001the board meeting of center grove will come to order now our mission statement here at center grove is we develop knowledgeable confident and responsible citizens through inspirational and innovative learning opportunities if we all stand so we can do the pledge please 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 our first order of business is the adoption of the agenda do i have a motion mr president i move we adopt the agenda as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second second thank you mr hubbard all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 our next order of business is public comments regarding agenda items
002so it appears no one's put signed up for public speaking we're gonna do this that's up to you mr president okay listen up participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to preface their comments by an announcement of their name address group affiliation if and when appropriate each statement made by participants shall be limited to three minutes duration and may only speak once all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no person may address or question board members individually the presiding officer may prohibit public comments which are frivolous repetitive or harassing interpret warn or terminate a person's statement when the statement is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant request an individual to leave the meeting when the person behaves in a manner that is disruptive of the orderly
003conduct of the meeting request the assistance of law enforcement officers in the removal of a disorderly person when that person's behavior interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting call for a recess or an adjournment to another time when the lack of public decorum so interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting as to warrant such action waive these rules with the approval of the board when necessary for the protection of privacy or the administration of the board's business the portion of the meeting during which the participation of the public is invited shall be limited to 15 minutes and right now we have more than 15 minutes worth of speakers just to let you know so i will start down the the order our first one is jerry hornberg or brick or hornbeck okay if
004you will step up to the mic here please and sir when you come up would you state your address for us we need that up for the rest sure thank you jerry hornback 1203 east stone shore drive greenwood thank you i'm sorry ready yes good evening my name is jerry hornback the center grove school board was elected by this community to create and implement district policy the voters of this community trusted you to put their children's education first and you betrayed them again and again you've been trained to trust the parents taxpayers and our children and here's a short list of examples we found the last few weeks you hired an sel counselor who based on our social media comments clearly supports crt ideology you've allowed crt curriculum to be taught in one of the
005assignments called education racism today given to the center grove high school in july july 18th in a u.s history class you allow doors and windows lesson plan to be given which has direct connotations redux connections to crt as well as a panorama survey which was funded by facebook used to track students actions for future use you protected you you and your staff by not allowing parents to be in the same classroom as the audit was being taught your typical response is that you have to protect the student's privacy which contradicts your security cameras all you're doing is hiding behind your policy to protect yourself besides the parents would not want to be there to honor other students we want to be able to audit your staff what's being taught in lesson plans you also also
006have accepted federal funds to teach scl and also undertones of crt now you're in a corner you cash the check from the government support crt and scl but now you have taxpayers and parents that are uproar about your poor decisions the teachers unions have also stated in their last yearly conference they'll continue to push crt and scl ideology so this indicates that you are also being influenced by teachers you need to push these racist policies and programs you're now being a pawn of the woke class and being your useful eddy sex to get their plans and just to clarify we're not disputing supporting kids on individual traumatic events such as suicide divorce death personal injury we all agree on it that's not even the topic but yet you push seo like it's a crisis and
007it is not all you've shown is data that is one sided supporting your hidden agenda critical race theory so i've got a you have another thank you i've got a list of terms that are disguised as crt um and what i want to do is for the parents if you're watching a listing be aware of these terms and make sure your children are wearing these various names that are cover-ups for crt they're used to disguise crt and these names change all the time and this is just a small partial list and most importantly tell your kids if they hear any of these words to tell you immediately then report them to the attorney general's office the toddler cuter for evidence of allergy ideology here's a list it's a partial list action civics social emotional learning
008diversity equity and inclusion culturally responsive teaching abolition teaching anti-racism anti-bias training anti-blackness anti-mediocracy obtuse mediocracy centering for de centering or de-centering collective guilt colorism conscious or unconscious bias critical ethics studies critical pedagogy critical self-awareness critical self-reflection cultural awareness cultural competence the list goes on and on that's what one third of the list [Applause] our next speaker cara cecil and thank you caleb our next speaker then is colin i don't know are you going to do it now kelly you tell me go ahead kelly's sponsor 4763 brockton ridge court barkersville ready it must feel like you are getting feedback from all ends of the spectrum right now but all you have to do is walk into any building in this district to see where the majority of our community lands on covid between 70 and 80
009of our students represent the families who are choosing not to wear masks not because they're selfish not because they're anti-science but because they believe that in life there is acceptable risk how can i stand here having lost two friends to covet and call it an acceptable risk because the one bright light in the midst of this pandemic is that healthy children recover incredibly well from this virus and that's not a hope or a hunch it's scientific fact did you know that we have had 2500 positive pediatric coveted cases in johnson county and we have not lost one child in fact out of those positive cases there have been only 15 hospitalizations typically only seen in children with pre-existing conditions and all of them made a complete recovery i initially had trouble finding our local stats
010on the indiana dashboard so i reached out to the johnson county health department alarmingly they had no idea how many children had been hospitalized with covid how does a county health department not know that because it's not relevant to them they are simply regurgitating the guidance handed down to them through the government chain of command maybe it's time for us to ask some questions before we follow that guidance and not questions like will we be punished if we don't but questions like what data do you have to support that why are we taking unmitigated measures to protect our kids from something that we know with almost 100 certainty they will recover from we don't do that in any other area of life car accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers but we have
011a parking lot full of cars driven by kids across the street every day could we lose one we have my brother was a junior at center grove when we lost him in a car accident but i'm not going to let this keep me from taking my 16 year old to get her license in three weeks because i don't make my decisions based on fear acceptable risk life is full of it if the state and local health departments won't acknowledge what we can see with our own eyes we can't make them but we can acknowledge it when 10 different experts tell you 10 different things you have no choice but to look at the data for yourselves we elected you to be a bridge between bureaucracy and our kids unprecedented times call for unprecedented leadership and
012that's what we're asking for some of you have stepped up to do just that with respect some of you rely far too much on bureaucratic guidance and not enough on good old-fashioned sense i am asking each one of you to put the mental emotional and academic well-being of our kids above your fear of retribution from the government that's why we elected you okay our next speaker is colin garlick i'm impressed that's rare many years of kids names in classrooms 462 ridge road greenwood indiana obviously um i won't waste much time here but uh i know you guys are probably in an impossible position in a lot of everything that's going on right now uh i want to acknowledge that it's got to be very tough you guys are probably pulled in thousands of different directions
013and i respect it but i think the time now is to stand up the time is now to stand up against all this and i have a very hard but easy solution the answer is no no to critical race theory in any form just know period we're done no to any social emotional learning i mean it we're done no none of it no mass mandate of any kind at any time and any place on any part of your property the answer is no parental decision of course they can kids can do what they want and no vaccine mandate just no absolutely no vaccine mandate we know it's coming no medical apartheid no so either say no to all of this at once and make it easy on yourself make it easy for us say no
014to all of it or just be done with it please and just say yes to all of it so we can move on so as i see it i was here last time mr hubbard based on your lines of questioning and your deeper understanding clearly of the issues i think should be the example of how this board proceeds forward it's time to ask deep questions in my opinion just say no and i beg you and you stand up for liberty be resolute this is the time this is our martin luther king moment to say no i yield the rest of my time state your name and address please bill collins 3865 new battling bargersville since johnson county didn't know any statistics i actually looked up a couple took less than five minutes actually maybe because
015i'm an analyst by trade i work with scientists and engineers every day maybe johnson county health department might want to talk to some a couple interesting statistics i did a quick google search of some of the leading causes of child death number one cause pneumonia with 800 000 children dying every year uh simple diarrhea with 480 a year malaria while not a big issue in center grove 274 000 a year tuberculosis 600 a day that's 219 a year the common flu something that has had a vaccine for longer than i've been alive um 56 000 a year while so far this year we've had 14 128 as of the 17th of this month which is about 2 000 a month on trend at this rate 24 000 covid deaths of children a year while granted
016i have three children one is too many but that's still far less than the common flu um you know we're panicking over covid meanwhile diarrhea kills far more and when was the last time you required kids to wear diapers just to go to school it's it's insane another statistic for you guys when my daughter was two she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has a her type of leukemia had a mortality rate of 20 percent if you're going to have cancer that's really the kind you want because that has an 80 cure rate she went through two years of chemotherapy where she had no immune system i could have a runny nose she got hospitalized for a month she could have died at any moment we would hear weeping families down the hall constantly
017and seeing the covered gurneys being wheeled out almost daily thank you somehow my daughter survived we never shut the city down shut the world down we never required our family and friends to mask up and wear gloves and require everyone in the school to e-learn we just asked when you came into our home wash your hands here's some sanitizer and then we bleached before and after they came we took control of our family we made the decision for what was best for our children and i ask you guys to do the same and i ask you guys to not hold anyone else to a different standard than what i did for my own daughter that had a much higher chance of dying than anyone from kovid thank you [Applause] our next and last speaker will
018be uh i don't know if you put your last name first the first name janice walt it is walt janus gotcha name please i put it on the sheet there is it oh could you say it we can't read the numbers there it's uh 392. okay okay 392. right you talk about privacy a lot and in this age of wokeness and cancer culture some of us might be worried to get our names and addresses out there because we don't know who's watching this and may decide to visit our homes so um you know you talk about privacy for our kids you know these are our classes we're paying for them we're paying for the teachers to be there and we're sending our kids there um the question of privacy is one that i think is
019is uh disingenuous we should know what's going on and we need to have i mean if we can have police officers with body cams there's no reason why we can't make up the teachers and if nothing else just simply have an audio of what's going on in the class and if the picture and the camera is only trained on her desk that'd be fine too or his desk for that matter um there's um there's a question of how dangerous covet is for kids there's i was told there's about 9 000 people 9 000 students going to our schools here statistically speaking if every single one got covered every single one would survive um i didn't really prepare my statements as well as some of the other people here i just came came in here with
020some ideas um as for sel and crt we really need to worry about what's important to teach our kids and that's math reading science i mean real science not the woke stuff [Music] we need we need to really focus in on making sure our kids know how to think and not what to think there was a teacher in utah this past week i hear some laughter i guess you guys know about this did you hear that person got fired um that happened just a matter of a couple days she was teaching or promoting some very leftist views and we're told here in center grove we can't fire someone just as quickly we're doing something similar and we're not allowed to even discuss it because those matters are private well these are these are our public
021buildings these are our public schools we should be able to know what's happening we should also demand that our kids are being taught you know how to think not what to think and we need to also make sure that we don't indoctrinate them into certain ideologies that the parents would never even dream of trying to teach them we need to make sure our kids are learning to love our country and not hate our neighbors and that's all i got really so 30 seconds left [Applause] thank you all our next order of business is the consent items do i have any questions on them from the board members do i have a motion mr president and i move that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you do i have a second second thank you
022mr daniels all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 we move on to our action items luckily tonight we only have one but it does involve a hearing so dr arkanov thank you mr russell um this evening is a hearing to prior to selling bonds uh for the financing of middle school building projects and i'm going to turn this uh hearing over to mr russell to run so i'm sorry i now open this public hearing i would like to turn it back over to dr arkanov to introduce the presentation about the project the financing of the project and the actions we are taking this evening thank you i appreciate that uh mr russell i know it's kind of funny the way we do this but we have to do it
023by law um so with that before we get started on this um i think mrs hoover or dr hoover was going to introduce somebody after the personnel report and i didn't want steel or thunder so if you don't mind well one quick introduction then we'll do this while she's coming up uh i neglected to to tell you that we recessed the exec meeting we will be reconvening our executive meeting after this board meeting thank you um i am so proud to be here tonight to be able to introduce two additions to our center grove administrative team um our director of special ed ali chance let us know she'd be leaving at the end of july and this is one of the hardest positions to find in the state of indiana and so we were very
024lucky when we opened this search we actually ended up restructuring because we have two amazing people and so we will now have a director of elementary special ed who gets to really focus on the elementary um the work that we need to do and then a director of secondary and so kaylee brown miss hayley she's worked here since 2018 and she'll be continuing her work with the elementary in the director position and for our secondary dr renee staley comes to us from martinsburg where she's been already serving as their director of special ed and we're very lucky that she has wanted to transition to work with us so i'm really looking forward to work they're going to do and strengthen not only the special education program but just what we do for all kids thank
025you so much welcome [Applause] all right now now we'll go thank you so tonight's our first uh uh 10 28 hearing uh we're going to have two we'll have a second one at the next board meeting i want to talk a little bit about our project at both middle schools we're looking at 2296 new homes planned in in white river township right now we had been discussing what to do at the middle schools whether to build a third middle school or to expand our two the two existing middle schools financially it's it's better for the corporation better for the taxpayers to expand those two buildings so we've engaged the architects cso to help us with that that's all right that's my hand to go faster wasn't it that's right go ahead and go um so
026at middle school north uh what a couple of things that we want to do is replace the temperature controls add security cameras uh but but specifically the the big addition is adding a band room renovate the orchestra room renovate the music areas expand the cafeteria and then get new furniture if you remember we bought new furniture for all of the elementaries we've and as we've done the high school project we bought furniture for the high school now we're going to try to replace the furniture at the two middle schools this prepares us to um to be able to hold this is the first project of a two-part project that will allow us to house the the middle school enrollment growth that we see the nice thing and i think dr gabriel is going to talk
027about it is we can do the the additions to both of our middle schools with uh while maintaining the current tax rate so middle school central a little bit different we're going to add 12 classrooms two science rooms and two art rooms and then buy the furniture we'll also renovate and expand the cafeteria and kitchen again like i said we'll be able to do both of these projects without raising are with by maintaining the current tax rate just uh to give you an idea the addition at middle school central is there on the top of the screen with the red arrow pointing to the blue right now that's just half of what we need but it's it's in line with what our enrollment projections are so we'll do we'll do that there on the north
028end of the building and then on the south east corner is where we'll expand the cafeteria and expand the uh the kitchen area so that's what it looks like at the top that's just a little more of a kind of a block plan of what it looks like um and then at middle school north uh again the red arrows there at the top of the screen is where the new music room will go and the the at the bottom of the screen is the expansion of the cafeteria in kitchen here's just a little bit closer floor plan look at that when we built the middle school about 18 years ago we didn't have an orchestra room and we've added an orchestra room and we don't have the space to to grow the program so our
029we've had an orchestra program and we don't have the room to add that the cafeteria there is there at the bottom of the screen just to give you an idea of where that will go and what that does for the size of both the kitchen and the cafeteria then dr gabriel will talk about the financing but before i go on jim goalie from hunt construction is here if this broke if this project is approved we'll use hunt construction as our construction manager to help with the project so hard questions again go to mr goalie okay okay so i want to talk a little bit about the finance of the project middle school central um working with the architect and the construction manager we've developed a budget for this project it's um about 16.8 million dollars
030in construction costs and an additional 5.4 million dollars in the all various fees and the furnishings that go with a project of this size uh one of the reasons that this is as large as it is is because we are adding all the classrooms that that are included in this project that are really not included in the middle school north project at this time so and we of course i think most people are aware we have portables now out in front of middle school central and when we get these classrooms added it'll it will eliminate the need for those portables but we've got enrollment projections that continue to show the size of both middle schools gradually getting a little bit larger each year so that's middle school central middle school north same thing applies these
031have been developed by the architect and construction manager 5.8 million in in hard construction costs and 2.6 million and all the other associated costs that go with it for a total of 8.5 million dollars at that project this is the the required information that we need to present if when we have a hearing like this it's a lot of fine print i think i just want to highlight a couple of things first of all we will sell bonds to pay these projects back total cost there as you see is 30.8 million dollars for these two projects combined we'll sell the bonds over over a 20-year period if we did this all by itself with nothing else going on in the community or anything else it would have a tax rate of about about 13.68 but
032the important thing here is that because we have other projects coming off the books and an increased assessed value we predict that the debt service fund rate is going to continue for the next 10 years or so as a result of these projects that should not increase and again we're we've done a lot of work modeling what the future will look like uh and and we're confident that as a result of these projects we're talking about today the tax rate will not increase um yeah next uh just um okay this is just a picture of of uh what the tax rate looks like right now and what it shows for next year i didn't think we were going to talk about this slide but it's okay uh and he talks about it yeah right because
033we've got more current information this is for for actually for 2021 payable in 2021 but it's when we look at this slide and compare ourselves our total tax rate to other districts in the county we've continued to be in the middle of the pack for the last decade and and kind of expect that to continue that way so okay next steps tonight this is the public hearing and that's all it is which means there'll be no official action taken by the board um at the next meeting there will be a next school board meeting in september there will be a second hearing and at that meeting the board will be asked to approve resolutions to officially authorize these projects following that approval of those resolutions we publish notice that begins a 30-day waiting period after
034that then the architects will finalize the projects and all of the plans we hope to have bids for these projects ready to come back to for the board to approve next spring and then work on these projects uh was expected to be completed middle school's much smaller project it should be done by the summer of 2003 middle school central uh much larger project will be done by the summer of 2004 and then um the first payment on these bonds will begin we expect in 2014 and i know we've had this question i'm sorry 20 20 and we've had this question before why isn't this in the budget you're going to approve next next month well because the payments don't come until 20 20 24. so if you won't see this in the budget for a
035while but as i said we've done some pretty extensive modeling to make sure that the the the message we want to get across about this is that it will not increase the tax rate so at this point um i'll turn the meeting back over to mr russell to conclude the hearing thank you so at this time this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the middle school building projects or the information presented this evening are there members of the public present who would like to comment on this particular subject thank you i now close the jack i saw him i saw him yes [Music] their current enrollment is smaller than middle school central and the building's a little bit better the building's a little bit bigger as i said we
036we have built into our long-term plans the locations where we will add classrooms there eventually but we don't want to spend that money and add those classrooms until we really feel like it'll be they'll be necessary and we think we can get by and you know as you grow the first thing you the problem you have is the common spaces like the cafeteria you need a bigger space for kids so that's what we're tackling in this project so does this project include repurposing the existing orchestra yes that was on the on the slides yeah it went real fast no we are yes okay what's the repurpose of the existing area music rooms more music yeah okay do you want to become a couple just did something at middle school i thought it was in the
037cafeteria the last time there was a project was that not we added a cooler on to the kitchen that's always just yeah freezer and it was on the outside that's why you could see it there's another handy camera any other questions to this particular subject thank you okay you said that the cost of this wouldn't raise the task tax rate with the additional staffing that would be required for the expansion with the combined extra cost possibly you have to raise tax rates when we do our our long-term modeling we consider all those things and um [Music] the issue there is that those as we specifically look at the extra classrooms um the extra cost would be teachers for those classrooms and as we continue to get more students to put in those classrooms the state
038gives us more money so the cost of teachers is pretty much covered by the money we get for enrollment growth so that shouldn't be a problem and and but more importantly we model the total tax rate of the school district to make sure that that does not increase okay i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions i guess my question is for mr zolly in the back i'll save my the hard one you can get the project plane sharpened before the next board meeting are construction rates material costs starting to come down are we anticipating any issues as you've had with a couple of the other projects they're leveling out they're not they're not still on the rise they're leveling out okay we feel confident we
039can get this in and the number we update yeah we updated uh our estimates are uh hunted for us right before this you know they're the most current they're the most numbers that we have okay thanks jim yeah yeah construction costs are moving all over the place for month to month okay there's no question thank you guys very much and i i do want to compliment the board your work on this and and of course uh bill and paul on these projects um you know we've we've had to do a lot of work being such a growing district and growing so fast and the fact that over the last 10 plus years we have not had to increase the tax rate is really just a testimony to boards before and all of you and of
040course your hard work too so thank you guys thank you at this time there is no board action required on this particular hearing okay we are moved down to other business go down the line here mr daniels do you have any other business uh not at this time thank you mr russell thank you mr hubbard i don't have another business but i have a couple board member taking time out your day coming here tonight taking it away from your family um i also want to thank all of you guys for sending us your emails and um you wouldn't even imagine the emails that we've gotten and i do appreciate all of them i really do um i i read them i catch myself and i'll be at the gym working out or be at home
041and i'll just catch myself getting caught up in emails and stuff so i do read them um i if you don't get responded to by me uh please don't make it feel like you go unheard um but with that being said i my background is different a lot of the board members up here i didn't go to college i uh i won the military and i spent a lot of my time overseas and and kind of something colin said maybe made me think that something i realized when i was in the military and um our freedoms are extremely precious especially precious to me and um i you don't have to do that um but anyway i i realized that my role on this board is to represent the community and i don't in all honesty
042these are your chairs they're not my chair they're not ours they're yours this is your building this is your school um so that's why we do read those emails because we do want to represent you we do want to you know and just because something might not go your way doesn't mean we're not listening and we're not hoping you know i mean i always want the best for for all of our kids here and uh and that's what i was elected to do um the school is a republic and i do realize that um and i'll always fight for you guys and i always kind of do what i feel is in the best interest of the community not always what's in the best instances of the administration or the teachers here at the school
043you know i i won't be pressured i can promise you that um but anyways the what i want to talk about is this antibodies thing that kind of went out last week i'm sure a lot of you guys are aware of that you saw the email um and it and a lot of your emails kind of talked about mistrusting us or kind of being secretive with you maybe um i just want to kind of clarify a couple of things um some things are brought up in those emails we know that we kind of told the administration and the board told you that we would not change any anything unless it was mandated and then uh so on the earlier middle of last week rich dr argenov got with the board and said we he uh
044he got an email from the johnson health department that we were mandated to not be able to use antibodies test anymore so the board gave him our feedback on that and uh email went out to you guys i believe it was friday um before and i didn't even know the email was sent out but i got it friday morning and i knew something kind of didn't feel right so i called the johnston department myself as a parent and asked them why they felt uh kind of asking for the data of why they felt that they needed a mandate to center growth that we couldn't take the antibiotics anymore and they informed me that they did not mandate that um they recommended it so at that time i got back with with dr arkanov and and
045and he was upset and i'm you know i basically said somebody's not being truthful and uh it's making the community look bad um we're you know it's we're losing trust in you guys and that's not what we want to do and and he was upset and he sent us the emails from the johnson health department that did say that so um at that point we kind of had a decision to make i think the weekend came kind of came and went and and and i know the board was really upset because you guys called us liars you know because we said we wouldn't do some unless was mandated i wasn't the only parent that called i saw it on facebook it looked shady for lack of better words so with that being said to tonight
046i feel pretty i was going to make a motion to reinstate it but hold your applause but before this meeting um dr archanav said he got a email from the state today that mandated that we are not allowed to use antibodies tests anymore so um i just that's the whole truth of the matter i just wanted you guys i just wanted to clear the air i i don't think the [Music] not too many people would just tell you that we rely to you but i'll tell you i don't care they can be mad at me but we were and that's the way it is so and i'm sorry that you guys went over the weekend thinking that you guys elected some people that were not being truthful to you and that's just not the case
047so um we're not time for public comment now we're not we're not i promise you i wouldn't do that so that's all i have mr alexander so yeah i guess just a couple of things in the my voice doesn't carry to the back of the room without it um we read all the emails i know there's been a few of the emails i've read that have implied that we're not taking the time to read them i'm going to tell you you can you can ask my wife you can ask my son we spend hours reading the emails i mean we've gotten probably in the last week four or five hundred emails and if we each of us took the time to respond to those we we wouldn't have time to do the to do our
048day jobs to be to be quite honest we're we're spending our free cycles trying to read the emails and understand what everybody's asking for and there are as dr arkanov said in the coffee chat yesterday we have 9 100 students at center grove and we got nine thousand one hundred opinions about what we should and shouldn't do at this point um and all of us are taking those into account taking them into consideration um it's it's it's bigger than you know i when when you run for school board you go through the school board training there's no training on what to do if there's a pandemic um we're we're trying to figure this out partner with the medical authorities and understand the rules that we have been given to go by and one at one
049point in time the johnson county health department did approve our back-to-school plan and that did include the antibody testing as we all know and and have i know we have all learned over the course of this journey that the situation is fluid the situation is going to change we're going to receive mandates strong recommendations from the health authorities recommendations from the health authorities and mandates and ultimately the as as mr hubbard said the state health department informed i'm going to say dr arkanov because i think that was more directed towards center grove than it was some of the other schools well i believe they released just a slide a statement directly to everyone it felt very centered where where they have mandated that we cannot use the antibody test and and at that point um
050quite honestly folks when it's a mandate and it comes down from the state we we have to go by that and it falls in with the executive order the governor is also giving us about quarantining there's an executive order that exists on the rules we have to follow when it comes to quarantining and i know we get mrs norman and mr taylor get tons of questions about it and there's i mean the executive orders out there it's a matter of public record we're as flexible about it as we can be we're working through the problem as we go and i kind of like i said there's no playbook for this i mean we have a disaster recovery plan and pandemics in there but i don't know that you know any of us tabletop to exercise
051what to do for a pandemic so thank you mr alexander miss counts so i want to start i i have some comments as well but i want to start by talking about the gala for the grove and the center of education foundation for those who don't know i am the liaison between the education foundation which i served on the board for four years and the school board so i did attend the event i think there were several people that attended the event that might be in this this crowd and it was a great event so jen gave me four updates they have four new board members for the education foundation and i believe most of them actually attended the gala so they you know got thrown straight in uh they were the beneficiary of the
052kopetsky's clean to contribute program for the month of august so i think that was actually last tuesday or the tuesday before they received an educational partnership grant from the johnson county community foundation and again the gala for the road was amazing so and i was the lucky recipient of the stadium picture that was signed by the 2020 football team so that was really cool so um gosh i i went back and forth uh with my comments and it's really weighed on me a lot this week i'll tell you i am a newly elected board member so i have served on this board now for a little over seven months i'm in my eighth month and i will tell you that learning what the heck is required of me is rob put it perfectly when i
053started it's like drinking water from a fire hose so everything that is thrown at us i mean i don't think there's a day that goes by that we are not talking as a board and you think about that's that's eight months that i communicate daily with these gentlemen and everything is talked about so what i wanted to say kind of goes along with what the other gentleman said i'm listening to you i read your facebook posts i i take that to heart i really do i try not to i have thick skin i owned a restaurant for eight years believe me when people leave you know negative comments you just have to let it roll and understand that sometimes they're just having a bad day but i read your facebook posts i read your emails
054i'm up at 4am reading your emails because i have 142 sitting in my inbox and that little red dot on my phone is just bothering me you know i say that and i'm saying that with i too have my own opinions right so i don't want my kids to wear masks at school i don't know if i'm supposed to say that but i i'm one of those parents but if my kids want to wear a mask at school they can wear a mask at school but i do make them wear it on the bus because that is a mandate um actually i had a conversation with my sixth grader about that so but i will say that i re i read everything that you present i read your facebook posts i read i read your
055emails i take your text messages and your phone calls and i keep an open mind even though they may not necessarily coincide with what i agree i keep an open mind for my community and i continue to pass it back and forth with these gentlemen and i'm telling you that there is research that's presented you know by jason taylor and mrs norman and we continue to poke holes in it because that's our job right that's our job is to poke holes in the information that's presented and to try to find ways around this to i'll tell you my number one priority right now is keeping my kids in school because i now have a middle schooler and i don't want i do not want her sitting home two to three days a week i don't
056she's not going to learn anything i want her in that classroom that's my number one priority right so i just want you all to know that we are all listening and um while you don't you may not think so and you don't know what necessarily goes on behind the scenes just know that there's a lot that goes into it and we appreciate believe me keep sending the emails like they said you're giving us information that maybe we wouldn't find on our own and that's great and i appreciate that and i will continue to read and i'll continue to listen and i think that's all i have to say jack [Applause] dropping off oh chad could i just briefly i just didn't have anything to say and jackson maybe the line out of that pass but
057i i just want to i don't want to repeat any anything that's been said because i think they're all all good points and i don't want to waste everyone's time with that but i do want to compliment our community and when i say community i'm not just talking about the people sitting here i'm people that aren't sitting here we disagree on things there's people that don't want masks there's people who want masks there's people who don't want the vaccine there's people who want everybody to get vaccinated but we are keeping it civil and let's continue to do that we're going to disagree on improvements we're going to disagree on a lot of things but what i was impressed with the five people that got up and spoke tonight you have opinions you express those opinions
058we are listening i also read the emails i al we are also always communicating but let's keep it civil let's not get to a point where we've seen in some other communities where it's getting ugly because i've got to tell you we are all in this together we all want what's best for the kids we all want in-person learning we want to do everything we can to keep it civil express our opinions and get to whatever ground we get to in the right way so i thank you all for doing it the right way this evening thank you jackson [Applause] dragonov thanks mr russell um just a couple of things one i just want to compliment um you know everyone that came tonight and shared your opinions we appreciate that as the board said um
059we get the emails you probably all have emailed me and hopefully you've gotten my response yes sometimes my responses are a bit of cut and paste if they are the same email over and over again which they are a lot you know there's the don't wear masks there's the wear mask so after a while i just thank you for letting me know and i share that with everyone involved so i appreciate that as i said in the coffee chat 9 100 plus children 9 100 plus opinions if not more with parents involved as well so we're working hard to navigate everything thrown at us being a public organization we do have to follow mandates and requirements and we have to figure out whether they are or not and to be quite honest with you there
060are days where we have no idea just like the antibody test we would never go out and intentionally lie to anyone our team works really hard to figure out what we're being told we can and can't do and quite honestly it's extremely frustrating because there are hardly any clear directives directions from our legislators and our state much of this is pushed down to avoid the political climate above us and now we're all in this together as mr daniel said and has said for two years now but we're all in this together and while we're trying to navigate what local control is and mr taylor will tell you this oh we had local control oh i didn't realize it because every time we think we can make a decision they tell us no so we're not
061really sure what local control is you know with the antibodies being a really good example now we have official notification that we can't use it we just never know so if we you know it isn't that we are looking to make people's lives difficult believe me they work really hard and i just i can't say enough to amy norman and our nursing staff um please please please be kind to them many people are not and it's just not right they are working their tails off to keep our kids safe to apply the rules that they are responsible for applying and to take care of our fa our kids and our families i was in the buildings today and i can tell you our high school clinic was packed packed folks kids are sick now i
062don't know what they're sick with i didn't ask i don't know but they're sick and so our nurses are in there working it may just be a flu it may just be a cold it may be sore throat it may just be that they've got a test and they don't want to go to it you know i don't know but you know it is it is very busy in all those clinics uh middle school north middle school central you know they're busy busy places and these folks are working their tails off so i would really appreciate it i know you take emails and tell us what we think but boy it'd be wonderful if you could send some really nice emails to our nurses and to mr taylor and mrs norman because they're they're working
063really hard too so we the last thing i'll say is we do we work together as a team up here we're a good team because we we argue we fight over things we have open honest conversation i like to say we're passionate and unguarded in our discussion and then we make a decision and we move on and we do that the best we can with the information we're provided which unfortunately under covid is ever changing but we're continuing to do that and so we just appreciate your support and understanding and believe me we share in your frustrations so thank you all again for being here tonight and sharing that really appreciate it i'm very proud to be a part of this community and have two graduates just recently you know from from the district and
064i just tell everybody really quickly my daughter made the marching 100 at iu so i [Applause] yeah that's tough because i got one at each so that's why i was asking well thank you all for being here this evening and your comments i'm not going to go through and repeat everything that the other board members have said because we all feel the same way on the same thing it is a fluid situation it changes every 24 hours if not sooner we have made it clear i hope that we have everyone in the community to deal with and i don't mean that in a negative manner it's just that opinion where do we get all of us to be somewhere we can agree and that's really hard in the political environment that we're being thrown upon
065in our country right now so be patient try to work with us in a positive manner because i can guarantee you something may come out next week or another week that will not agree with you or something may come out that we'll agree with you but we all have to work together to move forward and i can tell you for my personal and i'm sure it's with the others my greatest thing is to want those kids in school learning in the classroom i want them to see each other every day socially i realize how important that is i have family in the school buildings i may look a little experienced on top here but i have kids in the building that i care deeply about and i have talked about before it's my cg family
066i care about all these kids tremendously so it is it gets hard to make some of these decisions and how do we deal with this on a day-to-day basis when the people who are supposed to be leading us are not giving out the right information or twisting information so you can all understand how that that is hard to work with we'll do our best and we appreciate it thank you what wow that's the teacher i haven't lost the teacher look at this i just have one thing else to say um i got off on the antibodies thing i totally forgot what the whole reason what i wanted to say was um we know you guys want to talk to us and you want your voice heard and i know that people signed up tonight they
067didn't get to talk and last week people didn't get to talk and that's unfortunate i want to hear from everybody um last month for example i know i kind of got on jack a little bit and for that jack i apologize um we do have a board we do have rules and and you know we do try to limit that to 15 minutes but with that being said we as a board need to recognize that that you guys want to have more of a communication channel with us whether it be town halls coffee chat something i think it would do the community well the five of us could try to figure out a way to have a dialogue with with you guys versus just emails i think that would be more transparent because that's what
068i'm hearing a lot is the transparent word because these board meetings really aren't for that they're really not um but we are here to be represent you so let's let's work together let's try to figure out a way and um you know let jack run the meeting and let's just move on and and if you guys got comments let's let's do that on the outside and figure it out you know what i mean i think i think that's the best for everybody okay if you got an idea email it to me that's it sorry we will reconvene for our executive meeting thank you all