9/27/2021 BCSC School Board Meeting

001b yeah all right good evening and welcome to everyone who is attending our virtual school uh board meeting this is a regular meeting of the board of trustees for the bartholomew consolidated school corporation here on monday september 27th so welcome to all of you who are joining us to participate in our meeting virtually we start each of our meetings with reflections from one of our colleagues and this evening i'll turn to mr grimes thank you dr shad the the topic of my reflection this evening might be considered a little bit on the unconventional side and with that in mind i'd like to start with a couple goofy jokes what did the pencil sharpener say to the pencil we don't know stop stop going in circles and get to the point one more goofy job what

002did the pencil say to the paper yeah i don't know i dot my eyes on you i dropped my eyes okay good try i recently read an article on the importance of maintaining a positive sense of humor and the ability to laugh especially during challenging times in our lives i'm certain most of us would have no trouble agreeing that the last one and a half two years have been just that quite challenging no matter our opinion on what have oftentimes become very divisive topics one thing we have in common is that those topics have become very anxiety provoking and stressful parts of our lives the article that i read served as a reminder that it can be easy for us to lose our sense of humor and willingness desire to laugh when times get tough

003thinking about that led me to the most recent two most recent books i've read the first was called laughter yoga daily practices for health and happiness and the second was the book of joy co-authored by the dalai lama and archbishop desmond tutu those two books were full of practical advice regarding how to utilize humor and laughing for both physical and mental health benefits as mark twain said humor is the great thing the saving thing after all the minute it crops up all our hardness is yield all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes place even though humor and laughing research is still a relatively new field preliminary studies have discovered a staggering number of significant correlations between laughter and improving both our physical and mental health through things such as boosting

004our immune system having a more positive affect as smiling and laughing can help to increase serotonin levels in the brain helping to alleviate anxiety and lowering stress hormones boosting our cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure lowering our resting heart rate reducing muscle tension and increasing blood flow helping to alleviate pain by encouraging the release of endorphins improving self-esteem easing tension in relationships easing the negative physiological impact of anger and helping to facilitate forgiveness sooner higher quality more productive social interactions as it could lead to drawing people together and more focused attention and more rational decision making as scans of showing higher levels of activity in the brain associated with those tasks the list goes on and on the late dr robert provine often regarded as the nation's leading authority on laughter research said that a

005person can't feel anxious angry or sad when they're laughing professor of psychiatry at the university of louisville dr clifford kuhn known as the laugh doctor has stated that if laughter could become the nation's latest health craze we would all be much healthier physically and mentally having seen the increased productivity of employees in environments where humor is part of the daily routine stanford has recently instituted a humor in the workplace course as part of their mba program i've spent the last 30 years in the classroom at both the secondary and college levels at the end of most days over those many years i typically take the time to reflect upon how things went what worked well what things were a flop was it a good teaching day or was it a lousy one inevitably the days

006that seem to have been the most productive and most positive in regards to student learning have been days when the students and i had opportunities to laugh and smile with one another those days that i regarded as not having gone real smoothly were the ones that were dry and mundane danish comedian victor borga said a smile is the shortest distance between two people and we feel closest to one another when we can laugh together how true that seems to be when thinking about building our relationships with others i'd finally like to close with a quote from the archbishop desmond tutu i don't think i woke up and presto i was funny i think it's something you can cultivate like anything else it's a skill yes it does help if you have the inclination and especially

007if you can laugh at yourself so learn to laugh at yourself it's really the easiest place to begin it's about humility laugh at yourself and don't be so pompous and serious if you start looking for the humor in life you will find it you will stop asking why me and start recognizing that life happens to all of us humor makes everything easier including your ability to accept others and accept all that life will bring oh thank you so much that was perfect all right next for those who will um can join me here in the room um it is opportunity for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the life of the united states of america and through the republic for which it stands on a nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for

008all all right all seven of us on our board of school trustees are in attendance so we certainly have a quorum i will call this meeting to order yes you will there you go um as a reminder we have on the screen for those of you who are watching with us our mission and our vision which guide the decision making that we will conduct throughout this evening and we also share our list of high expectation objectives that again ground us in the decision making that we do this evening so if you've watched any of these you know i love to play with the gavel i need to gavel out of our regular meeting and then gavel into our public hearing regarding our 2022 budget and with that i'll turn to mr phillips good evening mr

009grimes i wish i would have written a joke for every one of these slides now i hope to help you with your rational decision making after you after you get a good laugh out so good evening uh this is the second of three meetings uh for the 2022 budget adoption process this one is the public hearing portion this public notice is posted on both the dlgf website and link to it to the bcsc website at least 10 days prior to the public hearing what this notice shows the public is what the maximum budget we're asking for for your approval to advertise and then adopt next month as well as the maximum tax property tax levy for each of those funds and then it also shows the current year tax levy and percentage increase just an

010overview i know we went through this in extreme levels of detail last time so this is just a an abbreviated overview prior to taking public comment or public input the overall budget is up 7.6 or 9.7 million the increases in revenue come from uh tuition support from the state level per pupil tuition support up 5.1 percent in the current fiscal year 4.0 percent in the next fiscal year each of which make up six months of the next calendar year uh enrollment up as of as of this morning we were at 113 up but that did not include the partial credit we get for the private school middle school students who come to us for a period a day from saint peter's and save bartholomew so still comfortable with a an estimate of about 120 up

011from prior years the maximum levy growth quotient also increased 4.3 percent this year for next year and assessed value up 6 so that's where the revenue comes from so where are the dollars going salary and benefit increases are the majority about two-thirds additional staff of somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 teachers but as you see each board meeting that changes from week to week substitute costs are of about three hundred thousand dollars as we work to try to get subs in our classrooms and then buses and technology equipment that had been on bonds for the last couple of years have moved back to the regular budget and then a net change in the debt service bond payments of about 2.3 million this next slide is a line by line budget fund increase from the prior

012year and so you can go through there and see the total at the bottom of 7.6 percent and then here is where those dollars go for each portion of the budget about 6.1 total between the education fund the operation fund about 6.1 million goes to salary and benefit increases 2.3 million to again a net change in the bond payments as some roll off and and new bonds roll on i think you have six resolutions tonight to approve for the refinancing of the existing central middle school bonds and then the issuance of new bonds also larger cpf projects to two large cpf projects that we included in the cpf budget this year uh the remainder of the roof of taylorsville and the columbus east football visitors bleachers and then you see a negative number there i

013thought i'd point that out i didn't get a chance to at the last meeting but the utilities budget for next year will be down 350 000 largely due to the implementation of leds and solar across our buildings so that's a victory right there and then a full year of the mental health portion of the referendum operating bond i'm sorry operating referendum um gets us about 200 000 of that increase and so the net total is a 9.7 million dollar increase over the prior year which is mr pillows can i stop you for a moment can we um offer the directions for those who might want to offer comments and then please advise if you want questions as you go through or if you want to wait till the end tell us what you'd prefer i

014prefer to go ahead and wait till the end that way we take them all okay okay so if we would let's just clarify for those watching if you have questions during this public hearing about our budget dr roberts sure thank you dr sid so there was a link in the public statement that came out that would take you to a zoom link that will allow you to make public comment on this public hearing specifically you can also go to our website at bcschools.org through the school board information on the main page and that link would be available when you click on that as well again there's a zoom link that would allow you to get in and get public comment specifically to the budget during this this period of time all right and we are

015monitoring that and then as mr phillips suggested he'd like to hear your questions that you might have at the end of his presentation so thank you for that thank you so the next portion that we uh usually try to point out in some level of detail for you dr roberts i lost connection or would you mind go ahead and go to the next slide please thank you this is the bus replacement plan um about 1.75 million for 2022. 420 000 of that will come from the operating referendum fund and the remainder the 1.3 million from the operations fund the next slide shows again this is the same overview you saw last time of the transfers between the operations and the education fund a net change of 7.1 million and what that it results in is

016a transfer a monthly transfer of funds from the education fund to the operations fund at the end of each month until we reach that 7.1 million the this is the advertised tax rate history um and and the advertised rate is always higher than the final rate approved by the dlgf and adopted by bcsc the dollar one that we were at this year dollar 1.011 cents per 100 of assessed value is again where we would expect to land over the last five years the actual tax rate has been somewhere between 2 and 14 cents lower than what we advertised and so right now i would anticipate the advertised rate for your adopted budget after the next meeting to be right just over zero 1.06 cents per one hundred dollars of assessed value again by the time

017we work with the dlgf uh and get our notices and respond to those i would i would anticipate that we will end up at the dollar one mark that we advertise to the public during the referendum and continue to to adhere to and the next slide just shows your next steps the october 25th meeting there won't be a presentation but just a vote to adopt so if any of you have further questions or anyone from the public i'm happy to uh to do my best to answer them now all right first are there questions here from my colleagues all right has anyone joined we have no questions this is a typical public hearing in my experience so dr bozeman just clarifying nobody in the room at this point that's correct nobody has signed in to

018speak publicly about the hearing right all right thank you doctor great thank you last time questions about them all right so we are officially out of our public hearing and back in our school board meeting so we have the opportunity to focus on the whos and why and are looking forward to a best practice presentation from taylorsville elementary school so i will turn to miss gant and she can introduce her colleagues who are with her good evening thank you so much for your time we're very excited bcsa board members to share with you uh some a little bit about what's going on out here at taylorsville and i have mr schaffner our assistant principal and kevin sweet one of our fourth grade teachers joining us this evening thank you yes so our goal for today

019um is to share with you the why and the how we are using intentional writing practices uh to develop critical thinking and writing skills within all of our students uh kindergarten through sixth grade here at taylorsville and just to highlight for you a bit about um the connections to our instructional framework universal design for learning the why certainly uh being very important to us the developmental stages of writing as we know you know we have kindergarteners who are labeling pictures and being able to identify for us the writing within their mind of starting out with drawing and and being able to identify what they have drawn all the way up to argumentative essays within our sixth grade students and certainly that real world context is critical to our students because as we send them off

020into the secondary level to our middle schools and high schools we want them to be able to look at complex issues review complex texts to be to be able to make a valid um supported argument uh both in their writing and in their discussions so certainly the why is important um behind everything that we do and how we are doing it we have created out here a vertically aligned plan which is based off of bcsc's writing plan as well as integrated significant amount of sport support from an outside consulting group s meccans education group we've been able to use some of our federal title one money to support this learning for teachers the last three school years so we're very excited to be able to share a little bit about that with you um before

021i share specifically our timeline and our journey i just wanted to highlight argumentative literacy uh we worked significantly as a district with dr steven benjamin uh several years ago and this was this was not new to us but certainly the depth at which we were currently taking our students needed to increase and so when we look at all three of the stages of types of writing persuasive informative and expository certainly the argumentative piece while only in our sixth grade standards is certainly relevant within all grades in our kindergarten they start out with opinion writing in our primary grades and then we move more into the persuasive writing and then ultimately in sixth grade here at the elementary level really heavily focusing on argumentative to be able again as i mentioned earlier to analyze and comprehend

022those sources use those to develop claims acknowledging and understanding the counter claims and supporting it and being able to refute it with evidence from the source and why that is incredibly important for our students again before we send them off to middle school in high school we want them to be able to um form and uh support those text-based arguments because that's going to prepare them for real life and with those skills needed to critically and analytically think and write and and collaborate with their peers and with the adults that they encounter as well as again taking them from opinion writing and then in the very early stages of writing and kindergarten level and moving still encountering and including their feelings their thoughts their personal experiences but really being able to use those as a

023starting point and develop again the critical skills with their research and their reasoning and their evidence-based arguments uh to support uh deeper learning for them so mr schaffner is going to highlight for you the timeline that we have taken um here at taylorsville with our writing work yes good evening thank you for having us so uh briefly just running through our timeline here in um 2018 2019 as mrs gant shared that dr benjamin actually uh came and consulted with us and that's kind of started us moving the wheels for our argumentative uh or argumentative writing plan or a writing plan in general so fast forward to 2019 2020 when we use our title funds to bring in smackins as mrs gant shared as well and to come come and provide professional development for our teachers

024we also we also worked as a staff to create a vertical alignment plan for all our grades and we also uh worked as um as a group excuse me worked as teachers um through what specific tools we can use um to utilize during our writing instruction and then fast forwarding again to the twenty 20 20 21 school year again we um we again had megan's come in and provide professional development and that was specifically on writing in response to reading and then this year again smekins came in provided professional development specifically on the writer's workshop and setting that foundation and that process within our classrooms of just the writing process thank you so wanted to briefly share with you on the next line i have on three examples from three grade levels first third and

025fifth obviously we have these for all the grades but just wanted to highlight um and we also have skills that are related again to the other forms of writing that i shared and informative and expository but highlighting persuasive and argumentative um these are the skills that you see highlighted that each grade level focuses on throughout the year in their writing instruction and so you see us adding skills each time we progress in a grade and as i mentioned earlier sixth grade is really the only uh grade level that has argumentative in our indiana state standards it's opinion and persuasive in the younger grades but we felt that it was important that we acknowledge where our students are going and what they're going to be expected to do in sixth grade and so while we have

026these skills highlighted they're not necessarily writing they're obviously not writing a full complex argumentative essay in first grade or even third grade but they are working in class discussions and class instruction to develop a an argument or to persuade someone um you know for example red apples versus green apples which one tastes better and how you can start in a simple subject like that and move up into more complex issues such as school uniforms or something you know of that nature chewing gum in class um so lots of different subjects that you can use within the class discussion piece and have that model and then the graphic in the upper um right hand corner is um it's an accessible writing plan so all of us know every year what we're teaching what the grade level

027above and below us are teaching as well as what tools mr schaffner referenced earlier the tools that we use during that writing instruction so that as students progress in the skills the development of their skills they may see some similar graphic organizers from year to year but then they also changed into some new ones also and we review this plan um each year just to ensure number one that we're all on the same page it is still relevant it is still authentic to what we expect our students to be able to accomplish at the end of the year and from that we have some examples that mr sweet is going to share with you from his fourth grade students all right thank you miss camp so this is what you'll see in a typical fourth

028grade classroom at taylorsville and this student really excelled with smacking's writing and her opinion writing just just really went exponentially uh up so persuasive writing in fourth grade really what they need to do is um pick one side so they're not on both sides yet so articles that we choose have both sides so they have to dig into those articles and find out what side or what parts the article are for a certain subject and then what size are against it so while they'll do that banning zoos is what we chose last year they went and highlighted why they should be banned or why they shouldn't be banned and they use two different colors and then those details were put on a pro con t chart you can see that in the middle of the

029slide there so certain colors uh that were pro uh banning zoos were on the left side and on the right side was for or against spanning zoos and then from there this wonderful graphic organizer they had to pick their top 10 reasons and those top 10 reasons are there in the top right in the top 10 reasons they basically had to filter through which ones were actually redundant which ones could they merge and then eventually they got their top three uh strongest reasons which goes to the bottom left corner then you have your table top and those end up being your legs for your tabletop or for the table itself it's for your supporting details and those three supporting details support your claims for in this case um i believe wise white this dude should

030be banned and then those table legs will eventually become your oreo which is actually your outline for your persuasive essay that eventually uh culminates into your actual final essay what the students have and they can support their claim you know as supported by details are they for are they for are they against zoos so yeah great thank you mr sweet uh briefly want to highlight with you uh some data that we have collected as we indicated again in our timeline we have only had two school years where we've been implementing the bcsc writing plan and our vertically aligned plan so we don't have significant number of years and while this um these numbers are not certainly as as high as we would have hoped um we do in looking not only at the the grade

031level percentages but also um the cohort data so our kindergartners in 2019-20 being the first graders in 2020 21 and so forth if you see the first graders in 1920 and 20 percent and then in second graders at the 20 20 21 school year they were up to 49 so we did see um some gains there again in third to fourth 29 to 53 percent um and and so our goal again this year is working on improving those skills again this year and looking to see some great advances one piece of anecdotal data that's not reflected in these numbers last year in our meeting as a staff we shared um the plan and our sixth grade teachers asked if they could comment um quickly and they shared that in their first timed writing prompt that

032they did as a sixth grade team they were amazed by the stamina that our students were able to um to demonstrate and the amount that they wrote in that first writing prompt so um you know it's it's not something that kids always necessarily like to do um but as we've expressed it is definitely a skill that they need to have a need to to master these foundations here in elementary level before we send them to middle school in high school and so that was that was a celebration for all of our building that that intentional focus kindergarten through sixth grade um we are already seeing the gains and the stamina and so now our work will continue so that we can see that growth reflected in these percentages so thank you so much we would

033be happy to entertain questions from you all right thank you that was really interesting i appreciate that you shared both the data and the timeline and um mr sweet the ex the samples of our learner's writing so are there questions that colleagues have mr stenner i thank you for the presentation uh i'm interested to know more about the gmrc and where uh it was the last slide where the 2.5 falls on that overall gmrc scale yes so 2.5 is the um the the grade for lack of a better term just below the 3.0 so the three is meeting grade level expectations and so we chose to focus there on the 2.5 because when we looked at these numbers obviously they were not what we wanted and so we wanted to find a starting point that

034was common for all of us because again we have to teach our students on ilearn are given what we have found in the last three years is they third of them will have be given a persuasive or argumentative essay topic a third of them will be given an expository and a third of them will be given an informative so while we want to certainly we look for ways to increase the amount of time we spend on argumentative instruction we do cover all three types of writing and so um we're just not there yet to look at the three data but it is 2.5 is just under that 3.0 on the gmrc scale tell me again what gmrc stands for and i'm so sorry gmrc stands for growth model report cards and it's our standards-based um

035grading system that we use in the elementary and all bcsc elementary schools thank you and the rubric would be one two three four in terms of the numbers so 2.5 following on a one two three four scale all right are there other questions yeah hi this is uh nikki wieldon so since you've now walked down this path to try something new and you've seen some improvements is there anything that you would do differently or if you were to start again or if there was another school looking to adopt something like this advice that you would that you would give this is an easy one for for me to answer and i would think that mr sweet mr schaffner would support having that conversation as a staff and looking at the skills necessary for all three

036types of writing and having that clear um the honest conversation about what are we going to teach in kindergarten what are we going to teach in first grade in those developmental stages of writing so that we you have that aligned plan and there's no question what's being taught above and below me and so you can really focus on your grade level skills um and increase those scores thank you that helped are there other questions well i can say i appreciated seeing i even seeing the differences between persuasive and argumentative and i think it's interesting that instilling those differences and the qualities of each in our elementary learners was very helpful for me to visualize and i very much appreciate again the samples so that we can get a feel for how the learners are doing

037the work and to your point your data over two years to exceptional learning years i would add our most impressive so thank you so much for what you've shared with us this evening thank you for the opportunity we appreciate sharing the many good things going on here at taylorsville great doctor i just had a comment so thank you to mrs gant mr shafter mr sweet for presenting tonight a reminder to board members is this is a typical part of our meetings but has fallen by the wayside a little bit over the last crazy months that we've had with covet 19 when we were going to school buildings and would have that building present at least sometime that month in our old calendar taylorsville is the month of september and so we invited sadele and her

038team to present on some great work they were doing so so pleased to have them present tonight and maybe get back to that rhythm of having things from our school buildings and the great things our our teachers and kids are doing uh celebrate a little bit so sadele jake kevin thank you for presenting tonight yes thank you very much all right next is um an update on how coveted 19 is doing this school year in bcsc yeah so thank you dr i have just those some numbers in front of you each board meeting and so i will do that again and do this relatively quickly and that our cdc numbers as as you see with the state designation there the entire state has remained read now for for several weeks the department of health we

039were in the red actually on our off week uh so orange at our last board meeting had a red week as a county and now back to orange so hopefully that's uh we hit our peak and maybe can start coming down the other side we'll see if that is indeed the case from the covet 19 task force and putting the presentation together the numbers weren't out from yesterday that would come out today so i just grabbed the screenshot from the the numbers from our local copa 19 task force website from last week so this is dated september the 22nd on that date new positive cases were 45 and hospitalizations at 44 and the paper was the republic was reporting similar numbers of hospitalizations of this weekend our local numbers which are again when we make

040decisions in regards to our various mitigation factors all that stuff is important to know what's happening across the country uh around our state and even regionally but then internally what are we seeing and i've kept the information from a year ago up there just because it was uh interesting that to know that first quarter we had 29 positive test cases as we headed into fall break where fall break is around the corner for us and that we went to e-learning on november 9th for all kinds of reasons including some operational challenges but it was 106 positive test cases uh we are over 400 positive test cases now first 35 days of 21 22 this will be day 36 and that 441 was sometime today so we could actually call that 36 days perhaps but 441

041positive test cases that is made up of 393 students and 48 staff members the number of close contacts thus far are there i did given just an extra uh number there if we have 441 positive test cases this year and about 2300 close contacts that would average out to a little over five close contacts per positive test case of those close contacts 112 have later tested positive the last time i gave you that percentage we were just over five percent at 5.1 uh it dropped to 4.9 so a slight change getting under 5 since the last time i gave that percentage but still around five percent in terms of that and then we've had an additional 1030 who have had to miss some school uh who are symptomatic i did take a look an extra

042look just today in terms of the number of kids we had out and so if we look at kids out of our buildings today uh we have about six percent out of our of our students out for for a reason related to coven so whether it's uh uh close contacts or symptomatic or or actually testing positive it's about 689 students so that would be approaching six percent of our kids specifically related to covert 19 of that number 178 are positive cases uh the good thing if we break out the closed contacts from those positive test cases i give 5.2 for the year up here and that's skewed a little bit because there were some classrooms that we had particularly the pre-k level early that took out a large number of of people um a the

043the current rate is 2.87 uh close contacts per positive test case so uh hopefully our that's reflective of the many things that our buildings are doing to to limit just the number of close contacts we have if we have a positive test case so at least as we would stand today the number that you see on the screen is indicative or reflective of the entire school year right now with kids that we have out of school we'd be in about three close contacts per positive test case that's all i have on all right i appreciate that perspective are there questions members have i have one dr shed dr roberts what for kids that are out on quarantine and i'm thinking particularly i guess secondary students what are the expectations of teachers in terms of reaching

044those kids that are out on quarantine you know i'm thinking particularly classes where they're out for a number of days and without receiving you know being exposed to some type of direct instruction i mean missing a number of days it's very easy to fall behind so i yeah my question is what how are we bridging that gap yeah really good question was for guys because without question then with the number of days that a student might be out there there's going to be some challenges and um we we've tried to address this in many ways as we looked at last year and the successes and sometimes maybe not so much successes that we would have had and we we really tried to model or to utilize the bridge concept that was being the bridge program

045that was in place last year that many of our students families took advantage of we then tried to replicate that in classrooms of students with close quarantines we have not tried to do that this year so we will have parents and students who may have had that experience last year and felt very positive about that because there were some additional things happening in the classroom videos or whatnot that may have been bridging that gap because of what we're doing with bridge anyway with almost 3 000 students we had learning online at any given point in time last year we we did try to remove that piece and just ensure that teachers were keeping up to par with their students keeping them informed of the lessons that were going on trying to to maintain communication and

046contact its learning is our learning management system so having information available so that all students were aware of the progress of the class but have not engaged to the degree that we would have seen last year by utilizing that bridge model so in other words so readings that needed to be done or particular assignments are sitting in its learning that the learners are do have access to it it's again a great question because the complex challenge it presents in that if we think of pre-covert we would have students miss a number of days at a time for a variety of reasons right somebody has surgery somebody has a broken leg or some other illness or just situation that took them out of school for extended periods of time and and and we addressed that in

047certain ways last year with bridge we with 3 000 students nearly 3 000 students online we changed that and that very much benefited students who then had to be home for a quarantine and then we're back in school in trying to address both their needs and in our staff who are trying to work through now um complicated situations with students both in the classroom and out we did remove again some of that video piece and have tried to lean on the its learning learning management system that we utilize so effectively in my opinion a year ago and utilize that that management system to keep students up to par and where they need to be dr shed yes i was going to ask we've talked about the the numbers of positive cases and the numbers of

048students out on quarantine for covid related reasons at any point in time what what can we say about the duration when a student is out how long are they out and are there ways to work at reducing that duration yeah so so the without knowing exactly what the average number would be mr stenner 10 days is probably a number to shoot at but that would not be all school days right that's 10 days of separation that would include some weekends in there so then the number of student dates is going to be less than that i use that number because if positive 10 days is is is a standard number to look at and then get on the other side of that and be able to come back to school as long as i'm asymptomatic

049all those kinds of things and then 10 days is also the chosen quarantine amount that we have that 7 10 14 that was put out by the cdc so it is somewhere around that 10-day number that a student might expect to miss or a staff member might expect effectiveness from work if they're identified as a close contact or are a positive test it was our second part to that question uh are there things we can be doing or maybe you already are doing to help reduce that direction the thing that is out there and i think i referenced this at our last meeting and continued to be a question that we'll get you guys are probably getting is that flexibility that was extended through the governor's executive order that's dated at the end of august

050uh right before labor day weekend and and we we appreciate that that flexibility is there what we have hesitated to do is to go backwards on mitigation strategies while our numbers continue to rise and while we also had close contacts testing positive at a much higher rate than we had a year ago i'm hoping that that we are starting to get on the other side of things and can take a another look at that and internal conversations that we've had you know if the governor's executive order probably need to restate that the governor's executive order allowed the department of health commissioner to make some different determinations the department of health commissioner said hey you can use zero if a student is asymptomatic um and so i think schools across the state are are perhaps taking

051advantage of that flexibility we have not chosen to go chosen to go that route yet but if we're at 10 and the commissioner of the department of health says zero maybe your question is is there something else in there then that could be worked out and i i guess the answer is yes in that that flexibility will be provided because the department of elders went to zero right so anything from zero to whatever seems that if a school corporation can work that out it still would fall within the parameters of what the department of health has worked out our concern would be let's say we would go to five split the difference of zero ten and go to five um what i understand to be the case is that if i am a close contact

052the best day to test for uh to see if i might have actually contracted coping 19 will be on day five six or seven so if it's day five do we create a testing situation to come back if that's the case what's the burden on the system that we have already in place that's trying to manage all this so there are some pieces to try to understand there if that were to be the case but a short answer to your question about the long one i just gave would be since zero is is what the health commissioner has given the range is really whatever the school corporation would decide that could could work best given that we would have the capacity to manage to manage that i don't know what other schools are doing when

053they bring or allow students to stay at zero it just it does still run contrary to what we understand from the cdc and i know that it was a part of the effort to say if you go to masks there's this little reward here and and many corporations have went to masks given that circumstance or situation and immediately went to the zero days of quarantine we already had the mass mandate and had our quarantine procedures in place so maybe the circumstances were different even on that given day of the executive order but um just going back to what i've indicated earlier with with the numbers we've had with the numbers then later testing positive we have felt uncomfortable adjusting that yet but but are are looking forward to continuing to analyze our own numbers and

054the flexibility that exists with with that with that opportunity thank you you're welcome so if i can just clarify what you said um you could only go to zero if you mandated masks right for quarantine and it's only specific to the classroom and i guess school bus but but those those confined or kind of structured settings or situations the the other times or ways that you're identifying a a close contact it would not remove those so it's not going to eliminate you know all of our closed contacts but would should significantly impact right that number but yes it is um only if the corporation has a mask policy right not not a mass optional one a mask required one i just wanted to say that for those who aren't immersed in talking about this all

055the time sure that's a good point to make that it is based upon first of all that that mask requirement mandate i think mr grimes has a question just one more here so if the 2287 close contacts is that 2287 individuals or some of those kids that have been identified multiple times you'll be identified multiple times okay so yeah yeah those are the kids that i particularly worry about that are identified as a close contact two three four times through no fault of their own and uh before you know it yeah they missed a few weeks right yes yes yes okay the bad thing about cove is you have so much data that you can look at it about a million different ways right but of the 112 people that later tested positive it would

056be interesting and could help form an opinion if those close contacts not lunch times if available majority of those were during the lunch time you would say that that potentially go a different direction right yeah good points mr william and i don't know that we have that degree of data at the moment but something we can we can take a look at in terms of uh when and how because the other piece is if if testing if later testing positive is a close contact to school versus later testing positives and close contact at home so separating that out first and then looking at it in the way you're talking about other questions great thank you for clarifications thank you all right we will move on to board commendations i'll turn to my colleagues i know

057mr grimes doesn't let me go ahead dr oh please do okay um why i hope this is an appropriate time to go ahead and mention this but a very large congratulations to principal brett findlay the students teachers and support staff at csa lincoln for recently being recognized as a 2021 national blue ribbon school through the u.s department of education and so congratulations again to all their hard work and effort and dedication to learning at lincoln and then just some athletic fall highlights from athletic directors at north and east mr hughes and mr lewis in no particular order lots of good things going on columbus north cross country boys currently ranked first in the state number 10 in the nation girls team currently ranked second in the state both repeat as conference champs this year east

058volleyball ranked number nine in the state north girls soccer ranked number eight and mr lewis particularly wanted me to give a shout out to senior jenna lang for becoming the school's all-time scoring leader boys and girls soccer at north both repeat as conference indiana champs let's see what else girls golf congrats to the east girls golf team for winning the sectional and also in girls golf three seniors harley gant from east gwen anderson ella wilkes from north congratulations to them for qualifying for the state this weekend at prairie view in carmel let's see east boys soccer has clinched a uh at least a tie for the con conference championship and congratulations to chris quisenberry for becoming the all-time scoring leader at east and one last one here boys tennis at north who is currently ranked

059second in the state their highest ranking ever um five of their seven varsity players have gpas of 4.0 plus two of their varsity players senior matt liu and freshman parth shah are both currently valedictorians of their classes as well so congratulations to all those student athletes at both north and east excellent thank you very much there are other commendations yes mr stenner continuing on with accommodations to students i noticed that the youth leadership both alumni county program had their meeting and distributed scholarships to some of our students and all the students that participate in that program come out with some excellent life skills and then also kudos and commendations to everyone involved in restoring east after the water damage earlier this year i know that's a ton of hard work and before the meeting dr

060roberts was describing some of the changes and improvements that we're going to see it's very exciting great thank you for that as well others i will say i had a new budding cheerleader participate in the cheer clinic that was held as a student project at east and i thought that was really well done these little girls were standing in attention i don't know how those cheerleaders got them to do what they did in just a few hours of coaching but it was pretty remarkable to see them at home coming on on friday i also i was really impressed with the band the combined band performance was was pretty was pretty awesome so that you know there's those teachers and that program seems to be really good and i'm going to give a personal shout out

061to um coach dismore burton and burke northside cross country i have a student in that program and they've just been amazing what they pour into those kids is really pretty remarkable so it's very successful season thank you for all they do wonderful thank you thank you all right i'll turn to my colleagues for any school board member reports mr grimes sorry uh just one quick uh plug here from the the school foundation um for anybody who's not heard the harlem wizards game has been moved from what was in november to march 22 i believe and then also an upcoming brighter futures for all 5k start and finish out at the new bcsc soccer complex sign and out nice out and back up river road down the people trail registration at indiana indianatiming.com hopefully we have

062a good turnout for that november 13th awesome great thank you any others mr stenner thank you districting and facilities committee met the september meeting focused on some of the construction projects that we've discussed in the last two board meetings and then also a new process for managing construction projects that we'll hear about during the cabinet reports excellent thank you all right i don't see any others i'll now turn to our cabinet member reports so um first about the cmc process and who starts here dr bozeman i'll introduce thank you dr shedd and members of the board we're fortunate to have steve jones of ice miller and jim funk from cso to provide an overview of the construction manager as constructor process this is new a new process for bcsc that we're exploring that we'd like

063to give a presentation to you this evening and ask for your approval later on this evening in the meeting all right great my name is steve jones i'm an attorney at ice miller focused on construction law i'll kind of start us off and then um jim funk at cso um we'll back clean up on on this presentation we're trying to keep it short so as was just mentioned this is a relatively new project delivery method k-12 schools have been permitted to use it since july 1st of 2017 some of the state educational institutions like purdue and iu have used it they were permitted to use it for about three years before that and so it's a new project delivery method and um you'll hear us kind of abbreviate construction manager as constructor as being cmc

064um they it means the same thing jim and i have worked together over the past several years since this has been permitted on several cmc projects involving k-12 schools so my my portion of the presentation um is focused on some of the applicable statutory requirements and then jim will kind of uh provide at the end a summary of his experiences using the cmc process so there is some significant differences on the cmc project delivery method versus your traditional design bid and then build project and so what one of the the differences is for cmc the school must issue a request for proposal or rfp you this is issued to prospective construction manager asked instructors you are obligated to give the same public notice that you give under your traditional public works statute you know uh

065two notices uh at least a week apart with the second notice at least a week before proposals are due um there are some requirements for the rfp um which um jim funk is very familiar with but i'll outline it the rfp has to include you know the criteria that from which you're going to select the cmc you're also [Music] have to provide evaluation factors as it relates to minority women and veterans business enterprises and then also you identify how the gmp which is a guaranteed maximum price is to be established and then the statute also requires that the in-chunks requirements for these cmcs also be provided and and so as far as the selection process for the cmc an evaluation committee needs to be be formed the statute doesn't say when it has to be

066formed i'd suggest at some point before proposals are are due to form it once again the statute doesn't give a lot of guidance on where it gives you really a lot of flexibility on the evaluation committee they define it as a group of individuals so there's a lot of flexibility as to who you have on it and how many members and and the you know after the proposals have come in and this is fairly common but it's optional the evaluation committee may select certain offers to meet with essentially interview they have to be given equal opportunity to me so in practice what that means is um often kind of the short list is determined as far as the responders and then there's a certain time period for an interview that's the same for each of

067those responders and then what the evaluation committee does is they look at those proposals submitted by cmcs to the rfp they consider any interviews that were conducted they also considered the proposed fees by those cmc and then the evaluation committee um is selects a a cmc based on that criteria that was established in rfp and you enter into negotiations with that cmc that was selected unlike your traditional design bid build the school is under the no obligation the evaluation committee doesn't have to select um the the proposal with the lowest fee fee is it needs to be certainly a criteria but you have flexibility and doesn't you you aren't mandated to select the the proposer with the lowest fee and then the other requirement is that the evaluation committee after it's evaluated each of the

068offers and made its selection just needs to create a written summary that would be subject to public disclosure after the cmc contract is awarded um kinds of the processes so the the school is going to hold kind of two contracts it's going to hold the contract with cso like it a typical design bid build and then it's going to hold the second contract with the cmc and and for the construction piece of it what the cmc is going to do is um contract with first tier subcontractors often it's subdivided into bid packages such as an electrical package and those and what the cmc has to do is they have to go out and publicly bid this they they also have to comply with all the public works requirements which include awarding the subcontracts to the

069lowest responsive and responsible subcontractor the cmc is permitted to self-perform work if you know they do it but the statute kind of makes clear that in order for the cmc to self-perform they have to be basically the lowest responsive and responsible bidder for that work which i have interpreted to mean the cmc has to submit its own sealed bid and then when you open it if the cmc is the lowest bidder then they would be awarded that work unlike your traditional design bid build project the cmc statute does allow a pre-qualification process for subcontractors that is done by the cmc as well as the school and and so you can basically have a process whereas those subcontractors if they want a bid have to kind of go through a pre-qualification subcontractors so you have like

070more confidence that those subcontractors are capable of performing the work and then the other piece of the kind of cmc process that's a little different is it's a what i described as a bifurcated approach the first approach is type now while you're starting the design process you get the cmc involved to provide pre-construction services in the rfp you ask for you know what's the fee for the cmc to provide pre-construction services and then so the cmc and jim i'm sure we'll go through it in more detail but the cmc provides some pre-construction services while the design is being prepared such as cost estimating and then typically although the statute gives you flexibility but typically after you know the design is complete and construction documents have been issued and after the cmc has gone out and

071solicited public bids from subcontractors the cmc will come back to the school with a guaranteed maximum price proposal to to the school that basically says okay based on the construction documents and the design prepared and also based on the bids received here is what we provide as a guaranteed maximum price and if that proposal at that time is acceptable to the school a relatively short gmp amendment is entered into by the parties that basically says here's a substantial completion date here's the guaranteed maximum price here's the list of drawings and specs that the guaranteed maximum price is based on if and and this isn't common but the statute specifically provides that you know if for some reason the gmp proposal is not acceptable and you you aren't able to kind of work out a mutually

072agreeable um guaranteed maximum price the owner can terminate the cmc contract at that time uh you know they pay the pre-construction service fee but that's it and then the school has several options they can go back to another cmc that proposed they could proceed under a different public works statute or or decide not to proceed with the project um and so that that kind of in a relatively quick nutshell is a summary of the statutory requirement so i'll turn it over to uh jim now thanks steven i think a few things i'll mention is this is this is not a new delivery system in in the world of construction it's actually a fairly old one it's just that indiana is the actually the last state to adopt it as a public works uh process that

073can be used so we've done it in the private world quite a bit it's just it's great now that we can just do it with normal projects especially k-12 um so we've been doing this actually started several projects right when it got approved as well as started with some universities before that but i think we're up to 11 different school corporations now doing these projects i've done over near next door neighbor at monroe county we did the new tri-north middle school project there and doing some projects at decatur county to your east and so a lot of a lot of success we've been very happy with it i think for owners you know the big advantage is owning one contract with the contractor many of the clients that we have using this did cmc which

074under that process our cma under that process you might have 25 contracts each with a different bid category and this really simplifies that um you know the biggest thing right now is in the coping world we live in is having a contractor at the table early in design phase is a huge advantage um with all the product delays and knowing how long it's going to take to get something as well as try to put cost estimating uh right now is a huge challenge so um you know in a normal project it's it's a real advantage but right now it's even more advantageous to have that cm on board initially um and then there the whole project they said the you know they do the estimate they set the cost they own that budget throughout the

075whole project so that's a great thing for that um you also just have an opportunity to do fast tracking of projects and we see this a lot where we might issue if it's a new building put the site out first and get that going or get steel ordered and bid and then follow behind with building packages and and that's all the shortened durations and you know right now um cost association goes up a little bit each quarter and that can save you money doing that for you guys when it's a building that's being renovated you you know the contractor is going to be on site and they're going to control that job site and manage safety at that school and how tasting is being done rather than you know we did like we have in

076the past um where we had you know big projects in east and north you know we were fortunate we got there but you know we were kind of a little bitter got to control that site and we had to work with them we didn't get to choose them they they chose us so this is the opposite we can pick kind of who we feel comfortable with he's got the best plan for implementing safety and how to manage that job site so that's you know kind of another great thing everything you pay for is really open book so when they bid out packages you you pay that amount the cm has kind of three pockets of money they get funded on the project the first is their pre-construction that's steve talked about that's just a fixed

077amount during the design stages the second is the price when they bit items and then there is a what's called a cm fee that gets marked up on top of that drilling about two and a half percent something like that and then there is a cm kind of a staffing fee because they will during construction typically have somebody at the job site and people at the office working on this they'll evaluate how many hours that is and put a fee to that um so you kind of know up front you know all what those costs are going to be and you know from a cm perspective most like this role because they have the subs right under them they have authority um rather than having it through a third party like during with the cma

078process so um the pre-qualification with bidders the districts have done that has actually worked out pretty well um you know not everybody chooses to do that but those that have we typically get a better set of contractors and um they are um generally lead to a better job at the end of the day might pay a little bit more initially but i think at the end of the day it kind of evens out um kind of disadvantages challenges um you know when a cm says they're going to sell perform and bid a category sometimes it discourages other contractors from bidding that category just because they have an advantage with already having people on site um we see that some some sometimes not um contingencies and allowances become a little more complex and who owns a

079contingency and what does it pay for and that's more of an educational piece than anything else of getting everybody on the same page once you do that things really work pretty well sometimes setting the gmp can generates risks especially being created early you know we always recommend the line to cm bid out stuff and then fix the gmp because then the risk for both parties there's a lot less and then you know on a small project this may not be the right method and you'll see on this we're combining several projects together to get to a nice size which makes it a a more manageable and appropriate delivery method for that so with that i'd be happy to take any questions for both steve and i so are there questions from my colleagues dr shed

080yes yes i'll ask if uh and i'm not sure if it's uh jim or steve but if somebody could expand a little bit on uh second to the last bullet point about the shift in risk so the taxpayers are not taking as much risk as they are under the old system the tradition what we would consider the traditional system and and some of that risk is being shifted to the construction manager your note says that the construction manager can become less of an extension of the owner that there might be i imagine some more contentious discussions between owners and construction managers than than under the traditional system what is how have you seen that play out is that created problems well and that gets back to why we recommend not setting a gmp until you

081actually bid the project out um if you do it too soon what can happen is you know you do uncover some issue um prices go up you know things bit higher than expected and then this the cm you know my contract can start to eliminate things to get back in budget you may not like that um but that's kind of how it works but and that's why you know if you can wait as long as possible to set the gmp then then you kind of know all the costs are more fixed and that risk level goes down it's not risk to the public it's just risk about the dollar amount of the project and so doing it early the contractor will set higher contingencies so you may end the project with a lot of money

082left over versus if you kind of wait you you may end up you know having a little bit left over not a lot thank you and and to just add a little bit to that the the the jmp guaranteed maximum price it's a different form of compensation method whereas your traditional approach is going to be a fixed price here under these contracts your the school is obligated to pay to the cmc the the cost of the work which as jim mentioned is largely like the subcontract amounts the the contractors supervisory costs plus their their fee on top of that and then it's subject to the guaranteed maximum price and so if it ends up that you know the project maybe not all the contingencies used and those costs and the fee on top end up

083less than the guaranteed maximum price that the default is the owner the school retains all those savings so they get the upside of it sometimes although i don't see it very often in the public world there's a shared saving or a shared sharing of the of any savings but more more typical is if it ends up you know the project went went well and a lot of the contingencies didn't occur the the school ends up paying um just the cost of work plus the fee um and it ends up retaining any of those savings all right thank you for that question that helps me a little bit so as a as a practical thing on previous projects we would get notices from cso about something has changed from the original bid that it may have

084been more or less that work is now done by the cmc rather than coming to us as a board we still have the authority to um modify those things so as they as they as the projects come through so this it's less likely to happen this way because with the cmc that contractor is at the table with you designing and and working through things so it's more unlikely um that those will those will occur because of the partnership and relationship that that goes into the project as opposed to previously where it's the we design it separately with the architect and then the contractors come in and and bid and then there's some changes later on okay so the expectation is we're seeing less of them in this that's that's the negotiation between the cmc and

085the subcontractor you will see actually more um because the cmc will will be with us at board meetings even prior to bidding and asking to bid and then after they bid it out you know before we did a single prime you would just see one number um with some alternates you wouldn't see you know who the subs were and everything else now when they do their bidding they'll submit their gmp and then it will be listed for each category who that low bidder was and plus they'll be able to share if they want who else bid it um so you actually see a lot more information than you do in our traditional process we've been doing in the past so i have a question do you what's the sweet spot for which you would use

086a cmc versus subcontracting directly so so it says right there for smaller projects i'm sure the size of the project is one factor there are other factors we are considering that would tell us cmc is the right direction for us to go um [Music] i generally say about anything greater than 5 million there's a there's a payoff and something gets back to the project type the renovation project falls more quickly in that category or if it's a brand new project you know that's a standalone you know that you could you could still do either way but there's still value in both methods but i think the renovations is where i i feel there's a huge advantage and then the the other factor is having worked with cmc's in another place change management seems to be

087a really high factor in the success of that relationship and partnership in the project are those typically terms that are agreed on prior to the gmp phase of the program never been through a construction project that didn't have some changes along the way so how is that factored into the relationship and that is setting the right contingencies and allowances to to cover when you find bad soil you find conditions you didn't expect and the contract outlines he's responsible to pay for those and that's why we create those kind of different pots of money to make sure we have the right amounts to to cover anything that comes up mrs wilder i should have mentioned to begin with um we're looking to use this strategy the cmc for parkside renovation is including with schmidt hvac and

088then likely the um from the build america bond funds with the um softball construction east high school and baseball renovations as well so it'll be a fairly large project that we'll we'll start with and it's successful a model that we can utilize as we look to renovate future elementary buildings here in the next handful of years so the sam there'd be one cmc for those three that you just outlined right three separate gmps correct right right there are other questions individuals have all right just remind you that this whiz under the request for approval so any questions answered at this point is is important while we still have uh our uh guest speakers on the on the line okay i'm at the point i don't know what questions to ask to be honest but others

089dr bozeman from your standpoint with this being a request for approvals is there a relatively short summary you provide in terms of it being our preference as a as an organization it is we've been advised because of the nature of what we hope to do at parks elementary particularly both to maximize our financial opportunities and expedite the project we've been advised from um several groups and mr phillips and i have actually had conversations with other school districts that have followed the same suit as what we're recommending um to to follow this process um for those for those reasons and then the advantages that um that mr funk has on the on the screen here so we've there have been a couple things uh that he's mentioned here that that just you know heads up and

090be aware of but no major roadblocks or anything it just seems like everybody we've talked to recommends highly it's a slam dunk and really benefits the district to move in this direction and utilize the cmc process i don't know if mr phillips has anything to add to that but that's a quick synopsis of the work that he and i have done over the past handful of months thank you i do have a question so once if we decide to approve this this process then this process would take place for every i'm sorry not speaking into the microphone for every project even the smaller ones where it might be more expensive or are you just proposing it for the ones you've mentioned just for the current renovations that were that we're bringing to you correct thanks

091okay um mr funk thank you very very much and mr jones i appreciate the summary that you gave to all of us thank you very much thank you gentlemen all right next we get to hear from dr pleek good evening on this screen you will see our three-year approved calendar with a lot of highlighted cells and i wanted to for a couple different reasons wanted to review it with you and tonight we are just going to review the calendar and ask for approval at our october meeting and this is twofold here one this summer bcsc submitted a waiver for house bill 1003 which allows some flexibility for school corporations to use extra time we do go to school more hours in the day in minutes than needed so we can take some of that time

092allotted to be able to have a waiver for days and so we applied for the waiver to add professional development days to our school year we are often puzzled with how to provide the necessary training and professional development for our staff members in such a tight frame of a school day or with a shortage of substitute teachers so we are wanting to use opportunities with this waiver allows us to do to add some professional development days that our students will not have to make up those school days their approved days off and as you can see for on the left side all the way down the column you'll see four lines that say professional development no school and starting second semester of this school year and for the 22 23 and the 23 24 school

093years we are recommending professional development days and again at that time students do not come to school and they do not have to make that school day up and we will have the entire staff bcsc over 2200 employees in for training that helps align with our strategic plan to meet the needs of our students and staff members to help them grow as individuals to serve the needs every day of our students and our corporation and so there we go and we try to pick days that were maybe more convenient for families and if you can see for this spring semester we are looking at adding a day on president's day february 21st they will give a long weekend to families and also thursday april 14th it's the day before good friday they'll give an extra

094day off for that as well and then the next two school years we are looking at extending our labor day weekend to where students have off tuesdays as well so it makes it a four day weekend as well as the day the monday after thanksgiving and we kind of wanted to choose there was a committee i need to mention amy london cea president helped me co-chair and we met with a committee group of administrators teachers um to review the changes and make proposals and one thing they did ask is maybe not the same day of the week so students weren't missing necessarily some the same classes over and over so that's why you see a variety of the days there and then the next thing i wanted to review with you besides the professional development

095days you will see many changes to when the school year starts when winter break begins when second semester begins and when the last day of for students and teachers at the end of the school year and these suggestions were brought to us by cea and i would like to thank mandy kill she did a lot of work on this she's vice president of cea one of the co-vice presidents and we just made some just suggestions after this year what we experienced and so as you recall this year our students went to school first day on a friday and the challenges that we met with that and thought maybe the revisions needed to be made is our high schools are on block scheduling and if we start school a day earlier at least on a thursday

096so they would have thursday and friday to get to a full rotation of their entire schedule so some familiarity there that way in that week teachers get to meet all of their students during that time and it also allows our younger students to get in the habit of just more than one day and a little bit more of a comfort level so that is revision there to start a day earlier which then it gives us an extra day for winter break which gives us about two weeks on both of the next two years for that break and then when we start back that second semester again it gives us about two weeks and it allows our teachers to come back on a friday than our students to start on a full week when they return

097and then we wanted to make an edit there towards the end because one of the like last days um was like a monday or tuesday for our students and we just wanted to make sure that they didn't see that as a short week at an opportunity so um it was a monday so we switched them to tuesdays for them so just some little tweaks not any big overhaul to our schedule with the recommendations provided by the calendar committee i do thank everyone that served on that as well as cea's collaboration during that time and so again this is just a proposal something for you to review we will come back in october asking for the clarification if we do receive approval in october then we will post it immediately to our website so parents can

098look accordingly so they can any plans that they need to make and i do know that mandy kill is on the line on the zoom link if there is anything mandy that i left out that needs to be stated please do so i appreciate it thank you thank you dr pleak i i think you've covered it again as she mentioned initially we had some members when the calendar was actually approved last december who had some concerns and certainly those were um those bore out in in terms of when this school year started by starting on a friday as she mentioned our high school students had an a day and then had to wait a weekend before they had their b day but really all of our students i think would benefit by having those two

099days before going into that first weekend as teachers get to know their new students and and to try to get them a little bit more comfortable in that new classroom and then also as you mentioned the last few years prior to this year we've had that records day on that friday coming back at the second semester and then the students coming back on that monday for a full week and so our members definitely appreciated that as well and so that would be addressed in years two and three of this calendar and she covered the pd so i i think that's it and unless anybody has any questions of course for either of us no i will say as a parent thank you for not sending them to school on a friday the first day that

100was hard for me personally that was a really hard day so i these are really these look like really good changes one thing that um i know in the past we've had some built-in snow days in like a an additional kind of spring break week and that's not listed here are we thinking about snow days differently going forward i know we've got some you know e-learning opportunities but yeah so with the uh three-year approved calendar we had uh i guess trying to benefit from what we learned last year we could do an e-learning day effectively if necessary um so instead of having a second week of spring break potentially used for makeup days we are instead taking those five days and using them as e-learning days if necessary so an example we come back to

101school on uh second semester and have a snow day in january we would have made that day up on that one week of spring break previously we will instead do an e-learning day and make it up immediately now once we have used five e-learning days then we do put days at the end of the school year as necessary so even with this there is a little buffer there at the end of the school year you have a couple of days few days ahead of graduation if that's necessary we i know many school corporations are doing e-learning days period we we had a little challenge with that in terms of just going completely to a we're going to be learning days every time we have a snow day but we will use up to five and

102after five we would start adding on to the the end of the year so short answer to the spring break piece there is no longer a second week there potentially for spring break it is it's gone yeah so i apologize if this is a dumb question because i know there are such things but this the next two years then the student year will be 100 they'll go to school 176 days on this calendar rather than 180 because of the waiver yeah okay yeah mr grimes i appreciate you bringing that back up so just reminder with what that waiver was is is that the state with the flexibility in in is a 1003 right in 1003 had a variety of things that maybe schools could apply for a waiver uh we are one of really a

103handful maybe 13 school corporations indiana i think we're given this this waiver based on our application and it's in its we will now count our school year in a number of hours instead of days so that was the flexibility provided so 180 days or number of hours school corporations across the state have a different number of hours per day so we might have a seven hour secondary or high school day and somebody else has a six hour so even though it's 180 days we'd be going 180 hours more than that other school and looking at the minimum number of hours which there is in indiana code five hours for elementary schools six hours for secondary schools we exceed that by about an hour in each of our cases so we we basically have 180 hours

104or so in excess of the minimum number of hours in a year that the state requires with that minimum number of hours per day 180 days per year so it's those hours we're using to to then count and and back up the number of days and instead use those days within the school calendar to still have our staff here all of them as dr pleek mentioned with a certified staffer support staff we have things we need to work on and have them learn and and make sure that we have saturated uh the professional development uh topics that we need to uh to work on so this year second semester we'll look at taking advantage of the flexibility that we have um been awarded from the state and and try it and see what happens with

105second semester with those two days that are in here and then move those over into next school year similar days days corresponding days and then you see the addition of the the days for first semester so to your point mr grimes 176 days for next year this year will be 178. 180 days worth of hours correct much more than that when it comes to the minimum number of hours that are from the state of indiana again we are we're approaching 200 hours more that we have per year than what is required as a minimum by the by indiana code conductor yes dr roberts when the state gave the waiver what period of time did they assign that for yes so just this year only so we'll have to apply again this is the second time

106we've been awarded the waiver we just did not last year with all of the stuff going on try to take advantage of it so we applied again this summer we were awarded ordered that and and so are trying it now but we will have to apply so this calendar here if something would happen with the waiver process and it would go by the wayside um then we would have to to to adjust the schedule again with you trying to put it out now again i know we know that parents love to plan and look ahead and understand when those opportunities are for students to be at home or to be able to take breaks or vacations or whatever the case might be so getting this on the calendar because those days in yellow there are

107days that students are not here so even though teachers are or staff members are in at least four of those occasions for 22 23 23 and 24 students or not so and remind me of the the board i think normally approves a three-year calendar what what years have we already approved these these three years and so these tweaks are being made for the three-year calendar that you had previously approved this school year plus two more so these tweaks are to that calendar so we are looking beyond that going back to your question mr stinner about the number of years for the waiver we did request four years taking us through these three plus getting into the next one so we could talk about it in the state it's just not yet as they're trying to

108feel out this new process that they created they weren't willing to they weren't willing to do that so just gave us the one one year at this point we have no reason to believe that they wouldn't continue to to approve it for us particularly if we can demonstrate value that we've received from it by taking advantage of the opportunity i have a question a general calendar question really about start dates and end dates through the year and do you get the general feeling that parents and teachers and staff like prefer going earlier in the in august and then getting out early in may or would it or do you think they would like to go later in august and get out like has you ever asked that i mean because it just seems like it

109gets earlier earlier every year there are people saying why does school start earlier just wondering if you had any i know every three years we do survey the community to get feedback as well as our teachers and have conversations with cea as well i know a lot of times we're kind of confined by looking at graduations and graduation dates and looking at when some students might be starting college or and some of those other things but it is a lot of things that give a lot of consideration too and we also have to always keep the balance of 90 days in a semester and do our best and it's very challenging to come back second semester or come back after january to finish first semester courses and so to allow us the opportunity to get

110all 90 days in and afford our people a week of fall break vacation the extra day at thanksgiving and two weeks at winter break it is better to start earlier in august to get that time in to help it break even and it helps our secondary students as well when they have their course changes and their student the student schedules it's just easier to have that natural break in place okay thank you great questions we can always count on the calendar to bring up questions it's maybe easier to understand in the cmc process oh i can assure you of that thank you very much for the presentation and please all of us as you may reflect on it have additional questions and as dr pleek mentioned it'll be on our agenda for our october meeting

111dr roberts you get to explain this long list to us yep let me get there we go all right there we go all right i have a number of requests for approval here actually a a long list for you um so we'll start out with the minutes of the regular school board meeting from september the 13th that was our last one first of two in september uh supplemental contracts field trips professionally school fundraisers and claims and payroll all things we have each time our claims for this time we just have we do not have pre-runs would have had those at the first meeting for the claims for this meeting a little over eight hundred eighty one thousand dollars from a payroll standpoint just one the the month or the one from september the 10th they

112cover the work days of august 16th through the 29th that also was the start of the bi-weekly bnc stipends from our contract that was about 2.9 million dollars and then we have a long list here refinance of central middle school bonds asking for a resolution to approve an amendment to that lease refinance of central middle school bonds a resolution to approve a supplemental master continuing undertaking a refinance of central middle school bond to resolution to approve a building corporation for that for that refinance for the 2021 lease rental bond adopt a resolution determining need for the projects 2021 lease rental bond adopt a resolution approving preliminary plans the form of the lease and authorizing publication of notice of hearing on the lease 2021 lease rental bond adopter resolution reapproving the formation of the building corporation

113and then lastly permission to receive bids for the construction manager as constructor agreement that was the process described to you prior to the calendar conversation so as you see with those dr blizman's on that last one and was a part of that conversation mr phillips has been working with legal counsel to get these resolutions in order for you as we take advantage of some opportunities and get ready to get financing in place for our building projects so those are my items a through l in your packet all right thank you very much so i'll ask for a motion for approval of four a through l as they've been presented to us so move thank you miss day off dwyer is there a second thank you mr bryant are there questions that individuals have over a

114through l all right seeing no questions i'll ask for your vote those approving for a through l as they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i those not an approval all right dr roberts has been approved unanimously thank you dr pleek your human resources i request approval of the hr recommendations as presented this evening thank you i'll entertain a motion for the approval of those recommendations thank you miss de hoftwire is there a second thank you dr bills any particular questions of dr pleek hearing none all of those approving our human resources recommendations as presented if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed those have been passed unanimously dr pleek all right we've heard a lot um opportunity for input comments observations mr grimes i think it's worth mentioning in

115the end uh congratulations again to lincoln one of only seven schools in indiana 325 in the nation for becoming a national blue ribbon school thanks again to mrs gant mr schaffner mr sweet for sharing all the good writing stuff that's going on at taylorsville and then lastly good luck to all the fall teams at north and east as most of them will be heading into uh yeah postseason competition here soon right great thank you miss wilden i'm coming all right thank you miss dayoff dwyer mr stenner uh just a big thank you to all the folks the volunteers especially that serve on the school corporation's districting and facilities committee i think this construction manager's constructor project is an exciting opportunity we're not the first to try this and we'll benefit from the experiences of those

116that have gone before us but i think the discussion and the questions at the last dnf meeting were an indication of the kind of people that we have volunteering to help us make decisions like this oh great well that's appreciated great good to hear dr bills not tonight all right mr bryant the young lady that you had up there that was holding her t-shirt yeah she was from lincoln wasn't she excuse me yes yes yeah congratulations to her yes [Laughter] all right thank you i'll just make the observation so for 4 e through k i know that represents a ton of work mr phillips mr monroe others that you consult with thank you for doing that because i know that you're working very hard to be thoughtful and very strategic and using our community's taxpayer

117funds as well as what we are able to get from the state so thank you for all that work i'm taking a breath so we have quite the hiatus given that fall break falls in the month of october our next school board meeting is october 25th at 6 30 here in the administration building and as a note we also have on our calendars a strategic planning session which will be for friday october 29th at 9 00 a.m here in the administration building in our terrace room with all of that i thank everyone for their work thank you to all of those who have been observing and watching our school board meeting i will call this meeting adjourned you