ECS Board of School Trustees’ Meeting 3/25/25

001Oh, that's pretty far [Music] down. Hi everybody. How are you? Good to see everyone. It's a sunshine day. Let's rock and roll this everyone. Everybody here. [Music] Good evening everyone. Thank you for coming to the March 25th, 2025 Elkar Community Schools public work session. At this time, I will call the public work session to order. Dr. Huff, good evening, President Scott, members of the board community. Uh, tonight we have an opportunity to share with you some strategies that we plan to implement over the next couple years. U, if you look at the title of the screen, sustaining excellence strategy to achieve financial balance. Um, tonight presentation will outline the strategies that Elcart Community Schools um, will use to maintain excellence while facing, let's be real, some physical headwinds that are coming our way. We're going

002to have to confront some pretty hard truths over the next few years here in Elcart Community Schools. And I think it's important that we hold firm to our values of knowing every student by name, but also being a very physically responsible school district. Um, but I also think this is an opportunity. This is a a night where we can also share about the promise that we say that we hold to kids and that we are going to make sure that we are not only going to be outstanding provide outstanding um educational opportunities but be very good stewards of the funds where we have to make some pretty tough choices over the next couple years. So I do believe this is a good moment for recalibration. Um we're going to respond thoughtfully throughout this process. We're

003going to make sure that we hear community input, but most importantly, we're going to make sure that we take and make decisions based on our current economic reality. Um, go ahead and change the slide. Our work this evening is organized into six interconnected themes. We're going to begin by celebrate what's working. Um, I am very proud to share with you some based off of some of our preliminary data that we have at the elementary level. I think you heard me shout at our last board meeting. um just the outstanding work that our teachers are doing. Um currently I will say that we're up over 11% this time last year in our IE data. Again, that information is something that we should celebrate. Um but potentially I think it's up 15%. Obviously I'm working with the

004state on some calculation formulas with that. But again, hats off to Mrs. pipe the elementary team, the elementary teachers and all the principles for all that hard work. Um also creating some systems that to have better internal controls on some of our physical measures or other things that we should celebrate such as reducing um some of the o unnecessary overtime looking at um things such as time clock that Mr. Quip will talk about during his part of the presentation. Um but we're also during this time going to look at our enrollment trends and our and our enrollment and our dynamics when it comes to that. um there's no surprise that uh enrollment is declining and we're also going to have to figure out how do we address um providing again these outstanding services while um

005we expect to see a continued decline in enrollment over the next few years. We also need to understand that the financial drivers in our state and at the federal level are changing rapidly. It's hard to keep up sometimes what's happening um um at the state and at the federal level. Um, but as a school district, we need to work with the information that we have today. And you also have to make a lot of assumptions what's going to happen happen moving forward. And I believe that we have the team here to do that, but I also believe that this is important time to make sure that we keep what's working well in Elcart Community Schools, but also look at some other ways to become more efficient. Um, finally, we will talk about the fiscal picture,

006and this is where Mr. quiet will come up and and share with you some of the things that we need to really begin to consider um if we want to make sure that Elcart is in a strong financial position um for years to come. I do want to share with you this is not a reactionary plan. We have seen the writing on the wall for this for for a while now. If you go back looking at um numbers pre- pandemic, we are down 12.7% of our students since that time. So again with a shrinking budget and with the same level of footprint we have to figure out what are the best way to utilize our resources here in the community. Uh next slide please. Take a look at that graphic on the screen. If we

007I would wear that as a t-shirt going out in the community. My team knows what I what I believe on a t-shirt. If you can't stand behind it and you can't put it on a t-shirt, then I'm not doing my job. I believe we're doing an outstanding job here in Elcart Community Schools. A 94.5% graduation rate is one of the highest graduation rates that we've had in years. One of the highest graduation rates in this area. Definitely one of one of the higher graduation rates for urban school districts that look like us. Something we all should be very proud of. Having 600 students, 684 um diploma received. Um today, um this is not in my notes, but today we luckily we had some status meetings. I went with Dr. Rous and Mr. Serge over at

008the high school. Over, knock on wood, and I will. We all have almost $10 million anticipated scholarships this year. I'm saying that again, 10 million as of today. It should hopefully that number goes up. They're doing status meetings with the kids on April 14th, I believe, at the high school. But after meeting with the five principles of schools of study, that's our preliminary information that we have at this time of students who have accepted into into colleges. That is a huge feather in those educators caps at the high school and also I think we something we should be very proud of. Last year our students received 186 technical certifications. Obviously we're the leader in the area for that. Um we are also blessed we have other um individuals other than individuals we have other entities

009that utilize our facilities at the career center. I believe we have the best career center not only in the state of Indiana but also in the in um the Midwest. We also have um have over 10,000 dual credit um certifications earned by our uh students at the high school. But last certainly not least that that led to a $ 1.9 u million savings. When I say Elkcart is providing value to the community. I think that we can see on the slide we certainly are. We're these are not just statistics. These are lifechanging experiences that we're providing for kids. Again, when we are everyone's there on June 3rd over at Notre Dame, we're going to see again another 680 plus kids walk across that stage. And please know that Elcart Community Schools has is going to

010lead a very prominent role into getting them to where they need to be. I believe what we plan that what we offer to them is an investment into their life long term. And so at this time, I'm going to go ahead and turn the next couple slides over to Mr. Quiet where he's going to talk about some of our um financial indicators. [Music] Thank you, Dr. Huff. Good evening, President Scott and school board. Um I hope that this presentation helps to pro provide some um fiscal transparency and some clear information as to kind of how we're working to make decisions. Um and we I like to start with enrollment. that's our largest driver of revenue as a school district. Um and so it's important to understand what's happening there. Um this first slide um just

011kind of illustrates our declining enrollment trend. I think it's important um you can see each grade level by color there. So if you start in the bottom left corner, that's our kindergarten class of the current graduating class, right? We had 1,63 students as kindergarteners. We're now at 725 students um in that senior class. Um and that trend continues um in each class, right? So we're we're seeing a declining um enrollment, new enroles, right? You'll also notice that the kindergarten started again at 1,63, we're now at 868 new kindergarteners. So not only we losing students throughout their journey at Elcart schools, we're also losing them in the coming in the door. And so we're seeing it um at both sides there. um what that means for our funding. Again, the state um is our largest driver

012of revenue um or our largest funding source. And so um this chart here kind of uh shares with you. The blue bars um show our enrollment. The orange bars show the foundation amount. So the foundation amount is the dollar amount that the state sets in the budget. So right now the state's going through its bienium uh budget cycle. uh and part of that forecast will be how much they will put towards that foundation amount and then um the green line is the uh state aid received. So really you're just taking the ADM times the foundation you're getting that number there at the bottom. Um interesting point about this graph is you'll notice our enrollment continues to decline through the whole piece. 21, 22, and 23, the state increased its funding um to that foundation um

013in in the ranges of 6% at times. And so during in the midst of declining enrollment, we continued to see additional revenues into our education fund. Um additionally, during that time period, we had a large influx of federal dollars that came into the school districts, not just ours, but all school districts. And so it was very common that um or because of this I think um the the enrollment loss maybe was not factored in right the dollars were there to support the things we were doing. As you can see in 2024 um the states went back to their low increases on that foundation amount. Um, and you can see that our overall funding uh from state aid decreased in 2024. Um, based on current uh legislative discussions, uh, we will likely see that again. We

014came to this looking at some financial analysis, right? We obviously are seeing a declining enrollment which is affecting our dollars um, coming in. And so we thought it was important to really get a better understanding of what that means for the district um how that's going to impact us long term. So we've worked with some um partners in policy analytics who we heard from uh Mr. Gardner um at a board meeting and talking about property taxes. They've also been working with us on some benchmarking data um and also providing some insights on our uh long-term projections. Um and so you'll see some of that in our financial update to the board um in the regular board meeting. Um we've also been working with Baker Tilly. They um are our municipal adviserss and so as we

015sell bonds we have to go out and um get an S&P rating and so they collect and share a lot of quite a bit of information um in terms of our S&P rating. Um I think one of the first uh pieces there was that we we uh we we have a double A rating which is actually very uh Berkshire Hathway also has a double A rating right so we uh financially very stable and the S&P sees us as such um which helps with our um return however our last S&P rating we did get a note of um potential downgrade um if trends continue specifically with the cash balance so we've started to really look at this 3 to 5 year forecast um looking at current operational expenditures to understand um where those costs are um

016and where we stack specifically to other schools um on a per student basis since funding is very much driven as a per student basis. It's also who we serve as our students, right? So we want to make sure we're allocating the dollars to our students. Um obviously we did an analysis of the declining enrollment to better understand that. Um and then we're continue to uh monitor and analyze the um proposed legislations but at both the state and the federal level that could impact our our district. This you want me to go on the next one? Y um yeah. Okay. So this is just one example and this is a very high level example of um our spending trend from as you can see 2020 to 2024. Um this is school years. Um and it highlights

017our education operations funds. Those are our two primary operating funds. Um when I present and talk about our consolidated funds, that would also include our rainy day and our um operating referendum fund. Neither of those have active funding sources, right? They're kind of they're stagnant. Um but we do help like to um consider those towards our overall cash balance and cash position as a district. Um but what you'll see on the bottom right there, um from 22 to 24, our total expenditures have increased at a a rate of 18.3% while our total revenues have increased at a pace of 5.2%. Um and so I think we can all do the math there. There there's we're outpacing our our um our resources. talk to the state for real quick too. Thank you, Mr. Quiet. I think

018also some of the things that we also need to consider is that while we know the current state of spending cannot continue, I I would think to the board and to the community just looking at that previous slide seeing that uh 18% increase in uh expenditures over the last two years is not only sustainable that was also operating under a different landscape in the world. Right now the state is currently working on not currently are currently um going through several bills that will have significant impact on Elcart Community Schools. First one is Senate Bill one that will result in loss of revenue and our taxing rate. What does that mean? It simply means that the amount of money that we could collect coming into our school system will be much less if it goes through

019um we already know that there is going to be an increase. We just don't know how much. Right? So one of the things that Mr. quiet and I and his team and our administrative team have been working on is how do we make sure that we are making really good decisions knowing what we think that we know how how we're going to respond to this. So again SB1 is something that we all should be paying attention to um as it will have a significant impact on Elcart Community Schools. Another bill that I would highly um suggest that we pay attention to will be 518 um with Senate Bill 518 which talks about um basically giving um part of our operation fund to entities that receive 100 or more of our students into their schools. And

020currently right now we have five of those entities that um would receive part of that operational revenue that will have a tremendous uh impact on how we provide basic civic services such as busing and custodial services and food services and things like that. Um and as a school uh community we need to embrace that that's not um something that we can just work our way around. That's something that we're going to have to work our way through. those things are going to happen. We just need to we just haven't they just haven't finalized how much of an impact they have. And then lastly, House Bill um 101 um we're going to see a decrease in amount of dollars over the next several years. But we also if we look at current trends, our enrollment um

021is positioned to also decline over those years. But also there's another thing that is happening um around the state as well. There's a proposal for universal vouchers, correct? that opens the door for um individuals to um really go to any school district they want. I think they're going to choose Elcart Community Schools because we provide outstanding services. But we are in a competitionbased u environment here and we must behave as such. We must make sure that we have clean facilities. We got to make sure that our transportation is right. We have to make sure that kids are getting outstanding services in the classroom. Um opportunities for lack make sure our teachers are also um compensated well. All those things need to happen with a shrinking budget. Um I would uh implore anyone who is watching

022this or in and our board I know you have been a breast of these three bills from the state level. The federal level comes with its own challenges. Um Elcart Community Schools receives well over $10 million in federal funds each year. Um, we utilize those funds to provide intervention services in the classroom, to provide professional development to our teachers, to provide professional development for our administrators, to pay for people to come along to support um our um our district with um um curriculum and so forth. A lot of things happen out of title one, two, three, and four. And then we also receive um the school nutrition C. That's basically universal funding for um lunches and breakfast inside schools. And then last, we also have the full service community grant inside of our school. We

023utilize these funds to provide lots of different opportunities for kids. Currently at the federal level, they are looking um we all know the Department of Education was um Trump authorized uh for it to be disbanded. Now, there's some how that looks will evolve over time. But we do know that there is going to be some reduction in federal funds to schools. We just don't know how much. I went to an ASA AASA conference a few weeks ago and they sh and they share with me you need to start planning to reduce that by 30% immediately. That was the um goal. Not the goal, that was the advice that I was given. Um and so one of the things that we're currently looking at is how do we make sure that we are looking at our

024title services and also our um funding other funding stream should at any point these um grants and these opportunities go away. Again, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of noise at the federal level. our job is to make sure that we keep calm heads but all and and really but really think proactively how we're going to make sure that we continue to provide those services for kids. Um so if you like I said before if you haven't had an opportunity to look at those u three important bills on the state side certainly take some time to do so. Um but at the federal level I I wish I could uh give you more uh insight on what's happening there. But what I do know that there are drastic changes and those things

025are occurring u rapidly. Um and usually with grants they're reimbursements and so as they're reimbursements we can be possibly on the hook for those things. um should we not be proactive and make some of those decisions? So again, those are another assumptions um that we have to factor in on our three to five year plan. And so those are some of the potential and um state and federal impacts that how will impact Elcart Community Schools over the next few years. I'm going to turn it back over to Mr. Quiet. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. R. So what does that all mean for us? Right. That's a lot of information, a lot of um somewhat uh daunting information. Um and I think this is just a graph to kind of show right 18.3% increases. It certainly

026outweighs our revenues. Um we've seen a lot of that coming from uh salary and benefits have increased by 18.5%. Uh purchase services have increased by 60%. Um supplies and technology by 18%. So it's really across the board that we're seeing these things. Um and again this is 30,000 foot data. there's more to be dug into and that's why we've got great partners like policy analytics and Baker Tilly to kind of help us dig through this information and share more as we go. But what does that look like for our district? Um in our current cash balance um so last year, last school year on our education operations fund, we had $125 million in expenses. Um and we brought in $119 million in revenue. And so you'll see that's made up with cash reserves. Um we

027have been um the previous uh or the the previous uh inflow of money um did help us to bolster our cash reserves. And so we are in a position that this has not put us um at at a we can be uh calculated in how we respond to this. But it certainly warrants that we respond quickly um so that we do not continue this trend um as a school district. Um so with this and obviously the facing the headwinds that we're going to see um from a legislative and financial standpoint um I think it's important that we start to share a plan of how we move forward um as a school district um and start planning for our future. Would you like me to Thank you, Mr. Quiet. Planning for our future. That sounds like

028that's something that we're going to do down the road. No, that's something that we need to um do right now and and in spring of 25. We have to make the necessary reallocations to safeguard our financial future and also our physical integrity. We need to be transparent with you and the community on how we spend our money and where money is going and and and not look so far back in the past to say, "Hey, we can't change that, but we can do better with how we reallocate money." Now it's also simply we just can't simply cut. I think it's also important to realign realign our services to meet the needs of our kids. Uh we'll ensure that every dollar supports a direct benefit to all students. These decisions will be staged and strategic. We'll

029also make sure that we get lots of input from our teachers, the teacher union, also from our community. It's important and that they get to weigh in and really hear where they would like our dollars to be spent for our children based off the limited funding that we will have over the next few years. We're not just managing scarcity. We're leveraging this moment to clarify our priorities and also to invest in what truly matters. And again, it's our children and our staff that truly matters. Our community should not expect anything less than us than to be physically responsible and also to make sure that we maintain educational excellence here in Elcart Community Schools and I think we are committed to doing both. Uh, next slide. There are going to be structural changes that are going

030to be required. Our path forward is anchored in three commitments. Um, I think first we have to do standardbased budgeting. What does that mean? what what type of outcome do we want to have and what type of physical standards and safeguards are we going to put there behind that and also how are we going to make sure that we are meeting that goal along the way by being physically responsible we have to have key indicators to make sure that our funding is matching the outcomes that we have and also if something is not working pivot from it immediately so as we looking how we enter partnerships looking at all our current grants that we're looking at we're also looking at all of our current partnerships that we currently have in the school district to make

031sure that they are one benefiting kids, but also um are they really needed? Um some things I think that we have it is time for a re-evaluation. Some things I think we're we're missing. And so I think again as a collaborative opportunity between um district leadership and having conversations with our our union to make sure that we are exploring those opportunities and thinking and thinking ahead. Also our second I kind of just alluded to it data driven decisions. It is great to celebrate that we are up 11%. But also that means we still have 30 more% to go right to make sure we reach all children in that one economic indicator. I'm sorry that one academic indicator but there are other benchmarks that we need to meet too. We need to make sure that we

032are looking at data driven decisions when they're looking at hey when we're doing professional development are people is it really contributing to um the classroom and how is that improving um teacher um pedagogical skills? How's it improve administrative skills so forth? What does that look like and how can we make sure that getting reaching down to our children? Um some of those um partnerships we have to look at hey are does it interfere with some of our mission that we have in in the school district? Is it for example is it taking away time from instruction and so forth? Really having some really tough conversations and and re-evaluating the work that we do. And then I think the lastly is our fiscal footprint. Our with this is a client enrollment. Our fiscal footprint has not

033changed. We are a very large school district. I'm talking about in scope and size. We are large school district. We have a lot of buildings to maintain. We have a lot of grass to cut. We have a lot of windows to clean. We have a lot of things that come with having a lot of things, right? What does that look like over the next few years? I think it is time to do a reassessment of th those things and start to see if we have the appropriate level of footprint based off our enrollment. We are designed to house 17,000 students in our school district. We have 10,400 as of today. So that is a difference of over 6,000 students that we have capacity for. At our core, our mission is to provide outstanding educational experience

034for kids. I know that sounds like a script, but it really is what I believe truly in my heart or with our footprint. I believe something that makes it very difficult to do it at a high level. So, while we're going through these having these conversations, I look forward to having a more formal conversation with our school district and with our teachers. It's time to really look at strengthening our core so we can weather this future. Um, so we can have a bright future for our kids. Next slide. This is not going to be a one-sizefits-all approach. It will be student centered. It will be phased in and it will be collaborative in nature. Um but it'll be carefully constructed to min minimize disruption. There are there's a lot of activities that are going on

035in the school district whether it is um reallocating our uh soon to be middle schoolers or sixth graders up into the middle school uh landscape. Looking at um how we provide um services at the high school and at the elementary school and also looking at how we some of our partnerships are how we look at how we provide services in our building level. There's a lot to look at. There's a lot of stakeholder feedback that we need to take over the next few years. Um, but we'll do this in stages. Each will be informed by data and and also to deal with our operational reality. Our operational reality is that we have 10,400 students as of today. We don't have we don't have 17,000 students. We don't have 12,000 students. We have 17,000 students. I'm

036sorry. We have um 10,400 students today. And how are we going to measure that impact? There are things beyond just test scores, their student experiences, their surveys, our teachers experiences and and what they believe and our parents, the value that we add to them. I want to be able to look every parent in the face and say, "Hey, you've made not only an outstanding decision by choosing Elcart Community Schools, look how it's going to pay off for you in the end." The story that we tell from this point moving forward about how we're going to do this work I think is critical and how this work is going to be supported I believe is critical. And lastly, I am very proud that this board will always continue to put students first and with your continued

037support, we will guide Elcart Community Schools into always into a place of excellence, but also with some additional transparency and courage. Um, and so for me, I believe that um, we are primed to really look at our programming, but also look at this as a great opportunity to make sure that we are um, just good community stewards. U, next slide, please. So, I think I kind of went over uh, the student center approach. Again, we're reviewing right now. Now, we're doing a physical and cost analysis on everything that we do, whether it's looking at software, looking at our textbook that we adopt, looking at staffing, all of those things. But then lastly, cost containment. I'm sorry. Secondly, cost containment. Well, what does cost containment mean? That is making sure that we are pressing vendors like,

038hey, is this is looking at our deal, making sure that we aren't overspending in certain areas, looking at usage of things, and also um trying to correct some financial imbalances um where um Mr. quiet will um attest I think that sometimes um overtime or claim sheets might be um a little bit too high and um we're definitely looking at that u financial planning um resource optimization um looking at operational efficiency and strategic staffing um over the years I think um in 2020 we had 912 FTEEs uh currently as we sit today we have 848 um FTEES for uh but in 2020 we had 12,000 students. Today we have 10,400. So looking at make sure that we are appropriately um right size staff is important as well. And then looking at our building usage um it's

039very important. Um and then lastly, how do we implement these strategies? Um implementing these strategies again by making sure we get lots of community input. Um making sure that we are being very transparent with how we're spending our dollars and also making sure that we are having continuous conversation with our with our staff. And then um our outcomes, our job is to make sure that kids get across the finish line and everyone is responsible for that down from prek all the way up to uh the last second we have them on um June 3rd. We all play a huge part in this. There are plenty of metrics along the way, testing, there's um informative data. In our later presentation tonight, you'll see how we're doing at the elementary and secondary level. I think during our

040actual board meeting. So those are some of the metrics that we have those qualitative metrics I'm sorry quantitative metrics but I also think the the experiences that our families share with us our teachers share with us those qualitative experiences are also important as well and those things will remain ongoing. uh reiterate um same thing that I kind of just discussed earlier looking at our student resources investing in excellence um empowering student success strength uh you know our financial stability I think Mr. quite spoke a lot about making sure that we continue to um boost our cash reserves. Um make sure that we have a strong S&P rating to be in a position where we are um able to go out and get the greatest rates on um when we bid um out projects and so

041forth. And then looking at our long-term health and our district health, um I the narrative is that Elcart Community Schools does not receive a lot of money from the state as far as funding per student. Mr. Quiet, would I have you come up and speak? Is that narrative accurate? No. Well, you stand up and tell him that. No. No. So, he he's alluding to some of that benchmarking data that um policy analytics um prepared for us. And um they have the state average along with the 10 school districts that are like size of ours. Um and we fall into uh the top couple schools in per student funding. Um we're close to we're over $11,000 per student. We also fall into the top range when you look at per student spending as you could probably

042guess from our um from our presentation. And so I think that is part of the silver lining uh certainly that we've uh talked about as we try to put these plans together. It's not a lack of resources. Um I think it's more of a concentration of how we're using those to execute our mission to serve this community. So um yeah. Thank you. You want to say it together? Okay. No, you can just say exactly. That was that was it. That was it. That was it. Um, thank you for an opportunity to u present to you tonight um just some of our preliminary thoughts regarding um one being more transparent but also um maintaining our excellence here in Elcart Community Schools and some of the decisions that we should be thinking about in order to make

043sure that is not just a a goal but that's a reality for all students that cross um in into our doors on a daily basis. So, at this time, I will open up to the board for any questions from me and Mr. Quiet to answer question. Um, I know we've talked about it and and there's a lot of work that's been done by um both of you and your teams and um other people that we've brought in to help. Um, and so as we're sitting here and and you're kind of walking um the public through all this, I think it's important um that the public understands that while there's things that are coming and we're trying to be proactive getting our ducks in a row, um we've already started. Um can you share a little

044bit some of the things that has already been done as far as um savings um processes that um you've looked at putting more um guard rails so to speak in place to help um and things that I've identified where we've already found some savings um so that the public understands that this hasn't just started now. This has been ongoing since la last fall. Certainly can I'll have Mr. Quiet speak to the internal controls and then I will fill in any um blanks that he may not hit on during this time. Yeah, thank you. And that's a great question. I think one of the first things that we recognized is um as we're in a service industry and it takes people to serve and so we've got a lot of people in payroll. uh the processes

045that were there might not have been um adequate to catch some of the uh internal controls that people could work outside of. And so we've restructured um how those processes uh how the the paperwork is processed through that department. Um we've cut out some of those silos. We're also working with our uh accounting software partner Lao um and advance on on demand advanced time on demand AODD um to implement time clocks um which will really give us a huge insight um at the finan the financial update in the board meeting you'll see the amount of the resources that do go to people and to have clear visibility into what that is so that we can uh empower our leaders to make decisions around those things I think will be very uh impactful as we move

046forward as district. Thank you, Mr. Quiet. Um, another uh internal safeguard that he Mr. Quiet is being um very um not kind, he is um very mod Thank you, Miss Dave. I appreciate he's being very modest. He's done a lot of work with making sure that we put in project charters to uh ensure that we are appropriately purchasing software and curriculum and any type of expense um that is justifiable. And I think that's important for the community to know as well. Mr. Choir, I'm going to put you on the spot again before I talk about something else. But please, will you talk about that process that you I think spearhead and it's um been embraced by our leadership team when it comes to making um decisions from not only a staffing point of view, but

047also from a purchasing point of view. Yeah. So, yeah, the project charter that um Dr. Huff is talking about really just focuses on uh trying to get the information the goals onto one piece of paper kind of what the problem is to solve uh what the impact that we're hoping to have and um kind of talking through or thinking through more importantly um some things that could get in the way and I think it's been helpful to um when you come to the table with multiple stakeholders you have one set of information uh that everybody's kind of working from it becomes a living document and it also challenges you as the person trying to get that resource to think through uh some of these things and the impact it will have um on the district.

048So I think it's been helpful both in for the individual to think through it but it's also been helpful for the team when it comes to the table to come to the table to try to talk about what that decision means for the district. Thank you sir. Thank you Mr. Quiet. Um other areas of where I believe some of the work has been done is going to have a huge impact looking at transportation. Transportation costs were huge u for the school district. Um, when I first came aboard a year ago, seems like a lifetime ago, but it's only been a year. Uh, a year ago, we were paying for transportation services for our homeless population, it was over almost a million dollars a year. Um, we decided we can do that work internally. We were

049able to um train drivers in in those areas and reduce that cost by almost $900,000. I think Mr. That's about accurate. Yeah. Nice boat. He said nice boat. That that's not that's not real numbers. So I I'm sure but but looking at those absorbent costs when we got here and say we can do this work ourselves. Also looking at rerouting all our our students this year going through the middle school transition. Perfect time to look at our routing efficiencies. Each route roughly costs $50,000 when we add an additional bus route. Doesn't matter how many kids are on the bus, right? Um but then um we have to pay for the drivers, we have to pay for um gas and all those things. This year we were able to increase the amount of students that can

050ride on the bus. I think over um 12% increase on the bus without adding one additional route just by utilizing some software and working with our vendor Transfinder to um again maximize our student routing. That doesn't mean filling the buses to the brim. It means making sure that our buses are going to the appropriate locations that they should be, but also um making sure that our teach our our people are trained and they really weren't trained to to route efficiently. We were routing every student in the district regardless if they were a um car rider or a bus rider. We've stopped that and put our registration process which also u Mrs. Brander and her team has done over the year for least that efficiency. We're having everyone in our district register our and this is

051shouldn't be a novel um aspect but it is for Elcart Community Schools and um right now we almost have a third we're over a third of our individuals register for next year um which is over a third of where we had last year at this time. So um hats off to you and your team but that enrollment number is key. It helps us to make our staffing decision. It helps us to rightsize and also most importantly it allows us to send students to where the resources are instead of keeping adding resources to buildings where um I don't I I never want to say they're not needed but they couldn't be used in more efficient manner. Um but also I think one of the things that we've also done is we reduced class size. We were

052able to reduce class sizes this year. When I got into the school district a year ago I think the threshold at kindergarten was it 28 bar? I don't know it was high. Let me ask Caroline what was it? She said 27. We were able to have a standard across K through three is 25. We were able to across the the board um to to make smaller class sizes by looking at our enrollment processes and I think that is a huge I think our our teachers would um appreciate that. I think our administrators appreciate that as well. Um and I think that's a a big key into uh some of the gains that we had from an instructional level. Um, another thing that we did, we joined the cooperative with NISAC this year, um, at $30,000.

053And, um, Mr. Quai, um, can you tell how that's we've that's already returned, um, some, um, revenue for our school district with cooperative purchasing? Yes, absolutely. So, the cooperative purchasing um, as a school district, Elkart is, um, holds a lot of purchasing power. We're a good size school district. Um, but it has allowed us to, uh, look at some food pricing, um, which has gained us some savings. And it also um has preferred rates for professional development for a lot of our teachers. So that's been an added benefit and it's become a partner uh as we help that can help us navigate some of these um purchasing I don't want to say predicaments, but we purchase a lot and we're moving quickly. Uh and so to have another expert and player in that game that

054can kind of help us think through and make sure that we're checking all the boxes, especially when it comes to some of the procurement laws in the state of Indiana um and giving us some of those extra resources has been a great help for us so far. Thank and u thank you Mr. Quiet. I think another thing too that we've been that some of the work that has been done is looking there's an extreme amount of money that's spent in software um around the district. One of the first things that we did last summer in sun uh summer of 2024 is look at the number of uh licenses that we have in the district. Um forgive me um licenses that we have in the district and looking at some of our old contracts. I found

055out they were inflating numbers in certain areas. So for example, we had uh licenses for kids that we knew were never going to utilize these at the elementary level and at the middle school level. So really making sure that we scrutinize some of our contracts. I think that has been a huge benefit um to the roughly um this year we saved $1.2 million in software. And then also I want to um give a shout out to Mr. uh Eekans at the career center. Um the our career center had an increase in revenue this year, $1.2 million by being able to expand educational opportunities for for students as well. um each day. Um I believe that my team does a really good job of making sure that we are operating in an efficient manner. And to

056your point, Mr. Vonve, um this didn't just begin today. This began um a long time ago. I think now is an important time to tell the community the story of all the things that have been happening over the years. Um not over the over this past year to give a better understanding, but also to increase transparency in those areas. So um hopefully that's a small glimpse. I do need to save some of that for the state of the district and so so um but I do um appreciate that question. Um what other questions may I answer for the school board this evening? This this is more of a statement than than a question, but uh you know I've been impressed with the the the the look into the internal controls the you know questioning uh

057uh certain whether it be contracts contract review uh actually that your team seeking to understand and uh a good example of that and you alluded to is the McKenna Veno uh Vento uh uh homeless transportation assistance act and the fact that you know you you guys saw the line item and you saw the cost and had a conversation like you alluded to. How does this work? You know, how does this work? How many students are we impacting? You know, what what are the true costs? Can we do it for less? And you and you had you took that extra step and you you got the answers to your questions and you figured it out and you ended up saving the district 8 $900,000 and providing the same service. And I think those are the things

058that need to happen when you're in a situation uh like this with, you know, declining enrollment, declining revenues. Um I I think you got to look at everything. It's attention to detail and it's asking the appropriate questions and and uh this is a very long process. Um you guys have been at it for, you know, quite a while since you've come on and I just like the fact that uh you know, it uh you know, nothing's too large, nothing's too small. Let's look at everything and and make the right decision. So, um I'm I'm excited to to continue down this path with you and and and being data driven. So, um you know, thank you for the the work that you've done, you and your team and everybody up to this point. Thank you, Mr.

059Scott. That's uh very much appreciated. again the the team has really done a good job all areas whether they are a department leader director um whether they are um myself I guess I could be a department leader but just really making sure that we are everything is should trickle down to the to the student and make sure we're asking that last question is this is in the best interest of kids and that is something that really drives me and I think that something that drives everyone who is in Elcart Community School and I think that something that we have to ask ourselves as we continue to go down this path to make sure that we are a financially strong school district because again I believe Elcart is perfectly positioned to um with our state average

060that we receive and our funding from the state to make some really um good experiences for our kids but also to u make sure that we're well positioned for years to come. And you've heard me say before, you know, if if you can end every sentence on how does this impact the students or is how does it affect the students, you know, that that's the right guide path. What other question may we answer tonight? Well, thank you for the opportunity and um we look forward to to continue this conversation over the next few months and over the next few years it seems like. So, thank you for this opportunity this evening. Thank you. Anything else? We will reconvene at 7 o'clock. Thank you. There we go. Mrs. Was over my shoulders. No. I assume now

061something that is a [Music] Thank you uh everyone for coming out tonight for the March 25th, 2025 Elkart Community Schools board meeting. At this time, I'd like to call our regular board meeting to order. If you'd please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You may be seated. Mrs. Vandervel, the Elcart Promise. The Elcart Promise. Every student is known by name, challenged and supported by highly effective staff and in partnership with the community will graduate career college ready and life ready. Thank you very much. Dor, do we have any? We have none. Uh so I won't uh go over the invitation to speak

062protocol since we do not have any. Um and uh we'll move right past public comment since we do not have any of that either. And actually, let's get right to the good stuff. Uh, moment of pride. Elk Logix Robotics. Come on up. Let's get to the good stuff. Yes. Where would you like the kids to just bring them all the way right around? Yeah. Yeah. Just let them You guys don't be Don't be shy. We are so supportive of you and so excited that you're here. Thank you. Good job, you guys. You can just just Good evening, Dr. Huff, President Scott School Board. Uh Carrie Anderson, proud principal of Elcart High School, here to again get to the good stuff. Um we are very excited. The banner right behind President Scott to to recognize our

063uh well the first robotics competition winner, our Elks Logix robotics club at Elcart High School. So it's my pleasure to introduce Nick Cidle, Ted Eli, and Todd Miller, the staff of this wonderful bunch, and they will go through their wonderful competition. We just had to go a little ways just over a pond to Baltimore um to uh compete. Um they were kind enough as Mr. Cidle told me to uh let outsiders outside the region of the Chesapeake uh be uh Bay Area allow other people from Indiana to come in and beat them. And so we're excited. Mr. Cidle, engineering technology teacher uh at ETI. Um I know that um Mr. Eli is a freshman division engineering technology teacher. And then we have Todd Miller um who has been around our robot robotics program for a

064long time. So we're very much appreciate all of all of you been around all of their work on this. So Mr. Cidle um first of all I thank you for inviting us here tonight. Um give us an opportunity to share our story with you um and some of the things that we've been able to achieve this year. Um but before I get to that, there's some acknowledgements that I want to make. Um, first of all, I'd like to thank the district and the support from the community that helped build the ETI building. Um, we have our own dedicated space in there now. Um, we previously worked out of what's now the freshman division and had to clean up each night. Now we kind of have some space that we can keep our things and not

065worry about other people touching them during the day. That's been a game changer for us. Um, I'd like to thank our volunteers. Um, Ted and I are the staff members um that work with this and the rest of our staff that help coach these students are all volunteers. Um Todd Miller is one of them. Um his son came through our program and graduated and he kind of stuck with us. Um Mike Stevens, his granddaughter was through the same process. Um he's still working on parts back at the ETI building right now for us. Um Jacob Stout, he's a alum from our team that's come back and to help us out and we I'm proud to say we also have alumni helping to coach other teams in other areas now. Um including Fort Wayne and Southbend.

066Um like to thank I'm blinking now. Shoot. Uh uh sorry, Mr. Garrick Langfeld. Uh Langford, sorry. Um he's been helping our team last several years. Um he was roped in by a family friend of his. Um he's our electronics mentor. Um Ted's father, um the other MGI, um he comes in to help. He's a retired teacher from Jimtown Schools. And who am I forgetting? Because I didn't put everyone on my list. I just had volunteers. But um they volunteer upwards of 18 plus hours a week. Um and again that's volunteer time. So I like to thank them for that. Also like to thank their families for giving up that time with them. Um because that is a lot of time and dedication. Um and then the next thing I'd like to do is thank the

067sponsors from our community. Um you notice our team t-shirts have some logos and some names and things on the back of them. Um you know our our program is very expensive to run. A bake sale is not going to be able to cover our expenses. And so we asked the students to go out and find sponsors. They take an active role in that so that there's some ownership there. Um and they were able to find enough money to help um keep our program sustainable year after year. Um so now they're done with the thank yous. I'd like to introduce our st excuse me our two student speakers. U Mr. Gavin Ays. He's a senior. Um he'll be going to my alma mater um Purdue University in the fall. And Axel Coronado Fernandez who's a junior.

068Um, so gentlemen, if you'd like to come up and give a few words about why you're part of robotics and kind of what your role in our team [Applause] is. Um, hello. Uh, thank you for inviting us tonight. You can pull down. Thank you for inviting us tonight again. Um, I'm Axel. I work as a part of the build team. So towards the beginning of the season, I mostly focus on, you know, what the robot needs to do and the mechanisms that we can build to accomplish that. And then towards the end, towards competition season, I work in the pit. So if anything breaks during a match, I look over it and we fix it up so we can go to the next match. He's been very, very busy. Hello, I'm Gavin. I am the

069team captain and the lead driver and programmer. So everything he's fixing is because of me. Uh so my role is to do most of the programming with along with my mentor uh Miller. Uh then I drive it during the competitions. Uh and then whatever I try to manage these guys, but I'm not good at it. Uh, and thank you for having us over. Do you get your pictures? Okay. Yeah. Do you need them squeeze in? Did they come up here? Do you want us to move out, Erin? Would that be easier? There we go. Okay. Yeah. You want to send this picture? Oh, nice. Do you want to put that banner in front of the table here? Yeah. Would that help you folks? Any drape it over? We could drape it over the We can

070try it. Part of it over the table. Depends on how the teams are. That will that help. Well, you know what? Why don't you get one picture like this and then we can hold it up. We don't have to be in it. We can actually be in the back and hold it. Well, here we can actually uh hold it up. There you go. All right. Look better if I pull a little higher. We're probably got it. Okay. Do you want us to pull out so you can just get the students? No, I I'll be helping. Okay. So, Do we have a chance to comment with them before they take off? Great job. Yeah. I have a question. Where where's the robot at? We're at the ETI building right now doing some repairs for uh our

071upcoming competition this weekend down in Washington, Indiana. Okay. And uh how big is the robot? 115 pounds officially. Not an ounce more. And it's uh footprint is like what? Two by two, two by square feet or 30 inches by 30 inches. 30 by 30. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So, it's about about this. I was thinking that. All right. You move 15 feet per second if you want to do. Okay. Oh, you should you should graduation. Right across the graduation, you know, just real quick with the banner right across there. Okay. So, like I had a question. Come on out here. I want you to show everybody. So, I figured this had something to do with it because I know Skills USA does this also. Back in the day it was Vicka. If you look right here,

072all of these pins, can you do you want to go up to the front and kind of explain like what those are, how they come about, and how you got them, or are you not? Yeah, do it. Yeah. Yeah. Tell them. Yeah. Everything about those pins, how you got it, and what happened with that? Okay. I should probably face you guys for actually presenting them. So, all of the pins that adore in my shirt and like my lanyards uh were all made by a particular team at the events that we go to. It's just kind of like a giving culture. We have our own pins and we just put in a box so they can get a pin that represents our team and then everyone else will also have pins that we can go collect

073to adorn ourselves to represent their teams. It's kind of just like a representation of the goodwill between the teams cuz the events themselves, everyone is super friendly even despite it being a competition. If you're missing something, you can go and request to get it from other teams. Teams are happy to help and share uh with you. So, these pens are just a relevant. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. Is it safe to say that since we're the the winner, our pens are a little more valuable? Very nice. Yeah. And you guys, like you I I have the the privilege of being able to read the donations. And so everybody here, if you go back to board meeting after board meeting, you guys, I kid you not, I felt like every single

074time I was reading a donation from our community for you guys of such large numbers. So to know that like here you all are in front of us and we had the opportunity to see how the community supported you. We are just so excited to see what you guys do next year and we cannot appreciate all the work that you guys put into this and we're so proud of you and it was just such an honor to see what went into growing you guys and your team. So congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. Great job you guys. Yeah. Who's doing the graphics? Who's doing the graphics for your uh their shirts? Where's the digital design team? Me and we also have help from other, right? No, those are really awesome because it looks like the

075elk is a scuba diver. And this one here, I think my daughter is a graphic designer. She was actually on the team one of the years. or she helps out with the graphics. Oh, those are really nice. Thank you. Good job, you guys. Thank you. Bye, guys. I'll see you soon. Thank you for sharing about appreciate that. Bye, you guys. Good job. That was cool. And we've uh we have more good stuff. Uh Mr. Buckley, Mrs. Ross, uh Larry, come forward, please. That's a tough tough act to follow though. President Scott, members of the board, Dr. Huff, the athletic department would like to share with you a couple of outstanding achievements accomplished by Mr. Larry Kissinger. Uh Larry is a 38 year has spent 38 years in education, 14 years coaching in Illinois, 20 years

076as the athletic director at Goan High School, and the last three and a half years teaching and working with Elkcart community schools. He has taught our servant leadership class for the past two years. He has been a member of the double AAA, the NITAA, and the IHSAA for the last 24 years. He has served as a district chairperson, served as a district membership chair, and has spent 15 years as the proposal chair. Larry has been married to his wife, who is with us tonight, Kelly, for the last 33 years, and they have three adult children that all that are all married. Sunday night, Jackie and I had the opportunity to watch Larry receive two awards as a member of the Elcart athletic program for his commitment to serving student athletes. Larry um received the NIAA

077which is a national interccogiate athletic administrator association state award of merit in recognition for his outstanding leadership and he also received the Charles F. Mass Distinguished Service Award for his significant contributions to athletics. So, we are here tonight to congratulate Larry and to brag a little bit about all of his accomplishments inside of our athletic department. Thank you for your time. [Applause] [Laughter] Just looking at me, we'll see. Thanks, Larry. We appreciate you very much. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks, Larry. Are we not doing the excellence of card excellence? No. Oh my gosh. I'm ready. You are ready? Yeah. No, no, we'll do that. I tell you what, I think she's going to take a picture. So, why don't we just Well, I'll come back to it. Oh, we can switch. Yeah, that's it. Please. I

078was ready. I know you're ready. And I was ready. You're right. You're already there. So, we'll go move right along to alumni access. I can do the excellent part, too. you know, I can, but I will I will do the alumni excellence. Uh, good evening, President Scott, members of the board community. Tonight, I have the pleasure of introducing the better Thorn. But, um, but I'm honored to recognize Judge Deborah Elthorne, who has served on the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois since 2015. Uh, a Mallister Mallister College and Duke University graduate. Judge Thorne pres brings a lifetime of service, scholarship, and advocacy for justice. Um, from leading national um legal organizations for advancing the economic uh equality of working women, her career reflects both distinction and dedication. We need to take

079this moment this evening for to share how Elcart Community Schools played a pivotal role in her remarkable journey towards becoming Judge Thorne in the work that she continues to do and just another example of the proof that the foundation is laid here in Elcart Community Schools that any student can become anything that they dream of. So at this time, Jake, turn over. And we are have the pleasure of having uh Judge Thorne speak to us a few for a few minutes tonight to one receive this I think very important well-deserved uh entrance into our alumni uh um um receive alumni excellence but also to use this opportunity to make any funny jokes towards her other. You're clearly the more accomplished Thorn. You're clearly the more uh the Thorn that we would love to spend more

080time with. So, um but and we could not tell that you were siblings. So, but share a little bit uh about your uh your journey and um and just want to say thank you. we we really appreciate you being a model for our students to look up to and all the the difference that you're making in this world and also reaffirming that we're making a difference here in Elcart Community School. So, uh um Mrs. I'm sorry, Judge Thorne, um can you uh Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, definitely certainly can. And your brother's right here. I think he's crying. [Laughter] U thank you very much for this honor and I'm very sorry I'm not there in person but I have a nine o'clock calendar tomorrow morning with about 400 people so

081I need to be in Chicago tomorrow morning but I am very humbled by this award and um Doug told me that I should be very short in my remarks so I won't tell you anything about when we made him play um be part of Little Women our play that we put on I I have a I have a darling picture of him and he was very nice and wore a little sailor dress. So, there were no boys in the play. He had to take the role. But, um I just want to say that the Elcart Community Schools were a very important um part of my life um from the first day I walked into Miss Jester's class at Mary Daly um to graduation in 1971. and obtaining a good education was a goal that was

082certainly embedded in my family. Uh, learning to read from Mrs. Turf at Mary Dailyaly, uh, memorizing the multiplication tables, building projects for the Westside Science Fair, playing in the Westside and the Elcart High School bands, studying Latin with Mrs. Fox developing an original oratory for um the National Forensic League uh and then getting up at 5 every Saturday morning to get on that bus to go to the debate and speech tournaments. Those were all opportunities that Elkcart Community Schools provided for me. And I was want to say I was very fortunate to meet many teachers along the way that encouraged and challenged me to think about the important issues um that were in the 1960s. the environment. Um, the first Earth Day happened while I was at Elcart High School. We talked a lot about

083poverty and the war on poverty, civil rights, access to fair housing. All those issues impacted my friends and families in Elkcart and were important part of my life. There was so much violence, the death of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the very early days of feminism and that meant for EHS girls that we got to wear blue jeans to school. I don't think Miz Magazine had come out yet, but we were ready. The the the teachers that encouraged me um that I really remember were Mr. Steinpring um who really challenged me to think about the issues that were going on in the country and to to to try to be a critical thinker about those. Um to a large extent, Mr. Winganger, our speech coach, and Mr. uh Stranahan, who was our debate coach,

084were very influential. During my senior year, I was I think I mentioned in the video, I was secretary of the student council. That was the most significant role a girl could take in 1970. And I was very grateful to Al to um Alice McKon who was the student council sponsor who was really a mentor to me, supported me, helped us solve some of the problems that existed in the 197071 school year when there was a lot of turmoil in Elkart and throughout the country. And what I have learned and I hope to share with the students, my students who come to me from law schools, my law clerks, my externs and my grandchildren is that a fair and independent judiciary and access to justice is really crucial to our country and a diver developing a

085diverse pipeline into the practice of law and onto the bench must be developed and provides a stronger court system. And the people who come before me are like many people in Elcart. Small companies, individuals, sometimes they're debtors, sometimes they're creditors, and most of them are at the worst moment of their life. Either they they made a bad decision, but sometimes it's just bad luck. They got sick and they have medical bills. So I try to take the lessons that I learned in the schools in Elkcart and from my parents to provide a meaningful access to the courts to listen to them to apply the law to the facts that are presented and to try my best to render a decision which is fair both for the winners and for the losers. And certainly this is

086a large part of what I learned in my many years from Mary Daly at Westside and the high school which that point was the home of the Elcart Blueblazers. But thank you once again for this honor um and for the many years of instruction and experience I gained in the Elkart Community Schools. I am forever in your debt. Judge Summer, thank you for taking time with us this evening just to talk about your experience in Elcart Community Schools. Um I have next to you your brother that I will be handing over your award um your recognition to. um it still is worth the same amount even though he's touching it. But we want we we want to just say thank you for your time and all the advocacy that you do on behalf of everyone

087in the from Elcart, but also the people that you serve who's sitting in front of you on while you're on the bench. So again, thank you for all you do. And Mr. Thornne, do you have anything you want to say to your sister? I will be looking to make sure that the plaque is prominently displayed either in your home or the office. Well, and I please please know that if there ever are students that are interested in the law who um don't just don't find that Doug has all of the answers for them if oh see a bankruptcy court in p in uh action. Um I have very happy to make arrangements for them to go to South Bend to see a great bankruptcy judge over there or if they want to come into Chicago

088I'd be more than happy to meet them. So, you know, please keep that in mind. I'm always loving to meet students. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. And let's give another round of applause for Judge Storm. Have a great evening and again, continue to do the great work that you do. Thank you. You too. We will. Doug, man, you got roasted big time. Oh, it's all right, Doug. For every one thing said, we'll have five positive things written down for you. Don't worry. I got you. I got you. All right. This is a this has been a good meeting so far. We just uh one moment of pride to another moment of pride to alumni excellence. Now we're ready for the Elkart uh excellence of Elcart. All right. Good evening, President Scott, members of

089the board, Dr. Huff, and the community. We have we are entering the busy season of the school year. So I have more slides than usual. So I've condensed what I'm saying about them a little more so that we can go through them. But we have so many exciting things to highlight as you've already seen. The Okat High School AF JOTC military ball celebrated student discipline, leadership, and accomplishments showcasing the students dedication to excellence. We had 34 bring change to mind students that attended the bring change to mind middle school summit from Pierre Moran where they gained tools to build resilience, express emotions, and promote positive mental health habits that they can take back and use in their school. District students explored agriculture at the 4 fairgrounds during a day, engaging in hands-on learning with FFA

090members and local professionals. Our young adult students showcase their entrepreneurial skills by selling Heart City coffee and handcrafted products at Gan College, continuing to provide them with valuable business experience. And if you haven't tasted their coffee, it is fabulous. Once again, congratulations to the Elgard High School robotics team for their outstanding performance at the first robotics competition in Maryland where they earned first place. All right, and moving on to the arts. Elkart High School's music ensembles had a remarkable weekend this past weekend. Gold Rush Vocal Jazz made their fourth appearance at the Isma Jazz finals and the advanced jazz band made history as the first Elcart Jazz instrumental ensemble to advance to state. Also, the winter guard and winter percussions performed excellently with the winter percussion advancing once again to the IPA state finals. Also

091in the area of arts, the freshman division students transformed the stairwells. That's the middle picture. They transformed the stairwell walls to reflect the EHS identity, showing their creativity and leadership in this project. Additionally, the two outside photos, students created children's books explaining scientific concepts like protein synthesis, and then they shared those books with younger students at Mary Feeser Elementary. It's not going. There we go. And then the area of athletics, Max Malloy represented Elcart at the Nike Indoor Track Nationals, qualifying for both the two-mile and onem championship races, showcasing his elite athleticism on the national stage. and Maya and Regan competed at the IHSAA state gymnastics meet. Maya excelled in the vault and Regan performed as a base gymnast on the beam. Also, congratulations to Phyllis Tubs, who is honored with the IHSAA 2025 Beyond

092the Game Award, recognizing her continued impact on education-based athletics long after her high school eligibility ended. And congratulations to Katon Anderson Mitchell for being named honorable mention all conference and boys basketball. a welldeserving recognition of his hard work and talent. And then things that are happening tonight is the boys volleyball season opener. So they are playing right now their very first game. So that's exciting. Can't wait to to follow them this season. April 7th through the 11th is spring break. And mark on your calendars. April 21, 23, and 24 are the middle school parent nights. And as always, please stay up to date by following our social media. Thank you so much. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Aaron. All right. Next on the agenda, Miss Mrs. Crepe, elementary school data presentation. Good evening, President Scott,

093Dr. Huff, members of the board, and members of our school community. Um, it's my pleasure to be here tonight. I wish I'd gone first because these are awful tough acts to follow tonight. But um I do have great peeps here to introduce you tonight. So uh it's my pleasure to talk to you a little bit about the Indiana Literacy Cadre and our members of that cadre cadre. Um just to Okay. So, I'll just Can I go backward? There we go. There's my shorter title. Dr. Huff. Okay. Okay. Dr. Huff told me my longest title he'd ever seen in his life. I said, "Okay, I guess that means I have to fix it." Okay. So, all right. So out loud, the Indiana Cadre is state supported and it's focused on coaching and professional development for our

094educators. Um it in it emphasizes datadriven instruction and evidence-based literacy practices. Uh we have 10 schools participating in Elcart Community Schools version of the literacy cadre. We have 10 cadre coaches and um if you remember last spring I talked about hiring these people and oh my gosh where were we going to get these people from? And um it was tough but I got to tell you I am so proud of the team that we put together. Um, Ann, you're gonna make me cry. No, because they have worked so hard and I can't even tell you how much training they have had to go through. This was not an easy coaching position. And I just want you to know it is so highly accountable. their time, every minute of their day is accountable to the state

095of Indiana and um they are constantly in training and um they are going to tell you a little bit more about the details of that. They are led u by uh Becky Richard who can't could not be here tonight. She's our training support specialist hired by the state. Um, and they use six weeks coaching cycles uh for sustainable impact on our schools. Um, so I'm going to introduce these coaches to you tonight and I also want to point out that most of the principles have been able to come tonight too to support them. Um, this group of these principles, these cadre coaches have been so instrumental in helping Elcart Community Schools test scores. I read test scores rise and we're going to let them leave after they present so they can get out of here

096and up early to get the rest of our second and third graders to pass that I read test and I'm confident that they will. So when I call your name if you don't mind standing. Um from Beersley we have Ricky Meyers. Okay. And Michelle stays the principal. Okay. from Mary Beck. We have Holly Kimble and uh Mrs. Hayes who could not be here tonight. From Bristol, Christa Salm could not be here. Is Tim Pedley here? No. Okay. Um from Cleveland, Annie Carmichael from Mary Daly, we have Kim Muan and Shirley Elliot, principal. Okay, Shirley. I thought she was coming. She probably couldn't. She's in the back. She's in the back. Where are you? You're supposed to be up here. Okay. Um Okay, now I lost my e and from Eastwood, Denise Demiter, Brandon Kavanaaugh, principal.

097Uh from Mary Fezer, Lisa Brian. Okay. And uh Carolyn Lebron's principal. And from Pinewood, Cynthia J and Travonda going Travonda Washington, sorry, Travonda, principal. From Roosevelt, we have Angelina Lazovich and Mrs. uh um Robinson could not be here tonight. Okay. from Woodland. As last but not least, we have Christine Erlacer and Jeremy uh Beal is the principal. So, I want to officially a round of applause. Yes. Huh. We should all thank you. Okay. So, Lisa Regan. Oh, here we are in Indianapolis. We took a nice little snapshot. spent two days. I was down there two days with the principles. The rest of this group had to stay a whole week and that was just the beginning of their great training. So Lisa, um, okay, Lisa's going to talk about some of the training they've done.

098Go ahead. Good evening. I am going to talk, like Barb said, I'm going to talk a little bit about the cadre coach training. We were in Indianapolis for a week and that began our journey of lots of professional development. We have had extensive professional development focused on the science of reading. Our professional development includes twice a month meetings with coaches and administrators across the state, usually about 350 of us, I believe. Um, virtually. We have weekly meetings with Becky, our training support specialist, where all of the coaches attend. Uh we have monthly individual meetings also with Becky that are focused more on our individual building needs. We have weekly book studies and the topics of our professional development have included literacy instruction strategies, collecting and analyzing data, coaching techniques used to support the teacher by

099focusing on student data. In addition, we have ongoing learning and collaboration that includes letters, which thank you for helping to provide that for us as we work towards getting our practice, passing our practice, and getting our literacy endorsements. Um, the IDOE sponsors learning such as the science of reading modules, keys to literacy, and keys to early writing. And all of these give us a wealth of resources to share with teachers in our efforts to support student learning. Thank you, Angelina. Let's see. Okay, perfect. Good evening. So, in addition to all of that training, I'm here to tell you what we're actually hired to do, which is work on our formal coaching cycles with students and teachers. So, each formal coaching cycle lasts around six weeks. To begin a cycle, we hold a pre-cycle meeting with

100the teacher. And at this meeting, I always like to show the graphic that's on the screen and give them an overview of what the steps of a cycle are so they know what to expect coming up. During that prescycle meeting, we also look at what standards are being covered and based on those standards, we create learning targets for our cycle. Then we discuss and develop a pre-EST to assess students on these targets. The next step is to administer the pre-EST to students and collect and organize the data. The coach and teacher will meet to analyze the data and decide where to begin first. Then for the bulk of our cycle, four to five weeks, depending on what the schedule looks like at that time of year, the coach and teacher will co-plan and co-e weekly.

101With co-eing, we like to be with each teacher at least twice a week. If we can do more dependent on their schedule, that's great, but two times a week is the goal. Each co-planning is driven by some type of data, whether it be formal or just informal noticings and anecdotal notes that we have. During co-planning, teachers and coaches decide which co-eing model will be used for the lessons for the following week. And we try to um we use Diane Sweeny's student centered co-eing models and offer teachers a choice in which ones they want to use so that it can be a true partnership. Some of the options are noticing and naming. That's when either the coach is teaching or the teacher is teaching. And the other is taking very specific notes on student reactions, student

102responses, and seeing what are the student strengths, where can we work to help students grow. Another model we use is teaching in tandem where the coach and teacher will do a lesson together. We can bounce back and forth between each other and kind of feed off of each other to keep the students engaged and support them. And those are just a few examples of the models that we use. After those four to five weeks of co-planning and co-eing are complete, we administer the post test, collect and organize that data, and then each cycle ends with a post cycle reflection meeting. And that's where we can look at the growth that we had from the pre-EST to the post- test, and then think about what went well, what do we want to replicate moving forward, and

103then what might we change to help students? And that pretty much sums up our cycle. Thank you. Okay. And Holly Kimble is gonna tell us a little bit about how they document all their time. Um, my name's Holly Kimble. I am the introvert of the group who did not think this through before I volunteered and told Barb that I would talk. So, all of these people back here are probably really shocked that I'm up here. But, I do want to say one thing that's probably not on the slides, and that's how important Becky is to all of us. um because this is a very lonely job. Um you're kind of out on an island by yourself and I can speak for myself, can't speak for them, but Becky is a wonderful asset to have where

104we can bounce ideas off of her because she's in every building and she's very supportive and I think they will all agree with me. Um so like like Barb said, we have to account for any time that we interact with any teacher kindergarten through third grade. So we have what's called a data dashboard. The graph that you see here is a summary of all of our hours combined. Um there are six different subcategories. Basically, you see 800 hours were spent analyzing data between the 10 of us. Um there are also over 800 hours co-eing and 250 hours co-planning. So the goal is to get more co-planning as we go along, as the teachers get more comfortable with us uh working with us and in the classroom. Um because what I'm finding is that the more

105that we co-plan, the more that collaboration happens and the more we we all learn, us included and the teachers as well. Um so there's 122 hours of setting goals. That's like Angelina said is at the beginning of the cycle where we set specific targets that the teachers want to reach by the end of the cycle. And then uh planning and providing professional development 600 hours that could either be us being trained on something whether it be foundations or phmic awareness or phonics or us giving professional development back to the teachers in the school. And then the last one over at the end is utilizing and planning for coaching cycles. That's a little more broad and I think we all use it differently, but it could be administering preassessments, administering post assessments, or just doing random

106check-ins with the teachers because we always like to go back and check in and make sure that they don't need anything else from us. Thank you. I think you can see why they're such a great asset to us. So, uh, just to wrap up, um, we're, you know, we're looking ahead to continued development. We've, you know, we have, uh, we will have all these coaches back with us next year and hopefully after that to continue to support our teachers and our students. Um, and I, you know, as the graphic up there shows, you know, there's nothing better, there's nothing more that makes me happier than to see kids reading and writing and enjoying it. And so I call it music to my eyes. And I do want to thank each and every one of you

107principles, cadre coaches, thank you for the time because the coaches have actually I mean the principles have actually had to put a great deal of time into this as well. And I think we see the payoff. So congratulations and thank you all. All right. And you may be dismissed. Okay. Thank you for coming. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Okay, I am switching. Can I go ahead and start? You may. Okay, so I am Oh, Jake, you got to set me up there. Okay. All right. So, I hope this isn't kind of boring after the evening that you've had. Um, I'm going to give you a little bit of of preliminary data review, midyear review on um our elementary student outcomes. Um, we're going to start with our K2 um evaluation that we use,

108assessment that we use. This is a state approved assessment that evaluates those five pillars of reading. um starting with Phiney McGwares um all aspects of of early reading foundational skills. So this kind this chart is just a summary. We have very complex data that we can get from the MClass amplify MClass system. Uh but these are scores from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. If you go AC, if you look across the top, if you go horizontally, um you can see growth across grade levels. Um if you're go look down vertically, you can see students growth through the year. Um last year was the first year we used MClass Dibbles. So we do have that baseline. So now we can start to see our growth from U one year to

109year to the next year. If you look at our entrance, our the first two years with the test, we have our kindergarteners coming in at the beginning of the year at about 20% 18% this year. Nationally, they come in at about 30%. So, our students are coming in a little bit lower than the students um the national uh data for this assessment, which is is very broad. Um, but if you can see the kindergarten students are just kind of like little sponges. And so they started 20% but if you look at the first first column going down um they ended at 60 or 65% which was just 3% short of the national norms for um for the end of the year testing. So that was pretty exciting. So you know the trick is or the

110challenge is is keeping that momentum from year to year as the skills get harder. Uh so but if we look at um kindergarten 2425 which for this year from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year um the kids went from 18% where they started to 52% proficient on their middle of the year score um which is a huge jump and it is significantly bigger than it was last year at the middle of the year um for first grade um 2324. You can see we went from 36% at the beginning of the year to uh 58% proficiency at the end of the year. That is below what we we had at the uh national level last year. Um for first grade this year, um you can see that at the middle of

111the year, we well we started with 40%, we have 43% proficiency at the middle of the year. Um it's not a huge jump from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, but it is a big jump from the from first grade last year at this time. Um for second grade um you can already see that we came in a little stronger at the beginning of the year with this year with 44% and there is a big increase from last year's second graders at the beginning at the middle of the year to this year's second graders. So I think all the efforts that we've made, we've increased, we've assured that our teachers are doing more progress monitoring with this assessment this year. Last year it was a little loosey goosey. So we

112tightened that up a little bit this year and um our principles have been supported and m supportive and making sure that uh teachers are doing their progress monitoring. So this is exciting news. It is a start. Um to, you know, to get us on the road to reading success in the um in the uh upper grades. Um clearly if we don't have a good foundation that is very difficult for kids to make progress later on. Does anybody have any questions about that data? Okay. All right. So I read I can't give you I can't give you any specific numbers because the data is embargoed. Um so but I am giving you this information. It's really exciting. It's Dr. Huff and I were and many of us were so excited about um the outcomes that we

113experienced this year. Um we actually we believe we had a 15% increase in our I read scores this year which is great. We were hoping for five 10 would have been fantastic. So um as you know the state is a little bit fussy about this right now but this is our belief that we did make 19% growth okay or 15% growth excuse me. So there are some little little few others few other little um successes here too. We had five schools that increased more than 10% and five schools that increased more than 15%. We again had uh a lot of perfect scores 13 uh perfect scores which was very exciting. And um for grade two this is you know this test is made up the I read test is made up of three separate tests

114reading foundations and vocabulary reading literature and then reading non-fiction. Um so for grade two we saw a 10% increase in second graders who received the an above proficient score on the foundations. Um they also increased their proficiency by 4% on the reading literature test. And for grade three um third graders increase their passing by 18% um on the reading foundations assessment, 7% um on reading literature. Non-fiction scores were just slightly lower which does not make me happy. So, but it is a flag, an alert that tells us we need to get going on that between now and May when we retest. Um, I think the other thing that I could say about this is that we have a lot of potential between now and May when we retest, I think in the third week in

115May. Um, that I think we can, you know, we'll be able to to get a lot of lot of lot more kids over the line. Um, we actually have like 141 students who are on track to pass. So, that's really exciting for second grade. And we have about 108 kids that are also on track to pass. So, they're very close. Um, and you know, all the people and the cadre schools and our other principles are making a great effort to um get kids over that bar. Um so what did we do? We've talked a lot about some of the things that we've done over the year. Um we have a very strong focus on science of reading and the five pillars of reading science. Uh we did become a member of the literacy cadre as

116you witnessed here tonight. Um we have encouraged highlevel instructional strategies such as direct instruction. I personally have discouraged iPads um and more um teacher direct instruction rather than having kids do a lot on their iPads. Um we did increase our level of progress monitoring. We are entering intervention plans for all our kids who are at risk of not being successful in reading through Panorama. And we have trained or we are training all our teachers on letters. Uh and so they are finishing they will finish up units 1 through 4 this year and they will do uh units 5 through 8 for the next school year. Uh the other thing is is that we also implemented some very formal I read practice tests and our cadre helped us create those assessments through uh we bought a

117system last year called pair assessment. And so what we were able to do was actually create assessment I read practice assessments that completely mimic the the um I read the actual I read test. So, it had the same kind types of questions, the same three subtests. Uh, we did actually ask them to make that assessment a little more rigorous because we felt like if they could pass a more rigorous assessment that they would it would be they would be more comfortable approaching the states I read assessment. I think that was a uh it was a wise thing to do and um it was a good good assessment and it gave us lots of good information. Um I can show you just real quick. I know everybody's tired. They're like, "Barb, how long are you going

118to be?" I had about five people say that, "How long you going to be, Barb?" Oh, and I did not give myself permission to do that. So, I'm gonna Jake, can you give me back? Okay. All right. Okay, I'm going to quickly go through iLearn the iLearn checkpoints that is we entered the pilot for the new iLearn testing system this year. Uh you may be familiar with it but we are there are three checkpoints. Those are formative assessments. So they are used to help us understand how our students did on the test, retach them, and then they even have a second opportunity to te to actually take the test. So this was the first year for the pilot. Uh next year will be the uh official assessment. Uh I think we've learned a lot by

119participating in the pilot and we've been able to get a lot of good resources from the department of ed. Um I think that um they've been very thorough in helping teachers schools understand what the expectations are on the I the new iLearn test. So we have completed three. I only have data for two. Um I need you to know this is very preliminary data. it is kids are kids across the state are still doing second opportunity tests and so I think that's closing pretty soon and then the summitative test will be coming up. Um but I did want to just get a little bit of a view of what's going on. So this is our uh ELA I learned checkpoint one. So this was the first assessment we did. And so when you look at

120this chart and then the next one, these are the number of students who are in those four categories um uh for of proficiency for iLearn. And uh so but what's important is I think you can look and see that some of the many of those schools um I actually did I think I have one two three four about eight of those schools actually did a little bit better. Now, some of this is apples and oranges because the standards are different. Somewhat some are different between one checkpoint and another checkpoint, but I think the more that our kids take that assessment, they get a little bit better at it. So, those are checkpoints for um the number of kids who are in the cate in the proficiency categories for um iLearn. This is just another visual

121for you to look at. Sometimes, you know, it's easier to look at a chart like this. Uh this is each one of our schools. At the bottom is the district percentage and our state percentage. All this is still in flux as far as the percentages go. The highlighted areas are between checkpoint and checkpoint checkpoint one and checkpoint two. All I did was look at did we grow a little bit between checkpoint one and checkpoint two. So those highlighted green shows that we did do a little bit better between checkpoint one and checkpoint two. It also highlights that you know what we need to pick up in terms of uh teaching between now and the summit of assessment. Again here's the same thing for math. We did have uh I think more more students um we

122we had decreased our numbers in the below category pretty significantly between checkpoint one and checkpoint 2. I believe almost every school uh made decrease those numbers that are in the red. Any questions so far? Okay, just remember these are just preliminary. Okay, so here's the chart for math for checkpoints one and checkpoint 2 across the grade levels. Same thing with the highlighted areas of growth. Um so the question is are we making progress in ELA by you know by school and I would say if you look at this chart that depicts checkpoint one and checkpoint two I would say yes. Hopefully we are. I think this shows that you know we have some improvement across the schools and uh for math uh we can look at it the same way. Uh so you can see

123the red bar represents the second checkpoint a little bit higher than the first checkpoint. So we're hoping that is signific significant but we will find out when we have completed this year and we know all the facts about the iLearn um the new learn checkpoint assessment. Um so the question yes we are making progress and you know it makes me very happy to stand here you know tonight and um it's due to the efforts of a lot of people here in this district who have been raising the bar on academics and um I think we do see that and we will continue to see that growth um as we build readers starting from kindergarten and moving up. So I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I just have one comment. One, thank you for

124your leadership during this as well. I know that this is uh literacy is your passion and making sure that our principles and our teachers are supported and I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit for all the work that you've put in to guide this team. So, I just want to give a hats off to you as well, Mr. Thank you. Okay, you can deserve a round of applause, but no, I will get in trouble for it later. But no, uh thank you. But I do think the the data will continue to rise um with this and I'm I'm so glad we have those two additional opportunities for our our read. So yeah, and I failed to mention that because this year the state is giving us two more opportunities to do the assessment. So

125the kids will take it in May, they will take it in June again after summer school. So we're hoping to get most of our, you know, second graders above the bar in May and anybody will be invited to summer school just for I read this year. It'll be a very focused summer school to improve reading. Can you place like like your talking to your mom? Yes. Your cadre helped the foundations the letters. Then like looking into our packet as we move forward. I'm reading about your UFly. So does that like actually benefit? Will that actually be another component that will benefit also? Yes. Yes, that'll be a supplemental component as well. Um it has a really um high level of effectiveness. I mean, you can read about it. Yeah, you can just read about it

126all over the place and so um it is an outstanding program. So, but we will continue to use that. Uh we are hopefully going we are going through a textbook adoption too. So, um we don't you know we got a little hitch in there with the state of Indiana right now, but um we hope to have that completed. Um so, yes, there's a lot going on. Uh the letters training has been huge. Um, it's been difficult. We've had teachers, you know, that express the difficulty. I know they're so busy, but we've also had teachers contact us and talk about how it has changed their approach to reading and how grateful they are. I personally, you know, I wish I had had that information. I won't tell you how many years ago. Um, but, you know,

127it is really it is really a great program. Well, I want to just take, you know, take off of what Dr. have said when you think about the different programs that you brought in and what happened this year, thank you for all the hard work that you do with bringing all of these into place and and guiding everybody in that direction. Kudos because that will bring more students to Elkar Community School. Yes, that's my hope. Yeah. And if we can just keep our 19 or our 15% um growth and um I hope you will all support us in that 100%. Okay. All right. my 100% versus your 15. There you go. It's our 15. You got it. You got it. All right. Thank you. Wait, I have a question. I'm sorry. Between checkpoint one and

128checkpoint two, did you say that there was reteing? There is. There there is an opportunity. There's a second chance for kids to take take the test. So, they take opportunity one. And um if kids did not pass, it's kind of up to the principles. They decide in their schools. Some did a few just a handful of kids and some did more. Um so right now because it's a pilot they're two they're considered two separate tests. The information I gave you is just opportunity one because we had a scattered amount like one school had maybe four kids, one school had 50 kids. So we're I'm starting with checkpoint three. I believe that the state's going to combine the first opportunity and the second opportunity scores. So, um they're still refining how they're going to re how

129they are reporting the scores. Um but yes, there is an opportunity to take the test, retach what the kids didn't know, and then take a second chance. So, the reason I'm asking is I don't know which chart it was, but a couple of the schools between checkpoint one and checkpoint two, they went down. And I was just wondering what are some reasons they would go down or what would cause that? Well, one one reason would be is that maybe their curric the way they were following the curriculum did not meet the standards that were on the checkpoints. So for example, there may have been a math skill on that checkpoint, a math standard that maybe those teachers had not taught yet. So if they take that first opportunity and they had not t they had

130not taught that skill yet, they actually have until the summitative test to retach or to make sure their kids do get that skill taught and then on the summitative test they should be prepared to take that test and pass that skill. So it may be a mismatch between curriculum and the pacing or the standards that are uh that are identified for each checkpoint. We're a little little bit different. The timing was off. Are the standards the same for check point.1 and check? No, they're a little bit different. Okay. Okay. There's some overlap like especially with reading pretty much reading comprehension goes across everything. Um but there are some different standards taught or expected in each checkpoint. Okay. Thank you. And that gives me an opportunity to add to the principles uh just looking at the

131charts. It is it is wonderful to see the growth that you had even with like a tiny little glitch. There's so much to celebrate and I've sat in this seat and seeing how deflating it could be deflating it could be as you guys have tried to navigate through figuring out how to process what the students have done. And so it's refreshing to celebrate you guys and the hard work that you've done the last two years and see it really in a chart benefiting all of you and our students. So congratulations because I've been there and seen you and now I get to sit here and see you celebrate. So congratulations. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. And appreciate all your support. Thank you. Thank you Barb. Mr. Surge secondary school data better do well, Mr. Serge.

132I'm kidding. You always do. Oh, good evening, President Scott, Superintendent Huff, and members of the board and all our colleagues and community out in the audience. Uh, you know what I do want to say about Mrs. describe, you know, this is great because when the when the elementary gets better, the secondary gets better. That's our foundation for our school improvement in in the secondary area as well. So, it's critical what she does, what Mrs. Kre is doing and uh Kre's army of cadre coaches and principles, they're doing a great job. All right, secondary school data. Uh we've got a little bit of a mixed bag, but I think we have some positives as well that I'll reflect on. All right, this is the model we've been using and we've been talking about this. It's instruction

133assessment and reteing. I mean, this is what we need to do. This is the model that we've been using at the secondary. I believe it's the model they've been using at the elementary level as well. So it's it's important. So we're reteing and what we should do, we should even have assessment after reeaching to really see where we're at and how effective we were. Instruction or teaching is all the it's really if you think about it, it's about assessment. Did we do what we wanted to do with our kids? Did our kids reach the level that they needed to reach? And if they didn't, then what are we going to do about it? And that's where we come with this model. All right, let's go on to the next slide. All right, I want to

134talk about Mastery Connects. And I'm going to talk about it. I could go on a long time about it, but I'm going to keep it short. Uh, Mastery Connects is a software program that we use to collect formative data. Now what I mean by formative data, we give in the secondary, we give uh little quizzes that are five to 10 questions, just really short little windows because we want to see where kids are at. When we see where they don't do well, then we want to go back and guess what? We want to retach that that uh that problem or that theory or that concept. So we want to teach that in depth. Let's go to the next slide. All right. In master in this uh in this program we have given 740 this this

135date has been as of the end of February. We've given 747 assessments. Uh 831 standards have been assessed. Uh we have 98.4% of our students used it. I know I promised you 100% Doug, but we didn't quite get there. But we're at 98.4. Um, we have 277 teachers that are using this system. All right, let's go to the next slide. All right, this is an example of some of the assessments that we have given. uh the uh first block is ELA grade 7 and these are assessments by standards that we've given and you can see the couple of them come to the 80% level some of them are where I would say we need to retach u so we're taking a look look they're our teachers are looking at that data now if you go

136to the right side of the graph this is grade eight and and we're doing absolutely the same thing instruction assessment and reteing and and we're giving we're doing a lot of assessment. Now remember these are short. They don't take a lot of class time to do you know five to 10 questions. That's it. Next slide. All right. This is this gives you an idea of middle school math. You can look at the number of assessments we've given there. Now we've given our teachers the ability to uh to to design these assessments on their own. And if they I if they needed, we've asked them to at least do four each semester plus the summitive. And you can see they've they've done a lot more than four. And the reason they probably would do a lot

137more than four, uh they would give the initial assessment. All right? And if the kids didn't do well, they want to retach it and then they want to assess again. So they probably created another assessment to do that. Now, what we need to do to improve this is we really need to have um a a an assessment that we create at the district level that, you know, that we can give periodically through the year to really get a good handle of where we're at, you know, um just to gauge, you know, where we are in our growth at that time. All right, but our teachers are using it, our kids are using it. This is positive. Next slide. All right, this is uh what we're looking at. This is the high school and you can

138see grades 9, 10, and 11 um on this chart and their uses of uh Mastery Connects as well. And you know, one of the things that we were concerned about, can we get everybody to use it? Can we get everybody on board? And I think we've done a pretty good job of introducing it. We have some excellent instructional coaches that have a that have done a great job of supporting people with uh with this software program and utilizing this these assessments in um in improving our instruction. All right, next slide. Again, this is math that we're looking at at in these particular subjects. algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry. Okay. All right. Now, I want to go into the I learn checkpoints a little bit. The checkpoints, we've given three checkpoints through the year, which

139if you add all three to together, will be reflective of the summitive assessment that they'll be taking at the end of April. Uh believe it's the 22nd, April 22nd through about the 29th. Uh that's about where the window is. Now the checkpoints assessment just to explain it briefly like checkpoint one only, you know, we're only looking at two to four standards. We're not looking at eight or 12 or nine standards. We're we're looking at a few standards and we're taking the we're taking the checkpoint assessment on on those few standards. Okay, let's go on to the slide. Now, what I have here is ELA grade 7 on the left and ELA grade 8 on the right. Um, and you can see it's all broken down by schools and it's broken down. The blue bar represents

140the initial assessment. Uh, reteing has happened and then we have the opportunity to which represents the red bar on this graph as well. So, you know, the black line that you see there, uh, and I shouldn't do this, but the little devil on my shoulder got the better of me. And I I put the black line represents where we were last year. So, we're we're seeing some improvement in that area. The language arts scores are are not as good. There is some improvement, but they're not as good as the math scores. They're they're a little flatter. Now, I'm I'm encouraged by the by the uh by the time we take the assessments that I'm encouraged we'll see some growth. Um, but it's a it's it's it's a little more challenging to to improve the language

141arts compared to math. All right, let's go on to the next one. Here's math check uh checkpoint one in math. Grade seven on the left, grade eight on the right. Uh the black line represents where we were last year. Uh the blue bar represents the first opportunity. The the red bar represents the second opportunity. And as as you can look at that, we're we're we're seeing we're seeing some growth. We're seeing improvement and you know I'm real you know I'm I'm happy with that. I think it's a good start right now. We are we are seeing improvement with these scores. The uh state you can see the state is on the right side uh with the blue and uh red bars there. Now, if you look at grade 8, you see the blue bar in

142opportunity one is higher than the red bar is on opportunity two. Well, this all depends on the group that that takes it and those overall averages that are then calculated and that places where the state is in that. All right, let's go to the next slide. Um, this is checkpoint two. This is language arts in uh in grade seven on the left, grade eight on the right. And um you you can see where we fall there. Uh but overall, you know, when when we're retesting, we're growing, we're improving. Uh would I like to see more growth than we are seeing? Yes, I would. and and you we have plans to hopefully do that. Uh but again, we're we're a bit flat with the ELA scores. Let's go on to the next slide. This is our

143this is our math. Grade seven on the left. And uh if you you take a look at where that black bar is, you you can see pretty good growth on on the seventh grade. On the left side, um we have we have the pretty much the uh the middle schools overall are really growing in math. On the right side, we have the eighth grade. Again, overall, we're we're we're seeing some growth. Um, we're getting we're getting better. I really believe it. I not not much in the eighth grade, but we we are growing. All right, let's go on to the next question. Yes, sir. Um I I've seen it in a couple of our schools, but o overwhelming up to checkpoint two for the state the opportunity two is is less consistently than opportunity one

144after the retaching. Any idea why that is the state level? I mean could you ask that one more time please? the opportunity two at the state level, we I've seen it in a couple of our schools, but I think almost 100% of the time in checkpoint one and checkpoint two, uh the opportunity number two at the state level is less than opportunity one after the reteing. Any any thoughts on why that is, uh so frequently for at the state level? Yeah, because as as it and it depends on the number of people taking the test because then it's reormed or reaveraged at that time. So depending or people taking the test opportunity too it it could be that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right. All right. We are at Okay. This is overall. This is

145a state comparison to Elcart. If you look at grade seven opportunity one where the blue bar is and that's an average of Elcart. It's all three of our middle schools that are averaged out. Uh and the red bar represents the state on opportunity two or one rather. Now if you look at now checkpoint 1.2 is basically opportunity two and you can look at the state bar and opportunity two and where Elcart is it's represented in the blue bar. So, we're seeing pretty we're seeing some good growth there. Um, checkpoint two. Um, uh, we're we're we're not we're growing, but we're we're not at the state average at this point on this one. All right. And we could look at the eighth grade. Um uh again the eighth grade is growing um compared to where we

146were last year. Um but we we're approaching the state on opportunity two. Uh we we've come close in both opportunity two on checkpoint one and checkpoint two. Uh we still got work to do. All right, let's go on to the next slide. All right, I threw this in there. This is checkpoint three. This is our last checkpoint before we take the summitive um um uh test. All right, if you look at it, I've compared last year's 2324 with 2425 and and you you can see where we're at. Um uh if if this is indication north side north side is improved. Pure Moran uh is pretty much flat there. West side is almost flat with what we did last year. All right, let's go on to the math. All right, here's um and if you look

147at the math, the uh every every middle school has improved in that checkpoint. I mean, this is ELA. I'm sorry, I said math. This this is ELA and we're we're showing some improvement in language arts across the board. Okay, let's go on to the next slide. This is this is grade seven and it's broken down by the three middle schools and it shows 23 24 25 and and the state on checkpoint uh three in seventh grade math. You can it's pretty obvious it. It's pretty obvious obvious that we are we are showing we are showing growth but we we still far as uh the state average we still have some improvement to make. Okay, let's go on. This is grade 8 math point check checkpoint three. And it's it's pretty similar where we you can

148see it's obvious that we were growing. Um you can see north side was less than 10%. We're over we're over 20%. And uh in in how they're doing. Uh still far away from the state average, I know, but we are getting better. I mean we're we're improving. All right, let's I think All right, that is it. Let me Are there any questions on that right now? Okay, thank you, Mr. Sergey. Really appreciate it. Okay, we have Carrie Anderson is going to come up and he's going to talk about uh our Elcart High School's AP data. Thank you, Mr. Serge. Thank you, Mr. Serge. Thank you, Mr. Hello again, Dr. Huff, President Scott, and the board. I'm excited. I was invited here to talk about our advanced placement um scores results program and we uh very

149much accepted uh that opportunity tonight. And so there's nothing flat about our data tonight for the Elcart High School. We will show you obviously trends are really important. Um so I just have a few slides here but uh absolutely like most schools out of the pandemic things went down um with with just students engagement obviously with with the rigor of AP but you can see the five-year trend and I will get to at the very end where we are today obviously the school year is not over AP tests haven't happened yet that will happen roughly the second week of May uh this in like in month and a half or so. So you can see the trend here and very excited to report you know from uh you can see 2223 we had 237 different

150students taking AP classes. Uh last school year we had 284 kids. So we have grown since uh 2021 uh very much an upward uh trend. Um not just a few students but multiple percentage points uh quite a bit. I mean you roughly 20% growth in this slide. And then next we want to talk about the number of AP exams given. We want to continue to raise the rigor um challenge our students have more kids involved in more challenging classes. Uh very similar result. You can see that in 2021 you know coming out of the pandemic kind of hit hit a bottom and then in 2022 22 23 and then a huge growth on the number of AP exams given uh last year almost 400. Then you with that also if you have more kids taking

151it taking the test, you have more kids involved, more tests, you want to make sure that the kids are are are ready and they are achieving and so the overall trends definitely upward. Um you can see in last school year we made a huge growth uh roughly almost almost a 50% growth from 73 to 117 in 2324. So very excited that that uh graph represents the number of students that received at least one score of three. Multiple kids take obviously two three four five AP tests. This represents how many different students got at least a three on an AP test. uh this percentage now uh statistically when you increase um greatly how many kids take a test increase the number of AP classes that are being offered sometimes you see a drop in that first

152year before you kind of marginalize everything you need to do to um get it equal from 22 to 23 we had 30% of our students have a score of of at least a three last school year we jumped all the way up to 41% so 41% % of our students had at least one score of three. Really happy with that growth obviously on a roughly a little bit more than 10% growth from 30 to 41. And you can see the other trends um on the other school years. So overall uh the number of students the percentage again this isn't the number of students that's higher now but the percentage of students um from u 22 23 to 23 24 greatly increased obviously in 2122 had a really good year. uh less kids involved with that.

153And so as we keep pushing more kids to be in AP classes and we we are doing everything we can. We have a for example most students in in AP a lot of them are high ability students. We have high ability coord coordinators now in our high school working with those students. Um and we we definitely would see for for this year our results to be better and that's our hope. Jake if you could go to the next one. And so this is this year right? So the total number of AP exams, you can see the courses that we offer. Um we have uh we continue to have uh new AP classes. I think that's important too for our students. Uh we have AP pre-cal. That's brand new this year. Next year we've added you

154guys have approved uh cyber security. Uh that's under the college board wing um as well. And so just this year we went up um from 396 and a slide before to 447 uh different students now taking it. that represents a 12% growth. And then we have you can see there we have from 284 to 316 on the different uh number of students that are that are uh taking. So we're we're increasing the number of kids in our cohorts. Um giving them more access, having more classes, more challenges, and our kids are rising to the challenge. We hope again in early May that they will achieve uh really good results on our AP scores. And obviously we're always excited to come and and share those results of our students. I have a couple questions. Yes, ma'am.

155Are you done? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Um, so can you clarify because they take a AP class, what's the difference between the exam and the grade? And is it evaluated differently because it's a special kind of exam? So, they get they get high school credit, you know, just the normal credit for a high school. Then the AP piece of it also could have dual credit opportunities if the teachers are dual credit credentialed. Then for the colleges um it differs if for your let's say your u very very academically strong Notre Dame Ivy League schools typically those colleges are going to accept fours or fives sometimes only fives on the AP exams as five is the highest score you can get. Um, and so that would be um if if the kid could get, let's say, a

156A minus in the class and and get a get a three on the test, get a four on the test, or get a five on the test. And so that would be the the differences um at times. Am I answering your question? I'll let you finish maybe. Okay. And so it it would just differ on the on the if we're talking about individual students on what college they want to go to because some colleges don't accept scores of three. Some not some don't even accept scores of four, but they'll transfer in credit so those kids don't have to take uh their freshman year, let's say, of math. They'll already go into their second year, their third year of math. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is the exam part of the class or

157is it an extra requirement? Part of it. They if they take the class, they're taking the exam. Okay. And then it's just scored one through five. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. You may want to tell them they also get the multiplier on their GPA for a lot of our dual credit classes. AP um for sure they get a they get extra points on their for a weighted GPA. Um we multiply that by 1.25. So if if a student gets a a 4.0 you know, and the uh transcript ends up being a five for their GPA. You monitor um or review um the success of the students by class to see for example um calculus AB. Um historically that's been a very strong class for students to be able to pass. I think they've had

158a very high success rate when those students take that. So, do you look at do you review that of where the students what classes the students are being successful at as far as where they're scoring on the AP um score part? Um yeah, we do we do quite a bit. I mean, obviously like you talked about our in our AB and BC calculus, specifically BC, we are we blow the roof off of compared to the state on our results. It's important to us to make sure we have the right kids in the right classes and also the right teachers teaching those classes. Um, it's a little different than dual credit. U an AP teacher. Um, there's no special credentiing. There are specific PD opportunities and training that we we we do send with your support

159teachers to those trainings, but it's essential that we always review our student results with our staff. I I think one thing um that I really like about the AP and I'm glad that we're seeing more kids um take that challenge um because for those students who want to go to college um having that type of a class with that type of rigor and environment um whether or not they they get the three, four or five, they're they're putting in an they're put in an environment um that is tough. And so that's going to help them be prepared for when they go to whatever university or college they choose to. And so being able to be challenged here in an environment that has the supports around them so if they do get discouraged um they'll know

160how to handle it because they would have been in that environment. So when they get to the university they're a little more better prepared um for the environment that they're going to be in. And so I think it's really important um that we that we really push kids to to take that challenge um because it will benefit them in the long run um for the lessons that they learned throughout that that class process. I would just hope our a our AP enrollment and results just keep continue to grow. Right. Yes, ma'am. Great job, Mr. Thank you, board. Thank you. All right. Uh, on to the consent items. Do I have a motion? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Have a motion and a second. Do I have any discussions or questions from the

161board? Yes. So, we have our donations tonight are uh first, our diesel technology received a Toyota forklift worth $6,200, a man lift worth $4,150, and a road compressor worth $2,200 from our um Cumins Onan community, which they donate a lot to us, and that is for growth and our diesel technology department. Then again, our surgical service department, our program, which is so beautiful over at the career center, received another donation of $4,000 from Beacon Health of Supplies. Honestly, if you guys have not gone over there, you have to take a look at it. Is beautiful. Our automobile technology class received from one of our own staff members, Meredith Waro, a donation of a 2010 Dodge Caravan so that they can take that apart and learn what they need to do inside of the mechanics classroom.

162And then our Elcart High School football team received $5,637, which this is a donation that comes twice a year. And that is from our Elcart Blazer alumni football team in conjunction with our community foundation. And for those of you that don't know that if you were a Blazer, you have the opportunity to donate to that fund and that fund then um goes into the Alcart Football League tax donations um off of that. But it is a wonderful opportunity to serve our community through the community foundation and they match what you put in there. So it grows in that in that way also. So thank you to them. And then our last is our national honor society received um $1,000 from Haley Stouter for extracurricular activities. And tonight we celebrate a retirement of a secretary at

163Northside Middle School. Janet Pharaoh has been there for 13 years and she has done an amazing job knowing her students. When we talk about knowing our students by name, Janet absolutely does that um to the fullest of her ability. Uh even parents and uh I've had a great opportunity to know Janet and watch her grow. And I'm excited for her to do this retirement, but I keep telling her we need her to come back and sub whenever the opportunity is. But um I want to thank her personally because she's seen a lot of movement in North Side and she has stayed a steadfast person in our office. So congratulations Janet and we celebrate your retirement. Thank you uh Trusty Mullins. Uh do we have any other questions or comments or discussion? Seeing none. All in

164favor? I opposed hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. All right. on to Mr. Thorne. Old business policy 8210 school calendar. Good evening, President Scott, members of the board, and Dr. Huff. Uh this evening, the administration is requesting board's approval of the proposed revisions to board policy 8210, which is our school calendar policy. These revisions reflect the waiver received by the Elkart Community Schools following a resolution approved by the board on December 19th, 2023 under the authority of Indiana Code. Uh this uh 1003 flexibility waiver uh exempts the district from compliance with IC 20323 which mandates a specific number of instructional days for our students and allows for us to have more instru uh professional development opportunities for our teachers through that process. Mr. Thorne, do I have a motion? Motion. Second. Second. I have a motion

165and I have a second. Do I have any questions or comments from the board regarding board policy 8210? Seeing or hearing none, all in favor? I opposed. Motion car passes unanimously. Uh on to new business. Mr. Thorne, board policy 0164, notice of meetings. Thank you, President Scott. This is one of the bylaws adopted by the board. Uh this evening the administration is presenting for preliminary consideration proposed bylaw and policy 0164 notice of meetings. If approved this policy would consolidate the requirements under end of law regarding the issuance of meeting notices for this board into a single streamline policy. Currently these requirements are outlined across three separate bylaws. uh with the administration's approval of this and the recommended precision, you will actually reduce the number of policies across the board that are uh in place. Bringing

166this tonight for preliminary consideration. Thank you. Any questions from the board? Moving on. U board policy 0165.1.2.4. Those are the recisions, right? Those would all be recisions that we would ask you to act upon presuming that uh 0164 is approved. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have uh Miss Brander uh agreement for residential services. Good evening, President Scott, members of the board, Dr. Huff. The administration recommends board approval of an alternative residential services agreement for an Elcart Community Schools student. I have a motion. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Do I have any questions or discussion from the board regarding the agreement for residential services? Seeing or hearing none, all in favor? Wait, I do have a question. We do have a question. Yeah. Can you explain kind of

167the process or how this comes about? Uh, sure. So, I believe what you have in your board packet is actually the executed contract that we have with the state of Indiana. So, the Indiana Department of Education will reimburse us for the cost. um it's called an excess cost application for students um that require a level of services that we are unable to provide and so we partner with the Indiana Department of Education to reimburse us for those costs. So that's actually what's in your board packet this evening. Any further questions from the board? Bless you. Thank you. You're welcome. Uh I have a motion and I have a second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Lindsay, Jason. Next, we have uh common school fund loan petition. Good evening, President Scott, Dr.

168Huff, board members. Based upon our current enrollment, our district um is approved for a common school fund loan in the amount of $1,43,020. So, we're seeking board approval to use these funds to make technology purchases we cannot get from other sources of revenue. Thank you. Do I have a motion? I have a motion. I have a second. Do I have any questions or comments from the board? Yeah. Um, what is the U, if you got a loan, what's the interest rate on that one? It's a 1% loan. It's over a four-year term. Okay, good. Yep. Any other questions? or comments. Seeing none, all in favor? I opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next, Mr. Quiet. The financial report. Yes. Thank you, President Scott, members of the board, Dr. Huff. Um, this

169evening we've got a bit of a Well, do we have a financial report slides? No. Um, okay. Um, All right. Well, I believe Okay. It's in the packet. Um, so there's sharing a little bit of different information with you as we look at um um our spend and kind of helping us understand what's happening there. Um we've got a pie chart broken down of expenditures by different categories and our operations and our educations fund. Um I think it's important to um these are our two primary operating funds. um the really the two largest drivers of when we talk about our consolidated cash balance that we we kind of keep an eye on. Um you'll notice in the education fund, our wages and benefits account for uh 97% of our expenses year-to date. Um as we

170look at benchmarking and trying to understand where we we we sit, I would say a target would be in the uh high 80s uh very low 90s um for that. So, I think that's an area as we work to um improve our spending um is something we we'll need to continue to look at. Um the next slide I just put those consolidated funds together so you can kind of get a picture of um as a whole of what our primary spendings are um kind of where that lands. Um it does reduce that uh wages and benefits to 85%. Um, so that brings in your operations fund, um, where you're paying for your utilities, your school buses, um, a lot more professional services and things of that nature that aren't necessarily wage driven. Um, and so

171I thought that was a good um, way to start kind of understanding where those dollars are going um, each month. And this is a year-to-date um, calendar year to date, not a school year to date of our expenditures. the the next slide um this is some gauges that um policy analytics helped us put together and there's a a fuller packet in in your in your board report but um it's the trend of our revenues and expenditures uh based on where we sit today and so I think it's important to say that he we are using past data to trend forward so we've got you know past few years of of trend two years of or two months of spend at this point um trending that forward. So right now our revenues are projected to exceed

172our our projections uh by 101 at 101% right 100% would be right on target. Um our expenditures are also um targeted to exceed our projected expenses at 103% and then that ending cash balance um would be reducing to 6%. Again these are projections um as we kind of alluded to in our board work session um cost savings measures and things like that that we're starting to put in place. we should start to see these trends change. Um and then if we look on the next slide um again projections on expenses to um revenues um and we are projecting another year of a deficit spending again um the the importance of putting some measures in place to start to reduce that trend. Um, we have, um, I'll remind you, our BNC bonds, 24 20 24 BNC

173bonds have been allocated to help, um, take some of those expenditures out of our operations fund, looking at capital projects throughout our district that typically hit our operations fund. Um we're also purchasing our school buses out of that um capital or the the bond proceeds as well as um curricular materials that um are going to be a new expense to our education fund. We've allocated um some bond dollars to help alleviate that. So we have put some mechanisms in place um to help kind of uh extend that runway if you will. Um and we're also working with our team. I think if you'll remember back to when Mr. Gardner came and spoke on our tax rate and our our um assessed value as a whole. Um our debt service rate is very low um compar

174comparative throughout the state especially throughout the county. Um so there are uh we we are in a financial position that we have some mobility uh to or some options to move maneuver if if needed. Um, so I think that's positive in the long run or for the short term um to make sure that we get through the um as we as we start to realize those savings initiatives that we talked about in our board work session. So um that concludes uh my financial update. I'm happy to answer any questions. Zach, what's the um what's the target area for our ending cash balance that we want to be between for as a percentage? Yeah, that's a great question. um this the state will target when they're talking about their budget that they target between 10 and

17515%. Um and so they'll so as you see those dollars get above that 10 to 15%. Now this is um your cash balance to your expenditures and so um they'll start to spend that down. We were above that um which is good I think again as we're declining with our declining enrollment it's nice to have uh some cash balance to weather some additional costs that might come up. Um, so we would we should definitely certainly target between 10 and 15% of of a cash balance operations fund. We're we're focusing on um with the largest gap. Correct. Say I'm sorry, ask that question again. The the operations fund is uh uh projected expenditures versus projected revenue is Yes. So yeah, the I um that bond a lot of those bond proceeds should go help to offset

176um those expenses um that we would traditionally see out of the operations fund. Yes. Uh insurance report. Yes. Thank you, President Scott. Um a brief update. 2 months into um our insurance plan, we are um our loss ratio is at 81.2%. Again, this is a bit of a new graph that you're seeing um here. Uh which that represents the funding that we had projected. Um and the expenses that we're spending are slightly less than what we had projected in expenses. So, that is good news. Um I will say insurance funds are fickle and they can change drastically. So, um it's good to have a a positive start. Um, also note, um, we've I think we're we're having a positive transition, um, working with Gallagher. We've seen, um, some exciting initiatives that we're starting to look

177at, um, to be able to better, um, share our plan with our employees. It's a um, asset that we invest a lot of resources in um, for the benefit of our employees. We want to make sure that they feel that that's a benefit and they understand how to use it well. So, we're um encouraged by our initial um work with Gallagher and and the focus that we're trying to bring to help educate our employees around that benefit that we offer. Questions, comments from the board on the insurance report. Thank you, Zach. Thank you. Long evening, Dr. Hoff. You know, I I will make sure I keep it very brief. I do want to just say, Mr. quite thank you for all the work that you put in those slides and those visual representation that we

178obviously didn't share, but I think that we will share that out to the community and moving forward they should expect to see some type of visual representation of what we're talking about during um your um presentation. So, I just want to say thank you for the work that you put in. The gauges and the dashboard are very helpful. Um um to uh uh Saturday before last, I had the opportunity to um go to the ROC um military ball. It was a fantastic um event. Um we have many amazing kids who are um in who are cadetses and who are led by two probably the most professional individuals in the plan. Uh Major Sergeant Scott um Rutled and Major Dorman. When I tell you they have those kids uh not just attention, they have their they

179have their love, they have their admiration, but most they have uh a brotherhood and a sisterhood for the rest of their life. It it was amazing to see and the stories that they um shared about how they grew and the camaraderie and we have one of the best our um ROC programs not just in the state of Indiana I would probably say in the country and those two men uh and their team have um done an outstanding job. Also had an opportunity to hear uh uh their guest speaker did a wonderful job as well, Mr. Weaver. Um no, I mean I'm being serious. He did he did an amazing job with his speech and they were hanging on everywhere and the questions that they asked I think were really um affirming why they chose that

180program and why many of the kids left and came back. I won't say many a few of the kids came um um came to the program initially um and then they left and they came back. So I just want to say it was a great event to to go to. Um, additionally, I had an opportunity to visit one of our uh, great elementary schools uh, last week, Cleveland Elementary School, and I got to uh, read with a grade level of kindergarteners and um, Mrs. Crusomire, uh, Mrs. Schaefer and Mrs. Marshall are outstanding educators because one and also very trusting. They allow me to be in front of their children, which was I thought was a great gift and also a lot of pressure. Um, I was able to read um, we don't eat our classmates

181uh, to the kindergarteners and that was a great book, great experience, but we talked about a lot of highlevel things, speech bubbles and why do we use this and they were making some emphasis. So when I say that those teachers are preparing those kids for the world, they really are. Um, so I think she's out there. Hey Miss Karma, you have a wonderful group of kindergarten teachers and those kids are ready. They were really bright and engaging and caring as well. I mean I if you are having a bad day like I am, go to a kindergarten classroom because they are it was a wonderful place to be. Um uh last and certainly not least um I also want to share um the literary cadres. I think some of the best reports that you can

182give or get are from the people who are actually doing the work who are impacting our children. It was an honor to hear um those educators talk about the work that they're doing to make a difference in other educators lives. I think sometimes we don't get to hear that too often. And to see those three uh ladies, I don't have all their names memorized, but just to hear about um how their how they value their work and how she said the work was lonely. She's she's not alone. There's 10 there's 10 of them who can help support them. But I also wanted to say that has made a huge difference in the professional practice of Elcart Community Schools. I would go out and say that should be at all of our schools, but most importantly,

183I think that they have a strong sisterhood and brotherhood of of individuals as well that are going to move our kids moving forward. So, um, great investment by Elcart Community Schools. But again, hearing the people who are doing the work and how they're doing the work, I think is important for our community here. So, I just want to say thank you to those team of teachers. And that's all I have for you, Mr. Scott. Thank you, Dr. Huff. Um, anything from the board? Yes. Um, I'd like to thank the Air Force ROC, uh, for allowing me the honor to, uh, speak before them. That was awesome. I'd also like to thank, uh, um, the communications department, Aaron, for sending a photographer out. Uh, I'm sure there was probably 3,000 photos taken, and we only seen

184three tonight. And also our food service, who catered the meal for us tonight. And uh all of those were quite excellent and we look forward to seeing that again next year. Thank you. And I didn't get a chance Frank walked out of the room but you know not selling him short on his presentation because there's some things that you know he needs to remember growing the AP program at Elcart Central was one of the most phenomenal things that Frank Serge ever did for our school district. and to see the numbers grow at the level that they are. Um, seeing small moves at the junior high is amazing, but for me to see math to grow at that level is pretty phenomenal. So, you know, wherever he is in the building or wherever he is, I

185thought that one of the greatest things he said is creating a personal assessment, but like celebrating the fact that Frank Serge really brought the AP program to Elcart Community Schools and our children are benefiting from it. Amazing. And Aaron touched on music and I want to touch on another student that will be graduating from Elcart Community Schools this year. And she's a young lady that, you know, she's always been in music. She's always done things, but she did sports, sports, sports. Then something clicked in her and she decided that like music was her way. Watching her grow as a senior through many of our programs. It's um a a young lady that graduated from Eastwood, then Northside, and now she'll graduate from Elkart High School, and her mother is one of our teachers of the

186year. uh Megan Gutierrez and uh but Olivia she has starred in our last uh three plays with very key roles just in 9 to5 she had one of the largest roles but she received an award over the weekend for her music that I don't want to go without saying and she had a solo with her flute and she earned I like what Mr. Wyrick said enthusiastic applause after her performance and it was the outstanding music solo award. So I didn't want the weekend to go by without always celebrating our music department, always celebrating our arts department, but celebrating a young lady that really took what she loved and and grew inside of Elkart Community Schools. And she is going to be a wonderful example of one of our fine graduates as she chooses one of

187her colleges. So kudos to her. Good job. Yeah. Thank you, Kelly. Anybody else? What do I need to do? Daisy mean