001to 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 welcome and thanks for coming to the regular meeting of the greencastle school board for february 2022 first item on the agenda is adjustments to the agenda mr given yup i don't have any adjustments to the agenda for this month okay next item is public comments regarding agenda items does anyone have anything to say regarding an agenda okay here we go next item is recognitions mr given yep let's begin with uh mr ricky and dear meadow all right i'd like to introduce you to annara pettit and our as a kindergartner and jessica stockton's room and i'd like to share with mrs stockton chaired for our student of the month anara
002i'm nominating nara because she's a great example of what hard work looks like she's a hard worker always trying her best she's also a great example of a leader she's modeling she always models how to be a leader and i can count her do the right thing and another teacher added anara is a good friend who likes to help others she's respectful to her classmates and adults [Applause] we have a backdrop a green castle backdrop for photos mrs johnson pretend i have a cute little girl just kidding um our red pass students of the month is elliot wright unfortunately she has a prior commitment on monday so she's not able to be here she was nominated by two staff members just this past week mrs height house nominates elliot wright because she shows great effort
003in reading and math she's very respectful of others and she is learning and models good choices for students that struggle to follow classroom rules mrs miller states that she also agrees with mrs heighthouse and elliott is the true definition of perseverance so she works super hard so elliott wright is our student [Applause] mrs rhodes or mrs so tz's student of the month is miss sophie cole sophie is a third grader in mrs miller's class and mrs miller has written sophie is a delight to have in our classroom she is always helpful and encouraging to others sophie is a conscientious hard-working student she consistently completes her homework and readily grasps new concepts and ideas sophie is a creative thinker and is thoughtful towards others at all times and i think mrs asbo and i would both
004second that she is a just fabulous student always with a smile always with a hug or a high five and we know we can count on her to help anyone in the class that needs it so sophie cole is also not able to come but is rachel hebert she's a very dedicated and kind student she has intrinsic drive to do well she encourages others to succeed rachel's always willing to put the put the work in even when it takes her a while to learn something new i'm so happy she's coming out of her shell and becoming a leader in her grade mrs niklas says rachel's always on task and doing exactly what she should be she's kind to others and responsible and respectful in every way she's a wonderful and bright young person who's dependable
005and true delight to have as a student and mrs smith says rachel's a great student awesome student council member she's very hard working in class is always willing to participate [Applause] we also do not have a student here from high school but our student of the month is addison edwards and our character trait was trustworthiness and so one of our teachers has said that addison edwards is a student of month for trustworthiness because she is always someone that can be counted on she always makes sure little details are taken care of and she will show up to volunteer with any classroom prep addison is one of the most reliable students that she knows so congratulations to addison and we'll get pictures later on and i also have one other thing and we had a special
006donation and our physics and chemistry teacher miss fennerty shared this that tall grass energy in bainbridge donated a complete classroom set of soldering irons complete with solder extra tips and individual carrying cases to the greencastle high school physics program that donation was made possible by the generosity from the operations supervisor uh nate mackey not named after mackie arena but i gotta put that plug in go boilers and one of our physics parents uh who works there robert papossi so thank you for letting me share it thank you [Applause] okay next item on the engine is approval of the consent agenda which consists of meeting minutes from january 24th a regular board meeting january 24th annual board of finance meeting february 9th board work session and february 14th special board meeting minutes uh the allowance of
007plans the financial report and the personnel reports part one and two which are posted on the door and on the school website i'll make a motion that'd be approved let's hear from keller will you write a stock here we go um we'll go ahead and start with our finance packet here there was two regular payrolls in the month of january uh january 7th for a total payroll of 125.46 and as usual we also have our taxes and retirement that we pay out for each payroll the january 7th payroll total taxes and retirement 99 769.89 the second regular payroll was dated january 21st of 2022 for a total payroll of 411 thousand seven hundred sixteen dollars and forty eight cents and along with that came the payroll taxes and retirement total of one hundred seventeen thousand
008nine hundred forty two dollars and seventy nine cents did anyone have any questions about the payrolls for january okay well we'll go ahead and move on to some prepays here um these will be prepays dated january 1 through january 31st of 2022. i just want to point out five um prepays that we did that were not typical that you will not see every month and that would be for our debt service and pension payments that we do in january and july each year so you'll see that our total prepays for the month of january 2022 are exceptionally higher higher than normal uh total prepays one million eight hundred one thousand six eighty seven ninety two did anyone have any questions about that okay all right and then we've got um some claims that are dated
009today february 28 2022 was there anything in on this list that anyone had any questions about okay all right so we've got total um regular claims dated today 228 000 17.96 and are we ready to go ahead and move on to the fund report sure all right all right fund report ending january 31st 2022 ending balance and education fund at 2 million 16 365 dollars and 51 cents in operations you'll see there it's a fourth one down fund 300 a total ending balance of 1 million 500 2 832.87 total for all funds on the last page page 5 is seven million two hundred nine thousand four hundred twenty dollars and ninety eight cents next in your finance packet you'll see the depository statement balance in all banks at the end of january twenty twenty two
010you'll see less outstanding checks there for bank 10 and then you're also going to see an outstanding deposit there this month so if you look at that ending balance january fund balance for all all bank balances you'll see that that number is identical to fund balances on the fund report and then lastly you'll see um expenditures that were paid in february 2022 at a bond 2021 total expenditures equaled 300 249.47 added to the balance forward from july 21st through january 2022 our total expenditures paid out of bond 2021 is three million one hundred seventy six thousand three hundred sixteen dollars and twenty eight cents pending no questions i'd like to recommend for approval okay can i get a motion to approve yes motion in a second all in favor all right next item on the
011agenda is reports first we have the assistant superintendent's report dr yeah so i gave you one of these so if you want to pull out this little packet of some data a few times in a year i like to share some assessment data with you so in february we look at our nwea data remember that nwea is um the only assessment that we give from k to high school so k to 10 takes this three times a year um so what we're looking at right now on page one we're first going to look at the scores from the fall so that you can compare that to the winter so page one here and if you want to kind of just ignore the table at the top and just check out the graphic it's much simpler
012so you have your grade levels and the orange diamond there is actually the benchmark that we're trying to hit and this is just measuring growth so you can see where we hit our goal for growth and where we didn't hit our goal for growth so that first page is math you can quickly flip over and look at the language arts see where we are with there again we want to try to hit that orange diamond area of growth and that's from the fall if you flip over to page three this is winter so this is what the students just took last month so then you can see the improvements in the game from there so every grade level then did hit their benchmarks compared to fall so that's great and then our high school does
013not take winter testing since they have so much other testing going on they don't want to lose that instructional time and so for math and both for language arts all grade levels hit their their growth which is great so i like that just because it's a quick snapshot it's easy to see just a district-wide look um at where everyone is i just want to share that with you also i also wanted to share some other upcoming we're getting into testing season so i'm going to share with you some of our upcoming assessments that are happening so we have our sats happening for our juniors coming up then we have our ire three which is for our third graders and that window opens in march 7th so as we know that's the reading proficiency in the
014state for third graders however there is a change to that this year so the doe opened that up for second graders so school districts could opt in if we wanted to allow our second graders to take that it's still the third grade test but we can often um to use that as a different data point we always already have plenty of data on our k2 students and we didn't want to give up that instructional time and give them more testing the only benefit that some teachers are seeing with that is that they can kind of prepare the second grade teachers can see what the test looks like in order to help prep their students a little bit more but we didn't feel like that was was beneficial enough to give up that instructional time also
015even if our second graders pass they're still going to have to take the same assessment in third grade they'll just take an abbreviated version so some of our neighbors also opted out cloverdale and clay city also opted out however they were just contacted by the doe and told that they will be taking it because they need the data sample so our prediction is that this is just kind of one step closer to moving towards standardized testing for second graders um and they need that baseline data so that's that's my prediction where where and why that's happening but greencastle did not opt into that second grade and fortunately we were not told that we were going to do that so so that's good so we'll see what the future brings for that um also we have
016a different high ability testing platform that we're going to be using it will be all digital we'll get the results back really quickly and we screen for high ability for kindergarten second and fifth grade so that will be happening in the month of march before spring break so we're excited about that and then gold i learn for our grades three through eight testing will happen in april so everybody's getting rev revving up for for all of the testing um you will be uh you will be requesting approval tonight on our summer school so i just wanted to give you some more information on what that will look like so our elementary and our middle school last year if you remember we tried to jump start so we did it right before school started in july
017we didn't see any significance and the data changing doing a jump start you know it's just something else let's let's try as a different strategy um so we didn't see that being any any benefit to that so we were we're going to go back this year just to doing a june um summer school for for k8 that will run concurrent with our high school programs um so elementary we will have approximately 75 students or we're going to invite 75 students of our current k to 4th grade and that will be a two-week program also our middle school we're excited mr white has some really great ideas and things that he wants to try differently so our middle school approach will be a summer camp style in computer science utilizing our fab lab so we're going
018to open that up to current fourth through seventh graders and whoever is interested in that and so they're gonna have the opportunity to come for two weeks and learn how to use all of the equipment create some cool projects and we're going to be able to build up some leaders in our students that will be able to kind of generate excitement and stuff throughout the student body in the fall i think that's a great uh exciting strategies we're excited about that and then the high school will continue to run their credit recovery and a variety of courses for in-person and online so a lot to get ready for this summer great yeah busy time yeah thank you next is superintendent's report mr gibney yeah so just a few things this month obviously february we know
019that we have the second count day of the year which can impact school funding our february count we're at 1744 students so that's down 29 students from the fall but typically you know schools do see that's not drastically different than a statewide trend you have early graduates you have some dropouts you have some families that move so while we did lose students it's nothing that's catastrophic we do have a rather small junior and senior class i expect those numbers to hopefully increase come next fall with replacing a smaller outgoing class but hopefully another really big group of kindergartners um and on that topic we're going to have kindergarten roundup april 12th and 14th um from three to seven at the path in deer meadow um so we're excited to uh to get get that out
020and get those kids excited and used to our buildings um alongside that we'll also get out our registration for her to uh for our preschool program to hopefully build on that in year two this is really kind of the first year of having the community style preschool program continuing to work the best we can on returning to pre-pandemic policies and procedures obviously we saw the lifting of the mask mandate during the school day and then obviously beginning today we rolled back on the requirement of masks on the school buses based on the update from the cdc i have also had a high school student olivia headley finished 20th in the state um and i think it was the 50 freestyle competition and that's a significant accomplishment for her and based on a lot of the
021athletes that she competed against so i wanted to mention that and then this past weekend i think it was 12 there were 12 students in mrs that attended the isma solo [Music] thank you solo ensemble the isma competition and all 12 students earned gold so which is takes a lot of hard work a lot of time and dedication by students and mrs munoz so that was a really awesome thing we're moving forwards with the building project obviously uh you know in february in february still february earlier this month obviously we awarded a contract you know they're going to mobilize beginning in april but we have a meeting scheduled for march 10th with weddle brothers construction and we hope to learn more then or we will learn more then about the sequencing or phasing of the
022project at the high school and how we may be disrupted here at the end of the year and obviously moving forwards we're going to have to be flexible and make adjustments with our space and get used to doing things uh different and knowing um the outcome uh that of long term have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with braver brothers on our new maintenance storage building over at the transportation center we've approved that contract already and obviously expect to break grounds hopefully soon so we work in getting maintenance out of the high school footprint and then obviously the final thing march 18th through 25th is our spring break so that's the friday before and then the monday through wednesday i know everyone's been working really hard and i think a lot of people are probably looking
023forward to that time to return recharge their batteries for the final sprint so that's all i have just a few updates for this okay month thank you next item on the agenda is old business and we have no old business so we moved to new business the first thing is an approval request for the 2020 23 occupational services contract yep so as is customary this time of year mrs sullivan has submitted her recommendation continue with mrs mrs real for next school year her rate will remain the same as it is currently and she'll work 12 to 14 hours a week average next school year and be paid for out of our federal grant it's my recommendation that the board uh approve this request as presented give a bush can i give a second i'll second
024okay i have a motion in a second any questions or discussions hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next is an approval request for the 2022 summer school yep so i won't say a whole lot because jenny or dr french shared this information earlier but in your board packet you saw the financial commitment of those programs of course we'll submit that to the doe and they reimburse at a rate of 105 and so it's my recommendation that the board approve our summer school request and then we can begin filling all of those slots and advertising that information yeah i'll make a motion a second time okay motion second any questions hearing none all in favor all right all opposed quotient passes next item is an approval request for authorization to advertise
025notice of a public hearing for building projects yep um so as we uh discussed at our last last board meeting when we awarded the construction contract bids came back higher than higher than expected we've made adjustments and eliminated the off-site baseball and softball fields as a result of the project i'm really going to focus in on finishing off the high school project the way it should be completed while also protecting the other projects and after hearing uh from the community there's a lot of excitement around that in support of that and so we have to hold a public hearing for financing to complete that work and so all this is is authorization to advertise the notice of a public hearing in march and then a second one at a regular march yeah i'll make a
026motion for that okay motion in a second any questions or discussions hearing that all in favor all right it's all opposed to passing next item is an approval request for an interleavable agreement between the city of greencastle and greencast community school corporation yep so um so i've been working with uh mr shields and actually mr shields been working with a couple of uh young ladies in the high school and i know i'm gonna mispronounce their their name i believe it's cadence shaner and madison voorhees they had an opportunity to they're in mr shields class at the high school and they had an opportunity to visit the fab lab at the middle school and they really enjoyed what they saw and their question was is they would like to have something like that at the high
027school to uh just to continue to enhance the type of education that they receive there so mr shields and the girls worked on a proposal to present to the redevelopment commission so the greencastle redevelopment commission funded our our middle school lab and roughly 197 thousand dollars investment for equipment and ongoing training and support and so the girls made their presentation it was last wednesday and the green castle redevelopment commission would like to fund this endeavor at an amount of 195 thousand dollars so this will go to essentially kind of adding in some tools and repurposing some of the existing tools in our what's the old wood shop and adding in some uh you know the cnc router and adding in some 3d printers and laser cutters and we'll continue just to kind of build the
028program up and offer teachers and students that choose to use that equipment just additional capabilities so we're very very proud of the girls for for making that presentation but then obviously i also want to you know extend thanks to the redevelopment commission for funding this endeavor and initiative and so what we have just like last time is that interlocal agreement just lays out the the contractor expectations of moving forwards so it's my recommendation that the board approved that agreement so okay have a motion in a second all in favor aye next on the um agenda is approval request for some donations one from beech grove united methodist church to any uh taxonomicus intermediate in the amount of six hundred dollars and the second being kathleen russell to greek castle high school deca club in the
029amount of five hundred dollars i get a motion to approve those yeah make a motion to approve absolutely a second time yeah motion is second all in favor all right all opposed motion passes thank you for those yes absolutely last thing on the agenda is other business does anyone have any other business i just want to say i think it's really really cool that the two young ladies were able to make that presentation and do that i mean it's a it's a great thing with our community but um it's really just really awesome to see two young people you know stand up and do that so yep kudos anyone else last item on the agenda is a journalist i'll make a motion second okay motion second all in favor all right all opposed motion passing
030thank you everybody thank you everyone careful going home thank you