001thank you oh how are you i just messaged okay [Music] did you turn oh thank you all right good evening it is wonderful to see so many people here tonight we thank you for being here this is a regular school board meeting for the bartholomew consolidated school corporation our board of school trustees we started each of our meetings with reflections from one of our colleagues and thank you dr shed about a month ago i had the opportunity to accompany a small group of students to washington dc our indiana group of 20 students and four adults spent the morning of our last day there in the senate office building talking to our indiana senators mike braun and todd young the senators thoughtfully fielded many insightful questions from the high school students one of our most passionate
002and compassionate students asked each of the senators what their opinion was regarding the increased polarization found in both politics and the us versus them attitudes and belief systems of so many people in society today it was senator young's response to the question that resulted in a lot of stimulating conversation long after we had left the senate building his response was and i quote it makes my heart bleed senator young went on to provide a few different explanations as to why he believes such sharp dividing lines exist in the world of politics that oftentimes set the tone for society at large a large chunk of the culprit according to him is social media algorithms keep us plugged in with those that further reinforce our opinions resulting in even more extreme beliefs technology makes it easier to
003spread misinformation more quickly another simple explanation offered by the senator was that it seems more people are simply less willing to admit when they make mistakes and that they are less willing to pop possibly revise their views even in the face of much evidence that refutes their views however senator young made it clear he doesn't believe the current state of society is all gloom and doom he said he believes conditions have been much worse before and that we made it through those times just like we'll make it through these current challenging times our indiana contingent had several good discussions on the way home regarding their takeaways from our u.s senators particularly senator young's it makes my heart bleed statement another particularly perceptive student asked the group if they had ever heard of the notion of
004intellectual humility and its counterpart intellectual arrogance that she had recently been reading so much about she went on to explain both concepts after drawing blank stares from her peers her summary of intellectually humble people described them as those that consider they could be wrong or that their views are eligible for revision in the face of contrary evidence she added that intellectual humility involves acknowledging the fact that we might at times rely on either faulty or incomplete information or that we ourselves are not experts in categories that we simply aren't her explanation of intellectual arrogance included an unwillingness to acknowledge competing information less of a desire to learn new things and less tolerance of those they disagree with she went on by saying that intellectually arrogant people have stronger emotional reactions when people disagree with them
005and are much more likely to disparage people that hold different views from theirs in other words they are more likely to promote an us versus them kind of thinking as compared to intellectually humble people that are more likely to be open to the opinions of others and take them seriously needless to say this student's musings led to more stimulating conversation with her peers in one of my readings in preparing for this reflection i came across a thought-provoking statement the most powerful force on this planet is human cooperation a force for construction and destruction here's hoping we can find more cooperation leading to destruction rather than destruction in order to do that we have to take on a perspective of intellectual humility and be willing to accept that our beliefs aren't necessarily the best for everybody
006nor should they be the beliefs of everybody hopefully intellectual arrogance can lessen and we can communicate with one another respectfully with open ears rather than just taking over talking over those we disagree with instead of actually engaging with them i want to conclude by saying thanks to the student that asked the tough question of senators young and braun i learned a lot from her and the ensuing conversations that occurred with her peers may she and so many others continue to engage with others in such meaningful challenging and thought-provoking ways thank you very much all right if you are able if you would stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty
007and justice for all all right six of our members here are present dr bills is under the weather but she's going to join us on screen here very soon turning on her camera so we definitely have a forum and let's get this thing started here on our screen and behind us you will note the mission and vision for bartholomew consolidated school corporation each of these guide us in our decision making and also listed behind us includes our high expectation objectives again guidelines for the decision making that we might be making throughout this evening the fun part is all the wonderful recognitions that we get to do this evening so first i'm going to turn to dr roberts that we might recognize our state wrestling finalist kade law thank you dr biltz it is also when
008we have the opportunity to recognize uh excellence within our school system and we certainly have that with the columbus east wrestling program so i i'm going to ask mr p used the athletic director of columbus east to come to the podium thanks peter dr roberts school board members cabinet members again it is with great pleasure that we are here tonight to honor two magnificent people tonight first a little bit on coach cooper he was awarded the indiana high school wrestling coaches association coach of the year and and to me one of the highest honors you can receive is to be voted by your colleagues the people you compete against the people that that you work with and across the map with for them to say you know he is he is the coach of the
009year i i just think it's a it's an unbelievable honor for that um coach cooper you know he's done some very special things for columbus east and for for this community and school corporation his program has seven straight sectional titles six straight regional titles has won the conference five out of the six years and for the first time in school history and this is something that's only been around i think five or six years columbus east was the 3a steam tape team state duel champions and we'll have one quick story about that and i don't i see that three minutes not on you but i'll try to go quickly so you don't turn it off so we're wrestling in the uh the final match of the day and i mean it's going to be a
010tough one we were the two seed they were the ones see roncalli i want to make sure i'm giving the teams rights anyhow we start out on fire it's like oh my gosh and i mean my heart rate starting to go starting to go starting to go and and we get off i hate saying we because i'm just standing there sweating being nervous but anyhow the olympians get off and they've got a nice lead and then roncalli is making a battle i mean they're coming back and they take the lead and then it's basically come it literally came down to the last match of the night and uh we were blessed to win that blessed to win the st team state title when i went to shake coach cooper's hand to congratulate him he literally
011about ripped my arm off i mean my wrist was sore for three or four days he was so excited so just i mean he is a very special coach for columbus east for this community very proud of what he's done and and then he's producing great wrestlers like cave law and he's also providing many men opportunities to take their athletic skills to the next level academically and that's really what we're about is student based athletics and providing opportunities and he has several of his wrestlers that that move on and wrestle in college are going to get very nice degrees and and get an excellent head start life i can remember the first time i saw kade russell i was going into his freshman year we we had a summer i think it was like a
012three-way in our gym and we had just come off another very strong season we were saying goodbye to some very talented seniors we had a lot of gaps to fulfill and i was interested to see what this team was like and it's like well who's this wrestler k law and i mean he came he just fired right in there and i mean stuck some guys i'm like oh man i think we're going to be okay and throughout the years like i say another great story about kade was uh in the state finals a couple years ago your knee wasn't a cave that was really messed up that you went out there and kept fighting hard and i mean he could have just done a medical injury but i mean he stuck the match out and
013that's why it was so neat for him to come back his senior year and make it to the state championship match he had a tough route to go but we're very proud of him but again i don't want to steal any of the thunder but i am going to turn it over to coach cooper to talk more about cade [Applause] uh thank you mr hughes uh it's always always exciting to come talk about our kids our team um kade is uh you know just put an immense amount of time to the sport if you know anything about wrestling uh you know earning success there is not easy right it takes a long time i mean these years that's a decade of work right there to get to get to that level so um you know
014cage is just a member of an outstanding senior class we have 10 seniors one of them here tonight ashton hartwell is also a state medalist but you know 10 guys that it's going to be difficult to say goodbye to but i'm confident that you know and ultimately what i tell our guys like i mean wrestling is great you know it takes you so far but at the end of the day when when you leave here i just want you to be able to go grind you know and go to work every day hold a job support your family do all the things you want to do but and fight for the things you want so i think that's one thing we focus on in our program just to get kids ready to do that and
015i'm real confident with these 10 seniors that we have that that were in in that spot uh winning winning state duels was was tremendous i mean anytime you can accomplish something as a team you know i tell our guys in the room all the time in practice it doesn't matter if you're the weakest guy in here the worst guy in here at wrestling it doesn't matter you're a part of our team you're a part of that success uh and the kids buy into it uh academic success i mean these guys really lead the way our our team was uh we had a 3.56 team gpa this year which is the highest that it's been as long as i've been involved last year we won uh the team competition with the gpa slightly less than that
016this year they haven't announced yet so hopefully that's that's us again but um we had 10 academic all-state members as well and kate was one of those you know a three-time state state uh finalist a two-time medalist he placed third last year and then made it to the state finals wrestling under the lights in an overtime match this year to take second also very proud to announce that uh kate is going to be wrestling at purdue university next year mr newell especially is mr jensen especially excited about that so just a fantastic kid and then uh you know i know he'll be back i know he'll be around helping out with our program uh when he can but just a fantastic individual okay ball [Applause] okay congratulations let's take your shirt [Applause] that's a wonderful
017bonus to be able to congratulate both our student and his coach thank you both very very much all right so this is one of those happy sad moments that we get to do i will turn to dr fleet for our human resources recommendations good evening i request approval of the hr resource recommendations as presented all right thank you very much so i need a motion for approval so move thank you mr bryant just last second okay thank you um all right all those in favor step in just real quick before you discuss the recommendations dr biltz is now on camera part of our policies we have somebody electronically engaged they do need to be on camera for the vote and will be a roll call so not just so real call for them thank you
018all right are there any discussion items about this list of human resource recommendations all right and we will do a roll call for approval mr grimes all right mr bryant mr huff dwyer aye ms wilden hi thank you and i as well so these recommendations have passed unanimously thank you [Applause] so as a part of those recommendations um was a retirement of um this is amy dixon amy is in the audience here this evening and is retiring from northside middle school uh amy has um served as did serve as a math teacher for eight years three years as an assistant principals for the past 15 i believe maybe as principal at north side so when we do those human resources recommendations there are a lot of names and so forth and they're going to want
019to bring that one out with amy and the audience it also leads to this next piece which we'll be asking you for approval too which is a recommendation for mr dixon's replacement and that recommendation dr pleek is mr evan burton very good so we do have a a recommendation for mr burton for your information mr burton is a product of bcsc uh he attended schmidt elementary school north side middle school and columbus north high school so this kind of grew up along that little block right there has 15 years of experience in the field of education four years of teaching experience in the content area of science and 11 years as an assistant principal out of the 11 years as an ap he has served seven of them as the assistant principal the last seven
020at northside middle school so there's our recommendation that mr burton be accepted as principal before you do ask for a vote on that dr shed i do want to acknowledge that north side middle school's continuous improvement council so we have cics in each of our buildings north sides was involved in this process i think we have cic members in the audience tonight if you are here please stand northside cic so thank you [Applause] so crystal serves as co-chair for the cic cic we very much appreciate her and that team's leadership in helping us through this process and getting us to where we can make this recommendation to you this evening um i think that is all i need to say at this point i'm going to turn to you dr schiff for a vote on
021mr burden as our principal for north side middle school all right so i do need i'll take y'all's comments as a motion i do need a second for the appointment of evan burton thank you miss and with that are there any comments any discussions about this recommendation all right here we go mr grimes all right mr bryant lauren mr dwyer aye ms wilton hi thank you and i as well so unanimously we are welcome to say evan burton is our new principal in middle school at northside middle school mr burton if you could come to the podium please we wouldn't mind hearing a few words from you this evening congratulations on thank you i think pete's had a pretty good bar so i'll try not to talk as long as pizza as this evening so
022anyway thank you everybody so i'm just very appreciative and grateful um for the confidence that northside has in me and cic and our staff to to be the next principal um there and the bcsc has in me to continue to lead in this district being able to serve the students staff and families for almost seven years has really given me the opportunity to make northside my place and i've never had a desire to be anywhere else take this opportunity with kind of a captive audience here to thank my wife beth for her understanding that texts phone calls emails don't really have an end time and the school day never really ends either so without her uh support or i guess her support throughout these years it just has just been invaluable so thank you also
023to continue the thanks i'd like to thank my administrative co-workers some of which are here today for just advice and guidance as i've continued to move my career and the biggest thank you possible to amy dixon for just being an absolutely exemplary mentor and friend so it was said to me when i was hired to be the assistant principal at north side that i had just gotten the best job in the district and i am and i know that that's because i was given the chance to work with and learn from you so thank you finally i've been thinking the last couple of days about how to kind of move forward from just the excitement and the best way that i can kind of talk about it is is that is that i have a
024get to job not have to job i get to work with all the north side students and prepare them for whatever comes next i get to lead and work side by side with the best absolute best teaching and support staff and finally i i get to continue having an overwhelming sense of pride to call northside my home and to bring value to to my community so again i i'm trying to contain myself but uh just thank you uh very much and i'm i'm so excited for this next chapter awesome [Applause] okay we're going to have right is [Applause] so how very exciting so congratulations now we have the opportunity to learn from rock creek elementary school join us all right thank you this evening to our school board and dr roberts for allowing us to
025come and share with you about rock creek i have amazing staff and students here with me as well bring cute kids they always say and it makes it go better so a little bit about rock creek and so we have a 324 students in our current enrollment with 15 general education classrooms if you think of rock creek many people would state it's a multi-generational community building so grandparents parents their students some of our current families were even the first individuals to attend rock creek so it is nice to hear those stories when we have community events rock creek was built in 1958 with three building additions the latest was adding four classrooms onto our building in all right thank you um our goal this evening is to explain the number talk strategy to you that
026we have utilized this year and k-6 at rock creek we will explain how this consistent strategy aligned vertically in our building has increased overall proficiency in math as well as computation i have several staff members and then our two students with us tonight so the why why did we choose to do number talks and why did we choose a strategy for our building in 2020 21 we looked at the data and it indicated that two areas that we needed to work on for growth was computation and also computation in relation to number sense just not understanding the math facts and so the why when we do the research behind number talks is that math is about making sense of numerical relationships and it's also helping students when they're consistent with number talks understanding place value
027and then utilizing those strategies when working on different problems and so if you continue to look at our data from this year you can see at the top overall proficiency for math between the fall and winter nwea assessments we've seen a five percent increase and then when you look at just the computation strat strands for k-6 you'll see a 9 increase between the fall and winter assessments of nwea one area to really pull out is that fifth grade overall proficiency we've seen a 15 increase this is a grade level that mrs ellsberry will share with you they have been using this strategy for quite some time and these students also have seen a 31 increase between fall and winter with computation so that's a pretty large increase and we're excited about hi i'm tabitha tedder
028udl facilitator at rock creek elementary and some things i want to bring to light about member talks and tying it in with udl in the udl principles so for example in the area of engagement number talks minimize the threats and distractions by allowing students a risk-free environment to allow them to discuss the problems and take on their explanations and listening to others and suggestions from their classmates another example for number talks is that it varies the demands and resources and increases mastery oriented feedback from those students and allows for various ranges of discussions from those classmates it allows a consistent expectations and various strategies and self-assessment to increase self-regulation for those students another example that number talks aligns with udl is through representation and providing support for vocabulary and math notation and symbols and also
029when you think about action and expression for udl number talks aligns and provides multiple ways for students to respond and communicate through multiple levels of support and practice and reinforcement hi i'm amy elsevier teach fifth grade at rock creek um i'm going to share with you an example of one of our math talk days one of our lessons we have been studying place value and so this would be an example this would be on the board um i post the question to the kids they have the option of they can write out their answer on a whiteboard they can just talk about it some they like to do in their head that becomes a almost like a competition between them i think sometimes but i had noticed something i feel strongly about is that kids
030need to be able to talk about why why is that trans or what makes that answer correct what's a different way that you can do it and so in a whole classroom of students that's difficult to give everybody a voice and so a nice thing about number talks is they're speaking with each other and so they're learning from each other and they're able to each have a voice in what they're saying so um we have a video of the kids this is for my students discussing what you just saw the number one nine thousand one hundred thousand unparalleled fifty three and because the one is one hundred times greater than the one in the scribbled number so let's go up to the hundredths place and the nine is a hundred times greater than the nineteen
031terabyte number so go up [Music] so they're quite proud of themselves they've quite thrilled me doing this video for you i am amanda gleck i teach kindergarten in kindergarten we strive to build a strong foundation of number sense so each day we take five to ten minutes prior to our math stations which are very hands-on and we have our number talks and these include recognizing and building numbers subitizing and other early computation skills and story problems and here is our work it out wednesday so this is where we have our story problem practice first i read this story problem to them and i have them listen and visualize what's happening and then they talk to their peers about how to solve the problem what what their what is their plan and then they then demonstrate
032with dry erase boards or objects with manipulatives on how to solve it i feel that number talks give our kids a chance to really explain their mathematical thinking and strategies and to help them ensure their understanding [Music] i teach their great at rock creek and to start our math lessons we do some type of number talk every day it's a little bit different to kind of keep the kids engaged this these are one of their favorites you know the would you rather they always come up with their own silly ones but with math you know would you rather so you give them some type of situation where they're going to have to choose option a or option b okay and then they're going to have to explain their thinking so just as my colleagues have
033said the best part is to hear their why even if their why is incorrect they still have a why they got there and that's really when as the teacher you can dig in and you know fix their line understand help them understand their misconceptions so we did bring two of my awesome students i have two friends with me today so they're gonna just share what they like about it and so they're a little bit nervous but they're gonna do a great job this is caroline glick she is in my class and she's just going to share what she likes about number talks you okay to do that talks okay that everybody participates and helps other people do it and you get to talk with your friends about the math problem at your table and nope
034and um all right here's theo west what do you like about men talks what do you enjoy i enjoy to work it out with the other people and see what they think and if you have two different answers you can both do it together to figure out which one you think is right did you think of yours yeah what i liked about it was that everybody participates on doing the math equation and that the um that the people uh she said you know it's great when she was talking to her like okay so what do you guys like about them and she mentioned to me she said that people don't get upset when you're wrong they don't say things to you like oh my gosh you're so wrong and that just kind of hit my
035teacher heart because it is hard to talk in front of your peers and being able to share in the risk of it being incorrect or having something different and so that is a big risk for kiddos to take and so the fact that she could recognize it's okay to be wrong and still share out i feel like that's a very important piece of this so thank you guys you did awesome are there questions for any of us now that they've all left are there questions individuals have i just have a comment i think this is a great program mainly because y'all have heard me talk about my daughter and you know both of my kids they've struggled with the whole map placement and flash cards and things like that and even today you know it's
036funny because being a history teacher is far better in being a math teacher and it starts with knowing your math facts knowing the placement and trying to understand what math is and i appreciate this because i really think this will help our students in the long run so thank you yes i can hear oh i'm sorry go ahead i can i can hear my mad head faculty over in bloomington thank you so much for focusing on the why that is so important in mathematics so that's very valuable and i appreciate that you know and caroline you're learning that about mathematics and what it means and that you can work together on problems that's very important to also understand i particularly appreciated the relationship between the math talks and the udl framework and use that to
037make them work together thank you i have a question how does this scale for the different grades yeah so it's nice that we got to hear from kindergarten third grade fifth grade what were some of the lines of thinking in terms of how teachers adopted it and adapted it to their grade level so when we started the school year we looked at our data as a building and realized that computation and understanding how to apply that computation was an area we needed to grow in so as a building we have a document that really shows by standard what the grade levels below and above are working on and what the expectation is as a kindergarten first all the way through sixth grade teacher what my students will know and be able to master before they
038leave four computation number six and so being able to see that allows me to kind of segment then when i do my number talks each day on which areas to work on and then as we do assessments we can see where our strengths are or maybe where we need to grow a little bit and review but i had the opportunity to when i do my observations i strategically went in during number talks time and it makes me excited to hear kids talk about numbers and just understanding the relationship they have and really we can see that growth beyond and some of our kids that are really mathematical thinkers it's great to hear about their vocabulary and so i have questioned fifth grade teachers regularly why is your math growth so high every year and being
039able to see kids talking about it i really believe that's a piece to it theo and claire line you are my hero okay that's pretty great wonderful thank you very very much thank you all thank you again you and caroline for coming to be with us tonight right we're going to flip from that brain of mathematics to the sexual studies check and see if this works hello my name is jeannie long he's gone you guys hear me okay hi my name is jeannie long and i work in the elementary curriculum and instruction office and i'm brandi coomer and i'm the coordinator of instructional technology i would like to thank the bcsc school board and dr roberts for allowing us to come and speak to you about our social studies resource committee and our findings that
040we have we have for you so the goal of this presentation this evening is to present the social studies resource adoption committee's recommendations and gain approval of this resource for our elementary students i would like to recognize the participants of this committee that served with me we had representatives from the majority of our elementary schools we had parents on this committee an administrator a udl facilitator an ell teacher and every grade level representative some of our members had prior commitments and were unable to attend this evening but i would like for those members that are here if they would please stand so they could be recognized i would like to sincerely thank all of them for the time that they gave to bcsc that if they're here or were unable to be here i appreciated
041their commitment to this process so when we looked at coming up with a rubric we had two main things in mind how can we provide a have a a scorable rubric that is with the bcsc udl framework with engagement representation and action expression but we also added a component on our rubric how does it meet our indiana academic standards in social studies that was very important to us that it meet both of those criterias our udl framework and our academic standards the timeline for this process is we started in september and we formed our committee we quickly then reviewed resources and then we're here tonight for your approval so the two resources that we evaluated were studies weekly and discovery education studies weekly has an online and a print component discovery education has is an
042only an online program i have linked the websites to studies weekly and discovery education for you to per to take a look at later so when we looked at these resources we looked at what characteristics do we want a social studies program to have in our elementary schools and we looked at do they represent our state standards that's what we teach i've been a teacher in bcsc for 22 years this is my 23rd year in the district my first year in this office and the state standards are what guide us they're very important to us so that had to be in there we wanted to look in our elementary is there some way we could have an online and a print component for our elementary students it has to span grades kindergarten through sixth grade
043is there something that our kindergarten students and teachers could get value out of as well as our sixth grade teachers and students was it accessible for all students accessible to all teachers in a variety of different ways was there an ease of navigation not just for the students but also for the teachers were you able to find the resources to do the lessons with the students were they able to navigate the sites as well and another very important component was is it going to be cost effective for our parents that's something we have to be very mindful of is it cost effective for all of our parents in bcsc so you can see from our chart that we have studies weekly has checked off all of those characteristics on our on our our sheet of
044what we were really looking for so let's take a closer look at studies weekly you have in front of you one of the newspapers so studies weekly is so i have a variety of grades to all of you we have kindergarten through six grades in front of you and when you look at this you know that it's you can see that it's a very unique format it's in a newspaper format it is full color there are between 21 and 32 weeks that the students will receive and the teachers will receive to use they are able to mark these up they're able to circle text they're able to highlight they're able to really make these truly consumable within those classrooms and they can be used for a variety of subjects not just social studies you can
045use this for your reading instruction as well they are standard aligned studies weekly gives charts and they give lots of documents of where they are aligned in every grade level but the most intriguing to me was that they are completely indiana standard based in third and fourth grade so some of you i made sure that i put two third grade and two fourth grade because those are my my favorite because they're completely indiana history and it says across indiana history and all of the articles are indiana it's talking about the wabash river it's talking about the tribes in in that we're are in indiana it's a hundred percent indiana history and that's what when i taught fourth grade we were looking for true indiana history it also has access to the students and the teachers
046have access to all of these resources online as well so students can access them on their chromebooks it will read the text aloud to them teachers can project them on their smart boards they also have interviews and online field trips that they can enjoy from the comfort of their classroom and we believe at this time in our negotiations with studies weekly that the cost will be under seven dollars a year for the students for this resource so i have an online field trip that i wanted to share with you as an example some of the online field trips can be a minute and a half that's what this one is some are 30 minutes so i did not keep the 30 minute one for you so i just wanted to show you one of these
047uh field trips wilson adventures this week we're going to visit the wright brothers national memorial in kitty hawk north carolina the biggest lure at the burke brothers national memorial is naturally the monument itself [Music] entering the memorial grounds visitors can park and check up big kill double hill to have an outpost perspective of the greenwich structure visitors can also experience 360 degrees of plans in this vast monument [Music] a reproduction of the laundry is located not far away [Music] as are the small monuments marking the exact locations of the first through fourth landing spots nearby visitors will find republican living quarters where the wright brothers called home during their buying experiments and the hangar where they stored their famous 1903 white fire just south of the monument lies a life-sized statue recreation of the events
048that were photographed during the first flight [Music] thank you for visiting the wright brothers national memorial event see you next time on weekly adventures thank you so we looked at the we looked at the rubric we looked at what they scored in each of the sections but we also looked at what their comments were what did the people that served on this committee what were their comments and so we had a bcsc parent that said this curriculum clearly shows how the materials align with the indiana standards a fourth grade teacher said this is my favorite i want to use it now and then a fifth and sixth grade teacher they said there is a great mix of videos pictures timelines questions read aloud options and editable questions now i'm going to turn it over to
049brittany for her section all right so thank you genie as genie had said there's a lot of technical pieces that go along with this option as well and this is one of the better online interfaces that i've seen and not all of them are created equal and this one is fantastic because it's compatible with our existing technologies whether our students are using ipads in kindergarten or chromebooks in the upper grade levels it's also compatible with our district supported assistive technologies as well so some of our students who need to have those options this is flexible and compatible with those and something that really stood out from this particular resource and this option is that there are several assistive technology pieces built into this platform on its own which is really great because it doesn't mean
050that students have to pull up four or five other applications to be able to read with their ears and have pieces interpreted or have closed captions if that's something that they need there's the ability to have any passage on this platform let aloud the students can adjust the speed and the voice it highlights the words they click on the words and there's a picture dictionary that can even pop up and show them that's what this word means and all of the videos have closed captions that are accurate and are in multiple languages including english and spanish thank you so we had some opportunities with studies weekly so there was there was an optional pilot for the fourth nine weeks so i asked some teachers that i knew would you be willing to try this in
051your classroom the fourth nine weeks the online component and the print text studies weekly said that they would give us the print materials at no cost for those classrooms that would like to try these newspapers to see how the students reacted to them and what they felt about them they also said that we could use their online platform so that the teachers and the students would have some chance to practice so we were excited about that that we had this option to bring in the print version and the online in the fourth quarter and we have every uh building and every grade level that will that is represented in that so it is our recommendation and our request that bcsc school board would approve studies weekly as our social studies resource in bcsc k-6 classrooms
052thank you for this consideration what questions do you have for me about studies weekly all right colleen's questions um we deal with this maybe every other year every five years sick everything four social studies so i'm not up to speed on all the steps in the process but do you get a chance to meet with representatives from studies weekly or what you normally have had it not been a coconut can you tell me a little bit about the meetings and the face to face so what we have done this year because of covid they have been zoom meetings so i had zoom meetings with other providers first to narrow our search and they were one of the people i had a zoo meeting with so i had a meeting with them and i asked them
053some clarifying questions about their program and what would be included and we started very initially starting about talking about cost and having them walk me through the process so i did that with probably three or four vendors met with them on zoom and then we had uh i've had a lot of interactions with them zoom meetings phone calls emails asking them some clarifying questions in a typical year because i've been around the district for so long this you know 23 years and i've been a lot of textbook evaluations on the other end as a teacher normally in a regular year we we have had it on our big adoptions where when you narrow it down you have a presentation and they come but with covid we did all zoo meetings with them um and they
054they discussed the program with us studies weekly so how many states are they making this available do you have a sense um i think that i'm not sure how many states that they do individually so what they do is um they for fourth grade in most grades that's your indeed your state history so they have a lot of states that they have um built that for so for us we have k one and two will be their national newspaper that people get third and fourth grade is indiana specific because indiana standards are your community and so they included indiana as our community so there's indiana information in third grade fourth grade is the all the standards are around indiana history so they make it specific and then fifth and sixth grade are their national news
055newspaper so i'm not a hundred percent sure on if they have all 50 states that they make those specific state pages for we both got fourth grade papers here at this end of the table they look fantastic and i don't know how he said something like this is generated i mean i'm looking at week 25 you're looking at week 13. um every week of the academic year you've got a new tool yes and i'm assuming that everything from week 13 or week 25 would also be available online yes so what studies weekly says that you will the teachers will receive all 32 or all 21 depending on the grade level you will receive all of them toward at the start of the year so teachers could also arrange the order in which they're maybe having
056a large unit that they're tying also maybe with their reading instruction or their or another instruction so they can move them but of course they are in historical order that that the magazines go one through 32. so yes the way i was pulling one it was the northwest territory so it was all in how indiana became a state how did we have formerly northwest territory how how indiana became a state and how many people had to be in that area to be considered a state so it's a really engaging newspaper it's a different feel for the students than having a textbook um i think this is easier also to go home for their parents to see and just they can go home and talk about what they had that they learned in school because it's
057a newspaper form it's an easy format to take home as well at the end of the year i take your your social facebooks home so this is uh also easier take home you can have some conversations of history at home as well seems to be an impressive company and i appreciate your recommendation thank you so i um i appreciate that the fact that it can integrate so well with reading and language arts is is really impressive and particularly for the diversity and language and reading skills among our learners so i appreciate what bernie you were describing are the options that learners have that's most impressive so i'm glad you told me you read more than two or two mr stenners that's like two because we've usually had more than that we saw the finalists i
058well clearly but um it's interesting that the finalists like were wildly different yes so in your check marks so they're wildly different in that um if we go back to that we go back to this one so when the the group evaluated the two resources it was very clear very early on which our group found the ease of use the most and what would be best for students when we looked at discovery education we had a hard time noticing where all the state standards are specifically and we fact we fact checked we looked okay it says that this is a kindergarten standard and and then we looked at the resource and there was no way that if i were teaching kindergarten that we would i would show that so we found that it it really
059represented our state standards very seamlessly and age-appropriate discovery education was almost 100 video based and having a print in front of students in elementary to me is very important as well and was important to the group to have some print as well in front of them and not just a video based sure and it was also um the group found it hard to navigate and the ease of use comes in so are students going to be able well they might actually be able to use it much better than us but the the ease of use for teachers and students to be able to get to the resources and the lessons that we want them to it was far easier in studies weekly and just a more seamless directly going back to our state standards and
060that's very important to us is directly linking back to our state standards well i have to love the print option and i'm not going to date myself as to what i used to get we called it the weekly reader oh no i used to get one of those all the time all right other questions yes mr grimes has um has studies weekly is it is it a program that's been around for a while is it pretty well established yes it is um it's a very established company there they have several school districts in indiana that are using it they have many dis school districts around the united states that are using it so yes it is i don't know i would have to find the date that they actually started business but yes they are
061a well-established and um older teachers like myself have heard of studies weekly uh quite quite often and that was going to be my other question is if you had a chance to to reach out to any other school corporations that are currently using it i asked six different districts that i'm going to have colleagues in that are in the technology world and four out of six of those said that they use studies weekly all right thank you all very much so we have the opportunity to review the links and all that stuff and we'll officially vote on it at our next meeting yes thank you and um you can keep the newspapers or you can leave them and cherie said she would pick them up but feel free to take the newspapers if you would
062like thank you very much for your presentation and all the work and those of you who are on the committee you had a lot of energy facilitating your work but thank you for all the time you put into the project as well thank you for that clarification dr shed so this is like the first reading of policy so information was provided to you to go back review the information that's been provided in the next school meeting which definitely was april 4th we would have the recommendation to you as a board for approval and on that evening the secondary presentation will be given as well as a first reading for social studies adoption all right it is time for a board commentation so i'll turn to my colleagues i've got some doctor i know you did
063mister well yeah i didn't start reflections no yeah settle in i've got about two dozen here no i don't have that man i do have several however and i'll try to go uh fairly quickly some of them are probably teetering on the verge of being semi-old news and some are hot off the press i'll start with some news from the college scholarship coordinator at columbus north high school sarah dismore shared the names of eight students that have been named as national merit scholarship finalists fifteen think it well ms dismore shared with me that out of the 50 000 top scorers in the nation approximately 15 000 are selected as finalists and eight of them at north and just to go ahead and mention their names uh congratulations to evan carr tiffany linfu sanjana jane shaywan
064lee matthew luke osborne rishi real and jack swan wang eight finalists for that that will be competing um for merit scholarship awards and that's based on not only their psat scores but also areas such as their gpa the coursework they've taken extracurriculars it looks at the whole package so congratulations and good luck to those eight um c4 again i seems like i mentioned c4 a lot but uh eight to ninth graders uh this is maybe uh in january now 12 over 1200 8th and 9th graders attended career fairs with c4 where students and teachers put together all kinds of cool looking interactive displays and activities for prospective students to experience and as stated in i believe it was probably the latest c4 newsletter the future of c4 looks bright so great job to c4 once
065again uh national uh according to a press release from national history day on february 14th central social studies teacher alan burkmeyer is named as one of 30 teachers from across the u.s two from indiana that have been selected to participate in a program called revolutionary ideals and mr burkmeyer will spend a week in july in providence rhode island and those 30 selected teachers will spend the next several months learning about researching the ideals behind the american revolution and their experience will culminate later this summer as they work in pairs to write and create lesson plans for an upcoming national history day publication and then mr burkmeyer also asked that i mentioned um mr lewis the social studies department chair columbus easton central and the central prison principal mr payne for for helping him to achieve
066this uh to achieve this honor um i would like to just give commendations to science teacher and adventure club sponsor at csa new tech mr larson um mr larson this is the i believe he told me this is the 24th year he has sponsored the adventure club started at columbus north years ago and it caught my eye because i saw it in the republic what their fundraiser was so i i talked to mr larson a little bit about it but it's a group that he said has impacted uh hundreds of students these last 24 or yeah these last 24 years they go backpacking camping rock climbing skiing canoeing cave exploring biking ziplining much more and the fundraiser that they had last month the polar blair polar bear plunge at mr larson's house in the lagoons
067and mr larson said they have raised nearly 4 000 to date to help pay for transportation you know equipment fund bigger trips and and so forth and they hope to go to red river gorge in i think michigan for their for their next trip so accommodations to mr larson megan schaff director of mcdowell the educators that mcdowell adult educators that were recognized at the state house as part of adult education day for the role that they played in helping teach english to afghan refugees at camp vaderbury and miss schaff asked for me to mention in particular nikki nolting debbie pogue arlene parsons mayra rodriguez and lindsay swann for the vital role that they played in that and then she also shared that another interesting thing that they did at mcdowell was they had their alternative
068high school students have the option to write notes of encouragement and to the afghans and they delivered them to atterberry and in return many afghans were eager to write notes back to the students and then ms schaff also shared that to the afghan families have settled here in columbus and are attending english at mcdowell one last thing about mcdowell miss schaff says the high school equivalency certification classes are in full swing again this year and today 38 individuals have earned their high school equivalency diploma so far uh this year at ed mcdown um three more uh from from sarah fraser the thing that kind of caught my eye this is the first year bcsc will be hosting an elementary spark night for fifth and sixth graders april 8th at columbus north high school and this
069mrs frazier shared that the events already at capacity 125 students 30 currently and on the wait list and that wait list is growing but the purpose is to help students celebrate their sparks or find a potential spark and um mrs frazier went on to say you know sparks it's very important for uh elementary age kids to find something that interests them and that they can get engaged in and so you know some of the programs that they're going to be taking part in coding unplugged vr and instrument zoo improv theater alternative sports so their hope is that you know the goal is to have each student come away from the evening to be able to identify and spark and then they plan to follow up with that the attendees those those kids that attended in
070april may to see if you know just what they've done in terms of pursuing their spark um commendations to mrs jennifer richevy uh reshave excuse me for winning the 2002 edna folger award for any full-time educator in bartholomew county a huge honor for that so congratulations to her and then the last one that i just got today hot off the press the bcsc winter color guard just won first place at their competition this past weekend at hamilton southeastern so congrats to the vcsc collar guard nice nice thank you thank you very much others commend the i think we'll find out at our board meeting tomorrow that it was the best the best attended one that we've had and probably the most profitable one that we've had i think people were anxious to get outside or
071to get somewhere and do something and they were they were there yesterday so nice nice great all right we have not had anyone sign up for public comments so we will go down to our school board member reports yes mr grimes so just a dovetail off the school foundation yesterday's harlem wizards i i saw another board bcs bcsf board member on the way out yesterday and he commented that he thought there were over 1500 people there so yeah it was very well attended very entertaining very loud very all kinds of things but yeah it was great to see so many kids and families out and about and enjoying themselves that was that was great and then the next event from the school foundation april 30th hopefully it won't be snowing a 5k at south side
072and i will have the online link out for that soon and then hopefully i'm not stepping on your toes here dr shedd but february 15th dr shed and i were able to attend uh the school board association day at the at the state house for this short legislative session that looks to probably wrap up in the next day or two yes and dr shed and i were able to have a good lunch and conversation with representative lauer and then uh mosey over to the the state house following lunch where we had a a good conversation with senator walker we did we did thank you others that seemed so long ago oh my gosh um all right cabinet reports yes yeah moving to my policy on here so we have just one item under cabinet reports
073today is to give a first greeting from policy uh we provided the policy to you in your packet uh policy 8310 so it already exists uh but with the request for records uh sometimes are are interesting but uh most interesting when they come from a commercial vendor who's trying to use that information for commercial purposes um so we are able to put in policy a disclosure of public records that just indicates that any person who requests information pursuant to the indiana access to public records act may not use such information for commercial purposes including but not limited to sell advertise or solicit the purchase of merchandise goods or services or sell loan give away or otherwise deliver the information obtained by such requests to any other parties for those purposes so that is the simple
074edition is a paragraph in there when it's closure of public records to focus on those trying to use that information for commercial purposes again this is just information as a first reading and i'll ask for your recommendation for approval of the next board meeting all right thank you were there questions individuals have about that edition to your knowledge already i don't think so mr stinner i just we will get these from time to time and then we will reply you know similar to what this statement is but we didn't have that exactly his policy and so this allows us to give them the policy numbers based upon the reason they're requesting that information we will not provide that information all right now to our list of requests for approval thank you dr i have quite
075the list here um so quickly go through those we do have uh under my request for approval of the minutes of the regular school board meeting we met a month ago february 7th and then we also had an executive session uh recently as well two weeks ago february the 21st you have a list of supplemental contracts in your packet field trips and professional leaves school fundraisers as well as claims and payroll we have two sets for you this time made claims for today which is about a little over 1.8 million dollars and then the pre-run that went from february first to february 28th coming in the month of february a little over 2.1 million dollars in claims we also have two sets of payrolls for you both of those are normal ones covering the dates
076of the 17th of january through the 30th as well as the 31 31st of january through february 13th and that total of payroll was a little over 6.3 million dollars also we're asking uh for approval from you to get permission to receive bids for the roofing project at taylorsville elementary this is completing that project about three years ago or so we had part of that roof completed we also have a strategic plan uh in front of you again this evening we gave you a presentation at the last meeting we also have an adoption of findings of fact conclusions in order from a recent meeting that you had we all have we're asking for permission to declare some items from c4 those items obsolete we also have an appointment of mr michael macgyver of the local
077law firm sharpneck bigly stroll in washburn as school attorney mike is here mike we raise your hand so welcome mike and chris monroe has been our um attorney a school attorney for now several years since 2016 fall 2016 and uh was gracious enough as he was trying to step out to serve as an interim attorney for us for this first couple months so thank you chris for your willingness to do that i'm asking you to appoint mike michael macgyver to that position and uh i'm just we're going to run through the slides this is our bcsc strategic plan uh this was the presentation given during our pd day a reminder that we did have a full day pd day for staff back on february the 21st and during that day we opened it with this
078presentation and so got into the fact that we have a professional development day website that's available for all to see and to access information get through the day we got our schedule for that day and then jumped into information you've seen here and i've provided against this again to you it has our mission of shooting our vision mission and core police now the three focus areas of excellence and high expectations healthy safe and welcoming environments and pathways to success and then we got into what that means in terms of our specific strategic objectives and programs and methods that we are implementing putting into place to accomplish those strategic objectives and just roll through that quickly and again because this is the second time of seeing it it was again in your packet and i want
079to get to this piece in that we introduced for the first time after uh a number of iterations of trying to get to a new tagline as well as um icon for the school corporation as we're just trying to move forward with some of our efforts together we learn is the tagline we have here we believe that that is an indicator of inclusion openness unity and partnership and the fact that the success of our learners does come from the importance of collaboration both internally and externally as well as then these symbols of the school corporation with our bcsc together we learned as a tag line and this check mark slash pathway or road that we have as an icon and that particular icon is a stylized check mark that would signify its voice of togetherness
080as a school corporation there are four striped segments there that would represent families or students our staff members and the community so four different pieces and then the road like quality is is signifying the different pathways that we offer our students so three different things coming together that one icon one a check mark that people have chosen us to be the school corporation to send their students and or to work with us and then the four segments being the four different groups that we try to collaborate and partner with and then those that road um being the the pathways that are so um such an important part of our school corporation and i think a demonstrative of the success that we have as an organization so that um one of the pieces that we've we've
081arrived at and ask you for your approval for all this information and this is just an example of strategic planning questions that we follow the presentation with we did ask for people to get together then and to review um the plans you'll resonate with them what maybe were some opportunities that we missed as you uh know this is a document that will continue to evolve it should be an active document and one that will continue to try to move forward and improve all the time but that was a conversation so here is an opportunity for any input and review as well for you as we i guess that's actually the next part of our agenda so i'll stop right there so you have the items in front of you now that i am requesting your
082approval and i would ask ask for a question for that doctor so if i might have a motion from one of my colleagues for items three a through j as they've been presented to us so man thank you mr grimes is there a second sure thank you miss dave dwyer do individuals have questions about any of these items mr spencer it's just a tangent but i think it's the first time we've been together since the professional development day yes and as you talked about the strategic plan i wonder were there any big takeaways for you for your cabinet uh learnings things we might things that go really well or things that we might do differently next time yes all of that i as i introduced the the morning i introduced it as an experiment this
083was the first time we had the opportunity as a school corporation to gather our staff all two thousand of them together and try to meet their needs both individually and collectively and then organization as we try to explain what we're trying to do as an organization and then align and move forward and so the schedule that we put forth we try to provide some individual time not a lot it was about 45 minutes then with a 15-minute break to move to the next thing uh and then the the morning was full of corporation-led activities uh first focusing on the strategic plan then professional development with udl and pbis two very foundational pieces of our school corporation uh lunch and then followed up with building and department specific things in the afternoon so north side evan
084and amy would have in their cic would have organized an activity or activities events in the afternoon that would need to be meet the needs of that building specifically and then even more specifically to this strategic plan so as we move toward the next time um we are reviewing currently over 1300 responses we get to our exit ticket so 1300 people did take the time to respond to that our teachers association also put out a survey just asking some questions about things so we're trying to understand all that information and and take that and understand how we can be better the next time uh with all that said um the the responses were very favorable certainly there were people that that had good constructive feedback for us in terms of how we could improve but
085in terms of the purpose of the day how the day was structured and utilized um and the feelings of of coming together and be able to collaborate both as a school corporation as a whole and then with their buildings and departments were very favorable and then our support staff i think felt very valued we just don't get enough time period with our staff and and even more so with our support staff they come in and work their hourly positions get straight to work and and then they work their hours and and we where it's hard for us to pull them out for professional development so bringing them into play and having them understand all the things that we try to regularly talk about i believe was helpful and our feedback does indicate that that was
086the case very positive they look forward to the next one thanks for asking that any other comments all right all of those i don't know if you julie if you're still with us we have to see you for your vote there we go yay there she is i hope you feel better soon so um with that i'll do a roll call so mr grimes all right mr brian all right mr hawk dwyer hi miss wilney hi mr stenner hi dr bills hi i as well so items a through j pass unanimously dr roberts thank you very much so lastly an opportunity for board input and review mr spenner thank you dr tonight it was just amazing coach cooper and his wrestler mr young mr law families that were able to come thinking about the parents
087that have participated in the curriculum the new committee for us the administrators and teachers and students that we have as part of our presentations tonight great meeting great great days i read a lot from cases so that was really helpful tonight since i've been on um i also i i was as the rock creek teachers and principal were talking through their numbers talks i was thinking back to mr grimes reflections and intellectual humility and i thought how great to have this group of kids present their ideas and be a little vulnerable in that and be willing to take input and it all kind of came full circle if you want people you know we're teaching our our kids how to live in a world with social media and polarizing topics and views and we're going
088to have to teach them differently than we did in the past to overcome that so you know that kind of came full circle um a couple more congratulations to mr burton um on being appointed the next principal at northside um yeah and thanks again to uh mrs dedler and the staff of rock creek for sharing number talks and also thanks to to all those people who worked and spent time on the elementary social studies resource adoption materials yes for sure for sure yes you made me nervous by calling on my first i forgot that i wanted to thank judge monroe for serving as attorney for so many years and to welcome mr mackay absolutely and you can see that we take all of this very seriously as we should i appreciated all the enthusiasm that
089we heard today oh my goodness so i think so i don't think i've heard mr hughes speak that much at one of these before so that was very impressive and he was thoroughly excited as was um i appreciated the enthusiasm that he shared about chris cooper and what he does for the athletes with whom he works that it is more than just wrestling but it is about they're growing as individuals and mr burton could merely contain himself and that was just so fun to experience and we didn't take and i hope everyone appreciates how much we value amy dixon and the fabulous leadership that she did for us at northside middle school and then the the children at rock creek and there's actually one of your quotes on the that made me think about the
090kids they talked about their collaboration and working and it's there the success is the importance of collaboration which they talked about as they were discussing their whys in their number talks so that was my full circle it was we got to appreciate so many components of our corporation and what makes it the great place that it is so i thank everyone for fabulous work so far it is very cool to see everybody without a mask so i hope school went well this past week without them yes everyone truly truly deserves this coming spring break be safe and enjoy yourselves please i my last line that i have to do is our next meetings we will have a strategic planning session on march 25th 9 a.m in the lovely terrace room and our next school board
091meeting will be on april 4th at 6 30. so with that i'll call this meeting adjourn and everyone have a very safe relaxing spring you