001here okay welcome everybody we'll go ahead and kick off our our board meeting um I think we can start with the Pledge of Allegiance so for those who are able if you want mind standing congratulations one nation under God okay thank you we have all seven board members in attendance so we do have a quorum and meeting will be called to order I think our first item on the agenda today Dr Roberts is a human resources recommendation it is Miss Wilden so just real quick on the slides here or the screens we do have our vision mission and core beliefs and I mentioned those because as we then hire this next person we we try to make sure we're aligning these kinds of recommendations with our efforts from a school corporation to our strategic plan
002so we do have on the agenda a recommendation for the director of title services and that recommendation is Megan schaff and so Megan is uh received her Bachelor of Science degree in PE sports management from Valparaiso University in 2000 where she also played basketball she received her masters of education in 2009 and principal licensure in 2013 from Indiana Wesleyan prior to beginning her career in education Megan did also serve as a graduate assistant basketball coach at Valparaiso and then began her teaching career at Westfield Middle School she joined our school corporation in 2005 as a teacher at Columbus North High School she was in that role for seven years Department coordinator and volleyball coach varsity volleyball coach at North she then went to CSA new tech and then on to McDowell where she has been
003the director there for the last last several years she I mentioned the that vision mission and that strategic plan piece and one of the things that's really important about Megan is she's been very active in the community she currently serves as the president of the board of directors for sukasa she's on the board for our school Foundation she's a guiding team member for our Council Faith development here in the community and she is currently a member of the 40th anniversary class of leadership Bartholomew County here in Columbus last year Megan entertainment mcnow were recognized for their Herculean work that was the word in the Republic the newspaper as they worked with Afghan refugees at Camp Atterbury to help help them learn English so we have we're recommending uh Megan for this position due to her
004ability to develop strong relationships with all stakeholders her experience with budgets and Grant applications with this director of Title Services position certainly has as a part of it and her commitment to the corporation's strategic plan so it is our recommendation that Megan Chef be named our director of title services and again from a vacancy standpoint the reason this position is open for us is because as of July 1st Charles Edwards who is currently in the position will be moving into director of secondary education for our school corporation so Megan schaff is our recommendation for director of Title Services thank you Dr Roberts do I have a motion to uh Point Megan Chef is director of Title Services second thank you Mr Allen thank you Mr Bryant um we'll take it to a vote all those
005in favor say aye aye aye well there's a post congratulations all right thank you and Megan is here okay thank you very much um I appreciate the uh the vote of confidence and kind words um certainly it's always been a team effort and I don't want to take much time tonight because I'd much rather hear from CSA new tech and the kids that are here to share about the great work that they do but I do want to thank Dr Roberts and the board for this opportunity to serve and if I were to list all of the people I really need to thank through bcsc over the last many many years it would take way too long so it's a blanket thank you and and to the culture of bcsc to really support um growth
006and development of their teachers and their staff and and the belief in me the mentors that I've had along the way many of whom sitting in this room tonight to really help me get to the point where where I've had the opportunities to to be ready to serve in this way and keep the mission going of really serving um the students and families of bcsc and Columbus I do want to mention quickly some people that mean a lot to me that came tonight my husband Chris and my two sons Riley and Kellen are here and certainly their sacrifice and support you know for anyone and Mom out of the out of the building at times uh meaning home it's a team effort at home and nothing happens without them and I'm so proud and for
007the 70-ish plus years of education experience sitting between my mother and Aunt who came to surprise me to to congratulate here teaching and educations in my family it's in our blood and so you know that's just that's part of what it is and I appreciate their efforts to be here so thank you for that um and and with that appreciate it and get look forward to getting to know more of you as we move forward measures [Laughter] okay before we move to the next item Miss World I would just call our attention to the photo that's up there so it is Megan there and uh that was when Governor Holcomb uh brought our group up from McDowell to recognize their efforts with uh our Afghan refugees at Camp Atterbury so a Statewide recognition for them
008okay next on the agenda we have I think a special presentation Dr Roberts is that right yeah we do so uh we have some represent representatives from United Way here uh this evening so uh United Way runs a large annual campaign throughout this community every year bcsc is happy to participate in that we have students involved we have staff involved throughout the organization and so you can see a number up there and we we do contribute a decent amount of money each year to the United Way so we'll I'll step up and we'll do the check presentation thank you again [Laughter] well first of all as a father of four I want to thank bcsc and the amazing work that you do to former students at bcsc two current students and just really want to
009thank you for the amazing work that you do the amazing teachers that you have and preparing children for school so thank you for that uh from the United Way's perspective just we could not do what we do without bcsc we have such a deep partnership with all of the work that you do supporting children outside of the school so that they have what they need whether it's backpacks whether it's food security assistance whether it's help with clothing whether it's any number of different things helping students get what they need outside of the classroom so that they have so that they can then succeed as students so thank you so much for all that you do and we will use the money very wisely to make the biggest possible impact that we can for the students
010at bcsc so thank you we'll reciprocate that thanks Mark thanks so much for your leadership United Way the United Way is a great partner and does so much for this community thank you okay uh next item is our best practice sharing for tonight so can I invite up this CSA new tech team please foreign [Music] good evening thank you for giving us the chance to spend some time with you and introduce some of the great things that are happening at CSA new tech if you haven't already been in our building this is an open invitation to any of you who have not been there come on over give us a call and one of our students will give you a a tour and you can see for yourself the the Fantastic things that are happening
011there so my name is Mike Reed and I am the principal at CSA new tech and I have been since 2008 when we opened our doors which is a little bit amazing to me that we uh have been a bcsc high school for now for 15 years joining me this evening is CSA English facilitator Veronica Buckler and seniors Tommy Morrell and Abby shoot Columbus signature Academy's part of the new tech network of schools which is a national network we offer a rigorous College Prep curriculum with an emphasis on 21st century skills that are necessary for students when they go into the world of work whether they're going into post-secondary education uh we actually are the uh first in the nation to be a K-12 pathway our schools include CSA Lincoln CSA fodrea and CSA Central
012Middle School so CSA new tech is actually a magnet school all of our students have a home school of either Columbus North or Columbus East the magnet school status allows our students to participate in extracurricular activities through one of the larger high schools uh CSA new Tech students participate in athletics band choir theater C4 all of those things in the large school our enrollment is achieved through a stratified Lottery that's um that's aimed at matching the demographics of our district once in the pathway students have automatics bids to the next grade level should they choose to CSA 8th graders are automatically enrolled in our ninth grade class unless they choose to opt out which they may do we currently serve 365 students grades 9 through 12. and what you see for you is is a
013breakdown of the demographics of our our current uh enrollment so we are about 50 lunch assistance uh textbook assistance 16 students qualifying for special education services and about seven percent of students who are English language learners uh you can also see a a breakdown of the ethnic uh diversity in our in our school so at the heart of uh CSA and the new tech model is an instructional practice referred to as project-based learning Veronica Buckler bcsc Teacher of the Year by the way uh is a new tech certified pbl trainer she is a certified magnifying learner or learning pbl trainer and I am going to ask Veronica to capture for you what project-based learning is based learning is a revolutionary Pathway to education that brings real world experiences to the classroom this educational approach focuses
014specifically on authenticity of learning active exploration of topics application of learning academic rigor and making adult Connections in the community our students are centered in PBO as the drivers of the learning teachers become facilitators changing the stage on the stage to the guide on the side by empowering students to take charge of their own learning pbl encourages students to explore their passions Curiosities and possibilities with that students are also understanding the purpose of their learning finding real world connections and applications of the content while also exploring future career possibilities project centers around a driving question and a problem statement that outlines the direction students need to take in their creative problem solving we begin with an entry event that interested introduces students to the main idea problem or opportunity and generating excitement for the project
015then we direct students to consider what they already know about the project and what they need to know in order to be successful bees knows and need to knows establish the direction of the classroom work we will we will go in using the need to knows the students and the facilitator create a workshop list which incidentally the facile already anticipated in the design of the project but the major difference is that students are requesting these workshops to accomplish their task this is where the academic rigor steps in and pushes students to not just learn the material for the test but to learn its application through the doing setting a deeper understanding of the content and therefore the state standards from there students begin to research experiment and develop solutions to the challenge presented by the
016project students at CSA have explored the challenge of City Planning through designing new downtown spaces and buildings in Columbus confronted food deserts and sustainability issues with our CSA Garden created a space for our new beehive colony and criticized societal issues through the writing directing and Performing of dystopian plays at local theaters we have consulted with the parks department on the need for teen spaces in the Nexus Park and tested water quality at the lagoons we have interviewed Hometown Heroes on their commitment to our country at times of war and hosted our very first CSA Veterans Day event this past year our students have presented ideas and solutions to the Chamber of Commerce the Parks Department Council for Youth Development bcsc Administration turning point and numerous local businesses pbl does not just connect students to Community
017Partners needs and challenges locally it also allows for students to participate in Regional State and national projects a student from CSA was able to have her screenplay turned into a short film after submitting to Project Pegasus which then allowed more CSA students to have the chance to work on a full production set as they filmed this in Columbus through the use of pbl CSA has prepared our grads to enter colleges and careers prepared to collaborate to present their ideas to peers and partners and to advocate for themselves and their work through a strong sense of community and agency Veronica so new tech as I mentioned before is part of a national network of schools that actually originated in Napa California the model was created in response to business and industry leaders expressing their concerns to
018the local school board the graduates lack the 21st century skills that they wanted in the workplace so they defined those skills as 21st century skills for example the ability to collaborate with others the ability to solve complex problems in a technology-rich environment uh good communication skills and work ethic so in order to achieve those outcomes then we must first teach those kids our kids how to do those things and we have to give them opportunities to practice those things and we have to give them feedback so new Tech student grades are actually based on five school-wide learning outcomes the first of which is content uh and you can see the breakdown of our school web learning outcomes sixty percent of uh their student grade is uh content and then 10 each in four other school-wide
019learning outcomes and when I say that those four school I learned learning outcomes are not separate from the content they are part of content but we're assessing students in every single class in writing they write in math they write in science they write in the English class obviously um and they do a lot of presentations and I will tell you that those kids that started in kindergarten at Lincoln and Padre who have been presenting and collaborating challenges every day because they just do amazing things so that's a look at our assessment processes additionally our students earn core 40 diplomas they can earn a core 40 with academic honors core 40 with Technical Honors some students will earn both academic and Technical Honors and we encourage our students to go a little bit above and beyond
020and earn what is called the new tech seal on their diploma if any of you have read the newspaper today you might have seen a feature story on breed Winger he's one of our seniors who's actually pursuing the new tech seal in order to earn that they must earn 12 college credits they do 100 hours of community service starting in their freshman year they take four years of math and science and of course they do an internship foreign so this evening we'd like to highlight a unique pathway that's available at CSA for our students that was created out of our partnership with Ivy Tech information technology is one of the fastest growing career paths with a variety of high paying jobs and opportunities and students that are interested in it can start the CSA new
021tech Ivy Tech I.T pathway which is a mouthful in their sophomore year and you'll see a breakdown of classes here the courses are taught actually by an Ivy Tech Professor on our campus the course sequence allows students to explore a variety of aspects of the I.T field including Hardware software coding networking and cyber security students who complete the program will graduate with 29 college credits tuition free and Industry valued certification and I'm pleased uh to have two of our seniors here who have actually participated in all three years of the I.T pathway they're going to tell you about their experience we're going to start with uh Abby shoot hello my name is Abby shoot and I'm a senior here at Columbia signature Academy and I'm also a senior at Columbus North High School North I've
022been an active member of the Columbus North Wind Ensemble for three consecutive years and a member of the 25th Street jazz band both are which the top bands that are offered here at North alongside that I was the 2022 mellophone section leader in the sound and spirit of Columbus last year and a two-year consecutive member of the Indiana All-State band outside of band you can either find me tap dancing or Irish step dancing this fall I'll be attending Purdue as a cyber security major the I.T pathway mentioned has definitely prepared me for this next step not only did this pathway build my fundamental skills in I.T but it gave me real world experiences such as a cyber Patriot cyber Patriot is a nationwide competition that are by cohort which is six members just competed in
023and did semi-finals last week this competition not only tested our cyber security skills which we haven't taken yet we're starting this course this semester so we're actually we learned cyber security skills before we even done and we made it to the semifinals so we just competed in that as I mentioned last week on Friday at Ivy Tech and we don't know if we made it nationwide but we were also competing alongside other teams Nationwide so not only are we competing against people in Indiana or like in our community we're competing against people in Colorado we're communicating as people in California and this is great because we were not only defending different virtual like different virtual machines within it but we were also testing these skills that we had not yet learned and so being able
024to take this I.T pathway has given me 45 college credits from not only it but also the other dual credit classes that I've taken at Ivy Tech and this is with the real the Dual credits certified teachers and the real world real world experiences that I've had through PBO and this pathway has also given me the chance to have more freedom in my schedule in college and this allows me to not only space out my classes more in college but also be able to take a minor in forensic science to further my studies in cyber security thank you so Abby correct me if I'm um if I'm wrong you didn't originally see yourself going into cyber security before this pathway you were going to be an architect okay um Tommy Morrell is going to tell
025us about his experience also in the program Tommy thank you um my name is Tommy Morrell I'm a senior at CSA new tech I've been in the CSA CSA program for four years I came out of Northside Middle School not part of CSA and then I joined in high school because I have a lot of family and I'm also a senior at Columbus East I wrestle for Columbus East Olympians I'm uh this is my six year wrestling on the team I am also a team captain and going into my or at the end of my freshman year I heard about the I.T pathway and I was definitely interested as I've always had kind of like a little knack for it and like I'd always like to fix anything I.T that I could and I would
026always be on a computer um so I heard about it and then my sophomore year I signed up for it uh this I.T pathway not only has opened the doors to for me to see like all the possible options in it but it has also given me a step ahead of other students who may be going who I may be going into college with they may not know they may not know or have the knowledge that I do from this I.T pathway um I'll be graduating with 53 college credit uh from CSA new tech 23 of those are from the it pathway and the rest is from other Ivy Tech courses I have taken or from teachers who are certified to teach with dual credit one moment and whether in the I.T pathway we be
027tested with making a robot making an ATM program or even taking certified real world certification exams such as the CompTIA a plus certification which I am on my way as well as Abby we both have passed one of two exams and one student in our cohort is actually passed both exams and is certified as a comp Tia plus uh passer I guess but they will have that CompTIA plus certification and the CompTIA a plus certification is like a nation known uh certification which basically covers all the basics of it and it is often a prerequisite for many careers in I.T I'm going to be moving on to Purdue next year to study game development design and the IT Pathways definitely open the doors for me and made sure that I am going to be participating
028in a career choice that I definitely want to do as these options have provided that for me thank you Evan and Tommy thank you both um very much so CSA new Tech students benefit from a small school culture where our three pillars of our trust respect and responsibility uh they benefit from a small school they benefit from pbl while also being able to reach out and do the large school of things at the heart of our school as our advisory and close relationships between students and staff we are the CSA new tech dragons if you haven't visited us come over and see us and thank you for giving us time this evening we are happy to answer any questions that you have all right helping up to the team for questions Mr Stenner I know
029I've asked this question Mr Reed before but if you could remind me how we make sure that we blend all the state standards into the curriculum as the students are going through the the projects and then uh I'll make it a two-parter I'm curious too about our library projects I'm assuming that year after year after year we continue to add project ideas that the students might undertake um and make sure that they fit with the state standards absolutely and Veronica quite frankly um you plan projects and you start with the Indiana State Standards do you want to address that question sure thank you that's a really great question about pbl because I think that sometime is a is a misunderstanding or just something that's Unknown about pbl but when I am going to design a
030project for my class I start with the state standards I look at what the state is asking me to teach in my course and and we actually kind of treat the state standards as the bare minimum this is this is the bare minimum that we need to teach because then that allows us to open the door to everything else that we could be teaching in that class as well so really I come at it just like any other teacher would in their classroom we look at the state standards we create a year-long curriculum map based off of the flow of the standards and the skills that need to develop first second and third and then from there we use those to develop projects that will then allow students to explore not just those State Standards
031but anything else that we think fit into those ideas uh so we are currently so I one of the classes that I teach is uh World Civ world history and civilization so we have looked at all of the standards that Indiana requests that teachers teach that have to do with revolutions and social movement so right now we're talking about uh the Scientific Revolution we're talking we're going to talk about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution we're going to talk about the Latin movement for Independence the Industrial Revolution the movement to decolonization after World War II so we're going to use all of those to to really understand the move for freedom and democracy and independent thought and secular ideas throughout world history and from there we're asking students to understand how to get a movement
032how to get an idea out into the world so when we designed that project we look at what we have to teach and then we see what else we can pile on from there and I'm sorry what was the second question your library of projects yes so um pbl asks for uh for a facilitator to really consider what the immediate need is in the community and that could that could mean School community that could mean you know City community that could mean State Community and that allows for that project to be authentically real real in the moment so a lot of times projects kind of just pop up um a Community member can reach out to somebody at CSA and say hey I really need this I need feedback on this I I want to
033know what your students think about this so the um the new idea for Nexus Park and and the parks department requesting some feedback on just how do we get teams to use this space so that naturally created a project for some of our classes to really consider what um what city planning requires of a city department but also how does a Community Serve its residents so our students had to consider those ideas and they had to present uh their argument so argumentative writing to the panel that we convened so we have projects that are in the moment right we're probably never going to have another project quite like that because Nexus Park is almost done but uh what we also do is we find those projects they're kind of the linchpins of the classroom so
034in the past I've had a class where we do the dystopian Masterpiece Theater project where we studied dystopian novels every year and we come back to that project and it's something that I think you guys heard about before you made it to the class and then you've talked to younger students about oh man this is this is a really great project that I really enjoyed so it's those library of projects that we can repeat that kids get super excited about and then there are these other projects that are just kind of in the moment when they pop up for whatever need uh exists in the community I've got a couple simple questions at the release I think they are so Mr Reed the enrollment this year of 365 has that been pretty steady since 2008
035that has been pretty steady yes um the program was designed around 100 per class I think our largest enrollment at any one year was about 382 but 365 is typical yeah it's part of that also there are some some variants in you know my my ninth grade class is going to come from largely CSA Central so you know as their numbers fluctuate so combined and one more um obviously you know Tommy's very involved at East and Abby's very involved at North about what percent of your kids are involved in extracurriculars at their home school I'm going to phone a friend here um just real quick because our counselors immoral can throw a number just about how many students do we have traveling at any given time she said about 175. now we have students also
036who who will be four years on our campus and and not take a class uh or maybe not participate they do our own clubs you know so the beauty of this really is that there are so many opportunities for our kids to engage in different in different ways so yeah and I just want to really offer Kudos so I came from Columbus North High School in the high school intercurricular program which was very similar I think from what I'm understanding and the time spent on Dual credit and working with our partner organizations and being able to take that time out of school is only going to be very valuable to both of you and honestly it's been invaluable in my career experience so just kudos to you guys for providing that to them um first
037of all I want to reiterate what what Mike just said I think one of the really strong points of your school is that your students get the benefit of a small school and the benefit of a large school which is really a unique I don't know how many places in the country kids can do that I do have two questions one is do you know about what percent of the central CSA students stay in CSA for new tech and for those new people coming in like Tommy do you have to do you build anything into the curriculum to get them up to speed with the kids who have been doing PBO so 70 to 75 percent of the eighth graders is what I would anticipate are going to keep their spots this year uh and
038you know we we do some exit surveys to to find out if they if they choose to leave sometimes it's Athletics sometimes it's family uh sometimes they're they're leaving because uh they're leaving our district you know they're moving so uh that's that's the percentage that I would expect um we in terms of recruiting uh additional students to the program actually every single eighth grader in our district takes a tour of CSA new tech if they just drive by on 25th Street and they have no idea our curb appeal from 25th Street is is I mean we're working on it um Dr Roberts helped me get a great sign out there early on um but if if you've never been here and you only know that building as Hoosier Auto Parts Warehouse which is what it
039was when I was in high school you got to do yourself a favor and come in because we've created a revolutionary learning space those 8th graders come uh and then you know we get more applications in terms of onboarding new students um you know it is it is part of everything that we do with our freshmen when I say we teach those 21st century skills you can't just say that we want our kids to collaborate in 2008 when we opened I will I'll make this really short if I can we were sitting around the teacher room scratching our heads because projects were just going horribly and students were not and somebody had the wisdom to say maybe we ought to teach them how to collaborate and we partnered with Cummins engine company who sent Engineers
040to our building and they took on the same project we did Fishbowl protocols for them to watch and so we looked at our rubrics and said how do we teach a freshman to collaborate what does oral communication look like a good presentation for a sophomore so we're very intentional about teaching those skills yeah I have one other thing so this has been several years since this happened but but many years back I was I forget what you call them but the boards that that the students present their projects to I was invited to be on one of those I assume you still do that with some of the projects um are you talking about senior projects yes we absolutely loved it I would invite you to invite us to serve on those yeah yeah we
041absolutely love having community members come in and and be part of our assessment process because it it brings on another level of seriousness when they have to present to somebody from our community and not just to miss buckler again so and if I should add it was a it happened to be a geometry class so of course I loved it but but it was a good experience too thank you all right thank you so much for your time and I think you have it no I don't think we're done I don't think we're done I'm used to it so if you want some water I got some water here you guys have been talking for a long time so I'm going to do this real quick I'm actually going to ask you to pass the
042mic to the students so both Abby and Tommy um you guys are both going to graduate soon and as a graduate you're going to be an ambassador for the school you went to you're going to speak it up to all the friends that you have to have younger brothers or sisters that could go through this what is the real quick one experience that you would use in a very quick conversation to sell to other prospective students that this is the best experience for them um I would say house games it's something unique that we do with our advisories so uh our school is broken up into six houses kind of like Hogwarts houses we have uh Hydra Leo which is the best one uh Hercules Orion uh Draco and Dorado they're forgotten about but uh
043uh so house games is at the end of a nine weeks and at the end of a semester we come together and we play some games um we compete for house points which is a ranking of which uh which house has the highest amount of points throughout the year and then overall they'll become number one at the end of the year right um and really it's something that brings everyone together and you really feel that sense of community that you wouldn't feel at some other schools necessarily and you really get to see like and interact with your other students in a way that I feel like you wouldn't be able to experience anywhere else I'm slightly offended you forgot Dorado because that's my house and we're the reigning two-year in a row I believe house
044Champs right now so anyways the thing I would use to sell uh CSI is FICA so every once in a while in our houses our advisories we come together as a house so that's three advisories in each house and we have fika which I believe is Swedish for it together right so we all bring food and we all eat together and it's kind of just a nice way to collaborate and get to know the Freshman because coming into high school I was really scared because I actually graduated from San Bartholomew so it was a class of around 50 and I was going into any school bigger than that was going to be terrifying and so coming into CSA and having this thing called FICA got me allowed me to learn the upperclassmen and have those
045connections and I still actually talked to many of my upperclassmen because since I'm going to Purdue and marching band there and so I've reached out to several different alumni from CSA and I've been like Hey how do I do this how to do that and just FICO is a nice way to get to know everyone thank you same question yep sorry one more uh keeping track of the students as they progress it sounds like both Abby and Tommy joined uh as freshmen and and experienced project-based learning as a as an academic program that year the kids that started the students that started as kindergartners where where are they now have we have we had kindergartners yes spend all 13 years yeah last year I think was our first uh class of kindergartners who went all
046the way through yeah um yeah and uh actually two of those uh Emma Edwards and um brought burbrink finished in the top of their class so we were pretty proud of them great College Choice boiler up okay thank you all very much appreciate it [Applause] Christmas [Laughter] thank you thank you thank you very much [Laughter] um I actually was thinking I needed a sticker for my alarm okay we will move on to board commendations I don't leave things to chance I like to start on one side or the other so tonight it's going to be down there with Mr nellon do you have anything for board commendations accommendations to Sarah Rapp and Trisha burns from Central Middle School recently at least when I got this it was recent it's not quite as recent now but
047recently they organized a project where students collected over 1700 food items and raised over 200 in donations for various local food organizations student representatives from different groups in the school met with Bartholomew County food insecurity coalition to share out all of the work that they did so recommendations to Sarah wrapp and Trisha Burns uh accommodations to Brett Finley and the Husky family over at CSA Lincoln um they hosted me a couple weeks ago and I enjoyed learning their school history understanding the results that they come a long way in closing the academic achievement Gap and just seeing the school operations and they were very very hospitable you know walking us around to see students all the way through k-6 at their school and it's just nice to see the family that they've created and I
048mean they allowed me to ask a multitude of questions so I apologize to Brett in advance for all the bombardment and I did take away one thing that they did really well which was an annual theme and their theme this year was that all roads lead to Lincoln and they reinforced that theme in multiple areas through their academic but also through their extracurriculars even into their Sports so I could I just combinations to the Husky family for a good job I'll move quickly through about a half dozen here congratulations commendations to East girls varsity basketball coach Danny Brown for recently recording his 300th win at East and thanks also to Coach Brown for his 20 years his dedication in 20 years of coaching at East as he'll be retiring at the end of the year
049accommodations to all the Columbus robotics teams seems like they are very frequently in the news for any number of things from you know representing themselves well at competitions for hosting events and most recently for providing stem inspiration to others outside of our community congratulations commendations to the seven seniors that recently received scholarships from the local African-American pastors Alliance at the annual Martin Luther King Jr Day breakfast at the commons accommodations to Kristen Beck the director of Wellness for bcsc for so thoroughly promoting the district's new EAP program offering Google meets making herself available to answer questions and help explain the new program to employees and we can only hope that more take advantage of this new EAP program than has been in the past um accommodations to all those responsible for creating the weekly staff
050highlight in an attempt to recognize even more bcsc employees and the good work they do on a daily basis and lastly congratulations to the Columbus North girls bowling team who participated in Regional competition at Jasper on Saturday Junior Reagan Mathis finished second I had the second highest Regional score in junior Lexi Jones had the seventh highest score at the regional the team also posted uh scores great scores as they finished runner up to Jasper and the top three teams Advanced so the north girls bowling team will be competing next week in the uh at the same estate in Indianapolis thank you any other combinations sure I noticed in one of our newsletters recently that we have four classified staff named employees of the month I guess that's a regular thing this month January Kathy Gunn
051Larry Jones Scott Bay and Christine Baker so commendations to them for their exemplary behavior as pcsc staff members so I'm a talker so I want to try and do this as quick as I can but on Monday the 16th Logan and I visited Richards Elementary School in an effort to tour the schools and get to know some of the principals and staff in the different areas and the challenges that they're met with we were met by Mr sprung at the front office staff and there's a lot of smiles and positivity it was a great welcome we left his office area and we're met by one of the teachers Viviana Alvarez who does a lot of work with the student council was kind of kind of refreshing to talk to her because she had some ideas
052that were interesting that the students brought up the students actually thought it'd be really cool to meet the board someday and get to know what we go through since they're doing kind of the same thing at a much smaller level at the school they also had some ideas on how to make our Board website a little more kid-friendly I think the term spice it up was used so they were it was really cool to kind of hear that the kids are interested in those kind of things I think a lot of us probably when we were younger especially older people like myself hit 47 we didn't have an internet when I was in high school so a lot of this stuff is kind of cool to see the kids that are using the technology so
053we moved from there we walked around the halls we stopped in several classrooms to observe what was going on in the classrooms we talked a little bit about how the architecture in the building is set up to allow a lot of light in the room to give a lot of openness to space there were several rooms that did a good job with using color in the room just to kind of give a fresh feel it's not Battleship Gray so a lot of us probably grew up in in those School rooms that just didn't have all that color so it was kind of neat to see that it was nice to see some of the diversity that was in the school it was it was amazing to understand that Richards elementary school has 14 different countries
054represented in that school cool so we stop and think about diversity it was kind of neat to hear that it was uh let's see um see we had a good conversation with DaVita Hardin about stem DaVita is a stem coordinator for I think all bcsc I think is what we were told but luckily for Richard she's stationed there four out of five days a week so they get the benefit of having her there and and it helps the students learn a lot more we noticed that there were some new smart boards some of the older smart boards are hard to see because there's a lot more lighting that older technology isn't as good as the new technology so they shared with us one of the newer smart boards and that's something that they would really
055like to see more schools get access to so that's a something long-term for us to all consider we I felt I'm sure Logan would tell you too that we had a good visit we were welcomed by everyone we met we want to take the time now to thank the teachers the Tas the staff the janitors the kitchen crew and Mr sprong for giving us a little bit of their day on Monday from a sports perspective I think that both the boys and girls teams were undefeated if I remember right I know he said they were playing south side and I thought I'd heard they won but I did not confirm that so either way that was pretty cool and then we also while we were there we witnessed something that was kind of cool it
056was a virtual field trip and so I'd like to thank Mr strong for giving Mrs winsler some extra credit work for the next next uh best practice sharing um she was not happy about that but it's probably because I asked her to do it and she had my daughter long ago and so it's kind of paybacks um I also from a sports standpoint I know we talked about Coach Brown but also coach Humes and and Mr Hughes at East all are celebrating their retirement so I want to thank them for their years of service I'm done now okay any others no I'm just glad that my uh board member here turned 47. 48 in June okay thank you team um now School Board member reports I know we are making committee assignments tonight so it
057might be might be difficult for any of those to apply but for for people who maybe are carrying over are there any any member reports yep Mr Grimes um the school Foundation board just met January 10th Lots going on in the school Foundation just renewed a commitment with donors choose where teachers can submit projects and others who might want to help fund fun fund a project I would encourage those teachers or anybody who wants to help fund a project to check out what's still on there projects still needing to be funded that's at bcsf stars.org for any students parents that might watch the board meeting later on scholarships are now scholarship applications are now open so I would encourage you to get on the site and see what there is available thanks to Dr Bozeman
058for working with bcsf and and partnering with the visitors center where certain schools will be toured the first day tentatively April 29th and then also a fall date perhaps later on so whatever profits made from those visitations half will go to the school foundation and then lastly probably the biggest news from the school Foundation the biggest fundraiser of the year for the school Foundation the Harlem Wizards game that's set for Sunday March 5th at two o'clock at North the ticket link is up and running on the website again that's at BCS at B CSF stars.org and then secondly just kind of a quick legislative report from the school boards Association today marked the beginning of the third week for this session the bill filing deadline has passed the school boards Association had currently has 218
059bills on its uh tracking list which is about one of every five bills that were submitted are somehow related to K-12 education and as you might imagine the the list of the topics of the bills kind of run the gamut everything from Pure EK immunization School Board elections tax incentives textbook fees mental health Child Protection teacher Recruitment and Retention and a lot of those topics have multiple bills that that are related to them and so you know things are still getting underway and as things heat up if you will during this session I would anticipate that list of 218 bills on the watch list to start to be whittled down by the School Board Association State House day on February 21st and then lastly I was able to attend a virtual third house session this
060morning with Senator Walker representative Lauer and representative Meltzer and you know one of the things that uh representative Lauer said as one of his priorities um is certainly uh continuing to fund the Columbus Learning Center the legislators fielded a lot of questions about partisan School Board elections so support for early learning House Bill 1406 which adds bcsc to a list of school corporations to Pilot the high school equivalency and then gosh I could go on and on but uh yeah there's um uh a couple other bills that um I'm sure going to be vetted and scrutinized and amended considerably in regards to providing more work or more emphasis on careers in in schools and then also school school choice so looking forward I suppose is the best way to put it to the remainder of
061this legislative session thank you thank you any others uh no I'll just say for those of us who are very much looking forward to Nexus Park becoming a reality I believe there is going to be a groundbreaking February 8th at 11. I think there's going to be some public announcements it's out there in little bits and pieces so if people are really interested in that project um I encourage you to go out and show support okay check that one off us I think we will move on to Cabinet reports next so Mr Williams and Mr Burnett foreign good evening thank you for having us tonight uh for our annual technology department update and thank you to Dr Bozeman and his continued support of our department over the years so our our mission for the technology
062department is to create a flexible productive universally designed environment that responds to the needs and challenges of all stakeholders supporting a school system is a little different I think for most I.T because we do support business offices as well as our many thousands of staff and then you have 12 000 students who are close to that that are on devices every day as well so it is quite a challenge so this mission statement and visioner are more General in that sense and we want to inspire Innovative anytime anywhere accessible learning and productivity and again we've heard many examples tonight that I'll probably refer to throughout the presentation of just how much technology has an impact on our district and how much we're involved in all of that we do have a strategic plan aligned with
063the bcsc plan it is on the website if you want to see that in more detail but it is around cyber security Recruitment and Retention customer service support for everyone essential skills and project management and it's something that we took about the same process that Dr Roberts did or at least tried to mimic that with the district with our own department and stakeholders to create a plan that everybody buys into and moves us forward so our team is here today our leadership team um Brian trivett is the assistant director of Technology operations and sees about 27 team members Brittany Coomer up here as well is our assistant director of educational technology she oversees the student services but also has this wonderful team of tech Titans which are teachers in every building that helps support their
064buildings with educational technology initiatives and I'd say both have just grown immensely in their positions and our respected leaders in our district because of their communication the the process that they take to make decisions and really just their work so our infrastructure is vast and you can go through here and look at some of the statistics but it is always changing um as well so the Republic had a wonderful article today about Milo a robot that joined our ecosystem this summer and just again kind of seeing those stories is really inspiring to see how much these tools can help affect learning and the growth of students and then also we've had a new Esports team that popped up at East but just the the support of our our cabinet through those projects really makes a
065big difference in all of our systems and then collaboration is another big key for us you heard an example with uh Tommy and Abby up here going through that Ivy Tech program that has been uh just a great program for us to work with Ivy Tech and to make sure that they have the tools that they have at new tech for those students to be able to be successful and we're involved in about everything thankfully to help support the district moving forward we also have vital Partnerships with all of our vendors that really kind of helped us over the last couple of years and continue to help us and keep us on The Cutting Edge and then on top of being collaborative within the the uh the district we're very involved within the state and
066nationally as well these two leaders are also becoming leaders in the State uh as again they go through their careers and these are just some of the examples of organizations that we're involved with and can collaborate and find best practices around the state and country in terms of what they're doing with technology so that is kind of a transition into one of our new tools that is supported by not only us but more importantly our Communications coordinator Josh Burnett so I'm going to hand this off to him and he's going to walk you through this all right Dr Albert's board thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about parent Square um when I started my work with bcsc it was a very external facing things like social media video production websites and crisis
067Communications but really starting in the pandemic we noticed that we're using a lot of different tools and we needed a unified communication system for families and one that would allow for two-way language translation this is one of my favorite features so that I can send you know a text message to my students teacher that might want they might be talking in Spanish and then coming back they can write that in Spanish and I would get it in English not a great example because my kids teacher doesn't speak Spanish but our Elgato program definitely does but that's been a huge something that we'll talk about in a little bit with some of it's been a huge Plus for our families sending communication through text email or phone one of the things that we've noticed is that
068we are in a mobile first generation and through that we are able to have access quickly outside of a social media world that often is really based on algorithms and people's user their patterns but when we get into their text their email their phone we can communicate quickly efficiently and tell some great stories we can also send e-alerts this is really important especially for our high school students whether they're at CSA new tech and north or east that are traveling to and from or our County folks that come in and participate in C4 we can send critical information instantly to those who need it the most and you know it's it's very helpful to someone like myself self that might have to send an e-alert notice that you know four something in the morning that
069I know confidently that when we send a school is closed or there's a two hour delay or whatever the situation is that we're directly tied into our PowerSchool system that's a huge benefit so that our students and our staff can get that message quickly this was kind of where we were when I started and you know I worked with Nick Brenny and Brian and Dr Boseman we we assessed our current communication tools and we noticed that our website and text alerts were tied in with blackboard at a district level but several of our schools were using remind and then when you get into the classroom communication they were using s'more Google I believe that's publisher canva but then also Class Dojo seesaw remind blooms and so there's just all these different schools doing different things
070and while we believe it's really important to have autonomy when it comes to regular communication with families how can we find that one tool that will reach people effectively so that was former State and then now we're able to use one tool to do all of those things and these are just a couple of examples this is a smart alert and the really neat thing about this is that it can get very granular like this is a North High School attendance notice and so just checking in okay Delaney was absent from sixth period a day called this number to discuss this notice or click the link that you can send a note to explain cuts down on attendance time for our Frontline staff with our administrative assistants considerably and starting tomorrow all of our secondary
071schools will have parents wear attendance and that's going to be a great benefit to them but then you also see like Columbus East High School you know there were critical portions of of East that were without power and so we had to Pivot to e-learning and so we were able to send that through a text through email and even through an automated voice to get that message out quickly um here's an example actually to my student will from his teacher and they wanted to give an update and I know that several of our our teachers are sending regular message to and also receiving messages from families and then this direct message has allowed um really for my family a great way of communicating consistently with our students teachers and this was just a proactive message
072from Mrs Abney and it just it made you feel really good about your son's progress and things going on and it opened up that line of communication if there was something that needed to be improved and so we really appreciated that uh in addition every week I send out an e-newsletter and one of the things that we noticed before on s'more is that we were averaging about a thousand views one of the reasons was there were too many clicks that it took for our families to um to get into this and so very quickly when we started the parent Square newsletter sending out to a little over 22 000 different contacts our readership went from 1 000 to averaging over ten thousand and so we're able to see what they're clicking on and so I
073try to regularly look at that to see what people are most interested in but also keeping in mind that we're trying to hit our strategic plan and I will also say with the check mark I think every week am I hitting something with families am I hitting something for students celebrating staff am I talking about the community and so those are different ways that we try to incorporate that in our weekly e-newsletter um some other functions as I said the newsletters attendance alerts scheduling meetings asking for items or volunteers creating groups we're working on right now piloting that at the secondary level with extracurricular groups and and seeing some really good success all of those will be moving over into the fall and it's been well received 96 percent of our families are contactable and
074I'm not going to rest until we get to 100 but then we're going to have a change we're going to have to keep shooting towards that but that's why Northstar trying to get a hundred percent of our families contactable so that they can engage actively in their students learning experience but within that we're seeing a great participation as I look at this I see a lot of our elementary schools using this the most as far as numbers but that's also because at the secondary level there's a lot more of its learning coming into play and so we're very encouraged by these numbers let's see with posts I want to give a just a special shout out to Clifty Creek Elementary they were our our first semester highest user and specifically the Legato program was just
075doing an amazing job and you'll hear about that in a second but volunteers requested that's been something really neat to see families being engaged in that way and oftentimes our families they just don't know how to get involved and when we reach out those requests are being filled those items being requested it's been great to see a couple testimonials you can read these but I'll just highlight Sabrina Rollins this was a huge one Parkside used to they had a kind of an old school way of doing parent-teacher conferences and through parents where it's been able to take the secretary out of the teacher and it saves time and it went very smoothly and they they just can't say enough about that but then also think about our student service coordinator TJ here that the number
076of students submitted textbooks assistance for the school year was up over 400 students from the previous school year so we're getting people to support and help that they need and we're getting it to them quickly see a huge increase in parent turnout for different things going on at East Clifton Creek again parent square is beneficial because our school is able to share activities happening in the classroom helpful links for parents and the most important feature is that it all can be translated to any home language that's been amazing to see just the people the families getting engaged through this tool the ask for more items at South Side and then attendance notes much better than leaving bumbling voicemails we know we've all done that plus there's a record for it and so the weekly grade
077level update I want to hand this back over to Nick I know we went through a lot of different things we'd love to answer any questions you have a question yeah go ahead parent Square obviously you know I'd say it's you know obviously a good move how would you rate for a non-techy parents Guardians um how would you rate its user friendliness well um it's really hard to say universally because you know sometimes some of the best people on social media you know they might be an 80 year old grandmother that is just very actively engaged all in parent square or someone that might struggle might be that you know 25 year old dad but I will say that in the app it is very user friendly if you download the app but then I
078think once it started it's pretty intuitive one of the things that I notice with the other types of tools was that there's just a lot of set up and and this was an opt in so we it's tied into our information already through our sis and so through PowerSchool it syncs that yes I have to do some you know editing and changing but being able to contact 96 of our families you know we can we can get them up to speed pretty quickly say from a parent Mr Williams where would you say I am on the technology scale one I can't believe she opened her laptop today to 10. she's a she's a savant I'm probably on the three scale as you say I'm not going to answer that yeah you shouldn't you shouldn't and
079I can use it Mr Grimes so I would say it's pretty pretty friendly yeah I noticed on the graph you don't have to go back to it but there's a huge difference between some schools usage and others I I don't know if you've done a survey or not to make sure that like in some of the schools where there's a very small number of people using the app are they getting what they need regularly just through other means or are they just not using because they don't know how we we have reached out to those in some of the data is skewed on that specifically because say for instance McDowell or C4 they're tied into the other schools and so they are using those other schools that was the thing that first stuck out to
080me was like okay what's going on here well that's because they're able to toggle and they're tied to a specific school on you know their responsibilities but at those different Elementary levels we have reached out and offered training as well as just ongoing assistance if needed I'll also say that those are just flat numbers so a school like Columbus North is going to have so many more users and then a Lincoln those aren't percents yeah and I I kind of acknowledge that you know it's a big difference between an elementary school and the high school so it just was it was just a curiosity to just understand that you guys are looking at it I do appreciate that you are and that you're trying to identify ways to engage with the parents that aren't maybe
081using that tool and then uh kind of a follow-up to that you've kind of mentioned a little bit about what the future looks like but what other features to this app do you think are going to help enhance that maybe cover some of those gaps that exist today that will be available for us in the future um one of my goals is to have all of our schools actively using the attendance alerts we know that when kids are in school they learn best and I believe that that will help in every way you know at the the family teacher communication piece that will help the students academic performance and so that's one of our goals I'd also like to see you know the asking for items or volunteers feature use because every time we ask
082people to step up they do and it's been really exciting to see our families finding ways to get engaged the biggest one though would be creating the groups for extracurricular activities we have such a wide variety of opportunities for our students and so we want to get all of those groups which they're already set up with their user accounts and then you know the more connected a person is in each of those groups it's it's to find what is already going on in their lives but it shows okay who are the people that are very connected and how can we also help others to get connected into groups where they're a part of those communities so I would say those would be the the big things that I see coming but we're always exploring and
083parent squared is improving all the time and one thing that we haven't mentioned here is that high school students are in here under a student Square so part of the need for this is that we have so many students traveling all day long as we've talked about today and being able to alert them in a timely manner for safety reasons I think is just a big plus for this that luckily we haven't had to use at this point but it is a tool now that we we have confidence in okay okay sure um first of all the two things that really stand out to me that I think are huge positives here um one is when I taught I know some people use remind and some people used other things and and the fact that
084you can unify this I think is very powerful and the other is that you mentioned a couple times the language translator is is just huge I have one clarifying question and then a challenge um I think Josh what you were saying is we didn't see anything up there for C4 because they show up under East and North is that correct exactly so it's not that it's not being used no no it's definitely being used yeah um so my Challenge and maybe it fits under here I think this is tremendous so this is in no way of criticism but but the four checks one of those is community so how do we do this kind of thing to people who don't have kids in school but are still part of our community yes you don't have
085to answer that tonight but no I'm I'm with you and it's something that you know as I spoke to earlier that was really the first part of my my job when I got to be a part of UCSC was that external Community facing one of the really cool things about this and I know it only speaks to social media but there is an ability for every school to post their Weekly Newsletter and to share that on social media that is a newer feature and not all of them yet have that it's another one of my goals for this semester so that we can get um you know Jana does a great job reporting you know each week for bcsc but they're there's so much good news that is going on and opportunities that we can
086connect I think it's an integration of both social media but also making those available on the school web sites and so that's something that I'm always up for the challenge so I appreciate it very good thing nope Mr Williams I'd like to take uh the question that Mr Majors asked to impose it for the broader technology in schools Arena where where do you see things going I mean we've come from every building had a computer lab and we were proud of that and then some of our students were one-to-one Computing and I think now that's is that everybody what's next what what will we be investing in so I think um I was prepared for this question but um the the things that we've really seen even just the last couple of months but including
087this year is the advancements in artificial intelligence and how quickly answers can be easily available and it will just Advance the phones to watches to everything else and how that impacts teaching and I think it really goes back to the importance of relationships that we build with students as technology just gets more and more combined with those instant answers um kind of those Jeopardy answers if you were but going to that higher level thinking project-based learning is fantastic in trying to utilize some of those tools and then like the the Milo robot is just mind-blowing we've we've done kind of demonstrations with it and everybody's like oh that's interesting but to see it work and make such a big impact I think we'll see more and more of those things come out that will help
088individual students and and hopefully we can be on The Cutting Edge moving forward thank you great job thank you all okay Mr Phillips tell us about the money we just usually jump right into that board action in a in a public notice but this time we had enough notice Chad just one second I think Nick is trying to it is I just turn it on I mean go up and check test one two okay so we have an opportunity to refund an old bond issue from 2013 and save some significant dollars for the district We'll be asking you to take action and we'll have a public hearing at the next board meeting and so today's information is just for you to digest and ask any questions that you have so in 2013 we issued bonds
089for about twenty two and a half million dollars lots of projects across the district but the primary purpose of that was Secure entries following the Sandy the Sandy Hook event back in that time frame and so most of our schools had those vestibules added and secure dual locked doors that debt is scheduled to roll off the books in 2032 but as is usually the case with our longer term bonds we do those are callable here in July of this year and so Dr Roberts if you could sorry I should go over there briefly um we have about 15 and a half million dollars remaining on those bonds um with a rate of just under five percent and we can refund those at just under three percent two point seven one percent saving us over the
090life of the remaining bond issue uh almost 1.6 million dollars in debt payments um and that should then add additional capacity for us to be able to uh issue a Geo Bond probably later this fall to move to the next Elementary School on our list as we are currently as many of you know and saw recently at Parkside in full-blown renovation mode moving on to Schmidt and fall so this helps us be able to do that um with a lesser impact or at least remaining is still tax neutral impact on the tax rate okay we will post a public notice in the Republic probably this week of a hearing have that hearing at the next meeting and then you can see the rest of the time there line there closing on those refunded Bonds in
091April happy to answer any questions you might have this evening any questions on those savings Slide the refunding estimates slide I notice it says estimated net savings describe what goes into the netting process where are we net of like legal fees and advisors fees those kinds of things correct we will um it's basically the remaining debt payments um what they would have been before refunding what they are after refunding and then net of we will have we will have three large cost of issuance one of them anytime we do a bond issue into this this large even if it's a refunding we do uh we're rated by one of the bond rating agencies standard reports and we had a financial advisor fees and then Bond Council fees so those are the three cost of issuance
092and the savings are incredible correct correct they're estimated and they always estimate high I'll probably come in the savings will come in a little bit better than what we've advertised but they round up on all the cost of issuance any other questions no thank you Mr Phillips okay and then last we have some policy revisions dude these are always fun and interesting a lot of reading that you have to do I hopefully you had a chance to get that started at least so um just a reminder to everybody that we do contract with Neola in e-o-l-a as a company that is um we use that company to help us stay on top of changes and so as you get a list of policies to review uh it's just not a random list those policies have
093been looked at by Neola based upon changes in legislation so we will get another set of change policies after this session of the Indiana legislature for example as we we see different things that are going to maybe become law on July 1st or change sometime during the calendar year or it could be a Supreme Court case or some other case law situation where we have more information and Neola takes that information and changes the policy so they give us those various uh policies to look at and revise I always start with taking the ones that we need to look at and comparing it to what the previous policy was and then send those edits out potential edits out to a cabinet and then to you to begin to reviewing tonight is only a first reading
094a first opportunity to look at this and then we'll need to either approve them at the February 6 or March 6th meeting I say that in just that the February 6th one is two weeks away I want to make sure you all have had time to completely digest those and ask all of your questions and then I see Amy sitting back there there are a set of those not every single one of those but some of those certainly play into from a staff standpoint need to be reviewed and talked about discussed with the Educators Association so we just want to make sure all that time is allowed so I'll just walk through the ones that at least we're reviewing right now and taking a look at and this first one is just a bylaw zero
095one forty two point three and it refers to vacancies and just the process that you as a board could go through if you find a vacancy so all of a sudden something happens and there's a vacancy on the board what is the process for going through that so that board that that policy speaks to that um this next one is in regards to staff and student relations um and there are three different policies and just for everybody's sake particularly three of you brand new to this oftentimes we'll have a policy that's getting changed in three different places it would be perhaps certified staff classified staff and then administration because in our policy manual we have uh chapters of policies based upon three different employee groups most of the time there are similar changes there may
096be different ones with the teachers sometimes it's because of collective bargaining law and state statute with our certified staff but on this one it's just talking about how do we specifically address staff student relations that may constitute criminal conduct child abuse or neglect and then inappropriate boundary invasions or other conduct Unbecoming so because of some case law situations it was suggested that there are a few other things we might wish to add that would lead to discipline of a staff member Beyond just criminal conduct and things that we might say is okay that's inappropriate boundary invasions for example so that one hits those three different policies hit that kind of same area mandatory curriculum so as you're all well aware the state of Indiana has a lot of very specific topics we have to cover
097from a curriculum standpoint and so the only change here is reflecting uh some statutory language where in Indiana code now AIDS has been replaced with HIV in this new course requirements around that so it's just recognizing that uh Indiana code reads differently than perhaps it did at one time uh these three get to school accountability we're in three different places in our policy we have the words ISTEP plus well it's been a while actually since ISTEP plus we moved to iLearn and recognizing that it seems like on a relatively routine basis we take a look at that standardized test and we may change the name as so we're not coming back to you all of the time each time the legislature thinks about changing the name of the test to just State mandated testing program
098it seems safe to say that the state of Indiana will always have a state mandated testing program so that's just some simple wording changes there on those three policies this one is just a technical correction so 53 40.01 is on student concussions and sudden Cardiac Arrest it's just taking the term Sheehy and replacing with the student throughout that document whatever that was most of the policies have been kind of updated from that anyway this one had not so it's a technical correction nothing from a Content standpoint policy 5460 is on on graduation requirements starting with this graduating class actually of 2023 there are graduation Pathways have been specified that the that students have to maneuver their way through for graduation so we're just catching up with that language again it is statutory or Indiana code
099language that we are following With The Changes there 5511 is on dress and grooming and it's just making sure that our language is stated in a way that's non-discriminatory in uniform so there's an attempt here to make sure we're complying with Title IX and this comes from case law so again things will pop up with case law maybe across the state whether it's a staff or a student and we'll we'll be asked to look at policy and potentially revised policy based upon that so that's where some warning would be in that one a school-sponsored student Publications and Productions only a technical correction again there were just some drafting errors in the last release and so you will see in your documents some changes attempted on those so no content changes necessarily a grant funds because
100of um uh Esser and gear and other things tied to coveted relief these policies are attempting to review changes to Edgar which is the education Department's General administrative regulations and build those into specific requirements around how we're spending Esser and gear dollars so it's Grant funds was one way before it was 6110 but that was before all these other grants were available to us and they have different management or administrative regulations surrounding them and so trying to build that into the language of policy that's similar here with cost principles and how we spend federal funds funds and then the procurement of federal grants and funds those different Esser gear again federal dollars are provided to us and gets into some some different pieces there in terms of prohibitions regarding costs incurred for telecommunications video surveillance
101Services Etc and then we get into food service program and this was just again some case law pieces and we make sure that the policy includes prohibition against discrimination on any protected class and make sure that there's a specific complaint procedure available as required by federal law and then we get into school visitors and school visitors here it has been revised to prohibit persons who are entered in the state sex and violent offender registry or the equivalent Federal registry and then other persons who meet the definition of serious sex offender and and having that built into whether or not they're able to access school grounds so some additional pieces there and that is it at this point in time there were some other ones that were in this particular volume but because of of what
102we're looking at we've pulled for now so for example later on in the meeting we're hoping to approve a subcommittee on public engagement and so public comment it always is one of those things that we're looking to maintain with at least Indiana code or or state statute and as you look at that we didn't want to bring a new policy to you without that subcommittee having a chance to look at that and give some ideas to us about how we're going to further engage uh engage the public so we left that one out a year for now as as you as a board look at that one with the subcommittee so I know you had um dozens is probably the right word of pages to look through there and wherever you might be on that
103uh certainly can take any questions you might have see if we can run back through things and answer those quickly otherwise please reach out to me with suggestions on on policy revisions things that you you think still have opportunities for improvement we'll be engaging the Teachers Association with the continued dialogue and that's why I'm indicating that maybe not February 6th is the second reading but March 6 which gives us just a four additional weeks to make sure that you've digested these and we we get them right whenever you you have it for the final approval it was 110 pages so that's at least dozens yeah okay do we have any questions tonight or do we maybe need a minute to review and come later sure so I mean my understanding of these policies is that
104before and after they're made available to the public are we making the changes proposed available to the public so that we can get any back from the public regarding any of these changes yeah so we have not uh Mr Schultz necessarily just put them out on website or whatever but um the the the revisions are available uh so if somebody requests to take a look at what we have we can make those available because now that they've went through you for a first reading they are public documents and can be accessed for for review okay so I it wasn't overwhelming amount of reading um so I I have lots of not lots I do have specific questions but I I guess my question tonight is about the process so are you saying we would email
105you about questions that we have specifics um are we okay getting feedback from um from Amy and cea about some of these I assume that she she has seen it so so we will meet with um with through our discussions process which is the bcsc administration team and and Amy's team we'll get together and talk about specific ones that they they believe that specifically affect you know staff so staff student relations would have been one probably a staff dress and grooming um maybe things that involve funds and Grant funds because that's usually involved with spending money on students so we'll have that specific dialogue from your standpoint what I like for them to get from you or any specific questions you have about maybe why or how we arrived at that recommendation and or suggestions
106for improvement and you certainly are welcome to reach out to your constituents stakeholders with questions or thoughts regarding those policies what's interesting with Viola it's a little bit confusing is that as they make a change in it may be um one word that's changed in the policy but we have to go back to the prior one and see what was even the policy before and kind of recheck those boxes so anything that was kind of an option before maybe there were three options to choose as a corporation with any of them any of those options would satisfy requirements or legal uh recommendations or advice and so we always go back to check to see what did we do before assume that that's still appropriate unless somebody tells us differently but when you see them you
107don't necessarily know and I'm not sure of a good way to tell you that this was already that was there before and really in this document that had three pages there was only you know one thing that really was it should be different so you're seeing everything in terms of uh what what they have and what we're crossing out and adding so the red Parts is you know what's being deleted or taken out the green those those new additions and so please please reach out and maybe I have you talk to somebody else if it's food service for example we have a team that works on that food service policy and could give you you know more background in into that but I too read these in depth before sending them to the cabinet the
108cabinet members read those and send things back Amy's team will have the policies they need to take a look at it and so that's that's where we are to so I would just add to that some of my concerns are around the student-teacher relationships sure we're about relationships but we're about appropriate relationships it's not inappropriate and some of these I read and I I it some of them sound like they could be very appropriate right and they could also be done inappropriately yes I mean yeah there's things about hugging and if you go to graduation you're going to see a lot of kids hug a lot of teachers yeah so so it's little things like that could I have been fired when I did that right yeah yeah there were a variety of options there
109that we we may or may not choose the criminal ones easily enough right and I think you know just thinking about that policy there was one about you know whether or not a a teacher or it should be providing guidance you know it might kind of guidance counselor kind of stuff and that's walking a fine line we certainly want that you know that student relationship with teachers we want that trust adult so how do we word that appropriately uh to maintain proper boundaries but also have that trust and respect between staff and students that we're asking we have many unique situations right yeah I don't know should I turn myself in here I had a student live with us for the last six months of his High School career yeah yeah and it was it
110was important for him and for us needed to do that yeah I violated several opinions okay yeah yeah in terms of how those are written or yeah so we could talk about those we haven't graduated yeah and I know that I think Amy you know we are a little bit of our correspondence that was in one and that was I believing a few of those down toward the bottom of that we want to take a look at to see what what needs to be checked or not and just just from our process so as you're collecting feedback from board members Amy others you will send revisions if you felt like there's a there's been a need for me yeah so any any changes that will be made to a given policy uh Sherry will get
111those back out to you for review and so it'll be a constant kind of back and forth with for you to note that new changes have been made and you'd be pondering those as we prepare for a an export meeting so one of the things from a process standpoint that I'm not sure how we manage through this but you know if if we all right now there's no committee that I know of that is policy Review Committee and so if we don't have a policy Review Committee and we're sending you and only you because we can't send it to everybody our questions what if we all seven have the same question it's going to drive you crazy at some point responding separately is there is there a way that we can at least put questions
112that everybody has in one place so we can see what other people are thinking because this is my struggle with this is the conversational side of this discussion right and how we go through there's just so everybody understands Nikki said 110 Pages all right I've got three pages here of questions and it may not be what there's there's there's one question about Davis bacon we put that up here a minute ago right I have no clue what that is I know who Kevin Bacon is but I don't know anything about Davis bacon and from putting that into a policy we kind of talked about this earlier there's probably an audit or a certification or effort that people are going to put into to make sure that we're under compliance and so just having the bigger
113broader picture of how some of those things impact might be good to have a policy committee where we can all talk about it together yep I appreciate that suggestion Mr major the something where it encourages additional conversation is probably going to have to be necessary because I wish we could use the technology to kind of gather that you know Google doc we all listen questions and stuff seems like it'd be effective too but we're probably starting to border on a meeting right we're all of a sudden seven people are adding to a document we're kind of having a conversation behind the scenes so that wouldn't meet the the Open Access or Public Access so perhaps Mike Mr McIver we could have a conversation is what a proper you know process would be to either gather
114the information or have a subcommittee or even create another Jason you and I are before the meeting we're talking about do we have a separate meeting just where it is the seven of you talking about the policies and instead of all this business meeting and all the other things we've talked about so far we just concentrate on policy and we focus on that particular piece so maybe that's an answer too with that gap of time we have between February 6th and March 6th so let's have a conversation we'll come back with you some with some recommendations and see where the other team might be thank you hey just another idea food for thought sometimes when you get a question Dr Roberts from one board member you'll let us all hear the answer which is helpful
115to me yeah so if somebody asks hey what about this on this page and then you develop an answer if I have the chance to see that answer the question probably never would have occurred to me right not that bright but I can learn by reading the answer yeah so and part of that would be Mr stinner so as we have revisions or make revisions based upon input that you've had or questions you make we'll send that out with a memo to all of you but as as we've talked before we don't we don't expect a reply all we don't get into a conversation or a back and forth in terms of electronically but certainly can send a memo out to you indicating what these changes are based on the question that has been been
116asked very good thank you for those questions dialogue appreciate that okay uh we will move on to public comments I see we have none tonight so we will now move on to board appointments four committees my name next to it okay I can help you out with that that would be fantastic so I think the best way to do these um a reminder to to all that we did not appoint committees this last time because we didn't really have officers in place to try to get committees organized before and it is by policy that the President appoints to those committees is which is why Mrs wilden's name is there and so she has went back and forth and tried to to work with all of you to figure out interests and um you have been
117given board members have been given a description of those committees and and opportunities and and maybe even a time commitment in regards to those and when those meet and and baseball all of that we have some recommendations uh here and so um I I believe uh given the information you had beforehand it makes sense to do these as a consent unless there's you know one of you would want to pull one of these out for for some reason but I think a recommendation for these four which would be the bcsc Health Trust with Mr major the district and Facilities committee with Mr stinner the diversity Leadership Council with Mrs Wilden and the business advisory council with Mr stinner these four all kind of grouped together because they're very internal they meet at least quarterly on
118a routine basis to help the corporation make specific decisions and so these four are kind of grouped that way whereas the next group or more Community minded so I would I would recommend that that we have a motion for these four and then take it from there okay very good do I have a motion to prove items three a through D on committee assignments I move that we approve number three letters a through d as as presented thank you Mr Grimes do you have a second okay thank you Miss Brent all in favor say aye aye aye all opposed okay thank you for that the next one is then similar a few more committees this is an approval of board members serving as Liaisons with district and Community advisory boards and committees so there are
119some district one here the district one's here but also there are some community-minded Ones high ability broad-based committee we have Mr nalin that is a statutory requirement that every corporation has that committee the Bartholomew Consolidated School Foundation Mr Grimes he spoke to that one earlier served in that role a year ago the corporation continuous Improvement Council ccic that one is actually another one that meets at least quarterly with the corporation and we're asking that Mr Schultz serve on that one the education Hall of Fame committee which we're going to be celebrating that one in a couple of weeks we're asking that Mr Schultz serve on that one the Indiana school boards Association or isba there are two pieces here there's a delegate assembly where in the fall at the annual meeting delegates meet we're asking
120for Mr Grimes the other isba one and Mr Grimes spoke to this earlier is just being a legislative plate of liaison for the board as the legislative process works its way through this spring The iupuc Advisory Board they ask for a person from the board that's Mr nallen or a request for Mr nallen classified employee Roundtable Mr Bryant the counselor for Youth Development a council that that tries to meet the needs of Youth here in our community and partners with us on a lot of stuff is Mr nallen the district Wellness Council Mr Bryant and then we have two Redevelopment commissions here in the community one is the Bartholomew County one and that's Mrs Wilden and the other one is the city of Columbus one and that's Mr major and I believe that is all
121of those so I would ask for recommendations uh those are my recommendations items four through a through l you very much do I have a motion to approve items 4 a through L for board appointments yeah I'll make a motion to approve them as written thank you do I have a second second thank you very much all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed motion approved thank you if possible on those I'd like to just ask one question sure how do we get the invites today the mystery it's a mystery so now it's your name is attached to those those leaders of that will be reaching out to you quickly and we'll get all of your contact information from Mrs Chrisman and you'll be invited soon looking at those in terms of
122meetings coming up fast let's see um Health Trust will be in February district and Facilities committee meeting coming up soon I think Dr Bozeman diversity Leadership Council February 15th I believe so most of these are coming up in February meetings would be happening Mr nellon asked the same thing and I said they will find you okay don't don't worry yeah they will all right the next one is is uh kind of a new one and based upon the feedback you all gave at the last board meeting so there was a lot of dialogue or again in regard to a few topics uh the two that I think we heard from your conversation was around public engagement and what does that look like and so um because we could have three of you make up a
123subcommittee it's that's not a quorum and you could find different times to meet if you want to have breakfast somewhere and and talk over coffee or whatever the case might be you can do that and so public engagement uh Rich Stenner Dale nalin and Logan Schultz as the ones looking at that and then the meeting agenda you talked a lot about commendations and just the flow of meetings and where things might fall and how we might do each of those so just looking at the meeting agenda itself Todd Grimes Pat Bryant and Jason major uh would be the ones that we're looking for there so I'm asking we're asking for approval of appointments to the subcommittee so we can begin work on those and then after after perhaps approval we can talk about some expectations
124in in going through the next few meetings and starting to get an understanding of flow and process and get some deadlines perhaps assigned to recommendations that would come from those subcommittees so as we start looking at some changes perhaps in the function or at least the way the board the processes and function goes good okay do I have an emotion to approve item 5A and B I moved to approve board member appointments to subcommittees as presented Mr grams do you have a second second thank you Mr major all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion approved thank you and Miss Wilton maybe you'd speak to we at least a little conversation on what might be a timeline we can have further dialogue with the individual groups but yeah I think we're discussing
125we'd like to in July have have everything set by July so really in June we would like in June start to get the recommendations in so we could process those and the conversation was around having a flow of meetings just to to get a feel for for how they are going um experience them and then based upon that experience is then be able to make recommendations from what we are feeling seeing hearing and if we can start having recommendations come in in May your process those in June and then our July board meeting any changes we would have in place to start the new school year and in July we always look as that's the start of the next school year and that'd be a good time maybe to work those in and uh and
126I would call that a deadline however if the team is a highly effective team and can can make a recommendation earlier I'd always say and I'm sure they was happy to hear that okay clarification Our intention tonight is to get these subcommittees up and going in in a sense they're ad hoc we wouldn't expect that one of these committees would still be here 10 years from now like the Health Trust will still be here 10 years that's I I think that's right created out of questions concerns need to take a look at a few topics that were on people's minds so yep yep yep and I think Miss Roberts has offered to stay connected and I will obviously also stay connected with the team members and the chairs throughout the process to make sure we're
127we're working working at a reasonable pace and can answer any questions yes and and so uh and then even attendance at a meeting if there are questions or whatever I can be flexible to to do that Nikki has a little bit more difficult time because if she shows up she's a fourth board member so we just have to keep that in mind okay very good where are we at I think we are at my request for approval my typical lists in a through ACE e is indeed the ones no I take that back a through D are ones that are usually on here so we have minutes of our last board meeting which was on January 9th our reorganization meeting we have supplemental contracts we have some field trips and professional leaves we have our
128claims and payroll claims for today's date January 23rd is about a million dollars just under our payroll was about 2.9 Million Dollars and it covered the check dates of 113.23 for the work period 12 19 through 1-1 it includes administrator increases just so nobody gets excited on that those administrator increases have been approved back in the summertime but our contracts don't change until January 1st so any any changes in pay when most peoples are changing in July with the beginning of the school years ours do not and so they did take back effect at the beginning of January 1st and so those were included in there and then the remainder of these are a little bit different e is the resolution to a final transfer from the education fund to the operations fund and that's
129kind of a reconciling of the Year where we just have to look at the expenditures we have and get dollars from one to the other Dr Boseman has a recommendation for three lawn care and Landscape contracts to take care of the many acres properties that we have to take care of and then we have conflict of interest statements for Mr stinner and for Mr major that arose out of uh last meeting when they saw a need to abstain and looking at those needs we decided to do conflict of interest forms for for them so you have those as well okay do I have a motion to approve um item six a through H as presented this evening so real quick can we ask questions do we ask questions before I've been doing this wrong Mike
130haven't I okay so I'm supposed to get a motion a second and then I ask for input which I've not done but I will if we get to that point this time yep thank you do I have a motion true proof I move that we approve uh number six letters a through H as presented thank you Mr Grimes do I have a second second thank you Mr Bryant now do we have any questions yeah I just had a question about the lawn care contracts I noticed that uh there were three different um companies we were going to work with one had 11 properties one had five one had two and they were all varying costs and it was just I didn't know what the difference in acreage or it defined work but one of them
131was I guess significant significantly higher if you look at a buy property cost and I just don't know enough about the difference in what work is being done to know if it makes sense yeah thanks for the question um and it's a it's a fair question so um all of our properties with the exception of this property were publicly bid um and as you can see um some of those the the cost per property very greatly so for example um our Johnson Pre-K Center there's very little landscape in there to maintain versus a Clifty Creek which has more than 30 Acres of property that's that's maintained and varying landscape beds and that sort of thing so generally speaking um that's those contracts cover all services related to lawn care and Landscaping with the exception of
132um weed application weed control on grasses we do those kind of separately but the reason that there's so much variation in the the um the what you see on the contracts is just because of the amount of space that's covered for each of those properties do you have a question yeah this one's actually and Mr Phillips I know you told us at the last board meeting the the amount that um percent of funds being transferred from you know within this Corporation and then you told us I think also a percentage that kind of throws up a red flag to the state and would you mind just refreshing my memory on those percentages no problem the threshold set by the legislature was 15 so they don't want districts to transfer more than 15 percent of their
133education fund budget to the operations fund to cover those costs that moved when they made the change in law we after this transfer will be just a tick under 11 percent we've never come we've never come close to the 15 threshold thank you you're welcome any other questions no okay all those in favor say aye aye as opposed great motion approved and then last but not least Dr pleake I request approval of the HR recommendations as presented this evening thank you do we have a motion to approve our HR recommendations thank you Mr Bryant do you have a second second thank you any questions yeah on on this one I know that we can see what's happening obviously reasons the public can't see would it be possible in the future maybe to look at giving
134like a list of the things that are there so maybe you have a this time you have a retirement or a maternity leave no names but just so that people understand when they see this it it's when I sat out there it really wasn't clear to me what was being looked at in when you look at it from our perspective in the board packet it's it's easy to vote Yes for these but it's hard for them to understand why so I didn't know if that's something that maybe we could just say this this time we had three maternity leaves two retirements and we hired four teachers I think that's a really good suggestion for maybe the subcommittee focused on agenda to to debate I think it's a good suggestion if I could ask that maybe
135that team review the recommendation and provide that as an alternative yep that's good thank you because I can't think again as that team looks at some things and thinks about how we can make sure we're showing things to the public what additional improvements to the presentation slides those kinds of things I appreciate the categorical maybe look at that yeah high level perfect okay we already approved no we had a second great all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion carries thank you yep okay now we move to board input and review since I started down there I'll start down with Mr Bryant it's time okay yeah I talked a lot earlier I think uh just again I appreciate the openness that allow us to visit the different facilities the different schools um
136you know I think Mr strong again for for Richard's uh in the welcoming that we got and I look forward to Future visits to other schools thank you I especially appreciated the presentation this evening best practices presentation from our new Tech High School CSI high school and not to drop names or anything but I have played melophone next to Abby shoot who's better Mr Stenner slightly better okay um I will I will just say my heart breaks for the family of Ariel Roberts and um for all of the teachers and staff I know their counselors on site very quickly I just think this Corporation responded really really well to support our kids and our teachers so I pray for her family and thank you all for taking care of each other thanks again to Mr
137Reed Ms buckler Abby and Tommy from CSA and uh for a great presentation uh thanks also to Mr Jensen director of secondary education Mr Newell the East principal who Who provided a uh in in Friday notes a very thorough breakdown examination of of graduation rates and uh the rather obvious role that covet had and continues to play in that in that shift and then also uh best wishes to C4 for a successful open house Wednesday evening at Columbus North yeah I do want to thank the CSA new tech for the presentation and for CSA Lincoln for hosting me uh last week I think and been making what Mr Grimes mentioned about the graduation rates I think just given the amount of talk I've heard from the public being able to present those in a presentable
138format to the public I think would at least Open the Eyes to everyone of what mitigation and what steps we're taking to improve those would be very helpful as well I I want to extend appreciation to the cabinet and to principals as we move into this apparently new Venture of visiting schools they they have been open and welcoming to the whole idea and also thank you to our board president who did the daunting task of assigning us to committees thank you you're welcome I'm a very good delegator Mr nellid no problem okay with that I think our next board meeting is on February 6th 6 30 in this room we have an education Hall of Fame of word reception at 6 PM which I am personally looking forward to my first time being on the
139board we get to have a real party for that's right yeah so real quick on that Mrs Wilden the reminder we have said this I think publicly before but uh Dr John quick who was the superintendent of our school corporation for 13 years and served in other roles in the in the corporation is one of two and we also have Peggy Myers a special education teacher at Columbus East which I think Peggy's received a few different Awards teachers of the year and whatnot in this community in the school corporation so it'll be great to celebrate them here with a reception six o'clock regular board meeting at 6 30 and then a formal introduction of them during the board meeting uh again down here in the terrorist room very good okay with that meeting adjourned have
140a nice evening