001okay we will bring this uh meeting to order this evening the regular school board meeting um our mission statement here at center grove is we develop knowledgeable confident and responsible citizens through inspirational and innovative learning opportunities if you all stand in your own homes wherever we will have the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay before we get going tonight i need to read a statement here because things are a little different because this evening's board meeting is being held virtually we will be using the webinar features in zoom to facilitate public feedback specifically the q a feature if you have a comment please type
002in the q a box your name address the action item to which you would like to comment and then your comment as we do in in-person board meetings we will take the first five comments that are related to an action item i will then share those comments during the public comment section of the meeting just to clarify your comments need to be in the form of a statement so let's move on to action or adoption of the agenda do i have any comment on that from board members mr president mr president i move that we adopt the agenda as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second was that mr daniels yes thank you now because of virtual meeting we go through a roll call so i'll start with mr alexander hi mr
003daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard i and myself motion passes five zero we adopted the agenda let's move on down now to action items our first action item this evening is the first reading of proposed policy revisions mr dr arkanov who are we going to give that to um mr president you know what we skipped over something thank you mrs parker's right on it uh i apologize to everyone let's back up to the consent items number five do i have any discussion on our consent items any questions no see you now here's none there i need a motion mr president i move that we accept the consent agenda as presented thank you and we will have a roll call i'm sorry do i have a second i'll second thank you mrs counts so
004first by mr alexander second by mrs counts now do roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye mr hubbard hi and myself 5-0 motion passes thank you for reminding us of the consent items now we will move down to the action items we have the first reading of the proposed policy revisions thank you mr russell uh this evening um the board will uh take no action this is just a first reading on some revisions to and editions of some board policies uh as they're presented in your packet much of these policies have been revised mostly around the impact of the pandemic over the last two years and some of the actions that the boards have had to take it primarily with electronic meetings and so forth so with that um i just
005present those to you for your review and questions so i will open the floor for questions and comments and discussion about these items this evening but no action is required tonight any questions or discussion rich do we do did we solidify the process in which once we approve these at the next board meeting that the appropriate online updates will be made yes we do yes thank you anyone else and and i will clarify for example the bylaws the new bylaws around electronic meetings those are outside of a public health emergency they do not pertain to a public health emergency okay thank you dr arkanov our next action item is 6.2 approved statement of benefits and compensation thank you mr russell this evening um i'm recommending that the board approve the updates and statement of benefits
006and compensation for non-teaching staff and this evening mr taylor will provide you with an update on that and some information for your review yes thank you dr arkanov um this is something we typically do in the month of october after we've been able to settle and negotiate a teacher contract many of these changes will align with what the board approves for the teaching staff at the last meeting but we do update all these documents you'll see it's updated to reflect the staffing changes that we've had in the past year it includes the rays and the changes to benefits that we have this year again updating names in the directories of each of these we did take a look at our year-round employees and so we had a discrepancy in our holidays versus our peer schools
007and as we've added both martin luther king and presidents day is full holidays now for the school we took advantage of adding a couple holidays for the year around employees we did add some language to clarify um how to how and how not to use lost time during an e-learning day for some staff updated again some more staffing changes and names updated and changed some of the sro the school resource officer compensation based off their years of experiences added those positions that we've talked about of police lieutenant and safety and security integration specialist and we updated a 15-day waiting period we made a change for our long-term subs to waive that 15-day period moving forward typically they're paid at a lower rate and then they go up these are subs who typically have an emergency
008license or a full teaching license and are helping us out i think that's it all of the summary there is on one page i do want to point out that on some of these like the insurance change when we talk about a 12 increase that does not equate to the percentage increase we we provided in the staff raise this year 12 of our employees premium is far less than um the seven and eight percent increases that we did give earlier this school year um it obviously varies on annual earnings um but the the most are uh our plans went up or 40 and that was for our highest health plan and some of them were as low as five dollars per month um whereas the hopefully the salary increases were closer to uh you know
009100 or so for even the the lowest earner in our district and for some folks their monthly might have went up by um four or five hundred and it just kind of depends on how much they make so those two percentages don't equate i just want to be clear on that for some folks um and just let you know anything else mr taylor no i think that's all thank you i'd welcome any questions you may have any questions from the board and sorry i just caught this i didn't i didn't catch this when we were when i was reading this prior to the meeting jason we added a position of lieutenant do we have someone in that in that role we did promote from within yeah it's just an additional compensation we didn't actually have
010an office jason beck is doing that mr alexander oh okay awesome sorry i should have asked that no no it's fine we're really happy to have mr back doing that yes sir anyone else i just want to say congratulations to jason um he's a good guy he was in case you guys don't know who he was he was our last board meeting there with us so he uh he's a good guy congratulations okay do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the revised statement of benefits and compensation as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second call a second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander i mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard i and myself motion passes five zero thank you everyone thank you
011for the hard work on teacher compensation and other compensation thank you jason our next uh agenda item approved certified staff handbook 6.3 thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the certified staff handbook and mr taylor will provide you with some additional information thank you dr arkanov this handbook applies to our teaching staff and some of our administrative staff minor changes this year we had to make some changes to clarify updated snla language we did add a section on military leave to clarify we've actually got a couple of active service um folks or they're in reserves but they're being called back and forth for service and so we wanted to clarify some of that and then we updated our workman's comp uh benefit that's actually switching providers and so we
012had some addresses and names we needed to update um but other than that those are just the three changes this year thank you mr taylor any questions for mr taylor i think this is the fewest changes i've ever seen jason job okay do i have a motion for approving the certified staff handbook mr president i move that we approve the certified staff handbook as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second is that mr daniels yes thank you roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard aye and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you the next item of business is to approve support staff handbook mr dr thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the support handbook the changes to that and
013again mr taylor will provide you with some updated information on it thank you a few more changes here this covers obviously the about half of our employee employee group so um added a lot of new positions and titles things that have been approved on various personnel reports over the past year added some language to help folks out during inclement weather and emergency closing time where they could actually have work from home option approved by the supervisor same thing on those closures uh same fml language we did in the certified we did give a little more flexibility on funeral leave there was a clause that would be three days beyond such death we went ahead and extended that so folks have more flexibility the military leave language is identical to what we did in the certified
014staff handbook clarified some paternity leave language under fmla again talked a little bit about the sro experience incentive we've got that in here for some other some other positions and then finally the changes for workman's comp that we talked about just a moment ago so a few more cells but not just about the same amount of changes thank you mr taylor any questions for mr taylor i'm glad to see that uh you know we we all love mrs toomey and the service that she provided but i'm glad to see we updated to acknowledge mrs counts as uh as our new board member that you just that's good any other thoughts or questions i do appreciate you worked a little bit more on uh support staff having other ways of checking in for work on emergency
015days because i know that was an issue they were concerned about we've got a lot of folks that are able and willing to work remotely during those situations real helpful well they're very dedicated and this this helps them stay that way okay do i have a motion on approved support staff handbook mr president i move that we approve the support staff handbook as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second a second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander scott mr alexander are you still with us you're going you're muted listen you're muted there there you go mr ben all right mrs capps i and mr hubbard and myself 5-0 it passes thank you everyone our next thing is resolution to appoint board of directors for building corporations and i assume that's
016to you dr arkanov thank you this evening i'm recommending that the board approve a resolution adopting board of directors for the building corporations and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information on this item thank you we use building corporations to assist in the financing of our school construction projects this is a very common practice in the state of indiana and currently we have three different building corporations each of these has a board of directors that is appointed by this school board and normally these directors serve for the life of the bonds which finance the projects which is typically 20 years and since this these these uh building corporations don't meet typically this causes problems for us when we need to contact someone that may have moved as a result we'd like to uh
017establish the same three people board members for the three building corporations that we have those people are lisa porre uh brandon ferguson and jennifer rachael and and we've talked with them they're all obviously active in the community and and willing to do this so the resolution that you have in front of you accomplishes this change we've been working with our attorney jeff walkenbush to prepare this resolution and we're asking for the board approval this evening thank you dr gabriel any questions for dr gabriel do i have a motion on this to appoint board of directors for building corporations mr president go ahead go ahead amy i move that we approve the resolution appointing the board of directors for building corporations thank you mrs counts mrs counts if you would uh look and see where you
018can turn your camera on my camera's on okay mrs counts was the first mr alexander was the second this time roll call mr alexander aye mr daniels aye mr scouts i and mr hubbard and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you our next order of business is to approve the 2022 budget and the resolutions and dr arkanov thank you this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the 2022 budgets for all funds and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information this last meeting uh in in september we had a presentation on the budget uh since that time there have been no questions or issues raised and no changes made the presentation is here but i don't see the need to go through it again since it was presented a month ago so at this
019at this point we are asking the board to adopt the budget as presented along with the resolutions that are included thank you dr gabriel any questions for dr gabriel on the budget uh dr gabriel do we have a more updated student count at this point that we had a month ago we do um we know that the final count is going to be uh 9071 which is less than uh we anticipated a month ago so but we do have that final number now yes and what did we anticipate a month ago yeah that was my question well the budget was built on 911 and last month we were [Music] we were expecting it to be about 90 80. it turned out to be 90 71. do you think that the uh the lower head count
020i mean it's not significantly lower it's just a few a few here or there but do you think that's going to have any impact of us being able to satisfy this budget uh we're gonna we're gonna have to take a look at making some minor adjustments but but i don't anticipate anything big and um we're still waiting on our final uh head count for vocational education which generates a lot of revenue for us so that's a big unknown that we don't know yet basically the way the state operates we pretty much have to adopt the budget as it was presented and then make adjustments after it's been approved by the state so i would anticipate we'll be making some minor adjustments in january and february after the budget has been approved but being down by
021nine kids you don't think is going to have a significant impact though is what you're saying it may just be a couple minor adjustments that's my hope yes okay thank you any other questions for dr gabriel do i have a motion for the budget mr president i move that we approve that 2022 budgets for all funds that's presented along with the following resolutions resolution to adopt the 2022 capital projects fund plan resolution is to adopt the 2022 bus replacement plan resolutions for appropriations and tax rates resolutions for blanket appropriation modification resolution to transfer amounts from education fund to the operations fund thank you mr alexander do i have a second i'll second thank you mrs counts roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi mrs counts aye and mr hubbard and myself motion passes 5-0
022thank you everyone thank you dr gabriel's very happy right now yes thank you very much i didn't ask this when does this have to be submitted to the state by we have we have five business days after it's approved tonight to get this submitted to the state okay thank you so board members need to find a way to sign these resolutions because they want you know live signatures on solutions as that we turn in breakfast in the morning i will stop and do that once once i'm headed north we've made everyone aware of that where it will be ready to sign in the morning our next order of business is the 1028 preliminary determination hearing and resolutions cpf maintenance elementary school and other miscellaneous thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the
023board approve the revolut resolutions approving the issuance of bonds on the appropriations for the following bonds and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information this is a hearing i believe mr russell has to read a statement you're muted miss russell mr russell you're still muted there it goes okay did you hear what uh dr arkanov said earlier just a while ago yes this evening's board meeting has been approved appropriately advertised as a consolidation uh 1028 preliminary determination prior to selling bonds to finance the pleasant grove elementary renovations and miscellaneous projects facility improvements equipment and land improvements i will turn it over to mr russell to begin the week thank you doctor i would like to call on dr gabriel to make a presentation about projects the financing of the projects and actions we
024are taking this evening so at this time dr uh gabriel yes there are two series of bonds uh where we we quit we are having this 10 20 hearing on this evening uh series 20 21 a and 121 b and the amount of 5 million 575 000 uh in each series the first bond series speaks to our need for maintenance projects and technology projects we've been issuing bonds to support these this area of the budget for a number of years we typically pay these bonds off in two years so that when we issue these bonds we add new bonds in this year and the bonds from two years ago [Music] fall off and mrs parker if you can display the slides instead of the memo as i refer to them please um the process of
025developing the budget mr taylor and dr long to talk with principals and central office departments to plan for the coming year and uh the results of that analysis is a list of specific projects to be funded in 2022 on slide two you see the maintenance projects to be funded by this series of bonds and on slide three you see the technology projects to be funded by these this series the second series uh 2021 b this year we are selling a second series to allow us to catch up on some of our miscellaneous building and construction needs the largest the largest items to be accomplished are the completion of the pleasant grove renovation project and improvements to the high school entrance on pennington lane and you can see on slide four a list of these projects
026in the 2022 be 2021 b bonds the chart on slide 5 shows the total school tax rate and the debt service fund tax rate for a 13-year period once again our tax rate will be less in 2022 than it was in 2009 tax impact of these bonds should be considered as part of the total tax rate the total tax rate for next year will go up by eight tenths of one cent compared to 2021 our projection is that the school tax bill would increase by about six dollars for a home valued at three hundred thousand dollars the 2022 debt service tax rate is expected to increase by 2.12 cents compared to last year and this increase includes the cost of paying back all of these projects discussed as well as the middle school renovations projects
027that were discussed at the last board meeting and we're pleased that we've been able to maintain a relatively low tax rate for the district and you've seen these slides uh on slide six and slide seven that that show the ten year tax rate and also our comparison of uh how we our tax rate compares with the other school districts in the county so that concludes the uh comments that i'd like to make i'll turn the hearing back over to mr russell thank you dr gabriel uh i do want to remind people that if you have a comment please type in the q a box your name your address and the action item which would be this hearing at the moment to which you would like to comment and type in your comment of course remember
028it needs to be in the form of a statement so now this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the information presented this evening are there members of the public present or have put something in q a dr archdolf do we have anything in q a all right let's see bear with us please give everybody a little bit of time let's see uh stacy do you see anything we want to make sure if we have any says she does not see anything in the public regarding the hearing it does not appear to be anything in the q a that is regarding to the hearing at this time so we will move forward i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions are
029we still getting pretty favorable interest rates dr gabriel from the bond bank uh yes we are we would anticipate um these to be around two percent interest we've projected them based on on a little bit higher than that but hope they'll come in around two dr gabriel in comparison just for my own kind of edification what what's the range of typical bonds rates that we'd expect to see for this type of project yeah if you're asking about the rate um and it depends on you know the rate for a bond depends on how big it is and how long it is and you know these are relatively small and they're relatively short and that's that's why we are uh and anticipating something in the range of about two percent um i guess i i i
030can ask it differently i apologize maybe it was maybe i wasn't clear scott askapoo was a favorable rate and you said yes so what what's the basis for saying it's a favorable rate i'm not sure what you're asking mr daniels um you know historically what would what would an unfavorable rate be i would say something above three or four which we have for many years we've we have developed our budgets based upon four and five but as i think people are aware right now interest rates are very low very low and you know we we benefit from that in in not paying very much interest so moving forward now you believe we're going to get a favorable rate as opposed to delaying this and moving forward some later date because the rates are in such
031a good position oh yes i want i'd like to get these sold as quickly as we possibly can and that's what i was trying to get i appreciate that thank you any other questions for dr gabriel so i now may i have a motion to approve the 1028 preliminary determination resolutions presented this evening let's go back to closing here are there any questions oh i'm sorry yeah you're right i was right i was right you're wrong anyway i now may i have a motion to approve the 1028 preliminary determination resolutions presented this evening mr president i move that we approve the resolutions approving the issuance of bonds for the projects presented and the resolutions are proving additional appropriations for these bonds thank you mr alexander do i have a second i'll second as long as
032i don't have to repeat that entire statement thank you this one was a tough one rob a lot of words to wrap that tongue around okay mr alexander roll call mr daniels hi this is counts hi mr hubbard hi and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you everyone thank you for your patience and getting through that it's just a little different tonight so our next order of business is to authorize additional appropriations and this again is another hearing thank you thank you doctor yeah thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending the board approve additional appropriations and um this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as an additional appropriation hearing and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information once you open up the hearing thank you doctor so i would like to
033call on dr gabriel to provide information about the additional appropriations dr arkanov yes you see on the screen the amounts that we're asking to be appropriated uh in the operations fund we're asking for 350 000 an additional appropriation this will pay the staff raises of seven percent uh for the last six months of 2021. um and then in the education fund a number of different items um we need to budget about a hundred thousand dollars to pay the stipend to the non-teaching employees that will match the teacher appreciation grant which goes to teachers money for the teachers will be received from the state uh sometime late this year however we need an appropriate appropriation to cover the non-teaching staff and this is just an estimate as we don't know at this point the amount of
034the teacher appreciation grant but we're just going based upon previous years in the education fund we need to appropriate a million four hundred seventy thousand dollars which pays the staff raises of of seven percent or eight percent for the last six months of 2021. and we need uh to appropriate 260 thousand dollars to pay for the new staff that were hired at the beginning of the 2021 school year as part of the budget that was just approved this includes a net increase of six teaching positions three classroom aids an aquatics director and a behavior coach those are the new positions in the budget that total is a million eight hundred and thirty thousand in the education fund money for this additional appropriation will come from a cash balance combination of cash balance and new formula
035revenue that we will receive in the second half of 2021. uh there's a resolution attached that authorizes this additional appropriation and that is a resolution and a format that's prescribed by the dlgf and uh that concludes the information i would like to present i'll turn the hearing back to mr russell thank you dr gabriel and just to remind everyone if you have a comment to make put it in the q a section putting down your name and your address first and then your comment in the form of a statement so we'll give it just a little time here is there not yet okay this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the additional appropriations or the information presented this evening so do we have any members of the public that
036have made any comments stacey stacy do you see stacey do you see any comments from anyone concerning this hearing no but we might want to give it a second okay be patient everyone can't go on still nothing okay thank you mrs conrad so let's move on this is the appropriate timer okay we said that already i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions to dr gabriel well you did a good presentation dr gabriel no questions thank you so i need a motion if there are no comments from anyone mr president i move that we approve the resolution authorizing the additional appropriations presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second second mr daniels thank you roll call mr alexander hi mr daniels hi this is
037counts aye and mr hubbard hi and myself motion passes five zero thank you everyone good job everyone getting through two hearings virtually and our last order of business is the resolution to authorize transfer from education fund thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board adapt the resolution authorizing transfer from the education fund to the operation fund and dr gabriel will provide you with some additional information yes as has been previously stated we gave raises of seven percent to our support staff this year and these raises are largely funded by additional dollars that come to us through the funding formula and that money comes into the education fund so in order to to to fund the support staff raises in the operations fund we need to transfer some of this formula money
038into the operations fund so this resolution accomplishes this transfer in the three months of october november and december and it is in the amount of 350 000 which is the amount that we just appropriated to expend on this amount but we do need a separate resolution to to make the transfer and we'll request the board approval this evening thank you dr gabriel any questions to dr gabriel on this this is something we do every year right we we do um we we do a transfer every month but this is an additional amount because of the size of the rays we've not done this uh this particular transfer in the past okay do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the resolution to transfer an additional amount of 350 000 from the
039education fund to the operations fund thank you mr alexander do i have a second go ahead go ahead mrs counts that's okay rob you got it all right mr daniels roll call mr alexander mr daniels hi mrs counts hi and mr hubbard and myself motion passes 5-0 thank you everyone okay before you want to do this now or after i'm sure i can go ahead um just want to remind everyone i'm not going to do that at any time but i just want to remind everyone that we have uh announced today that we'll be going back to uh mask optional on starting on monday so everyone should receive the information via email so please look for that return school plan and that the changes in their plan so pretty excited thank you to the johnson
040county health department dr paul's working with us to be able to do that and the other school districts as well in the county so i'm looking forward to getting that going and hopefully we're one step closer to a better situation so thank you mrs thank you dr austinoff uh so it appears in public comments that we have one you ready okay okay yeah this is from william collins 3865 new battle lane bargersville his agenda item is benefits and compensation his comment is mr collins states that he has a simple question for the school board and administrators he asks how much they value center grove teachers and support staff he states that he has heard the fancy talk of union reps praising mr daniels for bringing the magic and the money and the superintendent boasting of
041a big pay raise averaging of about eight percent he claims that amount was only 5.85 and that the district has failed to mention the insurance premium increase of 12.7 percent mr taylor clarified this information earlier furthermore mr collins states that he believes most of the school districts other support staff like bus drivers special education assistants and instructional assistants and many others are not offered medical benefits and claims peers in neighboring districts like clark pleasant are all offered these benefits and their teachers just received pay increases of five thousand and an additional three thousand five hundred per semester two thousand per semester stipend for teachers that substitute teach in class during their prep period he states that it is no wonder that the district keeps losing more qualified teachers to neighboring districts he asks that while
042the district makes plans to spend 30 million dollars on renovations to middle school central and has spent 34 million dollars on a pool which he says is a very nice pool but he believes the district had a perfectly good pool already mr collins also states that the district also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on copiers but ask how much the district teachers and support staff are worth he states that he has several years of management experience in the public sector and has learned a few important things he states that one of the most important things he has learned is simply that quote if you want to recruit and retain the best you must be prepared to pay your people what they are worth he states that he thinks center grove can do much better
043in quote that is our only public comment uh this evening and now we have uh just a few announcements our next uh meeting is november 18th executive session 6 pm at the it center as usual and uh november 18th after that will be the regular board meeting 7pm at the uh admin boardroom any comments from board members real quick jack i i just have one comment um as it relates to the uh eight and seven percent raises for the teachers and for the staff i wasn't able to attend the second meeting at which that was approved i had a business meeting conflict um the fact that i wasn't there isn't a uh a sign of of any lack of appreciation for the efforts of one state legislature for appropriating additional funds which allowed us to
044pay more to the union three the admin and then all others involved because i think you know through that process we were able to do something that that hopefully will will benefit the the school corporation and and our very valued employees going forward um so i i don't want anyone to think that me not being there monday morning uh last month was any sign of anything other than just a unavoidable conflict on my on my day job schedule so that that's all i have jack thank you mr daniels i would like to say appreciation to everyone for this evening going virtual is obviously means a lot of technology changes quickly so we appreciate everyone attending and just appreciate your patience with it all thank you everyone thank you everybody good night