001e e good evening everyone Welcome to our school board meeting um for all those who are able if you wouldn't mind please standing for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation God indivisible andice all okay we have six board members present tonight five are in the room and one is on Zoom Logan could you please identify yourself virtually Logan are you there he says he can't hear anything select there give us just a second try again testing testing testing testing it's not on our can you hear me there we go yes we can hear you can you hear me Logan I'm talking Logan can you hear us okay I think so hello says he can't hear hear you guys
002hello if you're communicating with him will let him know that we can hear him Jason thank you and if he can check his audio my audio is fully on and working on my laptop with other functions well let me just reset my headset one second I was going to say the other option is for somebody to zoom into him on like your phone can you hear me now and see if he can he I guess can talk and still not hear you how about now we may have to proceed without me and I will enjoy from YouTube with our audience how about now Logan any luck there check one two nope I can't hear anything okay I think unless you have any just from a phone we can try well see if he can hear
003if it's on his end it might not matter if you off quorum to could proceed with the budget then I I think it's okay if I just follow along with on YouTube I don't want to delay this [Music] okay okay I I think we also do have to have him on video in order for a v vote to count Mike if you if that recollection is correct should be fine can still be on the zoom it would just be the audio from the okay so can we see his video now we just aren't seeing it okay okay just wanted to verify you want to try a phone as one last option Nick is that what you're suggesting okay I'm gonna give that a minute because if it I I can hear I can hear you
004now I can hear you okay okay Logan my birthday is May 27th what is my birthday May 27 very good okay there I I'll show I'll prove it's me there you go there we go okay you persevere all right thank you for your patience everyone uh each meeting we'd like to share our vision mission and core beliefs just to remind us of why we we are here um bcs's vision is that bcse is the choice to learn work and play our mission is to develop expert Learners by partnering with our community to invest in people and our core beliefs are that we can all rise to the challenge of high expectations that learning is most effective when we have Choice flexibility and see relevance we Thrive when our physical social and psychological needs are met
005and our community and School District are stronger when we partner with one another we flourish because of the diversity in variability in our community and last but not least considering uh a big election coming next week our democracy and Democratic institutions are strengthened by civic-minded citizens thank you first presentation Dr hack good evening Mrs welon Dr Phillips and board thank you very much for letting us present about an amazing opportunity we had just a few nights ago so if you've been around me or been on my team before sometimes I say these words I have a great idea and sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don't but this is one that definitely has panned out over seven years so I'm excited to turn things over to some fabulous people who do amazing things inside
006our schools and for this very special night good evening and thank you uh for having us tonight this um is a fun thing and I'm going to take just briefly because I know we're on time the why of this from the C4 standpoint is is that we are challenged uh by the state and federal to help uh young women move into stem fields and this started uh about eight or nine years ago with just a camp we did and then it started what happens if we have girls and and it's led into that this could not happen without our volunteers this could not happen without Dita Harden and she's going to speak and tell you a little bit about it and then after that we're also going to let a couple of students that were
007students uh in fifth and sixth grade but also have come back and helped and uh just to let you know we had close to 60 high school student young ladies that wanted to help Friday night and stayed until 9:30 to help us on this so it gives us some of things so like to introduce Dita hello and thank you for having me this evening um superc excited about this opportunity I've had an opportunity to work with it for since 2017 and like Dr hack had mentioned um the why is for our fifth and sixth grade girls just to see themselves in a stem field being able to uh experience fields that they normally wouldn't have an opportunity to do um and so that partnership is there with the C4 program um we had average anywhere
008from 120 to 130 girls um there's usually over a 100 volunteers there I'm just like Dr hack said there was 60 high school girls there and um we have Community Partners there's the Columbus Robotics and then also cumins and then our bcse employees and then community members so it's a huge opportunity just to be able to have everyone in the community involved um the wind we normally have it the third Friday of every October they're at um Columbus North in the C4 Wing as I mentioned we have Community Partners each year cumins and Columbus robotics bring brings in their robots and just Hands-On experiences so when the girls first come in they register they can participate in these activities there and then they have dinner we bring them back into the cafeteria and we start
009off with a song just to pump them up and everything and then we um dismiss them to go into their actual sessions this year one of the really neat things was normally we offer eight sessions this year we were allow um able to offer nine actual sessions and so we break the girls down to where they can participate in three [Music] on Friday October 25th bartholomy Consolidated School Corporation thank you slides AR can I go ahead and move go forward or back forward oh okay I apologize okay this is where we we're talking about the community events so as you can see in the pictures from previous years the girls are there in the cafeteria they're experiencing the Hands-On things that are in the actual area uh one year Toyota was there with her VR
010and so the girls just they get pumped up before they ever go back to their sessions it's really just cool to fill the energy that happens in the room itself um these are the past events that we've had since 2007 and you can see the um the attendance of the participants that were there and usually we try to find a theme that just really resonates what's going on and how we can focus on getting those girls involved into the Sim events we have the yes we can I'm not going to read all of them them for you but each and every one of them this year we had she Rose of stem uh in front of you you see a poster from this year and we can just um this year's theme was just seeing
011how you yourself can be a hero in stem um regardless if you thought that you could um but we wanted to be able to give them that experience and I think through some of the feedback that we've already got from the parents the girls absolutely loved um the event and wish that they could have an opportunity to have it a week long um so yeah we have lots of Community Partners that are involved in our sessions and they are listed here bcsf Tony London cumins Toyota Project Lead the Way Heritage fund Columbus robotics Indiana University uh the Rotary Club and then uh Little Caesars and of course C4 and bcsc so through the community we receive monetary support we also receive um Partnerships to where we have volunteers um they um see4 prints are posters
012for us the bcsc Food Services is involved and then this year we went with hotbox pizza and they ended up giving us a discount for the pizza so the community itself is act very involved in the the program itself the process um the planning as I mentioned there the estimated cost is about $5,700 each year we do receive the grant funding and that comes mainly from uh cumins the Rotary Club and then um bcsf and the leadership is the C4 teachers and we do have an on-site nurse um the awareness we create a flyer and send that out to the parents and have a registration for that and then the uh volunteers receive a confirmation there's several opportunities for the parents to receive confirmation and just information about the event the logistics of the event
013and then always after the event we have surveys and then I would like to actually back up and share the video from Friday evening's event so that you can see the excitement that actually takes place on Friday October 25th Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation proudly presented girl up shos of stem an inspiring event designed for fifth and sixth grade girls to explore non-traditional roles in science technology engineering and math with more than 180 girls in attendance the evening kicked off with excitement as students gathered to meet mentors and role models from various stem Fields the event was filled with Hands-On stem activities led by passionate volunteers from cumins Columbus Robotics and the local community participants were able to dive into Fields like architecture biomed Sciences Culinary Arts Engineering fashion and textiles graphic design Veterinary and Welding
014through interactive sessions these young girls not only explored career paths but also discovered their potential to make a difference in fields traditionally filled by men the goal of gr up is to inspire Empower and equip the next generation of shirros to pursue their dreams regardless of gender Norms or barriers the event was made possible through collaboration with BCS C4 program the bartholomy Consolidated School Foundation Columbus robotics Columbus Sunrise Rotary Club cumins Toyota material and handling and the Tony London company special thanks to these organizations for supporting our community's youth girl up shos of stem where dreams meet opportunity and together we learn [Music] uh first off I would like to thank bcsc and Josh and his crew they always do a great job of highlighting successful activities inside of bcsc and do want to say
015thank you publicly to that we say it privately a lot at this time I'd like to bring up two young ladies and let them introduce themselves and tell them a little bit about their experiences with a girl up both as a fifth and sixth grader and as their high school years hello my name is Kaye Koy um I'm currently a junior at Columbus North I am in my third year of the C4 biomedical Sciences pathway I take medical interventions with Mrs Samantha Moro um medical terminology with Mrs Stacy horn and human anatomy and physiology with Mr lassos sarz After High School I plan to attend Purdue University to study either Radiology or Nuclear Pharmacy um hello my name is Danielle Ashton I'm a senior at Columbus East High School um I'm currently in my third
016year of precision Machining with my teacher Mr Foley and then I take a culinary arts class with chef krie and then I'm also in a cad cam class class which is an advanced manufacturing class with uh Mr Foley as well um my plans for after high school I'm stuck between two things right now uh I plan to either do something with manufacturing or something with zoology but I don't really know how to pick so I attended girl up when I was in the 5th grade in 2018 and that was the only year that I was able to go um I remember the construction and graphic design design sessions the most um in the construction session we built a playhouse uh we got to use power tools like drills and nail guns um through grow up
017I learned that I'm not quite cut out for construction um I'm no longer allowed near scaffolding um um I'm really passionate about stem and supporting future women in stem uh so when I was presented with this opportunity to um help with grow up this year I was I was beyond excited uh this is my first year helping um and volunteering at the event and I definitely want to do it again the biggest takeaway I got from this event was seeing that the work that we were doing was genuinely um impacting these young girls I feel that women in stem are very underrepresented um I want little girls to know that they can like the color pink and still be an engineer um grow up is such an amazing event um and it exposes young girls
018to careers in stem doing girl up in fifth grade inspired me to choose a stem career and now I'm on my way to a career in the medical field um I participated and grow up in 2017 or 2018 when I was in sixth grade uh something like an activity that stuck along the way with me that I did when I was in grup was we got to use like actual welders and like weld a little unicorn onto a little stand and I'm pretty sure they did that this year as well um another thing that we also got to do when I was attending it uh we got to code our own little uh ladybug game on I think it was called scratch and we got to put it on a little USB drive and take
019it home with us so then we could play on it if we had a little computer at home um I love being able to show people people new things so when I was introduced with this I was pretty excited uh I've helped with girlup for three years now uh I think this program is really amazing for young girls because it really puts them out there and shows them everything that they can truly learn and just gives them so many different opportunities that they can see for the future that maybe they didn't know they already had any questions questions do you [Laughter] have any questions comments Logan do you have anything you're okay okay yeah I just I would just like to say thank you for taking the time to help help some of the younger
020kids uh fifth and sixth graders largely don't have any idea what they want to be when they grow up and so the two of you and all the other kids that help them kind of take those blinders and close them up a little bit and find some direction uh it's it's better that you help them than most of us adults because they don't want to really listen to another adult tell them what to do but when they see that uh kids that especially kids that might have gone to the same elementary school or middle school than them you know there's a lot of trust that they put in you so I appreciate the work that you and all the other volunteers did to help them understand that they can do just about anything they want
021to do if they pick the right path and and picking a college is hard so the best thing I can tell both of you is to take your time and uh really take a good look at all the schools that you can to really understand where you're going to get the best value thank you both for your presentations my my daughter wanted to um volunteer and it was all filled up for her area like every girl I think wanted to help these young these young kids learn it was it was pretty amazing to see and um I thank you Josh for making sure a not so flattering video of me made it into that cut I really appreciate that I was there on Friday it was a really good event and what was nice is
022there were a couple of girls that came in very unsure you know you could see like some Tears in their eyes and by the end they had a fantastic time and were very excited about what they learned and like there was just this spark that you got to see and some kids that got to try something new for the first time and it's like those things matter to kids for sure so the role you all played to Jason's point is a really big one and I think just continuing to grow this I mean your growth in this program is really pretty phenomenal so very well done for a very low budget I mean you just do a really great job thank you thank you and we we mentioned it briefly but it wouldn't be possible
023without our teachers because both the stem teachers at the elementary and then the C4 teachers and just working and making those connections and supporting the young ladies and the uh young girls to be able to reach their potential so thank you to everybody boiler up by the way okay next we have Schoolboard member reports um Mr Schultz I'll start with you do you have anything nothing nothing from my committee uh I believe ccic meets uh next week thank you Mr nellan I I have a couple um the high ability strategic plan and met for the first time this year and for the first time with our new leader Amy Ellsbury um and it it the high ability so far at this point this year we have 1,36 students involved um I think K through 12
024um and I believe it includes kindergarten also um and I will add one of the creative things sometimes um in school systems people are required to be creative um Amy through this program has money for for professional development but there aren't Subs available so she's working the professional development into the the four professional development days as much as they can so um so she hasn't given up on professional development she found a way to repackage it okay oh and my other one sorry um the council for Youth Development met on October 2nd um two I'll highlight two things from that meeting one is this was we met soon after um spark Spirit Week um and so the high school through this through the council for Youth Development there are they develop High School leaders which
025are called youth ambassadors and the youth ambassadors went to the middle schools um Northside Central andh Houser and um worked with 706 students at those School schools with different events during the week and um and had sessions with them about how important it was to find what the spark was in their life to inspire them so it's another case where it's older students working with younger students which is great uh couple quick items of note from the school Foundation the school Foundation just met with uh its new executive director deepy last Tuesday um the the school Foundation is currently working on a new grant program to go out to teachers um that will replace uh donors choose as was used in the past and that will certainly be the first priority after the uh Wizards
026game so the goal of the foundation is to have those Grant applications out to teachers uh soon after semester two starts and then lastly uh the Harlem Wizards um nove Sunday November 10th at Columbus East 2:00 to 4:00 plenty of tickets uh still available bcsf stars.org and uh many thanks to those that have sponsored and donated things to the game so far and and certainly still space for more uh donors and don't forget to get your tickets Sunday November 10th 2 to 4 at East thank you um the county Redevelopment commission meets in November so I don't have anything to report today Mr Stenner not tonight thank you Mr major so the first one I have is the Health Trust Health Trust met uh I'll just give one or two really big highlights I know
027there's a presentation later on so uh enrollment was about 1% up or less so it's pretty flat it looks like uh uh you know claims were up slightly and thees slightly and I guess the biggest thing is uh for all of you out there please take advantage of Dr Klein and using the clinic uh for for all teachers and families of teachers and um administrators janitors cafeteria uh bus drivers so uh the other one is the Columbus Redevelopment commission they had an amazing three hour meeting uh most of their meetings are usually less than an hour so it was uh very long lots of Engagement about the downtown entrance Plaza uh there was also some uh talk about the downtown 2030 plan there was a significant conversation around the housing study uh there was some
028more discussion around some mixed use development that will be over near where Joe Willies was off Washington Street and 11th Street uh then some more discussion about public works and and then there there's always a list of things that uh they like to just highlight but that's those are the big ones right there that took up about two and a half hours of the three hours of conversation so thank you all right we'll move on to Cabinet reports good evening thank you for your time and attention Dr stal Bal and I will uh present our portion of this presentation from our seats we'll have some guests come up to the podium here soon so um every year annually we give the board and the public an update on the operating referendum um are we saying
029are we doing what we said we're going to do what are the financials are the targets being met Etc so that's the purpose of tonight's presentation uh between Dr stalam and I and our guests here in a bit um as you recall back in 2020 61% of the voters approved a property tax referendum that uh was capped at uh 0.156 per $100 of assess value I'll mention that that's um actually collect less than that because that um that is capped legislatively as assessed value climbs so we actually captured a little bit less than that um each of the each of the years that has been approved as assess value continues to to uh to increase the primary purpose is to retain and recruit staff in bcse and and we'll go through some data points with
030that and and add some narratives here to bit and invest in student um and staff Safety and Security and then as you recall in the fall of 22 we dedicated 50% of the cost of Elementary stem teachers were added to to the referendum when we went to the public several years ago uh we were very open and honest about uh the our efforts to be transparent with these funds and if you go to our website uh there's a tab at the top it says referendum 2020 and all the data there is maintained on an annual basis at least um all of our financials uh there's a couple of screenshots there at the bottom um is a very detailed explanation of what revenue is brought in and how it's spent and then the the larger graphic
031there is a representation of our metrics and uh what we said we're going to do with the funds and what our targets are that we'll go through in some detail so again that is all available updated on the website if you go to uh BSC schools.org and look to the top right hand side there's a button that's clearly labeled for referendum 2020 this time I'll turn this over to Dr stalam Who will lead us on thank you Dr vosman through quarter three the operating referendum has contributed an additional $4.7 million to increased classified and certified employee salaries this year without the operating referendum bcsc would be required to reduce our existing staff costs by 5.2% as this graph demonstrates bcsc continues to outpace the state of Indiana for our average teacher salary with the support
032of the operating operating referendum without the operating referendum bcsc has demonstrated a below average salary in 2223 and just slightly above the average salary in 23 the 2324 school year in the subsequent slides the vice president of the Columbus Educators Association Mandy Keel will facilitate sharing the metrics and testimonials from our operating referendum goals as displayed on the screen we will display these metrics again at the conclusion of the presentation and answer questions about the presentation at that time so at this time uh we appreciate Mandy's support and expertise and she will continue with the presentation thank you and the rest of you can go ahead and come on up here as well and join me thank you thank you Dr stalam and Dr Boseman and thank you to the board for for having us
033here this evening in looking at teacher retention first here when we link certified teachers from the 2223 school year to the 2324 school year bcsc's retention percentage was 92% when we link staff from the 2324 school year to the 2425 school year we have increased by a percentage Point as we are now at a 93% retention rate for this current school year as Dr stalam stated earlier without the operating referendum our bcsc average teacher salary would not outpace the average teacher salary in the state of Indiana which would threaten our ability to retain teachers with us this evening are teachers Allison and Brett White who collectively have over 50 years of invaluable teaching experience here in bcsc and we are so so lucky especially as the high school basketball season is ramping up that we
034have both of them here with us this evening so we'll start with Brett first 50 years um uh thanks uh thanks for allowing me to speak tonight uh my name is Brett White um I'm currently in my 28th year of teaching overall uh my 26th year at Columbus North High School in the math department uh I was just going to speak very briefly about the importance of teacher retention within our department um you know having that consistency in our department allows us uh from year to year to look at our methods and our activities uh that we do in our classes um and see what improvements that we can make as we go from year to year um that is much more difficult to do when you start the year with you know two three
035four new teachers um so having that consistency allows us to uh carry things over from year to year without uh in some way starting fresh um another thing that I view as a positive um with a consistency a lot of times I have freshman sophomore classes um and developing that relationship with those kids as freshman and sophomores uh the fact that the teachers are still there when they're juniors and when they're seniors uh they come back to you um and so having that relationship and and having those veteran teachers that they can lean on is uh something that's very important um having that referendum money uh that we currently have has allowed us to uh to create more competitive salaries uh to encourage people to stick around in bcsc um and so for our math
036department that's allowed us to um stay more consistent the last few years uh which has been a very uh large positive for us um so that stability has really been pivotal for us to to look at our programs and uh make the the improvements that we need to make good evening I'm Allison white um I've been teaching in bcse for 26 years this is my 26th year here um both of my parents were also bcse teachers my dad had um taught at Central for 39 years and my mom taught at Taylorville for a number of years before I was born um Brett and I have a couple of daughters that have both graduated from Columbus North High School recently um um and our oldest Madison who graduated in 2021 um is currently a senior and
037pursuing her education degree as well um so this is something that's pretty near and dear to our hearts um I'm going to speak just from a personal standpoint in a family aspect um of how the referendum has helped our family um not only just with the day-to-day um expenses that you might have um but it's also helped us to contribute to our daughter's College um experience and pay um and help contribute to that a little bit um also just for our planning for retirement in the future as well um the referendum goes um you know and helps with all of that as well um it's no secret that in the last decade or so we've seen an a huge decline in the amount of people and students going into public education um and so I
038think um not only is it important for bcsc to um maintain and um keep the teachers that we have but also to entice um new new graduates who are going into the education field as well um as our daughter um you know to be competitive and to maintain a high standard for those people thank you Brett and Allison moving on to safety and training our udl framework focuses on understanding developmental assets and wellness strategies for all teachers receive professional development through various opportunities such as our udl summer Institute our book studies and our corporation-wide professional development days even as every staff member receives professional development 45% of teachers have received intentional training in developmental assets and wellness strategies as the needs of our students change this may be one metric to assess for changes in
039the future the mental health provider metric represents the number of contracted Services through external Partnerships such as those with Centerstone and Family Service due to Temporary Sr funding we were able to Triple our annual Target during the 2021 through the 2024 school years with the referendum funds we are able to maintain partner services at Double our Target with 21 during the 24 25 school year we know mental health is crucial for our students and their families and Sergeant Julie Q Smith one of our bcsc school resource officers helps provide and connect our families with these wraparound services and after attending a session with her during our last professional develop day I was personally reminded about how important SRO like Sergeant Smith are to our bcsc staff members as well that was fun time um so
040as school resource officers we spend most of our time serving three major functions in accordance with the national school resource Officers Association standard and that Triad is of course law enforcement officer we have public safety educator and informal counselor I do think it would be a surprise to most people to know that of those three as school resource officers we spend most of our time right there in that informal counselor role while we take the informal part of that pretty seriously uh we because there are moments where we have to refer out uh we do spend a lot of time engaging our students building relationships that hallway time that we get with them in the mornings and at in the cafeteria time that we get with them during the day it's invaluable to what we
041do and here's the major reason why is that when we're building these relationships we're also building trust and when you build trust you have a safer School community so while on the surface you might see us in the hallways and you know what are they doing it it's much deeper than what you're seeing right there uh something else that is happening also on a regular basis is that we communicate with Patrol Division of the Sheriff's Office and the Columbus Police Department that collaboration that's happening all the time also allows for us to keep our kids safe in that when we don't have them in school like on the weekends and when they come home from school and if there's any kind of interaction that occurs with law enforce ment we regularly communicate with uh our
042Patrol Division to make sure that we're supporting our students when they've been involved in traumatic incidents outside of school or if there's just something that we can support them on our other officers in this community are looking out for our kids in that way and they're reaching out to us and that collaboration I would say is unique to bcsc and unique to Columbus Indiana for what is going right for our kids thank you Sergeant Smith reliable transportation is important for students to engage in every instructional minute at our schools so bus safety and routing are critical components of our District's infrastructure for students the bus metrics demonstrate that we currently have zero buses that are greater than 12 years old and bcsc has 0% of driver routes unfilled our bus drivers are the first and
043last interaction for our students each day and we thank them for their service to our Corporation community and students i f first met Larry Mazy when he drove drove a bus for our Bartholomew County History tour field trip several years ago and I have since requested him as our driver for that particular trip as he also brings a wealth of knowledge about our community and its history so I welcome Larry my name is Larry Moy as it said and I have been a BCC bus driver for 10 years and uh very proud of it I love our kids and and really I think that's a solid theme with bus drivers and monitors we're here to support the school system uh as we've said by transporting our kids safely to and from school the referendum and
044I went through that process uh as a leader in the uh with the bus driver Association was very important uh primarily uh we saw out of it a bump in our wage per hour we got $2 uh uh increase per hour uh as drivers and monitors got a dollar and that was very important because we were tracking behind local communities uh in wage and we had uh folks leaving us so now what we have is the ability to go and and it has been done as the numbers indicate to uh recruit and uh uh hire uh and then retain drivers uh what that gives us are drivers assigned to permanent routes and as you all know uh a driver has a relationship with all those students that they haul and it's an important relationship that
045not only uh is there as a another counselor but also somebody that adds control to that trip to and from the the uh uh their homes and school the other major area that the drivers have benefited in our students and that is our equipment buses were old we didn't have seat belts all our new buses have seat belts this gives uh students uh an opportunity to be safe as well as uh driver control when a student is in their seat not bouncing around the bus the other piece that we have and there are several that the buses uh have had are cameras and the external cameras on the buses are important because they allow uh you to look at that 10-- foot danger zone all around the bus for loading and unloading so those are
046just a couple of ways that uh the referendum has positively impacted our students for their safety and um also additional relationship and uh the schools themselves thank thank you so much thank you Larry as this metric States bcse is proud to share that 100% of our elementary stem labs are staffed with certified teachers to provide all students with weekly Hands-On stem activities Lucy Hummer is a former Southside Mustang who who is going to share how these Elementary stem experiences have personally impacted her hello everyone my name is Lucy Hummer like she said um I'm currently a seventh grader at Central Middle School who joined in-person bcse in fourth grade um during my time in Southside Elementary stem was an important part of my week the stem program taught me to build plan and code while
047leveling the curriculum difficulty accordingly based off of our competency with engineering and coding skills which our competency kind of changed grade per grade I remember in fourth grade we definitely were not just as a class really super ready for in like incredibly difficult coding but we definitely got there by the end of 6 grade we had a really great curriculum with my teacher Miss Caitlyn yansy she was really um a great teacher and she taught us very well how to code and plan and make models while in the elementary stem classes I learned two coding languages scratch and Java and many important coding skills because of my positive experience with stem in general in sixth grade I decided to join Southside Vex robotics team when I joined it was the team's first official year and
048I had the roles of competition strategist robot robot driver documenter and robot builder it was during this robotic season that I began to experiment with more professional and advanced version of engineering from my first year in the Vex program I was also exposed to much more um like indepth versions of what we had learned before as my role in documenter I was overall exposed to every part of the competitions as like coding and building and driving which were all very important to my growth in engineering this inspired me to keep going with robotics and it also um helped me go in a middle school sorry I got a little lost there um my experiences with engineering and Robotics through the stem and Vex program have by pushing my engineering skills even inspired me to have
049possible robotics career in the future especially considering our relations with engineering type businesses in our community such as cumins and lhp I think that these opportunities for children in bcsc are incredibly important the next generation of the workforce should be exposed to Career paths that are of interest to them finally skills taught and valued in engineering and Robotics such as trial and error Drafting and planning and precision can be translated into almost any profession thereby prep preparing those involved in stem for future experiences and occupations thank [Laughter] you thank you Lucy she also happens to be a former student of mine so I'm super proud of her as we review the goals again of the operating referendum I could have easily filled this room with bcsc staff and students to speak about the positive impact
050that any number of these has had and continues to have on them directly or indirectly Additionally the referendum has allowed bcsc to recruit and retain quality staff members who bring a wealth of experience to our corporation which ultimately benefits both our students and our community as a whole and I'll finish with a focus on that word community I believe one of our CA members said it best when she shared that when our community voted in favor of the referendum in 2020 it made her feel that we are valued and appreciated for what we do every single day and I would also add that we and bcsc are forever grateful for that Community Support of our operating referendum thank you happy to answer questions you may have okay um I have one question the the one
051item on that list I don't know if I understand to the right level of detail is the trained in Wellness strategies can you say a little bit more about what the content of that training is just so I understand that correctly yeah we're gonna invite Dr Laura hack up to the podium okay it's like she knew that was her question Aon she was moving before you even that her name we were so appreciative of the PD days that have been offered within bcsc and So within the those PD days we do offer Wellness strategies and sessions for our teachers to go to so for example Brian dinks last year spoke to everyone about wellness and so we did um have that opportunity for him to do a keynote where he talked about Wellness strategies but
052then teachers could actually go into different groups different classrooms and learn more if they so choose to do that um we've also had book studies around the science of happiness and so that's been a very popular course um for our teachers to take we've had opportunities for wellness Specialists to learn from others within the corporation uh that have might have wisdom and knowledge around Wellness strategies we've had opportunities for um continued udl strategies inside the udl Institute where we focus on Wellness there for our teachers to attend and then also teachers may just take advantage on their own to go to a seminar semar go to a conference just on their own accord so we have many people um who have Wellness at the Forefront of their mind when we're thinking about teachers and students
053and then how do we continue to engage with them so that they're developed okay thank you and I'm just going to add to that on the second and third line there both Mental Health Providers and wellness strategies those are the areas we worked really hard putting this together together in 2019 thinking you know these are going to be the areas that we need to invest money for in resources in the long term um but those are really the two areas that are the needs of our students and staff have changed since 2019 obviously through the pandemic and then coming out of the pandemic so those are two areas that we are um we're actively working on those measurements and the metrics for those to to possibly come to you in the next 6 to 12
054months with some changes to those as the needs of our kids have changed so I have a question but I have a couple comments first um so you mentioned the teacher shortage I guess just to underline how important that was at the risk of getting involved in in age I I actually hired Brett White and back then when you hired teachers you Math teachers there were always fewer than other disciplines but but we would get 10 or 12 applicants and you pick the best one and we got the best one there um but in more recent years particularly in math and some other tough subjects you're excited if you get one certified applicant to apply so the fact that we're retaining teachers is is huge um and and I in terms of retaining bus drivers
055I don't know the data but I hear about other districts around that have a huge problem keep being bus routes covered and even looking at there are districts that have gone to staggered starts of Elementary because they can't get enough bus drivers um but the other piece of that I'm glad it was mentioned that the relationship that bus drivers have I that's near and dear to my heart because my connection with education was my mother was a bus driver um and and by having the same bus driver even Beyond one year the kids really do develop great relationships it's part of their school day my question and and I should probably know the answer to this but um reading the the the fund policies we got to read through before this meeting um it prompted
056this reminder in me it mentioned CPR required CPR training at one time teachers had to pay for that is that still the case did teachers pay for their own CPR training they do that's right so my question is that we might consider since that that's certainly a safety thing I wonder if it's possible to use referendum funding to pay for teachers CPR training I'll just throw that out there could that not become a PD day well it's a pretty long and it's quite a few hours I don't I don't know how that would fit in and I don't know the details I know there's cost to hiring people but it would be one more way to take a burden off teachers that you know we require this of them but by the way you have
057to pay for it well I will uh preface my question and my comment by saying um I will do my absolute best knowing that I only have this meeting and two more uh to temper my uh comments um but the one slide on uh teacher average salary um I'll save my editorializing for my comment but I've never been a real big fan I understand the average or the the necessity of using that as a statistic but I think an even more telling statistic might be the salary range for teachers in bcsc pre-referendum to now and would any of you know of ballpark um salary range pre-referendum as compared to current I do ballpark would have been uh 38,000 to 72,000 that's s about right Mandy and then um post referendum now we're at 50 950
05850,9 at the uh starting salary um and that does not include refer that assumes you have no experience whatsoever and then up to I'm going to is it 96 around 96,000 at the top of the scale that does include the maximum of a $50,000 $155,000 increase for experience through the operating reford thank you Dr Phillips um because I always think you know as a new teacher you know where am I going to start as compared to where I would start at other corporations and if I stay in this Corporation what could I potentially earn by the end of my career and so that's you know 38 to 72 51 to 96 is a substantial gain thanks to the referendum as well and and the last thing that I'll say is the board's legislative um Lea
059on for the last couple of years um you know I know that there are already proposals uh um already drafted um ready to move in the state legislature um for to divert even more funding from public schools to help support private parochial um tuition support and so you know and each day that I look at the daily news from the school boards Association there's another corporation that is looking at a referendum and um you know I just can't help but think how many of these you know there's an absolute relationship there I would say it's causal um between um you know the the current state legislature and where the funding is continuing to go um you know making such R referendums absolutely um necessary and more and more corporations across the state I could go
060on I I will stop thank you as we finish out this side of the table Logan did you have did you have anything you wanted to chime in on yeah I had a couple of comments can you hear me yes uh the one question I had was is the referendum in uh jog my memory here is it still not assisting teachers with under five years of experience that's correct the so the model is that teachers with bcse experience earn one point for every year of bcse experience and after their fifth point the following year they receive a $5,000 increase after 10 points it's 10,000 and after 15 points it's 15,000 that's up to a maximum so it's not to exceed that 96 maximum so the referendum pay can be decreased to reach the maximum for
061anyone without out of District experience we give one point for every three years and so if you had 15 years of experience in another District you would have those five points and receive the um $5,000 increase so I guess my concern here is and I know I've met with Mandy I've talked with a few other teachers about this is at least from my understanding of how the system works because a lot of the other districts also tend to um not honor one to one on years of experience actually I think it's an industry standard not to um the that the lowest uh experienced population is the highest risk of R retention loss and so I guess I'm still interested to see why the referendum dollars were not used there given that um we're trying to
062attract to me I know uh Miss White I think just mentioned about her daughter coming out and right is you're trying to attract new college students that are coming into the profession um those are the ones that are most likely at your flight risk as they have not earned a sufficient number of years of experience within the Corp to where you know it may be worth their while to transfer to another District based on um some minor pay changes within the band so I guess that's just feedback as we look to leverage this referendum uh going forward and then I do have a question unless you have a comment on that Chad no it's go ahead so I I was actually talking to a couple constituents uh a couple days ago um and they brought
063me some stats and I did confirm them and I really do appreciate uh the transparency being posted I think that's honestly uh a benchmark of how we operate our finances and um I I holistically agree with everything that was said here by the Whites by um Larry by the by Julie about making sure that our SRO our stems bus drivers teachers t i don't think we're included but ta as well um to be fully funded the the question that was brought up is uh from 2021 to 2023 according to those records about 21.6 million was paid out to those specific categories however the cash reserves across all these same funds grew by about 14.6 million so the I'm asking it really on behalf of them they were concerned as in reality 67% could have been
064covered by education fund operations fund under Reserve funds in the referendum rather than adding on to those Reserve funds so I guess from my concern here is just a as a matter of managing this budget is how are we looking to leverage that rather than build up reserves um going forward Logan can you say that last part of of 14 you said 14 so yeah here yeah 21.6 million was paid out to teachers Sr stem bus drivers and Tas right and across that same time period 21 to 23 the cash reserves grew by 14.6 across those respective funds so if we look at like for example right we you and I both know we transfer about $8 million out of the education fund which is the teachers budget into the operations fund both are growing
065reserves right now so from a tax standpoint right is all these reserves are growing across all these funds but we've stacked a referendum and essentially the constituent was asking me you know is it necessary and I holistically agree with everything that was said here like we want to make sure our teachers are paid and paid at the state highest and making sure that we can retain them keep them same with bus drivers like what Larry says same with making sure we have the state-ofthe-art technology but the question is when the reserves are growing at two-thirds the rate of what we're paying I guess the question from them was is it all necessary or is it essentially to build reserves thanks that's really a valid question to ask and I understand why someone would look at
066it and ask that um I'll say two items yes we could have um well I'll answer your question first yes I believe it was necessary um and continues to be necessary but essentially what we could have done is done about two-thirds then of what we have done over the last four years and run all of our cash balances to zero in all of our funds the I only just so you know I only showed the increase in the cash funds so it wouldn't have been to zero it just been to 2021 levels thank you which which I'm assuming the if you've got them to those levels we may have had um about one more year of referendum money that could have been paid with cash balance instead so at the end of next year or
067so somewhere around that time frame we would have run all of our all of our uh balances to zero the other thing that I do want to point out with the cash balances that um we've been talking about for the better part of uh better part of three at least three years for in recognition that they have grown in an unexpected manner that um part of that is due to conservative budgeting but part of it is also due um over the last two years to just interest rates being much higher than what we expected and adding um a couple of million dollars to those to those balances the other thing I do want to point out not that it's directly directly related to the the the question that you asked but Larry mentioned before the
068um the safety apparatuses on our buses and one of the things that this board did a couple of years ago was unanimously and very easily say we need to put those stop arm cameras on our buses in addition to all of the other safety equipment we have and we couldn't make a decision that quickly and um you know with that much agility for an organization of our size if we didn't have cash balances um at least of some substance like we do now because that's what we essentially ate into that year was saying let's use some of that cash balance and do an additional appropriation to make those um you know at least as safe as we possible possibly can to stop arms on the buses so that's only tangentially related to your question Logan
069but I hope that helps at least some yeah I think the only the only thing I would say is as we look forward right is and this constituent shared similar feelings to me right we want everything that was just shown here like no one wants teachers um not to be retained no one wants to make sure that we're leading the market and pay that we'd have buses that are unsafe and that we don't have agility I I think the concern was is are we doing it to build cash reserves and I don't think we are intentionally I think we benefited and Chad I think you alluded to it we benefited from um property assessments going up and really kind of getting an un unanticipated windfall of property tax revenues I which is really I think
070what drove I think we discussed at two or three meetings ago what drove the operations fund reserves to increase exponentially um I just think at this point it's it's we I think we have an ability to look into these goals further and challenge ourselves now that we have this referendum funds that with a additional windfalls from other funds how do we leverage it to even better further the corporation um I think you know one thing that I've heard as a little bit of fear both ways but like I'm not fearful of like trying to see how do we go after that zero to five teacher population I think that's the highest risk that I call or you know how do we go further into SRO and safety just given all the um the threats and
071risk that we've uh heard of in the last you know six months especially around the nation um so I guess that's what saying is like it feels like we're kind of being a little conservative um but that's um that's okay to some degree but I think it may be when you're hitting 35ish million on reserves on a I think it's like 168 million budget that's that's where I was trying to see is like I think going away from this and being creative with those funds to deliver even further on these goals as necessary thank you thank you thanks can you come back to me um so kind of to um dovetail off of Logan's first question about the 0 to five year teachers or 0 to four years I I see that as a concern
072myself too but I think um some interesting data so we see the overall retention rate but I think it might be good for us to look at um pre-referendum and post- referendum what is the retention maybe lump them as zero to four teachers or maybe 0 to two and three and four or something but but to look at did it specifically impact those teachers knowing that it's out there even though they're not benefiting at that time and it may or may not we don't know what the data will say but it' be worth looking at I'll just say anecdotally sorry Mandy um we we've had this debate since 2020 um there were some board members that felt strongly we should invest some of that money and in year the first contract we had after the
073referendum we did um give a stien with those dollars but um to zero through through fouryear teachers the the one thing that I continue to revisit is that if you spend the money on people before they stay and they leave that money is ineffective and I'm going to use bad data practice here and use anecdotal information and Dr stal bom can correct me if I'm completely off Bas but our youngest teachers who leave tend to leave for reasons other than money they leave because they're going back to their Hometown where a job opened up that they they didn't there wasn't a job there when they took the job here uh they leave because a spouse gets relocated um they usually stay in the profession um unless it's just a completely bad fit but um the
074the area that we really want to reward people for staying is when you start to hit that fiveyear point is when once we get people to stay for a few years past that they tend to stay in bcse and col for the rest of their career there's very few of them that tend to leave after that unless things are horrible from a financial situation and they can go get a lot more money somewhere else and so that's kind of the reason that we've used in the past and we can certainly continue to revisit that and we do through bargaining with CA which that's what I was going to say that this is all subject to collective bargaining which we would do again next year and so that could be certainly part of the conversation I
075would also say that during our last bargaining session a year ago we really targeted that starting salary in bcsc to try to make that competitive and I believe we are at almost 51,000 so that is some that is certainly a way that we've targeted those early starting teachers is by having that competitive starting salary too but again all of this would be subject to collective bargaining when we do that again next year good discussion M Mr Shar did you have anything you ask sure um great information appreciate the presentation um especially Miss Hummer's contributions on stem experiences um in some of the information that we've seen I'd love to know how we're doing I I keep asking myself in the back of my head how are we doing compared to peers so U you know
076we've we've gone from 80 some percent retention into the low 90s now H how does that compareed to other school corporations in the same geography as us or how does it compared to school corporations that are about as big as us I I like to think that um you know the the money has really helped us uh and the way we've spent it has been strategic and has helped bump those retention numbers but without knowing how other corporations are doing it takes a little bit away from it so and that date is probably out there I was wondering the same thing too about U uh um age of buses uh bus driver openings I I remember at one point we were losing bus drivers I think to uh Jackson County corporations that were able to
077pay more and I wonder if we've stopped that or has that been reversed things like that thank you Mr major yeah similar to everybody else I want to thank all the speakers tonight that are still standing you can probably all take a seat if you want um unless you're tired from sitting all day um but I am a little disappointed that uh Lucy left because I wanted her to hear that uh that was probably one of the best student speakers I've heard uh very poised very composed didn't even need to look at her notes much so I I appreciate that and uh I wish she would have stayed uh just a few more minutes to hear that but um hopefully somebody watching or or that knows her might convey that message to her and I'm
078assuming that was her dad I will make sure to pass along to her that she needs to go back and watch the Youtube video yeah it's 7:43 p.m. so whatever that is hour and 43 minutes so um but but yeah I I I very much appreciate that um you know especially out of middle schooler it's hard for how many times have we seen adults struggle with getting the words out because they're not comfortable speaking so she's definitely going to be fine with her career um one question I have is uh so to Logan's point and to others I've heard so many things in the last month about referendum um I've had friends I've had teachers I've had community members all thinking that everything that's going on politically outside of here is going to the referendum
079is going to come to an end tomorrow right um the referendum is not getting voted on till when 2028 at the latest right that's the last year and so likely there could be complete turnover of everybody here on this board today uh that will vote three to four years from now so um I know there's just a lot of people out there this is on their mind your money is not going away anytime soon and this then it really comes down to that 61.3% of the uh community members voted on that so uh you know there's there's no need to worry today uh we need to make sure that over the next three or four years we understand our finances to a point where you know how can we you know I mentioned last time
080to Todd about how do we work with uh the state the Indianapolis State House to understand how we can work on uh growing for example our operations budget our operations uh fund is limited at this point in time and we keep taking money from education to put into operations which then had less money in education which means fill that back up with referendum and so how do we get to a point where we're able to get an adequate amount of money for operations we're able to use what we have for education give the teachers what they need and deserve along with the teachers AIDS and all other ecsc employees so that they can end up having great careers here it would be good too to what Rich mentioned earlier about uh you know competitive comparative
081uh analysis and benchmarking to have some statistical analysis looked at internally and externally to understand from a retention rate uh you know what is what is our average years of service today so that 67 68,000 average we have today could be because we have a lot more employees at the 15 to 20 year mark uh if we had a heavy load at 25 to 30 years we should be worried because they're likely to retire soon and so I think it'd be good to take a a strong look at the composition of years of service of our employees so that we understand where we need to put the money because uh you know if if if I understand that they may leave but at the same time if we don't take a chance on them that
082may be why they left so lot of things strategically and tactically that can be done takes a lot of conversation but it's not going to happen right now so can I add just one more thing to that because I know there has been conversation about that money that is transferred from the education fund to operations and every time we bargain that is actually on our checklist of of items to review in terms of are the school corporations transferring what is within a recommended percentage of those funds and having been on several bargaining teams I can assure everybody that's here that bcsc is well within what the state would recommend in terms of that overall percentage that is being transferred from the education fund to operations and that is something that ISTA has us look at
083as the bargaining teams too so yeah and I'm I'm not just so you know I'm not challenging that we're transferring I'm challenging that the state will not allow you to put your operations fund at the right level to fund us today that requires us to be a that we now have to transfer to cover that and so that's my problem with this whole scenario is if the state would fix it and if if if we're lobbying and doing everything we can to push you know we've got Ryan La Greg Walker somebody should be talking to those two people all the time about hey how can we get the state to look at how they're funding operations and education so that we can be properly funded not moving money and not risking your referendum in the
084future because to the point made earlier about property taxes property taxes have skyrocketed I don't think anybody in this room room will say I'd be happy to pay more property taxes now I think there's reasons why we would be happy to pay in this case 61% of the people were happy to pay teachers more money for more property taxes but in general I think that's where if we can work on the state to try and get this ship going the right direction it'll help us out a lot and then you don't have to risk a referendum in the future thank you Mrs Keel thank you team okay I read Dr hack thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide an update on foundational reading skills for our current third graders in bcsc as a
085recap this should be a slide that you've seen before here's some exciting data about our second graders who took I three and are now sitting in our third grade classrooms we reported that 363 of these students passed I read during their second grade year at a 45% passing rate that's positive news we also projected that we have another 131 students on track to pass this spring based on their second grade scores again positive however we did recognize the challenges ahead that 318 of our current third graders were at risk of not having basic foundational reading skills and out of those six students have a score of 365 on their first I test which is a positive indicator that they are likely to pass on their second attempt of the 318 at risk students 68 have
086an IEP and qualify for a good cause exemption and while good cause exemption students will continue testing until they pass I or transition out of our elementary schools they will not be retained in third grade if in fact they do not pass Unfortunately they still count as a fail for the school and the district additionally 27 students are English language Learners and have been receiving services for less than two years these students are still in the early stages of learning to speak read and write in English and do qualify for a good cause exemption we are excited to support their language development as they work towards proficiency so that brings us to current data this is a new slide nwea is a test given to students across eight of our elementary schools teachers utilize this
087data as another piece of the whole child review helping them understand where each child is in their Learning Journey and what steps are needed to guide them forward of the 318 students identified at risk 193 took nwea in August or September others took a different assessment called the iearn checkpoint and we'll come up that will come up later in this presentation of those 193 students 28 are at or above proficiency scoring at least 48% on nwaa which indicates to us that they are most likely to pass I 165 are scoring below proficiency meaning that they will continue to need extra intentional boost in both read both in and out of the classroom teachers will keep finding the best fit for targeted interventions such as book buddies fluency checks sending home additional resources for family support
088Andress ongoing progress monitoring in the classroom three schools took I learn checkpoints those are Richards Southside and Taylorville as mentioned 125 of these students took a different assessment other than n WEA they participated in the I learn checkpoint pilot program and this gives us information about their progress of those 125 students participating in the check points T are showing strong foundational reading skills either approaching or achieving proficiency and we predict that these students will pass I the remaining 115 students are still below proficiency so like with nwea we continue to focus on their needs and work toward the goal of helping them become those fluent readers as we move forward it's crucial that we not only track progress but we continue to be proactive with targeted actions we are committed to intentionally analyzing each student's
089data and since the I scores were released last spring we have been monitoring these students and their growth we are focusing on increasing book buddy volunteers collaborating with ccic and leveraging our literacy codre across schools like badria Mount Healthy Parkside and Richards we're continuing to offer professional development to all Elementary staff in the science of reading and what that means is that we will help them better understand how students develop their reading and writing skills so now let's bring all this data together here's what we are projecting for this spring as of today based on current indicators and that means with no further instruction or interventions which of course is not going to happen in our classrooms as of September with the data presented we expect 74% of our students to pass IAD now don't
090be alarmed because we have work to do and guess guess what we have time to get there I remain optimistic and we will continue to make significant gains our administrators and teachers are working diligently to make sure that each student get what gets what they need looking ahead we have important steps to take this winter will'll conduct another round of Assessments that will give us another picture on how our students are progressing and the impact of these inter interventions more importantly it will help us fine-tune our Focus for additional support before the spring in the spring before before the I I read test window opens I'm confident these targeted interventions in Reading are making a real impact on the lives of our students and I'm happy to answer any questions what questions do we have
091uh what strikes me about this is the the the fluid nature as we're moving through the programs are we able to track uh the effectiveness of some of the interventions that we're uh trying in real time so that we know this intervention is really working for us or that intervention um maybe we let drop by the wayside and replace with something new right absolutely at the school level and at the teacher level our teachers are tuned in to making sure that they group students by their needs and then progress monitor weekly or bi-weekly to make sure that intervention worked and then as students move out of that intervention what's next for them so every student in the classroom is getting kid byid skill by skill support and that's exactly what we do this intervention's working
092ah this one may not be working for this week two week period what do we need to do differently and then um are we able to not that I'd want to see it in a a Schoolboard meeting necessarily but are we able to track demographics about here are some of the commonalities of of the students that are in that U 20 20 to 280 number yes okay absolutely we can take those students and really dig into what um what their demographics look like and then help support that as well are they do they need extra support with having um one-on-one intervention time do they need just additional time working with with a teacher on their language skills um do they need support in speech so there are different ways that we can slice those slice
093that data to help understand who these students are and I realized that U things have already changed from the last time we we went through this process but the 74% on this slide current prediction without any further additional intervention how does that compare to where we were in uh the 23 24 school we don't we didn't have a comparison and and if we did it was with all of our students within nwaa and now we've taken out three for the pilot so we don't have that comparison data um because it's not Apples to Apples at this time thank you but again I want to point out that if we had stopped school in in September we feel 74% of our students would would have passed IAD with no interventions and no extra teaching which is
094just not going to happen we're we're working hard I feel like we're going to take this test in the winter and have a have a different number that's higher than 74 come January other questions um first of all I want to thank you for for showing us this data um I I mean this is one of the things that I had hoped to see instead of waiting till next year and getting R read scores we see how we're progressing i' realize it's um some prediction involved but but it really does give us a picture what's going on um but some of was too fast for me to keep up with sure so 40 I'm trying to picture that 74% as a building from something so 45% that includes the 45% that passed as second graders
095that's correct but then there was another was there another percent that was predicted to pass at that point from the second grade test yes so those were second graders now they're sitting in our third grade classrooms okay and so that's the data that you're looking up on the screen right now so if they were predicted to pass 318 we looked at their data because those are the ones that didn't pass and so we looked at their nwaa data to determine if they're going to pass or not so I guess here's my question 74% is at the like at the end of the first quarter or roughly fall testing um what would that percent predicted to pass have been at the start of school 45% 45% okay so that growth is phenomenal yes we had 45%
096that passed and so then August September they took that first assessment and now we're at 74% okay and the three schools that are doing the pilot is the assumption that if that pilot goes well that all schools would use the the IAD checkpoints rather than nwaa the schools will the state will force checkpoints for next year and then bcsc will will um look in the spring to determine if nwaa needs to be given in conjunction with I learn checkpoints that's a lot of testing for our students and it may not be necessary what we do know this year is every student in third grade and sixth grade will get in WEA in the winter because we need it for high ability testing okay um and finally I I have to plug book buddies here um
097if do you have from this at risk group are there kids that would be in book buddies if you had more volunteers always we know that we can go a little de deeper with our students uh population going to book buddies if we have the volunteers so kids can be added to book buddies during the year if more volunteers show yes they can okay so that's that may be part of our work thank you for plugging that yeah and that's a great point because I had similar thought is from a predictive standpoint using some again statistical analysis to take a look at whether kids are you you may not be able to look at the quality of book buddies experience they get but it's kind of binary yes or no are they taking are they
098participating in book buddies or not and then looking at their AR tests and then combine that with assessments to be be able to have that predictive analysis of whether or not you see them passing and so I think you you you not all of us but you probably could see that um depending on what data you collect and and whether you had a dashboard internally that would help us maybe put a predicted number up there instead of TBD uh you might be able to say based on where we're at we're looking at possibly getting into the low 80s right it's never going to be guaranteed but that then also just kind of reinforces the work that's being done to show that it's all good efforts right and so that's what we're doing those checkpoints we're
099really looking and measuring right there in September to feel how confident are we what number do we want to put in that column to make sure that um our students are there and then we'll do that again in December because we'll have another assessment you referenced AR not all of our students take our AR not all of our students are in book buddies so there are some constants that we can count on but there are some variants that we just can't count on because it's not happening in every school I I learn checkpoints happening in three and NWA happening in eight so those those two constants really help us otherwise teachers may be doing some simple interventions or some simple work inside their classroom that's not Universal to B csse and that's that causes a
100little bit of H I wonder what would happen with that yep now the next question I have is when do you think you'd be able to present something similar for the math side of this so math inwa has been completed so we could tell you U we could look at that um we don't have a math assessment like I that's that's forced uh students to take in third grade um it would just be a NWA update on where we stand with with our math okay thank you and then relationship to I learn um I had a question h of the 220 how many of them have a GCE good cause exemption that's back on the first screen it's getting lost in numbers so the current current students right there so we have the 68 plus
101the 27 at this point okay thank you and then do you have access to um that 74% and how it might compare to other other schools we don't sh it it's um we we don't we just that would be me calling different schools and and and say how did your students do on the first administration of nwba um I again some take it in different Windows some take it in different looks some take it in different um different capacity so but what I do know is we're very similar in bcsc how we give that assessment it may not be the same at Center gr of caramel it just may not be the same in Bloomington so to call them I could say how did your kids do on the first assessment of NWA and they
102could give me a number I just don't know how how reliable it would be to to compare the two okay and next year when every school has to to do the the benchmarks we may or checkpoints sorry thank you no you're fine um we may get that data from the state we just don't know this time but when everyone is doing it we assume that data will be available okay uh Mr Schultz did you have anything I I just had a comment and a question so comment was as Dr hack I just really appreciate the thoroughness this was a a great detail uh of power detail analysis really probably beat out your last one which was already at the top notch so I really appreciate the level of detail your team's putting into this um
103the only question I had was the 220 that are still not projected to pass and then obviously there's there's going to be a TBD checkpoint of that also in December um is there anything on your mind um that you're looking at potentially asking us um for support of anything to help you uh get those 220 across the line I appreciate that again we're we need that support if if there's any volunteers that can help sitting hip to hiip with our students to give them that extra boost that's always a big a big um thing H that can happen we're asking for our families to continue to read with their students at night um we're asking them to play those word games we're asking our teachers to continue to progress Monitor and anytime a student comes
104to us new where are they with their reading and how can we help help them propel them forward so um those are some simple things it's not monetary it's not uh it's not huge amounts of resources that we're asking for it's just time and talent and really uh engaging in the work in in and helping your own child or maybe a neighbor or even you know grandchild just to say how are you doing in reading and really um really being encouraging and also excited about reading yourself okay and we have um discussed during the last CCC meeting in September some um we just brainstormed that day ideas for how we can Ensure that every K through three starting with third grade and then second grade next Priority First Grade next priority for the 176 days
105that we have students have assure that there is an experienced licensed teacher in that classroom for as many as of those 176 days as possible knowing that that's going to obviously be impactful so started that brainstorming in September we will continue it next week at the ccic um and we may have some requests come before the board around it could be anything from um mentors to long-term permanent Subs um we also had a follow-up meeting I don't want to tease this too much but we had a we had a call with lhp who's doing some data analysis work for us um and they had a preliminary finding that we we gave them some feedback and they're going to come back to us and um we're hoping to be able to bring you some information at
106the very latest in January to make a recommendation based on what we've asked them to do at this point is do backwards looking so just looking back at prior years uh what was the impact of prek on I scores and other academic indicators for kids in the long run and So based on what they tell us if it's if it works really well and there's statistically significant impact for a specific group of kids we may bring you a recommendation in uh as early as January for how we staff uh for prek for next year so we we have a long list of things that we may bring before you um to actually help directly impact these I scores in the long run thank you Dr hack Mr brener I'm first gonna throw a little curveball
107at you we're 95 minutes in uh I know I'm a numbers guy but I'm also 20 plus year track coach stand up everybody stand up just take a few deep breaths maybe swing around a little bit sitting for 90 minutes gets to you I I know that because it did me thank you Todd I might get back down you okay D thank you um financially bcsc is still very strong right now um if you look at our third quarter revenues uh over ACR across the board we're about 8% higher than we were uh through the first three quarters of last year um we're on Pace to reach the budgeted Revenue levels for the year and again revenues are up um a big part of that as we've discussed is um higher assessments that have come
108in education fund expenditures um salaries and benefits are up about 8% over last year at this time this is a result of the pay increases for all employee groups following the collective bargaining agreement last fall the addition of the high school administrators for cohorts and the continued success in filling positions the other expenditures are up just a little over 1% compared to 2023 and again we're on Pace to stay within budget for the year I will get this down I promise operations fund expenditures salaries and benefits are up about 6% over 2023 other expenditures are up are down actually 1% compared to 2023 but tracking to follow what we budgeted for the year operating referendum fund expenditures they're all um expending as budgeted um I don't want to beat this hor too much because they
109did such a great job earlier going through what we we've been spending on and finally our fund cash balances cash balances and education operations operating referendum the health Thal trust um are all up compared to last year the um revenues uh are driving those fund balance increases and the debt Serv funds um will continue to draw down slightly over the next year um but again very solid very healthy and be glad to answer any questions anyone has what questions do we have Mr Schultz I'll start with you this time do you have anything no no questions I was just going to say good use of the Northeast colors I was hoping someone would catch that as I see Mr Payne in here I think it's uh Central colors actually so thank you I I don't
110have any questions I think we've talked about a lot of it so thank you anyone else thank you we're numbered out thank you Mr brener thank you all all right next uh policy review we have um completed package one and so um the first package of policies uh was posted for 14 days did a first reading uh and then a second reading and approved those this is first reading for package two um that was posted um two weeks ago today so those have been on the web site uh on board docs for the last two weeks for public review those do contain um this is the largest and I think it will be the largest package of policies that come before us U there are 13 policies proposed for uh reorganization and consolidation and the
111consolidation definitely applies here because this these 13 policies will replace all or part of approximately 50 of our existing policies so getting rid of some of the redundancy um and and just the the difficulty in navigating our current policies will be helpful so this uh is the first reading tonight and it'll be on a second reading in November um these are the 13 policies that are proposed and there are a lot of HR heavy ones here that's why they're the longer policies and Dr stal bom U spent a signant Time significant amount of time looking uh at each of these trying to make sure that they matched up well with our existing policies uh here is page two of those policies which are a little bit more of the uh Less HR and more school
112related so medical surch and seizure background checks resignation SRO training I will point out that is the only one SRO training is the only one that is a new policy uh it's a very short couple of paragraphs but it was based on a piece of new Indiana code that was put into place I did receive um feedback from both Mr major and Mr nen on uh just a couple of suggestions on these um I think both agreed that they weren't anything that NE necessitated um a board work session to make those adjustments uh we will look at them before the end of this week and make sure that any of those changes are shared back out with any board members as well as posted to the website before at least a week before the second
113reading on November 11th so thank you for that feedback any questions on [Music] the package two of the policy reorganization comments okay thank you uh we do not have any public comments tonight so we will move on to our next item which is request for approval all business um since we do have a remote member uh all votes will be roll call tonight so I'll just go through each person in order and ask for your vote on any of the Motions that are made this evening thank you Mrs willan um do request approval of the minutes of the regular school board meeting of September 23rd 2024 I move that we approve the minutes of our regular school board meeting from September 23rd second thank you Mr Grimes and Mr major um I'm going to start
114this end of the table so Mr major um let me back up because I'm so excited about my roll C I forgot to ask if there are any questions or comments based on the motion okay thank you so motion was made to approve um old business minutes from our September 23rd meeting Mr major y or Mr Stenner I uh I am also I miss wield is I Mr Gramps I Mr n i Mr Schultz I okay motion carries thank you we also request approval of new business to include supplemental contracts field trips and professional leaves school fundraisers and claims and payroll the October 28th claims of 1 point just over 1.7 million and the pre- runs from September of just under 4.9 million and then the payrolls which had three payrolls in this stretch which
115is unusual for us those three p payrolls total just over 11.9 million also under new business we have letter e which is the approval of the 2025 health and dental premium and plan changes the Mr major referred to the Health Trust meeting these are the recommendations of the Health Trust and the only change is an overall total 1.6% increase in the health premium only and that should generate just over 280,000 additional dollars in Revenue to the Health Trust on about a $19 million annual spend and results in a per pay increase of between 3 and9 per paycheck for year round employees uh for the employee portion of that also under letter letter F we request permission to receive bids for the Central Middle School renovation uh which is the smallest of our projects uh that
116are going on right now and that includes uh work in a the wellness area which is attached to the to the library some upgrades to the library maker space and health health science pathway lab as well as furniture and Technology updates letter G is approval of the K through2 uh Indiana Department of Education K through2 uh robotics competition Grant which is just about $91,000 that will go to jumpstart all of our robotics teams and create new robotics teams around uh the district all of those dollars go towards only two items and that is supplies for kits for Robotics and entering those teams into competitions so entry fees and then last under new business letters H through L include the five resolutions required for the 2025 budget uh the only note I will make uh there
117there are no changes to this from the both the budget workshop and the budget hearing uh the only thing I will note is on the because it has been a topic of conversation both in the public um in the last few weeks as well as early tonight just to give uh anyone in the audience and and the board uh some background on the transfers between the education fund and the operations fund that was a a bill that was passed in 2017 that required schools to move a significant proportion of salaries and benefits that had been part of the general fund and required us to move those over to a new fund the operations fund which didn't exist before 2017 but it moved no revenues with those expenditures so every custodian which is which the is
118just an example all the custodians in the district um millions of dollars in salaries and benefits all of those moved from the old general fund to the new operations fund but no salary or no uh Revenue went with them and so the legislature obviously um knew that that would present a problem for districts and authorized um the transfers of up to 15% of your education fund to move to the operations fund every year since that time our move of dollars from the education fund has been under 10% um which is which is well below what uh the average of other districts a part of that is because we're a large District so you have a smaller District that has a department or a a director of transportation for example there a larger proportion of that
119overall budget but that Indiana a code that transfers uh sorry uh authorizes those transfers is 20- 40-26 so anyone who's interested in looking at those and then um CA has supported um each of those transfer amounts we share that amount with them as we calculate the budget just so that they're aware of how much is being moved and then um there is a resolution a unanimous resolution passed by the board for each of those years since then um looking back at history so if you're interested in the history of that um transfer between the education fund and operations fund so sorry for the long explanation there but uh letters H through L represent the five resolutions required to allow us to approve the budget so at this time I request approval of all new business
120items 8 a through 8 L I move that we approve all items listed under new business letters a through l as presented by Dr Phillips and second thank you Mr gramson Mr ner Mr nen sorry about that Mrs Weldon yes before you move to a vote we have had some discussion about silly state requirements tonight for Mr Schultz uh the state statute on electronic participation notes that folks who are participating electronically may not vote on adopting a budget so those items H through L that represent that part of it can either be pulled out and they could be voted on separately um or Mr Schultz if the motion moves forward as as presented Mr Schultz would not vote on it okay and he could participate in discussion would be fine but the statute focuses on
121that voting on adopting a budget there there's no risk tonight you're fine if Logan wants to just opt out Mr Schultz are you okay opting out of all a through L votes or would you I trust I trust you all fully I I'll I'll set on the sideline okay thank you Mr Schult okay uh motion on the table is for to approve 8 a through L any questions or comments from the board before we move to a vote the only thing I have is this is a heck of a lot of money that's gone up over the last two years so since I started we went from the mid 140s to now the upper 160s so it's about a $20 million increase I understand why uh almost all of it has to be done right
122it's not that we have a lot of money that we have to pay it's all there to it I think the the concern I have is the transfer side of it and how we find a way to work work with Indianapolis to get that fixed so I just want to reiterate that and then um I think there's some things in the budget that are more nice to haves than need to haves and I think that over the course of the next year it would be nice to map out some of these things to better understand them and I'll just give you one um all Columbus North is going to hate me for this but do do we need to spend $1.5 million on turfs Maybe not today right but I understand the need for it
123uh I understand wanting to make softball baseball fields look great and wonderful but I think it's just one of those things where um over the last three four years with inflation the way it's been maybe that's something that we can defer till later so okay any other questions or comments all right I will do roll call um starting at this side of the oh we can vote together thank you all those in favor of approving items 8 a through L please say I I all those opposed please say nay vot passes thank you 5 Z okay okay thank you thank you board the human resources recommendation for this evening consists of three appointments and two resignations I request that you please approve the recommendations as presented in the board packet I move that we approve
124the HR recommendations as presented by Dr stal bom second thank you Mr Grimes and Mr major any questions comments before we go to vote one quick question is Staffing okay I haven't looked at the website for a while yeah really good okay all those in favor of approving item 9A Human Resources recommendations please say I I oh nope I'm back to roll call Mr Schultz yeah your name I okay thank you uh Mr major thank you Mr Stenner I thank you m w is I Mr I Mr I great passes 60 Dr the additional Human Resources recommendation for this evening consists of two appointments I request that you please approve the additional Human Resources recommendations as presented in the packet I move that we approve the additional HR recommendations as presented by Dr stalon second
125thank you Mr gson M Mr nen M all if you're in favor please say I Mr I was going to I was gonna start with you oh Mr Nan I okay Mr gra I is I Mr Stenner I Mr major Mr Schultz I passes 60 thank you okay board and input Mr Schultz do you want to start no I just want to say thank you to the Mandy and um also Dr Phillips for presenting on the referendum I think a lot of those are critical asks and I know we're getting a lot of questions um just given the time of the year and so I'm happy to see the update I think the only thing uh Dr Phillips that I may ask going forward is on looking at the title one schools and the free
126lunch funding is H can we see an update possibly in January or February just seeing how that is trending I know you've sent a couple items in your Friday notes I just think it'd be good for the community to see that and uh potentially to see how that may or may not um impact uh I scores I know that's a large atrisk population so only ask we'll do thank you m Schultz Mr major uh just wanted to you know obviously we're back now from fall break but uh wanted to wish the best of luck to all the fall sports teams that are still active in Fall Sports uh in their respective state tournaments also wanted to say thank you to Kaylee Danielle and Lucy for their um their speaking tonight again it's hard for kids
127to do that it's it's hard for adults to do it the other thing you know just sitting here we have these posters on our on our um desk here one thing I just noticed I don't know is there did we buy this from someone or did we Design This Could Mike could we maybe try and get that copyright or something um it might be uh some IP for us something that we could you know maybe make some money off somewhere sometime in the future just uh you know marketing that to other schools so it might be something creative and and the other thing too is for any of the kids that participated in that being able to say that they've got their name on a copyright would be pretty cool so just something to think
128about and then uh we got these little keychains I think it is too so and they've got girl up and uh C4 on them so it's pretty cool stuff that the kids are doing and uh you I can tell you at uh 49 years old I never would have thought about doing stuff like that when I was in high school so good work thank you uh again as Mr major said uh thanks to all the presenters tonight especially Kaylee Danielle and Lucy uh really enjoyed the presentations uh thank you to Dr hack and her team for all the data both doctors hack and their teams for all the data that was shared tonight thank you um I just want to thank the team for a balanced um meeting today I thought there were problems that
129we need to fix that we got to talk about and get updates on those that was positive and then and then a lot of the positives um I I do want to just like Mr Nan did earlier put a plug for anybody watching or anybody in the room just to look for ways to engage in our schools and in our kids I was telling Dr stal earlier I had a really terrible week at work last week and on Friday um when I left work and then drove up to North High School and thought what have I gotten myself into my head as not in the game um and I was exhausted by the time I got home but I got so much more than I gave and I you know I just have to believe
130that that's so often the case um when we like give ourselves those opportunities and kind of put ourselves out there so it was a good reminder for me that there's always a little more left in the tank and hopefully maybe um others can find that too there's plenty to do Mr gr uh quickly uh lots and lots of individual accolades that could be shared um I'll just you know at the risk of leaving some out I'll share a few uh e senior Elena white CSA Lincoln sixth grader Emma Norton for winning the uh Mill Race Marathon poster content contest not content um the uh the three Lily scholarship finalists um from um each of the three high schools Northeast and CSA new tech um congratulations to North senior uh Hank Lynn and his fabulous tennis
131accomplishments um North football coach Logan haston for I guess it's probably two weeks ago now uh winning the Colts coach of the week which is a really big deal congratulations to him uh like Mr major said uh congrats to All Fall Sports and extracurriculars as they have either wrapped up their season and best wishes to those still competing many thanks to all those that present Ed here this evening and at the risk of being corny what the heck um you know our roll call vote tempted me to say this but a quick little joke um what did the pirate say on his 80th birthday I'm [Laughter] 80 okay I need to recover first um last week I had the opportunity to go to um a couple of the sessions for the exhibit Columbus Symposium and
132one of them was the high school team and um bcsc was represented amazingly well so I want to give a shout out to um the the four students Gloria Phillips Bryce Olen and Ashley Perez who I think are all seniors but they're from north um and Alex depal who I think is a junior but he's from East um and along with their faculty members um Darren Johnson from C4 and Dita Harden who we heard from tonight um talking about the what the fifth and sixth grade stem I think how they get involved in the exhibit Columbus but particularly the four high school students just did an excellent job of of sharing um questions that were fired at them that they didn't have a chance to prepare for and they they handled it very well um
133the other thing is so Mr major said it' be great to hear something about math results I will never turn down the opportunity to hear about math results but but I I'm G to bring this up regularly I think our three goals are I read graduation rates and stem did I get that right those are a three the three goals that Mr Phillips came on Dr Phillips came on board with and and tonight was a absolutely fabulous what I would think of as a start of looking at that digging deeper into okay this is what we're doing how are we doing at that um and we also we saw that with the I um what predictive data and and we saw that with two different aspects of stem the girl up and the um and
134the connection to the referendum um so the challenge is graduation rates we don't have to wait until we get graduation rates we can creatively think about um ways we can be monitoring that prior to graduation and along those lines um kudos to Dr Phillips and the team um it would be real easy to look at ir and talk about third graders but we're talking about prek through third and and I absolutely commend you for that okay um next meetings we have coming up uh we have a November 11th work session in this building at 550 15 p.m. uh we have a regular board meeting on November 11th at 6:30 p.m. and it it's not listed on here but on December 2nd we do have an executive session for the board to focus on safety okay
135well thank you the only thing I want to add is um because Larry was here tonight I think Larry's already gone but um I get to do lots of really cool things in this job that I didn't do a year ago and one of of them has been to ride the bus a couple of times uh rode with uh with Larry one day and also with Steve Moon and um I'm going to go away from the the data and and all those kinds of things there's probably some things I can share in regards to that with our bus drivers but there was it was overwhelming to me to watch our bus drivers interact with our students and our students interact with our bus drivers who've been on their route for a long time time U
136it's not something you put a dollar value on or um directly connect to scores but we would pull up to a a kid's house and before the kid came out the driver would tell me what was going on in that student's life and what things that happened to them and whether or not they just broken up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend um had could tell you everything about the kid and as soon as the kid walks on it was hey Larry and you know dab him up and and go sit down and do what they're supposed to do and um it was just opened my eyes to um the amazing people that we have working with us in all kinds of roles so thanks Larry and Steve and all the other bus drivers okay
137with that meeting adjourned thank you all