001all right oh it's so nice to see everyone we welcome you to the regular meeting of the of the board of school trustees for bartholomew consolidated school corporation so it's very nice to have you those of you who are here in the room with us and those who are watching us on our streaming we do start each of our meetings with reflections from one of our board colleagues and tonight i'll be turning to mr rich stenner thank you dr shed hello everyone tonight i'll be offering some of my own reflections on democracy and community something two things that i've been thinking quite a lot about recently mary parker follett was one of the first management consultants in north america she was a proponent of participatory democracy and a believer in working with people to get
002things done one of her quotes that i like is we have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations i think democracy can be thought of as a form of collective problem solving it's the art of problem solving that hinges on developing and using civic capacity that includes government but is not limited to government goes beyond government an important idea about democracy is that democracy requires a community or a society of citizens that can work together to address their common problems it is one way and i think the best way that citizens of a community a state or a nation can address the issues and problems that they're facing problems like natural disasters poverty violence pandemics gaps in educational achievement
003all these require citizens communities and institutions to work together strong and healthy communities are necessary to this notion of working together and therefore necessary to democracy without strong communities democracy can be reduced to a set of impersonal institutions and artificial techniques while some scholars lament the decline or collapse of community in our society like robert putnam did in his book bowling alone other researchers are finding that most citizens do yearn to shape the future of their communities and this yearning needs to be encouraged democracy is not just about the practice of voting of serving in office of passing laws or governing democracy must be lived out in our communities in real and deep ways that allow the community to solve its own problems we're lucky to have good strong organizations in columbus like the lincoln
004central neighborhood community center like the east side community center where neighbors work together to solve problems i think of our city and county governments our township and school corporations are also examples of communities shaping their own futures through democratic actions i'll close my reflections with a quote from john dewey who was an advocate in the 1900s for education and education reform in america here's what he said about democracy and community democracy is not an alternative to other principles of government or an associated life democracy is the idea of community life itself thank you very much so i'll ask if you're able if you would stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance [Laughter] one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice all right all seven members of your school board are here tonight
005so i can say that indeed we have a quorum and i'll call this meeting to order you'll see here on a screen and also behind us a listing of the mission and vision for this school corporation and which provides guidelines to us for all the decisions that we have to make this evening additionally here is the list of high expectation objectives which further guide our deliberations we always love to start with the who and the why and to offer the opportunities for some wonderful recognitions so i will turn to dr roberts for our united way presentation all right thank you dr now it is a wonderful evening in terms of our opportunity to celebrate and recognize quite a few people as we see as we have in the audience here tonight we're going to start
006with the united way bcsc does participate in the united way campaign each year we're very happy to be able to engage our staff and students in the effort to raise dollars for such an important organization in our community the united way we see as a true partner in working with our school corporation to serve the youth of this community so we always look forward to the opportunity to earn some dollars and provide those dollars to united way so this year's campaign we had 23 different individuals individual campaigns run throughout our school corporation and we had 44 champions in total supporting that campaign meaning 44 different individuals organizing those 23 campaigns to make sure that we were squeezing blood out of the turnip in some cases to get as much dollars as we possibly could to
007provide to the united way 11 of those 44 champions were student champions so we had 11 individual students helping us out with that so as we conclude our fundraising campaign and offer a check to united way we would like to do so in the amount of 33 399 dollars so our school corporation from its staff and students and the campaign that starts in november we shoot for a week it usually takes us about two weeks to conclude and get the money calculated and gathered and calculated and then ready but 33 thousand three hundred ninety nine dollars that's more than we have raised in the last six years so given everything going on we thought that was quite the success so if i could if i could invite the representatives from united way up in front
008of the screen here i will step up here with you [Laughter] thanks again to our partners at the united way for all the work that you do on behalf of the students of our community it's greatly appreciated absolutely thank you so i'll turn to you dr roberts again as we turn to mary and mark and wendy ellwood thank you dr shed we would also like to recognize the mark and wendy ellwood foundation so if i could have mark and wendy maybe just stand up here for just a second come a little forward as i read a couple of things and based upon the help that they have provided us so this is mark and wendy elwood of the mark and wendy elwood foundation beginning 2019 the mark and wendy elwood foundation began generously providing funding
009to create opportunities to support our k-6 students in making positive choices especially when it comes to drugs this project became known as project prevent since the introduction of this program all first and fourth grade classrooms now have a dedicated time to guide students through the steps to making positive life choices as well as teaching students how to care for their own mental health as reported by a bcsc student the lesson that helped me the most was self-esteem it helped me the most because sometimes i think i can't do something because it is difficult now i calm down and don't get mad at myself for getting a question wrong the self-esteem lesson was very important bcsc is grateful to the elwood foundation for helping us launch this important instruction to our young students we look forward
010to seeing these positive results in our schools and community as our students continue to grow and understand the importance of their mental well-being thank you mark and wendy for your continued contributions to our school corporation and therefore the kids of our community thank you [Laughter] mr stenner and his reflections was talking about democracy and as he talked about that he talked about the strength of community and i think that we have a couple of great examples here of that with our partnership again with united way it's important important contributions to our students and then people like mark and wendy who are willing and able to to help us out as we try to help the the many students we have about 11 500 we have some wonderful ones here tonight to celebrate and i think
011dr shev we can start maybe moving to that recognition of our students sounds wonderful so we would like to honor and celebrate our state spell bowl champions first i'll turn to mr j payne from central middle school okay i shall not all right let's move to mrs dixon okay amy dixon from northside middle school good evening thank you for giving me the chance to recognize two outstanding spartans sarah ross is an 8th grade english teacher on our mosaic team she sponsors our yearbook does after school tutoring on mondays tuesdays and thursdays and is our english academic team coach this year vincia lee is on our math academic team on mondays math counts on fridays in band and will be part of our science academic team outside the school vincia is a figure skater and plays
012the piano with all of those activities spellbol met before school four days a week for 30 minutes each day the list has about 1600 words and some of them sound the same so students must know their definitions to spell the correct word i am honored to say that vincia got a perfect score 9 out of 9 at the area competition to qualify for the state competition and then got all 72 words correct at the state level competition wow yeah before you run off uh vince congratulations uh that's outstanding to spell 72 words correctly in a row and then i understand with this particular competition you maybe didn't have the chance this time to ask all those important clarifying questions right like country of origin and all that kind of stuff yeah but normally in like
013spell ball competitions we don't really do that either so yeah yeah you just had to hear them as they were and spell it yeah yeah all right well congratulations outstanding [Laughter] well we're in the process of looking for mr payne but he's not here um is a central coach here by champs okay i know we have some central students here come on up come on come on [Laughter] what i'm going to ask you to do is introduce yourself and tell a little bit about what the competition is like i'm romwell agape uh i mean the competition is kind of stressful but fun at the same time it's it's it's it's a relief to be done but at the same time i kind of miss it yeah well we thank you very much we're very proud
014of you at bcsc as with with the north side students as well so thank you very much for staying with us and working with us to be here tonight before you take off so so same competition right it's exact same competition nine words felt correctly i think in the initial round to get to the state and then 72 straight words that you spelled correctly correct it's just outstanding congratulations again congratulations all right i'll turn to mr smith to share with us our spellers from parkside thank you board and thank you cabinet for having us here tonight to celebrate this what i would consider an amazing feat actually mrs logsdon needy logs since the coach of the spellboat team so i asked her to be up here with me tonight the competition for the elementary students
015a little different they have a team it's they work as a team they have 750 words that they have to learn and not so easy words two very difficult words i looked at the list today and i there were a lot of them i didn't know how to spell before i looked at it so it's pretty amazing because they get together as a team and you think individual well individually they can learn 750 words maybe but then for the parkside team to do what they did all these kids to learn 750 words and all these kids to get perfect scores to get a perfect score as a team at the state level and be the only i believe the only team in the state to get a perfect score i couldn't be more proud and
016anytime we can celebrate hard work commitment and achievement in front of this group of people or in front of anybody for the students at parkside i'm proud to do that and i'm proud that i'm their principal so i'll turn it over to mrs logsdon she's a fantastic coach by the way she she she spells them all too so here she is no i don't have to spell them so that's good i can i can use my little cheat sheet i want to just say that this year was really challenging um in in multiple ways for spillable and these kids were super excited to get to go to south side and sit in a standing room only gym which then did not happen and so we um decided that we would have our own little mini
017spell bowl in the forum at parkside elementary and we invited all of our parents to be there and i am telling you these parents that we have are second to none they um they're the ones who really deserve an applause so give them an applause thank you so much parents the amount of energy and enthusiasm and encouragement um that these kids get through their parents just as contagious as they come every week um to different to different types of practices um this was a tough year because i have we we start with just kind of an open spell group like a club maybe and everyone spells all 750 words and then if you miss a word that goes on the missed word list nobody knows which word who misses but then the you have the
018missed word list that we just keep repeating until that falls off so literally it's an hour of spelling words as fast as you can after school they made it so much fun every week we had to cut the team down to just 15 and so those 15 really spurred each other on i will say that between kevin chen and lucy so kevin is a fourth grader and lucy nevins is a sixth grader they were being chased the whole time they set the bar really high they never missed a word a single word and so everyone was chasing them in the spirit of good fun competition and that is what i just love about the academic bowls in general we make learning fun instead of kind of drudgery and so um everybody was rooting for each
019other one because they didn't have to spell their missed words but two because they really genuinely care about their teammates so i'd like to um introduce all of them again all of them even if they didn't spell they knew all of those words and they were ready so i just as i call your name if you'll come and stand this way and we'll face this way and then we'll turn and face that way i think that's a good plan okay so kevin is not here today we have ushma gandhi i will say we have seven fourth graders this year out of the 15. so you might see us here next year okay ninja hurley oh she's not here okay alicia jay suja grace lodi maggie myers viba nagalargi lucy nevins rayanch nigal jakar shevi no
020gojakar and michelle's son all right this is your state champion elementary school thank you for this opportunity so having been a mom that always wanted pictures can we do one for this group because we have all these parents that needed and need this picture oh absolutely all right i'm sorry nick one more please we'd love to have you all aaron's your will [Music] thank you [Music] oh you're mine take a picture [Laughter] awesome [Laughter] mr smith join them [Laughter] we did our parents [Laughter] congratulations [Laughter] it's going to come out congratulations to our parkside world champions i never had the chance to win they spell bull like that one to state gym but i'm i live next to somebody i noticed one of my neighbors he's in the group there so living next to the
021state's federal champion is pretty awesome i feel good about that so congratulations again thank you thank you very much for sharing with us all right now is an opportunity for presentations of best practice we'll hear from mrs katie day and mr patrick mccaffrey from schmidt elementary okay do you have the control up there is there make sure it works good evening i am katie day the principal at schmidt elementary and i am joined up here this evening by patrick mahaffey our assistant principal and mrs bless our title one instructional coach as well as kate edgar and udl facilitator i think this is her second board meeting presenting this month she's just that special so we are glad to be here this evening up on the screen is just a picture of our school and just
022a just kind of an overview of demographics at schmidt we are excited to be sharing our best practice this evening which is the effective use of multi-sensory instruction to build a strong foundation of early literacy with schmidt students so just a brief history to start off in 2019 an addition was made to our state legislature that with the hopes of identifying students who are at risk or at some risk in several areas of literacy and with the help of dr hack's office our district's response to this legislature included a very detailed multi-sensory instructional path to use as both a proactive best practice to reach all of our littlest readers and learners but then also a research-based intervention to support our students so multi-sensory learning involves the use of visual auditory and tactile strategies to enhance
023memory and to support early learning of language so really with our kindergarten first second graders but some of the strategies are really useful for students even in third or fourth grade so multi-sensory has always been done in all of our classrooms district-wide and pieces but this change in legislature put the process in place for every elementary school to use an all primary classrooms district wide so as the udl facilitator i greatly appreciate how multi-sensory instruction deepens our implementation of universal design for learning we've already known through our work in udl that students learn differently and they need multiple options in order for those learning connections to really happen we love how in multi-century instruction students are really engaged and are more involved in their learning because they're using all of their senses and you're going
024to get an opportunity to see that in action in just a little bit like i said it helps build multiple connections in different ways we know students don't learn in one way all the time and so it doesn't limit them to just being an auditory learner or a kinesthetic learner they get to learn in multiple ways throughout each school day and then finally like katie said it's a research based intervention and it's one that we do utilize when students are identified as needing some extra support but we also use it proactively for all students because we know providing those options is going to be really important i would like to introduce you to a couple of our students we like to put faces and names with some of this data and their families are watching
025at home so they're very excited this is wyatt wyatt just came into kindergarten this year similar to many other kindergarten students he didn't know any of his letters yet or any of his sounds and this quote actually comes from white's teacher so wyatt white's teacher reports that through his multi-sensory exploration and learning at school that he's just shown tremendous growth so far and it really helps lessen his frustration and it gives them the confidence to be successful in the classroom and this is eva and this quote is also from eva's teacher eva came into school this year saying that she was very good at singing but not so great at reading so her teacher charged her and said through auditory and kinesthetic learning and multi-sensory her teacher said you know we're going to change that
026and we have seen we've just wrapped up our middle of the year nwea assessment and she was in the 99th percentile for growth so not only were able to see her growth on paper but her confidence is also blooming in the classroom we will revisit with these students towards the end and just a little bit about our um journey through this and our preparation getting implementation in our k through second grade classrooms um it began with training for teachers like katie said most of our teachers have had multi-sensory they were using bits and pieces of it but the district really took took the lead with providing training for all teachers and different levels of training depending on what they needed we've also been able to visit other bcsc schools to do instructional rounds to see
027best practices from our other teachers in the district we've we've taken supply acquisition pretty seriously with the this multi-sensory approach we need to have different materials so teachers have utilized their supply money we've used title one dollars we've also had teachers write grants and just get creative with getting the materials needed our teachers have also done a great job adjusting the schedule to meet students needs so that we can work with all the students that need help and then even grade levels have collaborated even our third and fourth grade teachers are picking up some of these practices to continue with students who might need to continue with doing some of these practices a little bit longer than second grade these are the components that you will see in a multisensory lesson so usually we begin
028with a whole group visual tactile blending drill where the class will be together doing a very systematic approach daily to letters and sounds and blends and then we will also do phonological and phonemic awareness which is manipulating sounds rhyming syllables just auditory being able to do that listening and then speaking and then throughout the day different teachers do different approaches but some do stations or small groups with teachers or tas doing some more multi-sensory practice we have snap cards sand trays shaving cream all different approaches that you'll see teachers using to build in these different tactile approaches so like i said we wanted to give you the opportunity to see this in action so here is a clip was our second grade teacher laura adams starting to activate some background knowledge with a catchy music
029video a little shout out to the jonas brothers i can appreciate that so then she's moving into some practice again all the kids are at the carpet and you'll see in a little bit that they have little dry erase boards so they're also practicing some writing and this is what's called a spelling tic-tac-toe so they're working with that er and then um making different words and she's modeling what that looks like under the document camera that our controlled vowel makes her kids are getting a chance to say it and also write it on their boards and then after this whole group time she's going to break down kiddos based on what they need so here she has just a small group working on compound words multi-syllabic words breaking them down learning some strategies they can
030use when they're reading those together again involving highlighters printed paper small group then can work on different ways to practice we have an individual practicing here with stamps shaving cream is also been utilized and that is our teacher's assistant actually leading a station her name is twinette miller so a lot of just multi-sensory activities a lot of hands-on activities but that's not the only way that we practice so on the next slide you'll see different ways that we utilize technology and this is a really intentional use of the district resources we've been provided we recently adopted hmh for our english and language arts curriculum and it comes with this really great program that is super engaging called i read and it gives kiddos tailored individualized practice for the skills that they need to grow on
031and as you can see they all have headphones on because they are again practicing listening to sounds figuring out what sounds together make and the different blends and then helping them decode words as they're reading here's just another look at what you would see students may be independently working with letters sounds words and syllables in multiple ways again the teacher might be at a small group and then students would be working independently in a station or center format here is where teacher creativity really shines because as you know teachers love to make things fun and engaging for kids so this is an example of a kindergarten activity where the teacher created these turkey pencils with feathers turkey feathers and the students went around the building finding turkey cut outs with sight words on them and
032then the students practiced writing those sight words and saying those sight words so again just an example of this is happening all over the building where kids are engaged in the learning and it's fun and it's meaningful for them so to the results as i kind of hinted at that earlier with our two kiddos we have seen growth across the building we've just finished our middle of the year assessment and to see the growth that our kiddos have made especially the percentage of kids who are considered at risk has substantially reduced back to eva and wyatt eva's results are on the left from her nwa test if you can look at the 177 bullet that's the beginning of the year where she was in orange and now she grew all the way up to almost
033essentially green where she's on track to be at grade level just where we wanted to be by the end of the year wyatt has grown substantially as well if you recall he entered kindergarten not knowing his letters or sounds and not knowing how to properly use any kind of utensils and he is now forming all of his letters he knows nearly all of his sounds and he's using writing cutting tools correctly every day so our next steps with this instructional model dr hack always urges us to look at our data make steps as teachers and educators with the data right away so we're going to continue to use our title 1 intervention staff and our my coaches behind me to just do great great things for kids we want to make sure you know our
034goal is that postcovid even that we have fewer and fewer kids who are at risk get them reading and learning and spelling and decoding at a quicker pace and increased practice options and our effective util utilization of resources and that it concludes our presentation do we have any questions tonight thank you very much um and i appreciate learning how wyatt neva did are there particular questions colleagues have mr stenner sure thank you on one of the implementation slides it looked like the students the one with the headphones where they were really focusing we're using maybe a specialized piece of software yes yes that is ours does that come from how is that chosen it's our hmh platform that the district adopted um and it's a specific intervention program called within hmh called i read and
035so i i don't know if you can tell but sometimes they will use the headphones that you're just listening but this feature this program also has the ones with the microphones attached so that the the computer is listening to them speak and then the teachers can hear the recorded version which increases the opportunity for conferencing and for teachers to direct students obviously hip to hip listening is much better but when you have 20 22 students it's it's not always easy to do as frequently so so our k to two teachers and now uh even a few third grade students can use the program to help support their learning thank you i appreciate that that also made me think in terms of uh you introduced your next steps are there what did you call it dr
036roberts a moon shot are there are there moonshot goals for a program like this always right we want i would love for all of my students to be on or above reading level um i think it's it's challenging for sure um post covid but that's my moon shot i want all of my students on or above grade level in reading so i think we're hopeful that with research-based interventions you know such as multi-sensory instruction that that we can get there thank you awesome thank you there are other questions hi katie team um i have a question are there certain grade levels where you find this to be more effective than others you probably have to be creative at all levels i guess yeah it's it's definitely meant for the early literacy so kindergarten first and
037second um we have found especially post covid that our third grade students they really you know it's they had a normal year in kindergarten but that was about it um so we are finding that these strategies do help some of our students in third grader in third grade that are still struggling for for various reasons but but definitely geared towards primary and and to go along with this do you provide or have you thought of any suggestions for parents for at home activities that can also you know engage kids rather than just normal spelling words and things like that yes yes and so all of these programs are ixl that we use our hmh can all be accessed at home so we have sent chromebooks home for students it's not always possible with accessibility so
038i try to post strategies and activities on facebook our social media platform is is quite large with schmidt and our parents really want to help so we send the snap card flash cards those are a little different because they have emotion with it if i told you how often my daughter has sung some of the songs that my teachers have shared i'd be i could just do it all day so really really appreciate the support of our families we have wonderful families that do want to support our students at home great thank you dr bills she just asked the same question i asked so i don't need to ask katie can you help me with tools to get my kids to do their um their chores at home okay so that's an assignment that's another
039next step my facilitator would be happy to meet with you yes yes lots of no if i knew that answer nikki i could share with you i appreciate the time to present about schmidt thank you thank you thank you very much for your successes okay my all-time favorite dr roberts yes uh again one of these days we won't have to give this update but we are now love the picture here we did have santa and some elves delivering donations uh just uh recent just recently so appreciate the opportunity to pass that money out larry perkinson you might recognize santa there so with our cobot 19 plan of action update for 2021 2022 uh the map on the left has looked like that for a while that's from the cdc and how they measure um spread
040within each county so every county in indiana red the department of health is starting to look like that again a different measurement used that's why they look a little bit different but with the indiana department of health the most recent map looks like that one and bartholomew county is in red with a three there as is i'm not sure that's quite the majority of the state but but getting there if not yet so that's what it looks like um across the state locally here very specifically if we go to the data from our cover 19 task force this is data from today or at least was posted today reflects yesterday's numbers uh december the 12th so new positive case is 64 that's been increased hospitalizations is a 45 that's actually a decrease from the over
04150 that it had in the middle of the week last week test turnaround time has stayed right around that 0.7 or less than a day so it doesn't take very long to get your results back but hospitalization is high a positive case is high we're certainly seeing that within the school corporation school buildings as well if we look at our first quarter we had 514 positive test cases since that time we've had 382 more so our pace was better and you can see the bark chart there to the bottom right and how we got around labor day weekend had a peak there at that point in time and then started decreasing to fall break the smallest bar graph there is october 9th to the 15th which is the week of fall break and then we
042came out after that and had pretty good numbers until we got into november you see that little spike we had from november 27th to december the 3rd and then we had still quite a few last week but on the heels of thanksgiving certainly a decent number of cases there again for the quarter 382 i think what's important is this next chart so as we get to this number first of all which notice that that's as we had had increases and it came back down on fall break this is the highest number in a week that we've had all semester and that was just the week of uh november 27th december third when we look at how we've been able to keep kids in school this is a reflection of the number of kids who were
043out either because they were positive or because they had symptoms or because we sent them home because they were identified closed contacts and coming out of fall break we made that adjustment based upon the direction of the indiana department of health that said if you have a mask environment and the classroom made on the school bus you can keep those identified close contacts in your school building so even as we've had the highest number of cases the entire semester this week we are not back quite the numbers we had of kids out here because we've been able to keep most of the close contacts in the building so it has if it just i think these two graphs that kelly thank you kelly and nick helped put together for us just so we can pay
044attention to the data and try to make some sound decisions as that positive cases have been going up but the number of kids although going up comparatively speaking are still remaining at levels below what we had before fall break when we were sending every close contact home and i think that's key as we look at making any decisions moving forward you know one of the questions we're going to be asked about is hey what about this mask thing right there's going to continue to be the dialogue and discussion and there will be school corporations making decisions either way as you read the news my from my standpoint i i'm not able to recommend to you anything with mass until we know that that doesn't affect the close the close contact slash quarantine situation as long
045as that is the really the minimum that we're able to do from the indiana department of health still tied to executive order from the governor which is in a mask environment keep your close contacts identify closed contacts in school it's difficult for me to recommend anything else at this point in time even if case numbers would go down we might go to orange we might go to yellow and hopefully that's going to start happening at some point it'd be interesting since we're now more inside more enclosed environments all those kinds of things we'll see but in that case if those protocols don't change um and we have identified closed contacts that we have to send home because we don't have a mask environment because we go mass optional that's problematic in terms of the number
046of kids again that'll be in the building it starts to impact us in other ways and so as as we've stated our goal is to try to stay in person in school we know that that's best for our kids and it's best for our parents it is a struggle when they have to be at home and gosh those parents who have to have a child at home who's a close contact for the second time third time more that is is really a struggle in a variety of ways so as we think about math i just offer to you as we continue to review that circumstance or situation that i'm not able to bring a recommendation to you yet and and don't feel like i can until we see that quarantine close contact protocol piece change
047which would come from the indian department of health i think would come from them seeing changes um both locally and at the state level in terms of numbers so that's where we are with the numbers at this point in time and at least my initial thoughts on the masterpiece i'm certainly happy to entertain any further dialogue because i know that's a topic remains out there right and you probably get the most questions on when it comes to covenanting thank you for that are there questions yes mr grimes yeah i'm not sure that what i have here is a question comment observation i'm not sure but um and probably what i have to say is is considerably premature at this point too you know considering local hospitalizations what you just had to say dr roberts about
048uh close contacts um you know the number of those kids being able to stay in school and the importance of the hat but i guess what i would like to say is i would like for us to have some dialogue you know fingers crossed that we do return to a sense of normal um at some point and so when when numbers do become more favorable perhaps the quarantine protocols uh change um from the governor's executive order at some point um you know i would like to see us discuss the possibility of setting some parameters of when you know we might consider lifting the mass mandate i know personally you know after 30 years in education i can say the last year and a half two years um it's been tough and and talking to teachers
049in bcsc my colleagues you know teaching friends from across the state it's been tough i mean first and foremost on the kids and it's you know there's a variety of factors there and i think you know stress tension anxiety i mean they're all at all time highs and i certainly don't think that's all due to mass but i think whatever we could do and this is far from a black and white situation but whatever we could do to create some kind of stability predictability you know be able to squelch rumors um you know we're you know have you heard about what's going to happen next uh the the more that that we could do um you know i think could you know i think we have a responsibility to ease you know do whatever we
050can do to ease some of that tension and anxiety and uneasiness that just it's kind of like a low-grade fever right now just it's always there thank you great points thank you very much this data though helped me a lot because i can imagine a lot of the stress and anxiety is when learners are not in classrooms and parents are having to adjust work lives and blah blah i can't imagine so so that balance i think is important for us to monitor and i appreciate your pointing that out dr roberts i think that's a good point doctor shedd i appreciate mr grimes remarks i think if we think about the stress that's within our school system and everybody's feeling stressed in one way or another for the last 20 months but if i think about
051our school system it's driven the most when people are gone right so if students are out of the building that adds stress to our staff members who are trying to make sure that the education can continue and besides within our school system certainly have stress to those parents who have their kids at home and then from staff member's standpoint if staff members have to miss two because cases are also increasing with our adults i didn't lay out the adult numbers but we are seeing the proportion um change from almost all students early in the quarter or school year and now it's not a balance it's still more students and staff but we're having more staff test positive and so as we have more adults out there there's a stress on the system in terms of
052substitute teachers and trying to cover those classes so absences continue to drive a lot of challenges for us and whatever we can do to manage that the best we can and and then going back to the graph that you pointed out here dr shed we're at least improving with where we were with numbers but still have ways to go to erase that and get to zero which is we're hoping it closer to zero never beat zero i guess be closer to zero at some point in time dr yes mr huffman i'd just like to also maybe think um thank our employers and the community because you know as as our kids are out of school because of a close contact or maybe having you know sinus infections but they ultimately come back as being covet
053positive or you know or not you know you just as a parent many times we try to you know be very proactive and keeping our kids at home when they got the sniffles and sneezing and you know but maybe that's the only thing they have and so and i know it's hard on our community as a whole with our employers because they need our people at work and you know and where do where do we draw the line at you know mom's taking five days off between six kids and dad needs to step up to the plate too but you know they're in positions that they maybe can't or their employer doesn't have policy in place where they allow it you know it's just tough you know really all the way around and you know
054i think a lot of our employers have kind of stepped up to the plate and you know are giving them options and stuff but you know as far as public safety because you know it's very near and dear to my heart it's tough you know when you're law enforcement ems your firefighter and they don't have a big pool and people you know depend on those individuals to show up to work so you know the same way with doctors and nurses and stuff you know there is i wish there was a way that we can have a room in that a room or a place where if our kids got close contact you know and everything and that they're going to have to stay home that we can take them somewhere and you know they can
055you know do a virtual where they're watching you know their classroom and and still keeping up with work and having a person there just to help them with homework or maybe you know do something but i know you know that's probably not a possibility but in a real world or you know an ideal world that would be something that would be a great thing but i just wanted to say thanks to a lot of our employers that have been very supportive of our parents and you know everybody because it is very difficult and it's hard when you have several kids and this is the tenth time in the last three months that your kids been you know either exposed or maybe they ended up with cove at this time so i just wanted to put
056that out there thank you thank you that's very important to add i appreciate it other comments for dr roberts all right thank you very much you're welcome so next we're on to um board commendations so i'll turn to colleagues dr shed yes the education hall of fame committee met a couple weeks ago and we have chose our educator of the year for 2022 and we're very excited but it will not be announced until they are notified themselves but or by dr roberts and we hope possibly maybe in february or so the first quarter of 2022 we'll be having a celebration of our in newest member so wonderful thank you and thank you for that work others mr grimes yeah i've got a few here um some which have already gotten some received some press and
057some that have not uh but i'll start with from cynthia gover at project manager at csa lincoln her and i had some correspondence and i'll just read some of what she has to say about the robuskies the the robotics team at lincoln said it's been a fun season very proud of our robuskies here at csa lincoln they competed in a virtual judging session for the state tournament saturday the 4th they went to the university of indianapolis just this past saturday for the state tournament entitled robot run and uh she said that uh they would know the results today and unfortunately i didn't hear from her so fingers crossed they did get results and it came back good today um but uh the the theme this year cargo connect they were asked to focus on ways
058to improve transportation and they did a little video on the idea of how to make school buses uh safer particularly in cases of emergency and put out a video which was which was very it was excellent so again uh congrats to the robuskies at lincoln a couple of congratulations to sarah frazier and cindy owens the cheer leading coaches at columbus north mrs frazier says it's first time that north has had a game day competitive cheerleading squad they qualified for the national high school cheerleading championship in orlando at disney world and they did that by placing second at a regional competition in centerville ohio and they mrs frazier went on to say that she hopes that they will compete in a few more events before heading down to orlando in the middle of february and they
059currently have a lot of fundraising efforts going on to for their 16-member squad to go down there and then likewise hannah moore from columbus east the cheer team there they have also hannah says we've been selected to compete at one of the nation's most prestigious cheerleading competitions the national high school cheerleading championship produced by universal cheerleaders association again they will travel to the wide world of sports complex in february and like north it was the first time a cheer team from east has competed at the regionals and she hannah says she's super proud of how they competed since they were up against teams who had been competing for years and then lastly just commendations to second graders teachers and students at south side who collected and wrapped presents for the angels of love program and
060i know there are several efforts going on at many of the schools to you know to help those in need this particularly you know during this time of year and so accommodations to them and also thanks to the many local businesses organizations that have partnered with bcsc and helped so many of our students thank you awesome thank you are there others okay thank you both very much school board member reports all right we do have a dnf meeting coming up so it's on wednesday so we'll hopefully have something to report on the district again facilities front at the next board meeting okay and i'll yeah i'll share one real quick so the school foundation just recently met um on december 7th uh the school foundation uh marched in the festival of lights parade right along
061the uh festive school bus and uh passed out scads of twizzlers um but uh yeah and also um you know that december 7th meeting was susie bruins last as the executive director so welcome to nicole cunningham and then i would also say thanks to mike jamerson serving as president of the school foundation board as he begins his transition off of that and then also the grateful and thankful campaign the cards that were sent out to bcsc employees from the school foundation i i hope was a success as well great awesome thank you i'll just share with my colleagues that i did participate in the discussion among school board presidents of region 9 and 10 last wednesday and it was interesting listening to different summaries of how school board meetings are going you can imagine and
062then we also got an update from our executive directors terry spradlin as to what are going to be legislative priorities for what we think will be a short session though they're doing a lot that typically is never in a short session so that was interesting to hear and as there are opportunities for us to speak and share our thoughts with our local legislators and representatives we'll be sure to pass those on but i think it's for a short session it will be an extremely busy session yay all right so we'll go to cabinet member reports mr phillips good evening uh thank you dr shedd this is something we put together as part of the public campaign for the referendum and just thought it would be a good idea each year to bring it back to
063you so the department of local government finance approved our 2022 tax rate and budget recently and we will continue to track how we are doing from a tax rate compared to we look at ourselves compared to the state average as well as to the 10 districts around us the 10 districts that are most similar to us in their overall total budget and the 10 districts that are most similar to us in assessed value so we think that those capture basically the the best ways to compare how bcsc is doing from a property tax rate standpoint and we're happy to say that our tax rate will tick down just a tad in this coming year and that we continue not only to to be responsible from a tax rate perspective but continue to invest in our
064facilities and our people many of the actions that you have approved in the last several months so just wanted to share that information and thought it would be helpful for you i appreciate that will you clarify location is that the ten that are geographically close to us correct okay we took the ten that are closest to us all right thank you wow bartholomew county is such a deal by way of reminder the the jump in that blue line that's us was the voters chose that's correct thank you for pointing that out yes that is the um and when we when we did propose the referendum and you and you all approved us moving forward we did make a commitment to keeping the tax rate right around that dollar one and keeping it consistent um you
065know of course excluding any um extreme events that were outside of our control so we're happy to report we're right there right right okay thank you any other questions about that okay so dr roberts i'll ask if you'd like to go through the items for our approval very good thank you dr shet i do have a list of items here for you minutes of the regular school board meeting from november 15th we just had one meeting in november that is that one supplemental contracts field trips and professional leaves as well as school fundraisers and mr grimes mentioned some school fundraisers in your packet or some fundraisers going to the national cheer competition claims in payroll we had claims for december 13th the total one about 1.4 million dollars then a pre-run this goes from november
06616th through december the 10th that was approaching nine and a half million dollars for payroll we have two sets of payrolls for you about six totally about 6.5 million dollars from november the 19th which covers uh the previous two weeks of work days it was a normal payroll that included the new contract and retroactive pay for our teachers so there was some additional amounts in there for certified teachers covered under the collective bargaining agreement and then the most recent one in december the third covered the prior two weeks to that it was a normal payroll we have our neola policies emergency electronic meetings and please note at your places there are hard copies that i will refer to here in just a second just to make sure that you had the most hot off the
067press copies that if you do approve they will go straight into the neola data bank to then be added to our website whenever those are are done i'll come back to those in just a second oh actually probably good time to do that so um so the next few slides will hit that so in your packet if we just go in order uh with those jump to my ones so 0164.4 is revised by law that just talks about meeting of the board defined and so on that one in particular um see the piece that that you may not have had in your packet is the paragraph that starts the board's meetings normally shall be held at a location within the corporation boundaries so 0 164.4 in that paragraph the x was not clear as to
068what had been chosen there and it would be the superintendent and board president acting in concert so it wouldn't just be the board president it wouldn't just be the superintendent it is the superintendent and board president acting in concert to determine that it is necessary or appropriate to hold a regular special or emergency board meeting by means of remote or virtual participation so that was just being clarified on that one we then look at 164.5 which is member participation in meetings through electronic means of communication so find the one that is 164.5 i think uh mr stenner is the one that called this out last time options one and option two had been crossed out at least in your documents last time it had been on the on the website so i wanted to make
069sure you get those in front of you the options one option two cross dot accept we are actually going to say if you look at the sentence above where the option options are it says at least 50 of the board members must be physically present at a meeting okay so if we have members choosing to participate electronically we have to have at least 50 percent of you physically here so the next sentence is added just to clarify that because of our number of seven because boards can have different numbers of people it says this number aboard the number of board members who may participate in any given meeting through an electronic means of communication is limited to three board members so the most that could ever participate for us electronically would be three because that's
070less than the majority we would always be guaranteed then of at least the majority of you being physically present in in the meeting so that clarification is 164.5 164.6 did not have anything for me to add and is a new bylaw or new policy and then the last one which is 167.1 a revised one for voting by you um last paragraph all actions requiring a vote it wasn't clear what had been checked there it is all actions requiring a vote may be conducted by voice show of hands or roll call based upon the circumstances and how best to have you provide your answer so voice show of hands or roll call giving the option to the president who's presiding over the meeting as to how that would be accomplished with in person and then potentially
071virtual members so just clarifying those in case that was not clear as you read through the documents uh and we can come back to questions on that whenever we have a doctor whenever and if we can get a motion for approval in a second so moving past then those policy clarifications and again recommending them for approval tonight we also have permission to award bids for the hvac control system replacements at both east and north we also have the title 2 and title 4 grant applications mr edwards has placed in front of you the budget sheets for those and then we have an mou for the collective bargaining agreement so in your packet we included an update we simply did not get this corrected for the new contract is that for the referendum dollars given to
072teachers the five thousand ten thousand fifteen thousand based on years of experience last year's collective bargaining agreement said twenty five hundred five thousand seventy five hundred one half of those amounts because we couldn't start paying those amounts until january one half of the school year that's what it said for this year's contract two when we approved it it needs to say five ten fifteen we contacted the employment relations board to see how to best do that they said have you approved the memorandum of understanding with those changes that resolution is in front of you to approve tonight just to get that corrected for the collective bargaining agreement and those are the items that i have for you to hopefully approve for me thank you all right thank you so prior to any discussion or questions
073that you might have i do need a motion to approve items for a through i as they have been presented to us so moved thank you mr hofdwyer is there a second thank you mr bryant all right questions about what we just heard yes no mr stenner i'm curious about the collective bargaining agreement the move from a half a year to a full year will we have to move to a half a year again at the end of the contract good question i'm not sure that yeah so based upon the timing of the referendum and when we could get it voted and approved chen it will depend on on two factors one the voters approving the referendum to continue and so of course our commitment would be to making sure that this stays in place
074and getting it passed and making our case to the community and continuing to be transparent like we are with with referendum spending each quarter the second part would be whether or not there is enough cash left in the fund to continue for the remainder of that year okay so depend on those two factors and we would know that going into collective bargaining in that fall how much cash is in the fund at that time um but i would um anticipate that we would make sure there was enough cash to make sure we got through the calendar or the contract here the language um in the referendum is eight years is that correct that's correct yes those are calendar years of course and and we operate our teachers on a school year basis right the school
075year and the legislature and the state are all july 1 to june 30. right but we're january 1 to december 31. that's right correct good question thank you any other questions so i have to so the voting one just confuses me so 167.1 up in the red and green thank you for the christmas colors you're welcome the last sentence says all votes taken during meeting conducted with least one member blah blah blah shall be by roll call so so is the very last sentence to cover all the options because the preceding paragraph requires a roll call yes all right so that was the one before us is speaking specifically to an electronic communication the vote all actually requiring a vote down the bottom because this is voting period so regardless of how your meetings are
076conducted so you wouldn't necessarily have to have a roll call tonight with all seven board members here physically present and so based upon then what makes and he could i mean we could go with just that and every time we vote it could be a roll call mr grimes how do you vote so forth right otherwise the way we've typically done it is just a show of hands or whatever so it gives the the presiding officer the opportunity to manage that okay but all of this is specific to special meetings not all meetings 167.1 i think it's both yeah i think as well but let me oh it's under emergency and electronic meetings that's why i'm confused but that won't be the first time i'm confused all right i think i got it i just
077yeah and the reason i so 167.1 voting is a bible that previously existed it's listed under this special update emergency electronic meetings because that's the reason for for the revision right so there's a new policy in here as well as revisions but this policy 167.1 will be about voting for any meeting we have whether it is a special one electronic one only or any other way that you are you are here so that again that last paragraph then would give you the opportunity to show of hands roll call or by voice giving an example tonight with all seven being here right right okay got it um dr bozeman i won't ask her hvac technicalities because they'll go right over my head anyway but i just generally the wild difference between the costs of at north
078and east i mean i know east well they're both new and special buildings but a part part of that difference is the personnel and the legwork the train would have that they would offer but more importantly the the complexities between the buildings north is is larger but it's very simple in design mechanically and you ask me not to get into all the nerdiness of that so i won't but it's very it's a very simple system and east is not okay for a whole variety of reasons is the bulk of the difference to your question so will there be efforts to simplify east in this investment or that's not possible if we were to yes and no it'll efficiencies will improve the simplification will improve because of the upgraded controls in order to completely overhaul it
079to make it as simple as some of the other buildings would be it would we would require all new chillers all new air handlers you know a whole new mechanic which we'll we'll get through eventually with her but obviously we're not going to do that all the one fell swoop so sure thank you i was just curious all right i'm done being curious there are other questions people have all right i'll call for the motion then all of those who approve items for a through i as they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed all right dr roberts those have passed unanimously all right thank you so much sure dr pleague i request approval of the human resource recommendations as presented this evening all right thank you is there
080a motion for approval so moved thank you dr bills is there a second second thank you mr grimes any particular questions of dr please all right thank you all of those who approve the human resources recommendations as they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed and you have them unanimously dr pleek all right oh my goodness i must be sad to see susie leave all right this is an opportunity for comments your input um here at our last meeting of the calendar year mr grimes i'll go quick um first thanks to uh dr jean hack and c4 for the uh for lack of a better term super cool happy holidays cards um c4 continues to do you know excellent things thanks to mrs day mr mahaffey for sharing the
081multi-sensory literacy work they're doing at schmidt congrats again to the individuals and the team at northside central and parkside the the spell bowl champions excellent and then lastly um i guess best wishes good luck to the winter teams at columbus north and east as they square off against one another throughout the course of uh throughout the course of this week and i believe that's it for me all right so on that one just real quick dr we do have boys and girls swimming and diving tomorrow at east wrestling on wednesday at north girls basketball at north on thursday and boys basketball at east on saturday so north versus east four nights in a row coming up wow all right miss wilden uh a couple things so the first year my first year on the school
082board um i'll share something in my reflections the length next next year but the team has been really welcoming as always i feel like i've learned a lot and next year i should do a lot with that okay so um so i i'm looking forward to working with everyone again and and even i i told dr said this today i had a terrible day at work like just the worst okay and so i came in here a little down um and and in every single one of these meetings even the tough ones you know even the ones that it might have been easy to not feel so good i still felt good because even those tough ones people were here because they cared like and they care because what we do matters and then how
083this team does it is also pretty remarkable so i don't i find these things uplifting i'm glad to be a part of it and i hope i'm being helpful and will continue to try to do that the second thing is i got covet a couple weeks ago and it's terrible guys okay so um i shared this because i also want to give a shout out to the schools that i worked with to help get my kids some got to go some didn't i was doing the at-home parenting thing but in in all of these situations it was it was really well done and teachers were making sure my kids were staying up with their things and there was just a lot of great care from the school system community alike so and i appreciated that
084and needed it so for those of you who may have friends family or likewise that um have it right now a phone call a text message anything would help because it stinks being alone okay you yes yesterday and what uh mr grimes and miss wilding said and although i didn't have coven but i do wish everyone a happy and safe holiday as we roll into you know the christmas and the new year and i hope that 2022 will come in and we can get a lot of this stuff behind us and and everybody start being kind and more social than we have these last two years so thank you mr stenner thank you echo everything i've heard and i'm glad that this photo is up here for this part of the meeting i made a
085note to myself to thank susie bruin for her work at the school foundation looking at the picture of mike jamerson i've been trying to calculate in my head i think mike was the president of the school board president of the school foundation board of directors when i first started attending meetings back in the uh is that an octagon building mike had just made a major accomplishment for the foundation at that point in time this is how long ago it was he had compiled three ring binders for all the board members with all of the background documents on the school corporation which of course now you could send in an email um and then so we lug those notebooks back and forth to the old admin building for a number of years and they're going stuff
086in the google folder now yes right the school foundation does amazing work and i know that they will miss susie brown but look forward to the work of nicole cunningham and the board members who are there please on behalf of this board of trustees thank that board of directors for us for the work they're doing it's really important indeed thank you dr bills i agree with what everyone has said this evening i also want to charge the bcsc everybody on the staff during the holidays to not to check your email and to shut off your zooms or teams or whatever you all are doing and and to relax and and have a wonderful holiday and a peaceful holiday lovely thank you mr brian happy holidays to everybody mr grimes would you make sure that mr
087boseman get that report on school safety as far as bus is concerned yeah you can learn a lot merry christmas thank you all right thank you all i do have to say we i i appreciate that miss wilden shared she had a horrible day er i've had my fair share but we do have to extend our thoughts and our prayers to those in mayfield kentucky and surrounding areas and we hope for all the best appreciate some in our local community who are going down there to assist so when you have bad days there are contexts in which to put them so thank everyone in our school corporation for what they do for the students in our community it's fabulous very very proud special place if you're into tax rates we've got you covered if you're
088into the variety of wonderful opportunities that we offer our learners we've got it all so thank you for all the work that individuals do for our learners dr roberts i have nothing else to add dr shedd except we do happy holidays to everyone and we do have two meetings scheduled for january we get back to two meetings with the first one being a reorganization meeting so john that'll be one of those where it's very business in terms of what we do there january 10th and then january 24th so looking forward to getting into the holidays and then starting the new year all right all right enjoy thank you very much you