sounds pretty good more money this year than last year no last year inflation was 2.1 percent so when we get 1.3 percent additional money that doesn't even cover our current costs that's why I say that without passing a referendum and deciding what kind of schools we want there's no way that we can even stay where we are today and of course we don't want to stay where we are today we want to get better we have worked intensively since our last community engagement meeting of 2017 which was back in

051December because we had great support but people said okay but you need to tell us how much this is going to cost and we wanted to gather a lot of input and be very very specific about how we would spend additional funds so together with our administrators we spent quite a bit of time over the holiday break in fact our principals and assistant principals came in two days of the holiday break to help us work out three possible budget options an essential budget which would be the least increase keeps what we have and adds what we think we have to have in order to move forward with the next budget we call improves this would enhance what we provide to students and the optimal budget is what we believe would be ideal for our kids

052hours and hours of work and debate and pricing and budgeting have gone into these priorities that we're about to share with you you won't agree with them all we don't all agree with them all we're still working towards consensus but what I'm about to show you tonight is our best consensus as of 5:00 o'clock tonight I say five o'clock because we met with the principals at five o'clock and they brought us some feedback that's probably going to send us back to the budget drawing board tomorrow that's why we call these drafts our principals got some feedback from their teachers that may adjust what we talked with about the board but this will give you a pretty good idea first I'd like to talk to you about what budget option ascend means for our students this

053means that we would target class sizes at the kindergarten level of 22 or fewer right now our class size target is 25 or fewer at kindergarten but you know we have some kindergarten who at 30 and 31 I'm sorry to say this essential budget would target our grades 1 through 4 at 25 or fewer and our intermediate and set middle schools would be targeted at 28 or fewer this budget would also increase the time that our students have in art music physical education related artists I use I'm gonna back up a moment we use the word target 25 or fewer 28 or fewer because we're not going to use the word cap it's an unrealistic term things change quickly and we can only aim at the target you know if that 26th student walks in

054the 4th grade I'm not going to drop everything and hire a teacher but we are going to work very hard and we've prepared a budget that would allow us to meet these targets the essential budget would also allow us to retain and attract high quality teachers with salaries that becomes slowly and incrementally a little better each year over the course of eight years to try to do some catching up with our counterparts and finally this budget would increase our support staff to help meet our students needs that's a general overview but I promise we'll get more specific what about the improvs budget well same class sizes at the kindergarten level but the improvs budget would have the target for our intermediate fifth in sixth grade as 25 or fewer rather than 28 in the first

055budget it would also add even more support staff to support our students and would allow more opportunities for student involvement especially at the middle school level and finally a general overview of the optimal budget again no changes for K 5/6 excuse me k5 6 but this optimal budget we have our middle school classes at 25 or fewer we would increase support staff even more to support our students learning needs and we would provide more opportunities at the middle level at the high school level for our students after school now that gives you a broad overview of what this budget means in general but let's get more specific about each of these budgets and let's go back to that essential budget this budget would generate 7.35 million dollars each year for the next eight years what

056would we do with those funds well first of all those nine Elementary Teachers I mentioned that we've already added this school year to get some of our class sizes more reasonable at the k4 level we'd keep them it would also add a special education preschool teacher we would add 11 more K for teachers to meet those targets of 22 or fewer kindergarten and 25 or fewer at first through fourth grade we would add for intermediate school teachers to reach that target of 20 eight or fewer you might say wow that doesn't sound too good of course right now our minute intermediate classes have 31 and 32 so moving to 28 would be an improvement this would have ten and a half related arts teachers art teacher's music teachers PE teachers this would allow us to

057have full-time related art staff in each of our elementary schools instead of sharing a music teacher between two elementary schools going back and forth holding programs on different nights we would have a dedicated music art and PE teacher in each of our elementary schools we would also manage to hang on to the dancers that we just hired at the elementary level in January perhaps you heard how fortunate we were to be one of the very few districts in the state of Indiana to receive an $800,000 Lilly grant for counseling and that's thanks to our counseling staff who worked so hard to get that grant part of why we got that grant is because our counselors are serving way more students than is reasonable and so Lilly has given us this grant and for the first

058year they are supporting with these two Elementary counselors but as the grant moves on the school district needs to pick up the salaries of those two Elementary counselors this essential budget also includes increasing our instructional coaches by three positions now people say or instructional coaches and why are those important to kids well I don't know about you but when I try to engage in professional learning or not trying again at being a superintendent I don't benefit much from going off site and attending a workshop yeah I get fired up for one day and I come back and I'm all fired up and then three weeks later nothing really has changed because that's not how adults learn and change teaching is extremely demanding and sophisticated and it's changed quite a bit over the years we're fortunate

059that we do have some instructional coaches all across our district who help our teachers in the classroom while they're teaching get better at what they do now this model has been something that we've used for many years and our teachers are clamoring for more support of instructional coaches by adding the three instructional coach positions we would be able to provide our existing teachers even as good as they are with the opportunity to continue to grow and we talked about attracting new teachers it's not easy to be a new teacher there are no mentoring programs in place anymore in the state of Indiana as there once were and we know those new teachers need support and a master teacher who knows what it's like to be in the classroom can provide that support and so that's

060why adding three instructional coaches is a priority for us this essential budget would also add 11 kindergarten assistants even if we get our class sizes 222 or fewer you've ever been in a kindergarten class you know that many of our youngsters don't come to school ready to learn they maybe haven't had the opportunity to attend a preschool or have those enriched experiences that some other youngsters have had some of them don't really know how to behave in a social environment it's not that they are not great kids they're fabulous kids but they need our help learning how to engage in school and that's one of the points that we think is important about providing instructional assistance we would also add eight special education assistants again we have students who have special needs they're just as

061smart as other kids that they learn differently and learning can be more challenging for them so they require a little extra support we would add for English language learner assistance not sure how many of you are aware but in our school system we have students who speak more than 70 different languages at home as their first language then it come to our schools and they don't know a word of English yet you can imagine what it's like to have 30 youngsters in a classroom and one who doesn't speak English that's why we need some assistance to support us in addition to those we already have this budget would also add a media center assistant one building technology technician as as well as a district technology application specialist you know our tech department does a fabulous

062job but we haven't been able to add staff they're just like we haven't been able to add staff anywhere across the district and so they need more support to help us you will notice on this essential budget that there are no building leads needs listed here this referendum is not about adding to our buildings or renovating our buildings you'll also know you're not going to see any administrators or administrative salaries listed on this that's important to remember let's talk about how this essential budget would affect our middle school and high school students we were able at the beginning of this school year to add eight middle school teachers as well as one and a half high school teachers this budget would allow us to keep those teachers it would also add for middle school teachers

063to reduce class sizes recall that the essential budget targets class sizes of 28 or fewer in our middle school classes you may not be aware if you don't have a middle schooler but we have many menu well over thirty right now this budget would add a middle school special ed teacher a high school special ed teacher five more high school classroom teachers a high school counselor and a high school fan teacher it would also add an additional English language learner assistant we mentioned on this budget that this allows us to keep our teachers salaries moving in the direction of the market competitive pay I want to say a word here about our extracurricular activities now some people don't agree that this is an important or essential item but I need you to be aware that

064every coach every sponsor every club sponsor in our district who's fortunate enough to receive a stipend to sponsor those important after-school activities not a one of them has received a race since 2008 nothin we simply have not been able to increase what they earn so whatever the yearbook sponsor was earning back in 2008 9 that's exactly what he or she is earning today we believe that we need to be more competitive our coaches at Avon high school are the lowest paid coaches in our conference and we don't think that's right now you'll also see some things here for the middle school you'll see the importance we believe of adding assistant coaches or our middle school football team and our mono school track right why is that more important than anything else those are two teams

065that we don't cut students for we think anybody who wants to play football and anybody who wants to run track the field ought to be able to participate but we simply do not have enough paid coaches to manage the number of youngsters who want to be involved and we really like to keep as many kids involved as possible at the middle level now some people have said well that sounds good Maggie but what about adding middle school soccer or baseball before the last referendum you were thinking about adding baseball and softball and you know I'd love to add all that and more but as we talked with our coaches and as we've recognized the important role that ajaa plays and providing youth sports in our community as well as our many soccer programs in our

066community our coaches and our athletic administrators have said we probably need to focus on what we currently do and try to do it better before we add something new right now we have more than 50 clubs at the middle schools and a name on high school the teachers sponsor without a of compensation and these are clubs that help kids stay connected to school we know that participation in after-school activities community service Girl Scouts Boy Scouts plugs Band Orchestra choir sports athletics we know that that's a predictor of a higher GPA and a better chance of graduation so we think these after-school activities are important we love the fact that our teachers sponsor 50 clubs without being paid and that involves more than two thousand kids every year we don't really think that's right and so

067this essential budget would include some additional dollars to pay teachers for that now we've told you what this essential budget means for our students but what does it mean for our taxpayers this slide here explicitly mentioned what the essential budget would mean for people who own homes in washington tension if you look across the very top line of this draft budget you'll see the market value of various homes one hundred thousand on the paper on the far left you'll see a highlighted column of one hundred and seventy two thousand dollars six hundred and seventeen dollars and then you'll see some others that second column is highlighted because just last Thursday the Hendricks County Auditor was able to share with us the average market value of a home in a month the average market value of

068a home in Avon is one hundred and seventy two thousand six hundred and seventeen dollars so we think that's a good example to share it may not be the one that matches your home but it's a good example to share of how the budget would impact these tax payers now many of you may not realize that we don't pay taxes on the full market value of our home so if you follow along the column that's highlighted with the home typical or average on you can see that homeowners receive a number of deductions there's a homestead deduction of $45,000 a supplemental deduction of forty four thousand dollars and a mortgage deduction if this homeowner carries a mortgage of three thousand dollars so when we figure out the impact a referendum would have we're not figuring it

069out based on one hundred and seventy two thousand we're figuring it out based on seventy nine thousand nine hundred and fifty one dollars and you can see that the essential budget would increase for any homeowner 27 point forty seven cents per $100 of assessed valuation that makes my eyes roll I don't know what that means so we've gone ahead and we've figured it for each of those homeowners you can see that for the average homeowner in Avon that means that he or she will pay $18.30 more performant for the essential budget or $219 and sixty six cents for annually for this budget now I wish this was a straight math calculation I wish we could all look at that one hundred thousand dollar home and say Oh hundred thousand dollar home seven dollars and fifty

070cents per month if I just double that that would be right for a two hundred thousand dollar home it doesn't work like that the formula is far more complicated and it depends on what deductions you get so we want all of us to be able to calculate accurately what this would mean for us and we will have a tax calculator available on our website so that people can see exactly what it would mean but we wanted to provide some examples tonight and we thought using the average home would be helpful but that's the impact on the average home of the essential budget let's talk about the impact of the improves budget 1.11 No I'm sorry and jumping the gun this is the improves budget and rather than raising 7.3 million dollars annually this would raise

071eight point six six million dollars in your and as a reminder the improved version includes everything we talked about in the essential budget and it adds three more teachers for intermediate class size reduction because remember the improves budget takes those fifth and sixth grade classes down from twenty eight which is the target in the essential budget to twenty five it adds an intermediate counselor to element I'm sorry no wonder there were sorting perplexed looks in the audience thank you mrs. Teresa this budget would also add to elementary special education teachers for intermediate school interventionists as we talked about in the previous budget and an additional technology building technician again I want to root I want to emphasize that this budget includes everything in the essential Plus these items now hop out at the middle and

072I swirled this budget would add another middle school special ed teacher another high school special ed teacher or or high school classroom teachers a high school counselor it would add five middle school special education teaching assistants to middle school interventionists and some additional athletic coaching positions at Avon high school again that's what it means for kids what's the impact on the taxpayer the improved budget would add thirty two point three nine cents per $100 of assessed valuation the last project recall was twenty seven point four cents for seven cents this is thirty two point three nine cents again let's use that consistent example of the average home as of 2017 as valued at one hundred seventy two thousand six hundred and seventeen dollars same deductions and this means that the taxpayer would page $21.58 per

073month or two hundred and fifty eight dollars ninety six cents per year let's move on to the optimal budget everything in the essential budget everything in the improvs budget but now at the intermediate level we're having some additional extracurricular activities we do have some clubs for our fifth and sixth grade students but we'd love to see even more opportunities for kids to be engaged outside of school the optimal budget however has a more significant impact on our mill and high school classes remember that this optimal budget takes those target middle school class sizes from twenty eight in our essential and improves budget down to twenty five that's why we would add for middle school teachers three and a half new high school teachers now this is the part where people say now you have talked

074about target class size k-8 but you've not mentioned the high school high school is a little trickier we have I don't know mr. shockwave 150 different classes probably more than that Oh way more than that and the classes vary from maybe in the low 20s to sum up into the high 30s or 40s rest assured that mr. Shockley and his staff as we have analyzed what we need to add for the high school is addressing class size and curricular offerings making sure we're offering the full breadth of curriculum at our high school students need this optimal budget would also add to middle school music assistance six more interventionists at the middle school to high school support staff not for the classroom think about the high school with over 3,000 students and many many employees we

075need some office support to support that this would also add more clothes at the middle school it would even add an activity bus four days a week at the middle school for our youngsters who need to stay after school for extra help for study tables for music for band for sports or any club because that's a real obstacle for middle school students to be involved after school transportation home we'd love to have this at the high school level but at least if the high school many of our students are driving but we'd love to have the opportunity for more of our middle school students to participate it would also add some additional Club opportunities that Avon high school now some of our staff has said which clubs what clubs would you add whatever activities would

076you add how much would the stipends increase those are negotiated items with our teachers union so we cannot sit here and say the newspaper sponsors stipend would go up this much but again our administrators have worked hard to include an amount of dollars that will help us become more competitive and add some opportunities for our students but we can't be too much - it's more specific than that so we've talked about the impact on the taxpayers of the essential budget and the improvs budget what would be the impact of the optimal budget life it would add thirty six point three seven cents per $100 of assessed evaluation using the same example of the average home in Avon that taxpayer would pay $24 twenty three cents more a month or $290 seventy seven cents a year

077keep in mind you are never going to hear me say well the referendum will only cost but this many trips to Applebee's or this may I'm not going to do that because we all have homes that are valued differently some people don't carry a mortgage and it doesn't matter what's happening to the average taxpayer what matters is what's happening to you and we want you to know exactly how much any of these referendum options would cost you I have to emphasize to you that these are three draft budgets ultimately the school board will decide what type of budget we will advance in a referendum it could be one of these three budgets or they may modify this and suggest we make some changes based on the feedback that we're getting tonight and throughout the the

078days ahead to make a good decision our board wants your feedback our board is listening very very carefully so when will they decide as I mentioned we have a special board meeting scheduled January 29th we prints night at 7 o'clock and it will be a fat meeting where I anticipate the board will pass a resolution for some dollar amount it may not be exactly what you see tonight but it will be something certainly based very closely on the information that they've gathered and why are we being so careful we want to be thoughtful about what we're asking our taxpayers to support you know we have struggled through these priorities we have debated and debated them we don't all agree on everything that's up here or constantly revising because why because we know this is a

079must-win for our community so we need to ask for what we need sometimes I ask myself I go through this budget over and over again and I ask myself if including this one thing would mean we'd fail would I take it out but it's what I'm going to continue to ask myself I'd like to know your opinion about this I hope you'll speak up tonight and our small group and I hope that you'll share your opinions with any of us here tonight especially those who have been intimately involved in developing these priorities in summary what do we hope you'll remember tonight as you exit into our small group discussion we will be asking our community's support of general fund referendum primarily to reduce class size to retain great teachers and to support our students academic

080learning needs we won't use referendums money to build the renovate or add on to our schools we won't fund administrative positions and I have to tell you we have some serious administrative needs I mentioned earlier that today we have 1343 more students than we did back in 2009 10 and 6 fewer administrators nobody feels that quite like a non high school it's a bit and they do a fabulous job but we have the same number of administrators any of our high school as we did 700 kids ago we are making a commitment not to use referendum funds to add administrative positions we want these funds to go directly and closely to our students we also know we have serious technology needs you heard about the tax caps you heard about the money you don't have

081to repair our roofs or buy new buses or support transportation or technology but we simply don't feel we can go sup to the public and ask for more funds for technology I will say to you that if a referendum doesn't pass than today the way things are right now this is as good as it's ever going to be in Avon Community Schools and I don't think any of us think it's good enough we cannot continue with 1.3 percent new money from the state of Indiana and don't don't let me give you the impression I'm critical the state of Indiana they're doing the very best they can we have wonderful legislators who we communicate with quite a bit and they're trying very hard I don't agree necessarily with their priorities they don't agree with the budget

082that they passed because it doesn't keep pace with inflation and I think that our state should support public schools at the rate of inflation before they do anything else but they're good people doing hard work but we know about meager 1.3 percent that we're getting didn't keep pace with last year's inflation so without making people afraid and without fear mongering I have to tell you that things will get worse class sizes caseloads will get higher we will not be able to keep pace with our employees and many of you have said to us you know what Maggie you got to be explicit with our unity about what exactly we will lose if the referendum doesn't pass and I promise you we will do so we are so busy right now trying to patoot deal with

083these budget priorities and present clear information to the public that until the board decides what we're going to go for I will not be able to be as clear as I know our voters need us to be in order to be very very explicit about what happens if it doesn't pass but I pledge to you we will be very specific what happens down you know we've got a lot of support in this community I feel it every day I can beautifully nail some wonderful compliments all the time about what's happening in our schools but you know what most of our parents are not registered to vote I can look at this audience and say if your typical of Avon Washington Township resident most of you are registered to vote so your opinions really important but

084not if you're not registered to vote we know who's registered to vote we have voters registration documents in our office I happen to know who's a high fidelity voter I am since I moved to Avon that means I go to the polls all the time my husband isn't I hope he doesn't hear me say that he tends to go more often - the bigger elections but we have to get all of our of our taxpayers register to vote by April none in order for their voices to be heard and that includes our high school students who will be 18 we need to get them registered to vote and the unlined link is here it couldn't be easier we will have part of our campaign will certainly be and get out the vote campaign our high

085school student government students are excited about this and our high school teachers are excited about doing a better job not just for this day but in general getting voters to be engaged so our challenge is not getting your support as parents and community members our challenge are all the people who go to the pulse and just don't know they don't know what we've done to be more efficient with their tax dollars they don't know what a great job Avon teachers and students are doing they tend to not be aware because maybe they're over 60 and they're not connected to our school right now but you know who votes to the polls - ality voters people who are over 60 they're the ones who are registered and so we want to reach out to them and

086help them understand how we have been so vigilant protecting their tax dollars and how important their home value is and how it's connected to school quality I look at my home as my 401k that's my retirement and if the school system starts to decline in quality I know I'm not going to be able to eventually sell my home in Avon for what we paid for it and so that's what will be helping our community understand so help us get people registered to vote that's one way you can help us I also want to speak to the fact of why people don't register to vote and why people don't go to the polls I had a great conversation with 12 of her very very involved PTO mums and dads a few weeks ago and as we

087talked about this eight of them acknowledge that they have never voted that they are not registered to vote these are people who care about their kids care about their schools care about the community we talked a little bit about why they've not been engaged some of them said they don't really like to go to the polls in May they don't like to go to a primary where you have to say on the Democrat or under a Republican you know what I don't like that either you can go and just ask for a referendum ballot about that you don't want to vote for anything else you don't have to or I have to admit sometimes I go in to vote and I don't know everybody on the ballot I'm not as well informed as I should

088be you know what if you're not well informed about town councilor the tower's report or whatever you can go and vote for one thing we try to make it as easy as possible for people to be brave enough to go and vote and Hendricks County's making it really easy for us starting with this May primary they are going to centralized voting centers and so I can never remember am I supposed to vote in this place or that place this church or that building I can never seem to remember but now there will be 26 polling places all throughout Hendricks County you can go to whichever one you want here in Washington Township there are six that will be voting locations Avon United Methodist Church Crossroads Church Plainfield Christian Party Baptists are separate Lutheran and the

089American Legion Post you go to whichever one you want or you're like me and you're afraid you're gonna get busy that day you can vote early and we'll have information about how you can do that those who are at college right now they can vote absentee and we'll have information about that but remember who is going to speak for this referendum it's not the taxpayers who will speak it is the voters who go to the home on May 8th those are the people who will make this decision now right after the school board meets on Monday January 29th a pact will be formed a political action committee and there will be co-chairs and a treasurer and a yard sign coordinator and the letters to the editor coordinator and senior citizen coordinator and a fundraiser coordinator

090and it get out the election day vote for all these different things how do we know this because other school systems have done this before us and we've done our research we've been looking into this for a long time we know that there is one similar quality every one of those schools that has passed a general fund referendum I've spoken to all their superintendents and I've said to them what was the secret what helped you especially the second time around and they said having hundreds of pack volunteers so maybe you don't want to get involved on it yard sign coordinator level maybe you just want to host a coffee with five of your neighbors and will be happy to come and meet you or maybe you'll want to ask us to do a presentation at

091the homeowners association or maybe you'll come and help us knock on doors of registered voters in the spring but there is a way for everyone to be involved and we will need hundreds of volunteers the tiniest little district that I spoke to the past referendum told me that they had more than 200 volunteers actively working so we hope you'll get involved I also want to emphasize one important point that this is a political camp and it is governed by state laws one of the most important laws that I previously mentioned is that we may not use district resources to promote a referendum we may not hold building meetings in our buildings the pack will have to meet elsewhere we may not use school email our employees will not be able to put anything even on

092their personal email during their work hours there are a couple of exceptions the superintendent associate superintendent assistant superintendent Director of Finance and the school board they promote the referendum during our working hours but no one else made promoted or opposed it during working hours or using resources of the school you know what I think this is a pretty good law it's new since the last time we conducted a referendum I like this law we shouldn't be using school time to talk about a referendum with kids you have to urge us to get done we are going to be squeaky clean and ethical in the way we promote this referendum work our students watch what we do and we want them to feel proud of how we conduct our political campaign the day after the board

093approves a resolution I will be in written communication with every one of our employees so they know how to handle it what happens to the bus driver what a parent says hey so so what do you think about this referendum well they're going to say I'm not allowed to comment in an in an opposition or in favor of the referendum while I run the school duty I can direct you to where you can get some additional information but I'm not allowed to comment we'll be helping our employees understand how to handle that sure our employees can use their personal email their social media accounts their own time to promote or oppose a referendum they can certainly promote it or pose it after school hours this is a good law it's going to allow us to

094conduct a great campaign several of you have asked us happen watch for information about a pack call-out think about ways that you can use your circle of influence particularly to get people to register to vote them now at this time we are going to break and go into some classrooms people will direct you some of you may not choose to say and that's fine but people will direct you to some classrooms you can go to whichever classroom you want and we're going to spend about 20 minutes we're gonna put a timer on spend about 20 minutes with the administrators getting your input your questions your comments your concerns and then we do that because it's hard to walk up in an auditorium and say what you think in front of everybody it also would take

095us too long we want every single voice to be heard so after 20 minutes we'll all come back into this venue and each of new starter will come to the podium and share what he or she heard now dr. may our intermediate West principal has the hardest job because he has to go first but then the next principal will come up and say well I'm not going to repeat anything dr. LeMay said but I'm going to add these things and so after about 20 minutes we'll come back in here you'll be able to hear what people at your table said and you'll be able to hear what other people said most importantly our board will be able to hear what everyone said so before we do that let me just remind you that I am

096willing and our staff and our pack committee will be willing to come and speak to any group no matter how big or small I'm having a lunch later this week with five senior citizens who have reached out to me and I'm very very happy to do that we want you can understand that's our goal I'm not afraid of any questions anybody can ask we want to conduct a transparent process I also want to conclude by saying and this is very hard to out I am optimistic and I am terrified I am terrified because I know what will happen to our school system and for our children if we don't pass a referendum in May but I'm optimistic because we have a great story to tell I've been superintendent for just about six years and we've

097done everything we could to avoid this moment this is not my idea of a great way to spend our time I wanted to avoid this and I could we've done everything we could and now we've run out of options I'm also optimistic because I don't feel alone I have felt alone many times the superintendent of a district that's facing serious financial challenges but I don't feel that way anymore and then if we start talking about a referendum people started saying thank you thank you for doing something I'm with you I want to help I want to be involved this time I understand so I do feel optimistic but I can only be optimistic if we get people registered to vote and if every one of you watching at home or here tonight can stay involved

098informed and committed now let's take a break order the classrooms thank you