ECS Board of School Trustees’ Meeting 2/22/22

001we love the career center well he's representing well brandon he's like that he's looking very dapper okay so um essentially what we're going to do is i don't want to read off a powerpoint you can see where we're going to go give you a brief overview talk about the outcomes that we have the areas that we're looking to focus on in the future whether that be our programs of study or students that we're going to target growth potential and then concerns and considerations and we'll kind of leave that off with some questions towards the end um we are super excited because it is our 50th anniversary this year the career center started in 1972 and i'm not the historian that mr aikens is but we have many artifacts that we saw i believe brandon was

002when they first started the reporting program is that correct yeah yeah wvpe actually launched its license to support the career center so we actually have a newspaper in the office we just got a few weeks ago from a former elkhart memorial teacher that's from may of 1972. so spring semester uh and it's a great ride up on the career center and the 40 programs that they had that um that first year it's quite the article yeah we'll share that with anybody who'd like to see it it's pretty interesting um our average enrollment is around eleven hundred we'll get into some of the numbers later i'll bore you with that a little later but uh we have been on a steady incline uh with our enrollment in fact uh we were set to make record the

003year that the pandemic came in and obviously that turned things around but we're still on the incline so we service 10 school districts private schools homeschoolers and everyone in between 31 programs you'll notice through those six pathways they align um with most of our pathways that we have at the high school uh as you can see we don't have a direct line to the business and our only natural resource really is agriculture right now we have two new programs planned for uh the upcoming school year precision agriculture will take the place of what used to be horticulture and is now our outdoor landscaping and then we are going to start which this one we are really excited about pre-surgery tech and we are working with vincennes and ivy tech to finalize who our post-secondary partner

004is going to be with that program but that is one that we definitely have a need and beacon has showed us the need for that around our area so question yeah what is precision agriculture okay uh i'll i'll actually hand it off to braided but i'm gonna go into a little bit there's essentially this goes into the technology that goes along with agriculture um i know there's a portion of the program that deals with drone technology so you can see uh fields from above so you know how to do uh watering cycles planning cycles things like that i'll let brandon go into more detail absolutely rocky i think this is really where we start to see the technology and ag working together so we look at large-scale crop production in any agriculture endeavor for that

005matter i think we see this as a great opportunity to support the ag pathways that we have at the high school but also engage those students of technology that may not know a route yet where to take that technology so you do look at the utilization of drones you get virtual and augmented reality uh gps gis so really how do we make better use of our resources and ensure that we are utilizing the best practices to get the most outcome for what we're utilizing in agriculture uh the next thing i'll share is you know this is this is who we are and this is what we focus on um the reason the three three bullets are on the screen is this is what we are um evaluated by the state on an annual basis when

006they look at our programming uh the first is one of the things that i i'm very proud of uh this was ushered in by dr dave binnick uh before before i was the director but i was on staff we were the first uh early college endorsed career center in the state of indiana uh since that time i think there are eight other career centers that have uh jumped on board and seen the value in this and i think what this does is for for some folks that still look at career centers and the perception of what korean tech ed or vocational ed used to be uh it helps them understand that we've changed and evolved and we're really looking at ensuring that we're offering those students those stackable credentials um within our programs in our

00731 we have 11 of them that are early college pathways meaning that students have the opportunity to earn either the 18 credit hours certificate uh the 30 to 33 credit hour technical certificate or if they're taking those gen ed those college ed general education class math english science and social studies at the home school they have a chance to earn an associate's degree currently we have 17 students in our cardiology emt program that are on pace to earn an associate's degree this year um the stackable credentials like i spoke of we have dual credits across most programs the only two that don't have that are our dental program uh ivy tech pulled all dual credits from the high schools over a year ago i think we're on the second school year of that now and

008our construction trades program as we are in a partnership with the indiana kentucky ohio region carpenters union and they actually have the opportunity to serve two years in our program and then migrate into the uh union and have one year of the union done and then all those dual credits that they would earn in their training are articulated another huge fundamental practice of what we do is the industry certification i think we'll all readily admit some of our programs the industry certification carries a little bit more weight than the college credit and therefore the state of indiana has identified a number of industry credentials that are valued by employers and those credentials can actually be used to check box number three for graduation so across our programs we have a number of uh certifications but

009in 16 of those 31 programs we have the state recognized industry credential available to students the last and i think probably the most important of all these pieces is we can offer dual credits and students can take a certification but if they can't apply that to the world of work i think we're doing them a huge disservice and so our large focus on work based learning continues and it will continue to grow as it's an expectation that the state has raised the bar upon currently we have five of our programs that are seal certified so this is the junior apprenticeship route basically what the state does is they identify best practices in the state and somewhat certify your program as you can see we have a variety of work based learning opportunities whether it's clinicals

010apprenticeships practicums uh we do a little bit of everything and then lastly we are facilities that lend themselves to doing work right in-house and those are student enterprises so i know mr weaver's familiar with our small engine program that's a student enterprise folks from the community can bring in equipment to have service worked upon same with our cosmetology salon any questions about that yeah i would go to cosmetology but i don't have any need for it you know what they can do some pretty marvelous things down there i think that about myself quite often but i'm pretty sure they could even help me out all right as i mentioned before we've been hovering around 1100 you'll notice we are on steady incline uh over the last five years we have increased with the exception of

011one year where we stay maintained um we look forward to this growing as the need for the career center gets amplified by the needs of students to find their graduation pathways you'll notice here some things that highlighted that brandon and i noticed um have been noticing for a while uh the big one would be gemtown that are sends one-third of its juniors and seniors to us every year one-third concord sends a quarter of their junior and seniors to a second year those are two very strong programs that are as you can see their numbers by the populations that they serve you'll see that those are higher numbers on average um the numbers for the most part is say very similar you'll notice schools like northwood bremen and edwardsburg stay very similar to where they are

012uh they don't jump too much that's because they're tapped by their school board and they only allow so many students to attend and they have a certain set number each year so those schools are set by their own boards questions yes so how does the funding for that work could that be a reason why they're not they have a cap is there how does the funding do do they pay a fee per student yeah i can speak to that so is that is that the same for every school district absolutely so tuition per student is the same but that tuition amount can vary based on the number of students that are enrolled in the career center account day so when we do our enrollment and we put in our official count uh you know mid-september

013late september to the state that's basically where we're locked in with those tuition agreements for our ascending school partners home school partners whoever it may be from that point our friends over in the business office calculate what the operating revenue or budget excuse me is going to be for that school year and then that's how it's determined what that tuition is going to be for each and every student therefore they are billed and then each sending school has their own arrangement set up with the business office on how they pay that fee some of it spread it out over a monthly basis throughout the year others have their own whatever their their arrangement is um i got a question does penn have a competing career center or something or think about building uh penn does

014not i would not call it a career center now because of pen size they do have opportunity to offer numerous career pathways and that's something we're actually going to talk about a little bit later on in the slide um but but st joe county is exploring uh creating a career center i'm not sure if you're familiar with a gentleman by the name of larry garatoni uh he was the financier and the lead for the south bend career academy and success academy he is also one that is uh very interested in creating uh a career center for st joe county anything else on this i will note that 20 20 21 number that scott alluded to we were set at 1343 to start that school year and when it was announced cte does not have a

015virtual option we lost 200 students in less than a week so what what's your capacity of what you can handle kid uh student life i would say with our our current space limitations i'd say 14 would be pushing pushing it pretty hard we try to cap uh programs at 24 a session so generally 48. um safety is a huge need uh we don't want to get too many students in the lab and not safely be able to monitor and ensure that they're getting the necessary learning without also doing damage to themselves or equipment we do have some instructors that take on students beyond that every single year our law enforcement program would be a a prime example they'll take 30 students in the section but 24. cosmetology is a little lower state dictates that you

016can have no more than 22 in a training cohort so that usually sits around you know 40 to 44. thank anything else in the enrollment the next 35 uh speak to what rhetoric is talking about uh the service we provide for our students with the work based learning the dual credit and then finally the industrial certification i'm not going to spend a ton of time on these but if you have questions along the way feel free to ask the blue at the top uh on the key there upper right uh is the 2017-18 school year so as you can see they've kind of just about everybody's trajectory is very similar um one thing to remember is that this year is not completed yet so some of that wbl can go up um we've really been

017affected the last couple years by the ability to put kids in certain institutions based on the requirements for those institutions uh especially going into the medical field it's very difficult to get students out and work based learning opportunities they are happening but not at the rate that we would like to i think that we'll start to relax a little bit as we go but that's going to be a fight that we have uh going into the future um northbridge uh had a significant drop in enrollment there from uh prior year to this year yeah i think if they went from somewhere in the 70s down to the 50s i want to say it's all dependent they theirs is based on uh i believe student we have a very good relationship with northridge uh their their

018principal and their counselors so i'm not real sure that we haven't seen that in the past again that's also dictated i believe northridge dictates theirs through the amount that they'll allow their students to come build credits very simple credits are very similar again dual credits you'll have to notice that all those numbers are really small this year we have a lot of programs that are year long programs so you're not going to see those dual credits also uh vincennes does not report any credit earned until the end of the year so even if they have credits earned at this point we don't have record of those so we can't report those so that's why the numbers would be low on bill credit and then industry certifications again most of these tests are done at the

019end of the year so you'll notice that gray uh line there in the middle that was the cova gear when we went away those numbers should have been significantly higher but they do the a lot of our industry certification testing at the end of the year which is how we lost out of a great deal then you'll notice the big jump with the uh yellow again and then the blue shouldn't be too far behind if not ahead of where we were last year as we are on track to pass those numbers i get a question you know when it comes to um did we at one time offer a pilot ground school here that uh it's interesting you mentioned that but not aware yeah but that is uh we've we've looked into some of those

020things that might be something that we approach here at the end of the presentation okay good we got an airport here yeah pretty handy yep yep um just the next two slides are about our student organization um skillsusa is the organization that basically took over for those who know the vica organization from years and years ago skillsusa took over most of what mecca did uh our numbers at the state level participation in numbers in general participation have stayed relatively flat um it's it's tough because uh with skillsusa there are some programs that don't fit every program that we have as an offer so you'll see some of that on the next slide but uh we did have 114 that made it to state this year off 143 that uh participated at the regional level um

021in the 2020 2021 school year we had a student finished second in the state so here are some other organizations that we also get involved in so that it's not simply just put into skills usa across the board because these fit into those various areas hovers of tomorrow they did their presentation i want to say about a month ago here um i i just have to say it was my first opportunity to go down and see the pri show and watch these kids perform and it is amazing i can't tell you how great it was to be in there and see our kids going against people from all over the country georgia i want to say had seven or eight teams there uh all from the general atlanta area and some of the surrounding areas

022and i mean it was unbelievable the following day brought each team had numerous people and they had to pull back the amount of people that they even allowed at the show just amazing opportunity her kids of course finished seventh and uh each student that participated in that uh earned 7 500 scholarships um the ffa uh we have three programs that participate in that our outdoor management uh our vet and our small engines our small engine was supposed to have the regional about a month ago but because of the scheduling conflict they've moved back in march and then this is a newer one here the fccla the family career and community leaders of america we just developed the chapters for early childhood education and education professions and just looking forward to the opportunities that that present

023for our students this is uh this is something that has been near and dear to my heart when i got to the career center um brandon and i agreed we were probably not in the right place uh as far as our organization as far as leadership went i'm gonna actually start from the bottom and go up uh our guided coalition we established uh through a process where we invited everybody um in the school who wanted to be a part of it to be a part of it i think we currently have 11 members of our guiding coalition for our building and we have truly evolved over three years into a guiding coalition that is doing the work at the ground level there there isn't a decision that we don't run through the guidance coalition uh

024for insight and communication we have a very strong guided coalition we have a lot of people who have been on for all three years and who are truly invested in what we're doing at the careers we were lucky um that one of the national programs for plc and met a man who who pointed me in the right direction because uh cte runs a little differently when it comes to plc that's not very similar to the high school or even the lower uh bodies of school so we want to hook up with a cte individual and we did that wendy customer who is the head of cte for lincolnshire has been in with us numerous times in fact she was with us too we think she brought the pandemic with her but she was with us

025two weeks before the pandemic happened we were on the right track and then everything fell apart and but she's been nice enough to come back and continue that work with our guidance coalition and our school and she has been invaluable to our process um what is cte career technical education yep so then the last thing is our focus in plcs has uh been the 21st century skills uh these 21st century skills are laid out through the doe uh i believe there are 17 or 18 of these priorities and we are our goal is to create a comprehensive unit to address each of those priorities or standards that the doe has put out there are there any questions all right so uh gonna bore you a little bit but i think it's important to kind of

026understand um how the career center is a little bit different than the the other schools within elkhart community schools i think we understand that but but hopefully just to make it a little clearer um i'm not sure who i heard ask earlier about tuition um but the career center has two major um budgets that we operate from each and every year one is our joint vocational which is based off that tuition and that is our general operating expenses uh helps pay salaries helps fund our programming costs as far as materials but that's then offset by federal perkins legislation federal perkins legislation was created in the 1960s technical education and it has evolved since the 1960s with the fifth passing so we're on perkins five was passed um in 2018 and with that there are new

027requirements to go along with the annual perkins grant that we receive our perkins grant is about three quarter of a million dollars uh we utilize it mostly for um our substantial equipment cost professional development um those are the two major things that we use those funds for very strict limitations on how those funds can be utilized and it's my job to oversee that one of the pieces that was introduced during that legislation is the need to conduct a comprehensive local needs assessment every two years to ensure that your programming is aligned with the needs of your region we first conducted this in 2019 and 20. at that point what happens is it comes from the federal level to the state level your state ct office determines what that cl a process is going to look

028like and i will be quite honest just like i think our state cte director would say the first year's process was ugly it didn't really give the desired benefits or information that we were looking for so the state has revamped that and we're on a new process this year i will say it is an extremely cumbersome process we've been working on this since probably mid-october um we're hoping to hold the final activity which is a stakeholder meeting um on the second week of march the reason why we're talking about this because according to the perkins 5 legislation from the clna we look at data um related to these five activities that we see we have a regional collaboration meeting where we work with our local work one offices employer partners to look at what does

029job growth look like in our region what does training look like in our region where are there gaps in training to reach those desired goals as far as in meeting and filling those jobs the next thing we do is we look at the programs that we offer are our programs still relevant and if our programs are relevant are they given the desired outcome so that students have the opportunity to step out into the field or continue post-secondary training then we look at our students do they perform based on what we've created if they're not performing where does our support need to come from uh is it a possibility that we're not informing students of what the pathway looks like and we have students that are being placed in the wrong pathway is it our rigorous

030too high is it our rigorous too low how do we support those students and every year we are measured on nine indicators for performance those indicators are directly tied to the dollar amount that we get through perkins legislation any one of those indicators that we don't meet for three consecutive years we have to write an improvement plan for the next piece that was just added this year is equity and i think equity is something that we need to continue to talk about and examine in education because there's areas where we're not doing a good job and this is equity in a number of fronts does our staff look like our student population do we have equitable access does our support support for everybody not just support for different races but as a support for different

031social economic backgrounds is it supportive of students that want to go in a non-traditional path based on their gender the last piece we look at is our staff how do we recruit staff to the career center how do we retain them and first and foremost i think the most important thing is once we get them how do we train them i think i've shared with you before about 85 of our teaching staff are not classically trained teachers so how do we train these folks to take the knowledge and the skill set that they have in industry and be able between teenagers and hopefully point them in the right direction so that they can continue on in that field this work is then boiled down through a series of questions that a team goes through and

032looks at the data provides answers it's boiled down to about nine to fifteen goals and then as a school we have to take those nine to 15 down to three goals that are going to be directly tied to our federal grant and we have to show progress on those three goals over the next two years uh to ensure that we don't have any loss of funding any questions about this process your nine indicators of performance uh what are those uh the nine indicators so there are a handful of those that unfortunately we have little to no handle so when you do a process like this it's not based on just the career center it's based on career and tech education in our entire region so as the ct director i'm employed by elkhart community schools

033we serve 1100 students at the elkhart area career center but then all of those high schools that lay within our region also have their own career and technical education programming going on in those high schools now i have little to no oversight over those high schools and how they conduct their business but unfortunately there are 52 of us ct directors in the state and we're all responsible for all cte programming within our region so some of those indicators are going to be tied to students performance on istep testing which at the elkhart area career center we have no impact on that what is the level of earning of the work based learning industry certification dual credits dual credits nine or more per student graduation rate lastly our the last two are five years from when

034students graduate where are they are they in a field related to what they studied in cte are they in post-secondary training or are they in the military the last piece that we look at is non-traditional placement what does it look like in a program like cosmetology do we have male students that are enrolled so there are percentages that are bargained at each location so our local we've gone through our process where we bargain we look at what the state says the numbers or the percentages should be and then based on what is our historical performance we set an indicator and then those nine indicators were measured on each and every year anything else on this dlna and i think these are the these things right here these last two slides are something that scott are

035gonna and i are gonna tag team i like to think scott's going to talk about a little bit about the future programming options yeah um you mentioned one of them earlier we're looking at an aviation pathway uh we're probably a couple years out from that that could be for maintenance and or management we have seen plymouth go ahead and do this with their program they have partnered with a smaller airport than obviously we have but they have a great relationship with two of the gentlemen that work at the airport so i think there's going to be some groundwork that we have to do before we would get that off the ground per se sorry for the fun um the i.t cyber security is one that uh we have an i.t pathway right now um but

036we are looking at the potential of adding a cyber security pathway as well because that's one that it can be easily supported in our area as well as our region the uh the other ones there that you'll notice the pharmacy technician that's another one a pathway that is needed in our area that is vitally needed in our area as a matter of fact and then the supply chain and logistics is one that actually has a small section through the automation and engineering class but they don't get to touch it enough to make it its own program uh supply chain and logistics is huge um companies like days which changed its way to i'm not sure what our yeah uh is huge in the area a huge company that deals with supply chain logistics let alone

037the companies that we know of like the fedex and the uh ups and u.s postal service there's all kinds of supply chain logistics companies that we have these are just some of them that we've begun to discuss you know whenever we bring a new program on at the career center you know we look at a number of factors first and foremost is there a local need for the programming um not just local because we know some of our students have desires to leave the region obviously we want to keep as many of them as we can in our region to help it thrive but we got to look at that growth what is the growth going to be when they walk out the door is there a credential that we can offer them why they're

038with us that allows them to slide right into that hopefully get connected with the community partner that will continue to elevate their training while they're in-house therefore offsetting any potential post-secondary costs they may have or at least limiting that cost the second thing we got to look at is are the students going to be interested in it um we've had conversations about supply chain and logistics for the longest time uh but pardon the way i say this how do you make that sexy to a high school student they don't understand what that is and so those are areas where we we have to figure out how do you package something like that i think everybody that's on this call understands the importance of supply chain and logistics especially right now where we see miss so

039many breaks in that chain um so those are considerations and then the last one you know how do we support that and where would we put it and i think that leads exactly to the next bullet we have in there um i've floated conversations i've had side talks with dr tallheimer i've talked with other people in the community uh dr balba balkan from ivy tech on you know the thoughts of satellite programming i believe it was ann earlier asked what our capacity was and i said 1400 in our current brick and mortar structures but if you were available and open to possibly offering some satellite locations somewhere else throughout the county um we really could have some serious growth potential here i've had two school districts that have approached me before with this consideration because

040travel is a huge constraint on their daily schedule and so they believe that there was a location that was more centralized they may be able to serve more students but students that get involved in extracurricular activities it's a difficult thing um and so that's one of those things that we put out there is you know is this something that we explore in the future is this something that our school board would support i don't know that we're immediately ready for it and i think that this is something that we really want to dig in deep i think the considerations that are first and foremost is the nature of the program uh it couldn't be something like our precision machining or welding you know that is a very facility constrained program um this would have to

041be something that equipment wise would need a great deal of equipment that you could put up in another location i think the other thing you'd have to look at is how can you staff it and how can you stay connected to that staff um another growth potential as i know scott as a lifelong elkhart student and resident he feels the same way i do i would like to see a heck of a lot more elkhart lions at the career center than we currently see and i am hopeful that with the merger of the schools in the schools of study i hope we become better connected and we see more students participating the last thing that i put out there and this is something that we've kicked around um the last two years in this pandemic

042year because we've had to support some students and do some makeup time is really taking a look at summer programming in trying to determine how we offer options for students that are seniors in high school or juniors in high school that haven't finished their pathway requirements looking at students that were successful during their junior year and trying to keep them engaged so they come back for their senior year we need to continue to look at it i don't know where the state is with supporting this um we've applied for various grants over the last two years and we actually applied for a grant for the indiana chamber of commerce this year uh to try to launch some summer programming for the high school and um we were awarded but at a much lower um cost

043point than we had anticipated and it to be quite honest with you if that amount it really doesn't support programming so these are all areas that we want to continue to explore growth and some of these we'd like to move on sooner than later but it's things we want to make sure we get in front of you any questions on this yeah i have uh when you mention satellite programming what comes to my mind was starlink as opposed to satellites within elkhart you know elon musk starlink right you got like five thousand satellites in the sky no i don't think we're going that sounds like a good job i i was thinking about you know we have a ivy tech community college on county road 18 that has empty classrooms that's just off the bypass

044in county road 17. and for a number of our school districts that's a it's a pretty easy location to get to you know if they have facilities there and they're good partners of ours you know what's to stop them from saying hey we'd love to have your students that are dual credit ivy tech students taking the classes in our facility that's kind of what i was thinking okay anything else on this all right and i think this is just the where we're going to leave it because i think this is uh what we need to consider uh we need to kind of talk through and know that this is where we're at with the renovation the construction projects that have occurred to merge the high schools we are extremely tight with space at the elkhart

045area career center within our current building we have the classroom that we are trans transitioning from our cna lab to our pre-surgery tech lab and that's it um we have a classroom that was given up uh to be an apex lab it's currently being used by school without walls our last large meeting space we had to transition into a culinary classroom we do have some pro some some classroom space at the annex but for some programming i i don't know that that's the best fit because part of cte is the opportunity to collaborate with like minds and so space is a concern moving forward if we want to continue to grow programming how much how much space are you talking about you know i don't think i'm equipped to say that off the cuff i

046think we would really have to consider the programming that we're talking about to ensure that we're making an informed decision but it is something that i think would continue to elevate us and give us the opportunity to move forward and serve the needs of our region cte is not going away um and that's you know i'll jump down to that second to last um bullet point you know with the next level programs of study in career and technical education this is a vehicle for so many students to graduate from high school now and i only see it continuing to rise as far as enrollment and some of that enrollment will be at the elkhart area career center and some of that will be at high schools that's the high school pathways that i have listed

047there high schools are going to create their own pathways they have to um my forecast would be all of our sitting school partners or at least the ones that you know have a plus 1000 enrollment in their high school need to have at least six to seven pathways to support their student population for graduation they generally are going to look for the low hanging fruit what does it cost a lot to support what does it need a large lab what does it need expensive equipment so it's upon the career center to look at opportunities for growth where we cannot be replicated i feel very confident that our program will stand above all others in this region if we determine what programs we want to offer we've shown a history of it by becoming cell endorsed

048you've seen the outcomes that scott shared earlier i believe we can continue to replicate that in numerous areas but what does the space look like and what programmings i don't think we're ready to say that yet i'd say with the next level programs of study because i kind of skipped from that first bullet to the last two the next level programs of study are this improvement for career and technical education in the state of indiana creating equitable opportunities according to the state for all students across the state what it's doing to career centers like us who are early college career centers it's stripping away some of the dual credit courses we can offer so our associate's degrees that we have this year of 17 students we may not be able to offer that in the

049future because the state is taking away courses that we were once able to offer from ivy tech we've been in constant communication with ivy tech trying to negotiate how we can still have availability to those courses these things are our struggles and these are things that we are concerned about because we want to do as much as we can to ensure that students have the opportunity to earn as much as they can while they're enrolled at the career center that will give them the stackable credentials to help them on their journey and that's something that we definitely got to keep in mind i'll hit bullet 2 and i'll leave the last two for scott we do our best to ensure that our tuition to our sending schools and any cost to students is kept as

050low as possible if we drive up enrollment like i believe and i know scott believes that we can do our tuition will go down um our tuition is actually in the top 20 in the state of indiana for career and tech ed programming so we're we're at a pretty high threshold right now we don't charge anything for dual credits or industry certification we pay for all of that we secure grants we do everything we can to offset those costs there are some costs associated with programs maybe special specialized but general equipment in uniforms that students will have we do have funds where we can offset families in need but one thing that we've been kicking around is we have a network of 500 business partners we've never asked our business partners for money not a

051single time uh time yes their their input we've definitely asked for that but we are very closely considering sponsorship opportunities to help support our students and when i say that it's extension of what we offer you know we have a hundred and i think 11 scott said skills usa students going to indianapolis in april any of those students that place first have the opportunity to go to nationals nationals is five days in atlanta georgia that's going to get pretty expensive to do year in and year out to take 20 30 students and our staff members down to atlanta how can we help support that can our business community assist us with that other things that we look at is you know our hot rodders go to indianapolis every year participate in nationals they're in indianapolis

052for a month or for a month wow that's a long competition right you know the other thing we look at is our national technical honor society you know we pay for our students to get into that they don't pay their initiation we pay for them so we're desperate not desperate we are very closely looking at the sponsorship opportunity we've engaged in conversations with folks at the district level on how we would like to set this up but this is something that you'll probably hear me talk about again in the future it's something we have to explore it's been coming very common in education and i think if we want to continue to the best by our student this is things that we need to ask our partners if they want to help support and like

053i said i'll leave these next two for scott any questions i have one question now why are we having a struggle with ivy tech how do you mean that well they you said they were taking away uh courses i guess yep so so here's what happens you know ivy tech is the biggest dual credit partner in the state of indiana and part of that is because they have their numerous campuses campuses uh up until next level programs of study had their own level of autonomy as far as in what they were comfortable offering their local career tech ed students at the high school level we had built a marvelous relationship with south bend elkhart so this isn't a south bend elkhart problem this is when the state transitioned the next level programs of study and

054worked with ivy tech what they created was a state-wide crosswalk of course as it could be offered we are bound to that crosswalk that statewide crosswalk even though we have right now i can i can think of at least nine courses that we're going to lose because they're not on that statewide crosswalk so the local autonomy and what they've been able to offer in the past is being taken away because of the next level programs of study that were created now you won't find it's hard to believe i hope i've fought this ever since they've announced it i've had ongoing conversations with the state cte director when he says that next level programs of study are meant to create equitable access and i would retaliate and say well if you're trying to create equitable programming

055that's one thing but access good luck with that come to our region and look where our students come from and the level of supports that they have you know this isn't something that we can just say it needs to be even and equal across the board if we have a career center that can show results can show the student attainment in the skills that are tied to the attainment we shouldn't be penalized because we push the envelope scott and i are both very fortunate that we had cte directors before us that push programming career center and it's our job to continue to push it forward and next level programs of study has a lot of merits to it but this is one area where they definitely have it wrong and unless we can impact some

056type of change this is going to happen and it is going to impact our students thank you my question uh brandon is um how many students do we have that receive the technical honors diploma oh wow i'd have to look into that so technical technicals honor diploma is tied to two programs currently and get ready for this one ann courses that are needed for that are taken off the crosswalk so the entertainment the attainment after this year are going to go down i would say we were north of 30. okay and i would say so last year i think we had 155 graduates uh i would say college graduates i would think we had like 30 that were able to do technical i think we had seven that still were able to get their associate

057associates degree in that crazy year and then the number 110 or so with the certificate okay so we get xd we get extra funding if we have technical honors students but now so if i hear correctly enough i'm connection dot the state programming is pulling away will be taking away funding for us for our students to be able to have the opportunity to have the technical certification honors okay we we do not get extra funding for tech we do not get for a technical signal the career center does not formula overall brandon yes i hear you okay anything else on those points all right let's go all right last two we'll talk about are uh also crucial for our success going forward um that next little point increased support and opportunity for a diverse population

058um this is something that we have been battling for for for the three years that i've been there brandon is very passionate about this as well uh i need to increase our support and opportunity for students of color for students in high um or low demographics as far as uh their needs for money and things of those natures so uh one way that we've started to approach this is through hispanic students we have brought upon our school luis alvarez who works with us he also does a radio program during the week on a hispanic radio station and he came in and basically kind of did a mini audit of our school to see if it was welcoming and we were embarrassed uh i don't think we had a single uh sign with um that met

059the language needs of a hispanic student coming into our school uh that's something that we look to improve upon anything that we send out and opportunities that we send out we we definitely focus on those things we're trying to work on the socioeconomic it's tough because we have to work through other schools in order to support those programs but we're working right now in fact that'll be one of our uh one of our goals currently that we're looking at for our cnn is to increase our population not only of minority students but students in non-traditional classes brandon mentioned uh a a boy in a cosmetology program um our our numbers are really low in our fields related to engineering for uh females things of that nature we're really trying to push and we're trying to

060find ways to hit those populations in order to increase those opportunities the last just 21st century scholars i know i saw that somewhere in this presentation so did they only go for more like course stuff or do kids get credit over yeah 21st century scholars we've had students who are 21st century scholars come through the program um they just have they have their needs that they have to meet through the 21st century scholarship which is maintaining a c average and getting their essentially getting their diploma on time and then the last one is the uh industry competition for our staff brandon talked about the hiring the retention and training of staff we are constantly battling with our teachers being plucked or attempt to be plunged i mean it's happening everywhere in industry let's be honest

061but when somebody comes from the industry we know that we're not going to be at the same financial level that they were going to be coming from the industry we know that we just we can't really do that but we are limited in that aspect we've been lucky that they've gotten a few younger staff members that have come to us in industry we've got our collision number finishing teacher who is a younger teacher and our our automotive service technology teacher younger teacher typically what happens is you'll find somebody who's reaching their retirement age at the company or the field that they're working on and then they come into our field which isn't a bad thing per se those are people with a lot of uh knowledge and a vast experience level but when we get

062people that we want in the position and they are thriving we have to do our best to be competitive to keep that staff member so that they don't get plugged away i just think about our welding instructor who could potentially go numerous places and make triple what he's making right now but we also understand the bible but that is something that you just battle any questions or concerns we've gone a little longer great information anything can i get a copy of your presentation you sure can yeah all right thank you okay we'll take a 10 minute break and before we start the board maybe [Music] that that do you understand [Applause] every student is known by name challenged and supported by highly effective staff and in partnership with the community will graduate career college ready

063and life ready thank you you have the opportunity to speak at the end of the meeting you have to fill out a white card there should be some on your therapist not dora can give you one fill them out you'll have three minutes to speak when you come up state your name your address and your relationship to this issue all right we're going to have a moment of pride hello my name represent is superintendent student advisory council i'm currently a sophomore and the business and international so this month since february is dedicated black history month elkhart has been eyes honoring the triumphs and struggles of african african-americans throughout u.s history every morning during announcements a quote from a famous african-american individual shared so this past this pack this past week elkhart high school cheers team

064advanced nationals in orlando florida one wonderful um our elkhart varsity winter guard also were the wgi indianapolis regional champions and they had an incredible performance this past week our exceptional swim team um also event at least two of our swimmers will be advancing and moving on to state and two of our divers mathias van der schweig and nick hardy will be moving to read it this week now this past weekend frayed and gelatin placed six on the podium at the state restaurant and he had a great junior season and as did the rest of our wrestling and our our girls basketball team had a difficult game against the penn kingsman and they went to exceptional championship game and they unfortunately lost well the score 51-53 now some events that are going to be coming up

065in our schools in our school's future is that on monday february 28th the freshman division will be hosting the student and parent night at 5 5 and 7 pm this will be geared towards current current 8th graders going into depression school counselors will be talking about scheduling for high school graduation requirements and there will be displays set up by each department for students and parents to learn about more possible possible class opportunities than they had in middle school another event coming up is our students are going to be able to show off their skills and participate in the coffeehouse talent show stanhope will be in the music office at 1012 campus and our addictions will be march 1st and 2nd from 4 to 5 pm and we would love to see members or administrators show

066off their special skills we don't have so in addition to the normal freshman orientation that will be taking place ssat will be putting on our own freshman orientation we're going to try and make it a little bit more relaxed where the students can ask questions to us their peers and express any of their concerns to us but at this time we don't have any we're still in the process of finalizing specific details and finally miss baker and her theater team are going to be putting on the tilde musical and are currently adding the finishing touches the musical will be will take place on march 11th and 12th at 7 00 pm and on march 13th at 2 pm tickets will be 12.10 questions i have a question can you how often do you guys meet

067with the superintendent and what kind of like what kind of stuff do you guys do um we meet once every month and we basically we discuss any any concerns that we have that are going on in the school like uh we we all expressed our feelings on advisory and he was able to get that to her advisor who was moved to the end of the day and we can leave her and um [Laughter] some of the members also expressed that it was a little it was getting difficult to get a parking lot because traffic was really bad so he was able to get get into that before the buses the students are able to leave through the right situation against ken over there so that it's easier and traffic flows and we've been working with

068them on the orientation the day of taking the middle schoolers to the freshman today how many how many kids are are on the committee and is it specific is it equal representation by class representation for each school of study is this there okay um so students who had been involved from the two separate high schools carried over okay and then it was rounded out by mr miller with people representing students representing the different schools of study um and then i would say 12 to 15 typically are showing up on those thursday mornings yeah and there are you and um what's your career plans currently i'm thinking of going into a business or the business aspect but [Applause] okay we have our consent item oh 30 seconds we're going to read this oh we have excellent

069donations okay so 500 from julie weber for the uh af jrtc uh military ball which will be the 19th excellent donation event 25 hundred dollars get into the elkhorn high school julia program which i said it before and i'll say it again that haley washburn can get some money out of people lci uh 2500 for the cheerleading and then um a thousand dollars from the elkhart county symphony orchestra for our um orchestras to support clinicians and private lessons that's very wonderful 750 used for to the high school robotics team for team expenses from mr ed robbins robin's engineering then um to our athletic department now i want to make sure i get his name right johnson shoot if shoot okay yeah shooter yeah oh yeah yeah a thousand dollars to the volleyball program and then

070we have another uh for eti it's fifteen hundred dollars from scott hackett from lowe's for craftsman tool cabinets measure box cutters screwdrivers etc and then we have twenty five thousand dollars from mr pete legal and the legal family foundation to the eci building and we have another of 37 500 from thor industries for eti buildings we have one thousand dollars from the get wet for vet this is a donation that's in support of the rotc will be used for supplies snacks etc for our groups great great program and then we have five hundred dollars from culture specialty paints and issues for the angel giving trees to aslo and that is it so again amazing gifts from our community to our school so thank you is there any other discussion yeah uh just is something here

071no i didn't do that okay maybe you can help steve the only question i have is on the grant just for a contact on the mckinney bento grant how many how many homeless students do we have in the district do we have any ideas that's the ballpark line in the past that number has been tony can you come up to the mic so that people online should be pleased thank you i'll pension for uh serena thank you um in the past that number has been between 100 and 200 it really just depends one on reporting so what students to qualify for homeless are often our largest number of students who qualify as homeless are doubled up which means that they do not have family doesn't have money to pay for a home of their own

072so they're doubled up with another family member or somebody they know in our school district and according to the federal lawmaking event so that would be considered homework so we have students who live in hotels and then if a student is truly homeless and announces that they're truly homeless and that's what paul thought that would require us to contact the department children's services because the student would be in a situation where they could be guaranteed so sometimes those are under reported numbers okay so with this grant talks about like um purchase services and um and other what kinds of purchase services does that entail like so i would say that probably wants to read it here to be able to answer that question because she might have something specific in there but but oftentimes purchase

073services are things like mental health services uh tutoring with a local tutoring agency and transportation i was wondering if transportation was a bigger piece it tends to be a bigger piece because we have to contract with another agency we're required by by federal law by from the campaign for law for a student who was attending school here who is now homeless in another location outside of our school district as long as it is not longer than our longest bus route to transport that student back here okay so we uh and and tony behind me can share with you we work specifically with a particular transportation company to help us do that as well okay i appreciate it thank you any other discussions is the salary for that the [Music] well that would that would be

074reporting to the doe of what we're doing so any of the expenditures that we do have to get signed off in the business office as being contained within the grant and then we would have reporting of how those funds were spent that are always required by either state or federal grant especially if that came from the doe so they tend to put those under contract uh as they've moved so they used to you just kind of got the money but now it's done under contract and then there's reporting requirements at the end of any grant circle any other discussion all in favor all right in front of you where the numbers from our last couple weeks though coven numbers and as you see those have drastically come down again from where we were a month

075ago um and this week so far we've had a handful of student and staff positive cases reported per the guidance that came out from the indiana department of health effective tomorrow we will follow the guidelines that came from the indiana department of health so we are no longer required to conduct contact tracing or report positive positive cases to the state department of health and we no longer need to quarantine students who are exposed to a positive cover 19 case regardless of vaccination um and that we would still have the requirement that individuals who test positive that they isolate for five days and may return on day six if they've been fever-free so similar to if we in our general guidance to any student than family as if that your child is is feverish and not

076feeling well please stay home so that would still be a contingent here with that um so those would be that's going to all be communicated out tomorrow once that has all gone into effect as of the 23rd from the department of health one other question i have is given that change we will continue to gather our information and our number of cases and keep track of that but my question would be do you still wish this to be a standing agenda item or a given that we've moved into this phase do i need to be providing those updates i would say we need to move on it's fine but this is behind us yeah i'm okay that's we as always we'll have those numbers and and can get you those and share those with you

077at any time okay so on friday we had the work session regarding rfc and given the changes that we made and did during that conversation um i would ask for your approval of that demographic and feasibility study for us to put that out uh tomorrow and accept those um bids from businesses or firms or businesses that would be willing to do that work through march 25th your emotion there's a question mark oh i need to pull that out my number thanks a detail you just did clarify rfp study for like people that are here that don't have not been kept up to date or don't really know what is going on you just kind of survive what this is for so this study would have four four parts to it one is to do an

078enrollment analysis and projections of student enrollment across the district district to understand what would be happening as a result of changes in economics housing policy all of those things that are happening just general census changes that are anticipated and um what impact school choice might have on that in terms of students choosing other public school options or home school or charter schools or any of those things and we're basically asking for a review of enrollment trends and what would be happening over the next five to ten years so that we have a sense of what's happening with student numbers within our district the second part is to analyze the capacity of our buildings what is the kind of industry standard when looking at capacity what do our buildings have as their capacity and where does

079that put us in terms of the utilization of each of those buildings so that we understand what could be maximum or minimums within each of those classrooms and our schools overall the third piece would then be to look at boundaries and given those capacities and given the enrollment projections what might need to happen in terms of boundaries repurposing or closing schools looking at what might need to happen in terms of transportation and what that means and we as we continue to look at balancing those resources between the space that we have and the projected number of students and then the final piece would be is as this firm undergoes this work is there anything that they're hearing from people or that we should know about that is not part of any of the specific questions

080that we've already placed within that request for proposal and are asking for then the company would come back to us the firm doing this work would come back to us and tell us how they would move through each of those four chunks the work that they would do the scope of time that they anticipate that taking how much each one of those chunks would cost them to carry out and then we would take all of that information and consider the various firms or companies that would provide that to us and determine which ones would go about doing that work so right now it is just a study to figure out where we would go from there making process or anything it is just seeking information from a variety of sources somebody going out and doing

081that independent study and bringing all that information to us for us then to make a determination as to what would be in excess because my original thought was that i would say and until there's explain and we did that on friday to be like no let's not go forward we don't have all of our ducks in a row but we are only attempting to get our jobs in a row by doing this vote right now we're not making a decision about anything so if we've been able to uh identify the firms the number of firms that we're going to send this out to tomorrow how many there are three or four that we know of that we would directly send it to or that kevin through his contacts would have somebody that we would be

082sending it directly to and then we'll put it out through our associations and other groups and post it yep very good thank you do we have an idea how much the study will cost the scope of this one we're not entirely sure of in some of the feelers we've put out it's anywhere from nine to fifteen thousand um but without knowing the full scope the scope of some of the work that was done for some of the other firms by some of the other firms that kevin spoke to um this may be a little bit bigger than that okay is there any other discussion all right onto your business all right motion pad now onto your business good evening uh in the area of policy we have three policies that will bring you for initial

083consideration of proposing religious services policies a number of these are driven by changes in state law the first one is board policy 5340.01 which is the student concussion and southern cardiac arrest policy we'll propose several revisions to this policy we know something that change again comes from james's indiana code and that is the inclusion of futures overseeing marching band as the group of individuals that are in need of training regarding the symptoms of cardiac arrest the policy also recognized the ability of the united department of education to add other types of activities uh to this group policies at this point in time the state department has not done that uh and the policy would also allow comparison guardians to sign the consent forms by means of an electronic signature uh this practice currently is in

084place for the athletic department uh mr weaver asked some questions uh earlier today related to the policy uh and the uh the language and policy very much mirrors the changes in the united code specifically it's uh inaccurate section 30 20. that's what i get for trying to pull the possible problem uh but the the language in the policy here is pretty much indiana code section 20 34 7-8 i'll call 20 34 70 yeah you're probably going to be emailed to the board member i'm looking at the uh so it's impressive yeah okay um indiana code says you know one thing and that in my mind is always the minimum hurdle a minimum bar and so but that one thing i kind of called out was received verbal permission we've got a student or you know

085in an activity there that has symptoms of a heart issue or a concussion or something else and then it seems to me like well mom and dad's over here we can give you verbal permission to put my kid back in or to do whatever the activity is and that seems to be it's like wow you know if you went to the point of wow that kid's not right you don't help life that somebody's going to say okay yeah it's putting back in it's like right i think that's a little too quick we can certainly go above and beyond what the code requires in that particular area if that's what the courts need to do i guess the question is will be what i'd be interested in the foster board members are going to require that

086when when we observe those systems that we wait until it's released from a position i'm not arguing against it just think we need to clarify exactly what we would want in terms of that information i can bring those changes back to the board personally you know i'm okay with uh you know written uh the parents finding off on whatever the issue was because i think that's their responsibility to get their child to a doctor if that's necessary in their eyes but i don't want us to be in a situation where we're moving too quickly and then also if the parent gives verbal permission over here well within 48 hours they have to give written permissions like and something happens well i never give you written permission see that's what the statute calls for but there's

087no reason why we can't modify that uh so that we wouldn't put that that students back into the program until we received living successful parents if that's if that's the desire of the board have has there been any past issues with that happening the whole issue of sudden cardiac arrest is really very much of a current issue in terms of state law certainly there are many issues around the country and around the state in the not that particularly what what doug is saying the parents said they gave verbal and then they changed and said they did has that benefit i'm not aware of that ever happening at this point in time but certainly there is that risk that a parent who is concerned about getting their their child back in the game uh back in

088the competition may make a decision that would be efforts that that student can receive at the moment for lack of a better work how would you propose the process i mean if we go to written yeah you're not going to be until until we have written permission from the parent to return uh who would have allowed the student to participate now i wouldn't want to be in a situation where the parent scrolls that out of a handwritten note at the event and against it back to the code so i think we have to think kind of strategically about how as a board you'd want to obtain that written permission is that uh something that would be delivered after for lack of a better word cooling off period ah well as this reason now it's almost

089the verbal permission can come as you know at the moment they're either at the event is taking place a cardiac issue or a concussion verbal permission can be granted in the student to go back into the game or perform with the marching band so um would this make sense to possibly have a written sheet that would be the trainer who was making the medical yeah yeah form i i think what we would want to do if we want to deviate from state laws and develop a form that has some level of information sent to it so here are the risks for your student if you sign off on that pair acknowledges that those risks exist and says i'm aware of the risks not with candy and that we'll go ahead and move forward i'm more

090comfortable with that versus a verbal i think we can i think we can certainly do that um so i'll work on developing a performance set form that would accommodate the policy for sure um you know that that's their parent [Music] in our power school program so that we can pull that up and you can accidentally do that well what happened what happens in a split family situation so you know mom and step dad are at the game and they say he's fine we'll sign off he can go back in the game dad and you know the other side is not there something happens and now we have this side coming after us because we didn't have their permission yes welcome to my world well how do we protect ourselves well we we will typically refer

091back to whether or not we have a court order establishing which parent has the right to make those decisions uh and the courts will also rule on that particular issue in fact mr steiner and i had the opportunity to deal with this with a member of the local farm not less than a month ago uh in that particular situation we took advantage of our relationship with the elk county sheriff's department then clarified for that particular attorney i won't mention his or her name at this point in time but if you'd like to speak with me privately actually i'd be happy to share the name with you uh as to what was the correct interpretation of state law but we do have for example in the student management service we would frequently find an attached copy

092of that court order in there now there's the challenge of making sure that quarters are current fortunately i do have access to the court's uh docket system so that the full set of information is necessary but those are all interesting those are all challenging questions that we have to deal with related to these particular issues and more frequently we'll see this in terms of changing custody and those types of things but we also deal with that in terms of just general medical decision making issues i think i've asked the destroyer and i apologize if i didn't see a response but why did we exclude the external defibrillator um we typically the aed training is abs as i talked to the athletic department about that that is managed by the aid by the trainers and it's

093not required by state law that all of the coaches do that again we can go above and beyond that we could require all of our coaches to participate in that training of course the aeds that we have purchased over the years are all pretty much automatic in terms of telling telling you the next step with that but there's certainly no reason why we couldn't increase that level of training that's required obviously there might be success and sales in that but that would certainly be an option for us again uh is we start at the minimum threshold what the state requires we can always go above and beyond that the biggest difference in any kind of cardiac arrest is feedback defibrillator and time is the best and so that to me excluded personally i can't agree

094are you requiring the marching band will they do sport training will they be doing that they do have to do this they do have to do the same training that the athletic party uses they use the same training packet that's available through ihfda it's an online training movement would it matter if you know like one person and that was designated trained in that or something i mean i guess if they weren't there that would be you know in the one instance i think that's why it's so important that's where we have the importance of having trainers available having more than one trainer available to us uh presently we work with them in terms of our trainers but we have found out other avenues in the past training services foreign let's go back to what i

095was discussing for a moment shouldn't we put in the language who is allowed to sign a waiver um so that there is no question again i will tell you that can be complex sometimes meeting divorce degrees where fourth parents have joint custody like physical and legal custody well then i think you need to waiver sign that you know i mean we have to protect you know everybody involved so you know the student is protected that way we are protected the coaches are protected if both parents sign off something unfortunate happens we are absolved but if we you know don't take the necessary precautions we could end up in absolutely you know and it could end in tragic consequences we'll make some further changes to the policy i appreciate the comments thank you um i don't

096really feel comfortable if we're at an event and you know the students are participating and stuff like that and we're going to offer uh immediate sign off on that you know if we're if we're setting a student down because of this suspicion okay we should say that okay the soonest you can step back with a permission slip uh written permission is 12 hours 24 hours something like that i you know on the spot you know you know and it gives the families a chance to get the message out and iron things out um but you know weird things happen out there these days and stuff like that and you know i would not be concerned with this all right but this is for concussion and cardiac yeah not a sprained ankle or these issues that

097can't really be determined exactly all right we'll be making changes to call us and bring it back to you at least uh the next proposed policy revision is board policy 55 30. uh this policy really deals with matters of when at working with child protective services in the law enforcement in terms of interviewing students because we have students in our buildings for an extended period of time during the work day there will be occasions when child protective services and or law enforcement uh will want to interview a student uh and this is primarily we're focused here on non-school related matters and uh there are procedures that we have gone through with uh the office of family and children child protective services group in terms of when they do those interviews with or not uh there

098will be occasions where typically we will we will let parents know that they're going to interview a child unless child protective services indicates to us that the parent is the alleged perpetrator or another family member um then we will not provide that private education to parents uh but also our practice has been to allow a school employee whether it is a principal or a social worker participate or to not participate but to be in the room during that interview process mr weaver raised a great point in his email earlier today regarding who is the representative i think we need to clarify that that is the school representative not outside charlottesville something of that nature um well i'd like to clarify it maybe a little further you know in the category of a social worker uh

099you know because you know a representative like okay we're stretched so thin right now uh you know getting a principal or a social worker it's like okay well the the off the the secretary is gonna be the representative that doesn't i think going to expand and spoke to guidance counselors or social workers okay they're going to have the representative yeah but i i appreciate this for administrators yes well yeah so we can clarify that migrants as well are you saying that it would be an instance where the police could come and interview a child without parent notification or presence well we will notify parents in all circumstances that this interview is going to happen unless the parent is indicated by cps to be the perpetrator so is it enough of a notice so that the

100parents we try very hard to make sure that there's adequate notice before a parent before a child is interviewed by law enforcement that the parents can be present during their interview whether it's cps or law enforcement and we really try to discourage both of those interviews taking place during the school day but there are some times when there are excellent circumstances where they feel like the only time that's that's not going to catch up on that um in the prior verbiage uh if they give an example of the circumstances where the child's well-being would be in danger by questioning the student outside of school time and then it also the new language states that a legitimate purpose such as circumstances is defined by state law can we have an example or a definition of what

101that means absolutely thank you there was a statement that uh the records are not to be maintained in the student's file where do they go we maintain all of the records related to childhood support and student service for those who are maintaining separate college services department not in the cumulative file right but you said child abuse i mean this this thing right here could cover a whole bunch of different circumstances see i do read your writings and i appreciate that thank you mr weaver this week you almost reached carol moore's level that's your target that's your role i'll leave carolyn morris here for just a second all right hypographic yeah before i just already pointed one of them off i wonder if it's the same one um the the paragraph that's in green that says

102if the agency makes a request or interview with students at school it says along yeah should be alone pointed out to be alone hello but thank you in case this bullet had there any other comments on the policy again we'll bring this back together with suitable courage there's a suitable correction thank you uh the last policy that will bring in for initial consideration is a minor revision to the network and internet accessible use and safety policies really i think the best way to describe this policy is to recognize that students all are utilized in outbreak community schools devices and unfortunately students very creative people and have developed the understanding that they can upload items using an ipad that we would not want them uploading it might be obscene or lack of pornographic and so we

103wanted to put clear language in this policy to make it clear that that is not an appropriate use of district owned technology don't we have do we have filters absolutely we do have filters that does not stop a child from taking their ipad and taking a picture of themselves or other people okay and so really it is to make sure that that is not appropriate conduct in terms of not appropriate context period let's start there even if you're a football player in the nfl uh it's not appropriate conduct but we want to make sure that students also know that it's not appropriate okay are there any other questions relating to that quality all right so what do you mean thanks comments if you're careful are you ready to give us the financial report uh this

104department reports that the january 202 case balance between the remark was 41 million as we looked at january activity this year versus january activity last year our revenue expense balance very similar to tracks well just one thing i would like to note is we have that second count state enrollment count we're down a little over 200 students half the wrong happy years worth of enrollment is not quite thirty five hundred dollars and so that's the significant reduction in our funding from now until june so we'll keep an eye on that put my comments kevin i have a question um on um the local option income taxes i noticed that it's not on the education fund and it was last year has it all been moved to the operations fund yeah that was that was a

105choice okay it helps us try to reduce the transfer from education funds and operations as the state tracks that right tonight is the insurance report as we transition to anthem anthem is a little slower to report that's why i received it as the handout rather than on the package see now there's another line so we're tracking the run out of the umr claims as well as a second separate line for anthem medical and then cbs we've carved out the pharmacy a few years ago you see that in terms of a big rebate that we get as the year goes along so generativity was much improved over last year last year was not the greatest of years for us uh square off for good start with my comments on answering and so anthony made a successful

106link to the cbs network is through employers health right now okay i should know that answer but uh because i'm in the business and on the planet but thank you for answering my question welcome all right thanks for everybody is there anybody else that wanted to speak that didn't fill out a form you can grab one thomas is hold on let them get the timer hello uh i live in elkhart uh so um i'm just here to kind of inform you guys about recent happenings in behind healthcare central the well upper central field field of central uh blazer boulevard um since i'm informing all the neighbors in the neighborhood and you guys are kind of like the next thing to the neighbors at the property there that the property that used to house federal press

107is currently being looked at for redevelopment and as i expressed to the city commissioners that i didn't even know it was for sale and a potential redevelopment site and it's potentially being offered for a dollar and i kind of thought wow what could this property be used for and let me reach out to my neighbors the community and you know let's look at all options before we you know jump the gun i remember that property going elsewhere central and pier moran and getting boston from bristol and uh it was always like oh what's this old building right behind the high school and it took a long time for that building to go away and uh and it's finally gone and uh it came down to 14 um and interesting things is it hasn't been developed

108and one of the arguments that the city has made is that it's been available since 2014 and i would kind of argue that because of um you know there wasn't a lot of development you know in the last one last couple years really we've seen some development so i really think it'd be a really unique opportunity for the whole community to kind of come together and say how should we use this could this be used for the school system could this be used for um live work studios for people coming out of the new technology centers i mean we're doing all these great things with those students and do we just are they ready to start their own businesses coming out of high school do they need they need a place to do that so

109do we need housing for middle-income teacher housing things like that all these ideas kind of spin in my head like to be potentially used for this property and um you know if it could be used as a tool to hire features from outside the area to have have rent assisted townhomes to come live in until they get settled in the community so like i said i don't know what the best use is for that corner um i do own the property and and i'm i'm an excited neighbor to see what happens that could be a uh catalyst for the whole community um i called forget they call that an activator um for just to get the historic district and the historic district has been a struggle for 15 years that i've been there and then

110even before there there's people that grew up in the neighborhood and they have their opinions on what should be done but uh anything to activate elkhart right now i think would be huge i guess i've used my time i'm gonna i'm gonna leave you guys with the letters that i received official correspondence as neighbors i thought you guys should know thank you thank you thank you we appreciate how much you're wanting for elkhart and says that surrounding areas yeah i mean i think everybody should be involved in a decision um the thing that really concerned me was that they had already been up to the offer for sale and and i only found out about it by being you know interested in what was going on on the street and so it was like ah

111you know what are you doing thank you thank you thank you good evening members of the school board i'm honored to be here to make a lot of good decisions for our city and i am greg curry and i live at 2312 hawthorne drive and i uh i'm also the fifth district city councilman for that area and that area is also where hawthorne school is located our own school is kind of in the heart of my district so i've been getting a lot of calls about the talk about the future of hearthstone school so i'm here today to tell you what i've been here i'm here to let you know that people's main concern is the kids education they people are saying that the kids have to start learning if they're not learning now what

112are we doing then we need to do something different you know i went to hardcore school and all my all nine of us went to hartford school and uh we got a good foundation there and i look at you know what motivated me at hartford school and that me and my family and my four brothers and four sisters to go on and be very successful with not asking anybody for anything can be in favor of a school referendum because the few dollars wouldn't hurt me but uh harthur is true when we had patrol boys and i think it taught you leadership i was at a event where i needed to help fold the flag because i learned that at heart throughout school when i was patrolling but the community the main thing you know is

113not the building everybody loves that building teachers love that building former teachers and students love that building and say hey what are we going to put in that building if we repurpose it then if we repurpose that building with whatever goes in there if it's in the school's hands is it going to fit the community we don't want something like concord mall where you got all these trucks and stuff so that's the people's main concern but the main concern right now you gotta get these kids learning and i was told that there are sixty percent of students that hardcore school speak spanish and we have to find a way to teach them because they say you can speak english but you might not be able to read english and i just think it just offer

114a different challenge and i think that people down state that want to grade our schools need to notice we have these kind of challenges i wonder how many of them know that just don't you speak english can you read it and pass that english text so there's a lot going on but most people don't want to see it close and we're going to be just kind of watching and see what your suggestions are and hopefully get back with some of you especially my representatives and we can sit down and talk about it it's always good to see my classmate glad you're on the book thank you silly hello my name is joanne paulson i am a teacher at hawthorne elementary school for 33 years i am a student that went through elkhart community school and

115i was sitting back there and i was looking at that beautiful black thing behind you and it's an elkhart community school and the word community are people that have similar interests and belong together and i think our hawthorne community feels that too and this has been a very difficult time for our staff our families and our students particularly and hot boys to hear about this these are pretty much blindsided the past month um we haven't really seen any specific breakdowns of what repairs need to be made i want to know exactly how much is that hvac is it padded with other things that are you know the electrical things that we need to do i think the community elkhart community um needs to see those specific details because right now none of this is making

116sense to us at least not to me and i would like time and i keep asking i've spoken at almost every reason i have spoken at every meeting and i know you're all thinking i'm sorry but i have to go down fighting the school because it's very important and it's it's sanctuary and we're talking in may we're gonna this is gonna be the end and i can't take it can't take it anymore i think let's do the right thing let's do the right thing and maybe the next referendum will pass we will be in this financial state we need to get more input from our stakeholders at hoffmore um i think we need to turn over every stone that we can to save this wonderful wonderful wonderful historic community building this prominent existence in our

117lives on the south side please please give us more time to reconsider this we don't know the teachers we don't know where we're going oh yes we're having surveys and all of that but this is our luck these are our lives too for next year and this is all very upsetting and please give us more time thank you for giving me this time to all of you thank you so much thank you here hello my name is karen lockhart i live at 573 359 carrington court i spent nearly four decades at hawthorne on staff um i'm very pleased to hear that the board is considering doing a very thorough look at the statistics part of my job when i was at hawthorne was to watch and monitor all the statistics student data test results and

118i also looked at the stability of the school now i know that it's a concern for elkhart committee schools that you are losing according to the newspaper you have lost 2.3.2.35 of your student population and that results in a lot of money whereas at the same time concord is great has grown 0.9 so are some of us students moving from elkhart school to concord school one of the things i want you to really look at when you do your study is the stability rate of school back when i was with hawthorne that's one thing i monitored and hawthorne has a stability rate that i think you would be interested in the parents stayed there the students stayed there and i hope you will look at those factors our stability rate was higher than the other

119south white school and that's something that could be impacting how many students you get to keep i had one particular student who lived in uh sturdy oaks but her mother worked near popcorn and she wanted to stay at hawthorne for the for the entire year her mother drove her and i think she did for the two years after i retired too drove her every day because she wanted to stay of authority if you want to keep your student body you need to look at the culture of the school and are there families that are staying there because they feel connected to that school whereas if you remove that disability factor you're going to be losing even more students they're going to be going to concord west side instead so i hope you will seriously consider

120the impact of a move of reduced upbringing moving hawthorne and the stability has bodies and your student account thank you thank you again um today i'm speaking on top of the study um oh wait sorry my name's jen my name is jen and um i am very heavily involved in this a lot of people know me um during the whole process of the study that i've been hearing so far obviously as well um a lot of questions arose especially a lot of the hispanic community i've been going to door-to-door talking to a lot of parents concerned about this decision a lot of them have localized that they had no idea that this was even happening but they didn't understand what's going on some of the parents who are single mothers um are very concerned what

121can happen to their child they'll be able to be able to financially afford child care during the day how are they going to get to this school they don't even know what's happening very scarce of what's going to um i try to calm them down as much as i can letting them know okay this is what i've heard this is what their plans are but they also had a lot of questions i am unfortunately not having an explore i strongly recommended them to come to these meetings just to cheer them outside a lot of them attend the language barrier ivan was slapping to provide translation for these parents if they decided to come so that being said one of the questions that they have regardless of study is why can't they have more time why

122not present the study and then make your final decision after the study is completed again i didn't have an answer for that but it was a little bit different um another one what would happen with their child regarding transportation would that be covered um are the best is going to come are the kids tend to have to walk um because again i don't have the answers um so um it was really hard talking to a lot of these parents um especially since i attended hogwarts and i know that this has been causing my childhood um so it really is a surprise that the majority of the ones that i have spoken to it's just like why can't we have time why is it just you don't have to answer to that either um one concerning

123mother as well is does this mean that my child has to wake up even more earlier what if i can't get them to school or are they going to penalize me what if they can't fit into this new school what if we get bullied for coming to business school so i strongly recommend to go ahead and talk for community members i i really do because a lot of them a lot of them have reached out to me and see them to this day they'll they'll text me they're calling hey when is this meeting happening hey have you heard anything and all i'm relating is what you guys are telling me and unfortunately it's just not enough information and i can't answer all their questions so just again there's some questions that they had and i

124just wanted to vocalize them to see you guys so thank you thank you thank you is there anybody else that wants to speak that didn't get a chance this is your last opportunity okay is there anybody online okay uh first i would like to thank uh indiana black expo for the recognition of african-american students that they did last evening they had a presentation of three doctors from that talks about the effectiveness of being ready for your future and were really an inspirational message that they provided to students and it was always a great opportunity to see that presentation from black expo to our students the other thing i would just want to conclude by saying is that i i know that these discussions about hawthorne are not easy and the conversations that i've been having

125with people the things that we're hearing from the community had some people in my office this afternoon coming in and having a conversation for us to be able to talk through and for me to listen to concerns and understand where people are are asking about um is very helpful for the whole process so that we can know best how to move forward and and serve our students so i i just want to say that while i know that people have been emotional and there are issues about um feeling like it might be rushed and that people are wishing for more time we are engaging in those conversations we're working very hard as a district team to listen and hear from people and i i just want to let people know that we are listening and

126the things that we're hearing we're trying to put together to make the absolute best decision that we can so thank you i'd like to uh i have a uh eye appointment in the morning so i need to bring this up but uh the signs in the back could you bring them closer you took the time to actually in the morning thank you and i want you to know that hashmark had no child represented at that black expo because we were never informed yeah um march first uh kind of starts with one of my favorite times of the year uh march madness starts next tuesday at northside gym uh elkhart uh is playing i think the ocean in the uh on tuesday night of course yeah the second game we should have stuck with that and

127also uh saturday uh morning last saturday morning i had the interesting opportunity uh i was in a meeting and the guy sitting behind me was the elkhart county coroner now i usually don't have meetings with the coroner anytime but he got up and spoke and uh he was talking about uh uh fentanyl likes marijuana okay and so anyhow um it's one of those situations that uh you know i thought well he's right behind me so everybody's turn around looking at us and so i asked the questions like how many does it take to kill you and so everybody kind of looks at me as like that's not the right question you know i'm not a pothead the question is how potent and the scary part is it takes two to three puffs to kill you

128and as you've seen on the front pages of elkhart truth that word needs to get out to everybody because people think that oh this is stuff that's harmless it's deadly now it's past that stage so we need to educate our kids that you know hey two pops three puffs you're done and there's no coming back he said that there had been six confirmed deaths of fentanyl laced marijuana they they could he was called in to investigate they think there could have been as high as 40. it ranges from all demographics age groups uh you know doesn't care whether you're a minority or you know a majority it's non you know it doesn't select it kills everyone even though so just a word to the wise right there you know talk to your kids about this

129thanks man whisper kill that's why they call it man's breath so honest activism and catalog and just want you guys to know that we care about you coming and letting us know where you stand and we are definitely working hard to answer your questions and try to find out the best solution for all and we'll do everything we can i've seen these guys already turning over as many stones as many concerns trying to answer those individually um thank you for that thank you because we you guys restore my my um my faith and people caring you know caring um i love that so thank you guys so very very much anything else on the board all right you