001okay good evening hello testing testing one two three hello everyone okay we're gonna go ahead and get started in our school board meeting tonight for those that are able if you could please stand to do the Pledge of Allegiance with us um so given that it's September 11th I'd also like to say a few words and we'll do a moment of silence okay um it's been 22 years since that fateful day on September 11th 2001 when the U.S endured terrorist attacks in New York City Washington DC and Shanksville Pennsylvania where nearly 3 000 people lost their lives some of us remember where we were on that day and how the world was changed forever while some of us are learning about these events as part of our history whether you live through the events or
002just learning about them I would ask each and every one of you to take the time today to remember those lives lost those lives lost since then defending our country if you'd all join me in a moment of silence thank you I will now call this meeting to order Dr Roberts if you would please we have uh first is the review of our mission vision and core values a reminder that Vision our vision is for bcsc to be the choice our mission is to develop expert Learners by partnering with our communities to invest in people and our core beliefs we have six of them listed we all can rise to the challenge of high expectations learning is most effective and we have Choice flexibility and see relevance thrive in our physical social and psychological needs
003are met our community and School District are stronger when we partner with one another flourish because of diversity and variability in our community our democracy and Democratic institutions are strengthened by civic-minded citizens sent to the public hearings Dr Phillips thank you hold on do I have to gavel out for a public hearing okay we're gaveling out for our public hearing tonight now now it's official now it's official doctor filter evening we have additional appropriation request I sent you some details on it a couple of weeks ago but in general when we passed approved the 2022 Geo bonds last fall we had advertised and published a Budget prior to that the actual payments due in calendar year 23 were higher than what we proposed during the budget process because we shrank the term and so shrinking
004the the term of the bonds we're just paying more each of those years of the bond so the additional appropriation request is from Debt Service and it is simply to make the obligations that are due during this calendar year towards our semi-annual debt payments for the 2022 Geo bonds and in the amount of two million 470 962 dollars all of which comes from the available cash already in The Debt Service fund we did publish publish a public notice of this hearing more than 10 days prior to the hearing and so with your blessing Mrs will then we can take any comments from the public questions anyone from the public I'd like to ask any questions at this time you did not have to sign up on the blue sheet for this part this is a
005separate separate session so anything related to the appropriation okay Dr Phillips can you describe the next steps for us in this process just so we're all aware this evening in your approvals is a resolution approving the additional appropriation and then I'll send that to the dlgf and within just a few days they adjust the maximum appropriation for this calendar year that's the final step okay we will now gavel back into the meeting yeah first thing on the agenda is presentations I believe we have Miss McIntyre and Mrs Marshall hello my name is Kristen Marshall and I'm the program director of bright beginnings and this is Kelly McIntyre the Pre-K director and we're here tonight to share with you what Early Learning looks like within bcsc so bright beginnings was created to help support the continuation
006in education and careers of young parents while also supporting the development of young children and to give a peace of mind for bcsc staff and Educators returning to work we are located at the McDowell education center and it was opened in 2012 with just a handful of children and only a few teachers so now it's currently serving still six weeks to three years of age we have four classrooms and then ones twos in preschool four lead teachers and eight teaching assistants and several families on the waiting list um our Center strengthens and supports the entire family by providing affordable quality and licensed child care quality foundation for social emotional and cognitive Child Development educational Pathways and resources for personal growth of the parents instruction-based Early Childhood foundations and project-based learning led by the child's interest
007and proficiencies and these are just some cute pictures and this is our infant room and at Bright Beginnings we're always striving to be our best and offer the highest quality of care we support our early childhood professionals to ensure that they are well qualified effective and valued through the continuation of training experience and evaluation our one-year-old classroom two-year-olds threes and fours and then here is a statement from a prior graduate that went through the program and had her daughter with us and then these are our lead teachers and I want to end by saying that the dedication these teachers have for the children's development and well-being in this program is exceptional I have worked in the early childhood field for almost 20 years and I have never witnessed such a strong relationship and great communication
008between families and staff the worst part of my day is honestly telling a family that we don't have any room our program is thriving and in high demand for bcse staff and Community as well and I know this program will Thrive and grow in the years to come and I'm excited to be a part of it thanks Kristen I'm Kelly McIntyre the director of pre-K for bcsc thank you so much for having us here because obviously we are very passionate about early childhood but I've been given five minutes so I'm going to really try to stick to that um just a little background on bcsc Pre-K so in 2011 we actually only had one location it was busy bees it's a standalone building down on Sycamore Street and it had seven Pre-K classrooms fast forward
009today we have 11 locations so I'm pretty busy but we still have busy bees and then 10 of our elementary buildings do house some of our Pre-K kiddos so age four that's 14 Pre-K classrooms in total and three Early Childhood classrooms and each week we are actually adding more and more kids so so it's pretty exciting um and so BC has a Pre-K and early childhood offers the ability to just play learn and explore that's kind of our tagline but truly if um if you've not seen us in action I really encourage you to do so because honestly what our teachers do each day is create Magic in the classroom so we create Magic every day through playing learning and exploring if you do become brave enough to come visit us just be prepared you're
010going to be hugged a lot so bring your hand sanitizer but we really just honestly do just that we create Magic every single day in the classroom my teachers are just absolutely fostering curiosity every single day which is children my husband actually said to me the other day we have a two-year-old at home and she asked me honestly a thousand questions a day and she's like how do you do this I'm like spend one day in pre-k you'll get used to it um so just a little bit more about who we are currently serving we have about 305 students in total 23 full-time staff members and then 42 part-time staff members um so super blessed and very supported but really these are just numbers so who are our students and these are going to be
011the the cute pictures that Kristen started so our students are future medical professionals they are future athletes future meteorologists future scientists I know the kid in the middle I know more about a cicada than I ever wanted to know in my 32 years but I know a lot about cicadas just asked me their future cosmetologists thanks to our C4 kiddos for coming over from the high schools future chefs future Pilots and we have lots of Superheroes every single day but most importantly they are future bcsu graduates and I truly believe in all kids and their ability to succeed and they're the future of our community so it is quite literally the why of what we do every single day um and they they show up every day and so we show up for them as
012well so I do want to close I'm really proud of myself right now um I'm just I just want to thank you for giving me and my staff the opportunity to serve our community in such a meaningful way I know I speak for Kristen and I for both of us when I say it has been such an honor to come and share the gift of early learning because we are super passionate about it and I know what you know everybody's here listening but it truly is it's a gift every single day so thank you we will take questions if you have them yeah thanks for the presentation I I saw on pre-K in particular I think it was around 300 enrolled so far this year and you indicated that that changes and goes up and
013down from time to time um how many and I know there are lots of other programs in the in the community that focus on Pre-K at churches and other institutions what what percentage of the target markets have you acquired with 300 are there 800 that would be eligible in this County or well to be honest with you we were having a lot of conversation about that right now like what is our Target I do think the conversation goes around to 80 percent of kindergarten kids it would be our Target because we do know we've got private institutions lots of uh daycare options that actually offer half day and things like that which parents do take advantage of but I would be really pleased if I could capture 80 of our kiddos from kindergarten enrollment and
014that's a different number in each building but that that would be my target and then um I know we have the ability to track and and look at students three years from now five years from now ten years from now and say well this is what we have learned based on the Pre-K experience this is what we learned for kids that maybe didn't have a Pre-K experience what what is some of that data telling us so a lot of it would fall under kind of a social emotional approach is our kids are ready to learn right so our kids are coming into kindergarten ready to go following expectations quicker attending to tasks for longer and just able to do school in the most simplest of terms date academic data wise so we do have to
015do what's called I Sprout twice a year which is kind of some of those academic pieces it's also social emotional pieces as well but those are two pieces of data and we're actually starting that conversation now because I do have kind of this instructional coach mindset through Dr hack and really trying to bridge that gap between Pre-K and kindergarten and what does that look like and are our expectations across kindergarten the same or what should it look like across kindergarten how do we continue to bridge that Gap those are great questions yeah do one more please sir and this would be for both of you what um it looks like you've got great employees associated with both of these programs what what is the career path for Early Child somebody interested in early childhood education
016and is it the same as a teacher or different from a teacher or licenses and certifications required could you talk about that a little bit it is and she just said all of the above and it is so we've got teachers I have teachers and I'll let you speak to your program but I have teachers that operate with a CDA which is a childhood development credential I also have teachers with Associate's degrees in early childhood but then I do have teachers that have bachelor's degrees in early childhood or a bachelor's degree in elementary education so but our Tas we do actually support through Indiana has what's called a teach Grant teach is an acronym don't ask me to say what the acronym is but they do support reimbursement of of college career Readiness courses and
017so we're super lucky to have that because that is tied directly to kind of our funding for our kids and if you've ever heard of on my way Pre-K dollars so that's tied directly to that so we do have to keep up with a certain educational requirement to be eligible for on my way Pre-K and passive quality thank you you're welcome so for your guys's program are you guys tied into the C4 program around early childhood education what's that pipeline of talent coming out of our program into your program essentially from the student's perspective so we do Host this is only my second year in this position um the former director was Shane Yates who is now the assistant director of C4 so we have a pretty strong relationship those are conversations we're having right
018now what that can look like um and but we do currently host students from the C4 program they're coming over and doing volunteer hours they're coming over and doing credit hours um and I don't know if they're doing the same at Bright Beginnings job shadowing and things like that so I always have students in and out but even then they're taking field trips to even look at what the Early Childhood classroom because we all know hands-on experience is really what's best and that's where the true learning occurs so same similar and bright beginnings and then I have one follow-up is you mentioned waitlists and you didn't give a number but like what kind of wait list are we looking at in terms of so right now we have about 27 um bcsc parents on the
019wait list between all the rooms now we did have more than that in the beginning but after kind of looking at the numbers and birth dates you go through and there's certain ones you know well they're not gonna they're not gonna fit in this puzzle because with the way we work it goes by birthday so you know one kiddo can start in the twos but you also have to have a spot like in the three-year-old room so it's all about the birthdays so then I mean honestly at the beginning of the year before we kind of went through there we would have had about 70 people that wanted in the program so and Dr Roberts might not like this question but what's capping you what are you constrained by Dr Roberts no not at all
020not at all um no space is an issue um so building space and and I know you know with hopefully with future Renovations and that can be not a barrier um because it is hard I mean it is hard when you've got a family coming in that um you know wants a certain spot for their child and you don't have that spot so space would be an issue of sometimes Staffing it's hard to find 75 staff members and keep them all the time so but I would say space would be my major barrier yeah I would also say space we have you know four classrooms and let's say infants has they can have eight and then the one-year-old room can have ten twos ten and then preschool can go up to 18. and it's just
021they're full I mean and then you have a family you know that has another sibling come in so they take that spot so it's just it's space we could honestly probably have two or three classrooms and fill it all up so and not to give a segue but I see Dr Bozeman all the way to the back is this split was covered under if you can just give a thumbs up on the long range facility planning I'm assuming yeah hey well thank you for your time tonight I appreciate it okay we will now move into School Board member reports I will give a brief update on our Public Work session that we just held just prior to this so again this is the process I think that was our second meeting that we've held as
022a board as we started work through policies we recognized an ability to be able to talk with one another to try to land on what we thought was an optimized solution and so we held one of those meetings at five o'clock today it ended at six first on the agenda was to review four policies that had been previously reviewed by us but still had outstanding questions you'll you'll hear about some of those on the agenda later today that took up about 50 minutes of the of the hour the last 10 minutes we talked about the policies pertaining to curriculum material a lot of the book topics that we've been hearing about so you know we couldn't dive deep it was just 10 10 minutes but Dr Roberts took us over what those documents were I'm
023looking at them in front of me now we're going to go off and study those and then we've talked as a team about what we want to do kind of going forward our next meeting will be September 25th the next board meeting and we will likely hold another Public Work session ahead of that to continue the conversation so that's a high level summary anybody catch anything I missed there okay great and then we'll start with Pat Mr Bryant do you have anything from a school board member report Mr major yeah the Redevelopment commission has not met since the last time we met I think we're gonna have probably a meeting next week the Health Trust has had several meetings uh scheduled for the next uh about a month what a there's like three or four
024meetings scheduled we're going to be looking uh in in particular to teachers that are really going to be concerned with premium pricing we're also looking at the bylaws we do have a consultant that's assisted us with some data collection and so this will help us Benchmark ourselves regionally and nationally within the school bracket so that looks like that's going to be a huge help for us where we've probably not had as much data analysis capability in the past so more to come on that again several meetings coming up so hopefully sometime about a month and a half from now I can give a better update is where we're at thank you the district and Facilities committee met at the end of August we did a review of the current projects at Parkside and Schmidt Renovations
025of both those schools got updates for the members of the committee most of whom are community members folks outside the school corporation um Dr Phillips and Dr Boseman also um LED discussions informational presentations not only on the buildings and the status of our facilities but then also the Financial possibilities for providing the funding to do some of the needed improvements at our buildings so it's a good meeting four more meetings planned during the school year I'm actually going to add ahead of this meeting today at four o'clock until five o'clock there is a public input session for our upcoming bargaining which was well attended mostly by teachers and there was a lot of great input provided by then so just visibility that's kind of information gathering and then we enter into formal negotiations next Wednesday
026on the 20th all right yes yes yep it's good Instagrams the school Foundation met a couple weeks ago in just a couple of pertinent items to share from the executive director Nicole Cunningham wanted me to mention that a big thank you to Centric Credit Union for Their donation recent donation and sponsorship the employee campaign for the school foundation will begin later this week with the theme of schools are launch pads for learning and lastly and I might argue most importantly congratulations to student Eileen Carver of Taylorsville for being selected the school Foundation student of the month for August the ccic committee met last week between the cea appointed members and the ones from the administration as well mostly talked about very similar topics Dr Phillips and Dr Bozeman gave an update on the long range
027facility update which I assume will be what Leads Here we also discussed the timeline for collective bargaining and how it'll roll out from today's public hearing through hopefully I'm not up to November 15th and then the final piece of action that was discussed was looking at alignment of senior projects to make sure that it's easy for those that are transferring between schools to not put an undue burden on those students the council for Youth Development met in August for their quarterly meeting they have many ongoing workshops and activities to help the Youth of our community directly and to improve skills of people that work with the youth including parents teachers counselors and others and I want to highlight one of their activities we are actually in the in the middle of the midst of spark
028week which began last Friday through this Friday their definition of a spark is it's what someone is really passionate about doing an activity that unleashes their energy and joy one that may allow them to express themselves and to make their own unique contributions to the world there are special events in our schools and evening events at different sites including a special family night on Thursday at the high school design team installation on Washington Street that's from 6 to 8 PM Thursday and you can check out all the other activities around spark week at Cyd bartholomew.org thank you Mr L okay cabinet reports Dr Phillips and Dr Boseman thank you up next long range facility good evening thanks for making a few minutes my information will be will be brief um and thanks to Mrs Marshall
029for putting the ball on the tee for me with some facility opportunities to discuss um board members you had you may recall over the course of the past several months we have come to you with information regarding facility needs and upgrades most recently on July the end of July in strategic planning we had brought information to you about um basically a culmination of all those all those items that are limitations we that we have currently so those limitations are threefold really the need to renovate our elementary buildings uh the need to address demographic changes on the west side of town and then the need to address academic limitations that we have such as Dr hack has 170 kids that ask for welding and we can accommodate 60. so we've we've brought those items to you
030and and you told us in July great thank you now go ask stakeholders and the community what their opinions are on all these items and um and the financing options that we have therein so we've met I think Dr Roberts we might have a slide of some upcoming public meetings maybe it's not there I'll just tell them to you um but we um Dr Roberts Dr Phillips myself have begun meeting with Community groups I think we have 44 or so on the entire list and they end with um some public sessions that we have here at if you don't find it I'll just look at my phone and do it that way I can tell you what they are we have opportunities for the public thank you we have opportunities for the public at these
031sites to hear the same presentation where we're getting we're giving to others and most importantly give us feedback on their priorities and appetites for the funding so sources and strategies and limitations with that so we will go through those sessions and then by our next strategic planning session in October October 30th the evening of Monday the October 30th we'll we'll bring some recommendations back to you at that time so happy to answer any questions that you may have at this point or Dr Phillips or Dr Roberts I can just say for those in the room this offer of a tour of the Parkside facility I know everybody here is a vested interest in our kids it's a really great space so if anybody has an opportunity to do that I would recommend it highly it's
032a great project if I'm a resident of Shadow Creek and I feel like I haven't been invited yet what what steps should I take if I want to be part of one of these public sessions great thank you great question we have not we will we will publicize these uh through social media and parent Square to our stakeholders so we have not yet so we have not publicized this or marketed it but we will as soon as this this meeting is over here today so um and those are just um you may have you may be wondering there's two sessions for the public at South Side it doesn't really matter which one you go to it's the same presentation but we'll be conducting those in the cafeteria the auditorium is large and less personable I
033suppose you could say so that's the reason that they're split up into two groups in salsa Elementary so we'll start marketing those uh to the public this week thank you okay thank you Dr Bozeman up next 2024 budget work session Dr Phillips this is the first time I've had to do one of these with these things I think they make your eyes weaker the longer you use them that's what it is so good evening and thank you for the opportunity to to share the outlines of the 2024 calendar year budget with you tonight is a work session we just talk about the budget in a very high level and all the assumptions that went into building the budget that you'll see tonight in the detail that actually is scheduled an email scheduled to go out
034to you later this evening with um 80 some pages of line by line budget detail for you that's tonight two weeks from tonight there'll be a public hearing so this week later this week the budget will be advertised on the in the Gateway system and on the dlgf for the public to view and we'll hold a public hearing on the 25th going over the any updates to tonight's presentation any changes to it and then at the 23rd meeting in October that is for your vote there won't be a detailed presentation just an overview tax rate maximum budgets and that's the the vote in uh in October there'll be a uh several votes that night with different resolutions required for the budget but we'll go over those in detail at that time and then before January
0351st we hope to have the final tax rate issued to us by the dlgf there's no further action on your part required after the the vote before November 1st is the deadline that we have to approve a budget so this is a summary of the budget at a very high level and the five tax supported funds that were required to pass a budget for um from the board overall the budget reflects a 4.7 percent increase over the 2023 calendar year budget and some of the things that this budget allows us to accomplish salary and benefit expenditures between all three of the funds that cover salaries and benefits education fund operation fund and operating referendum funds is 5.4 percent more in expenditures for 2024 compared to 23 that's not a 5.4 percent raise that includes additional
036expenditures for added positions across those funds as well um this eliminates textbook or curricular material fees for families it includes a one-time eight percent inflation inflation adjustment to school classroom and Department Supply budgets the first time I've done that since I've been doing the budget for bcse with inflation as as everyone in the room knows at the level that it has been over the last couple of years I thought it was appropriate if possible to increase those budgets at this time so there's an eight percent increase there we continue to invest in facility maintenance and um and improvements and we'll get in some detail on that and we do not anticipate that there would be any increase to the tax rate in 2024. so this budget as as all are all budgets are built on
037a assumptions some of them strong some of them weaker this uh the revenue assumptions for the education fund so first I'll go in the education fund detail and then I'll stop and ask for questions on the education fund so um the assumption is that we will have about 93.7 million dollars in Revenue into the education Fund in 2024 it's an increase of 7.2 percent that is pretty simply a function of the per pupil amount that the state provides and the number of students that we have on our ADM account that's that's pretty simple there are there are some smaller parts that add to that in special ed and career and tech ed and um and nesp which I'll get into in a minute but for the most part that's what how many kids you have
038times how much the state allocates this is not a property tax supported fund this is entirely supported by the the state legislature through the state's general fund and you can see that there's an increase in both this fiscal year and next next fiscal year 5.7 percent per pupil increase this year that was a as of July one and then as of July 1 next year a 1.4 percent increase next year in per pupil expenditures so ADM estimates this is this is one of those weaker estimates unfortunately the state moved back the timeline for the student official student count data October this last year um but we still have to build a budget Budget prior to that so every I think it feels like every day I'm running a report from our student management system to
039see how many students were at at the moment and trying to make sure that I'm I'm accurately um estimating our revenues for the education fund so as of right now we we're at about 11 330 students um and that's down 101 students from last year at the same time um not unexpected and about where the demography study said we would be primarily as a function of the very large senior class that graduated last year and a really normal sized kindergarten class for us our kindergarten classes have been between 815 and 860 for the last several years and so it was a normal income in kindergarten there was just a massive graduating class going out last year and then it reflects about 330 students currently enrolled in the CVP program for which we receive only 85
040percent of State support and then because I'm advertising and working on a budget for calendar year 2024 I have to look at this Falls ADM which we don't know exactly but we have a pretty good estimate we have to estimate next Springs and next Falls to know where we're going to be from a budget standpoint and so I always estimate that we will lose 150 students in the spring compared to the fall some of those are made up by early graduates somewhere between 30 and 60 early graduates they graduated in December and then the rest of them transfers out transfers to homeschool all of those kinds of things that happen during the course of the Year sometimes we have we've had years where we only lose about 50 students in that semester but we have
041had a time we were close to 150. so I estimate that we'll lose 150 between now and the spring just so that we're conservative from a revenue standpoint and then we usually pick up some students in CVP during the course of the year or two and so the estimate there is that we would have 350 in the spring and then and next fall I estimate that we will be flat from this fall to next fall from an enrollment standpoint so then those are the revenue assumptions on the education fund the expenditure assumptions are that we would have 11.5 11 and a half FTE more in certified teachers than what we had last year and that is where we are right now today but this is interesting because some of these things were not in our
042control particularly that first one so the state used to operate a separate grant that was separate from all other state Support called the non-english speaking Grant and it had pretty much no parameters on it you could spend it just like you spent you spend from your education fund you could spend on supplies or people salaries and benefits this last legislative session the legislature said you know what why do we continue to do that separately let's just make it part of the education fund and so starting this school year when this nesp grant that we have that runs I think through the end of September right now when that runs out all of the teachers and staff that were on the nesp grant are now part of the education fund and so for that reason actually
043either at the next board meeting or the one after that I will have an additional appropriation for you to approve for the expenditures that we did not expect when we passed this budget last year it's about six hundred thousand dollars per year so in this this year it would not be nearly that much because all we have is basically the second half of September through December for the the staff it's and it's 100 staff three certified folks and uh about 10 classified staff teachers assistants interpreters and so on the other additions as we we talked about um extensively during the course of this year there were six additional certified staff added for the high school team structures all academic coaches and one counselor so one out of a counselor and five additional academic coaches and
044then we also added some C4 positions due to enrollment increases we budgeted for no additional non-certified or classified staff positions but that's pretty fluid considering the number that we have edition of four administrators as discussed earlier this year for the high school team structure that are in place now so it's an increase of uh just under four million dollars in salaries we made an assumption of Health premium increase of two percent in the budget and I mentioned that Supply budget increase of eight percent and then the the last part there is another thing that was outside of our control so um there is a 250 000 built into the expenditure side of the education fund for curricular material fees these are the fees that were collected that aren't textbook fees and so if you were
045in a biology course and you paid your the family paid will say eleven dollars for the consumables for that course that did not go into the textbook fund it had to be paid for from somewhere some somewhere else we collected those fees from families and then purchased the materials for those courses as the legislature passed a ban on schools billing for curricular materials this year they somewhat funded the textbook portion of the um the money that it was needed for those curriculum materials but did not in our case fund any of the course fees and the average of over the last three years of those course fees was about two hundred fifty thousand dollars and so that's budgeted in the um in the education fund which is the appropriate fund to budget where to spend
046it from I'll get into where that money's coming from later on in the budget so here's a line by line by category for the education fund budget the largest portion of of our budget State support up seven percent from a revenue standpoint um also on the revenues there the other revenues uh reflect um a pretty big increase in interest earned over what we budgeted for from last year I don't expect it to go up a lot from what we actually will experience in 2023 but when we advertise we have advertised pretty low number for interest earned and then an additional 250 000 to cover the curricular materials that I mentioned earlier that are a transfer in to the education fund budget so from a salary uh standpoint salary increases reflect the new positions um that
047and increases for this school year as well as next school year because we'll hey basically the uh the first um 17 pays of next school year on this contract for teachers and staff and then the following the the last nine the first nine of next year's contract are on this calendar year budget again bridging noses somewhat difficult to wrap your head around when we operate on a calendar year from a budget standpoint but a school year for from every other standpoint um the decrease in the professional service line that you can see there is pretty it's a large percentage decrease but it's only uh only about fifty thousand dollars there so not a huge amount of money but it is a significant decrease mainly that's for the CVP platform they adopted a new platform you
048actually approved that earlier I think this calendar year and it also eliminated the K-5 portion of that since we did didn't offer CVP in grades K through five this year so that was a savings there on that budget line item I mentioned the increase in the supply line there being pretty significant between the eight percent increase due to inflation as well as the two hundred fifty thousand dollars for curriculum materials you see that increase reflected reflected there the increase in the transfers to Ops I dug into this one a lot the transfers to operations sorry for the abbreviations without thinking I sometimes revert back to those transfers to operations we'll get into the detail of those later but it's almost entirely due to the fact that we passed significant increase for classified staff you know
049a good year and a half two years ago and just continue to fill positions at a greater rate than we ever have before and so being fully staffed and paying the salaries and benefits related to that has really been a positive thing for for operations Department bus drivers custodians technology staff so forth I do like to point out what percentage the salaries and benefits make up of the education fund budget it's right at 95 percent so 95 percent of the education fund budget goes to salaries and benefits um and the education fund is restricted to those employees that work with students in the schools in the classrooms so that's excludes central office administration even technology that's related to Corporation level activities that are excluded from this and those are reflecting the operations fund so this
050is the last slide on the education fund budget happy to answer any questions you have about that portion of the budget at this time I've got a couple Dr Phil one of my questions goes back to the estimated enrollment slide and forgive me if I I thought one of the changes in the law this year you mentioned early graduates and I and maybe this was just kicked around and I slept through it and I apologize if I did but I thought as graduates as we lost them the first semester there was a change in the law so as to not be penalized for kids graduating early and they could still be counted second semester yes we're getting the Weeds now I'll just no it's a good thing it's a good thing so I mentioned one
051of the other the other lines of the part the education Revenue there's the number of students times the number of kids are the state tuition that's the biggest portion and then there are four other lines in there one of them is the honors Grant or now it's called academic performance Grant I believe and the the Department of Education is still working out the details of how that's all going to work but essentially a student earns a specific amount of money for one of a long list of items that they can achieve um they could they earn back to the corporation money a different amount of money depending on what they what they do from this long list that can be everything from earning dual credit to graduating with an Associates to graduating early at December
052and to graduating with a common core 30 Indiana Common Core 30 certificate and there are probably a couple of more but they can only earn one of those dollar amounts and we all assume that that will be the greatest dollar amount on that list I believe early graduate earns three thousand dollars but I could be wrong I don't have the I don't remember all the list of the details there but that will come on a different line item as part of the revenues and from a revenue standpoint I only budgeted for that honors Grant the same amount that we earned last year because there's no past performance for me to go back and say okay if we Project based on this new set of honors Grant dollar amounts we can project what we're going to
053do this year the state's estimates had us a little bit higher but really nobody knows how it's going to work at this point so I kept that line item flat from last year's budget but it is it is good to acknowledge that the state did say we understand that you're losing funds for students that graduate early when you're doing your job and getting these kids across the finish line and they may be going to college early or going into the workforce or going into the service and you're being punished because you you aren't going to eliminate any teaching positions for the second semester when those students graduate early so they did make up for it in this new model but we just don't have a good good picture of how much that's going to be
054one question I had was in the transfer to operations you mentioned it is it gonna be touched on in the next slide that am I getting ahead of you yeah there's a slide of detail about okay so this is the transfers between operations and education detail slide and essentially takes the money that moves moves from the expenditures that would normally have been in operations before would have been funded from the education fund so all of that money moves that was almost 13 million dollars in this next year and it's utilities and insurance property and liability insurance was another large increase for this year as the natural disaster just continue to hammer our property and liability insurance and everyone else's across the industry but anyway all of those expenditures move to the operations fund and then
055coming back the other directions any technology that's related to the classroom and the technology employee software hardware and so on so forth that comes back the net difference between that is that 8.6 just under 8.6 million which is just over nine percent of the education fund budget we're limited by law to transfer no more than 15 percent we have yet to ever hit the 10 Mark in our budgets for the five or six years that that law has been in place and you mentioned bus drivers and I see school resource officers weren't those also qualified under the operating referendum as well for those two categories that were acceptable there or is this just an addition to what's already in that referendum fund so the operating referendum fund pays for sros up to a certain amount
056the amount we have budgeted and then everything else comes over the operations fine represents about half of what we spend and then bus drivers we pay an additional two dollars per hour out of the operating referendum fund so the rest of their salaries all come from the operations fund thank you you're welcome um the drop in enrollment projected rough enrollment I think was 150 students can you translate that real quick just dollars funding formula of thirty five hundred who's got it Logan's got out his his about 3 500 times 150. so we don't have to drive Robertson half a million 3 500 because it's half a year exactly because it's half a year so and we're just talking about the 22 correct so it essentially is for that first semester the first six months of
057calendar year 24 we would be collecting dollars for 150 fewer students than we are this fall you may not be able to answer this question State runs its fiscal fiscal why do you think we have to make budgets on a calendar is a great question Mr standard one I wish uh would change dramatically we're essentially it's it's because of the tax rate portion of it and so we have to we have to tie in with the property tax assessment cycle and creating a exactly and so counties cities everybody else is doing it on is budgeting on a calendar year standpoint so that's the reason I'm assuming okay so on the operation side real quick oh sorry Miss America I was writing something down sorry um I do have one question and I don't I you're
058not going to be able to answer it tonight so just some time between now and the next time we meet um before we had the meeting today at four there was a lot of um concern from several teachers that might have had 15 20 years experience somewhere else they come here they maybe don't get the same equivalent as to what a 15 to 20 year teacher would hear would it be possible to look at what if we were to if we were to do a one for one so if somebody came here for 20 years with 20 years experience can we look at what that cost would be if we even that out we can't yeah we have that data okay yep we keep it updated so thank you you're welcome I could answer I
059don't know what the dollar amount is but the answer was yes to your question any other questions on the education fund before we move on to operations okay on the operations fund side you can see the revenue assumptions are up about 9.4 percent from last year that's 33 33.2 million and um that includes about 3 million dollars in estimated tax cap losses which is 700 000 more than we will lose this year in cap losses so that number is just going to continue to grow up you'll see us to go up you'll see a slide here in a second that shows the trend the history but the operations fund Levy is one of those interesting one the levy the amount of money that we can collect doesn't matter what the tax rate is or the
060assessed value is the levy can only grow by the maximum Levy growth quotient and I didn't put it in here conveniently like that it was four percent it was capped at four percent for this year by the legislature um so that's the the this right here the legislature said this year because of assessed values growing so quickly the legislature said your mlgq cannot grow faster than four percent no matter what and so your Levy was capped at that and so um interestingly this is entirely coincidental our assessed value went up by exactly four percent this year primarily That was supposed to be somewhere the assessor estimated between seven and eight percent uh but after the legislature took some actions to increase deductions um Homestead deductions this year it went down to an increase of four
061percent and so because those two the levy and the assessed value went up by the same amount the tax rate should be the operations tax rate should be almost exactly where it was for 2023. here's that tax cap loss slide I showed you for a number of years that we were hovering right around that one million dollar Mark then that started ticking up around 2016 and continues to increase very very quickly for this year you can see the dlgs estimate that's what this slide is made up of it's closer to the 3.5 million dollar Mark but um it's never as high as what they estimate and so I budgeted for 3 million in cap losses for 24. that will continue to increase each year for now it's it's we're not in any danger today we
062have a healthy cash balance and the operations fund but there will come a time in and probably two three four years down the road where we'll have to start looking at what our options are from a from a tax cap loss standpoint to continue to be able to fund transportation bus replacement Capital Improvements and so on so on the expenditure side I apologize when this moved to uh the presentation the the alignment got messed up but um salary and benefits 1.1 million dollar increase over this calendar year which is just under seven percent um Professional Services was a decline of about four hundred thousand dollars and that is primarily I mentioned earlier we are hiring people like we like we have never done so or at least not in recent history um so we decreased
063the budget for um sorry up here we decreased the budget for contracted custodians and shifted that over to the salary and benefit line because we're just using them a lot less we've been able to hire and retain custodial staff at a rate that we had have not done since I've been doing this job I mentioned property and liability insurance insurance being a huge increase from for the last few years of this year we expected to to be even larger in the neighborhood of uh four hundred thousand dollars software this is a result of a couple of different items just inflationary costs on software but we also had a few pieces of software that we used to purchase we have been purchasing with Esser funds and they proved to be valuable so we use that for
064funds to try some things that that we hadn't done before and they proved to be valuable enough that Mr Williams and his staff wanted to make sure we budgeted for 2024 when the Esser funds expire and then there's also I'll add in here a really important I'm not going to go into detail Mr Williams can answer questions with you offline but we're investing in cyber security very very heavily as we continue to hear about public services agencies schools hospitals and cities and towns being subject to Cyber attack and we don't want to be standing up here sharing with you that that's us someday we're decreasing the electricity budget by six hundred thousand dollars that's not because we expect expenditures to go by 600 to go down by six hundred thousand we expect them to go
065down about 200 000 over what we budgeted last year but we also carried forward enough cash from the prior year unexpended that we're going to use those encumbrances as opposed to budgeting new money for next year and then we decrease the amount that we're investing in equipment and Facilities by about six hundred thousand but are still that was over the large amount that we invested in 2023 we're still putting in um a million dollars into small building level projects um 500 000 into district-wide roof and HVAC improvements and then this is the new line item that we haven't done in the past we're putting one million dollars in a line item for replacing the lights at both track football field stadiums they are almost unservable serviceable at this point Dr Bozeman can go into a
066lot of detail if you want that but replacing those with efficient lights that are functioning and cab replacement parts available for them when they need them is a priority for him and his group we were going to push that down the road and put it as part of a bond issue and when this football season started and an hour or so two hours before the east north game started the lights didn't come on at East he was letting me know we were going to put that on this this year's budget so we also at the same time as we're doing those lighting projects I think that both schools are ready for a scoreboard replacement and those both are more than 20 years old I believe so that's a pretty significant um investment in facilities there
067is that we usually wouldn't make from the operations fund but from a timing standpoint we feel like it's very necessary at this point and this is that same breakdown of line items for the operations fund budget the details uh which I already shared on the previous slide so I won't go line by line through that one for you but I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the operations fund at this time Phillips and the operations fund there are often some line items that um where we might benefit from some sort of a group purchasing organization I was thinking of the insurance premiums in particular who do we work with and are we getting the best value for a dollar we're still part of the cooperative that we joined about let's say it's about
068four years ago now the acronym is S Craft but there's about 70 districts that are part of that and it's a it's a group purchasing we go out and get all of our um property and liability and cyber coverage as a group and I have great confidence in that in that organization to make sure we're getting the best rate that we can possibly get um we also have really low deductibles through that group which is costs that's often not accounted for in the in the big picture of property and liability insurance but we're taking advantage of that in this case it's just the entire industry is getting hit really hard with the the natural disasters that you continue to see every week most people see those on TV and they think oh I feel sorry
069for those people I see them and I think our property and liability insurance is going on I just can't help it sorry summary sheet it is in it's strangely enough in Communications it's just the the categories of the state puts them in categories these are the five thousands and so it's right here in that line you're welcome all right I will move on no other questions on the operations fund um the bus replacement plan is pretty straightforward you'll notice unusually this year we're only going to budget for purchasing 10 buses that's because we bought 14 in this calendar year so we came to you for that approval back in I think it was January even because we need almost a year sometimes even more than a year of notice to order the buses before they
070can be delivered the um the operations fund will pay for 1.3 million dollars of that and then the operating referendum fund has 473 thousand or forty sixty three thousand budgeted for that line item already went over the transfers between education and operations the next largest portion of the budget and the impacts the tax rate is The Debt Service fund this is a property tax supported fund and this budget will actually decrease almost six percent from last year as we have a couple of bonds retiring you can see we made some refunded 2003 bonds are mature during the course of this year as well as the two 2016 Geo Bond so as those roll off even though this is an accurate number so I won't have to do an additional appropriation next year for this one
071but the Geo bond that we passed this fall doesn't quite make up for the expenditures from from the expiring bonds and the payments for next year you'll notice that we did we were able to we used to be able to Levy Against The Debt Service fund unreimbursed textbook rental from the state but we're not allowed to do that anymore under the new state law any questions on The Debt Service fund this is the the referendum Debt Service fund that is basically just made up of the bonds for the high school Renovations from 2010 the referendum passed in 2008 and those uh are essentially flat and will remain so through the end of 2029 when we make our final payment and then the referendi operating fund um you can see this is the budget that's been
072advertised with the exception of the last line item there that transferred to education for textbooks or curricular materials it just uh the teacher salary and benefit increases for experience the support staff are classified staff um one dollar or two dollar per hour increases are on the second line item and then there are each of the next line items have a slight inflationary adjustment made to them over the prior year and then the last line item there is the the new item which is the transfer to to the education fund for curricular materials so I'm going to go into that part really quickly I'm going to skip forward to the next slide and talk about each of these funds so the education fund is the appropriate fund to expend the curricular material dollar so what I'm
073proposing and what this budget reflects tonight is a transfer of dollars from the referendum referendum operating fund to the education fund to be expended from there so it's not taking the money that would come in from revenues into the education fund and using those for curriculum materials but it is the fund that is the most appropriate to spend those dollars from that so our options are we have to spend the money from the education fund for curricular materials we can only transfer funds for that purpose from operations referendum operating or the rainy day fund which is what is not on here because we don't appropriate any expenditures from that fund or we haven't at least in my time in this position so the operations fund is not an appropriate fund to transfer those dollars to
074the education fund it is explicitly for the purpose of paying for the operations of the District transportation technology so on and so forth Capital Improvements the rainy day fund is an option we could transfer 250 000 from the rainy day fund to the education fund to expend those dollars for curriculum materials but that money is not getting replenished from anywhere it's not the the rainy day fund does not have revenues that come into it every year it's it's a fixed amount of money that we set aside for an emergency so I'm not making the recommendation that we transfer dollars from the rainy day fund to the education fund so that leaves the operating referendum being the fund that has a consistent source of revenues coming into it each year and is allowable to transfer the
075dollars for the purpose of purchasing curricular materials so as I looked at the list of of what my options were for um for how to pay for that 250 000 in curriculum curriculum materials the operating referendum fund is one that has dollars replenishing it each year we are collecting more dollars than we are expending from that each year and so it has a slightly growing cash balance each of those years it doesn't take any money away from either the line items that are set aside for a teacher experience increases or classified staff increases that we um passed with a referendum passed it is an expenditure that was not part of the referendum when it passed it wasn't something that we obviously knew was going to exist at that time and we didn't know it was
076going to be a need but I hope that explains the reason anyway that at least from my perspective that's why I landed when you look at the people in the wrong direction um apologize when I looked at the options that were available to me there the operating referendum fund was what seemed to me the most appropriate for for spending those dollars for curriculum materials there will be questions here operating referendum if you can uh kind of gauge my knowledge I is close to three million dollars is what we've now over like collected versus expended over the past three years yeah so here's the I apologize I didn't here's the operating reference so we started this calendar year at about 2.4 million okay and we will end this calendar over three it'll be over three million
077dollars in cash balance um one of the reasons that we intentionally want to maintain a cash balance there I'll just remind you is that in in 2028 we will have to ask the public to renew this or it goes away we want to make sure that there's enough cash available in that fund to continue to pay at least through the the school year the 28-29 school year so something disaster disastrous happens and that operating referendum is not renewed we want to be able to continue to at least do this for that entire school year so you're targeting to essentially oversave 6.7 is Affair I don't have a specific Target for it but if it got to the point that I knew we could pay an extra six months of that then we'd start looking at
078do we need to Levy the entire maximum Levy that we could for the operating referendum fund but we're not to that point yet and then I noticed I mean and you went through the the Alternatives very well I know one that was brought to my attention by teachers was looking at we've purchased less buses right in the bus amount on the two buses was about the same for textbooks close and I believe looking at past history or on light against scoreboards that would have traditionally been a bond of some appropriation outside of traditionally using the operations fund so I mean would that have been an alternative considered given that you could reduce the transfer to operations possibly borrowed on I guess the lighting scoreboard and or the lower amount of buses this is am I
079factually correct on that normally would have been a bond appropriation for those kind of athletic upgrades yes it could have been I would the the one option you mentioned that I would be um more open to considering because it feels is right here in this line This is busted buses this is buses and it's from the referending operating fund um I would hate to go back into I'm not gonna I would hate to go back into the operations fund and start playing a shell game with those dollars which we sometimes have had to do and we had purchased buses with a bond before and so that is possible it is something that we can do we can issue Geo bonds to pay for buses and or technology which we've done in the past and vehicle
080replacement um but there is also the option is just to reduce this line to make up for this this 250 000 here and then issue a Geo bond for the bus replacement I'm curious curious about the rainy day fund I know you say not to use it but just approximately how much is there one million 10 million 6.274 million pulse roughly exactly yep right we would probably make two payrolls with that Dr Phillips so I I will avoid going into weeds again but could you get just a quick history lesson on the lull there 19 20 21 on the rainy day so um at this in 2018 we had um and we're back in this boat now I hate to to get too much into it but the um when we hire new staff new
081teaching staff um there is a time at which they didn't get paid until the middle of September they started working obviously we've moved our calendar a little bit in the last couple of decades as most schools have but we were hiring staff having them start two weeks into August and then not paying them for five six weeks and it was just a pay cycle and it was you know to the tune of 1.4 million dollars that would cost us to catch that up and so we did that in 20 2018 at the beginning of 2019 all teachers who were returning to us got two paychecks at the same time they got the last paycheck of the prior contract and the first check of the new contract at the same time in order to accelerate when
082teachers got paid that first time and we used the rainy day for that purpose and then in 2022 sorry 2021 we transferred money from the operations fund back to the rainy day fund to make that whole again we use just cash balance from that year um I think I know how to ask this question but maybe not when we talked previously about the change in textbooks and and the changes the state made we were told that for a couple reasons I think science adoption would have been this year but it got put off a year it's so with that 250 000 be greater or does that not impact us on this budget does it impact us at all we are the math adoption from last year cost 2.5 million and we have so far recouped
083zero of that and so I think the textbook Adoption Fund right now is somewhere in the neighborhood of nine hundred thousand dollars in the negative um we are expecting the state to distribute their first round this fall of um curricular material disbursement but we don't know exactly how much that will be at this point we're hoping it gets us back into the black but once we adopt science that'll put us right back into the red again it's another reason we're not adopting science today doe actually said hold off as we're looking at new standards for Math and Science don't do it don't do any long-term agreements for curricular materials for Math and Science until we finish our process so but it helps using what the state does in the future on that but that might
084help give us some breathing room for the next budget that's exactly right during the course of this year at least that one we we're estimating 1.4 million that we think we will receive in the curriculum materials from the state and that'll give us a year breathing room so that we can adopt science but we know science is going to be an incredibly costly adoption based on the same thing we experience with math this last year looking at the beginning year cash balances in the operations fund notice the doubling the size of the cash cash balances from 2020 to 2021 can you remind me of the story that goes along with that code no utilities no fuel we paid folks what their pay would have been to keep them afloat and keep them employed and make
085sure they came back to us but no overtime all kinds of those are the ones that come to mind they're probably more expenditures I actually have a spreadsheet from back then so it was essentially caught we still collected the revenue but our expenditures were way down due to the fact that we weren't running buses we weren't turning on lights I is that a part of the budget that haven't they said something about that the um the the dlgf and the state have looked at Cash balances not just ours across the state and notice the same Trend and they have asked us when I do are an annual financial report that I turn in at the end of August they've asked us to identify what dollars are allocated for future Capital Improvements and so um they're
086they're making sure are at least starting to to put a critical eye on those dollar amounts and make sure that districts have a plan for them and if they don't have a plan for them I'm sure eventually that'll be a top of conversation at the State House any other questions one more and I don't know if this is the right slide for it which ones are funded by property taxes the bottom four so the education fund receives no property taxes all four of these at least at some level collect property taxes the majority of each of these four made up of property tax revenues so I revealed early my my last slide about cash reserves there um that's again just where we started the this current calendar year and then a reminder of our next
087steps at the next meeting we will have a public hearing at the beginning of the meeting and I'll go over uh this similar presentation but abbreviated with any changes from tonight's if any changes in in ADM and so forth any other questions or comments on the budget tend to become [Music] beacons what are the elements of the budget you are the most worried about and why causes you the biggest heartache um the future of property taxes in our state are my biggest long-term concern I think for critical local public services property taxes are the most stable and reliable way to fund those services and that they don't go away if there's a shock to the system like we've seen in 2008 with a Great Recession and then again 10 12 years later with the massive
088covid recession when property taxes fund your fire and your police and your streets and your schools hiccups to the economic Peaks and Valley affect that much lesser and I think that is just my my my public policy opinion is that property taxes are critical in that way and the more that those things shift to the state and the more that those decisions about how our schools and our police and our fire and our streets are funded in Indianapolis I think that's less good for us as a community and so I worry about the future of property taxes I know people hate property taxes but when you look at the when you look at the big picture and whether or not you value those services that are provided in your community the dollars that come from
089your community that's the most stable way to make sure that not only do you get to make sure that those Services continue you also have local say in them as we're doing tonight at this meeting talking about all the dollars that we're going to spend with people from our community here here to listen and learn and ask questions because so sorry and this isn't probably a question this is just an expression of concern I guess and and I know there's different opinions out there but you know looking at that particular slide you know I know the operation you know the referendum operating fund continues to grow each year and the top two line items uh remain stable but again looking at um you know the last line there the quarter of a million dollars and
090looking at it from you know kind of a public um lands with an opera with the referendum advertised to increase teacher salary support staff you know the safety of students and stem labs to throw that on there and I understand the money is increasing there but that's also more money that could arguably be divvied up in those first two lines as well and so I yeah I just a concern now I understand and I just to to make sure it's clear those budgeted amounts haven't increased since 21 when we when we implement it at the top um but whatever our commitments to those dollar amounts haven't changed and there will be years including 2023 where we will we will spend more on that line than what we budgeted from um and I think that'll be
091the case in this in this calendar year certainly on the teacher the teacher line I'm not sure if we'll be close on the sports staff line but so as long as we continue to hire people and they continue to reach those Milestones of five years and 10 years and 15 years we'll continue to fund those even even if it exceeds that amount it may require me to come here and ask you for an additional appropriation based on where we're heading for the end of the year and we could be there by the end of this year but I understand your point I hate to ask one last question but I understood the criteria for Education fund of two pay cycles and now I'm understanding the criteria here for the operation referendum brain basically fund that
092you're trying to build up to basically buffer against 28.29 can you give me guidance on like what you're looking at for the operations fund just because of the significant size like uh it seems like that's also an easy move if where we move the 250 up for buses and then the buses come out of that excess fund that's available uh so I guess that's what I'm trying to think in my head just because of me again right the referendum was a commitment to the community and I know there's a struggle when we're seeing things that we're not interested on that question on those line items so essentially to your point the education fund the operations fund and the operating referendum fund are the three funds that essentially you as the board and we as the
093administration have the ability to do a lot of movement between those three funds and adjusting things and buying buses from here one year instead of here and vice versa the debt funds not so much the operations fund I don't have a Target amount but between the three and then you include rainy day fund in there and you look at the cash the cash balance compared to the 150 million dollar budget I still think that the dollar amount is a reasonable amount to have as a cash balance particularly when you look at the other public agencies in town relative to their annual budget how much do they keep in an operating balance from year to year and it's it's close to 100 percent in some cases and so for hours to be you know in that
094neighborhood of uh basically 40 I think yeah if you if you total up not the debt funds but if you total up the the first four across there from 25 that's 28 million against 150 28 million against 150 is still a reasonable amount I'm not saying and that's the reason I'm not saying that we aren't drawing this down and we have for the last three years brought you additional facility improvements I just think that with the number of facilities we have and the number of needs that we have that using that for the operations fund drawdown is appropriate and I do worry my my other concern about that 250 000 transfer is that when is it going to get fixed we don't know that this is not a budget year for the legislature this spring
095so they're not likely to open the budget up and say okay we need to fully fund that curricular material line item so it's at least a two-year expenditure um and we don't know if or when it would get fixed after that and so it may be something that we're looking at for the long term how are you you're proposing to deal with this um those who have operating referendums are looking at that I know um another District actually mentioned it to me when they were renewing um this fall which is what actually made me think that it was a possibility and look at that as a possibility for us but most are just pulling that out of the education fund because they don't have other options and so it's coming off the table for bargaining
096for for staff and increases for staff whereas this would would not be the case thank you Dr Phillips okay we are going to move into public comments I'll do a couple of reminders that are listed up here um speakers if you if you've come in a group you can define a spokesperson um to represent you if if your point has been made you may pass and or you may simply say I agree with whoever it was that spoke before you and you can relinquish your your time if you have a new point to be made you've got your three minutes please refrain from using the names of individual students and our staff members we've also gotten into a pinch where we've listed a specific role that we know as a specific person so please don't
097do that either be degeneric in your comments and then limit your remarks to three minutes we also have a policy that limits us to 45 minutes total regardless of of the number of speakers that have signed up we have exactly 15 speakers so tonight it will be perfect I believe um I think that's it and then if for some reason you're here in the room you have something on the tip of your tongue you didn't sign up but you still want to reach out to us all of us are available through through email and phone and other means as well all right with that I will start with Jahan Hoban hater I still didn't get it right Johanna I'm sorry but hopefully I'm getting closer okay thank you and your clock will be up here
098and I am a stickler I will cut you off at three minutes carte blanche okay well thank you I want to talk about book access and restrictions a couple board meetings ago several people from the community came and read from passages that had a lot of profanity and graphic sexual content trying to drive a point home the point that there are books available on our libraries that shouldn't be there um I want to start with reading a few passages that I found from a book there they do have some profanity they do have some graphic sexual content they are brief and they're only three he took hold of her and said unto her and come lie with me my sister and she answered him name my brother do not force me for no such thing
099ought to be done albeit he would not hearken into her voice but being stronger than she forced her and lay with her the second one says when Judah saw his daughter-in-law he thought her to be a harlot because she had covered her face and he turned to her by the way and said go I pray thee let me come into thee and she said but will thou give me that thou mayest come into me this the third one is a story of two women two girls seducing their father and I've I've done enough this isn't where they want to go I think most of you recognize that this these passages all come from the Bible and they all meet the criteria they all have a lot of profanity a lot of graphic sexual content in
100fact when I got here today someone handed me a stack of papers about with I think that have information on books that they found questionable right on the cover it says summary of concerns this book contains sexually explicit excerpts involving minors there are also Exodus containing explicit child rape and abuse illegal drug abuse graphic violence underage alcohol so and adult and child prostitution so the three passages I just read check most of those boxes and the rest of them are more exist in the Bible so this brings up a really awkward question do we want to restrict access to the Bible if it's all the criteria the page that someone was giving out today my hunch is that this is one thing that almost everyone in the room would agree it would be a terrible
101idea that all those passages that I read have a greater context around them they tell a bigger story a story that's very important to a lot of people and I'll show personally this is the first book that I remember my mom reading to me and she'd read a cover to cover multiple times and she knew what was in it but she read it to me anyway because it was important to her to share these stories with me and the same thing about those books from two board meetings ago all those all of those excerpts that were read have are part of the broader context all of those books tell the bigger story same thing with all the books in the handout that I got today so it raises a question should someone who doesn't value
102the Bible be able to restrict access to the Bible because it contains all this stuff in it I think that's an obvious no that idea is ludicrous so should someone who doesn't value a book on police brutality or gender identity be able to restrict access to those books why would we ever consider this what I'm asking you please is don't restrict access to these books please do not create a process that allows someone with an ideological bent to influence in an outsized way what books they read what books my kids read based on that ideology thank you thank you thank you sir hello Jack Jack okay uh I would like to clear up some confusion surrounding these policy debates in basic debate standards there is a fundamental difference between an objective disagreement and a personal
103attack the former merely disagrees with a position or policy where the latter attacks or insults a person or persons disagreements are perfectly fine in a debate but insults insults are not also known as verbal aggression name calling or ad hominem they are fallacious off topic and argumentative tactics these common underhand attacks that tactics are illegitimate attempts to reduce the credibility of the opponent but when exposed they only reduce the credibility of the user in debate credibility is everything another common tactic is to falsely accuse the opponent of making a personal attack this is also known as a straw man Distortion it distorts the definition of disagreement into personal attack of course making it easier to knock down like a straw man such tactics are commonly resorted to by the losing side the side that cannot
104support their claims so let me tie this together there have been significant accusations made here and about that disagreements with school policy or book content constitute personal attacks from what I have seen these accusations are entirely false but let me speak for myself I am not nor have I been attacking any Librarians teachers or administrators my disagreements including the information I provide to support them are entirely civil and objective so if the other side would refrain from such false accusations mischaracterizations and straw main distortions it would serve your credit credibility better let's keep debate constructive so let me add when I provide National statistics that show that public schools contain a higher percent of pedophiles than the General Public I I think that point has been made I'll ask you to move forward in your
105statements okay I've made the point of how I'm making the point that is those are National statistics it's just it's redundancer to the same statements you've made the last two meetings you may continue to but for get past I'm always supporting my disagreement with school policy not attacking or insulting or demeaning which policy are you doing or pulling three minutes any person or persons okay thank you Mr anymore we appreciate your input tonight sorry could I reclaim some time there or I don't think so but I'm happy to stay after I feel like I'm being censored a little bit if well if I may say so I will be happy to spend time with you after the meeting sir okay thank you I appreciate it okay uh Rachel hunt hi I'm very happy to be
106able to speak today my name is Rachel I am a mom of two bcsc students at CSA Lincoln a daughter in fourth grade and a son in second grade um plus they have two younger sons that one day will be bcsc students I also have a master's degree in library science um first I want to thank you for the time you did take at the end of the five o'clock meeting to very thoughtfully go over some of the conversations and topics that have come up about books and policies in the school district I'm also really encouraged by the idea that you share Nikki and the others agreed with to have Librarians come in to share how how they do go over the policies they currently have the reason that I want to speak today is
107because I was troubled by some of the things in the recent meetings I'm in the public discussion particularly one was the idea that it should be that there should be like the curation or the policies by a committee of politicians and non-life non-librarian parents um the reason this trouble with me is because there already are people who this is their job and that's obviously the teachers and Librarians who went to school for this to receive the training they are our teachers some Librarians and we need to trust them and we need to support them so I'm thankful for those here who do I literally looked up like how long it took me like I knew that it took me two years to get my Master's Degree in library science it was 36 credits 49 000
108and two years the full-time study um this is something that can't be replicated by a team of even well-meaning politicians and non-librarian parents it just isn't something that's possible I can't go and pretend to be a lawyer pretend to have another field so I hope that we can trust those who did put in the work the time and the money to learn the skills and develop the training um second I was troubled not by things that the board shared but by some of the other comments again in the public session last time where they're suggesting that like all parents in the district feel a certain way like all parents are against Librarians or teachers or or like wanting these books to be banned so it's one of the reasons I wanted to speak so there
109were a lot of people that did represent many of My Views but I'm also I'm both I'm a parent in the school district and I'm a trained librarian so I just wanted to be really clear that there are people of us who have both that background and um are grateful for the work that the Korean Librarians are doing um I also keep thinking like this is a silly example but my daughter wanted to watch the Barbie movie she's only nine it was rated PG-13 so I as her mom said okay let me watch it first and I'll see if I feel comfortable with you watching it after I watched it I did feel comfortable so I took her with me and I watched it again that was my job as her mom to make that
110choice can I have 30 more years I have a letter from her it's like two sentences can I please read it um so that was I was able to make that choice as her mom she wrote a letter it's very cute handwriting I'm going to leave it with you it says Dear School Board um she names her Librarian Is My Librarian I don't think there's a single book that's inappropriate and she's great at choosing books sincerely her name age nine um so thank you I think you miss that uh Sandy Watts I want to say that it's commendable that you're all here 94 of the students in this community attend bcsc and I think that's something to be proud of I think that shows the commitment this community has to this school corporation hey Miss
111Watts you have a voice that carries but the microphone might be helpful for others yep just in case thank you um I'm here to address the question of procedures on books I found it interesting that this hasn't been a question until we had a candidate Forum at Columbus Learning Center a certain part of a book was read out of context and people were shocked it was out of context I don't feel it's fair to judge a book by its cover so I've been reading a whole lot my husband will tell you that so I went through and read that book I discovered yeah there was a rape of a nine-year-old that's horrible horrendous I also know there's a student in the school corporation that was being abused by a relative but because she read a
112book she realized that was a piece she had been told it wasn't she got help I also read that book and realized that in that book it talks about a boy that was nine that forever his life was changed because what happened to him also in that book it talks about a lot of other subjects it talks about how there are young victims of gun violence it is dedicated to those victims of gunpow violence it talks about racism anti-Semitism teen pregnancy white supremacy and children that are dying by accident by guns we didn't hear about that side that's an important component of that book another book that's been brought to my attention was said to have had 184 words that aren't appropriate I haven't read them somebody else I didn't go through encounter also it
113was said that 34 of those words are the same words I've seen those words around the community I've seen them on science I've seen them on flags do you think you're going to protect your kids from those words is a fallacy those words are out there you have the opportunity to discuss those words with your children what a great context that they learn from you what's right and wrong um also in that book a boy is beaten severely his mother's sees him for the first time in the hospital and when she sees him she says an expletive the boy is shot he says and I can hear him my mother never uses those words that's a lesson right there I think we have to be careful there's 94 000 words in that book I read
114every one of them so 16 hundredths of a percent are words that have been deemed not appropriate one small Iota that have been focused on I really believe that there have been books that have been put in our school libraries one was put in recently in all 12 of the elementary there's one expletive so now do we pull it because of that one there's a procedure that can be used please please use that procedure if you don't want to use it there's a list of books at every school you can take get that book and decide what your child reads thank you very much for your time and please be considerate of all the employees of our school system thank you thank you thank you [Applause] David Spencer foreign hi my name is David Spencer
115I want to thank the board for allowing the public to make their comments and staying here for this late night I spoke a couple weeks ago at the last board meeting and I talked about some of the literature I teach at Columbus North High School I'm the 11th grade American lit and AP English teacher at Columbus North High School and my wife's a librarian here in bcsc my main comment a few weeks ago was that the purpose of literature is to provide an antidote for loneliness and a counter to Despair and there's a lot of loneliness and a lot of Despair in the students in the school that I work in and probably all throughout our community in bscsc I appreciate all the comments from the community whether I agree with them or not I
116think having an open forum and a Democratic Society is very important and we should maintain that I also think the libraries are one of the last truly free and Democratic spaces in our society today and we should support that and support the Librarians who work very hard and have many different factors and multifaceted variables for what they decide not just to put on their shelf and not just the collections that they keep in their library but how they have to analyze those Collections and all the different student needs and student concerns that they have all the different values that the students have that they need to address I teach AP English so many of the students I work with are trying to get college credit and they take an AP English exam at the end
117of the year and if they pass that exam they earn college credit but they have to write three essays in two hours so as many people here tonight know that would take a lot of stamina and it it's created by the College Board who makes the SAT and they suggest every year what kinds of novels that uh these AP English students should be reading and it's a list of usually 40 to 50 novels that have a wide range of diversity a wide range of authors from Tony Morrison to Harper Lee from To Kill a Mockingbird to Dostoyevsky and War and Peace and these are novels that the College Board expects my students to have access to that these are novels that have all sorts of sexual content and rape and incest and adult subject matter
118for a class that students can earn college credit we have many students that take AP courses in our high schools and earning these college credit and I think all members of the board and Community promote the access to college board and AP materials and our numbers have been trending upward and our scores have been increasing the last few years and I had 80 percent of all of my AP Lit students passed that AP exam last year so I feel like I'm on the right path and I'm doing the right thing and I feel like my administrators and the teachers I work with have been supporting me so I would like to just readdress and reorient some of the concerns we have in our school with the loneliness and the Despair and the kids that are
119going into library checking out books are not usually the ones we need to worry about we have more important matters to deal with and I hope we can set a press incident that we will move on from this issue and on to more impressive issues thank you Adeline Hearn hi my name is Addie Hearn I'm a junior at North I started a petition to protect student rights to access information in school libraries my petition went live the evening of Monday August 28th and had over 500 signatures in the first day in under a week the petition had over a thousand signatures as of Sunday afternoon the petition had 1739 signatures and 75 comments more still coming in although there were signatures from all over the world a thousand and forty signatures were from Indiana and
120853 from Bartholomew and surrounding counties I started this petition because I value having a variety of choices in the library and I wanted to make my friends aware that our choices might be limited if we didn't do something as school board members we know you play an important role in creating diverse and inclusive learning environment for all students all these students parents family members teachers and Librarians who signed this petition are calling on you to commit to the following to reject any form of censorship or restriction on Library materials to support intellectual Freedom by ensuring all students have access to a wide variety of books representing diverse viewpoints to promote critical thinking skills and encourage open dialogue within our school libraries and to provide professional development opportunities and support for professional Librarians and teachers tests
121with handling challenges related to our intellectual freedom thank you for the opportunity here is a copy of the petition results for your reference [Applause] I've never had a public speaker get a standing ovation you're quite an impressive girl Miss Hearn thank you Sunny curse and that is not right so sorry I am Sunny Currier um and I will do my best to tell a little story that I'd like to share with you I will try to be coherent I feel like I might be in a slight budget report coma but amen I'm just trying my best um not even kidding um so I have some roles in this community where I spend a lot of time with teenagers and have relationships with them um and I had coffee with a young woman that I've known
122for several years a college student recently and I'd like to just share especially with the board and Dr Roberts what what she related to me um she enrolled in Purdue wanting to be a high school math teacher she is so bright she talks about calculus 3 like it's her best friend and I don't know anyone except maybe Dale who would feel that way um she is she is super super bright she has helped other younger people with math and is really creative she understands how to explain things in different ways this is a very gifted young woman and what I'd like to share is that when we had coffee last week she told me that she was changing her major and I asked her why and she said I don't want to be treated the
123way I see teachers being treated and so it made me sad but with all the controversy that has been going on I've already shared my feelings of confidence in our school librarians and our teachers I think what I'd like to do today is to remind every board member Dr Roberts all of the administration that I hope you have and continue to have the backs of your professional staff because young eyes are on you thank you [Applause] yeah Steve Jasper my name is Steve Jasper and I'd like to start out by saying that I I come before you tonight not as a parent not as a parent of a student in bcsc but just as a member of this community and someone who cares very much about doing the best for our kids that we possibly
124can and based on the number of attendees tonight it seems that we have many people locally who are heavily invested in parenting their children and that's a good thing in fact it would probably be desirable if even more parents were as much involved in parenting their children as many of the people here tonight appear to be however there are some people here tonight because they want not only to parent their children but because they also have a an interest in parenting the children of other people and and they do that by trying to make decisions about which books are appropriate in our libraries in which students should have access to which books um and you know my feeling is if you want your children's exposure to books to specific books or to particular topics to
125be limited that is your prerogative as a parent but you should not have the right to impose such restrictions on other children and other parents when my son was in school and this was not a bcsc it was my goal and and I hope the goal of his teachers to develop an informed empathetic individual who would above all else be a good citizen I wanted him to learn that the world is full of people of different races nationalities economic classes religious beliefs sexual orientations personal and group histories and political opinions and I wanted him to develop an understanding of those differences the best way to do that is through direct experience with those opportunities are not always available therefore we offer our children the next best thing and that is exposure to diversity through Reading
126and as a somewhat biased parent I believe that this goal was achieved with my son but I do Wonder what would have happened and if his if his attainment of this goal would have been achieved if there had been parents in his school at the time who were interested in limiting his access to the books that he might want to read thank you Mr Jasmine Hewitt all right you hear me there we go all right good evening my name is Brittany Hewitt and my husband's name is Joseph Hewitt I'm here today to speak about reasonable accommodations we've lived in Columbus for a little over three years our daughter has started kindergarten this year at Southside Elementary School our daughter's a fighter she was born nine weeks prematurely and had three significant brain bleeds which led
127to our significant Visual and hearing impairment she has cortical visual impairment and due to this she has little to no lower field Vision this makes seeing curves on sidewalks very difficult along with walking up steps it's extremely difficult for her to know where the edge of the step is and where the drop begins one of the most common modifications that are utilized for people with visual impairments is taping or painting the edge of each stair with high contrast tape or paint this allows people with visual impairments to see where the step ends and the drop begins this allows them to walk up and down the stairs like every other kid Southside Elementary has been extremely accommodating to taping the stairs inside the school we've also requested though the exterior steps of Stop south side to
128be taped or painted my daughter utilizes those steps every day after Eye Care my husband I have seen the difficulty my daughter has experienced using those stairs we are told by the administration because there is a ramp they would not be taping those stairs but really all we want is for her to be able to walk those stairs confidently like any other child but the part that really troubles my husband and I is that my daughter's life should mean more to the administration than spending 38 dollars on a gallon of paint every now and then in actuality though we feel the real reason the administration will not tape or paint those stairs is because they don't really care about my child or about children with extra needs they don't want my child to be able
129to run up the stairs like any other kid they don't care to make it easier for her by just applying a little tape I want her to be different and feel different from her peers they want to limit her to just the ramp in life I know my daughter will experience trying times like any other kid but in her life she'll experience different challenges I don't know if she'll ever be able to drive I don't know what challenges she'll face because of her visual impairment but I do know there will be many it's because this world isn't built for people with disabilities I wish it were but it was just not but my daughter is five years old all she wants us to do is play dance and sing all she wants us to do
130is what other kids do she doesn't know she has or will have more challenges than neurotypical kids to you this paint or tape is an inconvenience an extra cost and extra work but to us my daughter this is everything it would allow my daughter to walk down those steps free of injury and free of fear if they can give us that with a little bit of paint I don't know why they wouldn't so we're requesting a school board agree to paint the exterior steps of south side and to hold the administration accountable to grant our request thank you [Applause] Carla Craig that clock makes me nervous my name is Carla Craig and Dr Robert Smith mentioned at the end of the last meeting that the Librarians and Library assistants had sent you all a letter
131and I just want to put a face to that letter my husband and I have been married for 43 plus years we live in ogilville we raise two sons I have two grandchildren and I have worked at the Mount Healthy library for 25 years in that time I think I've had one parent who called me and said you know I don't want my son to read books about witches and of course I automatically thought that you know she didn't like books about witches later I found out that wasn't true it was that the book scared him and so she didn't want her child to be scared um Dr Mr Nolan who had my son Adam a long time ago um mentioned that this is spark week and my spark has always been children I've always
132been interested in taking care of her children and being with children and um I babysat at an early age and I have I have a love for children um I just want you to know that these libraries have people who are running them I've done it for at least 10 years at Mount Healthy um I have a brain I have a face and I have a heart and I love those children and I would never purposely um let them have access to something that was going to hurt them I am also available so if if someone has a problem with my books in the library they they can call me they can come in and meet me they can talk to me and I I am certainly willing to look at the book and take
133the book to the principal I've done it um to find out whether or not it really is an appropriate book we have a procedure in place if you disagree with a book you can fill out a form you can talk to the principal and there is a committee of people in the end who will decide about the book If you if you really think it's a bad book so there is a procedure you can talk to me about your own personal child you can fill this form out um if you really disagree with a book um but there are a lot of people and a lot of words coming out of this microphone that behind this issue there are people there are employees and there are children and I feel like I want to do
134the best for the kids at Mount Healthy and again I would never do anything purposely to hurt them I make mistakes and I apologize for them and thank you for listening thank you Miss Craig Cassie Oren uh good evening I'm Kathy Orrin I live on 2880 West Carr Hill Road I had three sons that graduated from Columbus North and I just really want to make two very brief comments um one is I want to thank Kristen Marshall and Kelly McIntyre for their really heartwarming presentation of the great work they're doing in early learning our community has a real desperate need for capacity and spots in the early learning space so I'm truly grateful to to the two of them and to the entire bcsd team for all the work that's been done over the years
135to grow the capacity for Pre-K and preschool secondly I just wanted to say thank you to all of our Librarians and share my heartfelt support we have amazing Librarians in bcsc they're doing great work they're highly trained highly skilled very caring individuals and our kids love them and they're very lucky to have them so I just want them to know there are a lot of people in our community that that support them and I would like to encourage our board to engage with the Librarians as appropriate and to utilize the policy that we have in place as you've heard from others today I think it should work as needed and there's no need for anything different so thank you we appreciate you Nancy Mervis thank you harmful to minors can mean different things to different
136people I do not propose complete moral relativism but we must consider how we apply that standard the example that comes to mind for me as a psychologist arises from years of experience listening to people as they live through or remember living through adversity Hard Times bad events in their lives many books teach the just World hypothesis they tell children if they act rightly they do the right thing things will work out that is a reassuring message until things go very badly and we all know the terrible things that can happen in children's lives or even something less dramatic like a divorce or death of their grandmother you know the things that many of us can expect to go through children can conclude that they must have done something wrong or that something they couldn't help
137was actually their fault I'd rather not see children top that message but I'm not proposing to remove every book that gives us what I think is misleading account of how the universe works philosophers and religions have struggled throughout history to address the question of why do bad things happen to good people and it's corollary why do good things happen to bad people these are important questions and I don't think I can constrain what children read about the attempted answers even though some ques some answers May leave them vulnerable to anxiety and self-blame I trust our librarians to give to include books that give children the opportunity to learn what others have thought about the world and what happens to us in that world thank you Johnny Edwards it's me again I want to commend you
138first of all and say thank you for the opportunity to speak to you once again but I'm here today as a community leader elected Community leader even though I reside in district one being an elected Community leader I represent all my districts and everybody in my community one other thing I want to encourage you as board members and people that are supposed to follow the core belief it says our community school district are stronger when partnering with one another the more you're divided the more this community is going to distrust you now speaking as someone that represents the African-American community and while we're worried about books and other things I don't know if you guys know of your kids watch tick tock social media it's far worse than what you can imagine and the reason
139I'm saying that is there's a trend right now taking place in bcsc where kids are capturing kids on the phone paying them ten dollars if you go up and say somebody to somebody the n-word so while we're focusing on everything else understand there's an underlying message that's being going on right underneath our nose with our children that's not happening in a library it's happening on social media but as long as you're divided our community will not trust you and I'm hoping and this is why I commend you for supporting the Multicultural coordinator do you know how much of an impact that's made in my community alone to have that representative there but guess what he's being browbeat on social media for representing multiple cultures if you don't back that individual she'll continue to be attacked
140and it was just over or later we won't have anyone to represent our kids of color now as a parent I'm gonna give you an example of how I could be up here preaching a message about wanting to stand up against something I have a daughter in elementary that was being invited to go on a field trip to I believe it's the old school of the 1800s some of you guys as a parent of color at first I wanted to be upset because how are you going to invite my daughter to a school trip that back in the 1800s she never would have been able to go to but you know what I had to take a different approach as a parent I had to find something constructive and educational to help her understand who
141she is and what she was participating in can benefit her in the long run so while we're worrying about what other people can teach our children I have a responsibility to teach my own again I'm going to say to you school board members represent everyone stand together or you're not going to have a community that trusts you anymore thank you our boils Barb Wheels oh that's okay I am a parent of seven children and I'm currently in my 20th year as a bcsc parent I have five more to go um so um when you talk about limiting and reviewing books my mind goes to many many different places have even a little chart here that I did earlier but to many places but the main thing and I don't think I've heard really anybody talk
142about this is who is most affected by limiting books and it's the lower income families now if you limit a book at the bcsc library that they want to read or they need to read for a project they may not be able to get it my daughter who happens to actually be the person Sunny spoke of earlier had a friend when she was in high school she lived in Heritage Heights and her family did not have a car her only mode of transportation to and from school was the school bus so she could not utilize the public library because she wouldn't have had a way to get home so the only way she can get the books she wanted to read was the library or if she was lucky enough to have a friend that
143wanted that had the book and was willing to lend it to her [Music] um you know what I sped through that a lot faster than I meant it too but that's pretty much all of it have a great evening I'm Steve Wills there was a moment in time when we were about two percent of Southside enrollment between me and my brother and our seven and their five anyway a lot of my points have been made so I just want to make a couple of these one is that the actions of this board and the school generally are actions of the government and the government deciding content of speech is something that hasn't always gone well in their passes should only be done very seriously and very soberly and well the current board has Infinite Wisdom
144the next board that comes along may not so this might be the kind of thing we don't necessarily want to get into doing um I've also heard in here a couple of comparisons to movie ratings doesn't really apply movie ratings are entirely voluntary and they're done by a private organization and again this is a the acting of a government body and if we ban a book or whatever the proper word is it's gone it's not like the librarian can say well I know and in the movies they can just say no you can go on through so this is not the same thing at all um and then I think just uh um the last one is that I think the Touchstone should be educational value I hear a lot of you know this is
145the count of how many bad words are in this book or these are the topics that are touched on and so forth and I really think if you look at our mission statement is to educate kids and that should be where we decide what's in the library so we should be looking at the educational value and I don't necessarily hear that um when we're talking about things I hear like oh this shows something bad you know um so anyway that's what I would say is let's move very soberly because we are a government body and um yeah let's focus on the educational value of the books thank you okay that concludes our public comments for the night I just really want to thank everybody for sticking with us and taking the time it's very much
146appreciated okay move on to how requests for approval old business okay I'll take that Mrs Wilden um I do have recommendations under old business for minutes of the regular school board meeting our last one August the 21st as well as two of those four Neola policy recommendations we have four that are are holdovers from the last volume of the oil policies we're working on just because they needed some additional conversation we had some additional conversation tonight and we're looking at Wellness as really a new first reading given the the draft of that created by our Wellness team and the 5420 reporting of student progress you've given me some direction on on marrying a couple of paragraphs together with some thoughts so we'll work on those two so I would ask for approval of policy 5610
147suspension and expulsion of students and policy 8400 school safety with policy 5610 I would ask that we change the school board to accepting all expulsion appeals and hearing those and his expulsion appeals that is different than we had talked about before so the board would choose to do that and under school safety we are adding entities within the community that we would seek out input except for Corporation police officers which was included in that list of of entities we do not have that are our school resource officers are contracted in conjunction with the Columbus Police Department and Bartholomew County Sheriff's Office so those would be the two policies that would recommend and the changes that we have based on conversation in those two policies thank you Dr Roberts you have a motion from the board
148I moved we approved the minutes of our last meeting and the changes to policies 5610 and 8400 as presented by Dr Roberts second thank you Mr grahamson Mr major any discussion or questions okay very good all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes thank you and and I would like to thank the board for taking the time during those policy conversations I think they are helpful to have that dialogue uh around the different thoughts and uh helps us create a good policy under the next one it is request for approval new business and I have field trips and professional lease supplemental contracts school fundraisers as well as claims in payroll for the claims dated today September 11th about eight hundred thousand dollars for our pre-run that was for the month of
149August August 1 through August 31 almost four million dollars then our payroll uh the last one August the 21st is a little over 3.4 million dollars I also have two resolutions uh letter G is a resolution regarding the vaping settlement Dr Phillips included information in your packet about that this is the second settlement that we were asking for the language is basically the same in that agreement the first one was through Jewel and this one is through the company that is over Jewel which is the Phyllis Morris group or Altria and this amount is eighty seven thousand two hundred ten dollars and as we indicated when accepting the um a few hundred thousand dollars we were to receive from Jewel we would like to turn this about uh back around and look at substance misuse
150and how our Wellness Council can take the dollars being received if you approve this and use those for the purpose in which we we sought them which was the issues with with vaping that we were seeing throughout our community and and communities across the country letter H our last one is the resolution that Dr Phillips talked about in the public hearing at the beginning of the meeting so that amount for a 2023 additional appropriation those are my request for approval under new business Dr Roberts do you have a motion from the board I move that we approve number four letter C through H as presented by Dr Roberts second thank you Mr Grimes and Mr major any questions or discussion okay all those in favor say hi hi all those opposed motion carries thank you
151Dr Blake I request approval of the HR recommendations that's presented this evening you will see that there are two recommendations thank you doctor please I move that we approve the HR recommendations as presented by Dr plea second thank you Mr grams and Mr major all those in favor say aye all those opposed thank you Dr Blake okay let's start on this end um well I want to start with two commendations accommodations to Keith Burton band director at Columbus North and Casey Mitchell director bands at Columbus East their staff students and band parents for a well-organized marching band Invitational this past weekend and for an outstanding performance by the sound and spirit of Columbus I'm a specially thrilled that that students and staff from both of our high schools and parents work together to put on
152such a quality program um commendations to Darren Johnson and Derek Gratz with C4 and the exhibit Columbus High School design team on their outstanding com contribution to the installations downtown and to the presentations that they have made about those installations they have done a impressive job of representing bcsc and C4 and further note I have actually had conversations with teachers and administration from Columbus East and Columbus North around the high school team restructuring and um and I it's been very encouraging they are excited and it seems to be going well but I would like to reiterate I think it's been said before but but I would like a report back to the board maybe at the end of the quarter or maybe at the end of the semester with some measures and also I would
153particularly be interested I think I think we can say that this was instituted without a hundred percent backing from the teachers and I would be interested now that it's being implemented to have a some kind of survey or feedback from the teachers to see if their thoughts where their thoughts are at this point and my last thing that I want to say actually um so it's been said in the past what percent agreement we have between these two groups that we hear from I'm not one to make up percent so I'm not going to say what percent agreement we have but but I heard two speakers say tonight that what we want is what's best for our kids and I think it's good for us to acknowledge that both sides of this argument want what's
154best for our kids we might not always agree what that looks like but but we are in agreement that we are doing this for our kids going over the last week I want to thank Dr hack who hosted us for the home built by C4 students to celebrate the 50th anniversary of barcon construction and it was a collaborative build in the Lincoln Central Family neighborhood so I want to congratulate that team and all the effort that they did and the students that put in the Blood Sweat and Tears probably to get that building up and the family that was very very humble to receive it so I want to send a kudos to Dr hack and his team over in C4 Kudos also to Columbus North High School for winning the Excellence in college readiness
155Awards a couple nights ago with a 250 000 award and the efforts that go there and also hearing similar positive feedback from the team's model and the ccic meeting um also kudos to Dr Roberts on winning the Indiana Wellness volunteer of the Year from the Indiana Chamber of Commerce this has been a critical aspect as we bounce back out of the covid-19 pandemic and the wellness requirements they're in that our students face and the challenges they're in and I know that has been a commitment by the administration and it's along it's very very deserving finally I would ask that this board seriously considered the inquiry by Miss Hewitt at Southside Elementary School I had the privilege of talking with both parents as they are members of my district and also with Southside Elementary School and
156I'd like to see a report of that as soon as it may be made available um thanks even though they're going now and probably getting ready for bed thanks to Mrs McIntyre and Mrs Marshall for their presentation this evening on vcsc Early Childhood bright beginnings and Pre-K thanks to all community members stakeholders that were present at our Public Work session prior to this meeting and all of you that have hung around to either listen and or speak this evening and lastly in regards to all this book talk I think one thing that everybody can agree on is the absolute vital importance of nurturing and developing young readers and I I saw I was kind of late in reading the newest newsletter on the 8th I believe but uh so this is for anybody out there
157listening book buddies needs volunteers um second you'd be paired with second third graders across the district to help them further hone their their reading skills and abilities and you can inquire at bookbuddies at bcsc.k12.in.us thank you um I love being able to serve on the board and and I'm just going to share something kind of off the cuff I was at work today and I left a little early because our meetings here started at four and and they're like but don't you have a school board meeting I say it'll be five five hours guys five hours and they all look at me like oh my gosh I'm so sorry and I'm not I'm not sorry I really I enjoy serving this way I enjoy the different perspectives I'm learning so much I hope I'm giving
158a lot so anyway I just wanted people to to know that second thing is um you know I I appreciate all the speakers but two stood out to me Miss Courier that budget comatose I'm going to use that at work that was gold that was gold um and then also to Addie Hearn it was great to get to hear the perspective of kids and I'm super impressed with you thank you again thank you I'd Echo the commendations that other board members have made in particular I appreciate the speakers and the listeners the folks who are paying attention to the work of the school corporation it's welcome speakers at the four o'clock meeting the folks that sat and listened through the boring five o'clock meeting and then the folks that spoke this evening but also the
159folks that listened I appreciate it and I'm sure it will help us to better work as a board yeah as rich just said I agree with everything everybody's already said so I will add that um this time of year uh there's Not Just Sports but there's other after school activities that are going on so I just wanted to give a commendation out to all the coaches directors mentors teachers everybody that's taken place or taken their time out to support after school activities it's a lot of extra work that people put in and sometimes that time is just given freely and then also just to highlight that you know there's a lot of bus drivers that are part of the make the late trip home with the team and custodial staff that has to clean up
160afterwards so I just want to tell all them thank you they don't probably hear that enough so thank you I'm Mr Bryant first of all I would like to invite Miss Marshall and Miss McIntyre back before the end of the year just to see how things I know that they need more space over there been in that school and yes they do then I would like for the people to look at that young lady that stood up there and read and understand that that she turned out pretty good and I don't know what books you read but I have for uh apparently it's been enough to influence not just self but your other students that are around you so and that young lady inside you looked like you too so keep it up thank you
161oh by the way we have two of our employees from Bethany County Public Library that have joined the bull Buddies just to let you know okay uh with that I think upcoming dates we have our regular school board meeting here September 25th at 6 30 we will again have a public work session just before that starting at five o'clock ending at six o'clock also in this in this building okay with that meeting adjourned thank you