001i don't know about some of you this year once in a while it's been hard for me to find inspiration in the covered world oh here we go then a is for accept accept others for who they are and for the choices they've made even if you have difficulty understanding their beliefs motives or actions b is for breakaway break away from everything that stands in the way of what you hope to accomplish c is for create create a family of friends whom you can share your hopes dreams sorrows and happiness d decide decide that you'll be successful and happy come what may and good things will find you the roadblocks are only minor obstacles e explore explore and experiment the world has much to offer and you have much to give and every time you
002try something new you'll learn more about yourself f forgive forgive and forget grudges only weigh you down and inspire unhappiness and grief soar above it and remember that everyone makes mistakes g is grow leave the childhood monsters behind they can no longer hurt you or stand in your way h hope hope for the best and never forget that anything is possible as long as you remain dedicated to the task i ignore ignore the negative voice in your head focus instead on your goals and your accomplishments your past success is only a small inkling of what the future holds j journey journey to new worlds new possibilities by remaining open-minded try to learn something new every day and you'll grow okay no know that no matter how bad things seem they'll always get better the warmth
003of spring always follows the harshest winter l is for love let love fill your heart instead of hate when hate is in your heart there is room for nothing else but when love is in your heart there is room for endless happiness m is for manage manage your time and your expenses wisely and you'll suffer less stress and worry then you'll be able to focus on the important things in life and as for notice never ignore the poor infirm helpless weak or suffering offer your assistance when possible and always your kindness and understanding oh open open your eyes and take in all the beauty around you even during the worst of times there's still things to be thankful for pee play never forget to have fun along the way success means nothing without happiness cue
004question ask many questions because you're here to learn are relax refuse to let worry and stress rule your life and remember that things always have a way of working out s share share your talents skills knowledge and time with others everything that you invest in others will return be returned to you many times over t try even when your dreams seem impossible to reach try anyway you'll be amazed by what you can accomplish you use use your gifts to your best ability talent that's wasted has no value talent that's used will bring unexpected rewards the value value the friends and families who've supported and encouraged you and be there for them as well w work work hard every day to be the best person you can be but never feel guilty if you fall short
005every sunrise offers a second chance x x-ray look deep inside the hearts of those around you and you'll see the goodness and beauty within why yield yield to commitment if you stay on track and remain dedicated you'll find success at the end of the road i had to laugh at this last one because z is zoom so i don't just not zoom like teams zoom to a happy place when bad memories or sorrow rears its ugly head let nothing interfere with your goals instead focus on your abilities your dreams and a brighter tomorrow thank you thank you very much that's a great way to start so if you are able if you'd stand join me in the pledge of allegiance indivisible all right all seven of us are here we decided to drive on a
006snowy evening so i'll call this meeting to order with our quorum we do take a moment at the start of each of our meetings to reference our mission and our vision which drive all of our decision making as well as our high exp which are listed behind us here in the room and listed here on our screen so to start our agenda and our who and why of why we're about what we do i'll turn to dr roberts for our plan of action update very good thank you dr shed as we have gotten into the habit of doing at each school board meeting we'll talk about covet 19 and where we stand today and what we might be doing tomorrow so currently just a reminder we are in five days of in-person learning for our
007elementary students grades k-6 and a hybrid model is in place for our secondary students grades 7 through 12. as we continue to review the community spread of covet 19 our best case scenario would be to get all students into our buildings so with our current model would be getting the secondary students back to five days of in-person instruction whenever we can our next opportunity to review as a reminder is this coming thursday february the 11th so as we look at what's possible as we move forward this is the most up-to-date information that we have so this is currently this graph or chart is currently posted on the communities covet 19 task force website and you can see that as of the 7th of february which would be yesterday we're already always one day removed from
008the data that we're able to gather the per capita rate was down to 32.4 and is decreasing the percent positive test rate is at 30.6 percent is also decreasing the test turnaround time has hovered between 2.4 and 2 over the last several days a few weeks and currently as a 2.2 and then the hospitalizations have actually dropped into the yellow first time that number has been there for quite some time so the last two days we've had 13 and 12 as our numbers of hospitalizations related to covet 19 so are decreasing as well we look at the state map the state has its own set of metrics they are similar in terms of a per capita rate and a all test positivity rate they use a seven day rolling average and right now our county
009bartholomew county has a 2.5 score which places us in the orange we have been orange for several weeks actually months we go back to the beginning of november with that orange status last week we were at 2.0 so ticked up to 2.5 we think that we'll be back to 2.0 this coming week so hopefully heading in the right direction in terms of the color designation from the state as well this is the operating model considerations you approved uh in october so before we went to e-learning at the first of november and then even made the the changes we have currently in place after winter break uh we tried to align with the color designations of the state and based upon what our county was showing is then react to that in orange this says elementary
010schools may continue full-time in person option middle and high schools may consider a hybrid learning model so that's what we had from our october revision of our operating model considerations i know this is difficult to read so i will read parts it to you wanted to get this in front the state department of health last week following the governor's press conference revised their recommendations so this chart or this operating model considerations was based upon the previous recommendations from the state state has revised theirs and we have not revised ours yet but this says that schools should consult with their local departments of health and and the metrics from the department of the state department of health as they make decisions upon their instructional models so that orange piece of there no longer has any specificity
011on instructional models the only specificity you'll sign you will find now in the states color designations for counties is in the red and it specifically calls out the hybrid instructional model for high school students so a little twist or change at least in the way the state is looking at the county color designations and their recommendations so that was updated and see to the side on february the 5th which was friday dr roberts yes sir if i understood what you're saying so the part about the only specificity being associated with the red so there's no specificity to differentiate orange from yellow there isn't no so actually from blue yellow and orange the wording is basically the same that the school in conjunction or collaboration with local department of health would make instructional model decisions that
012could be in-person hybrid or full virtual or e-learning to give us flexibility to give us flexibility and i think you said the only specificity is in the red and that's about a step that we're already taking even though we're in the orange correct yes so we have been in hybrid while we've been in orange now since the beginning of january and that that level of specificity in terms of consideration of hybrid dropped from the orange by the state well that changes how we look at it or not but just putting this in front of you in terms of these are now the the recommendations or considerations from the state level thank you you're welcome this was on the heels of this information here and we are not prepared to enact this um and so i
013need to to couch that as we go through and and make sure and do so carefully because the governor's press conference on wednesday and we certainly appreciate the state's efforts to handle a very complex situation too and as the governor and dr box and dr weaver from the department of health try to make these tough decisions as well they will announce things for schools wednesday's announcement was a surprise to us just in that sometimes we have a heads up as to what might be coming we were not aware of the many things that actually came out of that press conference on wednesday so as this information came to us we now have it in front of us and have to make decisions based upon it uh it did take effect today we were not going
014to have anything take effect until at least we put information in front of you as a school board we should make it tomorrow and so any reference you see to tomorrow february 9th bottom right of this chart we are not prepared yet to do that but that would be the earliest it could have taken effect in our opinion because we have not shared all the information with you we've not had proper conversations yet with our teachers association we've not digested all this with our principles all of those kinds of things a lot of information here because if we go from we'll just start left to right and look at supplies and ppe and what the state is doing and this was announced again wednesday and unknown to us prior to that so now we're processing
015this information and dr bozeman did fill out a survey on friday in terms of where that stuff should come so that it can be distributed from a central location for us but each staff member would receive 10 kn 95 masks so provided by the state 10k and 95 masks coming to our school corporation elementary age students will receive additional mass so another set of mass or a mask for elementary student coming to us rapid tests will be sent to schools beginning this week delivery may take several week several weeks the the number of kits is uh 120 per school and so we will again get those here and then distributed to schools if that's what we choose to do how are we going to use those that's a question and then if we chose to
016go this way nurses would administer tests at the discretion of our corporation and thinking primarily of staff only so what is in front of you is our initial thoughts that we had from a cabinet level just digesting the information again not prepared to move forward with any of these until we digest them further but that's we know we're getting stuff and so what do we do with that stuff now we have in terms of quantity 10k and 95 mass per staff member we have more mass for elementary students we have about 120 kids per school building in terms of quantity coming to us from a rapid test standpoint so then as a corporation here's our stuff how do we utilize that to the best of our ability to address coven 19 within our schools within
017our community so that's the first piece of the stuff that we were the information we were given last week any questions about supplies or ppe before i jump to the middle one um staff means support staff teachers believe all dr bozeman you finished that figured that survey we used all in terms of sending information correct yes thank you so approximately 2 000 staff members for us and the types of rapid tests that they appear to be talking about here are those the kind that you process in-house or do they need yes okay yep so sample taken and not the um the ones that kind of go all the way to the brain what's the best way to describe that but they're the the the tests are different there's a little bit less than that and
018could be administered relatively easy i think by our nurses kelly if we went that direction our issue is is trying to determine when and who who and when i guess that test would be administered and do we want to all kinds of things could pass and go down here do we want to encourage people to start sending people to school to get the test done versus other places that that tests might be done so a lot of just questions we're asking right now in terms of proper use and using it appropriately or wisely to accomplish what we hope to do which is to keep more kids in school staffing yeah where we are with that okay all right close contact updates and and this what this basically does is an attempt from the state to
019to by going to this level and basically giving counties and then schools permission to do this it would lessen the number of close contacts you would have right because you are taking the six feet distance and shrinking it to three so now it's only people within three feet of that person not six feet which is bigger distance that would be considered close contact so close contacts for students and staff now defined as less than three feet for 15 minutes or more that is a cumulative piece which has always been the case for us no quarantines or contact tracing required for those individuals more than three feet apart as long as individuals are masked at all times that is specifically kelly corrigan if i'm wrong in the classroom setting so in a controlled classroom setting mass
020on the entire time not lunch not recess not pe not a ball game it's it's during the classroom time three feet comes into play and so if you had a student positive case you look at the classroom were they all at least three feet apart all the time or at least if they were closer than that it was for less than 15 minutes cumulative you might have zero close contacts in that situation as long as they were three feet or more versus the six so that's the first piece is trying to to lessen the number of students or staff that would be considered close contacts moving to the quarantine periods this piece would be to try to get people back faster so fewer people out because they are closed contacts and back quicker even if
021they are close contacts so that's the rationale behind or behind columns two and three so in this case staff and students may return to school after a 10-day quarantine if that person never developed symptoms where's the mass at all times upon return if they can't you need to make sure and maintain the 14-day quarantine and six feet of distance must be in place while eating in this case and uh so in the cafeteria we sometimes are not always again six feet uh trying to get that distance but uh for this case this person you'd have to ensure that that was indeed the case so we have these three things that we are trying to ponder consider and see what is the best with the supplies and ppe stuff again just trying to find the best
022usage uh 10k and 95 mass per person um i guess we can distribute those and see if people choose to wear those i don't know that we're prepared to mandate the kn-95 master one at each time we have gotten this far this way elementary age students we probably have mass already dr bozeman in terms of quantity we still have some mass in supply in the corporation so we're just adding to that and again that 120 kits of of testing how do we use that for students and staff members continued conversation the closed contacts three feet if you recall in our plan that started this year even adopted way back on july 20th we were looking at three to six feet we knew the challenge of six feet with eleven thousand five hundred students in our
023eighteen school buildings and so based upon um the american academy of pediatricians we decided that which had recommended three to six feet we decided that that's what we would put into our plan so that's what we went with so the three feet close contact tracing basically on three feet is not would be foreign to us because we have been kind of using that guide post since july 20th if we can't get six feet anyway the quarantine periods if you recall the cdc it's been back in december that actually came out with this they they in december said that they could accept 10 days or even seven days i guess eight days uh if the person had tested negative and had no symptoms so actually had a a negative test no symptoms could come back at
024day number eight and then the next piece is no symptoms no test come back on day number 11. or 14 does remain the cdc's recommendation and they are saying that we can go down to 10 because the percentage of the the possible the possibility of spread does increase but maybe not as a significant level that would keep them from saying okay we agree to 10. um so that that's the debate we have to have internally with our plan is to do we move from the number of days we currently are which is 14. we did not go to 10 when this when the uh the cdc said that and even the state said that we could do that back in december some schools chose to do that as early as that time most waited to
025after winter break if they were going to change most i think still and i i'm saying this without having data in front i don't know if a survey has been done of all school corporations in the state on this topic but it seems like at least as i talked to my colleagues that most are still with 14 days this the third column kind of reinforces something that was first released back in december the middle one is new in terms of counting the contacts close contacts that way although it does use the information that we were trying to use way back at the beginning of the school year the supplies again just just some stuff to be delivered to us so again i would state that right now we are digesting that are not prepared to
026put anything into action with that at this point but wanted to get it in front of you to see what questions concerns comments or otherwise suggestions recommendations that you might be ready to to pose to us as a board so dr roberts um what what data or context was provided in the state release to to kind of justify a movement in some of these areas um specific data i i don't know nikki and kelly if you had some specific specific data from your okay so nothing for the nurses meeting on friday all those citing research from across the country of now the number of schools that have been open or or remaining open the the the seeming lack of of spread that occurs in schools uh the seeming um lack of contribution of the schools
027to the community overall of increasing per capita rates positive test rates that that seems to be the information or data that is being cited across the country as a follow-up how many cases can we say have been through spread in our schools so in our schools kelly i i will divert to you but but a handful if at the most track we've had some close contacts test positive so as if an assumption is made we would have it there but it is a it is a literal handful in terms of that number we now have and since you asked that question nick you just pulled up the positive test cases we have uh since monday august 10th first student day we're not 500 498 we have actually since friday when you receive this data as
028well we send that to you via email in the newspaper printed it this weekend we have hit 500 cases so we now have officially 500 cases as a school corporation with the 498 you see the number of students support staff members and teachers there of those groups since we have 11 500 students 299 is about 3 percent support staff members we have about 1200 so that's about 12 and certified staff members if we add administrators to that list with teachers we're approaching 800 so we have about seven percent so that's those rough percents in terms of the makeup of those populations uh as you're all well aware now we were trending well through fall break at 29 positive test cases end of october 82 since then 416. and the average per week since that october
029october 30th is 30. so since that large number has been accumulated since the end of october but last week the number was 14. so we hopefully again we're trending in the right direction in terms of number of of positive cases but with those now 500 positive test cases a handful of close contacts that have tested positive after the after the fact i'm going to just clarify or maybe bounce off what nikki's asked so what you're saying is out of all the student staff administration teachers the cases that actually originated you think from school is a handful is that kind of what you're saying yes okay okay i just wanted to make sure yeah yeah so what we have in any given day we have close contacts there because of school positive cases and then because
030of positive cases generally speaking right a family member has tested positive so the entire family has to stay home and so in many of those cases and particularly within a household there will be then positive cases from that so we'll have a close contact that's been identified for some other reason that then test positive two and it seems most likely if you're in the household of a person who has tested positive view may very well test positive yourself but close contacts we have identified that we have sensed people home because of a positive test case in the classroom on a on a team or whatever the situation has has been a very very small number okay thank you you're welcome as we on the previous slide as we begin to distributions and decisions sometimes principals
031and buildings are decision making centers sometimes we we have decisions made in the for the whole corporation in the admin building which way are you thinking about when it comes to using rapid tests deciding this is when we need to use one or uh something in the middle column called line oh contact tracing you know i i consider this one a close contact uh but that one it was only you know 10 minutes within 5 feet so who makes those calls yeah so so the based on those examples it might vary a little bit rich so so with with close contact tracing it is done at the building level in in consult with with kelly and her team so they're having dialogue about that but we are having to rely on the individual who's tested
032positive to help us out with that and then the acknowledgement from other people who wouldn't be aware of the the the people number of people who have been around that individual to help that and determine at the building level so they then report that in a spreadsheet that we have um that then gets tracked back to kelly so that she can put it in the corporation uh within the corporation statistics um so if we change this for example um it would be changed at the corporation level right so if we said three feet i guess we're going three feet but then at the building level using three feet now instead of six feet that number would the number and who would be determined in terms of the tests the use of the kits again we
033would set that direction at the corporation level the challenge is with this one is if at the building level if if i have 120 kids to give and i have staff and students coming into now the nurses office is what discretion does that nurse use as to who gets that that's where our anxiety is a little bit is is that we know that students do come to school with symptoms we don't want to encourage that though and have a situation where well there are test kits at the school so i'm not sure my child has has all the symptoms but they could test him at school if if if they need to we don't want to get into that situation um but if we did test there would be ppe and so with this this
034personal protective equipment there is supposed to be a a set of ppe for each test we're given so we should have at least the pp available to that nurse if that nurse is giving them the test to utilize for that one time and get rid of but then we run into if the student tests negative does that mean you send them right back to class but there were symptoms so you're probably still sitting at home anyway so sending them home is there another step to take instead of giving the test at school and similarly with the staff member how might that be so we again a lot of dialogue is can we give the kids to our our clinic we have a bcsc clinic give the kids there and somebody could go there and kelly's
035shaking his nose so that probably wouldn't work because of a variety of reasons but but health department yeah so we give them health department and they could use them and figure out how to use them in that that context um so i guess i was on that that direction from the uh the nurses meeting the other day so they're a variety of things we're just we're just not comfortable yet with with giving a test in the school building to our students and staff uh just trying to figure out the plus delta of of doing that um and and weighing those the pros cons of of that situation and do we have uh opportunities or ways that from building to the extent that decisions are made in buildings to share best practices or learnings i mean
036do we is that done on a regular basis so yeah what i've learned at parkside can be applied at sure the other elementaries yeah i think the the the um a good thing about how we've handled all of this has been that at the end of the day it's all centralized so although there are things happening within a building it's all getting every single situation we've had with a positive test case identification of closed contacts even how buildings are are creating space you know and and trying to eliminate right up front and getting proper physical distancing we're processing that in a central location to know everything that's happened to them be able to share back uh whether it's in a principles meeting or some other situation or opportunity as to what's worked well somewhere else
037so yes thank you you're welcome yeah each piece of information that is covered 19 related funnels right back through kelly very specifically but then dr bozeman and myself try to break down each of those situations given the circumstances and then involve the rest of the cabinet weekly in those dialogues and exchanges too to then push back out to the necessary people so your next steps are really to digest this information and decide how it is yes dr bilson and i think that it hinges a little bit upon you know these next things um because i like to think that i think logically and as we're trying to get students back to school it seems odd to reduce uh the number of days that people are getting quarantined or even even the number of feet that
038you could consider close contacts even though we're trying to at least be three feet because we're trying to get students back in school and have them here and right now we're not even at that point yet with all of our secondary students but we would be battling back a situation in terms of what might be helping not spread uh kova 19. so that that's a little internal wrestling match we're having is as we're making that determination about an instructional model how do we couple that with decisions around close contact tracing and then quarantining the number of days of quarantines for those people who who are identified as close contact so i as you mentioned that through the slide up here which is my last slide i think go ahead and ask a question so for
039me the challenge of the stuff is the tests because we all know there are so many families and students that rely on the schools to feed them to take care of them so i have to infer from that yes that we're also the health care if you will for them so i have i i have no sense about are is testing in the community free yes okay so so perhaps the best resource i i think i like the idea of it going to the community health department rather than are assuming that because there's a part of me that's we have families that they won't get tested because they'll only come to school but if the resources at the health department okay i i respect that struggle i don't i don't think i get the thing
040about using them for staff at the bottom like i think they just go to our clinic instead of the school's starting to do that there was at least an initial thought that that if not doing for students perhaps we could at least do them for staff and so that's a little bit easier um that to do but there's some even hesitation on that for a couple of different reasons so we're right we're i mean we've absorbed a lot of responsibility i'm not sure as a corporation we want that one too yeah we just and i don't know that it happens but you try to consider every situation and and right now we're just trying to get people to stay at home with symptoms they were still trying to get ahead of this our per capita
041rates still over 30. and we were having a heck of a lot of debates about 10 back in in august and it's over 30. and so as we still work to manage that something that might encourage somebody to come to school with symptoms just to this to just then be tested there i i don't know that's what would happen but um it might and and no yes it will particularly i'm giving i'm giving everybody the benefit of the doubt i respect we just have so many families that don't have the resources or somebody has to take time off work and they don't get the time off so it could be it could be me i mean you know if if i'm not quite feeling well i have a few symptoms it could be you know
042i need to to get some things done i want to go in and kelly can give me the test and i'll know whether i'm positive or negative it sounds simple enough right you you show up i go straight to kelly's office and i get tested at seven o'clock in the morning and if i'm negative i can i can stay at school the rest of the day i don't know that we want to get into that kind of decision making process so there are some some protocols we have to put in place if we do it regardless right whether it's for students or staff some very specific protocols as to how this would be used and to try to eliminate too much discretion at individual buildings as to who would who and how and when that
043would be done but we are that's an important component all right all right thank you knew this would all generate a lot of we thought that this coveted 19 update would be relatively simple until the governor's press conference last wednesday and when that list of things came out that changed uh you know at least where we might be and maybe nothing ended up and it ends up changing too much but all things to very seriously ponder and work through and see how it could help us achieve our our ultimate objective which is having kids in our buildings five days a week and staying here uh as much as they possibly can um i should add to that week not adding to the spread of coping 19. so plain of action looking forward um our decision
044making point is around the corner i guess i didn't actually add that dave did i no i didn't so the next decision point is this thursday um which is the 11th 11th thank you so february 11th and thursday so some kids considerations in trying to think about that so we have our secondary students in a hybrid model spring break is approaching we've been going on a two-week rotation here so if we said oh we're going to stay hybrid for two more weeks all of a sudden we have seven student days until spring break so just an fyi in terms of what we've been doing recently that that gets a little awkward here in terms of just that small number of days than to to pivot and make another decision perhaps secondary students again all the
045students in grades 7 through 12 have been out of the classroom for about 58 of the time since monday march 23rd and why monday march 23rd that's the monday we didn't come back from spring break and we were out the entire quarter and then we were able to be in school for um a number of days from august 10th to november 6th so not out any and then november 9th through december the 22nd we were already learning i was another 30. and then since we've been the hybrid a through k students have actually been out 16 days because of january 4th we didn't have school anyway martin luther king jr day was a monday and then they also had a monday out last week and tomorrow is a tuesday and we have snow right now
046so unfortunately the a through k students have landed on it on a few days now right now because i counted today with making the finishing up this slide uh is only two days difference because they did go to school today and this week hasn't yet occurred for our l to z students so they'll add to their number here and maybe add to that gap if they're able to get into school at the end of this week so uh just the nature of the beast uh in terms of that 16 that is eight out of 24 days so we we have had uh 24 possible school days um and and they've been in school eight because of just how that that works so that that's of concern as we think through all of that and try
047to make those decisions so i just i place that in front of you in terms of spring break is approaching uh how we handle that in terms of a pivot with a decision and how many weeks or days we apply this next decision as well as that continued concern about secondary students not being in the classroom as much as we would like for them so again it is about of the time since monday march 23rd they've been out of the classroom so the majority of those days that is my last slide again we we will uh look to make a decision as always i'll reach out to you just in indicating uh thoughts and and direction um we have a meeting on wednesday morning i think we had a hold on that kelly but we
048were trying to get some things finalized for a a a conversation with our local medical professionals again um just to take a look at the data and and also make sure that they were on board with these changes because i i failed to mention that with the stuff here it is important that our bartholomew county health department also review this information and gives us some insight as to to where they might stand and i believe a meeting is coming up for them to digest this information too so we'll continue as we have since last march we'll continue to consult with our local medical professionals and work from there as we make a make a decision for this next next time doctor operations i'm going to go home and let my w child who is in
049middle school know that you are aware of the disparities that she has made for the monday tuesday a couple of times okay so thank you very much for keeping more on that i bet others are doing that gosh darn it those kids are getting out even more than we are yeah based on how they're looking at it but yes we are keeping score the monday tuesday group is falling behind okay i'll just share for future conversation and i and i do respect all the controversy associated but i think it would be interesting that as we're doing our metrics that eventually we start adding the percentage of vaccines happening in our county i mean we've been working i mean we've been it's i'm recalling the conversation about somebody asking us about the number in the hospital
050like because it's the county and bcsc is not the whole county and the intent of that initially was so how healthy are we but then it evolved into it's an issue of can we take care of everyone so so the purpose of that metric kind of evolved and got a little more complex in our conversations so it just occurs to me that i think the percentage of vaccines that are happening in our county is also kind of adding to the complex portrait if you will of how things are going that probably should start to be added we can ask us to what kind of data we have available on that and how we could add it to our conversation what's that kelly okay code and task force is it on the site now it's come
051okay so that is in the works to be on that okay good thank you good great all right that is uh my update all right thank you so much so um next on our official agendas opportunity for public comments and we did not have anyone sign in today so i will move on to an opportunity to share board commendations so i'll ask colleagues if they have commendations they'd like to share yeah dr shan all right guys yes i would like to uh take the time to congratulate a couple of teachers who just received lilly teacher grant creativity opportunities it's a super neat program put on by lilly awarding up to twelve thousand dollars from teachers to you know kind of recharge their batteries if you will over the summer months and hopefully at the same
052time pick up ideas to utilize in the classroom and two from bcsc were recipients uh brooke lanat from ell teacher from schmidt and fadria and the title of hers recharging in chile a linguistic and cultural immersion so brooks plans to spend some time with a host family in chile and develop spanish-speaking skills while learning about vina del mar if i pronounce that correctly and then the other recipient from northside language arts teacher dakota huddleson i personally am very jealous of his opportunity but a writing teacher's written renaissance and dakota plans to travel the u.s by train to spark creativity and rekindle the desire to write for pleasure and teach creative writing in the classroom so a couple of super neat opportunities for uh teachers this summer and i know that's kind of a lengthy somewhat
053tedious process to apply for those so applaud their efforts for you know receiving those awesome very good awesome thank you for sharing those others all right i've got two um i wanted to share that our fabulous eye care program has been reviewed by the 21st century community learning centers which is an element within the indiana department of education and in that evaluation the words were and i'll quote your program was selected as having some of the highest levels of academic achievement in the state with an exclamation point so congratulations to all who work on such an important part of our programs here in bcsc and then i'll secondly i will share that amy dixon and evan burton both at northside have been named as the 2021 outstanding administrators of the year by the indiana council
054for exceptional children so we knew that about them but we're so glad that others have identified their outstanding skills doctor if i could just add one more perhaps if i could add to the group um because i don't think we've mentioned this publicly but our marching bands at columbus north and columbus east uh are are going to begin working together so providing some expanded opportunities for our kids a great idea uh somewhat innovative approach i know there are other school corporations that have done something similar but as opposed to just having a marching band at east and a marching band in north and they may do some of that but they're also going to have a combined effort so increase some numbers increase some opportunities probably help us out a little bit even with competition
055perhaps but a really neat situation that our two band directors have have found a way to get the two schools together and have two bands one sound is is what we have so we're looking forward to that uh that work between the two awesome are there others individuals have all right school board member reports are there reports that individuals have to share okay dr shed yes this isn't necessarily a report but just as a reminder for folks to put on their calendars for the next board meeting on march the 1st we will be having our hall of fame education hall of fame recognition on that evening so just so everybody can jot it down on their calendar right yeah great article in the newspaper i believe yesterday's version of the republic on on susan so
056tremendous thanks kathy and thank you for your work on that committee kathy dr shed i have a couple quick ones please um last week at a couple meetings one i had the pleasure i'm participating in the indiana school boards association new board member academy uh last week we had a meeting on effective governance and board superintendent relations and tomorrow night uh dr roberts be glad to know the topic is uh evaluation of the superintendent um probably yeah and then the other uh meeting last week the school foundation just to remind everybody that the school foundation's virtual trivia night is coming up saturday night the theme share the love so i just want to remind everybody to hopefully get involved with that saturday evening i believe 7 to 8 30. awesome thank you mr grimes i
057appreciate that others no all right i'll just share with individuals as your liaison oh i love this part um there's a lot of conversation among a variety of our educational state associations about there are three different bills that have been presented that increase the amount of funding in our voucher system here in the state of indiana so just again this this afternoon there was a meeting of representatives of those associations all of whom are considering a letter both to members of the general assembly and governor halpum as to so how do you find money to do that when students in our non-public schools are four percent of the students in the state of indiana so we'll watch the progress of that legislation as it goes forward all right it is cabinet report time mr phillips
058i'll cycle ahead there mr phillips there's not a slide on the t8 tax participation one rate right okay that's correct yep good evening thank you i'm going to uh go relatively quickly considering the state of the weather outside i will just note that mrs wilden i think our eighth grader will switch places with yours because if it if there's a snow day tomorrow my h son in eighth grade i think my wife might just drop him off at school anyway just leave him there for the day because she's tired of him being home so that um just a quick update on the each each year we do tax anticipation warrants and in january we find out what that interest rate that we're being charged you'll be happy to know that our interest rate on our
059tax anticipation warrants for this year is 0.63 interest so great time to be borrowing if you haven't refinanced your house do so now personal advice there and then on to the 2020 year-end financial report again you have all of the details in front of you and so if i go too quickly please feel free to stop me or send questions afterwards so that we can get home safely tonight um just an overview of the year end on this is the education fund and um the revenues were a little bit higher than expected mainly because adm was up when that was an anomaly across the state and a surprise to us that adm was up for the fall and we also had some timing issues with some federal aid that we get we go we got
060two deposits from the federal government one in january and one again in december and we usually get one a year so next year with zero but um so some cash flow changes there that are unexpected and then on expenditures expenditures were basically right where we expected to be a little bit less before you take into account transfers from the education fund to the operations fund but just about just about right on there so cash balance up uh quite a bit about 50 over the prior year but again with uh revenues higher than expected that's uh that's exactly what we would expect we have seen as we entered into the fall you know that we did cut positions in anticipation of the state cutting our funding and then they ended up not doing so that wasn't
061until september that we found out that that was the case that they were going to fund us fully since that time and this could have changed since i asked miss heine last week since that time we have hired either full-time permanent teachers permanent substitute teachers or temporary teachers to address the needs in our classrooms from bridge students that are online to just covering classrooms when people are doing other things to um to subbing for someone when they're a close contact situation they have to be out of the room so we have taken some action in that last quarter to uh to really catch up because we probably would have had our expenditures in 2020 would have been a lot less had we not done so and those continue to be the case we're still still
062looking for additional subs and temporary teachers to fill those spots for the second semester on the operations side much different story over on the operations side just a strange year as you would expect revenues were about right where we would expect them to be because i don't ever budget for for any tax cap losses and our losses were expected to be a little bit less um final the final losses to be less than what the state guessed in the fall before but this year we had an unexpected decrease in our last tax distribution we have not shared this information with you yet been working with the county on it you probably read in the last part of last year that the county's lawsuit with hpi or thrive alliance now housing partnerships was went to the
063indiana state supreme court and was final and they are still negotiating but the county didn't want to get stuck with that bill during the 2020 calendar year and not have the money so for the last 10 years or so bcse has collected tax property tax revenues from the county and on those properties that were taxed that hpi owned now that the state supreme court said that those properties were not supposed to be taxed they reduced our tax property tax distribution in december by about five hundred thousand dollars so the county's sitting on that money and has that money ready to pay whenever the final settlement amount is finished with hpi in this year so between the about half a million dollars that um that we were expected to save in tax cap losses that were
064overestimated and the half a million dollar underpayment because the county is keeping that money for the hpi settlement is about a wash there so that was a lot of information just on that one line yes mr the amount that i think you said the county was keeping because of hpi that represents several years worth of taxes across several hpi properties correct and the 500 000 is the sum of it all correct plus interest so uh it's about 12 years but i think that only represents 10 years of it they're still working on the final two years but yeah about 12 years of of taxes on i'm going to say it was it was well over 40 properties maybe closer to even 60. i don't remember the final number some were taxed in some years and
065not others but that was the estimate that the county the biggest hit was to bcsc into the city those are the largest two taxing taxing units from a property tax standpoint so and then on the expenditure side on on operations you can see way under where we would expect to be in a normal year for obvious reasons due to cover we were closed during from the uh didn't have students in buildings anyway from march uh until the end of the school year and so things like fuel and utilities that that we would have normally you know spent at a at a certain level way under what you would expect because of covid but one of the things that was i noticed when i went back through this data we actually had a lot less expenditures
066in people but that and that doesn't make sense because you know that we paid all of our support staff the entire time and kept them engaged as much as possible and even paid a couple more extra dollars per hour if they were coming to work during the spring semester but what ended up happening what was clear is that if we had someone resign which with 1200 1300 support staff members you have people leaving and coming all the coming and going all the time there wasn't a rush to fill that position when we were not open to students for for a period of time and kids weren't coming to the building and so in that in 2020 we had a lot less um people turning over in those positions as there wasn't as high of an
067urgent need to fill those spots and then so as a result of of revenues being where you would expect them and then expenditures being you know 12.4 percent under expected our cash balance in the operations fund is much higher than what it has has been for several years so here's just a graph of that looking at this this year compared to prior years and pretty consistent across the board but then you have that real jump in the operations fund for this year and we do have and and we have some recommendations that we're going to bring to you in a future board meeting for how to gradually draw that cash balance down in the operations fund not to a an unreasonable level but my predecessor used to say our our goal in finance school finance
068is not to cross the finish line with the most money it's to do what you need for kids and and get the buildings taken care of so one of those recommendations we will bring to you is just shifting some of the blue to the yellow so that 1.4 million dollar transfer from rainy day that we did in 2018 we would suggest transferring that back to replenish the rainy day fund to the place that it was there at the high point and then we have um you know 21 buildings with lots of needs with roofs and hvac and so dr bozeman and i have been talking we'll be bringing a plan to you in the next few board meetings for addressing those needs just a little bit at a time over the next few years so
069can i say what's interesting to me now that we talk about staff and i know fuel and i know the buses weren't moving around but um we had so many added things that we had like who was buying hand sanitizer before um so it's just an interesting to me how that balanced out that's a really good point and i did not mention that we have already spent well over i believe a million dollars dr plate could give us more details but the cares act distribution we got a 1.6 million dollars from the first round of cares act federal support the vast majority of that is what we used to spend on ppe so we met those needs through the uh the first round of cares dollars all right does the cares act funding run through
070one of the reports that you gave us before no all these all federal funds with the exception of that one payment for the the impact aid payment for the two townships that contain camp batterbury all of those federal funds are maintained and completely separate from these tax supported funds on the grants and i i did note in my notes to mention that just a reminder this is 2020. so none of this includes any operating referendum dollars yet this is just an overview of our payments to in the debt service fund another one of our tax supported funds up about two million dollars over what we spent in the prior year but there's good reason for that because we spent much less from the other two debt funds again this is the high school renovation referendum
071and remember we refinanced that and at the end of 2017 to take these payment this payment down from this level to this level which is how we could afford to spend more on the regular debt service side and still keep the property tax rate flat here's just a summary of all the tax supported funds and where we stood at the beginning of the year revenues expenditures surplus and deficit and the year-end cash balance pause and take a breath for questions the health and dental funds another important part not tax supported but really a critical part of what we do after five years of really struggling with our health fund we finally have had a positive year we wish the two things wouldn't have occurred at the same time because you know we made a lot
072of plan design changes and and really encouraged um changes in behavior and um and increased our revenue but it was such an unusual year with people not being able to go to the doctor and having those elective procedures done that we don't know how much of this positive year the two point mil 2.2 million dollar positive year in the health fund was due to covid and how much it was due to those changes in our planned design so hopefully during 21 we find out more about that could i just ask just so it's interesting how varied our reserves have been and i understand i've i've been here through all those years but i'm curious what what would be our target do we know do we know what would be our target reserve in health trust
073ours is 40 of expected expenditures so in 21 um i believe we're expected to spend uh six 16.5 million dollars and so somewhere in the neighborhood of um of four to five million dollars would be um the minimum that's the minimum level of where you would consider yourself you know fully funded from a self-insured standpoint okay thank you and then on the dental side dental is going the opposite direction and doing just fine and i do believe the teachers association has some ideas about instead of reducing premiums here or doing a premium holiday maybe increasing some benefits a little bit on this side to spin that down a little bit on the dental side any questions on the financial update that's so all right dr roberts we have not quite the same length we have
074items a through j for your you're sharing the information i think about 10 items here and i will roll through them the the policies are on here again i will not spend much time on those unless you have a specific question and we can we can dig into that particular policy but they are the first reading last meeting so my request for approval includes the minutes of the last port meeting from january 25th a list of supplemental contracts that were provided to you we had no requests for field trips or professional leaves we did have a a couple of school fundraisers that were in your packet from a claims and payroll standpoint we have two today february the eighth that's about a million dollars and then a pre-run that covered the month of january january
075that's a little over or about 9.4 million dollars then we have payroll for january 29th that includes the dates of january 4th january 15th just based on how regular payroll is played and that number is about 2.8 million dollars we also have the second reading of our neola corporation policy update volume 33 number one and these are the policies from revision to the employment of the superintendent of language in there to technical correction with the flex program grammatical error some revisions to student assessments revisions to the publication of the annual performance report revision to staff evaluations specifically in regards to how objective measures might be applied revision to the determination of legal settlement and eligibility for enrollment of students without legal settlement in the corporation this guide into the specifics of even if you are
076a corporation which we aren't if you are a corporation that denies transfers you have to allow certain transfers specifically ones that are kids of your employees we had withdrawal from school technical correction there in terms of just uh grammatical error and the addition of a statutory reference some revisions to suspensions and expulsions of students specifically around making up of work revisions to student employment in that now the work permit is called something different an employment certificate and even the person who's issuing that within the school is going to be called something different animals on school corporation property we revise that policy just to make sure that if we have some animals on property used for certain purposes there's a way to handle that appropriately we have school safety that came through some threat assessment pieces
077and an mou specifically in place for are with community mental health centers we had then revisions to the environmental health and safety specifically around appropriate testing of drinking water which we have accomplished that already we have some additional revisions to child abuse or neglect and having appropriate individuals named school social workers school psychologists who could provide appropriate instruction around those topics revisions to transportation that allows us to expand the use of some of our vehicles already under our ownership revision to religious slash patriotic ceremonies and observances a revision to relations with special interest groups this is where we talked a little about boy scouts the last time and just making sure certain organizations could get into our schools and share their information and those are the policies that we had we then have i'm asking
078for an appointment to the bartholomew county public library board and with that it is dr hack that i am asking you to appoint to that board this is a four-year term angie winike has served in that role for us the last four years and is rolling off and dr hack raised her hand real high so she is now assigned to that i'm asking that you appoint her to that position we have the 2020 appropriation adjustments mr phillips had that information in your packet as well as the final 2020 education to operations fund transfer i think that amount was included in chad's up-to-date 2020 information and then support staff coven 19 stipends this is where back in the fall we ask you to approve a resolution to give a stipend to our certified staff members specifically
079since they were dealing with all kinds of different instructional models so a teacher might be handling uh two even three instructional models at the same time we asked for stipend just to help that additional load of work that we had provided or or that they were taking on well they are not the only ones that had some additional uh stuff added to their plate our support staff has done a tremendous job in managing all the things that we've been doing since uh last march 23rd and up to the day and so we're asking for stipends for them the way that we're doing this is similar to the tag money the teacher appreciation grant that the state gives us dollars and then we assign dollars to teachers but then we also ask you well besides the
080state dollars that we give to teachers let's also give some dollars to recognize our support staff similarly here we wanted to approach it the same way we have some dollars we're going to give to our certified teachers you approve that resolution in the fall what about our support staff so we're asking that you approve stipends for them too and i think that covers my items so i asked for your approval thank you very much i'll entertain a motion to approve items for a through j as they are presented to us so move thank you pat and the second second thank you nikki i appreciate it any particular questions individuals have about a through j yes i probably could have done this by cross-referencing but um after in our packets after the supplemental contracts were a
081couple of tables called hiring blitz and i wondered are those considered supplemental contracts when we approve that agenda item are we approving those stipends were those stipends also in the dockets of yeah are you sure i know which one you're talking about what page was that do you have a on here scrolling was it after the claims of all the individual teachers or staff members period it's right after the supplemental contracts page i love the name hiring blitz so it's in it's in the regular board packet and it is how can i make it say page number okay yeah it's all right i'm looking into the claim material it's in it's in with the board packet looks like we are encouraging people to make referrals to us for new potential new employees dr roberts it's
082the incentive sub incentives yes okay do we need to call those out on the agenda or do they need board approval tonight let's see here so i'm just now finding those we have the yeah so that was the substitute teacher once yeah is that and bus drivers and so forth and we do not have it listed here chad teresa is there a need to have that specifically approved yeah yeah so we have the the stipends in the packet of the substitute teacher ones for recommendations or referrals and then for the individuals who had worked a certain number of days so this goes back to that substitute teacher piece that you had approved to do ahead of time so i'm thinking very quickly do we actually need approval again since those have been approved to do
083prior these are part of the supplementals okay so it was just added to that okay the way the way it's set up and they're separate from the support staff stipends that we're talking about those have not been paid yet thank you see going back on the slide just to see if it is cast that way and maybe it is yep my mistake there so we go back to this slide here mr center teacher subbing for teacher the substitute work today's typing substitute teacher referral stipend yes thank you thank you mr phillips thanks for asking so we've got that quite the additional pages there okay thank you i've lost track do we have a second for a through j oh we do yeah yeah one question that question followed the second questions i was following everything
084i was supposed to do goodness all right any additional questions all right i'll call uh for a vote on items four a through j as they are presented to us all of those who are in favor if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed all right those pass unanimously good thank you you're welcome miss heine i'm requesting approval for the human resource recommendation as presented all right so is there a motion for approval of these human resources recommendations i think we had a whopping one so thank you kathy is there a second second thank you todd are there any questions for miss heine all right so those who are approving the approve of the request for human resources recommendations if you signify by saying i i those opposed thank you unanimously okay all right
085board input and review colleagues to share their thoughts reflections after tonight's meeting or just about anything else todd anything no it's just it's been kind of an overwhelming learning experience three meetings in yeah just to stay on top of all the legislation and i mean just i don't know intimidating amount of emails each day it could i could see how this could turn into a full-time job easily but yeah yeah so yeah it's been uh a great learning experience and looking forward to learning more good i hope you keep that positive turn towards all the emails thank you anything nikki mine is just a maybe a personal thing i um i work in the community and i've been very focused on contract negotiations for a local labor union over the last three weeks we got
086a positive outcome yesterday that was a big deal for us but it was a three week process and when i went into it i thought how could this possibly take three weeks i am an executor by nature i like to kind of check things off my list and i thought there's no way and at the end of three weeks i looked back and i thought oh my gosh three weeks just went by and and in the process though it's not meant to be efficient it was my reminder okay this is my reminder moment we've gotten so used to executing and thinking on the fly and having to do things differently just because that's what we've all had to do it was my reminder that sometimes things take take a while there's value in that process
087of two teams coming together to get to a right answer and i don't know it's my own personal moment of spring the groundhog stuck its head above and i've decided to stay out i'm i'm a little renewed by my experience over the last three weeks looking forward to maybe slowing down and getting back to to life as normal so anyway random thoughts great great kathy nothing for me tonight all right rich well i'm thankful that we have the the right staff in place to wrestle with all of the kovid 19 challenges that we're facing we continue to face just when you think you're you know all those slopes are moving in the right direction uh something different happens and then i'm also thankful dr shed that you're reflecting on what mr grimes said i'm thankful
088that you're our board liaison for state legislative actions thanks and i noticed in one of the emails today that tomorrow is state house day for education and the state school board association so i wish you well on that one okay thank you thank you nothing for me tonight all right pat i just want to say thank you for all those people that uh remember what february 3rd was all about a friend of mine notified me at 3am reference to it so thank you for those of you that did it after 5. i appreciate that i think we went to after 5am didn't we well why don't you got real close but i want you to that person was but thank you anyway mr bryant had a birthday last week so yeah yeah yeah i don't
089know though oh you want me to gamble out i can't do that yeah mr phillips mentioned something about snow being out there yes all right all right so let i do want to just say one more thing um i i want i appreciate and i respect very much that we have had a number of high school seniors take it upon themselves to share with us their reflections about being in school or not and a general reminder to all of us that we are in the business for them i've read what they had to share it was all very very thoughtful um asked us to be mindful of their associate on emotional and well-being needs as well as the quality of their learning one was very and in fact i was referring to it as we
090were having this conversation very explicit in offering us some important cdc statistics and with respect to schools and age groups and the variants about covid so i want to thank the students and remind all of us that they're the reason that we're making any of these decisions um and they were deeply in support of getting back to high school full-time so i respect that and i want to thank them for taking the time to write to us dr roberts yeah before you adjourned i i had to close the meeting on a sad note but uh we did lose a valued educator within the community uh last week uh helen heckman principal of saint bartholomew has passed away and so our our thoughts and prayers certainly with the same bartholomew's church and school family as they
091mourn that that very tough loss so just wanted to make sure that we acknowledged that passing yes thank you very much all right as kathy has reminded us our next school board meeting is march in addition to doing all the great fun things that we do we will also be recognizing susan scott as our education hall of fame winner it's march 1st 6 30 here in the terrace room i'm sure will also be on our media so thank you all for who are attending virtually and for those who came out in this snow this meeting is adjourned thank you