001Right. Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. We will call this meeting to order at 6:30. If you would like to stand and join us as we say the pledge of >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Um, Dr. Schaefer, are there any amendments to the agenda? >> Uh, Mr. Trey, no, we have none request this evening. Thank you. >> Okay. Moving right along. The next item on the agenda is students of the month. Dr. Schaefer. >> Yes. Thank you. And we are privileged again uh this month to be able to recognize our students of the month uh from each of our buildings. And Mrs. Perkins is going to lead
002us off by introducing the student of the month from North Elementary. And just a note, if you don't pick up on this, but when appropriate, our students are recognized for exhibiting our portrait of a learner traits of initiative, organization, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and adaptability. And I know this month's focus was on communication. So students tonight have been uh selected at least in part on that skill. >> Welcome. Good evening. I'm excited to introduce North Elementary student of the month, Emma Gasper, daughter of Jesse and Corey Gasper. Emma is a first grade student in Mrs. Brewer's class. I found her to be lively and inquisitive, and I can see right away that Mrs. nominated for her communication strengths. Emma's favorite thing at North Elementary is art specials. She loves to make art. And the day
003we spoke, she had just made something special using a purple heart, a dark pink heart, and a light pink heart. She was very proud of it. In Mrs. classroom. Emma likes to read and to work on which in her opinion is better than the kid. If Emma could change anything about North Elementary to make it better, there would be two recesses, one after lunch and one after specials. At home, Emma lives with her mom, her dad, a dog named Belle, and a dog named Harvey. She has an older sister who goes to Dep University. While she's While she's at home, she is most likely watching her favorite show, Catching Teeny. Teen catching catch teeny ping or if there is not any internet at the time she'll be playing with a toy box full of her
004dolls. Emma's favorite thing about her mom is that she gives good snuggles. Emma's favorite thing about her dad is that he will usually do whatever she wants him to do. If Emma were in charge for a day, she and her best friend Caroline would spend the day at the zoo seeing the kangaroos and the butterflies and then they would go get McDonald's. When Emma grows up, she wants to be a small animal veterinarian so she could be with animals all day long. She predicts that her favorite animals to take care of would be bunny rabbits because they look so cute and soft. And she has also decided that her veterinary practice will not treat reptiles because she doesn't want to be bit by one of them. Our learner trait for January was communication and Mrs.
005Brewer nominated Emma sharing the following. I am proud to nominate Emma for student of the month. Each day she arrives with a warm welcoming smile and is ready to learn and give her best effort. When a new student joined our class, I knew Emma would be the perfect choice to sit beside him. She immediately made him feel welcome by helping him learn classroom expectations and inviting him to play at recess. She shows the character trait of communication by helping communication by helping new classmates feel comfortable and by asking great questions because she always wants to learn and grow. Emily, you are truly deserving of this recognition. Congratulations on the students of the month. Congratulations, Emma. And Mrs. Hollingsworth is now going to introduce our student of the month from South Elementary is proud to introduce
006Miss Abby Gabra as this month's student of the month. Abby is a student in Mrs. Prader's second grade class. She lives with her mom, dad, and two younger sisters. At home, Abby likes to watch YouTube and play with her baby sister. Abby is excited because she is going to get a pool at her house this summer. She also likes to play with makeup and wants to be a makeup artist when she grows up. This month's Warriorway Skilled Success is communication, and Abby is one of our multilingual learners as she moved to the United States when she was just 5 years old from her home country of Ethiopia. Her home language is Torinia and she's done an amazing job of learning English in just three years. She is bright, confident, and truly makes South a better
007place. Abby said that she loves South because she loves to learn and loves how Mrs. Prader makes learning fun. She said her favorite thing about school is when she gets to have inside recess so she can play teacher with her friends. Her favorite special is PE and her favorite class is actually the knowledge block of reading. Currently, they are learning about the Civil War and she is finding that very interesting. If Abby was in charge of South Elementary, we would have an ice cream party with her favorite flavor, cookie dough. Abby was nominated by Mrs. Prader and Mrs. Prader had the following to say. I would like to nominate Abby Gabra for student of the month. This month's focus is communication, and Abby shows this every day in real ways. As a multilingual learner working
008towards English proficiency, she uses both her words and actions to include others, works well with classmates and support those around her. Abby is kind, aware of what needs to be done, and often steps up without being asked. She's a great example of what strong communication looks like. Congratulations, Abby, on being South Student of the Month. >> Congratulations, Abby. And Mrs. Berkkey is going to introduce our middle school student of the month. >> Ma said she was nervous and I was like, all you have to do is stand here. This month, I'm proud to recognize eighth grader Micaia Ael as our student of the month for exemplifying our portrait of a learner skill, communication. As we all have said tonight, Micaia lives with her dad Corey, stepmom, Sarah, and a busy household that includes her siblings,
009McKinley, Carter, McKenna, Camry, and two older stepbros. She also has quite a collection of pets, including cats, fish, a sugar glider, a bearded dragon, and a bunny. When I asked her what it's like, what she likes most about having such a large family, she smiled and said that the best part is that if one of her siblings isn't getting along with her, there's always someone else she can spend her time with. A reflection of how she values connecting with others. Academically, Micaia challenges herself in meaningful ways. This year, she is taking four high school credit classes, agriculture, biology, algebra 1, and French. She described feeling both nervous and excited about the transition to high school. Nervous about the unknown, but excited about hearing after hearing from her older sister that high school is really cool
010and knowing it brings her one step closer to what's next. When talking about her future, Micaia shared that she has recently discovered a passion for baking and cake decorating and hopes to someday make a living or at least have a side job that involves this interest of hers. When I asked if she watches cake decorating shows, she laughed and said that her dad had just asked her the same thing, but she prefers not to watch others because she likes coming up with her own ideas. Micaia's teachers describe her as a student who communicates with clarity, respect, and purpose. Her ELA teacher, Mrs. Bowen, shared that she is the ultimate student and a perfect example of what it means to embody every portrait of a learner trait. She is consistently kind, caring, and inclusive, making everyone
011around her feel welcomed and valued. Micaia leads by example and demonstrates the qualities we hope to see in all students. Her biology teacher, Miss Carlton, added that she advocates for herself, takes responsibility for her learning, and consistently works as a strong team player. While her social studies teacher, Mr. Cecil, noted that she's a fantastic student, and a natural leader, especially through her strong communication with both peers and teachers. Micaia is thoughtful, reflective, and genuinely kind. Someone who listens well, speaks with intention, and helps others feel heard. Whether she is collaborating in class, advocating for herself, or supporting her peers, she consistently demonstrates what effective communication looks like in action. It's an honor to recognize you. Congratulations, Micaia. And Mr. Claude Fer is going to introduce our high school student of the month. Our student of
012the month at Danville High School is Drew Bowen. Drew was nominated by the DCHS science department. And here's what they had to say about him and his communication. Drew is an incredibly involved and dedicated student who makes a real impact on everyone around him. Between running cross country, serving as president of National Honor Society, and being active in student council, he leads with both commitment and heart. When you talk to Drew, you truly feel heard. He genuinely listens to others and takes the time to understand what they are saying. He's a great friend, thoughtful and supportive, and his positive energy makes him uh so much fun to have in class. As Mr. Weise has said, in short, Drew is a dog. As part of the cross country and track teams, Drew has been a three-time
013regional qualifier in cross country. He also enjoys fishing and camping. his love for the outdoors has taken him to many national parks with his favorites being Yoseim and Crater Lake. Academically, Drew values uh learning across all subjects, but he especially appreciates AP World History with Mrs. Campbell because she makes learning so enjoyable. Looking into the future, Drew dreams of becoming a Lego designer in Denmark where their headquarters are located. In order to make that dream come true, he plans to major in environmental engineering at either Michigan Tech, Purdue, or the University of Wisconsin. When asked who he admires most, Drew said that he admires both of his parents. He said they truly are kind to everyone and have taught him uh important values such as the golden rule and to always be willing to help
014those around him. One of the many one thing many people may not know about Drew is that he uh hopes one day to live abroad, even if only for a short time, so he can immerse himself in another culture and step outside his comfort zone. Congratulations to Drew for being an excellent example of dedication, character, and ambition. Congratulations, Drew. and to all of our students of the month and to their families and and families. Thank you for giving us such great kids to work with. That's a privilege on a daily basis. And thanks to our administrators and teachers for recognizing these fine young folks. We appreciate your your efforts as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next item on the agenda, student commendations. Dr. Schaefer. And on behalf of the board of school trustees, we
015are thrilled to present some really neat uh athletic and academic accomplishments this evening. I'm going to ask Mrs. Harvey, our athletic director at Danville Community High School, to please join me to help with presentation of these. First, this one stands alone. This is uh Porter Prather. Porter is with us this evening. And uh Porter, congratulations. been chosen as the uh a Indiana Football Coaches Association junior all state team member. Congratulations. That's quite an accomplishment. Quite an honor. Can you tell anybody about your experiences thus far? I'd hand you the mic and tell us on behalf of the board, we want to recognize you and recognize your accomplishments and thank you for being such a great example. Congratulations. Thank you. also in the concession. >> You let those seekers get out, you'll be in high demand.
016>> And we have a list of young men here who have been selected by the Indian Football Coaches Association as academic all state members. So, as much as we love the athletic performance, we like even better the academic performance in the classroom. So, we're going to recognize these gentlemen. We're begin with Alex Brown. Drewctor Reyes. Drink sharp. I want to recognize Ethan Wooden. Uh Ethan's let me know that he couldn't be here tonight at baseball practice, but congratulations to Ethan and all these things. I want to again on behalf of board of trustees, we congratulate you on your academic performance as well as your athletic performance. That's that's quite an honor to be academic all state. Congratulations. >> Okay. 3.5 GPA and minimum SAT or ACT score to qualify. So that's that's pretty outstanding work.
017Great job. >> All right. The next item on the agenda is community input for this evening. No one signed the sheet, but if anyone would like to step to the podium and share your thoughts, just state your name and your address. Seeing as no one is running to the podium at the moment, we will take a short break. For those who would like to exit the room, however, the next item on the agenda is a state of the corporation, which I'm sure will be fantastic. You might want to think about staying to hear it. >> Trying to help their speed. They've been they've been given fair warning now. He's already told me how much time. >> It's a rubbing clock down. I'm a big fan. >> You need that. Just turn the paper over and
018start putting time on the back. >> He's not listening. Now, >> all in favor, >> you're the official type. >> We'll give you a little card. >> All right. The next item on the agenda is a state of the corporation address. Dr. Schaefer. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair, and appreciate the opportunity to kind of walk the board through our annual state of the corporation address that we do uh each February. So, tonight uh we are going to begin with um just a preview of what we're going to cover tonight and we will touch on some assumptions as we look ahead into the 2026 year. uh revisit our vision, our key performance indicators, and then just an overview of our organizational review, which is going to include uh some aspects of leadership, our strategic planning, workforce,
019our learning systems in particular, because that's that's what we're here and that's what we're about. Uh our finance uh knowledge management and challenges and successes as we look back and forward uh to last year and this year respect or next year respectively. So some of our assumptions are that um we have funding trends for education fund and a local property tax that those those trends remain constant. Uh sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Uh but we're going to assume that as we look forward into next year, those current trends remain constant. that our student enrollment trends remain as predicted with moderate growth predicted for this next year and any uh legal changes may increase instability for schools in the year. Uh we know from uh the last couple years of some uh legislation that has
020been already passed. Uh that has caused a bit of instability uh for our schools. So we're going to work forward this year with that in mind. And sometimes I get asked what is you know what is the purpose of having a annual state of the corporation address and that really is to memorialize uh where we've been uh but also to look forward and create some benchmarks for improvement for us as we move into in this case 2026 and we always go back to our vision that everyone every day we have high standards and high achievement uh for those of us here in the district. We also want to revisit our values, our core values of empathy, excellence, initiative, integrity, personal growth, and responsiveness, and make sure that we're focusing on those and bringing those through
021in the work that we do. Our mission is that we commit to maximize our students success through personalized experiences here in the district. So though they they can make a difference in any community that our graduates move out to in their future. Of course, we have our our branded tagline of being the Danville difference. Um, but we're going to move on to some of our planning processes. Uh, we have an ongoing strategic plan and we have reorganized that with diverse stakeholder input over this last year into five distinct pillars. We've actually made it a little more simple and reorganized it. Those pillars are teaching and learning, culture and climate, finance and operations, community engagement and leadership. And we have a goal set uh in each one of those areas. And then we've been through a
022planning process now for 10 12 years ongoing. We keep improving that planning process and moving it forward. Uh this is our current workforce total. You can kind of see how we we break down in terms of our certified staff and also our classified staff. And probably the thing that stands out here is our workforce now is up to 443 employees. Uh which has grown quite a bit over the last several years as we have grown with students. So we have 192 certified staff and 251 classified support staff in the various areas that we we oversee. This uh line probably catches our our eye more quickly than anything that we can look at. And apologize for shooting a beam over you, Mr. Mr. Cassinger, but uh I'm going to point out right over here, and this
023is off our most current enrollment count. Uh we now stand at 2,956 students as of February 1st. So we have grown about 500 students in really the last five plus years. Uh we can go back to uh 2016 and bring that number forward, but the bulk of that growth has been since uh 2020 forward. >> Dr. Schaer, what was the decline from 12 to 16? >> Uh what what caused the decline? >> Why was there and then we kind of >> Yeah, just um that's a good question and really it's just normal fluctuation. um we were in a little bit of a pattern of declining enrollment over a period of time. We didn't have new housing. Uh current housing wasn't turning over very quickly. Um what happens is you begin to age out with your
024school age population. So, and that that's a great point because you can see from 2012 we were at 2600 at that time, but then really we're in kind of a a little bit of a gentle decline and then about 2018 uh we also saw assessed valuation go up and that's because we're seeing properties and those types of things uh go up with that and those opport housing opportunities for people. So yeah, this also stands out pretty significantly. And I'm just going to focus on the the top line up here. And this shows our population diversity and how that's changing over time. Um, and you can see our various ethnicity categories uh that are measured uh by the Department of Education and how those have changed over time as we move up and down any one
025of these columns. So we are a much more diverse school population uh than we were uh even uh five or six seven years ago. Um which you know makes us a little bit unique in that regard uh here our area as we as we grow out to the west a little bit. Um again not surprising in these changes uh but they certainly are changes that we're you know experiencing and and uh privileged to uh to develop as we move through time. We have a second demographics and this is broken down a little bit different way. Um and this looks at our different populations in terms of free and reduced meals. Uh those continue to grow steadily at a rate of about 2% increase a year which is interesting because the way that the state and
026and federal government now measure poverty is not based on this. poverty is now uh measured on the number of wick tanniff and SNAP applicants that apply in the county and those are measured every so often. That number is going down. Uh but what you can see clearly is free and reduced lunch pricing is going up. So it's it's interesting to see that dichotomy. We're seeing that across the state quite honestly. So we don't know if that's true just to how those things are being measured uh because funding is definitely tied to those but funding now is tied to the poverty index the wick tanniff and SNAP applications. So we're seeing federal government funding go down as a result of that. Um and again with the uh complexity here with the free and reduced lunches it's
027tied to state funding but less emphasis on that in terms of funding. The the number that really sticks out here uh is in the ELELLL number population and those are our English language learners, our students who have a first primary language language and learning English as their second language. And we can see in as recently as 2021, we had 22 students we were serving and we've grown to uh 265 uh students being served currently, which is a a huge change uh when in our within our overall population. And that's from about 1% up to almost 9% now of our students or nearly 1 in 10 um are an English language learner. Our special education numbers have really held fairly steady here the last couple of years. Uh they were on a a gradual climb. Um
028not that they won't change again next year, but currently, you know, we're running about 18 19% in our special education population. And then you can see our our total that total enrollment up there. That was our uh fall count. Uh we don't have the new February count in there quite yet because we we just got it literally. >> Now we're going to move on to learning systems and Dr. Walker uh is going to walk us through all the good things happening there. >> Yeah, a lot of good things happening. >> Okay, so I want to kind of take you through some of our KPI performance levels. Um these um are goals that we've obviously brought to you uh many times, but just to get a good report, a lot of these are based on um
029endofear percentages from last year. Some of these are um sort of live numbers, but for the majority of them, they're sort of uh based on school year and so they're from last school year and how we ended up. Um so just to take a highlight of some of our our goals here. So um we have early literacy skills which we measure um and so that was at 78.6%. Um I would say it's it's interesting from grade level to grade level but we are seeing huge growth in um how students are coming in and where we're growing them to. So we set that bar high at 85% and we keep we keep kind of inching toward it every year. Haven't gotten there yet but we'll keep working there. Um our second goal is um a goal
030on IE3. So we have um goals for not only our third grade students but we also look at our second grade students as well. So we have continuously done really well on our i3 assessment. Uh state average at this point is 87 just over 87% and we're at 95.7 last year. We're top um 14% in the state. Um that's due to some really hard work um by our elementary school teachers to get those kids ready for that test. Um, our third goal is passing the math iLearn assessment. Um, our goal was 60%. Um, our data team always sets very lofty goals. We, you know, we try to challenge ourselves. Um, and so we were 1% off, but we had made great progress. So, we were at 53% last year. We set a stretch goal at
03160 and almost got there at 59%. So, that was an amazing feat. Um, and as far as um, ELA I learn, um, we made great progress. So, we we met that goal. Um we were at 49% last year um the year before and then last year ended up at 55% 56%. So we were a percent over our goal which was an amazing um amazing job there by by our teachers to get to that point. Um our fifth goal is our SAT goal. Um and so our our goal was 65%. We knocked that thing out of the park. Uh our students got 76%. Um and that was up from 60 last year. So, we went from 62 years ago to 76% this last year. Um, and that was all due to, I think, a lot of
032great prep work that the teachers at the high school were doing. Um, PLC work. Um, and they were really putting in the time, putting in the effort to to um to hit that uh that high mark. Uh, next is the math SAT benchmark. So, our goal was 50%, we got to 45, but we had increased that was still an increase of 10% from the year before. So again, our team sets our goals high. Uh we do that intentionally. We feel like, you know, we we need to need to set the bar and try to get there. And so to have an increase of 10% was an amazing job um for our high school teachers there. Um uh graduation requirements, we had a great year, met our met our goal um at 97%. Our attendance rate
033um is looking good. Um the attendance uh has sort of shifted this year. So we have a a a different goal this year in looking at chronic attendees um versus our attendance rate. So this was sort of based on last year's goal and the way that the state gave um our data back before the state has kind of changed that and so they look at um chronic um you know students who are chronically not at school. And so that that uh goal will shift a little bit for this school year. Um and then our last two goals are our stakeholder goals. Um and that is our uh the first one is our um number of stakeholders um on the staff end. And so uh we look at how many staff rate Danville Community School Corporation
034as a high quality school corporation. Um and so we hit that mark at 96.9. Um goal number two that is our parent. Um and so that's usually um a lower number there. We want to maintain at least a 93% um we were just shy of that at 91 this last year. As far as curriculum goes, we're working really hard this year to implement new Amplify CKLA reading materials um in grades K through 5. So that's been a lot of work this year to get that up and running. And this year we are reviewing secondary ELA and world language materials for adoption for next school year. So, we're in the process right now of reviewing lots of curriculum um to make that decision at the end of this school year. Uh we started off the year
035as far as professional development, we are doing uh PD all year all year long. We started off the year with a great presentation by Luis Cruz. Um and that was on best practices tying PLC's to RTI. Um that was a great kickoff for our staff. Um after that at one of our PD days, we did some um ML training to help our multilingual students. Um and so that was another I'd say high point um in our PD journey this year along with a lot of other professional development that our staff are getting all throughout the school year. Um evaluation and assessment just kind of keeps getting more and more busy. Um so Mrs. No has has a lot of assessments that she is tracking and running through. Um, we've got M- in-class assessments for our
036youngest students. All of our students, um, K through 10, and then some juniors and seniors are taking an exclment. We've got not only the I learn at the end of the year, but we've got I learn checkpoints. We've got Kog assessments for high ability. We've got SAT, PSAT, IM assessments, I read three, WEDA, AP tests. We um really there's not a a time in the school year now that we do not have a test of some sort going on. Um, and so Mrs. No does a great job of of leading that and and getting all of our students through all of those assessments. Um, our course and program offerings, as you guys know, we've added PE for a high school credit at the middle school. Um, and so next year, I I believe that's going
037to help to free up some space in their schedules um for courses that will contribute to the diploma pathway of their choice. So, we're excited about that change. Keep going. Cuties there. This is all about special populations here. So, our our alt ed program. Um, we had 93 students enrolled during the first semester. So, that's up 36 students from last year. We continue to just keep growing that program. Um, those students are enrolled in 182 courses. Bless you. And they completed 165 of them before the the end of the first semester. So, they are just rocking through those courses. We've got kids in there that are doing uh working there for credit recovery, but we also have students that are working in there because they couldn't fit something into their schedule or they need a
038certain pathway and they need to be able to go to an area 31 or complete an internship and so they need to be able to complete classes um otherwise. And so they are rocking it in Warriorway Academy. Um our title one services um this is um a little bit about what Dr. Schaefer was talking about before. um that our our title one funding is determined by that formula, the percent of formula children. And um so those that's a different number than our free and reduced lunch rate. Um you'll notice if you look at that first um uh box going all the way to the right, you'll you'll notice that that 4.66% for FY 2026 took us below a 5% mark. And for some reason, even though that percentage doesn't change much, dropping below that 5%
039mark really um had a huge impact on our Title One funding for this last year. Um and so that's something we continue to watch. We're sort of hovering right there. We've we've been right at that level for a long time, but this is the first year that we've gone under the 5%. So we're going to kind of continue to to look at that number. um focusing on identifying students that need support and then trying to bridge academic gaps knowing that we have less title one um federal grant money in order to do that with um our high ability program continues to grow. So we now have 30 APCP honors high school credit courses to offer students. Um and currently we have 19.5% of our students who are qualifying for high ability services. So, we've got
040um a lot of staff members with their high ability license and kind of continued to grow that every year. Uh special education. So, that number continues to grow while that percentage has fluctuated with the number of students that we have. 557 students is still up from what we've had in the past. Um still our speech and specific learning disability are our largest areas, but our highest demand is certainly our emotional disability and autism. um and some challenges. We just kind of continue to focus on behavior and mental health and whole child support, including our three to five year olds. Our English language learners are multilingual uh uh students. We do currently have three full-time teachers that are serving those students. Uh currently 332. um each of those students has to have an individualized uh learning
041plan and ILP and they all have to complete the WEDA assessment. So it's a lot of time for those teachers but they are they're getting them through not only assessments but also making sure that they are meeting their needs. Um just a kind of a few general education. One of the trends that we wanted to sort of point out is obviously we're we've been working to acquire our science of reading training uh very recently but now uh the IDE has began to roll out requirements in mathematics and so now um we've got the science of reading stuff going out and now we've got some assessments that we're going to bring in for mathematics and I think they'll probably see more of a focus there. Um and so adding that to the mix as well. uh
042some challenges. We we do have an updated ILARN assessment this year. So that's going to mean that our data won't come back as quickly as usual. So we probably won't get that data until the fall of 2026. So that just sort of delays some of the things that we normally do and some of the things that we use that data for. We'll have that lagging data. Um and it we won't have it before we start the next school year, I don't believe. um with additional students obviously becomes additional staffing and so we got to be very strategic and uh we're certainly prioritizing needs each each spring. Um that's something that we're starting the process of looking at now is where are our biggest needs and and you know how can we uh match the staffing
043um to those needs. Um and then one of the successes to share is just working with our countywide team to develop that workbased learning process to meet the new diploma requirements. And so that's a countywide process. We're really excited about that work. um and excited to see by the end of the year uh where that process has gone and um hopefully getting our kids in a lot more work-based learning experiences. >> Turning it over to >> Dr. I have a question. >> Um when we when you're going through the goals >> and seems like we've improved in several areas, >> but I look at a goal of anywhere from 50 to 65% like that's our goal. Mhm. >> It seems really low to me, but you say that we set high goals. So, help me
044understand why only 50 to 60% of our kids are passing these tests. >> That is a great question. Uh, so the state averages for all of those assessments are very low. Um, and so we continuously are a lot higher than the state averages. Um, they are very rigorous assessments. And I would say also as soon as we sort of start to figure out an assessment and how to prepare students for an assessment, it feels like we shift standards, we shift an assessment, we kind of do something a little different and then we're trying to all kind of build back up and and figure things out again. Um and so it's sort of a consistent process, but I will say um even when you see those um goals of 50% or 60%, those are way above
045the state averages right now in those assessments. We yeah we've been running in right around the top 10 12% of the state and most of those and here's something it's important to understand that most people probably throughout the state don't know every state has a different testing system and they have different rigor levels and Indiana is in the top five in the rigor level across the nation. So we have one of the hardest tests in the nation in terms of what we're expecting students to know and master and how to demonstrate that on the test. So a student here who's in the 60th percentile might be in the 80th or 90th percentile in a different state. So we have very high standards, very high goals in that regard of what students should know and be
046able to demonstrate. But that will across the state then result in lower percentages of attainment compared to other states. I think the average for like ELA um passing is like 39 to 42% in the state >> overall and for both ELA and math. And if you look at like our I read scores were like way in the top, right? But those same kids take that ELA I learn and only half of them are passing because the assessment really isn't valid. If they are passing the I read then why aren't they passing the ELA, >> right? the reading I learned that's just like a month later. It's because it's not a valid test. >> So I mean and the rigor it's I mean it's ridiculous. >> Hearing Mr. Brown ask that question and hearing Mrs. Walker
047answer the question related to that that question that answer. So for example in goal three you had 59% of students um pass the math I learn it was an improvement over 53% to get to 59. That still leaves 4 %. Do you have any data that indicates what sort of growth that other 41% was showing on the test? You know, maybe they went from here to here, but it still wasn't passing. >> Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yep. >> To me, I think that's the way this is presented. I think it leaves what Mr. Brown was starting to think about is there's another that that goal alone. There's 41% of the students that we're not talking about. Mhm. >> And to me, if you could add that sort of data in this sort of update, I think
048it might show the public that that other 41% might be making some significant gains. >> Yeah. >> They may not be passing. >> Sure. >> But they're certainly moving towards it. >> And I think for some of those students, that's probably a monumental achievement. >> And yet they're not getting their due diligence of credit for the effort that they're putting in. >> Yeah. >> By the corporation. I think we need to start including that. I think it's easy with like the checkpoints because you can see growth on the checkpoints. I don't know if you guys do opportunity twos, but we see that >> um at our school. I mean, our goals are very similar to these. I mean, even on goal five, you got the number of kids that uh on the SAT, but when
049you take 24% of 2900 students, 2,800 students, that's quite a number of students that are accounted for in this update, >> and I'm going to guess that maybe if they've taken it multiple times or two times, some of them have shown improvement in those scores. >> Yeah, we take a PSAT every year, nth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade. So sharing their improvements to the public I think would be a good way to communicate >> what the rest of the students that aren't doing that aren't necessarily passing. >> I think it too it's interesting to look at the special groups like how special ed now we have you know we've had multilingual teachers for multiple years now. How is that impacting and looking at those special groups of students to see how they're growing too? Yeah,
050>> because the absence of I think it can be confusing to the public that they see the as Mr. Brown was noting your goal seems low, we don't have the growth for these other 40%. And then we get around and we talk about graduation rate being in the 90s. >> And I think that's for some people they're like, well, how can you have that high a graduation rate if you only got this percent pass in this and you never talk about this other 40%. And I think it's about trying to uh what I would think of as being more transparent about the success of the corporation that's really there that I don't think we're truly talking about. >> Sure. >> I think it helped me understand too just how difficult that test is. So, thank
051you for explaining that. >> You're welcome. >> All right. Now, Dr. Walker was eating into Mr. Herbert's time, so we're gonna we're gonna cut Mr. Herbert. We're just going to keep it there. So, I don't think uh so again this is the overview of our support systems uh this would primarily concern all the things that kind of keep the school moving along so that our teachers and staff can educate the students to the best of their abilities. So as we look at facilities uh we have six facilities uh we have increased square footage obviously with the additional uh renovations that we have been doing here. Uh some of the challenges that we do face are staffing for those new areas. I like to tell people that we've added almost 120,000 square feet uh over our
052campus here most recently in the last couple of years. Uh if you take that into perspective, you look at South Elementary, it's just under 120,000 square feet. So, we've essentially almost built an entire new building uh and still so trying to find the staffing to help support those areas. Uh some of the successes that we've seen over this past year, uh transportation facility is continuing to move forward and will be complete this summer. Uh our new maintenance facility has been completed and is working very well for our maintenance department and we've seen South Elementary renovations come to a conclusion uh here over the past year. As we move into uh Mr. readers area and technology support. Uh we can see that uh we have had a great response as far as the number of uh
053time that it takes for us to get tickets resolved uh this past year going uh all the way down to.3 hours from almost 5.9 hours in 2024. Uh so that has been a great improvement that we've seen over the last year. As we look at the tech and the infrastructure here, uh again we are in the process of migrating to powers school which will be our new student information system. Um moving away from Infinite Campus. We'll start to see that being rolled out here in the next couple of months. Uh starting with registration at the 1 of March. Uh some of the challenges that we continue to see are new content filters. Uh the the technology is changing all the time. students are adapting and figuring out ways to be creative about the things that
054they are using and how they're using them. Uh so that provides us with the opportunity to make sure we're staying on top of that uh to make sure that we're protecting those students when they have their devices with them. Uh as we look at successes this past year construction related, we've had a lot of AV improvements uh at most of our buildings uh and we'll be moving forward uh next year with that here in the middle school. So, we will really see over the last three to four years total technology upgrades at all of our buildings, which we're really excited about. As we move into marketing and communications, uh, Mrs. England, uh, we have social media followers of Facebook of over 6,500 and Instagram just over 2,000. Uh, obviously, we have challenges uh, in this
055area, which includes the social and media heightened uh, group emotion uh, or the spread of misinformation. uh surprisingly how quickly misinformation spreads but it does. Uh so trying to make sure that we stay on top of that uh specifically and when we have events that are happening here at this in the school world. Uh some of the successes that we've seen over here in the last year is that we have added a student intern uh to help boost the engagement among our students and I know has done a very good job with that. Uh and we also uh promoted our school finance series where we did a series of six videos uh that we rolled out about a year ago with myself, Dr. Schaefer, Dr. Walker uh and are expecting round two of that to
056be coming out here later in the spring uh to continue to provide uh just the financial background of how schools operate and function for the community to help them be better uh engaged and better aware of uh how we do function. As we look at human resources, uh we've been able to utilize several different platforms to help find qualified candidates. Uh obviously, we are still needing to hire more as we grow. Uh and being faced with the challenges of less budgetary dollars in order to hire those folks. Uh we are continuing to maintain our employee fill rate that we have set. Uh so we're doing a great job with that. As we move into transportation, I say we've been doing a great job in transportation. Uh we currently have on average about 1,900 miles that
057we travel per day. Uh that is up over 180 miles from last year. So you can see that we continue to expand uh the number of students that we are transporting to school. Uh this was a big uh issue that we had last year or a challenge was our driver shortage. That is currently still uh one of the challenges that we do face. Uh however, we have been able to eliminate the contract drivers that we've been discussing and used in the past. Uh but we are still currently down three drivers uh that we would love to be able to bring on and one bus aid. Uh so again, we're continuing to look for those folks. Uh and some of the continued success that we've seen uh awesome uh staff that we have. We've hired 10
058new full-time drivers. Uh so again, we are still down three and we've hired 10. So you can see it's kind of a rotation where there are times where we bring some in and some end up leaving for whatever reason that might be, but we're continuing to do that. But I will say the staff that we have on transportation with uh the direction of Mrs. Swanson is doing an outstanding job right now and she's done a great job of leading that group. Uh our monitoring, our safety meetings uh to continue continue to make sure that we have a safe transportation streak without incidents has been an improvement that we've seen over the last year. As we move into food service, Mrs. Stempkkey uh currently uh has been working to make sure that our uh dollars are
059going to where they need to be. Uh as we've discussed some of the challenges that we're facing with the free and reduced lunch as those decrease and the poverty decreases here. Uh those are providing challenges. However, we still are maintaining a a adequate balance and making sure that we do that to a very high level. Uh we've also competed completed successful for this past year the first non- congregate summer feeding program. It's a mouthful. Uh where we were able to provide families over the summer seven days worth of breakfast and lunch uh that was kind of a a drive up type where we have these prepackaged meals uh and bags and families would be able to come up. We would hand those out to give to those families so that they would have food over
060the next seven days. Uh so we completed that over the past summer. Uh and then improvements from last year. We are adding a coffee shop uh here at the high school as part of the renovations uh which should be opening any day now. Uh that we will be having the ability to serve coffee to our students. Uh that will be up for debate if it happens in between classes. We'll let Mr. Claude Felter manage that. We don't uh getting coffee will not be an excuse to be late to to class. So we're manage that. Uh a couple uh just different pictures here uh that Mrs. Stempky provided. Our Crimson Cafe uh that name was voted on by the student body. Uh so that is the name of our new coffee shop at the high school.
061Uh and then the middle picture was their uh summer feeding that they were doing that we just talked about. As we move into our pace or our latch key program, uh Mrs. Dennison's done a great job of managing this. 28 staff members. Uh again having various behavior uh issues and support trying to make sure that we are working through those challenges. Uh but also some of the successes uh is that Mrs. Dennison has done a great job of training her staff. We've really kind of made that a focus over the last not only last year but probably last two to three years. Uh so they're using PD days to make sure that they are training the staff uh to make sure that they are able to adjust and uh to be uh certified in the
062CPI deescalation process uh to help with that. And we move into Little Warrior Learning Center. Uh Mrs. Jackson again 121 preschoolers. Uh challenges again we've discussed the trauma, the mental health uh being able to help these students cope with the the emotional support that they need. Uh some of the successes that we've seen though is that this we have sustained this program enrollment consistently. Uh I know that we just rolled out open enrollment for this program about two weeks ago. Uh we already have several classes that are full. Uh and so it has been uh creating weight lists but we are definitely doing an excellent job as far as making sure that we fill that program full. Uh as we look at our maintenance and custodial staff again uh challenges for them uh is just
063taking care of the workload as we've discussed as the uh increased square footage of our buildings uh and trying to make sure that we're staying on top of all of that. Uh but the successes that we do have is that we are currently fully staffed. Uh and obviously we just talked about south that those renovations are complete and done. as we look at safety and emergency planning uh behavior threat assessment we kind of discussed that in our previous meeting uh but our SRO are doing a great job with that and managing that uh some of the challenges that we have is just promoting the culture of safety during construction uh construction always presents challenges uh as we've been aware of the last couple of weeks here uh so making sure that we're staying on top
064of that to try to eliminate the impact that we have towards students in their learning days uh And then obviously the successes that we've had at the Indiana and the National School Resource Officer Association has been partnering with us and with officer K uh to help make sure that our program is moving in the right direction. Uh and then submitting changes or yeah submitting changes for the school school zone speed limit signs. Uh before they were stating that when children are present, so trying to get those to have specific times on them from the 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and then 2:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. uh to make it very clear uh when children would potentially be present and not necessarily just there. Uh and then final section here is our finance. Uh we
065discuss this quite frequently, but as we know, still have a healthy cash balance in our rainy day fund. we were able to increase our teacher salary up to 525 for a minimum. Uh as we look in at the challenges moving into the next year. Uh obviously economic and legislative pressures and in inflation are going to be pushing costs up significantly in the operations fund. Uh but again for our goals, we'll continue to increase teacher compensation uh try to maintain the tax rate only increased to meet the minimum levy requirements and also maintain a strong cash balance within all three of our main funds, the education, the operations and the rainy day fund. And I will turn it back over to Dr. Schaefer. Uh just as we look forward into the rest of 2026, uh some
066of our key focus areas are going to be on our graduation pathways deployment. Uh getting and I explained it this way to people. Our freshman students who are u registering for classes right now in one year they're going to be registering for their junior year. So that junior year and their senior year is when we're going to see many of those students needing to do internships, job shadows, those types of opportunities uh to fulfill the new pathway graduation requirements. So we're working very hard uh to try to support them in work-based learning opportunities and experiences and get them connected to the workplace. Uh so that will be continue to be a focus for us here this year. uh teacher attraction and retention will continue to be a focus for us just because it is a
067um a a tight labor force uh in that regard. Uh our building renovations will continue um and that's going well and will continue to go well we hope. Uh growth preparedness as we've talked a lot about um adjusting to the differences not only in enrollment but the differences in diversity and making sure we have training and support to uh make sure all of our students are are well served. And then budget efficiency, as Mr. Herbert just spoke about, we'll continue to focus on those areas to make sure that we have the resources we need to be successful. And just a few of our um summaries, really, as we look at a district, here are some of the ones that rise to the top pretty quickly. Um this last year, we were the top 4% on
068our SAT SAT scores statewide. Uh we outperformed all of our cohort schools in iLearn performance. uh we had a nearly 98% graduation rate which is very enviable. Uh we did complete the south elementary building project and renovations there. Uh likewise with the maintenance property project uh I think a lot of people know we're about halfway a little over halfway through the high school project. In addition to that uh we uh revamped our complete strategic plan, revitalized that uh we completed our enrollment capacity mapping and our demographic study and our schoolboard goals were developed. uh they were prioritized in the strategic plan and those were all accomplished. So uh good job to our board. Then a lot of individual things we've seen a lot of these come through the board as as the board has recognized
069students and groups uh here within the district. Uh we saw Mr. Owens at the high school uh be named as a district 8 high school assistant principal of the year and a finalist at at the state um school assistant principal of the year. Um and a lot of just uh different uh accomplishments there from our student groups and individual students and we just like to point those out again. And lastly, uh we do work to be the Danville difference for our students here in the district. And this is the end of our presentation. Be happy to answer any remaining questions that the board may have. And I also uh maybe while you're formulating that, I want to thank our principles and directors uh Dr. Walker, Mr. Herbert uh for their efforts along with uh Mrs.
070England uh putting together um all this information because I I know it was a lot, but they collect that. They do a great job within their areas and appreciate their attention to bring all that to us here this evening. >> Comments or questions? >> All right. Thank you very much. >> All right. Thank you. >> All right. Next item on the agenda, consider approval of minutes from the regular schoolboard meeting on January 12th. So I need a motion to approve the regular schoolboard meeting minutes of January 12th, 2026. >> All right. So moved. >> We're going to wait till I ask. Okay. >> So that the people that are listening and Penny knows what's happening. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Thank you, Mr. Heel. Comments or questions? All in favor? I. >> Any opposed? >>
071Next item on the agenda, consider approval of minutes of the board of finance meeting from January 12th, 2026. I need a motion to approve the January 12th, 2026 board of finance meeting minutes. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Mrs. Ward, excuse me. Comments or questions? All in favor? >> I. Next item on the agenda, treasures report. Mr. Herbert. >> Thank you, Mr. Cherry. Uh January we had a fund balance in our property and state supported tax funds of 9,256,16. Uh we had education fund expenditures of1,878,612. We had no expenditures in our debt service fund and our operations fund had expenditures of $1,29,195. We did transfer 282,000 from the education fund to the operations fund. And that transfer brought the corporation's total transfers for the year
072to 13.11% of total education fund revenue and 14.07% of the total state tuition support. I would note that uh the expenditures in the education and operations fund are typically a little bit higher this month compared to most months because this was a three payroll month. Uh, so that's why it does do look a little bit higher than you would typically see. Would ask for the board's approval of our treasures report and happy to answer any questions. >> I need a motion to approve the treasures report as submitted. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Second. Second. Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Comments or questions? >> I have a question. I forgot to ask it last month related to um at the end of the quarters we have the quarterly reports and as part of that
073there's the appropriations report and the appropriations report presents information about monthly balances and expenditures. Couldn't that still be even though we talk about it on a quarterly basis? Couldn't that be added into the treasur's report since it does deal with monthly information to have the appropriations report come to us each month as part of the treasuries report also? >> Yeah, I think we could do that. >> Okay. I just think it might be I've gone I've been trying to go back from quarter to quarter, but noticing that it's kind of sometimes it might be a little simpler to look at some funds in reference to what was happening within a particular month between quarters. >> Yep, we can do that. >> Any other comments or questions? All in favor? I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously.
074Next item on the agenda, approval of claims. Mr. Herbert. >> Thank you, Mr. Cherry. Uh, we have pre-written claims for the month of $119,1824. And we have traditional claims of $55,84, bringing total claims for the month to $624,11628. So, I would ask for the board's approval of our claims for the month and happy to answer any questions. >> I need a motion to approve the claims as presented. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Comments or questions? >> I was surprised the demographic study was only >> what it only $6,000. >> Yeah, that's a that's about what we've paid for the last two studies as well. So, I was pleased um in speaking Mr. McKibben and what that cost was and for him to come and
075present. Yeah. >> Along with that. So >> it was a Yeah, it was a pretty good rate. >> Any other questions? All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. >> Next item on the agenda, approval of payroll claims. Mr. Herbert. >> Thank you, Mrs. Cherry. We do have two payroll claims here this evening. We have our January 14th payroll claim of $758,97053. Then we have our January 31st payroll claim of $835,32512. Uh that brings both payroll claims to1,594,29565. So I would ask for the board's approval of our payroll claims and happy to answer any questions. >> I need a motion to approve the payroll claims as presented. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. Comments or questions? All in favor? I. Any opposed? That
076passes unanimously. >> Next item on the agenda is old business. Seeing as we have none, we will move right along to the next item. Consider approval of personnel recommendations. Dr. Schaefer. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, I do recommend approval of the personnel report. Uh, I just wanted to point out we have two of our certified uh, teachers who have uh, indicated their retirement here at the end of the year. Mr. Blocker and Mrs. Linda Johnson uh both at the high school and we uh thank them for their service here in the school district and wish them the very best as they look forward to retirement here uh at the end of the year. >> I need a motion to approve the personnel report as submitted. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Second.
077>> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Comments or questions? >> I have a question regarded to comment you made in there, Dr. Schaefer, regarding the ECA contract for individual um do you and then based upon what I read is there any likelihood that one had an influence on the other in terms of that decision terms of his decision to leave? >> Uh I don't I don't believe so. um in looking at that I don't believe so and that has been resolved and uh we have paid that fairly. >> Well, baseball's a spring sport though, right? >> It is. It is. But they start early and when we have a certified position uh we spread that pay out over versus in our classified positions uh who aren't not I'm sorry not classified in our lay positions
078we pay half of the payment uh in the first half of the season at at mid-season. We paid the other half at the end. Uh but there have been a few duties performed in preseason work. It wasn't a lot, but the pay wasn't a lot either because of the cut off time here of the contract. >> Am I understand that all parties signed the contract and then there was some discrepancy about whether or not the contract was a valid contract later. >> Wasn't discrepancy on whether the contract was valid or not. I think it was discrepancy on the part what what the employee thought they were receiving and what we thought they were receiving. But at the end of the day, there was a signed and accepted contract and we we needed to honor that.
079>> Are there u when we're offering a position, isn't there a some sort of written communication as to what we're offering for the before it even gets to a point of contract signature? >> Typically would be this was just the ECA contract. U because in in today's world, you have a teacher contract, you have a separate ECA contract. So again, I think there's a little bit of confusion there that I think probably explained the the lack of understanding. Uh but at the same time, again, we looked at the documents, which is what we would go by. Um we wanted to make sure that everybody's treated fairly, and that's that's what we've done. >> Whether it's somebody internally, externally, would it be a good practice to to put a letter of offer out there that we've
080talked about it? And then ultimately, we need >> I I agree. I agree. And we do that we do that with our with the teaching positions and that's something I think we need to be more consistent with in terms of the ECA offerings >> positions in general maybe. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Any comments or questions? >> All in favor? I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda, consider approval to void outstanding checks. Mr. Herbert. >> Thank you, Mr. Cherry. Uh, Indiana Code 5-11-10.5 requires that school corporations annually void any outstanding checks that are at least two years old. These checks were issued from either the corporation account, food service account, and the ECA accounts of all all four schools. So before you tonight, I would ask
081for your approval to void the checks as have been listed. And again, happy to answer any questions. I need a motion to approve for approval of the voided outstanding check list as submitted. >> Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Hempil. Comments or questions? >> As we wait these checks, do we have the option to decide which fund the money goes back to or is it got to go through the fund from >> It just goes back to where it came from, yes. >> Are we getting close to not having to do this anymore since we went to a electronic We're getting closer. We still do issue some checks. >> Okay. >> Um so yeah, if there are any outstanding checks, then they would still come up. >> Okay. >> But
082we are getting closer. Yes. >> Okay. Any other comments or questions? >> All in favor? I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda, consider approval of PACE tuition for 2026 2027 school year. Mr. Herbert. >> Thank you, Mrs. Cherry. Uh the item that is before you is a proposal for the 2627 pace tuition rates. As you notice that this is not recommending a re a increase for our uh during school hours or during the school year hours. What we're looking at here is only for our summer program. Uh we would be increasing that pay and then also increasing the registration fee. Uh what this does is it lines up with the amount that we would charge for a a full day uh of activity during the school. So like an e-learning day
083uh or a PD day uh that would be the cost that we would charge for those students. Uh it would be the same one over the summer. And then also the registration fee uh would be falling in line with the same registration fee that we'd charge for our students to come through the the typical school year program. Uh so again, these are uh before you. Again, it puts us in line uh with other programs throughout the county and in neighboring districts. So we actually are still probably a little bit less than what those other districts are offering uh with these even with these adjustments. And again, it's just to kind of help keep up with inflation. Uh we did do a pay or a I'm sorry, a pace increase last year uh for the school
084year. And so that's why we're going to go ahead and just hold tight for this year, potentially look at additional one next year. So again, happy to answer any questions, but we just ask for the board's approval. >> I need a motion to approve the PACE tuition for 2026 2027 school year as presented. >> So move. >> Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Helil. Comments or questions? I >> have a question that the PACE program continues to hold us financially. Yes. >> Other than >> similar to what we talked about last month, I think. >> Yeah. Very similar to Little Warrior where they both cover all the costs of like their supplies, of their staffing needs. Uh any type of like pace does a little bit more especially during the
085summer as Warrior. Didn't you do some sort of increase though? >> We did a little bit of an increase. Yes. >> Kind of wondering is even though you're doing an increase for the summer during the regular year, wouldn't it? >> I mean, there has to be some increase in some of the supplies. there is, but we still I felt we still had enough of a buffer there because Pace was actually doing a little bit better than Little Warrior did over the last year. So that's why and again we've kind of tried to make sure that the increases for the predominant portion of the program. We do like every other year. Uh we try not to hit parents every single year with an increase. So like I said, we did an increase last year for PACE
086and that's why we're just looking at the summer program for this year. >> Thank you. Any other comments or questions? All in favor? I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda, consider approval of resolution for flexibility waiver. Dr. Schaefer. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, and again, this is our becoming annual request uh to submit our performance-based accreditation waiver to the state. Uh, we've been using four waiver days uh which we've used for professional development. There is a process, a stringent process that districts need to go through annually. Unfortunately, uh to make that request uh and this is under the the old house bill 1003. Um before I can apply on behalf of the district, the board must first pass a resolution authorizing me to pursue that waiver. Uh so pending the
087board's approval, the waiver I'll be applying for is the waiver of instructional days, which are seat time minutes, which would equal to uh four days. Uh currently we bank time and we have enough additional time probably to cover at least nine days of instructional time. This would utilize four of those days. Um so again we um also right now currently we qualify for the same waiver of time under what's called performance qualified structure. But what from what we're understanding is with the new federal requirements and what we think will be an acceptance by the federal government of Indiana's waiver for that we may see performance qualified structure go away. Um where we sort of had belt and suspenders to cover our time that other one may go away. So it's even more important to submit
088the performancebased accredititation waiver uh this year for for next year. So, uh, again, it's a seat time. Uh, in the the actual resolution, the Indiana code is cited in there, which we must specifically do because there are different code citations for different types of waiverss that districts might apply for. Um, so with that said, I would ask the board's approval of the resolution to allow us to apply for the seat time waiver. >> All right. I need a motion to approve the resolution for flexibility waiver as submitted. >> So moved. Thank you, Mrs. Ward. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. Comments or questions? >> One quick question. You You could use up to nine days, but we're only asking for four of the nine when I read that. I understand that. >> Correct.
089Under performance based accreditation, there are only specific reasons that you can request those. Now, with that said, the state has offered up you could you would request an impromptu waiver now for lost um like if if we were going to have to make up days. Uh there is a a current waiver right now for those makeup days which you could get maximum maybe two or three days but still if your if your additional time is roughly nine days every every time you request something that that number goes down. We also try to reserve a little time at the end of the year for our seniors maybe to to get out a couple days early once exams are done. So we do eat into some of that time. So we just have to be careful with
090it. >> So it's not like you get nine you're earning nine days every year. This is built up. This has been built up over several years. This is each year. Each year. Yeah. Our our beginning and end times at the elementary level and then the secondary levels are sufficient. We actually can't can bank roughly nine days additional. >> Okay. >> So, it'll give you five more days to play with if you know you got bad weather. Um you wouldn't get that weather waiver under performance qualified, but or I'm sorry, under um 1003 accredititation waiver, but you could get it under performance qualified. >> Was this was this waiver not available last year? Uh we've had this waiver now for several years running, but we have to apply for it annually. There are other waivers of
091different other different types. You got a four-year, you know, you apply and it was good for four years. For some reason, the state has held this one, too. >> I'm still a little unclear. We have we're applying for this for next year. >> Yes. >> And at this time, we have nine days that can be used yet between now and >> No. Um for for 2025 2026 school year, we had roughly nine days. We're using four because we have the waiver last. We're using four of those for this purpose. We have five other days, not under I know it's confusing. Not under performance-based accreditation, but under highly qual under performance qualified that we still have some bank time that we could use for for various various things. That's a little it's a little less governed.
092to the end of the year and we've used them all or is we get to the end years and sometimes we have days that we're just thrown away. >> Well, we could have some bank time, but I always have to always have to weigh that against, you know, we're paying salaries to people um and we want to provide students as much instruction as we reasonably can. But sometimes, you know, if you, for example, let's say that you had used up all your available uh e-learning days and you were really literally got to make up a day, tack a day on to the end of the school year, uh that instructional time would be questionable. You'd say, well, you know, if we have a day left bank, is it better just to give people off? We
093would probably say yes. So, it would give us that type of flexibility. If you get down to the end of the year and you need a day for something, it would be available. >> Yeah, good good question. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? All in favor? I. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. >> Next item on the agenda, superintendence report. Dr. Schaefer. >> Um, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, one thing I had mentioned uh earlier was we had our February 1 count. And we were from from our fall count in October through February, we were up 39 students on our enrollment count. Uh we had a meeting with uh the other county districts here uh this past week right after count day and just kind of asking around everybody all the other districts but one
094were down uh in terms of count. Uh one one of the other larger districts was up about 18 students. So it kind of puts our growth I think in perspective. We were up 39 midy year. Uh we used to I know Mr. Hel you asked about some of those previous years we were dropping. we would about every year at this time of year we'd be down a few more kids and you'd have some early graduates and those kind of things. So the last I'm gonna say three or four years running now we've been up mid year. Um which is interesting. It's it's sort of a good place to be. Um so um just kind of put that in perspective. Most districts lose kids mid year. So the fact that we're gaining and gaining a sizable
095population midyear tells us that we'll probably be on track with our demographic report as we look to grow probably 100 plus students for next year. So I have two questions. And >> our current ADM then is 29 >> 56. >> That's as of the February count. >> That's correct. >> And then again, I know that sometimes this is a magical thing to do, but how many students do we still have that? So we brought in that number of students, but how many students went somewhere else? >> Uh yeah, that that takes a whole lot closer study that I'm not sure if we have direct access to that data right now. We'd have to get it from the state later probably. >> I guess I'm trying to understand. >> What's the net? >> We're at 2957
096>> and the community has though, let's say it has 3,200 kids. How many, you know, did 200 and some kids go somewhere else? Are they are they? So, how many kids in our community still aren't coming to our schools? >> Yeah, that's a that's a different number. Uh the number we're looking at here is a net 39 growth. So, you could have had 20 kids leave, but you're going to then pick up 59 kids. You're going to be up a net 39. Um, now you're if you're talking, you're talking about transfers, transfers out to private school, transfer to charter school. >> Understand >> why they're how many students are in the community, they're choosing not to come to school at Danville, and how many is that that, you know, how much state tuition support are
097we losing going somewhere else? >> Right. Right. >> Trying to understand again, it's Mhm. >> You know, we seem to be doing relatively well and >> yeah, >> why would they be making that decisions? >> Sure. There's a lot of different reasons. >> Not even decisions, but how many are making the decision for some reason or another to choose something else, >> right? I can tell you our net public transfers, we are we actually we we come out net positive on that. >> But the challenge is particular when you're going to a private school. See, private schools don't have a district. So you you can't you can't exchange students with a district like you could with North Putham or Avon or something like that where you have X school over there and Y come back.
098So if you lose a student to a private school uh or a charter school, they don't have a district. So you it it's you always lose you never gain. It's like you never gain a student back that way. It never shows up on paper that way because that student already lives in your district. So when you look at those numbers, they can be a little misleading when you look at them. The only thing I can tell you right now currently is our net flow between public districts. We have a net positive flow. We we get more kids in. Again, we're we're governing that right now, too. We're we're shutting that off. >> So, hearing you say that that 30ome students that we've gotten since the fall count, those are kids that actually got an address
099in the community. >> Yeah. Other than wait, we had what we had a handful that the board approved on transfers and it was literally three or four, I believe. >> But that that is correct. Thank you. >> Um and just give you just a quick uh overview here of some things at midpoint of the legislative session. Just passed midpoint. Um House and and uh Senate have picked back up here for the second half of the session. Uh a couple of bills that I wanted to make sure you're aware of. Senate Bill 199, also referred to as the social media bill right now. Uh that was likely amended today. I didn't I didn't see what today's outcome was, but that Senate bill had gone over to the House. Um they had some pieces that were pulled
100out of it and they're looking amending those pieces back in. Um this is uh for protections for adolescence under the age of 16 on social media use. I'm going to try to explain this. It's a little confusing, but they're looking at these social large social media companies and trying to put some constraints on what kids 15 and under can get to. Um, so the way they look at this is if the user base of that social media company is 10% or more of their user base is under the age of 16, that's one qualifier. And if the daily activity on that site is 80% or more days of the last 12 months. So if you got 10% or more young kids going to this thing 80% of the days in the last 12 months they
101they begin to qualify to be um restricted. So and then the social media company that also would have to do $1 billion or more in gross revenue worldwide. So, if you got a billion-dollar company where 10% of their user base are under 16, they're going to that site 80% of the days or more in the last year, that would identify that company is potentially having some restrictions on it for these younger kids. Um, then what happens then is parental consent for the student would be required. In other words, they have to figure out a way exactly to get parental consent for the student to get have a social media account with them. Uh and once that is confirmed the the parent then would get a password and that password allow the the parent to go
102in and control that account. So it would limit the amount of time they could set days of time uh or I should say time of day when that student could be on or off the social media. Um and it also have a monitoring capability of usage by the student because the other thing it would do is for the social media company it would also require them to not um have student access to what are some of the addictive uh features within social media that keep kids coming back coming back coming back and adults too for that matter. Um so that's the type of thing that bill is trying to get to. That's Senate Bill 199. Um, again, there was word that that was going to be amended today. Uh, whether it did or not, I'm
103not sure. I'm guessing it probably did. Uh, also, House Bill 104, which is Representative Baining's uh, bill on various educational matters, and this one is also referred to as as a D-RG bill. Um, this one it it passed out of the House about on about a twothirds vote, 67 to 26, and it's likely to go to a Senate hearing on Wednesday this week. Uh, Democrats oppose the language removing hours limitations from teacher contracts. So, right now, teacher contracts have hours specified in them, maybe seven and a half or eight hours a day. uh as written. Now, if that passed, uh and it did pass the House, now it's over at the Senate, um that would remove any hours restrictions on uh for teacher contracts, it would also allow only temporary contracts for those teachers who
104have emergency permits. So, if you're teaching on emergency permit, then the school corporation would only be able to give you a temporary contract, not a full-time regular teacher contract. So, there's probably some details there to figure out yet, but that's a provision that's in there. It would also do away with concurrent contract language limits. I think we've all seen a situation where a teacher's working for a district and now it's late July, early August, school's about ready to start, and a teacher signs a contract with another district. That district then can hold that teacher contract for up to 30 days. It would do away with that. And I think the I think the intent here is to allow a teacher maybe to work across districts where that where that works. Um, and maybe it's just
105to free teachers up to to move around a little bit more. Not quite sure what the intent is uh but that is a current provision uh in the bill as we understand it. And the last and uh third bill here want to make sure you're aware of is Senate Bill 78 which is the wireless communication devices. And this would put some uh restrictions on kids bringing cell phones, using watches, using glasses, those types of devices in school. There's still some language working through on that. Um, and what we're seeing right now, where we think that is going to go is to say that device has to be secured during the school day. And they're still figuring out what does that mean exactly? Does that mean in a locker? Does it mean in their pocket? Uh,
106what does it mean? Uh, I will tell you for schools to collect those, that might make a lot of sense if you're in a second grade class, the second graders come in and put their phone and they're going to be in that teacher's room all day. But I'll I'll I'll pick on Caramel High School. If if you're uh Caramel High School and you got 5,000 kids walking in the front door, how you going to collect all their watches, all their uh glasses, all their phones, uh all their devices at the front door? Um so there's those kinds of things to think through. So I think they're looking at a little more general language just to make sure they're not being used when they shouldn't be, I think, is the main thing. So, that one is
107likely headed to a hearing on this Wednesday also, which ought to be interesting. So, >> you uh >> would you do you honor that 30-day or not release a teacher if they were to quit? >> We I I will tell you, I have never kept a teacher that I didn't have to have because, you know, that that employees ready to move on. >> Uh we have had a couple this year that we hired later mid year. that district uh needed to hold them. And there, you know, other districts coming are the same way. They may need to keep somebody there a couple weeks so they have somebody in that classroom. And usually what we'll try to do, and our our folks are really good about letting me know if we get that situation, I'll call
108that superintendent. We'll kind of talk that through and make sure that we create the best situation we can for both districts. >> Other comments, questions? All right. Next item on the agenda is announcements. This Friday, February 13th, will be advocates day. February 16th is President's Day and there will be no school that day. March 8th, daylight saving times, daylight savings time begins. And March 9th is our next regular school board meeting here in the Danville Middle School District training room at 6:30. And I I think we have 17 or 18 of our community folks who are coming in for advocates day and um Abby England's been organizing that with help from some other folks and doing a really nice job with us. It'll be a should be a neat experience for for those parents and
109community folks who are taking time to come in and spend some time with us. >> Isn't her planetarian doing something Thursday night? >> Um presentations. >> Yeah. What about the special meeting end of February? >> Yes. Uh we have our retreat February 23rd. Uh we're planning to begin that at 5:00 and that will be be here. >> All right. I need a motion to adjourn this meeting. >> So move. >> Thank you, Mr. Bryant. Second. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. All in favor? >> I. We are adjourned. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. What happened to two B names sitting next to each other?