001Welcome and uh like to call the regular business meeting of board of school trustees for Crown Point. Today's date is July 28th, 2025. We'd like to call this meeting to order. The official start time is 605. If we could all please stand and rise while Mr. Basser leads us in the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence. 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. Moving on to item 2.01. Patrons registered to comment on educational issues. Tonight we do not have anyone registered. So we will move on to item three, the consent agenda. Dr. Terrell, >> thank you. For your consideration this evening on our consent agenda, we
002have the executive session minutes from 623, the regular business meeting and public hearing minutes from 62325 as well. The personnel agenda uh 3.03, 3 the recommendation recommendation for employment of candidates pursuit of Indiana code 2026-5-11.2 and then 3.04 the voucher registered checks as listed. Thank you. You've heard the uh recommendation of the superintendent to Dr. Terrell to approve the consent agenda item 3.01 1 uh 623 2025 executive session minutes 623 20225 regular business meeting uh public hearing minutes 3.02 personal agenda 3.03 recommendation for employment of candidates pursuant to Indiana code 2026511.2 and 3.04 104 voucher register check numbers 176-960 through 177301 and vouchers number 304931 through 305733. May I have a motion? >> Second. >> So moved by Mr. Angel and second by Miss Basin. Are there any questions or comments? >> No questions or
003comments. Move to a vote. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Nay. >> Nay. and the pope carries 41 uh with Mr. Bass descent. Uh action items four uh 4.01 out of country field trip to Spain. This is Ramirez. >> Thank you, Mr. President and board members. I'm here tonight to request your support of an outofcountry field trip to Spain by our Crown Point High School students that are enrolled in Spanish. This would take place during spring break of 2027. And this would provide them with the opportunity to both um kind of immerse themselves in the culture of different stops within Spain as well as practice their communication skills. And it is the administration's recommendation that the school board approved the outofcountry field trip by to Spain by Crown Point High School students for
004spring break of 2027. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. You heard the recommendation of the administration to approve the out of country field trip to Spain by Crown Point High School students uh from March 26 through April 5th of 20127. May I have a motion? >> Motion. >> So moved by Mr. Vasser. >> Second by Miss Basin. Are there any questions or comments? With there being no questions or comments, move to a vote. All in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Vote carries 5. Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. Uh, moving on to action item 4.02, appointments by the board and accompanying bond amounts. Mr. Ree. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Members of the board, annually, we're required to identify those who are responsible for monies within the school corporation and purchased a insurance bond against them.
005We have done that again this year with the same amounts as last year. And with that, we recommend approval of the appointments and the accompanying bond amounts. >> Thank you, Mr. Reese. Uh board, you heard the recommendation administration to approve uh the appointments and accompany bond amounts as set forth under 4.02. May I have a motion? >> So moved by Mr. Angel. >> Second by Mr. Waring. Are there any questions or comments? >> Those are ours. Any other questions? Move to a vote. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Nay. Vote carries. 5 Z. Action item 4.03 approval of fresh fruit and vegetable program grant for 2025 and 2026. Back to you, Mr. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Members of the board, we bring before you a fresh fruit and vegetable program grant offered
006by the USDA working through the Ohio Indiana Department of Education. We threw it out to the buildings to see who might be interested in trying these bite-sized portion of fresh fruits and vegetables. Eisenhower, Solen Robinson, and Winfield Elementary responded back that they'd be interested in working with the food service department in their cafeterias to make that work. So, with that, we recommend approval of the fresh fruits and vegetable program grant for 2025 2026. >> Thank you, Mr. Ree. You've heard the recommendation of administration for approval of the fresh fruit vegetable program grant for 2025 to 2026. I have a motion second. So moved by Miss Bas, second by Mr. Vasser. Are there any questions or comments? There being no questions or comments, we'll move for the vote. Uh all in favor signify by saying I.
007>> I. Vote carries 5. On to item 5.01, superintendent discussion groups. Where we at, Mr. Angel? Nothing on >> windfield point July. The main focus was reimbursement. Just as a point of information, the average given businesses outside of the square has been $11,000,000. Thank you, Mr. Always interesting to know that kind of stuff. All right, moving on to the director of elementary education, Dr. Kina. >> Thank you, Mr. President, and board members. During two days next week, our kindergarten kickoff program uh will be occurring at each of our elementary schools. This is a really great opportunity that all seven of our elementary schools to help uh do to help our newest students, our kindergarteners become more familiar, more familiar, more comfortable, see some new and friendly faces, kind of understand how kindergarten works a little
008bit. Uh kind of get a taste of kindergarten before that first big day. So that will be happening a couple days next week. And then the following week, uh, on either Monday, August 11th or Tuesday, August 12th in the evening, uh, all students and families will be invited in for open house to launch the new school year. Uh, get to meet their teacher, get to see the building, and kind of walk around and get the feel of things. Um, as we continue to prepare, I want to thank our office, front office staff members, uh, and our custodians, uh, and our administrators who have been kind of hard at work, um, most of the summer here, uh, to make sure that everything is ready to go for our teachers on August 11th and our students on
009August 13th. Uh, we are excited and ramping up for an excellent year. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Pacina. >> Recognition item 5.03. 03 director of secondary education, Mrs. Ramirez. >> Thank you, Mr. President and board members. I just wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a program we were able to offer to our multilingual learners this summer. We had both at the elementary and at the high school level, a summer enrichment learning camp, which really allowed our students um to develop continued community amongst the multilingual families and students, as well as continue to learn um and develop English language development. proficiency. And so this was really an engaging opportunity for our elementary students. They took several kind of trips around Crown Point. They engaged in a lot of different types of learning experiences. And
010Eisenhower was kind enough to host our students there. And the high school program will wrap up um this week at the high school. And so I really wanted to thank Lexi Bloom who is holding that for our high school students. Fiona Subtle and Katie Chitz held the program for our elementary students. So, it's just another great opportunity for our multilingual learners um to continue their progress towards proficiency in English learning. I also want to thank our admin and staff who've been diligently working through the summer, whether that is coming up with big ideas for next school year that our administrators will be rolling out at the building level to our ELA and math teachers who've been in over the summer working on and preparing for new curriculum implementation at the middle level. We also had
011our blended instruction design specialist hosting teachers who came in for editing days for Buzz so that our courses are up and ready to go for all of our teachers and students when we welcome students back on the 13th. So, it's just been a very productive summer for um teaching and learning here and I'm appreciative to everybody for their commitment. >> Wonderful. Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. Move on to recognition item 5.04, director of exceptional education, Mrs. Pas. Good evening, President Smith, members of the board. Uh, tonight I wanted to express my appreciation to my assistant director, Kelly. She had to hold down the fort for several weeks this summer for one reason or another in my absence. So, um, she uh it it just runs seamlessly when I'm gone and she's here and um it just
012feels good to have somebody um with me that can just take it and run with it in my absence. So, I thank her. Um, I also wanted to recognize one of our middle school applied skills teacher, Harmony Hofra, completed uh the asset program this past school year and that is a program in partnership with our statewide special education administrators group. She was able to earn her intense intervention license free of cost. Um, it took a year. She had to attend a boot camp for a few days last summer and then each uh month she had one day online of training and then each month she and I would check in and we had some tasks to complete together. But um it's a really nice program free of cost that we're trying to encourage more of
013our educators to obtain those additional licenses. So it >> Thank you, Mascus. Recognition item 5.05, Chief Human Resource Officer, Mr. Ka. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. President, board members. Just would like to thank um all of our boy, so many people that have uh chipped in uh for a wonderful hiring season to get us in a position to uh kick off our our new teacher academy tomorrow. So, we have our breakfast in the morning and um the list is too long uh to mention here, but you know, central office administration building administration. Um there is keys, fobs, computers, everything uh different secretaries uh getting things ready for these folks that we're going to welcome to our already talented educational staff. So to all those that have chipped in up to this point and will be
014leaders uh over the next two weeks for these new folks, I just want to just say thank you from the bottom of my heart. is it's a big ordeal and uh we're fortunate to have uh uh onboarded some uh very talented individuals. >> Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Ka. Uh 5.06 Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ree. >> Thank you, Mr. President, members of the board. I'd like to recognize some of the technology staff tonight. Lynette Barker and her summer intern help that she has have uh gone through and uh got ready for all the students. 2150 Chromebooks that you approved purchased for a couple months ago. It's impressive to get all those ready and set up and ready for distribution all the buildings. I want to thank them for that work over the summer. >> Thank you,
015Mr. Ree 5107, Director of Communications, Mrs. Al. >> Thank you. Good evening. Mr. Mr. Gian Fermy is not here this evening. So he asked that I please remind everyone of a link that was in our newsletter we sent home last week and there is a link to the ED flex waiver. Information is on our website. But the short version is that this is a process with the IDOE that deals with title one and title four funds and it provides us a little bit more flexibility in hiring for positions particularly paras and also lets us spend those title dollars in a way that impacts students most. So parents can find the link again in the newsletter that went home last week. Information's on the website along with a place to add comments or questions if anyone
016has them. Um more specifically related to communications, um we did a hiring campaign for open interviews during the month of June. This was a combination of earned and paid media, including mailings and paid online ads. We had 84 attendees attend our open interviews that day. As far as I know, we extended offers to more than 30 individuals to join us for support positions. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mrs. Allen. Uh item 5.08, superintendent schools, Dr. Terrell. >> Good evening. Uh this evening, I'd like to recognize our administrators. This summer, as we have in the past, uh four summers, we had our administrative leadership series, which consisted of five different uh half day or full day meetings with our administrative teams and it's been really a great experience to watch how our administrative teams have grown
017and and how they work and rely on each other this year. Uh Sabrina mentioned the big ideas. They were challenged to come up with a big idea that they wanted to implement in their schools for this school year. They weren't given any other parameters other than it needs to address something in your building, something that you guys are passionate about. It was great to see each group come and the shared leadership amongst the principal, the assistant principles, their teams as they presented. Uh, literally every building, we took something away from that and people were able to figure out ways to implement that. One of the really coolest things to me was to hear the high school say about an administrator, an elementary administrative team that presented, "We found something in your presentation that we're going
018to can implement at the high school you would think how work but then to see back and forth. So just great to see the shared leadership and we always challenge our administrators to be educational leaders not just like building managers and it was very evident this summer just a great experience. Thank you Dr. Other board of other business of the board of school trustee 6.01 Have they done anything tonight? >> Yeah, Mr. Ramirez, I'd let you get away too quickly. I had a question. Um, with the SAT results that came out um maybe a week and a half ago, um, some friends of mine, um, that I've been friends with for a long time, Lake Central School Corporation, um, had a lot of celebrating to do on those and, you know, and rightly so. Uh
019but have you seen any uh correlation to SAT scores and anything else? You know, some people have trying to tie these to SAT scores and graduation rates, which I don't believe is a real good correlation, but have you noticed any other anything that >> on your part? >> Mr. Mayor, I'm gonna ask you to come up so they can pick you up on the mic. Sorry, >> that's Brian Gills rule. >> I would agree that we don't see a strong correlation between graduation rate and the SAT pass percentage on both evidence-based reading and writing and math. We have approximately 98% graduation rate and that will continue to go a little bit higher as we um have some students finishing up some credits before the deadline in you know early fall. Um what we are doing
020now is we have started just this past year administering the PSAT in the fall and then we are doing another administration of PSAT 9 and 10 in the spring. So what we are able to do is the PSAT has been relatively predictive of how students will perform on the SAT. So we're longitudinally able to look at how students did in ninth grade, compare that to their 10th grade fall, see how they're growing for 10th grade spring. they administer again in 11th grade and then um again ultimately with the summit of assessment in the spring. So that will give us some good data to track. >> Sure. >> We did see improvements in ELA and math for both um our SAT um administrations this year for those two subject areas. So we saw in ELA a
0215% increase and in math um a 4% increase. What's interesting is how much significantly above the state we still are. So, while we still have gains to grow in terms of our SAT performance and where we want to be, um, ELA, we are still 19% above where the state is for their SAT pass percentage and we are 15% above the state for math pass percentage. So, um, in the post that was made um, public by Lake Central, I think that that is a component that's important to take into place um, is where the state of Indiana is. There was also um a redesign to the SAT that took place last year. So this is only the second year of the new redesigned SAT. >> Yeah, thanks for that. I and I was thinking too of
022other things and I don't know how how deep you dug at this point because it's relatively new data. that do you plan on digging at all to find uh does this correlate at all to the percentage of students taking AP courses or dual credit courses or kids that are moving on actually to a two to fouryear college? Is there anything like that that you plan on doing? >> We have looked at that. But we looked at it historically and we were able to see realistically starting with PSAT 8 scores in the middle school, the trajectory that students went on to in terms of graduation and how they graduated either with an academic honors diploma. This was of course under the old model or the um general diploma. So we were able to kind of see
023a correlation there with PSAT 8 scores and where they ended up um in their high school career. >> Yeah. You know, there's more just like you said, there's there's more to a post than meets the eye. >> There really is. And when we see that we had the highest number of AP exams ever administered, we had the highest percentage of three three through five scored this past year. We also had the highest number of dual credits that we've ever administered in Indiana really is leading the trend in terms of um comparative to other states, the number of dual credits. So I think the picture that is really created is how comprehensive we are that we really are able to provide so many different opportunities for our students. I think at the June board meeting I
024also mentioned that we were able to the first time um have some of our students um earned the certification for the CNA um through that programming. So I just really do look at the data as well. That's a very important data point and we're continuing to target that through school improvement that we do have other data that we really are very very proud of and we're proud of our teachers for making these jumps of 4% 5%. We're going to continue I think um you know to see those increase as we provide data to our teachers. It's interesting um the college board does not package the data for SAT in a way that is able to be presented to teachers for their current students. So under Mr. Hardman last year he came up with a very
025intricate process for how we can actually package that. And so we're really looking forward to um being able to continue to get the data into the hands of the teacher so that they can work at an individual student level as well as then with their PLC's to make um adaptations to their curriculum. >> Thank you so much. Well said. >> Well, thank you. Thanks for asking. As far as other business, just a reminder to everybody for the fall conference in September, uh reach out to Diana as far as uh whether or not you're attending rooms like that. Rooms are going quickly. So, yeah, thank you for Dr. Kina, I'm I'm sorry I when I talked to you earlier, I forgot to ask you, but uh you mentioned kindergarteners at this point. How does the number
026of kindergarteners coming in compared to the number of seniors who just left us? Do you know that number off the top? >> That's right. Yeah, I I figured >> and I talk every morning probably give you pretty specifics. Um, our kindergarten number is always less than our fifth graders obviously as we get more families that move into our district uh throughout those elementary years. But um I think Matt can give >> I know we talked about that a couple of months ago, but we didn't we don't have the numbers. >> Yeah. So, I can tell you that last year uh on fall count date, we had 739 seniors. I believe the number this morning was at 566 for kindergarten students. So, decrease of about 170 students compared to from essentially May to August. Thank you.
027Thank you both. Any other board statements? Okay, move on to I'm sorry, I should say any other business of the board. We'll go to uh action item 7.01 or item 7.01, board statements of appreciation and recognition. Mr. Warner, >> Mr. Angel, uh just a thank you to all those that uh work behind the scenes that don't always get acknowledgement. Uh Mr. Coulson and the security uh food service, bus uh transportation, um buildings and grounds. Uh we don't see anything they're doing over the summer until you see and go by the sites, but obviously all that's being done. So kudos to all those that run those departments and are making sure we are ready for another strong start in the fall. >> I'd like to uh add on to exactly what Mr. Angel said. Thank you
028for all the folks that are working here in Crown Point schools, but especially for the last three weeks, those folks at our corporation who are working outdoors. Uh it's been brutal. If you've cut your own grass, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So many thanks to those folks u who are sweating it out to get the build buildings ready. Thank you very much. >> It's amazing. >> Well, I don't think we meet until after the school year starts. So, um, just an official good luck to everyone, um, as kind of our teachers make their way back into the buildings. I'm sure some have been in over the course of the summer, but as everyone officially gets their class list and gets everything ready, um, hoping for a, um, a fun, educational, and healthy school
029year for everybody. >> I too just want to thank everybody who worked over the summer. uh kind of echoing the theme and um just means a lot because obviously we can't do what we need to do without their participation and help. Also uh I hope everyone survives the start of the fair. I think it's coming. I've been seeing the trucks unload and so traffic will start getting bad and but kids get one last uh event before summer ends and goes back to school. So u with that I have I have nothing further but uh if we have a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. So moved by Mr. Angel, >> second by Mr. Warney. All in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Vote carries. 5 Z.