CPCSC School Board Meeting - February 22, 2021

001okay welcome to the february 22nd 2021 regular business meeting of border school trustees with a start time of six o'clock uh let's begin by if everyone may rise we'll ask mr angel to lead us in the pledge to lead us 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 thank you mr angel i'll be seated item two this evening our patron comments mrs green do we have anybody this evening thank you and then we can go to the consent agenda dr terrell so our consent agenda this evening for your consideration is the minutes for our special session with the board of finance meeting and then also our regular business meeting for last month the uniform

002conflict of interest disclosure disposition and of stale dated checks the end of the year resolution number personnel agenda and then the voucher registered checks as listed thank you dr carroll you've heard the consent agenda as presented by dr terrell do we have any do i have a motion to approve some move second move by mr babjack and second by mr angel any questions or comments for dr terrell not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed me because i wasn't present got it tom thank you we got uh opposed motion carries uh 4-0 and tom did abstain from not being present at the last meeting diana i i would be remiss just if i don't make a comment based on some of the individuals mentioned in the personnel agenda that are retiring uh

003we have i mean there's all kinds of individuals but three of them that just come to mind being in our finance department with cara vonitz diane spree and then of course karen toth our transportation director um we wish them nothing but the best and those are going to be three spots are going to be very difficult to fill based on their expertise and just professionalism that they've brought to those spots over the time so congratulations to all three of them and uh i'm hoping we find the next you know the next best people to fill those seats and i thought about that this morning at 4am when my phone was ringing and i was having conversations with karen about weather so yeah they will be dearly missed so i want to make sure there was

004a notation in there based on their uh everything they've done for the crown point school corporation i appreciate that artie was going outside oh sorry okay all right well i trust me i've been around long enough to know that though they're greatly appreciated as all our employees are but when someone's leaving us and doing the job that they've done for the years they've been here thank you it's well said katie's got to work that out for her that's for sure [Music] thank you mr angel and uh moving to action items we have 4.01 the 2021 summer school program mr hartman mr warning members of the board we're seeking your approval tonight of the 2021 summer school program uh this will include high school middle school and uh elementary school it'll be a very comprehensive program

005at the high school for credit classes there will be online classes they will there will be our physical education classes as well as some credit recovery those courses are for students who are missing uh quit missing credits and it's time for them to make up and there's also opportunity at the high school for what's called restart is to help students to improve their grades in courses that they have been taking during the course of of this year at the elementary and middle school a number of things are happening at the elementary and middle as we move uh hopefully to a green and bringing kids back in next year and if you just kind of think about what that means uh the terms that i've used is re-entry we're gonna have students that are gonna need

006to to re-enter into the school and we think summer could be a viable time to help them in that transition uh we think that there's an opportunity for uh advocacy for our students as well as in the social emotional area we anticipate and understand the learning gaps and also we understand that there's interest based we want to get kids connected during the during the summer school program at the elementary schools uh so this evening we're seeking your approval of the 2021 summer school program thank you mr harvard recommendation approved of 2021 carpool city school preparation summer school program do a motion to approve so moved moved by mr angel on second by mr hoffman any questions or comments from mr hartman not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the most curious

007five zero thank you mr hartman thank you and uh 4.02 is to purchase the student chromebooks ms dolan thank you mr president this time of year we're a little ahead of where we are normally due to some production concerns and delivery for our annual crumpled purchase for incoming kindergartners and then a refresh for the grade levels that are due in the case for this year that would be ninth grade we're also purchasing some additional units to accommodate some growth that we're seeing coming in through kindergarten as well so mr gill took this to bid these chromebooks as with prior years last for four years they are paid for through textbook rental we are going to continue to utilize the rainy day fund as the financier for the purchase and then the building level textbook rental

008will then repay the rainy day fund every year until that's paid for in full any additional units that are not assigned to a student get paid for essentially by the curriculum department and so the rainy day fund is still made made hold a change for this year we included the appropriation and rainy day for purchasing these items as part of the annual budget process so that we don't have to come in ask for an additional we just did it as part of the process from our budget meetings so the administration would recommend approval to purchase 1400 dell 3100 touchscreens and 400 dell 3100 non-touch chromebooks along with 1800 google management licenses from electronic strategies inc esi at five hundred thousand one hundred and ninety two dollars even thank you miss don you've heard the recommendation

009to purchase the student chromebooks at a cost of five hundred thousand hundred and ninety two dollars from ms dowling we have a motion to approve so move second move by mr babjack and second by mr smith any questions or comments about the chromebook purchase ms don did we turn in any of the old ones do we get any kind of credit for anything that's taken its useful life out of the equation so we we don't lease them anymore we purchase them outright because the buyback at the end is not to our advantages to the advantage of the manufacturer so we essentially keep the ones that come back to us as spares if they're usable or for spare parts that's through the manufacturer you said the i mean you said that we lease them no you

010don't anymore we don't purchase them outright um because the return if you remember cost us some money to reconcile that out the odds that a chromebook used by a student for four years is going to be without any type of mark or imperfection is essentially amazing esi are we familiar with them we've done we've contracted with them in the past my question is whether or not this is this a vendor we've used dealt with before yes sir that was brian's question also tom you guys were thinking the same there okay any other questions or comments from this dolly all those in favor signify by saying aye hi hi opposed welcome carrie's 5-0 thank you miss dowling and uh mr gill also for um take care of that work there 4.03 perch whitfield elementary school category

011two e-rate network cab uh was that cabling project miss dolly thank you mr army at winfield elementary school the new editions have all the new network and i believe it's cad 6a i think or chat yeah there you go cat says the smart technology genius not me it's all going in as cat 6a the rest of the building the existing building this is essentially to replace that existing structure cabling so that we can elevate the technology within that building so this will resolve some challenges we've identified with the generator being able to connect to all of the wi-fi and the things within the building is because of that old cabling and how it's connected so this is essentially dealing with replacement of the existing outdated cabling within the building this is eligible for e-rate funding

012which essentially means we're going to pay about 50. we're going to pay 50 of the cost the federal government will pay the other 50. it's not a reimbursement they pay it and then we pay our half and so that's definitely a benefit it's something mr gill leverages quite regularly we work with ad tech on to extend those dollars to our advantage so brian mr gill did do a bid on there you can see they evaluated it based on factors this is pretty common for him when we do gambling this is a project you will see commonly as we move forward with renovations as well because we have other buildings this is necessary so the 2020 geo bond is the funding source so we did contemplate this as part of the overall project the administration would

013recommend approval to purchase the cabling systems from tri-electronics who was the low bidder at a total cost of 85 300 the district's responsibility is 50 of this total the rest is funded through the federal e-rate era thank you miss dolly you've heard the recommendation to prove the purchase of the cable system try electronics at a total cost of eighty five thousand three hundred dollars uh do we have a motion to improve yeah so moved moved by mr hoffman and uh and second by mr smith any questions or comments from ms downing on the cabling purchase um if not i'll favor signify by saying hi opposed the motion carries 5-0 thank you miss donnie it looks like you have another one coming up at 4.04 the approval of preschool fees and charges as you all know

014and are excited i'm sure even though oh wait this morning should be the most excited preschoolers coming through the preschool program is going to roll out officially in the fall before that happens there's obviously fees and charges associated with that program um i think normally we would handle this through part of the regular textbook rental process but because of the need for pre-registration and to get some things done in advance we're coming to you today to get authorization for the fees and charges associated with the program within the recommendation you can see for children age three they'll attend two days per week the monthly fee is 120 for children age four days per week is three the monthly fee is 180 and for children age five so five but maybe not eligible for kindergarten it's

015a five day a week program half days the whole program is half days correct and the monthly fee is 300 we're also asking for authorization for a 65 non-refundable supply fee that we're going to use as a placeholder to hold their their seat within the program itself because we want to make sure we fill all the seats uh that are available lastly um obviously to participate in the program they have to live within the the parents have lived within the school corporation boundary but also we're going to discount or i think no charge doctors cannot afford to call or students who qualify for free and reduced lunch we are going to track that to see what that real impact is because we really don't know yet if we need some data under our belts with

016the program operation so essentially we're asking for your approval on those fees as indicated for attendance the 65 non-refundable supply fee to have the corporation cover the cost for free and reduced lunch students and that's our recommendation thank you for the recommendation to approve the preschool fees and charges and the amounts listed we have a motion to approve some movement second moved by mr angel and second by mr babjack any questions or comments from ms dowling um i'd have a just i heard you say it but i just want to make sure i heard it correctly that the if if a child qualifies for free and reduced we'd hope that the fee would be waived completely correct not a reduced rate it would be away for you okay and then also on uh two more

017things the the monthly fee for um i'm curious if there was research done locally but then also if we look statewide since this is kind of a new program for us she can talk to that i know they've been working on that we've been keeping a big spreadsheet on league schools and then also league schools were taking consideration we wanted and then my other part to that was i'm assuming you've had a large interest since yes we're at um i think it's 110 about the uh so we would be over 160 students at this point any other questions for mrs paskus or stella again all his favorite things opposed opposed motion carries 5-0 what do we have next we're going to uh discussion report items we have 541 policy revisions and additions the first reading

018list for cuba good evening mr presidents and board members as you know we partner with niola for our recommendations for board policy updates corrections and revisions this would be our update from late november and december you can see the policies highlighted there that we will be recommending down the road here to revise or update mostly due to making them congruent or in adherence with indiana code updates and you know state law there's some technical corrections in there as well so i present to you this evening this round of uh for first for first reading the policy updates uh for what is presented by neola as volume 33 number one [Music] i mean i think the intent would be for us to have a second reading and i'll clean it up and accept all the changes

019because this reads really rough in this first draft as you can see in the markup version and then we'll have it cleaned up so it'll be viewable for second reading next month you know as it will appear so we uh just like to present this uh for you this evening for first reading thank you mr q we have the information here for us to touch up on our own we'll get back to you next month as you said thank you thank you that 5.02 cap middle school update uh dr tora yeah so we're excited to come to you uh this evening and just give you an update of where we are with taft things are moving around along rather quickly as they need to be we have developed a committee for the design of the

020new middle school and mr gian fermi is chairing that committee mark you want to just give a brief description of who all is the part of that committee um so um the larger committee it's got carol uh katie's on that committee myself tracy cyber principal good so one of the things that we one of our main goals this evening is to really come to you and designate the site that we're going to be using for the new taft middle school as you know the corporation currently owns three different sites east of 65 and we have been looking at those sites we've had those for at least 15 years maybe longer than that the board years ago looked forward and saw what was coming and and did a nice job of securing some property out there

021so we have some property on 231 which is about 50 acres we have another 100 acres which is what we're calling the gibson street property which is at the corner of gibson and 121st avenue and then we have another 20 acre site which is too small for a middle school as we are looking at this so as we've been going through this process we've been working with skillman and gibraltar just to kind of get some preliminary ideas of locations reviewing topography reviewing different aspects with traffic with roads and looking at the development that's coming as you guys are aware most of the projects we're doing are looking at how do we stay ahead of the curve of what's coming we anticipate literally thousands of homes to be built here in the next four to five

022years and we know from different areas different acreages that are being purchased right now by different groups who are designing uh subdivisions and different places for people to live that east of 65 is at least a thousand maybe it could be up to twice that many homes in the next four to five years so with that in mind looking at our population looking at what's coming trying to make sure that we are reasonable with our expectations there so we've got a couple of things we want to show you here this is not new to you you've seen this as we went through our hearings and kind of gives you the locations of our different school districts i know that this is kind of small up on the big screens but if you follow the mouse

023right here this is 65 coming down through and you can see that the majority of our schools all with the exception of jerry ross and winfield elementary are on the west side of 65 so with the anticipated growth that we have here we think it is prudent to look at property on the east side of 65. so here is the current 100 acres that we own just as a couple of points of reference for you this is 117th avenue right here right up here at curves and then becomes 113th and comes back in to crown point proper to give you a little bit more of a zoomed in look the arrows here indicate this is jerry ross elementary school this is winfield elementary school so you can see here [Music] where the location is between

024the two of them is just straight west and almost splits the difference between them and you can see over here 65 running north and south so here is an aerial view of what that property looks like um there's currently a silo out there that is tom i just thought about gemma try and put it so you can see the screen up there i'm not sure it'll work but um that'll have to come down but then over here we've got about 10 acres of woods that has a pond nice sized pond in it we're really excited about some of the possibilities that that are there this is gibson street that comes down this is 121st avenue and then this is decatur street so again just kind of giving you uh an aerial view of it this

025really kind of brings it to life and shows you the possibilities of what we're really looking at gibraltar obviously their main thing is schools and designing schools and we're letting them be the experts in what that looks like we've given them the parameters that for instance we wanted to have to be able to accommodate up to 1400 students and talk through some some different things there and then through april and the early part of may we'll be working with the teachers and administrators at taft to come up with some of the things within the building for instance what's currently working really well within your school that you want to make sure is a part of the new school what are some challenges that you're facing and how can we make those better and then looking

026at current trends and even into the future of things that we need to make sure that we incorporate in this property so you can see here to give you an idea this spot right over here so this is on the east side of the property and it is 18 acres and is about five or six acres less than what taft currently sits on so it kind of gives you an idea of the size of the property that we've got out there and this could be a lot of different uses but you see here this will be the the school building will be designed right here to be all one level with the football stadium and track over on the west side with practice fields here a lot of green space back here right now we

027are looking at these fields being more what we would call physical education grade than uh event grade with the option though that they could eventually be bumped up to that tennis courts here this side of the building would be auditorium gyms and this side would be more of the educational classroom setting if you will on this side looking at ample parking around the building really excited about the uh different points of entry here having two on 121st avenue and then another one off to the side here really looking at some good options for traffic patterns for parents dropping off and then also for buses as they pick up and then looking at future opportunities here for outdoor classrooms for adventure learning challenge learning i should say and just some different opportunities there to really utilize

028the pond not just for taft but also for our entire corporation preschool all the way through 12th grade and some really neat opportunities that could be a part of that as well so that is the site diagram as we have right now we have weekly meetings every other week we meet with the larger committee and then on the off weeks we meet with the site development committee that's really looking at the specifics here for instance what are the possibility for the number of bus routes and how many buses would be pulling in there looking at traffic patterns looking at if we move the one of the practice fields into a certain location from another one those kind of ideas and just making sure that we have the adequate parking that we need around the building

029so really excited about where we are i think we're moving forward in a good spot i think that this will really meet the needs and interestingly enough a lot of the land right around this site has been purchased and subdivisions are already planned and they're getting ready to start moving dirt for infrastructure and those subdivisions right now so we weren't aware of that when we first started this process but pleased to know that that development is going to be right in that area where we expect it any questions we might have be able to answer for you guys cabinet members mark anything that i've missed that katie that you want to point out a question and i'm not overly familiar with this area it looks like a great great location very accessible which is which

030is exciting um very efficient for traffic flow growth all those things that we would look towards um i love the fact we're closer east of i-65 you know people from winfield families from winfield have sacrificed for a long time driving to middle school events and school and riding long bus rides and of course this will help but my question is and what i don't know is do they service city does a city service sewer and water in that location or is that something that we're discussing with the city or will need to be discussed yeah so that's a great question this is actually incorporated into the town of winfield so we went for we will be tying into city water sewer but with that we will have to do some uh pretty good improvements that

031are going out in that area to be able to tie in with it um last week had a meeting with skillman and the developer of one of the sub main subdivisions just north of this land and talking about that very thing to see if there are some ways that maybe we can partner and help with cost so i think that there's going to be some really good options with that there are definitely costs involved with that but we were able to build those in on the proposals that we brought to you with the projections so we feel like we're in a really good spot with being able to make the improvements out in that area but that will also then help all of the other development that's coming out as well it's coming there anyway

032yeah and and the other question would be the same with the roadways and that would be winfield as well if we were looking at developing roads yes and so actually the 121st avenue in on the north side there the north boundary is one of the few gravel roads that exist in lake county and actually if you go out there right now it's probably drifted shut still they don't plow it right now so we're definitely going to have to do some some work out there but at the same time we'll be able to make it exactly what we need and in partnership with the city or the town of winfield to be able to we're working right now on setting up a meeting with them uh to work through this and see what the project has

033talk with them about their future plans and see if there aren't some ways that we can use some of our green space even for them for different athletic little league stuff youth sports to see if there are some ways that we can utilize that property for them being a public school corporation we want our public to be able to use our facilities and uh want to go into that with the intention as we design this to make it that it's able to be used by our people yeah that's great i do you mentioned that there was a silo in the property that just reminded me of the fact that when i was a kid we had a farm property had a silo in it we had a hired man we took that silo down with

034yeah one of the one of the benefits that it appears is that um it's not going to be overly disruptive of with buses and why we do this and the build out of there's not a lot of housing there yet so the timing is is really good yeah we'll be able to get in there before a lot of that takes place also if you'll notice on the east side over there off of gibson street there are several homes right over there probably four or five different homes and then there's one in the south east corner of our rectangle there and we're trying to be mindful and be good neighbors of them so if you'll notice that driveway that comes out on gibson street we're making sure that that's in a location where lights aren't going

035to be shining at people's homes trying to the whole idea with the stadiums being over on the west side there and leaving up as many trees as we can and right now there's a pretty good tree line right there it's just a big corn bean field depending on the year right beside it but trying to make sure that the light from the fields and different things that are going on there that it's respectful of what's happening in the community as well that's great thanks gibson flows to 117 and gives you easy access off of 231 and then once 121st it's completed you'd actually have three access points of getting the property pretty easily so that's great gibson running down to 100 [Music] to 251 you have to kind of make a couple little jogs there

036but yes and it does run all the way up to 117th and i'm sure that people understand there's going to have to be there's already planned improvements being made on 109th right now going out to winfield and so this obviously is going to increase some traffic there but also as you head west on 121st street you can take that all the way over to iowa i believe it is and shoot right up so it will increase the the ability there to get to where you need to be on iowa which then can shoot right out on 251 as well it's nice to have enough additional land where you're not like cramming it in we're looking to figure out how it's going to fit so like i mentioned this is that additional 18 acres up here

037and then there's probably an additional 10 ish acres right here and again there's some water runoff possibilities here for wetlands so the site is really set up well for us and what we're going to need with drainage for parking lots and the different options there tom i thought you were going to say we need to start an ffa program out here with a silo but wasn't sure where you're going with that one [Music] i'm sure that the guys from skillman would love to have some help with it so [Music] you'll be well-rested after all that time in arizona tom so if there is anything else that's that's the update that i had for you this evening as far as taft goes and our project there are we um are we 100 sure we're going to

038call it taft right now that's the plan okay yep any any other questions about the tap middle school update yeah uh dr charlie want to move to 5.03 next thing i'd like to just talk with you guys a little bit is looking at our school calendar for the 21 22 school year and then also try something a little bit different for us here at crown point schools and that is to look at a two-year con or two-year calendar for the 22-23 school year as well so a couple of weeks ago we sent out a survey after going through discussion with our teachers and sent it to our staff and shared it with teachers staff members administrators and then we also sent out a survey to our parents and families as well to try and gain

039some information from them and we went into this really looking at a couple of guiding concepts a few guiding concepts as we prepared to look at our calendar and see if there were possibly some changes that we felt like could really benefit our students and our community one of the main guiding concepts that we literally wanted to stick with was being able to end first semester before christmas break especially impacting the high school students for a lot of different reasons part of that is to do with our dual credit courses and our university our higher ed partners and looking at their timelines with their semesters and the end dates that they have uh carrying that over into january just there were some challenges that went with that that were things that if we could change

040would really help us also with our advanced placement courses that we offer at the high school we offer a great deal of those and looking at the challenges there again with the timelines and then also we had several we have several students every year who graduate early at december or at the semester break and many of them want to get right into the college setting and make that transition in january and so ending before christmas break gives them that opportunity to make that transmit that transition more smoothly and and puts them in a really good position there so we looked at that along with that then we also wanted to look at the possibilities of adding a day to thanksgiving break to help ease not only our teachers and staff members but also our families

041who travel on thanksgiving weekend giving them that additional day and then also one to look at the possibility for fall break of having a week of fall break rather than just the two days on a friday and a monday again with the intention of helping everybody coming up right at the end of the end of the first nine ten weeks of school eleven weeks of school really giving people a break to get a chance to get away uh and come back recharged ready to enter the second nine week period so with that in mind uh brooke allen our director of communications developed a couple of different surveys one for our staff members and then one for our parents and created these questions by asking different schools around the state of indiana for samples of questions

042they used as they looked at modifying their calendars and so with those questions one of the questions the first question was would you be in favor of starting the school year earlier in order to be able to end the first semester before winter break and before memorial day and again we had very high numbers on those both from our staff members and also from our parents so for our staff members we had that came in at 66 percent for our parents that came in at 63 percent the second one was would you be interested in a three-day weekend or a three-day break for thanksgiving and not surprising this one came in with the highest numbers for our staff members that came in at 90 percent and for our parents that responded it came in right

043at 80 percent and then the final question was would you be in favor of a fall break that lasts for one week monday through friday and for our staff members we had 67 percent were in favor of that for our parents we came in at 64 so it's really interesting to see how closely aligned the two different groups were in those questions also felt really good about the number of responses we had both from staff and our parents as far as surveys go the participation numbers were very high with that so after we gathered all that information then we went back and talked with our administrative team cabinet building administrators had conversations with the teachers and really tried to look at what are some possibilities here the things that we can do based off of

044the guiding concepts so tonight you guys have in front of you a copy of calendars for the 21 22 school year and then also the 22-23 school year and with this one of the things we were looking at as we had asked about to our families and to our staff members about starting earlier and so in looking at adding a full week and adding an additional day for thanksgiving break we really also were challenged with how do we balance the number of days in semester one compared to semester two um so that it's not really out of sync with how many days you get in the two semesters that's always a challenge that school districts face the other part of this is and we've had some people who have said well i don't understand why

045we just don't go labor day to memorial day like the good old days and part of our challenge with that is because of the amount of testing that we have to do at the end of the school year and when those windows take place that are set by the state that are set by other groups that we have no control over we really need to try and get as many of our days in before those testing dates take place so a lot of this is driven by making sure that we have the number of days in for our students so in looking at this one of the challenges was we would need to move to accomplish all of those things we would need to move the start of our school year up a week so

046instead of it being the third week of august it would be the second week of august we're realizing of course that and having conversations with with several of you conversations that really helped as we talk through this and looking at at this point in time with it being february 22nd people having calendars set having vacations set we didn't want to impact what was happening as far as the school year goes but we still wanted to see if we could try and get as much of this accomplished as we could for the school year so our calendar that i'm bringing to you tonight for discussion would have us starting at a corresponding week to what we would have done if this had been a normal year and this is obviously not a normal year so going

047back and looking at other years before and that would be with having us start school the third week of august also being cognizant of the lake county fair going on right now and some of the issues with the timeline of how quickly or how close we are to that if we were to go ahead and stick with starting a teacher's first day back being on monday the 16th and students coming on the 18th and then looking at our fall break instead of it being a friday and a monday making it a wednesday thursday friday so just three days rather than the whole week for this year and then adding a day at thanksgiving break that would allow us to still end the first semester at the end of december before we went into christmas break

048session and would give us 81 days for first semester so the imbalance there is then second semester would have 99 days now when you look at that initially you think wow that's a pretty big difference between the number of days for the first semester and second semester but one of the things that that are that we have to point out is for our second semester is when we have to do the majority of our testing that's required from the federal regulations and then also from our state regulations and so by the time that you figure out the number of days that our students spend testing it really gets us a lot closer to being similar to that first semester dates so with this and looking at that with not moving that week up yet for

049the 21-22 school year what that would do then is give us an end date for our students on thursday june 2nd and for our teachers of june friday june 3rd we just feel really strongly that that's a good kind of compromise that still gets us a lot of what we are looking at and allows us to end that first semester at that time then with the intention of for that 22-23 school year [Music] bumping up the start of school to the second week of august teachers would come back on monday august 8th and students would come on wednesday august 10th giving them plenty of time we'd like to get both of these calendars out now so people can begin to prepare and plan for vacations and different things a year out and our intention then

050will be to continually be have two years of calendars out there at the same time so in the future coming forward as we move forward with this at this time maybe a little bit earlier in the year is rolling out what's that next school year so we're always another year out ahead of it and at that point in time then in the 22-23 school year we would look at doing that full week of fall break in october still having the three days of thanksgiving break that would then allow us to balance out our calendar or our semesters better at 86 days in the first semester and then 94 days in the second semester one of the interesting things about the 22-23 school year is how new year's lands on the calendar so the first is

051on a sunday which makes monday the second a national holiday so we actually had to adjust when our christmas break is there as you can see beginning break on a wednesday the 21st and going through tuesday the third with teachers coming back on the 4th on wednesday and then students coming back on the 5th on a thursday and again that's just one of those things that happens every few years as it rotates through the calendar where we've got to make that adjustment still keeping in mind all of the other things then gives us an in day the last student day is on friday may 26th and the teacher's last day then is on the 29th actually on the 30th i'm sorry right after memorial day any thoughts questions we've looked at these so often or

052so much that it all starts to kind of blur together um diana and i were talking about that this afternoon as we were trying to count through things and it seems like you see it so much and so much and then somebody else will look at in the first glance and be like well you left off the eighth of may the monday is just blank where's the number eight well my goodness i don't know we just get used to reading what you expect to be there so um thoughts concerns though that you guys have we took into consideration just some of the comments that we've heard um from our community from teachers from administrators conversations i've had with with some of you individually as well just to try and come up with what we feel

053is a pretty good compliment compromise and still puts us really in a good direction to help our students and help our teachers as well [Music] yeah so i know one of the things that we talked about is with the thursday or with thanksgiving and looking at adding that wednesday you know that's always a challenge for us because of staffing and we have people who are traveling and so a lot of absences that we have to fill as with subs on that day and it has really been positive and been received well in other districts that i've been in when we've incorporated this so that has been and with the 90 percent uh in favor of that for our staff it makes it kind of a no-brainer that that's something we really need to make sure

054that we do as far as ending before christmas that has been really helpful especially as the early college thing has become a much bigger deal earning dual credits has really become something that is now just not wow that's something that's neat that your school's able to provide that really has become the expectation and being able to help our students with that the idea of that fall break having a week long time has really been great for teachers it's been great for students to really when you're at that 9 10 week mark when you're about to hit the wall and you get a nice little recruit there the other benefit that comes to this as we look at our athletic programs isn't so often students who participate in spring sports don't get a week of week

055break during the school year because they're always in season during that time this then gives them that opportunity to have that as well so all of these things have been really well received where i've seen it in a couple of different districts and it has turned out to be really positive a good time um i'd share a couple thoughts for myself uh know thank brooke for putting the survey together brooke is something that we appreciate and not just this survey but as a board and a corporation we've kind of asked to try to get more involvement from our parents and teachers and um honestly not the particular i was a big fan of this survey i did i thought it was a very yes yes yes heavy i mean just you know speaking personally i

056thought it was a very you look at it and obviously yes i want that i want that i want that without really maybe understanding some of the repercussions that could come with those answers of yes but the importance is we took the effort to do a survey and get in and work down this path of communication um the fair uh i'm really happy to to see that we were able this year at least to get beyond the county fair i don't think it is a deal breaker to have school for a couple of days during the fair but i think it's very nice to avoid it so i'm happy with that um yeah i understand that the number one goal and going through some conversation that might be a little bit long-winded here but i

057think it's worth expressing that for myself to understand that all the reasons that dr terrell's already mentioned about getting done before the semester break it is just so important and thank you for those explanations i think for all of us to understand uh brian and i had conversations about the potential benefits of going beyond the break but i think everything we've been told trumps and we and have a good understanding why we got it we need to get it done and mr angel with the children just going through high school understands the importance of that be able to just shut it down at the break so um you know but then you want to get done before the break you're going to have to find you know things to give up on the other side

058for me i'm more of a i want summer to go as long as it can for the kids and the fall break i would sacrifice a couple days to get a couple to get one more of the weekends in summer um and but then you get i'm sorry i'm just recapping again what you said because it's important you go back and forth like you have this you gotta give away that to lose the spring break opportunity for the families that can't do a spring break or just the fact that i'm not sure about this but financially is it more affordable to travel in october than in march for you know to help families out so we've talked around this in circles and it's hard for me to swallow the the 22 calendar year to start

059the week of the 8th um i don't think i can come up with uh much reason to not support every thing that you've given us i mean if you know um if there's if there's further discussion and you find out that we can shave those three days back off of the full thanksgiving fall break and go back to the two days or or go a couple you know a day extra into the december week of the 21st or 22nd to get over the hump of the the next weekend of august i'd be all in favor for that but um i just want to you know just wanted to get that off my chest to to explain my personal thoughts and say that as much as i came after like todd what they what about this

060type what about that top what about this todd what about that todd everything he came back towards me with made sense so sorry about that a little bit long-winded but um explain our conversations with that yeah i would just add i think it's important to make decisions that are based on putting our students in a position to succeed you know what will help benefit them with their education and i we can't lose focus of that i mean is anybody excited about going to school in mid-august no no and my kids will probably tell me i'm the worst board member ever and i should you know be thrown off but the truth is it's it's you know they're gonna be happy when it comes to the end of may and they're off right i mean it's

061it's all relative speaking i do think that as a baseball player in high school i never got a spring break my family never got to get away for a vacation if you played a spring sport you didn't get away that's just the way it was in that aspect i don't think that should make a determination either but i could see from this calendar 81 days first semester 99 days second semester it makes sense to shift that calendar it just does for purposes of our students in their in their education with like you said as well said todd for for their college their school to get out uh to end it before christmas it makes sense and i believe we didn't speak about this but a lot of schools in our state uh are doing this

062or have done it already we're a little bit behind you know i never want to be an administration or a corporation that's afraid to make change just because we've always done it the way we've done it i don't think that should be our label we have to be willing to try and entertain new things to do the best job we can do so um this is a fair compromise i appreciate uh the administration you know the recommendation here not to do it this august because i do think that would have presented major problems uh not letting families adjust and prepare uh just out of respect and i think it was the right thing to do so i i would support this i think everybody will adjust by then and it seems to make sense from

063an education perspective and i would have to support that good thank you any other thoughts calendar doesn't affect you anymore it doesn't tell you based on being on the board a long time one of the main complaints sort of thing recommendations were to finish the semester before christmas break yeah and you get elected as a board member and it's to do what's best for students and then you keep everybody else involved including our teachers our administrators and then parents as part of that equation so but it starts with the students so i think by doing this we're putting what our number one goal is is putting kids first and i think this is a step in the right direction it's what everybody wanted you know that's what the parents wanted it's what the teachers wanted

064so why why wouldn't you do it so looks good i appreciate the time period of taking two years to get there as well you know i think it's real important to thank our our staff and our parents as well for participating you know one of the things that i heard as began this journey with all of you was we need to get input and be able to receive information and part of that is though people have to be willing to share back with you and and the numbers that we had of the participants were really really high so we feel really good about that appreciate people's willingness to share back with us thank you let's move forward to information items we have the superintendent discussion groups um and any anything that anybody would like to

065share i'd either senior electron point winfield just kind of open it up to brian do you have anything or no no i mean there's uh right if they've been getting do you know if they're back in a routine of uh meeting or they still they're meeting monthly they do a lot of zoom not a lot of in-person meetings and it's a lot of grant facade grant type actions there's just not a lot of activity going on right now so most of the discussions are things are not relevant to what we're doing at this point so it wouldn't impact our school system in those discussions thank you how about mr angel or hoffman any action out in the wind field or crown point area mr any activity that hoffman people could already see ms last meeting

066the town of winfield's willing to meet with us and i know dr terrell and those from our area are making sure that we get in contact with them now that a project location has been determined for the in the town of windfall and if i might um just as an update for you guys so katie and i met with mary grant here in crown point a couple of weeks ago just to talk with him about our upcoming projects and just to begin to build that relationship and see if there are some things that we can help them do and help us as we go through this again keeping in mind that it's for our community and trying to align what some of their goals are and a vision that they have with what we're getting

067ready to do as well last week katie and i and dave coulson um our director of security who used to be in cedar lake uh he helped facilitate a meeting with their town council so we were able to meet with them for right at an hour and again just kind of talk through this is what we're getting ready to do at macarthur what are things that you guys have coming up and look at some of the development options coming out there with them and then we're actually working even this afternoon we're trying to iron out some times with winfield to get with the leaders of the town there and have some conversations as well just to make sure that one we're sharing with them what our projects are what that's going to look like but

068then two to see if there are some win-win things that we can do for our communities that we represent here in crown point schools and as we move forward really meet the needs of our our community and our our people it's been good so far and i'm sure we'll have another good one with winfield here in the next week here yeah i i was given a little message of appreciation for the couple of meetings that you set up to see out in the community someone approached me to say it was pretty they were appreciative of the invitation to know what's going on we move forward to chief academic officer um mr hartman you're gonna take you're gonna go first and see i'll share first uh this evening mix it up um i've got three things

069i'd like to to share first of all is a commendation um you know child care has been a pretty stressful time this year with the changes from green to red and i just want to recognize uh the staff and i'll give names to diana for this but they've i mean they're like parents of kids that are coming in for the distance learning i mean they they are with the children trying to keep them on task they're doing all the things that that probably are happening in some of your homes to try to keep the kids uh on task with with their lessons and just just their flexibility being able to do that and uh you know we have three site leaders uh kathy kish carolyn lawson and kathy marrow and they they basically lead the

070seven sites that we have and then kendra days out of our office is the really the go-to person um that that they have so i just would like to commend them for the work that they have done this year it's been a different kind of a child care year for sure with that second thing kind of with the uh the project that's going on we're meeting with gibraltar regarding the technologies we look ahead last week or two weeks ago we had a meeting with principals and gibraltar's representatives and questions were posed of the principles as far as technology needs and principals had talked to teachers before that and they got some really good input tomorrow we're meeting via zoom with the principals and we actually have a presentation from gibraltar uh based on the the

071the needs that have been shared so we're moving forward in that to be able to identify the technologies for uh for our classrooms and we'll be phasing that in throughout the next few years as far as raising the level of the technologies that we have within our with our schools in the corporation uh the last thing i wanted to share was uh we did our first universal screening for dyslexia for kindergarten through second grade i'll give you the overall we this is based on 1674 tests screening tests that we did and 8.7 of those students are at risk of dyslexia and i think that's a key term i did not say they have dyslexia or they're dyslexic i said they are at risk those uh in this case 145 uh students their parents get a

072will are receiving a letter which uh is asking for consent to do a level one screen so you have a universal screener and then you identify students that are at risk and then there's another level of a screening to really get more deep into this and really you're trying to target and find out you know who really in a sense is dyslexic but at the same time you've got a number of students that have needs already and we want to make sure that we we address those i think one of the good comments that we heard from from principals you know the 145 students that are at risk they're already receiving interventions i think it was pretty much almost probably a hundred percent of these students are already in we've identified it it's just now

073that we have the uh the screener to maybe help us to uh to better identify and move towards the level one level two screeners and really get the students the support and help that they need so thank you very much you have any questions for me no thank you club director of elementary education mr mears thank you mr president and board members we are excited at the elementary level to be launching for the first time kindergarten pre-registration online that opens tomorrow morning and so instead of the traditional format which has had all of our families coming into our buildings on a specific date and there are lots of kind of congested areas due to covet and i think just due to the efficiency of being able to use our rds platform to conduct online pre-registration

074we will be able to offer that to our families and that will go live tomorrow a huge thanks to chantel pierce our data specialist who has been working with rds throughout this whole process to get us up and running also to brooke allen who has been integral in our messaging through social media through the mailer which hopefully you received at your homes and then through our updated website that our families will be able to use we want to make sure that we are drawing attention to the website so that we have kind of a one-stop shop for our families to make it easier for them when they need assistance so we are very excited and are crossing fingers that all will go well when the link goes live tomorrow so any questions about kindergarten pre-registration

075had went for uh registration two the previous two years and the second time you know we don't this should be online it's just i'm not kidding we joked around with the workers at the uh at timothy ball when we were there so that that's nice all it takes is a global pandemic and there you go thank you thank you for the update thanks director of secondary education mr gene fermi thank you mr president board members um i i could i'm gonna spend my time talking about crown point high school and i know a lot of you would think that i'd talk about this past weekend with all the great success we keep having in with winter sports but no i want to talk about something about academics that i think is just an amazing thing

076that has kind of transpired and we found out about late last week so you know every year we have students that qualify for national merit scholarship program and usually it's one or two students so just to qualify this they our students will compete with about 1.6 million juniors across the country and take the psat their junior year so they have to have a qualifying score and if their qualifying score is good enough they will get into that top three percent which is about 50 000 students then they will come back there in the fall their senior year and automatically two-thirds of those students will receive letters of commendation and they're out of the process the remaining one-third will move forward as national merit scholarship semi-finalist those semi-finalists will complete an application take a legitimate sat

077in october november december and then roughly sixteen thousand of those students who qualify semi-finalist 15 000 of them will move on as finalists so you're talking about students who started 1.6 million students they're in this top 1 percent of the country and this year crown point high school has nine seniors who have qualified as national merit scholarship finalist so i'm going to read their names real quick you might recognize some of them matthew bates joseph bell bailey brumbaum elizabeth leitzel abby namagada henry philbin anthony sonato jason tong and katrina valentine who i'm sure we'll get up here and talk to but next month let's keep our fingers crossed because out of those 15 000 that are in the finalist about half of them will receive scholarships so let's hope we have a few of them

078that have it but that's just an amazing feat mr marsnick thinks it's an all-time record but we can't confirm that so that's what i had to report maybe you get that before brooke gets that out to the papers so you got it hot off the price there so any questions or concerns that's awesome good information thanks thanks mr g for me the director of exceptional education ms pasquez good evening mr president and school board of trustees i have a story i would like to share with you i've come up to the podium each month and shared updates on inclusion and i want to share with you an experience i had last week in a conference i have already spoken to the parents and stated i would share this and they gave me permission to share

079this information so it was for a fifth grade student that is in our applied skills classroom at eisenhower that program wasn't previously there we moved a couple of those classrooms into town this past year the general education teacher was in the meeting and the special education teacher and the principal and the general education teacher started the meeting by saying olivia is just what we needed here they had never really had that kind of inclusion at eisenhower for the first time in her school career she's actually at her home school years past she had been bused to winfield or jerry ross she recently had a birthday party they invited her classmates they all came they didn't want to leave mom's the mom said that the girls were wanting to cancel their gymnastics lessons because they wanted

080to stay at olivia's party as we were meeting olivia was home for the day with some of her other classmates for quarantine and they were upstairs at that time facetiming the girls from the class they are truly friends so for me it just spoke to inclusion is so much bigger than academics it's all about the friendships the community the sense of belonging and what we've provided to that family and olivia i mean we all had chills parents were crying so i just want you to know this work although we're just beginning it it's already having such a huge impact and i want to thank cali dado jennifer meniere and jennifer chakina because without the three of those staff members pushing this it wouldn't be happening like it is so just wanted to share that good

081news that's awesome thank you thank you thank you and uh chief human resource officer mr akiwa thank you mr president board members just a brief comment on staffing we're at a very uh critical window right now as we start to analyze our enrollment data and a few other unique pieces of data that happen at this time every year i send an email out to all of our staff members uh asking individuals if they are interested in potentially voluntarily transferring to other buildings we're getting you know retirement letters in so there's a lot in play right now and i must say that um beyond the natural rollover of a school year that we we plan for there's there's so much more happening right now the vision of the school corporation in the wake of the audit

082and you know dr terrell's leadership everybody here this evening heather mark sabrina jim all the principals um putting their minds together to to not only you know re-rack our educational staff uh but package things uh hopefully in a in a little better way that'll keep moving us forward on a on a trajectory we've really not seen before and heather's really hitting the nail on the head right there improving uh all of our instructional environments and our and our culture here so exciting times i will bring to light one particular um area and that's kindergarten and thank you sabrina and all the folks that she mentioned in that effort it's no easy task to say boy hey i know you're working on this new online thing but we'd like it about a month earlier than normal

083um and they rose to the occasion and have it teed up and ready for tomorrow and this is very important for us because i don't know if you remember this fact there's a potential statistical phenomenon out there we're waiting to see if it shows here and that is individuals may have held their students out last year due to covet and waited an additional year before they started their children in kindergarten so we are waiting to see if in fact we might have a larger than normal kindergarten year um and this be obviously very important for us so the next few weeks are going to be very telling and things will start to really crystallize so i just want to thank everyone's effort to get us to this point where we're really starting to to see

084the crystal ball a little clearer so questions thank you for staying ahead of the curve okay thanks katie left she was going to a city meeting that was taking place this evening to hopefully give some input on some rezoning requests that were before the city and just with our thoughts and and concerns with that as well and just a little added on that anytime zoning issues are coming up and they're in a tif district those that don't know that's watching online that is very important to school financing and how that works with tiff dollars and allowing possible students to be in those tiff areas so thanks for ms dowling for attending and looking out for the best interest of the school corporation when it comes to decisions that are based in tiff districts so we

085appreciate she said is it all right if one do you want me to go and say something in two is it okay if i skip out of the end of the board meeting and i thought it was just it would behoove us for her to be there and represent our all of our interests as well so i appreciate scott your text this morning with that information again just making sure and reiterating that fact and yeah keeping that on the front side for all of us so good um so i have a few things did mary leave i'm ready okay so we see what oh okay to the same meeting i was going to introduce you to our new representative from the times who will be covering our stories mary freda is her name she's a

086crown point grad alum so we'll take that opportunity at another time winfield elementary update so i forwarded that to you you should have that in your email to look at and we'll be posting that online as well building is really coming along pretty exciting to see all the things that are going up out there and how that's coming to finish one of the things that is really happening right now is as you paid attention to your nes school board association as all of the bills that are in front of the legislature legislative both the house and the senate and there's a lot of different things that are coming out right now as far as funding for education and what they're looking at and at the end of this week is when all the bills have

087to have been crossed over from the senate to the house and from the house to the senate and then they take next week as a break and then they come back and that's when they really narrow it down they said before going into this this session there was literally thousands of bills that they were looking at this will narrow it down into the low hundreds for sure and then we'll start to see a lot of movement with that there have been school boards who have done resolutions and put out letters about different bills and what their thoughts are with that my experience and my thought with doing that is it's better to wait and see where it's where it's shaping up right now so we've got a couple of different groups that we work with

088here to get input and updates one is the school board association one is the superintendent's association but then also um with the growing suburban schools we have bi-weekly calls with our lobbyist who really keeps us up to date and kind of tips us off as to hey this is where we need to apply pressure at this time and so i think it would be better for us if we waited and really used our influence at a better time than doing it right before halftime if you will with that being said though if there are things that you guys would like us to do right now again let me know and we'll be more than happy to work through that with you i just think as far as an official as a board as crown point

089schools putting out an opinion right now or writing letters or having a resolution i think might be a little premature there's a lot of others who are doing that and i'm grateful that they are this will help us then come around with that second win but thoughts on that if you guys have any concerns or any thoughts of just regarding that house bill 1000 one zero zero one that used to be senate or the house bill 1337 or something and that was one that was looking to defund some of the school curriculum and high schools currently radio media i just find it's important that as much as we're waiting to see on when we need the so-called uh stuff in the accelerator um a lot of board members are involved in doing some scenes behind

090to find out who are some of the main contacts that we can reach out to so i know that was being done last week by myself when anything about defunding programs that are helping our students occurs sitting idle isn't the way to go and at least getting some additional information and through my past employment i have some connections down in the state of indiana or down here indianapolis that i've reached out to via email and phone calls just to make sure that when we know it's pretty much official that this could go through that we're in a position to act accordingly as board members and representatives of the community that might be able to just do some things that would at least uh fight for what we want to keep yeah so and that's really

091big with the department of workforce development and they're trying to say well these are high wage jobs well for instance one of them is cosmetology well there's a lot of people who make a pretty good living you know doing that and to defund that doesn't make a lot of sense so i think it really needs to be rather than a statewide thing more of a regional thing you know you look at our radio tv course classes that we have here and the amazing things that come out of that to say that that's not something that people can go on and it just doesn't make a lot of sense in culinary it looks like we all like to eat and yeah we are so uh we don't want anything to cause that we know you like

092you know you know obviously there's a shortage of teachers you know why is that and then now we're going to talk about reducing that because corporations like ourselves and others have that offering to give some other students a career path that they might not necessarily take and that doesn't make sense so especially at a time when we're talking about career paths and trying to provide different opportunities for kids and then we're going to defund some of those career paths it doesn't make a lot of sense but that's not totally untypical either so okay the last thing that i had was just a reminder for board members cabinet members of our executive session on thursday beginning at 5 at the learning center look forward to a good evening there as we begin to have training on

093strategic planning and what's in store for us as we move forward with that and if you guys don't bring it up i will bring up the great successes we've had over the last couple of weekends with the high school in particular but not just the high school but i figured that's probably going to be covered so i'll i'll give that to you it may there's a chance all right thank you dr carol um just before mr velasque do you have anything this evening no sir okay well we appreciate your support here and what you've been doing especially with snow removal and all that making sure that wind field i've passed out twice a week and with all the construction going on and be able to make sure people get in and out it has to

094be a chore in itself so to you and your staff thank you for making sure that could be done because it can't be easy i just it's got to be a nightmare i'd just like to thank my my staff the guys and gals that um and dr terrell's graciously uh providing an appreciation breakfast on wednesday for like 26 of my folks that they're tired right now i can tell you i i bought them lunch today bought them jill sasmos and they're tired it's been a rough winter in fact uh just her today it's been the worst winter temperature wise and snow wise in 12 years so i appreciate you recognizing them uh because they work really tirelessly to do everything they can to make it safe for our kids has been perfect but it's been

095pretty good when i drive by and i see somebody working on a sidewalk and you can't really see them because of the snow hills i don't know where they're going with it so to me that that deserves some recognition it's a good year to move to northwest indiana too [Laughter] welcome [Music] move forward uh uh item seven other business of the board of school trustees we have the 7.1 approval of the accommodation award presented to the cronkite high school latin club at the january 25th 2021 school board meeting so um assuming by reading that that we forgot to approve and take vote there so yes so just a little clerical cleanup thank you diana nice catch wow yeah um so the recommendations prove the accommodation represented the crown point high school latin club at the

096january 25th 2021 school board meeting do we have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr angel second by mr babjack i'm assuming there are no questions uh all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed uh tom's still with us right yes okay motion curious five zero and uh um any other business that would like to make match enough i said we talked about earlier but uh just a quick comment on the location for the middle school i just want circle back to say it's really exciting um the location looks great especially considering the others it looks superior to the other choices and uh i mean gosh i mean credit to the the board and administration that was forward thinking however many years ago so i appreciate what the uh were

097you a part of that uh i was part acquiring that land tom was on as well i believe at that point in time and that goes boards to before us and superintendent two back too to make sure we're in a position to acquire that knowing the growth was coming remember people didn't think the growth was coming to crown point as tom could probably more uh relate to at the rate it came here and the high school was filled we've now adding another addition and a fight for that high school hindsight does and i mean making sure that that was done and once again you know a few school corporations locally got handcuffed because those boards previously didn't act and the current boards take so-called the heat and the wrap for it so in this case

098it crown point was put in good position by prior boards and leadership to make sure we were in a position to acquire land for situations like this any other other business that anybody would like to mention i can't think of anything myself so um let's move to board statements of appreciation recognition i'll start with mr smith thank you dave i just heard what mr akiwa said a little while ago and it just keeps ringing i just it's so exciting when you're talking about the you describe the process that we're you know across the board you know we're just taking everything out and it is it's honestly hard to keep up when i hear your story and you hear about the different programs and the child care and you hear all these different moving pieces um

099not just busy but doing it well you know it's going to be effective you're seeing the results of that already um by what heather shared and um and what could get us more excited than that and seeing children be impacted their lives be impacted right i mean it's just that's our dream right i mean for any teacher anybody that's in education you want to impact lives it's not just teaching so how exciting is that but i you know i i just don't you know i said it before and i'll keep reiterating it you know average is not good enough for for us and i i'm so excited when you said that it just made it reminded me it said yeah we need to keep moving keep excelling keep pushing harder so i appreciate all you

100guys it's hard work it's it's it's the honor to be up here watching it it really is so you guys have done a great job that goes with our teachers and our students too who have continued to adjust all year i mean you know scheduling back and forth and now we're back to four days uh at the secondary level and it just seems seamless i mean from our perspective so but i know a ton of hard work went into that so you know nothing changes that quickly um you know without a lot of hard work coming into it so i just want to continue to commend them the building leaders the teachers our students our families for continuing to adjust and work with us and all things considered it's it's it's been great this year

101so with that being said i i um our student athletes are just rock stars right now uh they're excelling like crazy you know it's exciting it's really well done so i took one piece of this so i'll take the swimming team and congratulate them on their success and wish them the best this week as they go down and and they compete and so we got a real opportunity to do something really cool i mean it just seems like there's success everywhere so what a blessing it is to be a part of crown point and to be part of the school system so good luck to the swim team and those individual swimmers swimming this weekend that's yeah i mean i'm going to i'm going to speak briefly about the wrestling program and how they continue

102to frankly dominate even at a state level but mark i appreciate you you know giving us sharing the information with the national scholars today because that's that's not stuff that we get exposed to regularly this is easy stuff that the entire community sees so for you to take the podium and discuss how a new record i believe has been set and how we've quadrupled what we typically do and that's a that's a gigantic achievement so i do appreciate that and i know the rest of the board does as well regarding the crown point wrestling program the last month has been uh nothing but exceptional and amazing they've taken home a sectional championship a regional championship then they sent um after semi-state they end up sending i believe eight was was the total and according to

103coach i was texting with coach hawkins uh the other day and he said that that's that's a record for crown point which they did eight last year as well so the back-to-back years of sending eight wrestlers to state is phenomenal and it puts them in a you gotta send that many to have a chance to take it so um you know the boys got down they got down to state and uh we ended up putting two two wrestlers in the championship in championship matches one at 120 and one at 138 logan frazier ended up with a second place finish which is phenomenal and then of course we know jesse mendez won his third state championship in his junior year so one more one more season left for for that young man who's you know going

104to probably get his pick of where he wants to go for college so but then before that we had i think it was about a month it was like right around the time of our last board meeting the um girls wrestling state championship took place and alexi westfall won in her senior year won another state championship so i believe she won as a sophomore she's placed all four years so state championship as a sophomore state championship as a senior phenomenal i see the i see the work that goes into it um i'm experiencing it now as a parent who has kids that are in middle school and in elementary school and how they participate within the youth program as well as the middle school program i mean from top to bottom that's what you have

105to have to develop and get these types of championships it has to start with the with kids at a very early age and the wrestling program has has done an exceptional job of doing that so congratulations to the wrestling program coach lord we'll say thank you scott uh miss randy um before i get to the girls basketball team i just like to say thanks to the community and the high school i was fortunate enough to attend both senior nights for our girls basketball players and our boys and that's cheerleaders dancers and all that and the support is just overwhelming with what they put on for them and all of our senior athletes you know moving on to college next year it's nice to see that even during a pandemic that we could still honor them

106for their you know performance and years of playing that sport so thank you to all those parents uh the high school for putting on those you know senior nights because they are special when it's one of your own kids and i know i went through that in prior years so thank you to all that are involved with that and then congratulations to coach cyber and the lady bulldogs i mean um i have a good friend's daughter that plays with the team so i've pretty much followed them all year been doing just a handful of games uh but all the playoff ones that are important and for those of you that weren't this week's semi-state game even though we were up six at halftime pretty much dominating the second half but that prior week in the

107regional final when you were down 13 to nothing to start and for those of you who don't know penn probably has two division one girls based on my experience of watching basketball play and next thing you know we were down 13 to 12 and then took the lead early in the second quarter and never looked back so true testament of a winner and a champion is when cards are stacked against you you battle back and you uh move on and they did that and congratulations to our semi-state lady bulldogs and they will play brownsburg who um in the state title game saturday night seven o'clock our time down in indianapolis don't be deceived i'm one of those kind of crazy guys that actually looks things up so i saw some video of brownsburg and even

108though they may have 10 losses i don't think all those girls were on the team and they might had some covet issues during the year because if you saw this team destroy the sixth ranked team in the state by 22 points in their game saturday night just don't be perceived by that record so we will allow our hands full and the best of luck to coach seibert the lady bulldogs on saturday and to an outstanding season so far but like most of us say when one of our favorite teams is playing let's let's win it all so good luck to them that's great uh is i'm sorry no that's it okay um well like i said it's nice to drive down 231 and see the marquee in front of uh wheeler right now i believe

109it's still there it's a great day to great day to be a bulldog proud proud day to be a bulldog so everything we spoke about tonight kind of encompasses that and um want to repeat the appreciation to miss dado and uh chikina and i i missed the last um okay yes uh i mean what a story thank you for sharing that with us and um i i like the like brian says sometimes you hear something just rings on you it's not all about academics it's about you know and we know that but to hear you say that how the child is affected is awesome um the communication that we mentioned the uh throughout the year we've been trying to be better and i think we're getting a little bit better with uh some of the

110board communication emails from the community that may come to the board um you know it's been a trying year with the red green and yellow and some of the some of the communication we had in the beginning wasn't so easy to talk with the other side and you know everyone be on the same page but recently some of the emails that have come through i just want to if anybody is listening to this show some appreciation towards those emails and the questions that were asked and the intent of asking them and just trying to do better for their children or their children you know their their community their school whatever might be going on and um while dealing through a couple uh mr akiba has helped so thank you but i think but mr marcinek

111continues to amaze me as a principal of our high school and his passion to connect with children i mean it's uh not much more needs to be said about it but i knew mr marstnik i i mean just i knew he was a great person you know um but there is no fake in his trying to when he comes in front of us and says well it's the best decision for the kids what i do for the kids just continuously proves that and uh just want to thank him for continuing to not just academically but to do a great job with developing young men and women and making sure they're on the right path uh we've had a couple incidents last month and each time has been handled incredibly well that's right um that's it

112for me i'd be remiss if we didn't say thank you to mr mckee back there filling in for mr bill thank you for making sure that everybody could follow at home time so we appreciate your efforts that's right mr hoffman has skipped over your laptop there i really appreciate the fact that i'm missing the worst winter we've had [Music] but secondly seriously um as you fellas know my father-in-law passed away january 24th and i would like to thank all of the volunteers whether it be in our school corporation the ymca their church their hospital students helping students my father-in-law volunteered at the phoenix airport in a group called the navigators and their job was to help people find their gates their connections their ground transportation baggage whatever it was be volunteered nearly 12 000 hours

11312 000 helping people but every little bit helps somebody so i really want to thank those people who volunteer here and do it with a great deal of sincerity and i've got to tell you guys that so when we had one of our weather delays that went out at like six o'clock in the evening and we called off school the next day shortly after that phone call went off my cell phone rings and i look at it and it says tom and i'm like oh are you kidding me in arizona and i picked up the phone and i said hey i'm not sure why you're calling but if it's to rub it in that it's 80 degrees where you are at -10 here where i am this is not going to be a very pleasant

114conversation so he was just calling just to check and make sure things were going okay but tom we look forward to getting you back here and know your father-in-law had a great impact down there and i appreciate the impact you have here and the volunteer hours and service you provide to our community as well thank you the only other thing i would add to all the celebration for our community is the continued support of for our instance our cheerleaders they're three and oh now and sectionals regionals and semi state um our dancers and and the way that they perform is just awesome to see the way our kids support each other and come up but then also there's this older couple it's kind of crazy and they keep buying out all the fireworks stands that

115i do yeah shooting off fireworks when teams come back in town yeah it's just really really neat to see and uh we appreciate them and it's the scotland parents yeah bill and betty have a good time yeah have jackson fireworks that's a good combo i'm just glad he's the next police official who doesn't break his laws well it was funny the first the first night we did it my mom was all concerned because they came through at like 11 30 at night yeah and she's worried about the noise and the neighbors and then the fire trucks and cop cars all have their sirens on all the way down main street usually they kill it at the square but the whole way down i was like well don't have to worry about noise that's right it's

116a good time and that's better dave you ran yeah i love his number but i don't have it right now for those who want to complain but we appreciate it we appreciate the mayor's support as well and everything they do for our kids let's make it memorable well in fact that's a thank you i appreciate you bringing that up because between the mayor and dave crane the fire chief they're the ones that um i'm texting back and forth with when the girls are finishing you know giving them updates on where they are with the game and coordinating how far they are from the um hookup point for the escort and stuff like that so it's um they you know they go out of their way to get drivers there and everybody kind of pitches in

117so it's awesome screaming the effort it's cool all right anything else from anybody if not look for a motion to adjourn so move second moved by mr angel and saved by mr badger called in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed bush carries oh