ECS Board of School Trustees’ Meeting 9/28/2021

001all right [Music] okay variety of sections they're all marked in the front so you can turn to the appropriate piece but i will cover all of the various sections budget work sessions so i think that this session really has full budgeting on all right so i'm going to give you kind of the framework and how we how we have to put budgets together for those of you that are veterans you've been through this with me before um so here's the pregnant the state requires there is a variety of them there's a separate form for all of our expenditures for the budget fund there's a additional one for revenues there's one for notice as we work the budget it really is for an 18-month period it is for the second six months of this current year

002plus the budget that we're asking for in the coming and we're required to advertise that we're going to hold a public hearing that hearing will happen here again in two weeks during the regular session so i'll have a slimmed down version of this presentation that we'll talk through with the public that comes to the regular meeting and then we're required to adopt our budgets prior to november 1st and our timelines will be remember that the department of local government finance is the government entity that we work with on our budgets they ultimately review and modify our budget school districts we'll talk about this later historically budget high to make sure that we don't under fund ourselves so the state will look at the budget that we adopt they will work it and set whatever parameters

003need to happen and then they set the final tax rate and deliver a budget order to us i just the bonus slide is not your book but just to give you a sense of all these different forms this is all online through a gateway software that state is used to give you a sense of the timeline and there is a timeline in the front of your budget book it really starts with the department of ed's budget workshop with coba those have been virtual the last few years happens at the end of june subsequent to that they put the funding formula for the coming year out on the website so schools can center around with what they think their enrollments are going to look like and what their funding will also also holds a workshop hit

004again this year was virtual they'll have a session for all the schools in our county so three or four of us always get together with the dlgf field rep ask questions try to find out anything new that's required of us um and then as you can see the remaining things we have a work session we'll have a hearing and we will adopt them a month from today on october 20th so the funds for 2022 are unchanged uh in prior years you know we've gone through some significant changes and i'll touch on those education fund is our primary fund it's the largest fund operations then is that combination of funds that used to be separate capital projects transportation operating which pays for drivers and helpers fuel replacement which was only for of and buying buses and

005then items that used to be a part of the general fund when it existed they're non-instructional we also have three debt funds that i'll talk about uh the referendum operating fund is still on here because we need to gain authority to spend the catch that will be in that fund here and then also range when we work on the education budget we we take a very conservative approach we seek maximum spending authority uh there's no local tax revenue there's no property taxes there's several uncertainties as we start to work the budget in july and august we don't know what enrollment's going to look like what our year end cash balance is going to look like although we project that and then the ongoing issues related to cove one certainty was that the general assembly passed

006a new two-year state budget that started july 1st so school's budget on a calendar year the state budgets on a fiscal year july to june so their budget is from july of 21 through june 22. again the funding for education fund is no property tax rate uh state tuition support for the primary funding source you can see the components there of the basic grant complexity grant used to be separate in another one of their transparent moves they rolled the complexity grant into the basic grant which is the frustration line there's also an honors grant a special education grant a career technical ed grant and then there's some other pieces summer school reimbursement which until 2021 we had shrunk intentionally summer school two previous years but that's changing we also have some facility rentals and then

007we budget for interest and cut interest earnings in our suite in terms of credit first again it's a fiscal year they've got to be a healthcare student on camp day new this year as the state's pulling information directly from our minds that's pulling directly from our student data system they're using the traditional count submission as across though our staff district wide has been working diligently trying to make sure all the attendance or records are in the correct huge volume of data but that will have an impact on our publishing the first count was special account which is also under pulling what they were looking at september 17th just two short days ago that determines the funding for july through december so depending on what that count does the state in november december will either adjust

008up or down based on what our actual count was second count which is also tied to funding that return in 2019 will occur on february 1st and that count then we'll determine what our funding is january through june of 22. okay so second six months of their fiscal year can be different because our enrollment will always be different we lose midterm graduates students that didn't what can play well with others sometimes students that way here's some good news this year foundation amount you can see the amount per student the foundation amount went up just a little over five percent and then complexity which i've talked about every year and bemoaned the fact that they continue to shrink that uh two years ago the complexity amount per student was 890 dollars and in 2021 this this

009last fiscal year it was 816 so they took dollars away from us and all over schools as much as they were this sure it's actually up and so when you combine those two things shut down oh okay we're just putting it back okay everybody get their pen out strike through down and run up in your book um thank you um so the the net of this uh these two pieces increased about six percent firstly i lingered on that slide too long didn't it no i saw it i did the thing i thought a long time ago i thought i was the only one that didn't i was trying to figure out how 9 35 and 816 look at that so what made that change in that complexity is there a good rule no the state

010is the same worker budget they put extra dollars they raised the amount for special ed uh the december first half that happens so we get additional money based on uh severity student needs years ago they gave us two and a half nine dollars new foundation and it took away two and a half million that's different for school districts or does it stay the same like every every child is six thousand six thousand hundred ninety dollars for every school district every student um the amounts vary by district okay so the bell card is roughly 69. do they vary for charter schools do they vary like do some do home school people get money the complexity piece is also driven by your percentage of produce well your poverty we can not not we unless they're high poverty

011um on the expense side of the education fund materials that are in your book are by program and object level not down to the location level which is every student succeeds federal requirement this year there was ongoing lots of account changes from the ue those related to some of the new mods that they passed forty-five percent put a dollar stood down so they needed to try to track what that was going to look like if you put all those in place with our first pay up to school year which was again ask for maximum spending authority veteran board members have heard me talk about the guard rail approach i look at the current year's budget i look at a 12-month actual expense picture because your expenses are going to track a little differently from what

012you plan six months 12 months 15 months ago so we look at all those things and come up with the numbers for each category again i mentioned earlier larger summer school programs is related to trying to catch up on the burning loss so we have lots of programs going on this summer many were funded by esser but it's a piece of our schools funds through the education fund grew as well that will continue in 22. a couple of the shifts that are occurring in the education fund we were spending significant dollars for off-duty police officers we've been having a very difficult time attracting those who've added security hourly paid positions that are car staff members so we have control so you'll see that shift and then price academy which is out of bristol those dollars

013offset reduction from spending to fashion so we've taken those programs in house banks that are included in the expense budget for the education fund include showers and wages for teachers building administrators plaster of paras to the benefit of social security retirement medical plans also another piece in the education fund is curriculars and yes that's smaller than i can see very well but you can see that uh salaries with the bluetooth benefits of a lion's share well north of the education fund budget okay we're going to shift to the operations fund used to pay for non-classroom-related expenses again we combine separate funds the one large fund starting in 2019 previously separate but we track these with specific account numbers this capital projects items the operation of a transportation department bus replacement and then former general fund

014accounts that aren't related directly to classroom instruction so the superintendent of schools school board business department the big piece is all of the custodial full tax cap impact lands on the operations fund and also pension debt neutrality still have some time to go on pension debt payments and you have to reduce the tax rate whatever that tax rate is the support pension has to be reduced from the operations fund so that is the limiter on the operations fund there's two separate revenue streams in the operations fund for the capital projects transportation most replacement pieces those are funded locally through property taxes along with that comes excise tax dollars a smaller amount for commercial x5 financial institution tax when the state combined the funds they took the maximum levy which was selling a budget dollar and

015british county which was the capital projects those for the three plus the combined rate that is impacted every year by the state growth course and then to get the amount of revenue that you're going to generate take the assessed valuation within your district but multiplied by the tax rate to determine revenue uh the second revenue stream for the former general fund account uh this started in 2019 the state deposits all of your basic tuition support and the education fund and then as you transfer an amount equal to your former general fund expenses that you incur in the operations and just a couple months into that the state said that shouldn't be more than fifteen percent so for elkhart we've been running in the twelve and thirteen percent grant so we've applied some districts are over

016that fifteen percent threshold and then they have some other reporting challenges revenue influencers property tax caps as i mentioned just a moment ago they've been running in the 3.6 to 3.9 million dollars per year range uh the state estimate for next year is 391 thousand so right at the high end of what we've seen the last several years debt neutrality is roughly two and a half million dollars and then growth quotient the positive side of this is based on the six year rolling non-farm household income average so for 2022 our coming budget years 4.3 in 21 this current current year was 4.2 the one negative is that with the big dip in the economy last year as code really hit and everybody stopped spending and stayed home and businesses like law is this 2020 will

017become one of the new years a good year will drop off and a not so good year will come into the six year trend and so for the next six years while 2020 is in that brew the trend will be low but we won't see 4.3 we'll see something less there's been years that i that have been in three rounds so we'll see where that goes it's certainly gonna go down okay i'm gonna jump into the individual pieces briefly capital project budget is 16 million 78 000 the state requires a three-year plan it includes a piece for insurance and utilities we haven't used it for insurance for the results another significant chunk is the technology budget both for the staff and then the software renewals and so forth there's a professional services line in there

018uh and then as i've mentioned to uh this group before each building there's a page for each building and the capital projects fund as you'll see in their books there's a general improvement uh a line in the top line uh if you look at an elementary school there's eight thousand dollars in there for each elementary school as for bill dremel in this group to come and do repairs uh you know kelly maybe you you notice a trip hazard sidewalk situation let the principal know and they contact other services that give them some dollars to fix them now there's the budget for the middle school's a little bigger and then high school another piece is that building improvements projects are very limited whether except from large projects that are in there and then there's still some

019small rental expense and that relates to some technology things uh equipment parental and that kind of thing so there's no building there if you look on our website we're required to put our capital projects plan and our bus replacement plan on our website if you go to our website look under the business office 2022 you'll see the first page that comes up is the notice page and then behind that here's the the page about uh purchase of mobile or fixed equipment and then this is just the snapshot of the first lines that we put on my slides that show an accumulation of the various protocols again moving on to transportation the advertised budget is up as you've imagined discussion budget works in conjunction with the referendum operating funds we'll still be using uh some of

020those referendum cash balance to assist transportation as we go forward um to propose budget tonight just over 9 million won and the fuel piece of that budget is 900 thousand plus replacement mr fier was just in front of you a couple weeks ago our schedule uh i guess i'm going to jump around this bottom piece here remember that we purchased 20 buses in 2018 with an eye towards going to one high school we believe that we would need a larger fee and because our fleet ruled that instead of doing replacement we couldn't get to a mall in 12 years really bumped our replacement schedule of 13. um and so as we uh the transmission built the 22 budget they have 13 buses in there they include all all four of our styles of buses uh

021conventional the longer 84 passenger buses a bus with wheelchair lift and then there's one spec in there and it's significantly more expensive but it relates to a colorado trip for those of you that were around two years ago had troubles with buses and we have to show and advertise a five-year plan so we're still building this whole plan and we are showing that um five features all right so this is this is the buses that they are projecting for 2022. uh mr chavarriae came to you last time we deviated some from that plan as we tried to hold our spending down and they needed activity buses to give them flexibilities for the call so this is ultimately just the point um moving on to the piece of the operations fund that used to be in

022general fund uh there again you can see the various groups so the dollar item in there because so this so here's a recap i like to look at it this way because i just find this wired this way one of the pieces in there capital projects transportation most replacement changes a little bit part of that is going to cover up us and the formal general fund accounts and this is just a chart representation so you can see how big and what that looks like okay referendum operating fund again no tax rate 2022 it's low on that seeking a smaller budget for this and a bunch of items include driver wages benefits parts and fuel equipment purchases but also some assistance with food service as you know we've been running obtaining lunch health out of reference

023and then last year it was certainly crucial for us to survive through all the code stuff what's the referendum budget because there'll be cash balance at the end of the year and so i asked that question of the department of local government finance they appointed me at the state board of accounts who told me i need to include it in my budget process so i get an authority to spend the cash that's gone good question thank you good service three funds the primary fund is the largest it's almost 11 it includes uh all of our larger uh lease bonds as well as the autonomous hormones that's what they call paid off this serious 2015 married back june the new payment that would be coming on in 22 is this capstone campus improvement project that we

024borrowed the money this spring and so that comes on in 22. pension debt and referendum debt change very little year to year pension debt is up to 20 000 in 2022 you see the final payment will be in january of 27. we're closing in on it not very quickly but we're getting there and so that will help us when that paid off and then the referendum debt that's from all those safety security projects that occurred from the 2014 referendum that payment is a thousand dollars to 1 million 380 final payment for that is in 2033. um i got another question what is the uh total debt uh excluding pension data in the referendum that you mentioned here is it what what's outstanding yeah i don't know that off top of my head is okay and

025i thought this would be an interesting slide for the board we see what our password's been doing since 2018 and then east and red here is what just the debt service that service raised me down i want to hear from you later in a great meeting something i've been looking at the 20-year plan district as big as us we should be doing projects every time so i'll talk about that a little bit later um any day fun two ways you can get uh authority to spend ready day money uh obviously there's no tax rate that's generated for any day so you can go through the annual budget process which is what i do and you can wait until you have an emergency of need additional preparation process so that's why we budget each year for

026rainy day fund i've adjusted the amount a little bit this year this 3 million 250 is roughly one payroll cycle for us so my mind that's a proven amount and there's an opportunity to replenish from our attacks and that was my last thing would be glad to answer any questions or just along with too quickly okay the pension and referendum when you are done paying that where was that money coming from and then where does that money that you were paying that go to or does it just wash out and get you here so your tax rate will now uh pension debt we have to neutralize that right okay just what what since we're paying that back and then it ends then we gain money when referendum debt is paid off then equity will go

027down unless you issue that for other projects where you're rehabilitating buildings that so that's part of what the district manages tries to keep our overall tax rate okay i'm always looking for your class to be even more full so and then i'm looking through this book okay so then you still have like a budget for elkhart academy at 50th was that because that was based on last year since it's no longer here in the cpf book i have ten thousand in there i see that yeah nervous for some dollars well i'm just thinking back about the differences we've talked about from the different schools and you're going to talk about some of the schools and some of the things that you're going to be doing that go back to what you showed us last year

028because that kind of earmarked some of the teachers i remember from even last year okay let's see we're not going to have anybody else's okay your covet money so we got a lot of extra money from that so when you were saying like you know we lost so much didn't we gain so much also because we got so much money from the state and then we had this extra extra money so when we talked about that being like something that kind of hurt us because we had to pay out so much didn't we actually gain that back also the um we've got three pots of passion and we're using those for things like learning laws programs what what we're not using that money for is when we buy an additional sanitizer spraying classrooms we're still

029kind of paying that out of our supply line and operations as a choice we dedicated assessor dollars uh primarily to students sr2 has a construction piece of it because we've shared with you guys [Music] building good questions well and so that has been there's not very many people in here so i can just like ask this out there so there's all of this discussion that goes on outside of this and and different people's opinions and thoughts can you use this ester money does this extra money is it based on you know there's there's a diagram on the ido page it talks about you know uh covet and i've talked to you about four copa guidelines cover you know masking different things like that do you gain more money from doing that or do you get

030to keep your money if you follow certain protocols and don't have to give it back and so when so when we submitted our budget spending plans and those are locked in right they had to perform to the restrictions okay that we should do but if you don't follow those restrictions you don't have to give your money back right i mean you're not like if somebody would come back to the state and say hey you submitted this but now you're you're toying around with a few of these restrictions now you have to get some money back you're not really in that position to have to do that correct well i'll let you hear your answer then yeah so yeah we're gonna you know we built those budgets we're gonna conform to those budgets what i've shared

031with our administrators folks are good at coming and saying spongebob can't use some of us because they just follow that right now what i'm asking them to be as patient because we've built budgets and those dollars are available kind of a favorite fashion through 22 23 and 24 and we won't know for a while if we understand some of those budget budgeted items right so right now i'm saying no to adjusting esser spending as you know requests come so we're trying to find ways to pay for those out of our current questions no i'm i think no that wasn't yours yeah it wasn't my question my question is if you presented this to the state following these certain parameters and guidelines in uh perhaps sanitation or stimulation you know sanitation uh guidelines of how people

032will be in in a setting a public setting with master not master option or whatever if you step outside of that guideline that you presented to the state do you run a risk of losing money for 22-23-24 okay so you run a risk of that if you step other side of your risk of privilege okay and we can't but that's so i guess i was jumping to the next thing right we're not altering our our spending path at this point so i took two things so when they when we applied for the extra funds they had an application and we had to kind of detail what we were going to spend the funds for of the approved items that were approved for those funds in the state of freedom and we got to stay within

033those deadlines so say we put the application in and then we took 30 million dollars and built the greatest baseball stadium you know if it was a hockey rink or a hockey or two hockey rinks whatever so we spent 30 million dollars and we used that money to build something that was not on the application at that point i think they could come back and ask for the funds now your question is are there things tied to this uh the extra funds not necessarily in what we spend the money on but but what we do like for instance basket like yeah that's what i would say i'm trying to be like excited about it basically we take the mask off the children are you avoiding this money i'm just going to ask what people are

034talking about that's that's a question okay you're required to post a re-entry plan or a plan for what you're wanting to do on your website so we had a plan there we've updated that plan as we've changed it but that's there i i have not heard anything about any of that being audited or controlled or no chatter okay and we can't use okay so then there's another thing that ventures out there they just want to have an idea of the extra fund money okay that's tied to anything that's chronovirus related okay perhaps we choose like a health plan inside of the school system that would be a direction of providing vaccines or anything like that to children inside of the school system we are not entitled or allowed to use our extra money to put

035a vaccination clinic in any of our schools right i mean they're not hoping that that's what we should do like that all right no i don't have an answer okay i i don't think that that is that's not an that's not an expectation that you're fine i mean i think maybe you could but i don't it's not an expectation okay okay i mean we as you know there's a deadline we're very tight right we race to the end zone to get those submitted and approved right i think there's some important questions that are out there right now that i just wanted to do like all right okay i think i've got all my little pictures so there you go okay oh well so i i have a question on the referendum deck so the referendum

036went from 2014 to 2021. so in 2014 it was two questions right so that went from 2014 to 2021. why did the debt go to 2033. why wouldn't that paid off in seven years that that's the project referendum so there's an operating referendum that was generating dollars for transportation but then there was the project referendum that has a 10-year life on it no 20 20 years sorry 20 years yeah 20 years so it so that's yeah so that's the price that those were the safety and security projects we added entrances we have space on the building i remember what we did so that that's the piece that extended like a normal bond would right yeah um i think what my colleagues were driving at was uh i attended this uh county council meeting here a

037couple weeks ago on saturday like a five-hour meeting it was very interesting and uh one of the things was that for like a 2.8 million dollar grant to hire six employees into the health department uh but anyhow down through the verbiage and stuff like that uh there was a attention drawn to the fact that it required you to comply to these rules and any other thing that the secretary of health and whoever decided to throw at you in the future and uh so anyhow i think uh the board wants to avoid those situations you know at all costs and also the um uh the one lady of the county council she made the comment and i thought it was appropriate she said this is not the right grant for elkhart county at this time so

038and we when we get things handed to us in this case and stuff like that we you know sometimes we're too eager and we overlook some of the pitfalls that we might be dragging ourselves into and i don't want to get into a pitfall well now let's get into that if you check this out ready there and this it's done so good thank you so again i'll be back in two weeks we'll have a theorem during the regular session and swim down a discussion thank you appreciate it did you have something for the board well um the time for going to you don't need a business well certainly if you don't have another ability prior to this conference for those who are arriving lunch or dinner there's about an hour and 15 minute break from

039noon to 1 15 on monday when there's a lunch in the exhibitor hall that is part of our conference registration but mr lake's offering that we could meet for lunch then or we could go to dinner on on monday evening after the conference has been booted i don't know how you get too but i go for dinner because i need that hour and a half like get out of that stuffy building and crazy outdoors yeah yeah i think that would be awesome yeah and maybe go outside and meet with them and be back so you want me to tell the shooter and then i just related to that the urban schools association is doing a little reception from four to six at the conclusion of monday that we're invited to as well to meet with

040other urban school districts and that kind of thing so i'll have the details about that but if you would be interested in going to that before going to dinner monday morning um yes okay i have a question about the opening uh first thing do we have uh things that we can put on all the seats are they out there already uh we do not have i have this hard copy just for you it is out yep um so she may be special for you guys today okay uh then following that i would like to have special invitations um the prior board members who've been on here were hugely responsible for getting the high schools into the shape that they're in today and going forward and i think that those people that need to be recognized

041and also deserve a personal invite out there i will just double check the roster [Music] all right that's it okay we'll be back seven o'clock please rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all mr weaver yes sir the elkhart promise every student is known by name challenged and supported and highly by highly effective staff and in partnership with the community will graduate career college ready and life ready so at the end of the meeting we'll have an opportunity for the public to address the board on your seats there is a white form at the back of that form there is a document you

042can fill out with your name your address uh your relationship to the school system bring them up to mr dot and then we'll have you speak you can speak for three minutes no more mr burton good evening we are really excited to be able to share with you this part of the board meeting because we have a couple of moments of pride that have been happening in our district that we want to share with you and these are really things for which we can celebrate so first of all i'm going to introduce mr dan burton to you he dresser at here grand middle school he has a lot of high schools as well dan's been with us a long time and he's done some fantastic things with us over the years and dan has done

043another super super fantastic thing that you have to hear about tonight good evening good evening about three years ago i had a girl that joined my sixth grade man at fear moran and she had a physical disability where she could not move her right hand so playing a musical instrument sometimes involves using both hands but primarily the right hand so i knew you know there weren't a lot of options for her and she tried some different instruments that she did was pretty successful on playing the baritone which was really really neat she had a great sound that's the instrument that i i grew up playing so i was really happy that she chose that one the only problem with the baritone because she couldn't use her right hand she had to take her left hand

044and the way the baritone was designed the vowels are worked with the right hand so she had to physically take her hand and put it around the baritone this way and squeeze it and then play it across it was very awkward for we spent about a year working with her on that and i i thought there's got to be something some solution for this so i went to my friend mike who's i want to make sure i get his position correct he's the managing director division of education at consumer and i've known mike for a lot of years my i asked mike i said is there is there anything that your company manufactures that could possibly help this girl out and he said well let me check so about two weeks later he came back

045and he said i think what we can do is we can take a baritone and reverse the side on it and create this baritone so she can use it with her left hand as opposed to using her right hand so to accommodate her disability and i said that is fantastic um kind of emotional because she was talking you know she had struggled so long trying to play it uh across it across the instrument i had never heard of anybody ever doing that so again went to mike and mike said he was talking with his people at one of the manufacturing companies within on summer and uh they said they could make it happen so i went to brad and i said brian can we purchase this instrument for this girl so we have it in

046our inventory and if we ever have anything like this happen again we can have an instrument for her for that student and she can continue to play an instrument like that through the school so i'm going to let mike kind of tell the process behind this because it it seems like oh just something really easy to do but actually i'm going to pull out the baritone and show you how to design and feel explain the whole process that went into getting it good evening everyone good evening it's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be here uh on behalf of pax summer a lot of great people there uh and uh we're very honored uh to help elkhart community schools uh with music education we've had a great relationship for many years here

047in the local community and our goal is to provide access for music education for every child possible that we can when mr burton approached us in the spring uh my phrase is always we can take a no and figure out how to turn it into a yes this is one of those situations uh for the student that mr burke was talking about and a lot of great people jumped at the opportunity when he presented this to us and we have andy smith who's one of our product managers mark gifford an engineer from our east lake ohio plants so some collaborative efforts between elkhart east lake ohio to get this to happen uh but basically what we did is we took a standard 628 king bear dump that mr burton has here we actually flipped the

048bell normally these pistons over here would be on that side so the bell got turned this way and the piston casing itself here is inverted and all the slides had to change so we had some engineering to do on that side of the instrument and then in order to make it playable there's the lead pipe where the mouthpiece goes in they actually had to custom bend that by putting tar inside a brass piece of piping and actually custom bedded so it would fit specifically to go across the front there to be able to be played so we're very honored to be a part of this and uh again it's creating accessibility uh for instrumental music education and as an organization you're looking at uh continue continuing to do this for other students in the future

049we've done a handful of these and this was a very unique specific one for us so uh thank you mr burton for reaching out and thank you to the lord for your support of music education i would like to say we we were kind of nervous about the bill you know when it came back it was a customized instrument uh it was the exact cost about it they actually absorbed all the cost in their company in order to create this for this girl when she held it for the first time like did she i mean like was her weight shift so different because she'd been accommodating it and like she had actually you know i you watch her physically yeah she's very self-conscious and you watch her physically when she comes across and it was

050really hard for her to do that now she's just like i was totally straight up so did she have to change the way she positioned her lips or anything or was she able to just mold right into that mouth oh that's awesome so i just wondered if she was shifting her body if she came up if it changed her neck or yeah she looks great yeah it's just like it's like you know it was naturally based and the sound is just exactly yeah yeah that's amazing that's good well on behalf of beltar community schools we just want to give a huge thank you to khan selmer for dreaming up the concept and doing this and then absorbing all the costs that they did so that even one of our own could benefit from us so

051i think i'm a huge [Applause] thank you for for noticing and and and taking the time to realize that you know it's just not one student of learning to play an instrument that's probably going to be there two years and gone you know you you notice the struggle you took the time to understand it and find a solution and it's been so much easier not to do that and just let it happen so that extra effort is a great example of the quality of teachers and instructors that we have in this school district that will will go the extra mile so thank you for for doing that and then my question is um is there a reason why these aren't uh designed for a dominant hand uh playing normally you know you think like you

052know the guitar you know you flip them around and then make left-handed guitars it's more than flipping well i know but is there is there is a reason they're not you know made for a dominant hand playing there's a lot of historical design behind it if you think of the trumpet trump has been aged for hundreds of years and it's always been that dominant hand typically the instrumental music educators teach to a certain way on the instrument so therefore you know the market's expecting that and we vary you know these these situations don't happen too often but uh we as a company are actually looking to augment our capability to be able to adapt and adjust for students and uh this has given us another avenue towards that we've looked at different things on clarinets

053and uh we've actually done some left-handed marching instruments for those that are in need of that so it's on our radar to continue expanding our reach to make it accessible for students to be able to perform with disabilities and limited accessibility that way so it's something definitely on our radar and i don't think historically our industry has looked at it that way and we're hoping to set a trend in that way going forward well what you guys have done here uh can change your life and put somebody on a different path so thank you bring so much hope to other other other musicians that didn't think they could but can [Music] uh another project that we're working on that i'm really excited to tell you about is we have an awesome meeting with the fish

054rock organizations and they do local music competitions um they are a national organization and they have musicians from all over the world that performed with the organization they've served more than 88 000 students nationwide since 1995. so they would like to partner with oklahoma community schools they would like to initiate science programs for our second grade students they are doing literacy they're coupling coupling literacy with music every second grader will receive the book that they will choose for next year so we don't know what the book is yet this year they did a book called creepy carrots um and then the composers come and they perform and put the book to music and so then our kids will be able to be a part of that experience so dr shepard and i are meeting with

055them and they said they could even help those complex books for next year so we're really excited about that and hope this will be a great opportunity for our second graders so we wanted to highlight another connection with music and literacy and celebrate that you keep hearing me say over here music is the way for sure normally there's competitions at university of notre dame and then last year make sure our consent items so move okay we have a motion second do we have any discussion just to recognize another fantastic donation which i think this is excellent it's a year's worth of ramsey educational personal finance curriculum for elkhart high school this is donated by brian and laurie smith from the heritage financial group and what an excellent opportunity it has a site license for one

056year of 3 500 which gives all of our students opportunity with us having a bank and now the kids to be able to recognize personal finance and understand the depth of it as a wonderful gift from them so thank you heritage financial group brian and laura smith and i'm assuming information is going out to all the students yeah great um i have a question on claims if you're not i am always done um on claims uh we have a nine uh an account nine accounts out here that we've spent about six hundred and fourteen thousand dollars i don't know whether it's in the last month or the last two weeks on that and anyhow and uh i was asking i would like to ask mr uh scott if he could come forward and kind of

057work through each of those and tell us how we're spending our money there and all these accounts are based upon sr2 and sr3 type money two large items um i'll start with the best for two there's a wilson language training that's hundred sixty 310 dollars uh that is for our fundations uh uh elementary reading program is phonics related uh talking to dr higginson we believe that this will be self-con self-sustaining in future years then there'll be some nominal costs to replace materials and so forth the training for the staff all occurred within this pub so and i'll shift gears to uh esther iii now there's a renaissance learning uh payment in here it's actually a three-year subscription is 255 thousand dollars this is for the uh my own subscription reading program shows uh case six

058it's focused on learning loss it provides over six thousand digitally enhanced uh book materials that are available to students 24 7 so if they're home isolating or have to to do remote learning it provides that so again we've used esser dollars to pay for multiple year commitments that help our students thank you any other discussion being none all in favor all right opposed motion passes dr king under old business um and doing our monthly work for a meeting update uh regarding covet i broke down for you the weekly number of positive cases from students and staff gave you a total positive number of cases and close contact and then provided the ratio of close contacts to positive and as you can see for the first few weeks of school we were seeing four five six

059uh students out per student that had close contact on average um some of those were up in the 30s and 40s in terms of the number of students that were out with the way that we're trending now especially since we've cleared the week after labor day you'll see that we're trending into where we have about 50 positive cases within the district and 86 close contact so we're down to under two students out on average per close contact for each positive so the ability for us to have the mass and keep down the number of people who are within range of each other for close contact again wearing the mask allows us to have that down to a three foot radius rather than a six foot radius in terms of the recommendations from the state health

060department and so then that puts us in the position of having fewer students out of school or us needing to do something different with those students who would be close contacts which had included making an account for them not to be on the bus so by doing what we're doing and seeing the trend that we're on we are in a good place to keep many many students in school so that is the ultimate goal by which we've gauged the success of what we're doing here any discussion from the board that's the thorn thank you mr grandfield in the area of foreign policy we're bringing back to you for further consideration uh proposed revisions to board policy uh 26.23.01 this is the test administration's experience provisions policy governance statewide assessment uh so this policy really deals

061with the practices and processes that we as the school corporation use and our school district employees use uh related to all the various state mandated assessments that were required by state law to perform the changes to this policy are predominantly mandated by the union department of education and or the state board of education and we are assisting your approval of those consistency we have a motion and a second to have any discussion team none all in favor say aye i'll oppose thank you uh next we have a series of administrative regulations uh that deal with the forms that are utilized for either the spencer or the explosive process uh and uh as is the case with all of our administrative regulations so they're not actually acted upon by the board but as you know they

062are reviewed by the board until the board is satisfied with the language uh during the meeting uh a few weeks ago like two weeks ago we talked about changing some of the language in terms of behavior expectations uh and uh what we are suggesting would be that would be unified standards of behavior and that is the case with proposed administrative regulations jfcc which is the most suspension to any request for a propulsion uh and i'd be happy to go through the other uh administrative regulations as well i guess that's just the pleasure of the board it wants me to go through these uh mr weber i know that you were the individual level of concern with the old language i wonder how you feel about the new language i still am um yes um the

063thank you for removing some of the word or expectations out of there but it's still in there two times it's left in there twice so i'll tell you and i will answer the question that's why it is in there mr weaver and it goes back to the actual guidelines for a safe learning community in that administrative regulation we do use behavior expectations now if the ford wants to bring that administrative regulation back to change that language i'd be happy to do that but that would require that's why that language is still in there below but it is really based on the standards of expectations general behavior uh and behavior expectations is how it's listed in the guidelines that's why it's still in there at that area but we can fix that if you if that's

064the will of the board by reopening that administrative regulation directions that's the question always want to go are you asking us if we want to just do all of them at one time well two issues one is whether or not the language is acceptable but mr weaver legitimately raises the question that goes all the way back to the guidelines that were approved this summer and the question i would have is do you want to go back and reopen those and review those again in this school year continue i think the language is appropriate tonight ms malone has a comment um i would graciously ask the board to move forward with just um approving him at least for now he could always go back later but a committee of administrators and teachers and other uh members

065of that group worked tirelessly on state and african policies and out of respect for them i really think they can look forward to this so i just wanted to share that it was a lot a lot a lot of work and so continuing to mold this over right now just over a couple of words um i think maybe better less for the future if that's still something that's gone backward review uh in the spring in fact it might be a good idea to do that uh given that the short session if the legislature makes changes we could bring the entire guidelines back for a work session uh and get to reuse the board as to whether or not government changes as well again it's up to the board as to how they would if you

066don't vote on this one as you try to make sure that the language of the regulations meets the expectations of the board i mean that we vote as is and all regulations we're not voting for we don't know we don't know it's not a vote but it's more making sure that this meets the will okay gotcha um i have another question yes uh superintendent's appointment of an expulsion examiner yeah who is qualified to be an expulsion examiner mr porn i've been doing it for 19 years mr wheeler okay all right but obviously it could be any administrator in the district typically it has been me mr hasper has done had did it in the past uh if i was on vacation guys that makes false appearing i will tell you the next four or five

067years expansion hearings are very rare uh because we find alternative placements for students whether that's in school without walls the academy homebound enough to keep kids from school um i have another question uh yeah for the community here and uh can you define a safe learning community what's the definition of that a safe learning community would be where students feel physically safe and also safe in terms of their ability to express opinions but they feel as though they are safe from people physically assaulting them or bullying them uh which are all of the different types of behaviors that we try to avoid signals right with the tool section [Music] does it have anything to do with academics well sure if the student doesn't feel safe let's get it done well when it comes back then

068a student feels as though they're getting subject bullying or harassment your academic performance will go down okay i have another question here there's a the last page has an asterisk and it mentions race and it lists six different categories yeah those are required about that state law and uh and now just to state law or federal government laws requires us to make reference to these things in terms of when we suspend and excel as well as federal laws or requires that we track those issues to determine whether or not we are disproportionate in terms of how we handle this on issues of session area of special education uh when we have been disproportionate in terms of suspensions or expulsions it has caused us to lose federal funding from time to time so we try to

069make sure that discipline is fair and equally needed out and that there is not a particular group of students or something more disciplined that doesn't mean that there are photos in terms of discipline but it does mean that we carefully evaluate the nature of disciplinary consequences okay the success of the board is that that you're fine with these regulations you will move forward with them and again i would encourage them to have a work session in the spring probably after the general assembly of the job uh to discuss when you have a chance to support my phone the actual guidelines for state party committee thank you dr shepard administration presents to you this evening that proposed revisions for the 2021-2022 school calendar as it was presented to you that september 14th regular meetings so you're

070looking for your proof of identified calibers to approve we have a motion in a second do we have any discussion from the board and anyway i always ask everything just to make sure that it's out there any e-learning day there is always the opportunity for any staff to make up hours or do whatever they need and we figured out what to do at the end of the year that's correct okay i just want to make sure that's out there again so they have every opportunity to make up their hours at any point in time okay all right any other discussion from the board being none all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you mr thorne dr shepard on i just got to keep spreading places tonight uh we are bringing to you uh proposed

071revenge to our substitute compensation policy uh these uh proposed changes are an effort on the part of the district to make sure that we are not just competitive but fairly competitive with surrounding districts in terms of attracting uh substitute teachers to work for our community schools to see a number of changes uh that all the way to our efforts to make sure that we pay our substance and teachers who are very important for our operations to see them as well do the same thing as well for substitute nurses we have also made some changes um really for service incentives for some of our retired people to come back in terms of long-term assignments uh we are seeking your approval of these and i would require your way of security friends we have a motion a

072second do we have any discussion from the board and this doesn't have anything to do with like other people in the school that fill in for positions that's something that's being handled totally different that would be handled what this will do is if we our intention is that this will cause us to increase the pool of such if you just attract us to keep substitute exclusively in our park which is one of the reasons why you also see that change in terms of uh an additional stipend that is staged to those predominantly substitute for health care rather than others all in favor aye all opposed thank you very much always exciting time new course offerings all right that's always exciting and this time the new course offerings are coming from the career center and i've

073asked mr brandon aces our director of the career center to share with you information about these new courses that are going to be offered two new programs in cte we have next level programs of study which is a new initiative that was launched and been in process over the last two and a half years those course offerings were released last year and within those new course offerings there are some that are very relevant to our local economy and as of interest to our students you receive paperwork on our precision agriculture pathway within that there are four specific courses that will be taught within that sequence three of those courses the principles the precision ag and crop management because you're one at the elkhart area career center they are taught at the same time overlap the

074second course would then be the capstone course the reason that these are presented in chunks is that principle of agriculture is the foundational class for any ag pathway we also have plant and animal science in our high school school of study so it's important that we go ahead and get that principles course passed now as the other courses in those pathways already exist within our course system the other one is one uh that is the surgical slash central service tech pathway within this pathway the first year courses are the principles of health care medical terminology and central service tech when these pathways were released and a review document was out in january of this year we started having conversations with beacon and ocean health about the need for surgical techs a very overwhelming need at

075the time of that conversation a beacon across their systems out of 50 open positions in this area uh ocean health 35 and our vincennes representative that we're working with and actually reached out to saint geo medical their comment was we'll take how many of you passed and so we've continued follow-up conversation with that because central service tech there is some similarities this is the person that's utilizing um such as their procurement procuring the instruments that we use in surgery not actually in the surgery center responsible for sterilization and whether we're outsourcing or in sourcing those so there's some overlap between the two but but our objective is to really push the surgical techniques and that's something that we want to begin delivering to our students next year the last course offering in there is what's

076called the technical skill development course the technical skill development course is created by the governor's workforce cabinet as kind of a catch-all this can be utilized when it is offered with a concentrator a or b so this could be utilized with a medical terminology class or it could be used with a central service technician course the reason that this is important is some of our sending schools will offer principles courses and pathways that we offer in the careers if those students come to the career center they cannot duplicate that principles course while they're with us meaning that they would lose out on high school credits and our sending school partners would lose out on reimbursement dollars we can utilize this technical skills course once per student in place of the principles course to ensure that

077they're still getting the necessary high school credits the reimbursement the other thing that it does is in certain courses that are lab heavy if we don't believe we can get through all the lab activities we can pair that with a technical skills course to open it up a little bit more so it can be used at the career center but it could also be used at the high school in the future and it is kind of a catch-all i mean smart on their part yeah down in indianapolis that has that big giant section of their high school that's all ffa there's all these programs right here well i'm excited about principles i think you can utilize the excel farm in a much better manner and this will introduce a lot of current technologies uh into

078the course that i think will draw in an even larger swathes so brandon i'd like to thank you uh because uh you know this is part of the culmination of that you know eight years of work to do this i think you guys are doing phenomenal jobs basically i keep it up and i love the ag courses and stuff like after this uh my background thank you appreciation a brand new surgical tech when they leave this program are they then certified to go in and work or this they're going to have to go on i think they can do it with one additional year so we would want to design the course district field is uh in the two-year program we would want them to have the opportunity to earn the central service tech certification

079for that certification they have to have 400 hours in the field but there is no age requirement to them so they can still work towards a technical certificate you can get their medical terminology their anatomy and physiology uh their med law and ethics their intro to health all of those things that we offer across a number of our programs they can receive those they can give the certification and then one year additional because the clinical hours for search tech is somewhere around 720 hours specifically for that piece what we want to do is bring a local solution because that right now if you wanted to pursue surgical tech you could have uh valparaiso or fort wayne would be the closest locations so we've been working with both ivy tech and vincennes to try to formulate

080a local solution not only for high school students but for our adults okay and so um after they receive that what is the income level for example central service tech is more around thirty six thousand dollars a year is about the median when they get the surgical taxes or about 47 000 a year and that's a two-year degree okay has there been any discussion with the health systems to pay for that additional education that they commit to returning and working for i think those are valuable conversations we've been engaged through with beacon last week uh supposed to be a vegan friday but i'll be back with beacon on thursday of next week and continue those conversations i think that the biggest thing that we're trying to fight or trying to encourage is getting a local

081solution for that post-secondary partner we know that it is a huge need here our goal is to get those students at central service tech get them employed in elkhart county keep them here and have that local education option so that they can and then i think that that's where that conversation has to get into many of our employer partners especially the healthcare field if they bring you in under their umbrella they're willing to pay for your additional school at one time so you can pay all the way up to nurse practitioner i another two through their community benefits yeah i have a feeling because of the need that's the shirt we can get can they do an internship to green hours at the same time they're taking those courses they will have to okay absolutely

082so those hours are very similar what our early childhood education students have to do they have to have 420 hours they have to begin their junior year with those internship hours to accumulate the necessary hours there may even be a summer commitment to make sure that they do that okay thank you all right brian thank you very much thank you thank you dr charlheimer the next item is separated out from the regular grant requests because we wanted to highlight an opportunity that the administration is seeking a grant from the community foundation of elkhart county to contract with solution tree to conduct an audit of our district priorities and progress towards increasing student achievement as we look to emerge from the pandemic over the next months and seek to affirm for our staff and for our

083families that we are prioritizing the right things and engaged in the right work it seemed important for us to have some outside eyes come in and review what it is that we're doing in the district and provide us perspectives tell us what we're doing correctly affirming the things that we're doing correctly and then providing recommendations for the things that we could be improving or doing better the outcome of this audit would kind of result in in three things a report that would be provided to the board into the community regarding the things that we're working on relative to best practices instruction curriculum and the work that we're doing the second thing would happen is that that report would be provided in a public board meeting so that community and in a formal process would receive

084those outcomes another thing that would happen is that there could be and would be an executive session conversation regarding my work on those initiatives and part of my overall process of being evaluated as superintendent and then the most important piece is that we would then also do a public presentation that we would maybe co-host or do in conjunction with the community foundation of providing that information in layman's terms for families in the community to understand the things that we are doing and again propose the changes that we would need to make any of the things that would need to happen as a result of what that audit reveals at this point i would like to hand things over to kathy and claudia from solution tree so they could come forward and share a little bit

085about the process and a little bit about solution tree's role in this and then we also have alex mcneese joining us virtually um who would be involved in this work as well so kathy i'll hand it over to you thank you thank you very much thank you [Music] everything begins with a book um even though we do lots of other things and so this is not a breath but if you don't mind i will take off my nose um and um thank you very much for having us here my name is kathy mcclement and i am the director of educational partnership for solution tree here in indiana um you'll meet dr alex techniques in just a moment so i'll take just a couple of minutes to kind of i'll let you all know um the

086work that we're supposed to do and claudia do you want to introduce yourself i am a native indiana person i am the director of nothing right now um which is great i'm the education specialist for solution tree and also their authors liaison i've been director of educational service centers here in indiana and the director of a not-for-profit working with j-12 in indiana as well as had the contract to work with schools and improvements in indiana um so just a little bit about solution trey i don't know if you're familiar with solution treatment since 1998 solution tree has been developing and delivering professional development and special learning across the world we've got offices in the asia pacific canada australia and most importantly we have our home office and our home bases here in clemson so i

087feel very honored to be able to um service of the schools and the districts across the state and knowing that our home base is here and looking to be very honest with that um so what you'll find as we're looking for the drivers for whole system success and one of the names that perhaps if you'd like to research is michael coleman michael bolin is a worldwide authority on how school systems can transform and how school systems rewards women's you must have strong leadership uh you must have a very specific culture of collaboration and so the research on that is very very clear on how to move the needle on school improvement and also how to move the needle on student achievement so when you look at your mission and your vision and your district goals

088you see that that is what is happening here in elkhart you've got some shiny examples of schools here in elkhart you've got some things that are doing the ride you're on the right path here in this district and one of the things that we would like to do and support valpar is to continue that and bring that across the entire district so that you do have award-winning schools you do have these for the rhythm of this you do have models there are a variety of different um fabulous categories that can lift our schools and bring you to that level of that high achievement that i think that we're all looking for um and one of the things that as we're looking um and working with uh with elkhart and we've been honored to be able

089to work with elkhart over the last few years is that once we look at um the interventions and what right now i know that you've just implemented a k-12 math curriculum so that's across the board a compromise curriculum the meaning of interventions and interventions are not only for just the children that do not know it we always say what do we do about the children that don't know it but also what do we do about the children that you know so we've got to reach all of the children and when i say children i look at even from kindergarten to 12th grade i hope you are like seniors as children as well so um they're still growing up um many different levels um so you've already taken the first steps and so one of the

090things that we would like to help you do um is to make elsewhere a school district with exemplary schools and award-winning schools and a district where we would like to send our own children in my case my own grandchildren to be able to feel confident in sending my children to any of the schools in this district so that is what we're proposing to help to do um and again with this for with um this proposal for yeah i'm kind of shaking i feel a little bit nervous don't forget that um husband tells me i never need a microphone so i really want to say this that we think you've begun the right work race work it's smart work because if you don't begin with culture you'll never get it done you know my husband and

091i moved to a farm in court in indiana 46 years ago but the little green acres at the beginning the neighbors got a lot of food colors out of it but we learned very quickly that if you don't work on the soil you will not get a healthy plant got to nurture that you've got to weed it you've got to put the right nutrients in the soil of a school is its culture and so you're beginning by examining the cultures within your school and throughout the system it's the right work because without that culture you'll never be able to take contemporary achievement for students to the level that you want so alex take it away thank you uh very much uh can anyone hear me can i get a little wave if people can hear

092me well awesome thank you um i am dr mcneese dr alex mcneese and i've actually had the great pleasure of being in almost every school as of monday it will be every one of your schools in your classrooms in your main offices in your collaboration rooms listening to the people who do the work learning about the community it's been a great pleasure and i know the district very well the audit will review the systems or the culture around the six points that dr hellheimer has put together to plan to achieve the elkhart promise these points paraphrased or making sure that you're set that you assess and implement the best research-based practices in your classrooms to bring people together two to have your collaborative teaming and the professional learning community process grown three develop and implement

093the core curriculums four build a strong multi-tier system of support for students that struggle uh five improved curriculum and six was to make sure the merger of the high schools went through and to remain financially responsible the audit will look at each of these and if the board votes uh to have this audit done within a week we'll develop and deploy a survey for your stakeholders shortly after that i'll compile the data and return to elkhart to interview the teachers building principals central office administration board members and members of the community to get a very clear picture on what the culture says towards helping you achieve your elkhart mission your elkhart promise which you started today with um i'll take all that information compile it into a report which i will present to you and

094in multiple other places in the report i will identify how the district's culture is aligned to the goals almost aligned to the goals and the different various areas talk about the successes that you have in your schools towards those and also identify the needs to help you meet those goals my experience in your school has given me the ability to prepare a very fair and transparent assessment of your district culture thank you so much yes so um you're going to be interviewing various people how many teachers how many students how many parents how many board members are you looking to interview how many administrators is it going to be a sampling or is it going to be exhaustive it'll be a sampling of your larger group but for the board members it'll be every single

095one of the board members we'll do a sampling of our building principles um i again have met many of the building principles before and so uh asking them follow-up questions on on these six points and the district culture it'll be a random sample um i had not included students in that group and i have no problem with including a few students in the interview process do you choose the sampling i mean if that's by your choice by already assessing or how do you decide the sampling and how do you decide community members well community members it's slightly different from the larger groups really a random sample is the the best way to go from a science standpoint there are a few teachers i would like the the association president will definitely be one person i

096will interview uh the the key individuals in central office at the higher levels uh and the community members are usually ones that volunteer and step forward but we'll look at the active community members you have in your school and get their impression does the fan point off on who supports that we can include support staff in the building yes i think stuff you a culture is going to be very different from a leadership perspective from a young perspective and from a support staff perspective so to get an accurate read you really need to have kind of the same number of sampling from each group so in my initial audits that i've done in your schools teachers were part of the audit but so were non-instructional staff so i have spoken with your non-instructional staff before

097and we'll make sure they're part of this audit now how long is this process i know you're gonna start in a week if it's approved the process time is actually one that i believe has been laid out in the proposal where we will present and i'll i'll probably get the date wrong i believe at the november fourth meeting um possibly catholic that date uh and really the night possible go ahead one more time november 9th um that would be sort of our target date now which is why we were going to start so quickly thank you if if there are no further questions you can't think of any concluding reminders we didn't give you any background of why we chose the books that you have right now one of those books is dr mcmahon's book

098loving what they learn and the other book is from anthony mohammed and the approved time for change and we had proposed that nancy muhammad do the community presentation but i did want to make sure that you all have copies of that so that you can learn a little bit about their research we were unable to have pete mcallen the director of the community foundation here this evening due to another commitment but amanda jameson is here so amanda if you would want to come and speak from the foundation's perspective sure good evening everyone just wanted to be here on behalf of dr mccown and the community foundation to express our support of our community schools and the reason we're here and willing to provide a grant for this is because um it's been identified as helpful

099to the school system and we're here to support the schools in their endeavors questions for me thank you for your support and thank you for listening public education us in a life that needs to be guided and respected and we appreciate your guys's um support we really do and we look forward to being better when uh from this process we consider ourselves partners in the work and are about improving the quality of life for our community so thank you very much thank you thank you there's a motion um motion to accept i have a motion and accept in a second do you have any discussion from the board yeah susan would you do a roll call vote when they're ready is there any further discussion i have struggled back and forth because i think this

100is such a gracious opportunity from the community foundation and i really appreciate hearing from the solution tree because i still wasn't really sure about how i felt one way or the other but and i initially thought i was not going to agree with doing this because i feel like as a board there's a lot of things that we could be doing especially with what we have gone through with you know the school closing and reopening etc but hearing from staff members that feel like they have and i hope it's a large sampling an opportunity to express what they feel in in what they need and what they want to discuss about being overwhelmed with plc and too many things to where they can't necessarily educate in the way that they want to um all of

101those things are valuable and important i know you'll put them into perspective but i think the voice needs to be heard that they are ready to teach and educate and get the kids caught up so i'm hoping that that comes across when you do your interviews with the teachers so my voice my opinion first was to say no but then i didn't want to live a gift horse in the mouth and i didn't want to disrespect you and that's something that you need but if these goals make education and the opportunity for our teachers and our administrators to be able to educate our children without being overwhelmed by paperwork and i hope that that will come out of this school so i ended up saying that i will vote yes because the teachers feel like

102this is and support staff feel like this is something that will allow another choice to be heard so i just want to point that out of why i changed my mind any further discussion kelly holland hi david bowling sorry motion passes kevin good evening yeah well again i'm pinching for point d before we start down the path of projects for next year and i talked a little bit about this kind of work session and our service plan district that we have we should be doing projects working on buildings every year and so before we commit dollars to search for architectural firms and those kind of things tony is asking that we're for consensus we moved forward in 2022 with projects that we described in the spring as word retreat we're looking at daily longer hospitals

103very early in the process but i just need a commitment from more to move forward so that as we start to spend money and advertise and plan for uh bonding in the spring and so forth so mr okay i have a question okay is daily going to look like one cohesive building instead of a things put together when it's done that's a that is a tony g question uh as you can see in the materials that he provided there is various areas that we're going to touch in each of those buildings where there's ripping lighting surfaces in the building flooring and paint and those kind of things so yes so a lot depends on let's get down the road what this looks like and what we're going to last week and that was the number

104one call i shared with them that daily with it seven editions looked like a recruiting building and represented that would certainly be the intense policy another question that i received was uh how old was this hawthorne uh phone carter um originally was built 19.9 but their most uh recent edition was 2015 and i think as tony talked about during the board retreat is that if you invest money in buildings then you are committing to those buildings for some period of time that has occurred in all these buildings that we've done one renovation after another year so so we can certainly flesh out those those discussions as we decide if the board as we continue to discuss what's your appearance a little bit on one building or another that's certainly possible it's just really phased but

105again i just want the board commitment that it's okay to spend money and move forward to start that work um i notice uh in the daily program under the hvac there is uh cares money allotted for working on daily uh with scarce testimony daily and west side and so we're able to address some of the items daily but we want to come back on top of that and do another 5 million prizes so daley will certainly get quite a bit of work okay do you have a motion absolutely do we have a second second now do we have any board discussions um thank you i'll join up with what uh troy was asking about was uh the cares okay but only one building according to this is getting care's money directed towards it no it's

106just so we we uh terrifying has gone to two buildings but west side is not one of the buildings that we're going to do we're focused on uh interest you know you're focused on one three elementaries right right okay but the this is dedicated towards the carriage money was uh hvac systems so that's right that's the piece that the dailies are going to be addressed with cares right daily so how come with hawthorne and uh longer we wouldn't do the same thing you're using those cares dollars at website and so those two fit in the budgeted item okay all right okay um i have reservations about approving all three of these and i would like to see uh you know and i will make a motion to that effect to separate out uh hawthorne from

107a daily and longer i think those two build uh that building hawthorne deserves more conversation before we invest 4.7 million dollars in it and looking at our overall student population and stuff like that and i know you have a lot of demands on the money that you have available to you and as you just said you know if you put 4.7 million dollars into a bill you're going to keep it for another 20 years maybe we'll do that maybe we won't but as a board member i have not been convinced that that is the wisest use of the public treasury that we have available to us and i just want to discuss it i want tony people to come back and say okay here's what we got okay and here you know and economically hey

108if we decide to do something different how does that affect your financial plans and being such does anybody else have any other comments before i make a motion to separate that i have a misagree sorry from a timing perspective pulling that out how what what impact would that have it depends on how quickly we would come back to that discussion um today from somebody's perspective he's looking at starting the design discussion phase uh so we can allow the design the bid and then see how we feel about it i mean by voting for this now we're not agreeing that we're going to go ahead right now can i access the finance calendar so i can start planning takes about four months okay and tony start having discussions and design concepts which would help and he

109certainly could come back and speak more about hawthorne and token discussions what will happen is if you go down that route of doing before you get your ducks in a row you're going to end up spending the money on that whether you like it or not and i don't think we have all of our stocks in a row on that particular building right now at this particular point in time so i question again that should we do that so i will make a motion to uh separate the hawthorne elementary school from daley elementary and longer elementary so you're amending your asking to amend the original motion yeah yes for further discussion for the discussion okay is there any further discussion on that amendment what is the uh the cost of uh starting the process to

110take it out the bids to give the uh uh architectural folks involved uh the financing cost of it uh for all three projects no for just the motion is to pull hawthorne out for further discussion yes so how long do you think we're going to need for further discussion i mean because we can't wait forever so you know we could do it in a month two weeks you know if that's not my timeline that's the administration's timeline well the only reason why i'm asking is because the concern that's been brought up before about the heating system and etc i mean i agree that if we move forward with it then what do we do you know then then how do we have an outlay of you know so i would rather hear what tony's plans

111are and what he's looking for exactly without thorn then have the opportunity to put it back in i understand i just don't want this to go on indefinitely right so you know if we can you know have it for a month from now two weeks from now whatever it is so we have you know we asked for the tony to report back to us so we can make a decision mr thorne's gonna perfect my motion if i could i would suggest that if mr weaver's emotion would be postponed consideration on the separate author now and post home consideration on the boss warrant will pass on october 24th or november 9th date certainly a date certainly yeah i would whatever the administration feels comfortable with like the word session what's the next board meeting is the

112total stuff well postponed until i public consideration if that gives them enough time to uh and i'll provide you some more questions i think that i think it would take care of your concern and tell me the opportunity to kind of outline his thought process yep and i could provide information regarding enrollment things that we are considering i if if i knew these questions were there i'd have been able to answer them prior to this evening october 12th submission i think it should if i'm predicting what these questions might be but i don't know that it's difficult to predict well i think mr weaver's motion is to separate offline and close more considerations offer until i covered this phone is that a fair statement i'm good with that all right do you want this one

113that'll be fine is there any further discussion on the amendment request being none kelly mullen hi steven and vanderbilt jeff weaver with that being taken care of the original motion now for daily and is there any further discussion on those two schools see none permission to advertise the budget hearing as well here in two weeks any discussion all in favor aye opposed motion passes financial report please uh yes this department reports that the august 2021 attempt balance is 35 409 569.39 there is an improvement over prior same month for our year the same is true for education fund the education fund is 232 000 ahead of the august cash balance of last year keep in mind the state started funding us at the new level but we talked about uh sort of the budget discussion

114earlier tonight uh july and august and so we saw improved revenues it will be adjusted by our actual student count which will be a little bit lower than insurance update hopefully insurance update is uh as you can see from your economy board materials crane costs in august uh hits their high for the year it's 1 million 187 000. that was above uh the worst month last year of august and so that's what the interest committed to an rfp for services for medical plan as we seek to avoid a significant increase we will be successful for more information on that on the uh august claims is there any uh expect kids or any expectation of reimbursement on that number um there was a large claim from early in the year and it's just under the stop

115watching threshold so at this point i don't see uh any reimbursement on that number i mean okay thank you question does that conclude my time todd good evening everybody good evening thank you this front page is showing you all of 2021 and our cost avoidance by a month um added in dollars and then the percentages just for 2021 this year that's the front page right there um september i had just started i've done about a case of the utilities going through those and we're at 50 317 already um august and that had just finished yet so that is that number is set um and all um as in 2021 so far we're at one million four hundred thirty six thousand seven hundred thirty we're and just defeating over 2 million hopefully close close to over

1162 million now just to clarify for the people out there that's savings that's not money we're spending that's money the school system is saving by making sure that we're wise stewards of the energy right resources that we have the air conditioning the heat the electricity stuff like that they're very specific when they say this is what we would say or this is what if you you can add that false avoidance to what we would have spent if we were not in this program like considering what they've seen when they took our utilities in 2008 2007 2006 this where we would have been we started this program in 2009 well let me take it to the back of that handover real quick that is on the left side at the top you got the usage that's

117all the kilowatts from the turn on the right side you have the call so the fifth the batcc is the big adjusted current condition that is what we would have spent all the way down to go down to the bottom says total 3 million nine hundred twenty seven thousand four hundred fifty dollars if you move over to two million four hundred ninety thousand seven hundred twenty one that is what we did spend on utilities and then next to that is our voice so that actual in the avoidance if you added up is um 36.6 and that is over the whole so if that isn't just 2021 i'm sorry that's definitely 21. and our total savings right there is the avoidance 1 million 400 that we're just 20 21. um the next and the last sheet

118i have for you shows 2009 which is only six months we started in july and that was the first month that we actually started checking his phone and then um and then going through 2021 to date we have just so fast at the very bottom 16 million uh 126 500 points um on the left side is the actual utility cost that is what we did pay so so far in 2021 i mean you can go by a year 2009 11 12. um the total is 35 million six hundred sixty thousand seven hundred sixteen that is what we've paid in utilities since july of 2009 on the right-hand side if you slide over that 51 million is what we would expect now of course the 35 million plus the 16 except 51 million so that's a

119big difference right there and you can see this utility is what we would have spent 51 million 787 if we didn't have the program um my assumption with the asterisk of 2020 is covid yeah we were put down for two and a half months with absolutely zero people in the building and that is you know i can bring that to you i do have the numbers um from 2020 and it's uh yeah the false avoidance is amazing obviously because there's nothing in the building at all considering even the custodians where i'm not in the building um which does affect that display um moving on i have october 8th the 15th i looked with 20g on the upcoming weather and we're looking to shut down the chillers around october 8th to the 15th um that's when

120the heating season will start up um and then obviously due to the writing electrical costs that we're seeing all the construction upgrades that you guys were hearing about those those will all be led um anything that we are replacing any old lights that go out are all replaced with leds that is coming along slowly um we could hire companies to do it which would just be a lot more money but we also have an electrician who does it a little bit more slowly because he's the only guy um but he's replacing everything that goes out with led um all new construction is led dti those buildings all 100 leds um our base years like 2009 and is there any plans in the near future to pick another base year yeah i've heard that from a

121couple people and the way tony explained to me is that out that is how synergistic set up this program that it started and you want to see the life of the program um i'm not sure how would it affect it if we just cut it off and said 2022 we're starting over i think you see you'd obviously see cost points because we're going up monthly and yearly um that's something that might be more of a 22 questions but he just said it to me and senator senator jessica does explain that the whole point of the program is to start from beginning to as long as we go with this program i'd like to see something in the next three and a half years while i'm still on the boards if we get a new base

122here okay [Applause] thank you very much thank you great job i got you covered [Applause] that was good christy s newton [Applause] christina putin president of elkhart with one child still attending albert schools i guess withdrawing two of my high school boys for their request again i'm not here to convince anyone in math to work or don't work i am here because this is america and america in america we have freedom of choice and we have medical freedom and elkhart community school has taken that choice and those freedoms from us as parents and from our kids i find it very ironic that most of you not all thank you to the two board members who have voted against the mandate are here this evening wearing some kind of diaper on your face because well it's

123a public meeting and you have to play the part you know pretending you wear your mask or your face shield as in two weeks ago rocky uh for the safety of other than yourselves you are all double-minded hypocrites as we just saw as sorry we didn't but as we will see in a bit uh how dare you mandate our kids to sit with these on their faces for seven hours a day when you refuse to do the thing it's absolutely disgusting it's time parents in this community wake up and stand up i know i'm not alone many of us are gathering meeting up putting together plans working with lawyers police officers and county sheriffs because you have worked with sleeping giant at the last meeting i thought and i will say again i am here

124because i believe our future is in great danger and these mass mandates are just beginning what's next again vaccine mandates vaccination dams we continue to be puppets of the united states government and roll out these programs as well i guess if the funds wait a moment because i have something um let me be very clear here every single person on this board except for two of you are puppets being used by the united states government to roll out their evil initiative in front of me i have the operational strategy for k-12 schools written on may 15 of 2021. long before we ever entered the 21-22 school year these math mandates were laid out for the 21 22 school year in advance because in may the government magically knew there was going to be a new

125variant come august with an increase in cases and masks were once again going to be needed psychics they must all be psychic this information sent out in may by the cdc lays out the plan for mass mandates contract tracing coded testing physical distancing all the way to vaccination your time is up thanks gracie nick butler i just i did more writing on this and i have to find my whole one actually um explaining out here indiana thank you i'm a product of this school corporation elementary school junior high high school dropped out my senior year had to go to work get kind of worked uh anyhow uh don't forget while does everything involve eastwood without guys like that and like that and somebody like that right there this school system is going to go just

126let me know and how can this many people wear their glasses with a woman like this at this table but i don't have anything in there [Music] y'all just talked about the same learning environment are you gonna put that until next spring if it's about the kids but we're gonna talk about what 47 million dollars in some buildings like next month and that's priorities here right uh like i said this i'm not here to bash you guys there's guys that are before me and ask me i'll come and do that i don't have to do that i'm just bringing your own words to your attention the whole math thing i'm completely against you and talking about it because that's police or worries but every one of you guys receive some kind of propaganda handed out

127by people i don't know but you guys are all doing this except for these two taking your mask off when you want to talk mess with them whatever doesn't make sense to me okay uh let's see here i just you know this time that woman it is a time in history that you're never going to be able to race and where you're standing where you're sitting what you're standing for is everything and i'll tell you right now like she kind of just said i have four kids and three grandkids and i'll be done if i'm going to continue to allow my kids to partake in anything like this by the way we're talking about career center money and stuff you know passport over there they want or i'm sorry there's another school district over there

128that wants millions of dollars to create their own environment for career-centered work why not work with those guys and use some of their money i mean come on why not why do you guys need the money to do this when you guys are helping out all these other schools i mean come on everybody's pitching them before it's not allowing us it's not all on us you know i mean really you guys really don't even care what i expect but we should pay for it every day 112 hours a week for five days when we can get them okay by weeks i mean this is what i get but they thank you and here loriano hello laurie arnold says 15 times main street um uh i am actually a 50 year old grandmother that has become

129an activist why well because of what's happening right now uh i will tell you that i have been going all over to all the different school districts so um this is i think my second time here but uh i have been going all over in eltar county outside of albert county and i would like to thank you first of all and give you a compliment because you are one of the very few school boards that actually put microphones up and give us microphones to speak i cannot tell you how grateful i am for that because it is very disrespectful and in many places i will let you know i hear from a lot of parents and what they are telling me and what i'm experiencing in different school boards is disrespect towards the parents and

130the community in general with similar things like a microphone at least you are letting us know that you want us to hear you and you want to hear us and that is the problem that i really really hear the most is that you guys i say you guys as a school board are not listening not only are you not listening at the same time you're passing stuff that you're not even looking at you don't even know how about the stuff that you're passing uh if you ever wonder what parents think look up program for parents indiana check out critical race theory social emotional learning d-e-i then we go to math i'm going to let you know i have also been talking to uh by the gop members uh i know parents have been talking to

131the sheriff uh as the other lady mentioned um there was a meeting we have a county councilwoman or winger who's also uh getting with parents and trying to figure out what she can do to help this is not going away and we have seen online what happens when people aren't listening to you i'm stranded on youtube and see what's been happening all over our country at school board meetings because people come here and they don't feel listened to they feel disrespected and what happens is you're going to have really angry parents a lot of them are here these are the nice people who are just decided that they could speak up and a lot of them are at home that their kids are being bullied at school by the school by teachers they're letting other

132students bully their kids some special i have a special needs parent call me and ask me what am i gonna do they're throwing a mask on my special needs kid that can't get in aubrey what do i do what should they do what would you what what are you gonna do to help the appearance rich bowling you see like i usually like rich bowling uh healthcare indiana product of the school system and i sent all four of my daughters to this school system and i have three grandchildren in it i now still like to listen a little bit longer because that's when i learn the most i like to hear people's tensions and how people are thinking i can tell you this i started medical school in 1978 i went to depaul university from 74

133to and did my medical school from 78 to 82 and then a year of internship and three years of ophthalmology presidency for those 43 years i knew the value of cleanliness sterile fields and working in an environment is clean super clean i've worn masks for 50 years and i've worn masks a reason that's because it improves patient outcomes whether i was working in the er and i was just suturing up somebody that said fallen and different so collaboration or i was in surgery holding bowel back while other doctors were working on a spinal cord we all had masks on fafsa's improvement for a hundred years to take care of microbes antimicrobials and viruses if you don't think masks work just in the more current conditions of what we've been dealing with unfortunately with coal did

134look at the frequency of blue bugs affecting us in the last 18 months the number of people that died from the flu is in single digits compared to hundreds and hundreds we weren't very massive in previous years similar sized organism protected secondarily by we're wearing mass to try to keep ourselves from getting copic voltage is a new bug one we haven't fought before and one that we're still learning about how we fight but everybody knows the jama the eternal american medical association the ama the british journal of medicine all those the effectiveness do consent studies harvard has done studies we all know the effectiveness of keeping these viral particles that our immune system is not used to seeing away from us until we can develop our immunities this is an important step that keeps our

135students safe it's only a state's a safe student that can learn it is a safe environment that allows teachers to teach the best they can in a comfortable and peaceful environment no one's trying to force anything on anybody that's not good for them we have to wear seat belts don't we you can't drive after we if we're drunk and we get stopped by a policeman if our headlight is out that doesn't seem like not being able to have the freedom to drive with one headlight it's a decision by a group of what's best for all master's best for all of us mark glenn i'm dr mark brent holm i live in albright indiana have four students that have either graduated from who are currently going to elder community school um i want to sincerely thank

136all the trustees for the dedication to the students and teachers of elkhart community school i'm here harder to request in regards to the mass mandate that you not set a policy based on what you wish or hope will work but that you would look very open to looking at the large body of scientific evidence that contradicts the effectiveness of your current mandate policy maps do block some virus by blocking water drops with security virus but i think it is important to understand the difference in microscopic scale that we're talking about the coronavirus is 0.12 microns or micrometers even the water droplets are 0.2 microns inside surgical mass like the one that i have my pocket or the one that mr enfield is wearing have holes in them ranging from five to two hundred microns i

137know this is hard to understand the scope but that means if you do the math that the holes in this mass are forty to sixteen hundred times larger than a virus however you don't have to take my word in this matter there as there are no less than 14 randomized controlled trials that have looked at the effectiveness of mass in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses three of those demonstrated statistically no significance in the prevention of the transmission of respiratory viruses 11 of them demonstrated that masks are either useless in comparison to no mass or it compares to the hand washing or actually counter-productive again you have to take my word for it i um sent to you electronically a article that summarizes what i'm talking about tonight and i print out most of the

13814 14 randomized controlled trials peer reviews i have the highest respect for dr richard borland but one of the things he mentioned was ridiculous medical journal the top article here that showed no statistical significance is from the british medical journal that she mentioned um unfortunately current cdc guidelines do not reflect this large body of data but i need to stress that sometimes one to two randomized control files can change clinically how we work in medicine 11 randomized controlled trials is a huge body of evidence that should not be ignored thank you very much thank you sure thank you dr tom oh i'm sorry they just rhymed angelou are you there uh yes i'm here can you hear me yes please state your name your address and your relationship to the school and then you have

139three minutes to make your statement okay um angela whitlow 52088 delroo drive and i am a parent and volunteer um i just first of all wanted to say thank you for everybody that helped with homecoming week i know there was a lot of negative feedback on that and i know the kids put a lot of effort so i just wanted to announce that and thank the student body and the faculty for helping with that and making it a successful week second of all i would like to thank the school for putting out all calls for some of the issues that are going on with these tick tock videos hopefully it's improving it seems like it might be i just really wanted to say thank you um for keeping parents aware of what's going on because

140i think that helps control the situation a little bit better when parents know what's going on because a lot of parents like me are not on tick-tock um and i wasn't going to speak about this but i guess i will as far as masks go i understand the reasons for masks it goes a little bit higher than what the school has to follow unfortunately as is in regards with the governor i would like to point out the hypocrisy of putting our students in masks and then adults having parties um and then coming back into the school system surrounding kids so it's not necessarily a a school spread problem it's a community spread problem um i would i've also been looking at the dashboard the last couple weeks since you guys put the mask mandate in

141um i have noticed that there hasn't been any less covet cases it's pretty much stayed the same so whether masks are working or not i mean if you look at that data it's pretty much stayed the same one thing i would like to point out in consideration is the kids seem to be doing well with masks i will admit that the problem i've seen is the issues that masks create for students in an education standpoint when they cannot see the teacher's face their facial expression them speaking words to them and trying to pronounce those words it makes it very difficult for students to learn again i understand the concept of masks i get what they're supposed to be doing but just on an education standpoint i hope you guys consider that for future um reference

142is that it really interf interferes with the kids learning environment um other than that that's all i have thank you thanks for calling in now uh i don't think i have anything thank you board for allowing us to engage in the process of the priority audit and helping us work towards improvement so look forward to get that process started and we'll talk with dr meeting soon okay any comments from the board i'm thankful for the federal um indiana education secretary that came and visited elkhart schools this week and was at cleveland elementary as well as our indiana state secretary of education who um did some nice uh work while she was here and i think that it is a really nice i mean there's a lot of schools in elkhart in elkhart county and elkhurt

143um community schools was chosen for the staff and i think that was a wonderful um compliment actually to what we're doing it left our secretary of state of education be um more interested in our pathways when she got to see what we're doing and um she's also invited dr tolheimer which is a quite an honor to be a part of a collaborative kind of consortium of other educators to make sure that we're doing as much in the state as we can for our students and this all comes down to what's best for our kids and we are constantly losing sleep uh over what's best for our kids and what we think uh what is best for all so um i appreciate all your comments and um and i just want to thank all of the

144people that are working so hard to get through this period of time and uh i want to thank dr talheimer for pushing us in a direction that will help us be better i just want to follow up with some comments that were you know asked of me to do on behalf of the community and you know dr saulham was great in answering the questions that one of the things that circulated is the indiana department of education and there's a guideline that goes around with what we all know about call this ester funds etc on the chronovirus and it was a firm that we don't have to follow a certain guideline to maintain those funds we so so the fear that we are keeping mass on our children because of those funds we can kind of

145move that to the side and just stay steadfast and knowing that the goal is for obviously everybody know when i sit here and i'm i'm i don't i'm not a hypocrite so what i practice is who i am so uh affirming that and then also i will say steadfast and those in the community that asked again i speak as myself as myself as not the voice of the board but in the fear that there would be an opportunity that there would be vaccination clinics that would allow vaccines of our children without parental permission you can be assured that i will stay steadfast and making sure that that is not something that i allow inside of this school system you know but i'm just stating that that was after me and i just wanted to state

146it and on behalf of that this has been very a great meeting yes doug um we haven't done this in quite some time but i would invite everyone back uh thursday morning september 30th at 7 00 am we will have another public works session and it will be covering some of the concerns that the public has out here your school board is working towards solutions i'm not sure how fast we'll get there but i definitely want to move towards better solutions so anyhow thursday morning 7 a.m bring coffee and donuts should that go here yes be in this room correct yes monday october 4th there's a community night an open house there will be a 40 minute tour it will start in the beautiful engineering technology and innovation building it is from 6 p.m to

1477 30 p.m everybody in the public is invited you can see that building that was built primarily with private donations a great example of public private collaboration so we hope to see many of you here anything else we are adjourned [Music]