001e e say it's a little unusual to have a happy St P's day to get started byw stand Alle moment silence thank you Mr basser uh move on to item 2.01 Patriots registered to comment on educational issues there are no patrons registered to comment today so we'll move forward to item three the consent agenda Dr ter good morning and thank you for your consideration this morning we have 3.01 the February 24th regular business meeting minutes we have 3.02 our Personnel agenda 3.03 for employ of cidate pursu of Indiana code 2026 11.2 and then finally voucher register checks as agenda refer the recommendations in the agenda by Dr Terrell 3.01 February 24th 2025 regular business meeting minutes 3.02 the Personal Agenda 3.03 recommendation for employment of candidates pursuant to Indiana code 2026 5-2 and 3.04 voucher
002register checks number 17570 may I have a motion com action item01 to apply rece funds schar thank you Mr President in working with the Point Community Foundation School Corporation is apply for receive a grant total of $22,000 $4500 going to help AP exam scholarships which we have done with the commun foundation for several years now exams cost $97 a piece of some our students becomes financial burden for them so they can apply through our counseling department additional support for those exams and then also $18,000 towards our engineering and Robotics programming or what is essentially 3D printer so that they can create parts for their robots and their projects and their engineering classes appreciate how the foundation has now kind of streamlined us to be able to apply for the e corporation instead of all being
003individuals and cre a portal we just put in projects and take it through the back with what they will support so the administration recommends approval to apply and receive grant funding in the amount of $22,000 commun Foundation support advanced placement exams at Point High School and Point High School engineering thank you Mr recomendation from the administra to appr to apply for and receive funding in the amount of $22,000 from the Crownpoint Community Foundation to support student participation on advanced placement exams at Crown Point High School and support Crown Point High School engineering and robot robotics courses and clubs May I have a motion so move so move by Mr angel second by Miss Bas are there any questions if there be no questions or comments move it to a vote all in favor signify by
004saying I I nay guys carry 5- Zer just quickly want to thank again the Crownpoint Community Foundation for their support uh not only on this particular Grant but other all the other matters they've been a long time supporter of Ground Schools moving on to item 4.02 approval to purchase fire walls Mr re thank you Mr President members of the board today for you the purchase of two fora net firewalls and the foret fora analyzer which is the software equipment that analyzes the information going through the firewall there are two firewalls in there one of used as a main the second is used as the backup that way if one goes down you have a backup to replace it uh with that we utilize the higher education uh compact purchasing cooperative for this bid and we
005recommend approval the purch of foret fortigate FG 900g firewalls and fora analyzer F 300g from electronic strategies Inc at $1 129,130 gate FG 900g firewalls 40 analyzer fc300 from electron strateg Incorporated at the cost of 9,157 63 Mo by Miss War questions coms is is the life expectancy this based upon old firewalls about eight years yeah so the the expectancy is five to seven on these and we went eight with the last one it's just time to do the refresh V carries 5 4.03 Transportation Center improvements Point high schools improvements L streets improv projects back thank you Mr President members of the board uh last week we receed bids for the these three projects the transportation center improvements the Crown Point High School improvements and the Lake Street def Improvement bids were received and total
006amount of the bids were 3,852 600 uh the school corporation at skilman has extensive experience with both of these uh low biders on these contracts so with that we recommend approval the contracts for those three projects General trades the Gibson Lewis the amount of 3,541 th000 and to electrical for sergeant Electric in the amount of 31,600 thank you Mr re you heard aom Administration for approval contracts for Transportation Center improvements Crown Point High School e e improvements Lake Street Pro as follows General trades to Gibson Lewis 354,000 for electrical to Sergeant Electric in amount of 31,600 I have a motion so so move by Mr second second any questions or comments there no questions or comments take a vote all in favor signify by saying I I I vote carries five 4.04 skilman Corporation amendment
007number 3 2021 projects again back to of the administra for approval of the amendment foration 193,000 bations all work a lot of a lot of schools are delayed we didn't see many delays at all I think so just well done again thank you for this and also just want to make a quick comment to the transportation center those individuals working out there were very patient as we touched every other building seems like we touched every other area of our school corporation they continue to this operate put their needs of the the students first and so happy to see that we're able to help make these improvements all those I think we're ready for all those in favor signify by saying I I nay vote carries five uh discussion and report items item five 5.01 policy
008updates first reading Mr thank you Mr President and board members um it's recommendation of isda that we have this policy are calling in an essential policy or one of like this anyway U but the use of artificial intelligence has been one of the fastest growing uses of technology in recent years there's a date of November 22 2022 for its origination but it's been around for quite some time Syria and Syria uh but very commonly it's used to draft essays papers articles and responses to questions in addition to other written forms of communication when prompted by the user it's a tool many students and teachers are aware of uh isba policy 5335 uh allows us to address directly Ai and have it policed or covered by our current academic policies so what we have today for
009you uh is a copy of this policy as reviewed by our uh curriculum Department as U offered to just today for our first reading and we would revisit next month for potential adoption thank you Mr VI to be had today anybody have questions I did find it interesting that we're touching upon AI I know it's it's entering every part of our everyday lives Workforce I know it's certainly so glad we're tackling this issue be interesting to see what this go is for students y all right moving on to 5.02 referendum informational presentation Dr Terell m good morning just making sure that all of this we're videoing this and it will be posted on our website with the board uh meeting as well so that way people can go there to see this so as we
010go through this once we get to the end if there are questions we'd be more than happy to entertain those let's try to wait until the end just so we can get a a clean video recording of this and go there with it okay okay so Matt and I have presented this presentation almost 30 times already um going out to all of our buildings to our staff um pto's now uh just continuing to get this information out there when we go out and present to our buildings we have to make sure that it's informational only today we don't have to worry about that with all of you this can be persuasive as to why people should approve this referendum renewing the referendum at a reduced tax rate is what we're going to do so I'm
011going to go through the first part of this kind of giving everybody the reasons why um Crown Point is different than a lot of places the reasons why people should even consider uh voting and supporting this referendum and then Matt will come up and he will give you the Mind numbing data as we like to call it and Matt does a really good job with numbing everybody's Minds so we'll get into it from there so Crownpoint schools the uh whole reason that we exist is to compel students to become lifelong Learners and we do that through the highest quality educational programs and you'll see as we go through here many of the things such as the facilities that we have done with the state-of-the-art improvements uh looking here at one of the media centers in
012elementary school all of our media centers now and all of our buildings have been updated and improved uh and again intentionally designed so that we can provide our students with the the latest uh technological advantages as they go through you can see here the community grow um from over the last many years but you can now our population when you put in the three different communities that we serve as well as the unincorporated part uh we're up to just over 55,000 um residents living within our boundary we've grown by a third since 2010 so while we've experienced some pretty rapid growth um we see that now stabilizing as you guys are well aware of with the demographic study that we've had um we expect that to really slow down and and Be steady 100 100
013less fewer than a 100 over the next several years the average homes uh in our community is at $336,000 that puts us in the top 10% of all public schools within the state of Indiana and when you compare it to the median home value here in the state it's at 267,000 you can see that this past year our av so think about all of the homes new businesses within our communities that have been going up our av has increased by 14% which again out we are outpacing every other school district within Lake County the reason that that is important is as we look at this top number right here that 336,000 when we have our graduation in uh early part of June uh we graduate 750 is kids yet our sixth grade or our kindergarten
014students as they come in we're only at about 600ish so there's a big difference there but we see that change catch up when we get to third grade a big part of that is we feel like as people are coming in and affording the homes that are within our community many times they're a little bit further along in their career their fames more established so as they come in their kids are a little bit older than they would be if they were coming into kindergarten thus the reason for that increase as we get into third grade so you can see here uh by the chart the consistent growth that we've seen um almost 300 students in the last five years again as we talked about that's we see that leveling off Crownpoint High School is
015now the largest High School in the region with just over 3,000 students um and again people are moving here and a big part of that is because of our schools so with this the a big portion of the biggest portion almost all of the referendum dollars that will be coming in are about staff about teachers about teacher recruitment we're recognized as a destination District as we like to call it where we're attracting the highest level of Educators to come here when we have openings um really feel like our reputation because of our teachers and how they talk to each other because of our community members uh parents people want to be here we have have among the highest starting teacher salary in the state at right at 59,000 um what that everybody else our average
016teacher salary is in the top five in the state as well um last year we had 12 Elementary position openings we had over 80 applicants so when we talk about teacher shortages across the state of Indiana across the country here in Crown Point we're not necessarily experiencing those as others and again going back up to it's a destination District people want to be here they see the value of Crown Point as a community and again as our Corporation and how we work through putting the emphasis on our greatest resource which is our human resource with our kids all of this then leads to uh that consistent and committed staff where the culture of the district the culture of schools continues to be there and doesn't have to be adjusted each and every year a big
017part of what we did with this group of projects that we are just on uh finishing up this summer uh is really about the academic success and how do we prepare our kids for the future so you're going to see as we go through this all of this is anything but average um this past year the high school was recognized by the college board for excellence think AP courses we just approved the grant today this morning for the AP assessments um our students our high school received a silver recognition and that was because of the number of students who are taking AP courses but not just the number of students also the number of at risk students the number of minority students who are taking AP courses dual credit is another area that our kids
018can participate in you can see here that this year we expect almost 10,000 credit hours to be earned at the high school now keep in mind our high school's 3,000 students this is more than double what many schools our size are producing uh on an annual basis and you can see how that has continue to increase as we go through uh the year the biggest Advantage for this when it comes to parents for those of you who have had kids going through the schools or are in that process right now students can graduate with up to 30 credit hours earned and that could equate to a cost Savings of almost $1,000 but it's not just about kids going to college so as we go across the state as I go across the county I hear
019people say I think it's even been an article in the paper where need to put shop class back in high school we've all heard that right shop classes have never left Crownpoint High School uh as we go through and we look at all the different things here kids not only are going away to colleges but they also then can get their CTE certificates they can get ready to go right into apprenticeships into technical schools with the new facilities we're able to add the CNA program at the high school so this year our students can go through and actually graduate with their CNA certificate ific you can see the hospital bed here the facilities that our kids are working in are as new and up to dat as any of the new hos that uh come
020into our community over the last year too some more things that really set us apart and make us weigh anything but average way above average so we're in the top 5% of Indiana high schools uh top 10% of best high schools in the country we have a four-year graduation rate of 97.3 6% you'll notice the State average again is 90.1% this one is really above average our honors graduates so students as they go across that stage and get their diploma at graduation 57.5% of our students are graduating with an honors diploma the state average is 40.3 so just 177% higher than the state average attending postsecondary institutions Crown Point 92% of our students do this this isn't just College universities this is also Tech technical schools this is IV Tech right through wherever they need
021to be a big part of what we did as we expanded our our elementary schools and added on to all of them was so that we could add stem uh in our creative arts rotation at the elementary level so now for the first time ever in Crownpoint schools every Elementary student goes through and has stem class once a week just like they would PE art music uh media center a big part of this is we had two different curriculums that we using for this the first one was called Sam labs and it's really um we use that first semester it's a lot of coding second semester now we're into Project Lead the Way which then leads right into middle school and on into high school but in our first semester of uh having stem classes
022in our elementary schools our students completed more projects just over 6,000 projects than any other School Corporation in the country using Sam lab so again pushing forward with how we rolled this out it's anything but average again always striving to achieve Excellence Performing Arts now we were just talking today about the play that several of us went to over the weekend um the uh Orchestra concerts band concerts our kids just do an amazing job um and the benefits that they achieve from that or realize from that uh just continues to grow buzz and uh Friday Night Lights with football who doesn't like to spend Friday nights with four or five thousand your closest friends with fireworks things going around and while buzz and the football team is up here this really isn't about football as
023much as it is about the extracurricular opportunities that our students have seven out of every 10 students at the high school participate in at least one extracurricular activity many of them three four five um but that's how you take that 3,000 student building and make it seem smaller and and more manageable for our students is they're involved in other things as well this of achievement since August of 23 and it's just going to scroll while it's scrolling you're not going to keep up with it but Focus over here you're going to see speech and debate tennis basketball um softball Dance all these different events that are going on so it's not just Athletics Not Just Fine Arts not just High School not just Middle School not just Elementary but across Ross the board you can
024see that we continue to strive for excellence in everything we do and the achievements have been many one of the ones that I am most proud of um makes me smile every time it comes up not intentionally was the last one on the list as best buddy so in 2024 we were the elementary chapter of the year we've been working really hard on inclusion here over the last three or four years making sure that all of our students are our students and you can see that in the things that we've had the activities um the Crownpoint High School Ballers that many of you were at again really striving to have that inclusion piece that's a big part of it at this point we're going to turn it over to Matt for his uh data portion
025of this and we'll go from there in 2019 so since the last time we had the referendum in 2018 the state changed the funding uh for schools so my presentation is going to talk about three areas first area is going to be State support the money that comes from the state the second part is property taxes and then the third part is going to be talking about the ballot question we're all going to see on May 6th so with State change funding in 2019 they really broke it down into essentially four different funds for us to work with two funds shown here the education fund and the operations fund for the education fund I want you to think instruction if it's instruction related it gets paid out of the education fund everything non-instructional comes from
026the operations fund now we're going to talk about some blue money today and the blue money represents the money that comes from the state support or the funding formula that the state legislature is you're aware now is currently going through and devising a two-year funding formula within the two-year budget as that gets done the state legislature determines through that funding formula how much money every school district across the state is going to receive per pupil for us 85% of that state basic Grant goes into the education fund now that 85% of the funding formula makes up 98% of the re revenue for the educ the other 15% goes into the operations fund important to note is that 15% makes up almost 50% of the revenue in the operations fund the other pieces that changed in
0272019 is they did away with the bus replacement capital projects and transportation funds all three of those funds were and now inside the operations fund are funded through property taxes so again if half the money the state support and operations the other half comes from property taxes the third fund I want to talk about with this is The Debt Service fund and you heard Dr Terell talk about the projects that we're just wrapping up it's important to note that all of that gets paid through The Debt Service fund all of the debt that we issued so think of that like your mortgage on your home the difference between the mortgage on your home and the debt that we pay is that when you do a mortgage you have a mortgage on your home for approximately
02830 years with the idea that when you retire your home is paid off the difference between that scenario and what we work with in schools is that our debt is 20 years but the other most important fact is schools never retire right so we reinvest that money back into the buildings which is what we've done to just complete all the projects we've been working on so let's talk about that blue money a little bit and look across the state this is a scatter gram of every school district both traditional and Charter K12 in the state of Indiana you'll notice down here at the bottom is zionville the lowest funded per pupil at 374 $ 6632 the state average is 7374 you'll notice some schools are below the state average as we bring up some monster
029Handover Lake Central dunland Griffith you get closer to the state average as Hobert pops up along with Lake Station River Forest and Gary number six uh in the state the five above that are all Charter Schools Gary as a traditional highest funded traditional District at 8895 you'll notice the difference between Gary at 8895 and zville at 6632 approximately uh $2,250 now you may wonder where do the Crownpoint schools fallen in this as you can imagine we're near down the bottom at 347 6835 now if we just Reed the state average you'd be looking at additional almost $5 million in state funding coming from it that blo money coming in almost an additional five million and as you heard Dr Terell present nothing about what we produce with those dollars is average everything is above average
030and outstanding however our funding significantly below average now the other interesting point about this uh scatter plot is every single one of the districts on this has passed the referendum in fact one in five districts across the state have passed referendums let's look at our state support back in 2009 $5,200 per pupil in 2024 6835 as we just mentioned that may sound like quite a bit when you're talking about a $1,600 increase per pupil you have to remember that's over a 15-year period that equates to an average annual increase of 31% however need to take into account inflation over that that period over that same time period inflation grew by almost 50% in that 15-year period if we just kept pace with inflation our funding would be $7,800 per pupil or an additional 8.5 million
031coming in in that blue money it's interesting to note that our referendum fund generates about $8 A5 million dollar in property tax revenue so let's look at those Lake County school districts that uh tax rates acrossed what you'll notice is River Forest at 266 the blue represents both capital and operating referendums that are currently in place you'll notice Crown Point Falls right in the middle of that at a122 with our 18 Cent referendum rate it's interesting to note those that don't have uh blue bars means they have uh all but one have gone out and tried for referendums and you'll notice that those have failed in fact 15 of the 16 districts in Lake County have tried for referendum only one is not and that's marville let's talk about about the referendum rates as they
032come through you'll notice River Forest High at a16 Crown Point is the lowest referendum rate at 18 cents let's talk about how that money gets spent here at Crownpoint schools so and for the for the most part this has been consistent going back to the initial referendum run in 2011 to 2018 how we have spent that money has been very very consistent you'll notice that 19% goes for safety initiatives since 2012 the first year of the ref referendum every single nurse in school in in Crown Point has been paid for out of the referendum fund both salaries and benefits we've also enhanced our sro's through this process as well 49% goes for academic and educationally related programs what what does that mean back in 2012 it was determined that all Elementary art music and PE
033teachers we paid for from the referendum every secondary art and music PE teacher we paid for from the referendum on top of that every nonathletic extracurricular activity so think math bowl spell Bowl many of the things that you saw Dr Terell scroll through that we've received recognition for all paid for through the referendum 6% goes for retaining teachers and staff and then 27% goes for managing class sizes that is strictly used at the elementary level approximately three to four in some places five teachers at every Elementary are paid for out of the referendum fund the most important Point to P point out is though 27% plus 49% 76% of the funding for the referendum goes for teachers and staff to provide programs for students that money is going directly back into the classroom for all
034of those teachers also it equates to almost over 70 teachers that are paid for from the referendum fund so let's talk about the ballot question this is the ballot question in 2018 you'll notice those things that are underling are the items that you control as a board when you pass the resolution so in 2018 seven years was set up now it's important to note that when you passed that in 2018 you passed it for eight years the year before the legislature gave the ability for schools to run eight-year referendums instead of seven however Crown Point was one of the first ones to go back for a renewal of that referendum when you passed the this ballot language in 2018 it was done for eight years when it goes down to the state to be approved
035the state says no you can't you're renewing a referendum for 7 years therefore you can only do a renewal for seven years therefore the question that was posed to everybody was for a seven-year renewal why is that important seven years plus 2018 puts us directly where where we are right now in 2025 that's why this campaign is happening now you also notice at 21 cents and then the purpose of what the funds were used for was also outlined before let's go to 2025 this is the question now in 2025 again the underlined portions are the items that you control as a school board you'll notice then a year after that determination was made by the state that you couldn't do an eight-year they came back and said it was okay therefore this year we're going
036for an eight-year referendum again the purpose is outlined and the other piece of this is we're talking about changing the maximum referendum rate from 21 cents to 18 cents now we would normally use the words decrease or reduce but those those are not allowed because that would be unduly influencing the voter important thing to note is you'll notice in the non-underlined areas that the word increase is used four times it's really frustrating because we're actually decreasing the rate that we're allowed to ask for from 21 to 18 however if the first time you see this question is when you go to the ballot that day and all you see is increase and oh by the way you see percentages of 21 and 20% it's going to be very confusing it's important to note that this
037is not an in increase we're actually decreasing the rate and I'll show you that let's first talk about how property taxes are calculated if you had a home with assess valuation of $100,000 the standard Homestead deductions 48,000 you then get to take another 35% off of that number that therefore making your net assess valuation 33,800 you divide that by 100 multiply it by the rate of 18 cents produces an annual impact of just under $62 or $5 a month let's talk about our tax rate history if you look back to 2017 the tax rate was a138 with a 21 cent referendum rate you'll notice that trending downward and staying at the 21 cent referendum rate until 2024 where it was down to 20 cents and then in 2025 this year we're down to 18 cents
038what you also notice is as that Trend continued down a138 down to a122 this year now as we've talked many times during our budget sessions our range for our tax rate was between a130 and a140 as our assess valuation grew we were able to take that range down between a130 and a120 as I what's coming in the legislature at this point I'm fully anticipating more than likely a decrease unless we see a huge decrease in the assess value which some of the bills are calling for right now however let's talk about how that 20% is calculated the county auditor has to go through a formula it's about 30 to 35 steps and when they go through that process this 18 cents comes off of that and they essentially compare it to what the tax rate
039would be without the refer that's how they come up with the 20 cents and as I've shown you and will show you that's not true that's 20% increase is not what is not what happening we're actually going to see a decrease so let's talk about year-over-year 2024 to 2025 the total tax rate now this is the highest tax rate total tax rate so this would include the city the library the county to Township every taxing entity that you would face for us the highest rate is in the city of Crown Point the total tax rate just under $2.75 cents in 2024 in 2025 we're at 263 now remember our rate went from a128 to a122 or a 6-cent decrease so of that 11 Cent decrease from 24 to 25 we're actually a little more than
040half of that at six cents let's take the median valued home for US 38,500 produces is a gross tax using the calculation I just went through of $ 4654 24 and 25 down to 4461 but we have to remember we have tax caps and everybody's under that 1% tax cap 385 you're only going to pay 1% of your median home at 38,500 now the referendum tax goes on top of the tax cap so you have your tax cap and then the referendum gets placed on top of that you'll notice in 2024 that's 34 $9 in 2025 down to 310 so your final tax bill in 24 would have been 3434 and 25 down to 3395 what does that mean it's actually a 1% decrease in no part of that question do we talk about the
041decrease that's taking place when you look at the question that's on the 2025 ballot let's look at a little different scenario in 2018 at 21 cents the last time we ran the referendum gives you different levels of homes from 100,000 uh down to 4 00,000 I'm going to focus on that 38,500 because that's the median value median value $355 was the impact of the referendum back in 2018 for that same valued home at 38,500 in 2025 at 18 cents that's $39 important to note when you look at the difference it's down $46 from 2018 to 25 so I'll we talking about the 1% decrease from 24 to 25 we're also talking about a decrease from 2018 to the biggest part to take away from this this is not a tax increase remember the question says
042it's a tax increase four times most important part it's not a tax increase it's actually a decrease thank you well done so as you can see the takeaways from this are a little complicated at times as we look at the assessed value and how we were outpaced every other school corporation in our County think a big part of that is because of who we are as Crownpoint schools we're not taking credit for the fact that as a property owner my taxes have gone up as my assess value has gone up on my home but the value on my home has gone up significantly over the last four almost five years now that's a big part of what we do here when we looked at moving here my wife and I came up and visited went
043around the community two different week everything was about Crownpoint schools crowno schools Crownpoint schools it's not only us but it's a great partnership but as you saw those things that make crowno schools different many of those things paid for because of the referendum is all because of this the challenge that we face is as you pay attention to the rhetoric that we're hearing across the country the r rhetoric we're hearing across our state is that public schools this public schools that here in Crown Point we've been fortunate to stay above The Fray we don't get involved in all that stuff we have solid educational experiences for our students for our teachers who work here with us and this is about getting that message out but as you saw that question where it says increase four
044times when we're actually decreasing that this is the biggest challenge that we face as our communi go members go to the polling centers to cast their vote the first time and and Matt mentioned this that they read that question can't be as they're standing there ready to make their vote it can't be okay so I've seen signs I've seen materials I've seen presentations that everything said it's a DE decrease but here four times it's saying it's an increase we're not going to get into why we think it's an increase four times and not allowing us to say decrease that's beside the point what we've got to do is and we'll actually have a calculator that'll be both on our friends of Crownpoint schools Facebook page and on our website where people can actually go in
045and put in their address and see the decrease and they'll know what they paid last year what they're going to pay this year because of the referendum rate so that is the message we think is it's incredible uh value that people will get for this as we continue to move forward with it but our message that we like to end up with is we're asking you to renew our referendum at a reduced tax rate moving forward thank you so this will continue to take this presentation out uh I know Danielle's on rotary we're going to the rotary we're presenting to um many more pto's we've got um the Alumni Association coming as well and we'll continue to take this message out and get involved there's great opportunity for you guys for our community members for
046our teachers and staff members to get involved especially in the month of April um there's links on our Facebook page there'll be links on the website where you can uh sign up to get involved and volunteer to do neighborhood walks to help with yard sign distribution um to help with uh organizing pamphlets call centers so that we can continue to get that message out out and I think that's the biggest thing that we all need to realize here is while there hasn't been a lot out there yet about the referendum once we get back from spring break here next week so the first week in April that next four to be game on where we're really in try and get this message out there especially about it's not an increase in taxes it's actually a
047decrease so with that I'm going to transition back up there if there's any comments questions that you all have we'd be more than happy to answer those yeah Mr Reese Dr Terell thank you for your hard work that out think you did a great job are there any questions or comments from board members no I'd just like to State and just reiterate what we're asking for is just a continued partnership we've had a great relationship in the past we're not asking for anything more please just understand I thought you you gentlemen did a great job of laying that out there is no tax just asking for continued partnership with it's important that somebody that's lived in ground point for over 20 years now had four kids go through the schools you know it's it's been
048a real blessing just fortunate to have kids be able to participate and I know Dr ter said seven out of 10 of our students are now participating in extracurricular activities and that's stuck out to me so I also know I've been on the board long enough to know that there's a correlation with academic performance in those activities so with extracurricular participation and student performance they achieve a higher level of academic success so we're just asking for your your your continued cooperation and participation if if you have questions and you're watching the video please use the resources available to you to check and do your own you know fact checks and information and I love the calculator idea I think that's a wondery so enourage anybody else have super quick so um being in real estate
049as my non SCH War job um a huge draw for for increases in folks wantan to points in our schools so I would say nine out of 10 buyers that I have that are coming through want to be here because we have a great School Corporation so um I I think it's great what we offer for our students but it's also a community benefit our property values increase for everyone whether or not you have a student um so overall having our quality that we're able to provide and what we give as a selling benefit um increases everyone's home values when they go to resell whether or not they have a um a student it's a win across the board even if you're not a a parent or somebody who's got um active students else all
050right moving on to item six Super discussion groups start with Mr vassor Crow Point yeah good news for us fromel joog concession should have been cut already 84,000 that's a good that's my report that's a good report that's a great report so thank you for sharing item 6.02 director Grant assessments Mr Harman of um I was reflecting on the question I think last board meeting that was into testing I think the question was somewhat talking about how do we help kids with their anxiety okay T well ever since the beginning of uh school new calendar year started testing students we did wa the English Learners we came into that was January and February came into March we have I we have sat going on at the the high school we're coming up into uh April
051with I learn and I am which is our alternative alternate assessment we finish up with an advanced placement so we've been in this season of testing for you know five months we're coming into a situation now with the March Madness have you ever thought about Madness as far as what goes on I'm going to give you a few synonyms and you probably can reflect on some of these maybe it's you but maybe there's a little bit of craziness that uh that goes on maybe there's a little bit of Hysteria uh that you face or maybe I I can see Mr Angel a little bit hysterical with with some of the the march of Madness Mania is another word I found and then uh uh just uh uh just a kind of just a kind of
052losing control you know when we're participating or enjoying the March Madness I want to compare that to what goes on for the school that happens in our Madness which say is our testing season and Nick M Dr China kind of referenced these but there needs to be a sense of saintness within our buildings at all times so we can perform well and that goes from the top to the parents to the students the teachers needs to be we need to be same we need to be we need to have that we need to be reacting with common sense we got to have a level of just what say contrasting you know the the the the craziness goes on we want to have a very even key for all people but it does all start from
053the top and it works through the system so that our students do perform do perform well so a couple of points I just point out here I think our teachers our staff our principles all are working very hard to help our kids to be uh prepared for testing they're getting prepared not only academically but also the mindset for for testing and then I also think the other thing is that testing is a it's a long time it's a long season me you think of some of these students you know an English learner I mean they're going through a series of test depending on what grades they are and to keep that going is very critical and important for us we have great staff that do that parents working with us to accomplish that so it's
054a gratitude but also to understand that there is a level of comfort saness that we do go through in this time of Madness CR Point schs thank you very much thank you Mr item 6.03 director of Elementary education thank you Mr President and board members good morning uh just a quick update on a few Elementary things happening here uh one district one book uh we are kind of in the final week of of our one district one book I hope everyone's been enjoying just Harriet um we do this to celebrate literacy and encourage family engagement around literacy this Friday we're going to cap things off uh with uh every single Elementary classroom will be uh zooming with the author Alana K Arnold um that'll kind of be the last thing our elementary students do before
055spring break so we're really looking forward to that so they can ask some questions about the book and learn more about the writing process uh with the author herself uh just want to thank Janna Carney um our media and Library coordinator and all the people in in each building to help make this a s a success uh coming up shortly after spring break is math bow uh we love every time when our uh seven schools can get together so that is coming up on April 15th at 5:00 pm at Colonel wheeler uh students in fourth and fifth grade at each School are practicing hard and preparing for that event and heads up about another new event uh or a new event this year coming up on the evening of May 5th um second graders from
056every elementary school will be gathering at the cphs football stadium folk dancing night uh so the our music team uh a lot of creative thoughts there and trying trying a new event this year so that's coming up on May 5th to show our families what our second graders have been working on uh in music class this year thanks thank you 6.04 director of SEC educ good morning good morning thank you Mr President and board members I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate Mr fuelling the Crownpoint High School staff the crew the student performers for the play that goes wrong um they wrapped up this performance this last week and I just think it's a true Testament to the talent that our students are able to demonstrate and to develop over the course of
057the years because we have such BRS of programming from elementary through secondary and it really just shines and brings our community together so um I think that was just such a great opportunity um for all who were able to participate also want to highlight just some of the successes that our middle school students um who participated in the Indiana State School Music Association isma um over the past weekend accomplished at Taft the orchestra received two Golds band received three gold Awards and choir received received a gold rating at Wheeler Orchestra received gold ratings in grad six seven and eight they for band had two Silvers in sixth and seventh and a gold in eighth and then choir was all gold so really exciting that we see again that this is that comprehensive um opportunity that
058we provide to our students that our middle school students are really um excelling I'd also like to thank Susan Valentine and Annie Vasser they are two of our Blended instruction design specialist they have been working directly with our Encore teachers at the middle school level and I'd like to thank our Middle School Encore teachers as well we're transitioning from nine-week Encore courses at the middle to semester courses for next year and so they've really been um working hand inand to make sure that both buildings are collaborating with each other that they have updated pacing guides and that they have updated plans for how to really engage students through a semester long course which will allow students to have deeper knowledge more exposure a lot of Hands-On learning and and um you know really solidify relationships
059with those teachers so I thank the board very much for all of your support for the opportunities that you provide to our teachers and to our students thank you you Mrs news skip it 6.5 move on to item 6.06 assistant superintendent Mr J Mr President um couple items first I want to start with the artificial intelligence I know that you had a policy to review here first reading but in addition to that that just so you know the curriculum instruction team has been working with our Blended uh instructional design specialists in creating some AI literacy throughout our staff uh we know that this is something that's not going to go away and we want our teachers to be able to utilize their to the best of their abilities it helps them with their jobs and
060also helps our students succeed use it appropriately so uh on March 11th our Blended constructional design Specialists Jeremy Walker Vince Lewis Andy V Susan Val present it to all of our staff on this very issue so as we move forward with that and we are also um in the midst of piloting a couple platforms that are teacher platforms that are Tailor Made For Education magic school and some things that are built right into our Buzz learning management system so we're looking at that want to stay ahead of that so just so you know that there's the policy is the tip of the iceberg what's happening Behind These scenes and number two I want to give you an update on uh security badges from cix um they are in place across the corporation we do need
061some equipment installed at soin due to the construction that will happen over spring break and then after that happens all the training throughout the staff has been done um I want to thank Mr Gil for all his work on the back end um with making sure that the computer systems align um also Mr molaski and helping CICS get into buildings and install all that in December and then our building admins for allowing myself Mr Co said to get out the mornings in front of all the staff over from January to now our goal was to spring break have everything in place and when we come back from spring break everybody should be able to do a three button click and get a building level response or an a button click and put their building into
062a lock down so great job by everybody pretty heavy lift in the middle of school here thank you item 6.07 thanks Mr President and board members just a brief update on where we are sort of in oury school this isort of time we begin students in next grad staff across theard so I want to thank all of our our principes directors uh everybody involved with starting to move that data forward into a 2025 as we look at at staff for the next year in particular I want to highlight uh just two staff members in my office um as we create uh new workflow protocols there's some things that have to happen behind the scenes either when you was we call offboard somebody when somebody leaves us or onboard somebody when they join us um that
063in the wake of our old employee management system RDS exiting to just creating some new workflows uh for our employees across the board so that everybody's on the same page when somebody joins us in Point Community School Corporation and then everybody's on the same page they so I want to thank Jean Lang and Rene rich and my office for working very hard on on some of these that's all we have from uh the HR department and we'll keep you posted thank you thank you Mr 6.08 Chief Financial Officer I have nothing to see 69 director of communications Mrs Alan morning good morning thank you I want to thank a couple of our extracurricular programs at the high school who recently hosted um some Media Partners in the last few weeks first is Mr lablanc and
064the robotics program Lakeshore PBS is doing a 10-minute segment on their neighbors and friends show about that program it was great to have them there um not everyone loves being interviewed with a lital Spotlight on them and two cameras at the same time um so thank you to Mr LeBlanc and his students also thank you to Mr lowski and the Key Club students who run the St Bal DRS event each year CBS News came out and did um four live segments anytime you add a live news crew and a live broadcast to an event creates a little bit more um excitement if you will um so thank you to all of them and the the work that they put into that I think anybody oh kids these days um when I go to these types
065of events and I talk to our students and I watch them being interviewed um I think kids these days are pretty amazing thank you to them you thank you as I mentioned in our presentation regarding the referendum Matt and I have been out every building presenting to our staff um and talking with them and while that seems time consuming and a lot of work to do that we appreciate the fact of being able to talk with our people when we're in those buildings just kind of rejuvenates you as as we look at the work that we're doing not only uh regular work but also for the referendum work and hearing their stories and seeing their excitement as well um so I appreciate the opportunity to get in front of them um also I want to
066thank our referendum action committee uh there's about 12 15 individuals who have been working behind the scenes to prepare us and our community here for what's coming in April as we prepare for the vote May 6 and then also want to thank all of those who are going to help as well as we continue to move forward with this um looking at the the heavy lift that we've got to get our message out and appreciate all those who are going to be stepping up and helping with that as well thank you Dr only think spring regional meeting should be all right moving on to item statement appreciation I just elaborate on what we were talking about prior to the start of the meeting and Mr Mr rire touch base on it um the play goes
067wrong just uh an exceptional afternoon yesterday I went and saw the one yesterday and uh I didn't know what to expect not being someone that goes normally to plays musicals anything like that I'll admit that and I've been to a few but once again not knowing that aspect uh I was very very entertained for two hours it was uh amazing on how obviously it explains the title play goes wrong where things happen as they're doing it but yet it's part of it and between stuff falling down and all that I mean everybody looked to be safe even though it didn't look at times and they was well well executed from top to bottom so uh congratulations to all those involved being our theater Department along with those students and the parents that support that because
068I can't imagine how many practices and everything else that takes to make sure that's well done so kudos to everybody involved in that Mr yes Mr Reese you said you didn't have anything this morning you were so wrong your presentation was fantastic so it was great thank you for for all you did on that presentation I'm not sure who put the slideshow together there was a collaboration of many people but that was wonderful so today was number 31 then that you did so so thank you for that I I do want to uh express my thanks to uh to our parents in the corporation uh I've been a my entire professional life has been in education and I've always been a believer that education is really a a tripod of teachers and students and parents
069and if you knock off one of those legs it's not going to stand very well so parents that you continue to work with your students at home just even question how their day was what they're learning in school just just goes miles and miles and miles so kudos to you parents that are doing that continue to do that uh it's going to play Big dividends for you and your family and your students so continue to work with uh your teachers and so forth we really appreciate that thank you thank you Mr always something for me um okay so two quick things the first um Dr China we are loving just Harriet um in our house and I wanted to to recognize a a wonderful Community collab between Eisenhower Elementary and Sunday Funday so um last
070week they did a little collaboration where they had like a a community night at Sunday Funday and they had a just Harriet special which Harriet in the story she does her waffle cone with two vanilla ice cream so um I thought it was a really cute way to tie everything together I think the more um we make these things into a bigger deal it's just uh more fun for the kids it gets them excited about reading um I know like I said we're really enjoying it at our household and and it's something that's bringing my second and fifth grader together um in the morning which is even more uh of an astonishing uh feat there so we like to read um in the morning right before they go to school so we finish our our
071chapter of the morning is what they enjoy so um thank you for your continued work putting that together that is um so wonderful and I love that our entire Corporation is doing the same book um this year so thank you for that my second one I want to recognize um our our boys basketball team so we are uh repeat Regional Champions after the game last week so they are advancing to semistate um it's a two game semi-state so they do play Saturday and they are in elart so first game is against Homestead so um hopefully we can get some folks in the community to join us out there thank you Miss B this morning I just want to recognize two things first I saw on the agenda earlier today Scot three of my four children
072absolutely loved just just a passionate teacher I think that's just love to educate kids know we have a teacher our system said conratulations second last week uh had the opportunity and I know he spoke about this last month but to attend the big ball red white I saw a couple administrators there and so it's all crowno kids but what a phenomenal well- ran event and I think the thing that sticks out when you go to EV if you haven't been to one of these events i' encourage you to do so what sticks out is the The Joy the genuine joy that students these players have just it's just love and consideration and care for each other that they demonstrated something with us so my kids were there we all learn from them and I just
073think it's a great event great opportunity what what a fun day so I want to recognize the the students that participated and all the individuals that put into that just well done with that look for a motion to adj