001okay i'd like to call the meeting order with the pledge of allegiance please one well good evening and welcome to the regular meeting the regular april meeting of the newcastle school board first item on the agenda is adjustments to the agenda mr gibbety yup i don't have any adjustments for the agenda uh this month okay makes that easy next item is public comments regarding agenda items is there anyone who would like to comment on an agenda tonight here moving on next item is recognitions mr gibney yep ms johnson britt path would like to recognize our student from last month first and this is lenora hazard she is a first grader in mrs krohn's room and she was nominated by mrs roderick and she states she is a joy to have in class she is constantly
002asking what she can do to help whether it is pass out papers erase the board or read with a friend she always has a smile on her face and is ready for whatever comes her way she always does the right thing she is willing to help out any friend that might be struggling to figure out something all of her peers enjoy her company she's fun loving very smart and has a very bright future ahead of her so lenora hazards [Applause] so this is really exciting we were talking about students of the month again um late last or early last week and both of these girls needs came from both of their first grade teachers and i said let's do them together this is so great so this is brooklyn and britain wells and mrs clark
003nominated britain and she states that britain is a very kind compassionate and sweet student she thinks of people first and is always quick to make sure someone knows instructions or has a friend to play with on the playground as you can tell our theme has been kindness mrs crone nominated brooklyn mrs crone shares that brooklyn works very hard every day even though brooklyn has come across some challenges at school she has found a way to push through and this was my favorite part mrs crone said it has been a delight to watch brooklyn have those light bulb moments which every educator strives for and recognize that in herself both students are such a delight to have at red path so britain and brooklyn wells we have a backdrop set up for photos with our students
004of the month all right tonight we have meyla marlow and mrs hill is her teacher she nominated mayla and mayla is a very sweet and caring little girl she's a hard worker and an excellent role model for her class mayla loves helping others and takes the initiative to find others in need and always lends a helping hand so she is our student of the month at dear meadow [Applause] um now if you can't tell this is the model he is all dead down his purple already this morning or this afternoon this morning wow it's been one of those days so i would like to introduce enrique cerna enrique is a fourth grader in miss lewis's class at tz and she has written about enrique enrique is a student that always comes into school with a
005positive attitude and a smile he has been working very hard this year on his academics and striving to get better every day enrique is a friend to everyone and you can count on him to always make a good decision i second that it's easy to say that enrique makes our class better every day that he is in it congratulations [Applause] [Music] okay our student of the month for the middle school today is sophia endicott and she's new to our school this year she's coming back and her teachers have said she's a very hard working student always tries her best they love that she's always willing to participate and answer questions she's very kind and friendly in the hallways and they're impressed of how well she has adjusted the new school and worked so hard on
006her classwork she is a delight to have in reach she always enters a classroom with a positive efficient disposition and adds so much to class discussion sophie's incredible hard worker she is excellent at communicating with her teachers doing her work being on task and being kind to others sophie's true to herself and her values and shines an exemplary student daily [Applause] um so the student of the month for the high school is apparently not here um mr henke has nominated jillian cooper mr ranky said that julian was the model of character of perseverance among all the other students she stood out in her particular trait in math class no matter how difficult the material got no matter how challenging the homework was jillian always stood out by putting forth her best effort every single day
007he also wanted to mention that only not only did julian put forth an awesome level of effort every day but she was also willing to do it with a cheerful attitude never complaining or griping he knows that jillian will continue to be successful in whatever she puts her mind to in the future because of this deeply ingrained perseverance and it is that reason that he was pleased to nominate her for the character trait perseverance [Applause] okay thank you um next item on the agenda is the approval of the consent agenda which consists of the meeting minutes from march 14th of special meeting and march 28th the regular board meeting allowance of claims financial report and personnel reports part one and two which are posted on the website and the front door mrs roman hello everyone
008hello hello okay in your finance packet um you're gonna see a couple of regular payrolls for the month of march first one was dated march 4th 2022 for a total payroll of 437 154.95 and along with that as usual we're going to have some prepays for retirement and payroll taxes total for the march 4th payroll 123 372.88 the second regular payroll was march 18 2022 for a total payroll of 450 0.297.03 and the payroll taxes and retirement 128 479 479.55 and next in your packet you're going to see a list of prepays dated for the entire month of march 2022. did anyone have any questions about any of those prepaids on there no pretty standard yep they're nothing not uh unusual here except for the information the lab supplies that we ordered for the high
009school that's the only thing that would be different than normal on here the total is 485 925 77 and then next in your packet you're going to see the list of claims dated today april 25th and looking through here did anyone have any questions about any claims for this month no okay total claims uh dated today april 25th 2022 353 457 dollars and 30 cents if we're ready to move on to the fund report yep okay balance at the end of march 2022 in education fund 2 million 487 663.05 uh operations balance one million one hundred fifteen thousand a 104.66 total for all funds if you go to the last page number five is at seven million five hundred ninety seven thousand eight forty nine ninety two and then if you look at your depository
010statement you'll see the ending bank balance for all banks minus some outstanding checks for bank 10. total uh fund balance for all funds all banks 7 million 597 849.92 and that is balanced with the fund report which is where we want to be that's good news and then lastly in your packet you're going to see the bond expenditures for balance forward from july 2021 through march 2022 was 3 million 264 1879 and then we had some expenditures at a bond 2021 for the month of april the total for all expenditures for bond 2021 as of today april 25th is 3 million 379 675 51. pending any questions i'd like to submit for approval yeah just a i know last month we approved transferring some money over to a different bank yes yeah about it obviously
011that's what happened yeah what's what's tom what kind of time frame looking sure yeah um so when i go to close out april you're gonna see um some you know transactions on your depository statement on that that transaction actually took place at the beginning of april okay so when we go to close out april and we show you all that information at the may board meeting you're gonna see that balance in that bank it has happened yes it has so but thank you for asking it has happened and you'll see that that activity on the uh the may board meeting perfect thank you you're welcome can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda i make the motion to approve the cassette agenda i'll say that give a motion in a second all in
012favor all post motion passing next item on the agenda is reports first from assistant superintendent dr fred yes so a couple of exciting things i wanted to share with you so for the last 18 months to two years we've been doing a lot of professional development and work and teacher training around the science of reading and i know i've talked about that a lot but all that hard work is going to pay off because by the end of this fall every single one of our k2 teachers our classroom teachers will be licensed or certified ido reading specialists so because of all the work that they've done during our professional development they'll reach the criteria so they'll all be certified and what's cool is i don't know anyone else in the state that has that um
013and so because of that later on this summer um gcse will be highlighted by the ido and the indiana reading league with that um and while that's great for you know our teachers to have that certification and it's you know a great pr thing for our district um you know the big thing is our kids are gonna benefit from that with all of their special skills and learning how to read so i'm really excited about that um and then also tonight we have some exciting things happening at tz this fall some changes coming so i've asked mrs rhodes to share those with you so mrs rhodes whenever you're ready and i know think mr hill corey's gonna get me up there thank you yes okay so i just kind of made some slides here we'll
014just kind of go through them really quickly and then you can keep this to take notes or ask anything you would like so our next steps moving forward so so we put some i gathered some data obviously we have lots of data floating around we just tried to make it something that would be easy to read so we do nwa testing three times a year fall winter spring our spring testing will take place here in a couple of weeks but based on our testing that we did this winter it was determined that about 52 percent of our third graders scored in 50th percentile or higher we look at kind of 50th percentile as an indicator of passing i read or i'm sorry i learn fourth grade about 49 and 5th grade about 56 those numbers
015are a little bit higher than they were last year so we're moving in the right track our goal you see we're we've got some work to do uh 80 at each grade level is what was what we are going to be working towards the next slide so last year uh right we are heading into ilearn right now our third graders tested last week and our fourth and fifth graders are testing starting tomorrow they're all very excited um so last year uh you know a year and a half two years into pandemic and some of those gaps that we we have had we noted that our third grade 36 percent passed ela 46 to past math in indiana the average for ela third grade was 38.7 and then 48.7 for math so we're just under the
016state average in third grade um but again i think we're moving in the right direction fourth fourth grade 33 and 35 and then those state averages are there um fifth grade 48 and 47 and we are above the state average so that's where i want to kind of be a little cheerleader here because that is two years worth of or three four years worth of now wonders and eureka so having good strong curriculum and having something that everybody in the building is doing you know it doesn't happen overnight it takes it takes a while and the primary kids have had those curriculums and have built up and so i think here in fifth grade we've started to see see our results and i'm confident that we're going to see similar third and fourth coming in
017the next year or so so that's just a little bit there i read we have been consistent the last couple years with about 79 percent passing the spring test the one that we did right before spring break after we did remediation and we retested last summer 83 percent passed and we will retest again on june 16th after doing remediation the entire month of may as well as summer school june 16th or 6th through 17th our goal is 90 passing i think we are more than capable of that um with summary tests so and with the remediation plan we have in place uh starting in may i think um we're gonna hit some really good things so okay that's just kind of where we're at right now so now blasting into next year this is going
018to be our theme for next year um so getting ready and we're going to change some things into some space things and spruce things up a little bit from from what we've been doing the last couple of years so we've got a lot of things going on first corey we're going to be switching to a model card departmentalizing in fourth and fifth grade third grade will remain consistent because departmentalizing is not recommended for third grade and below and what that means for departmentalizing is our teachers are going to be put on teams of two and they are going to be given time to obviously help us increase achievement scores but also letting the teachers um grow in kind of an expertise in an area or two instead of having to learn other curriculum pieces and
019focus on all of those things we are going to have one teacher will be ela ela and social studies and the other teacher on their team will be science project lead the way on those stem things um so in within each grade level we will have three teams of two okay um all of our fourth and fifth grade teachers will be delivering our sel curriculum which is second steps um just for those social and emotional learning things uh just so that way we keep a very consistent language in the building with that and every teacher is using the same terminology and those kinds of things okay so that's a little bit about departmentalizing as dr french has been talking about we have been knee-deep in science of reading and science of reading if you don't
020remember is very scientifically based about reading and issues related to reading and writing and there are two primary components word recognition and language comprehension i like to think of the analogy it's a math analogy actually for reading but that we've learned from our reading specialist jamie piegler who's been coming in and doing some pd that if you think of each of those components as one if you have word recognition which is decoding and being able to sound out words all of those things if you have that but you're not good at understanding language either written or listening verbal then 1 times 0 is 0 so you're not going to be a good reading comprehender same as the other way if you're a good listener you can take in information but you can't decode then again
021it's 1 times 0 and you're still at 0. so both of those pieces have to be in place in order to have kids become good at reading comprehension so we are currently providing staff almost weekly with some kind of a pd whether it's at plc or during our weekly collaborations sometimes after school things coffee chats webinars those kinds of things to get ready and start continuing this into next year so our 22-23 school year is going to be heavy into these components we actually have somebody coming next week that's going to model a whole lesson for all of our reading teachers so that we can then kind of restructure our reading time away from the traditional language block into more of the science of reading program and then we will also add writing a writing
022component called science of writing and we'll look at that starting starting first semester and kind of make some changes there coaching and modeling with with jamie piedler our reading specialist as well as some changes we're going to do with with kathy asbell and myself and our teachers will be doing teachers modeling and coaching lessons with each other and as well as kathy and i doing things and then mrs keeper coming in as well so this is what is kind of being given to us by the doe and so mrs peepler's also been sharing this with us and it just kind of is it's just a visual for how all these pieces fit together so you've got language comprehension that is made up of background knowledge vocabulary language structure verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge and then
023that word recognition piece with phonological awareness decoding and site recognition and those kind of weave together to make that rope that we get to have be a skilled reader so it's just kind of a nice visual and the doe is looking at that as well so we're a little ahead of the game i think dr french has mentioned that we've already been planning science of reading things and i know when we got our i read scores back the state sent a three or four page document on tips for remediating and it all had to do with science of reading and looking at it that way and we were just we're already on that so we felt pretty good about that um some other things just just kind of really quickly we're going through and we're
024going to be getting a lot of different resources and kind of revamping what we already have first we're going to be looking at some new spelling and word recognition material so prefix cards suffix cards a spelling program that's based around rules so we won't be really asking kids to memorize lists of spelling words we'll be helping them understand a rule and then asking them to apply it our wonders reading program we have that for at least another year so we'll still be using that as our core reading program but we'll be supporting that with some other material that's a little bit more content rich i'll talk about that here in just a minute and then writing again continue with what we're using right now which is a common core writing resource that we've enjoyed using
025the last couple of years but then as we learn more about the science of writing and what what different ways we can be doing that we'll transition to that science and social studies is where we're going to see a real difference and we are going to be looking at some resources with a site called core knowledge and then project lead the way industry science will be a supplemental it's an online digital science but we'll be looking at really building background knowledge and content knowledge in content rich subjects for kids and those high interest things so that will be a very strong component and we're going to be the big piece here is that last couple lines currently fourth and fifth grade third grade does this as well continue but fourth and fifth grade they alternate
026between science and social studies every day so we have a social sciences time so they get about 45 hours of science and about 45 hours of social studies throughout the year and they are going to be getting 90 hours of each so that will be doubling because we're going to have a built in everyday science and social studies time and then i don't want to leave math out we use eureka eureka has come up with a new program called eureka squared that i kind of like eureka 2.0 better so i just call it that they have given us the new pacing guides some built-in assessment days which is going to be really nice because they give us about 180 days worth of lessons and then you're supposed to assess as well and there's just not
027time so you have to pick and choose so some of those days are built in there's a digital component that we're going to be having access to that will give us some benchmark testing and assessment as well as providing teachers with the material that they need to remediate and use in the rti process with math and then lastly we're going to have a building wide math backed fluency program i'm not exactly sure what that's going to 100 look like i've got a couple of ideas but i don't know about you but i remember you just learned math facts i was just a given you knew it and we still have fifth graders counting on fingers um and i see that in print so we're going to backtrack a little bit and it's not going to
028be a digital game it's probably going to be a paper pencil timed kind of thing but we're going to make it a building wide initiative to get everybody learning their math facts so next year it's going to be a big year obviously change brings about a little bit of nervousness lots of questions so we are going to be very intentional with our plc and our collaboration times looking at lots of data looking at curriculum instruction providing times for teachers to have lessons modeled and see how things should be and then we'll also start some discussions on breeding practices as well that's what's going on just don't give us a math facts test some kids really like it and so we have some classrooms that are still doing math time tests and any time if i
029walk in at the wrong time mrs so i know this is like with the whole curriculum and everything but just curious about reading in general so i know um so like when i was you know a little kid i just i loved reading and so i just wonder about programs or or anything to kind of spark you know i and i think some some kids are going to want to read like crazy and some are but um anything to kind of kind of spark just that just reading on their own outside so we encourage parents if kids are having trouble and they just don't seem to have an interest to to let kids read anything read a comic book read the newspaper read this you know the sports edition um we have if you haven't
030been into tz or dear meadow or with that we all have the book vending machines right now and the kids love that and that has sparked some interest in some kids being able to come get a book but there's lots of we use epic also which is it's an online book service and kids read books online so it's kind of like a nook or kindle but it's on their tablet but we just really encourage parents to have kids read anything and even if reading to them you know i know tv we do a lot of you know kids should read every night for 20 minutes but that doesn't necessarily mean the child has to read parents and that sometimes will spark some interest this core knowledge program and that resource will be very beneficial because
031i think it hits on a lot of high interest things there's a lot of things on you know american revolution american history science kinds of things that there's non-fiction topics that kids really get into it sounds a little bit like the teacher is going to be able to specialize to an extent into like a couple of fields yeah especially fourth and fifth grade um they will be either ela and social studies or they will be science and math so that's going to take take some things off of them but let them really be able to dive into some of these new things it's easier to be an expert at one or two things than it is of five or six steps sounds great thank you thank you thanks it sounds like that k through two
032reading program with everybody being certified it's gonna lend right into yeah that's the score of going up right that's the goal and then we also have some summer pb set up with our middle school english teachers too to kind of extend that up all right next is superintendent report yeah so just give just a couple of uh updates this month obviously we're still working to finalize our numbers from kindergarten roundup that took place um earlier this month and we'll continue to track down uh the buildings will continue to track down kids between now and the start of school so so we can really kind of begin planning for what those classes or what those numbers look like so when i get those i'll share those with you exciting work taking place on the building project
033obviously we see a lot of visible change now i think just either today or yesterday a second construction trailer has dropped off definitely appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation especially our parents and our high school student drivers as we change operations and and procedures um relatively soon here within the next week or two we'll lose our main entrance um to the high school and so they'll punch through the temporary main entrance which goes right through the guidance guidance department and that will serve as the main entrance until the the main work in the front of the building is conducted a lot of the teachers in the first part of the building have moved out of their either classroom same thing with the media center and then at the end of the year here we'll lose some
034areas at the back of the building so our teachers and building ministers have been doing a good job working together communicating we're still kind of working through what some of those unintended consequences or challenges um might be um but just and again um continue to communicate with our with our parents as we uh as we tackle this journey together but nonetheless exciting times for our for our school and community and then obviously last monday we approved a reward of the contract for the secure entrance and building envelope project at tz to deal with some of the moisture and humidity issues and just overall heating and cooling the outdoors so that work will take place either this summer and into next year it's we're on track we think as long as there is not a supply
035issue to have the secure entrances in each of those buildings complete by the start of we're still working with the middle school focus groups to to develop out plans for the updated science classrooms media center space and secure office century suite but again that's exciting as well so continue to move right along uh right along with that um and i cheered with the board and you'll see here highlighted at the end of the month but we're very proud of miss amy berry who is recognized as a wthi golden apple award winner and so it's already understanding that wthi will be highlighting award winners i believe the last week in april is that correct okay so but that's a that's a huge honor and i couldn't think of a more deserving um individual for uh for
036that she actually will be featured on friday even better great so we're really excited about that and thank you for writing that article jared and then we celebrate the wonderful staff that we have at gcsc next week with a week filled of activities celebrations and raffles because here we choose to celebrate everyone during the same week rather than during the individual week or individual days throughout the year so a lot of good things taking place and obviously moving towards the end of the year yes indeed okay okay great item on the agenda is old business and we have no old business which brings us to new business and the first item under new business is an approval request for the 2022-2023 [Music] school psychologist intern yeah so special thanks to uh mrs sullivan for arranging
037this our current school psychologist is working towards retirement and kind of easing slowly transitioning to retirement and she was able to line up an intern from indiana state to help assist dr ayette with some of the duties and so we have a proposal in here that we're seeking approval for um and there's no cost to the district she'll be supervised by dr ayat and hopefully be a good experience for her at the same time assist us sounds good to me more help the better so i'll make a motion to accept give a motion a second all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next item is an approval request for permission to hire summer bus cleaners yep so mr clearwater uh is wishing to basically kind of take care of the annual duty and
038just line up some extra help to help clean our buses that take they get plenty of views throughout the year and uh are in some dire need of cleaning so i would recommend that the board approve of this request she'll move i'll set for that okay we have a motion and a second all in favor opposed motion passes next item is an approval request for to declare items of surplus yeah so as is customary we have a few things that have since been replaced that if possible we'd like to be able to sell to recoup some funds or at minimum donate them as as a means of disposing them and so in your packet we have some old high jump pole vault pits which i believe mr greenlee has lined up a seller for those
039and then in cleaning and preparing for the building project in macanal we have some old swimming lane dividers some extra diving boards and a extra timing system for the scoreboard those are all we don't we don't need and we like to be able to sell them or donate them and so this completes a step that we need to take care of so it would be my recommendation or declare those items of surplus make a motion a second okay we have a motion in a second all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval an approval request to accept some donations several of them first one being from putnam county community foundation to the greencastle high school of decath in the amount of 225 second is putnam kind of community
040foundation to greencastle high school baseball in the amount of 2500 third is fm reed scholastics to green castle high school the amount of sixteen hundred dollars next would be the jack and shirley dalton trust to a student at greencastle high school to be named later in the amount of two thousand dollars mary allison children's trust to greencastle high school in the amount of and the mary allison children's trust to the zonicus intermediate in the amount of 2978 dollars and two cents it is so can i get a motion to approve these donations i will make a motion okay i have a motion in a second any questions for the quick match says that's over eleven thousand dollars of donations we just got ourselves thank you thank you okay let's vote on it quickly for some
041chances okay all in favor aye all opposed motion passes last item on the new business is the first reading of the 2022-23 building handoff yep so again another customary end of the year activity no action being taken this month just a first reading and to catch any technical corrections and we'll bring those for approval next month it's already okay great um next item is other business does anyone have any other business no i just have a question i know i ask this all the time but how's the how's the dog what's the dog doing that's um i briefly asked about this the other day and i don't have an answer but when the legislature said it was only three e-learning days allowed unless there are special circumstances are we going to have to re-look at
042our schedule or how we yeah we're wait and see because even in the we were supposed to get guidance from the doe in their weekly memo last friday um but they even they put a little one-liner in there that they're not quite ready to give us any guidance so let's wait and see yeah so to be continued one of our students uh mr hertenstein i believe is the name he had his name up on times square that's pretty cool for doing the finance stuff for the younger kids so yeah yeah i wasn't aware of the times square thing but i know fox fox 59 came in and they did a nice piece a nice story yeah he ended up going to new york he's pointing up and if you look at the very very top
043one you can see his picture up there it's pretty cool that's cool congratulations to him okay anybody else okay next item on the agenda is adjournment can i get a motion make a motion i'll say okay okay motion in a second all in favor aye all opposed like motion passes thank you all for coming this evening you