001comments okay quick call the meeting order with the pledge of allegiance my god all right good evening and welcome to the february regular meeting of the green castle school board can you can everyone hear through this okay no i don't know how about now better okay thanks okay first item on the agenda is adjustments to the agenda mr gibboni yes so have two resolutions to add to the agenda this month first one a board resolution supporting public school teachers staff and administrators vaccinations that will be 8 d and then as 8 e i have a resolute resolution opposing the establishment of education uh scholarship accounts and the expansion of the indiana school choice scholarship program that'll be a e okay can i get a motion to approve the adjustments with the agenda i'll make a
002motion a second okay i have a motion a second any um discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is public comments regarding agenda items does anyone have any public comments we have one hello uh no not yet i don't think her mic's working corey cory i don't know there you go okay so i would like to make um comments on the um board resolutions that mr gibney just added to the agenda um i just want to thank you for embracing the opportunity to give pass the board resolutions i'll talk about 8d first basically the resolution would send a message to the legislator legislators regarding the critical need to move public school employees to the priority list for vaccinations because unfortunately we all know the legislature has pretty
003much thrown us all to the side and we're just supposed to take what they you know give us and then moving on to house spell 1005 which is ae on the agenda um that that is an awful bill um that will potentially move 202 million dollars of public education funding to private vouchers and unsupervised home schools so um they're both awful and so finally on wednesday of this week we are asking everyone for their support to wear black to represent the darkness facing indiana public education giving these bills and how things are going so now they're switching houses so there'll be still be time to contact your legislators so i'd just like to say thank you for that consideration thank you any other comments okay moving on next item on the agenda is recognitions or
004recognitions we want to start with mrs johnson if the parents want to come down closer and get pictures you're welcome to red pass student of the month is raelyn brewer she is a first grader in mrs krohn's room she was nominated by an instructional assistant mrs peters mrs peters nominated raylyn because she is always ready to work she listens to instructions well the first time she is respectful to me mrs peters and her classmates she tries her best at everything she does and one of the things that we really consider to be such a strong red path star is she is so kind in her actions and words so our student of the month is raylen brewer [Applause] congratulations last month my student of the month was had to go home and unfortunately tonight this
005is my december student of the month she's i plan to bring her here next month when she's able to be here but our current student of the month is mr craig ames prairie is a second grader in mrs carr's classroom and mrs carr nominated him saying cray is a great second grader and an incredible boy he works hard in school but even more importantly he is always kind and thoughtful he greets everyone with a pleasant good morning and his manners are non-stop all day craig recognizes when someone hasn't been chosen in a game and that will be the person that he will choose next he follows directions the first time they are given in class and does his best work whether it's a spelling game or a math test i know he will try his
006best participating in class is another strong suit of craze he asks questions and shares comments that relate to the topic and he sets a good example for his classmates with the good choices he makes every day i'm so happy that i'm able to be a part of craig's learning and growing craig ames is amazing young man pray [Applause] ames so hello so representing tz as our student of the month is lucas frye and lucas is a fifth grader in mrs hopper's classroom lucas you are taller than me all of a sudden it just happened you had a spurt so i want to tell you a little bit about what mrs hopper said about you so lucas has worked so hard this year he is a fun kid to be around and is always willing to
007share his strengths with others his knowledge about our presidents and historical eras has been especially impressive and helpful in our classroom discussions lately and i am so very proud of him so that's from mrs hopper so congratulations lucas [Applause] good evening our middle school student of the month kaylee schwab could not be here tonight but i let her mom know that i would read everything about her and totally embarrass her in front of everyone that's not around her and then do the same thing at a lunch coming up so in front of her peers kaylee has often been okay with being in the background and not being in the spotlight however recently she has become much more outgoing in class and took on a solo this year for the solo and ensemble contest she asked
008lots of questions practiced diligently and ended up having a wonderful performance so congratulations to kaylee schwab so the high school would like to recognize paige kaiser mrs mann is the one who nominated her mrs mann says that paige is a classy intelligent young woman who is focused on attending the best indiana university in our state purdue she has been accepted and is looking forward to a future of being a boilermaker she works diligently to get her tasks completed she adds great insights to issues we discussed in statistics and probability she's an outstanding worker and works with others and accepting responsibility she sees great things for this tiger cub in her near future that's by mrs mann okay the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda which consists of the meeting minutes from january
00925th 2021 the regular board meeting minutes and the annual board of finance meeting minutes from january 25th 2021. not there yet and the allowance of claims and financial report mrs gardner would you be able to present the claims in january of 2021 we had three payrolls january 1st january 15th and january 29th the january 1st payroll was 384 931.17 with that the accounts payable which includes the payroll taxes and retirement total is 109 245.98 the january 15th payroll was 383 971.7 the accounts payable for that payroll was 109 747.85 and our third payroll on january 29th was 425 dollars and 20 cents the accounts payable for that payroll was 134 281 dollars next in your packet you will find a list of prepaids for january 2021 and you'll see on there there were several debt
010services and pension bond payments were made for a total of 200 2 million 77 605.74 do you have any questions on that okay no it's a larger number um because we made our lease rental payment so we had our our debt so that's 1.6 of that 2.2 just to make sure you understand that okay next in your packet is the list of claims for today february 22nd 2021 and the total of the claims is one hundred eighty four thousand eleven dollars and five cents are there any questions i do not have any okay next in your packet on the financial report you will find the funds report the balance in the education fund at the end of january twenty twenty one is six hundred eighty five thousand four hundred fifteen dollars and forty four cents
011the balance in the operation fund at the end of january 2021 is one million one hundred eighty one thousand six hundred fifty seven dollars and six cents and then if you turn to the last page of the fund report you will see the balance of all the funds at the end of january is 5 million fifty two thousand five hundred eighty five dollars and thirty four cents and next in your packet you will find the depository and bank statement for january 2021 bank number six is hundred 522 fifty dollars and forty four cents bank number two three million nine hundred forty seven thousand nine hundred seven dollars and twenty five cents bank number nine three hundred thousand eighty eight dollars and twenty cents bank ten five hundred fifty one thousand eight hundred twenty nine excuse
012me eight twenty 827.69 and then for the outstanding checks in bank number 10 is 133 665.89 bank six and bank nine have zero outstanding bank number two has thirty five thousand eight hundred twenty two dollars and thirty five cents and the total of all the banks minus the outstanding checks at the end of january 2021 is 5152 585.34 and then if you look back at your fund report on that last page you will see that the statement of the banks is in balance with the fund report and i'd like to submit these for approval okay great thank you okay and the last item on the consent agenda or personnel reports personnel reports one and two part one and two and those are both on the web page and on the door to central office so
013can i get an approval or a motion to approve the consent agenda this evening hello give a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda any discussion or questions you're hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next item is on the agenda is reports and the first one being from the assistant superintendent dr french hi good evening um so normally i try to provide an informative update but tonight there are just a couple of really cool things happening with our teachers so i wanted to highlight and celebrate those so first of all i would like to recognize mr doug hudson and miss jen finnerty they presented at a statewide conference recently the hoosier association of science teachers and their presentation was on designing and programming robots and it was very
014well received so i just wanted to make sure that we highlighted and recognized them for their presentation also each year the lilly endowment provides 100 teachers in the state of indiana with a grant and this year our very own kristen hamilton is one of the recipients and that means that this summer kristin will have the opportunity to travel to italy and explore historical landmarks and works of art from italian italian mathematicians and scientists and then she'll transfer those experiences into her classroom by incorporating her experiences and her information that she gathered into her lesson plans for her students so we're just really excited that she has this opportunity um to explore and just our teachers don't get enough of these great things just kind of perks and so we're just really proud of her and
015congratulations kristin [Applause] thanks dr french next is the superintendent's report mr gibney so it was a trip for the superintendent also included in that so i just have a couple of brief items this month first is the second count day for the school year took place in february and we're at 1704 students after some some data cleanup so that's down 13 from from this past fall so they will adjust our funding come november and december next is uh we will certainly honor him at a at a future meeting but brock carrington finished as a state runner-up for our green castle wrestling program and that was an amazing and outstanding accomplishment and of all years to be able to uh to make it that far and and to finish so strong we're really proud of him
016and just the way he not only did he persevere but also the way he represented himself our school and our in our community so um certainly appreciate that and we'll recognize him at a future meeting and then on the personnel report just a long time educator from greencastle schools with her retire with her retiring at the end of the year catholic mrs catherine dory and also a cafeteria assistant mrs morgan just like to thank them for serving the students of our school and just being being good members of our staff that's all i have for this month okay thank you next item is old business and there is no old business so that takes us to new business and the first item is an approval request for an authorization to advertise notice of a public
017hearing for building projects yeah so as you recall this past fall i mentioned uh to the board that i wanted to work with an architect to conduct a study of our facilities and in our buildings um in working towards a building project in our school system we have things that are at the end of life maintenance items that need to be addressed safety security educational programming type items and this is the next step to continue to move that process forward in allowing us to replace some of that debt to take care of some of those some of those needs so we're seeking approval to advertise the notice of the public hearing and that will be the march 8th and the march 15th meeting so i'm just seeking board approval to move forward with uh the
018notice to uh notice of those hearings i make a motion that we give notice for those meetings second okay i have a motion in a second any discussion or questions hearing none all in favor exactly all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for 2021 and 22 special services contracts one being with or four occupational therapy services with michelle really and and the other being physical therapy services with cornerstone pediatric rehabilitation incorporated yep so uh the hour or excuse me the hourly rate hours per week was included in your board packet and we're just seeking to continue with those relationships into next school year and so i asked the board to provide approval for those contracts kim are they working out pretty well okay good these are difficult to find
019professionals okay guy get a motion to approve the contracts they'll make a motion have a motion in a second all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is the first reading of updated job descriptions for maintenance custodial services and food services yeah so i'm engaged in a a district or corporation-wide job description update we just want to seek greater clarity to responsibilities and who's in charge of what as much to communicate district-wide as anything and so these are the first uh employee groups um of eventually completing every employee group um in the corporation um you know myself included and so we're not requesting any action be taking excuse me to be taken this month these are just for your first reading i'll bring them for a second reading and adoption next
020month okay thank you be approved we're just reading them this time we don't yeah thanks for doing it jeff it's nice to work who's doing what good work okay last couple items on the agenda is an approval for the board resolution for public school teacher staff and administrators vaccinations yeah so i won't go into great detail because mrs hamilton did a great job of covering it but essentially this is a letter of support to governor holcomb and the legislature just we need to prioritize our school staff we've been open and remained open for the most part from the beginning of the school year and we believe it's important to uh to prioritize our school staff so just asking the board to support this resolution of course which will provide to senator bray representative baird senator
021crane any other legislative leaders in our area and then certainly state there were these two resolutions something we actually needed to vote on and i'm asking you yeah to vote on them and approve them um so that would be the first one right okay can i get a motion to approve the board resolution concerning administrator and staff teacher vaccinations i still move second yeah we have a motion in a second any discussion hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next item is an approval request for the resolution opposing the establishment of educational scholarship accounts and the expansion of the indiana school choice scholarship program yeah so these are two really bad bills as mrs hamilton has mentioned house bill 100 or excuse me 1005 has has cleared the house and will
022make its way into the senate but essentially you heard the governor tout additional funds for public schools well the expansion of school choice will eat into a lot of those dollars our public school students make up 90 of the student population in indiana and it's going to be extremely difficult to drive additional dollars to the classroom if they're expanding school choice and you know with school choice and in vouchers those schools don't aren't held to the same standard of accountability it's just not a it's not a good way to spend our taxpayer dollars and then the second item is the establishment of the education scholarship accounts and again it'll take money out of our public tax dollars out of our public schools and again many of these dollars will flow to private home schools and
023again there's not much monitoring of how those dollars are spent so again asking the board to support this resolution which we can we can provide those same groups of people i i just want to ask the question real quick and and um so because especially if somebody was to do this and these funds go but then the child comes back to the school that money doesn't come back right yeah so the money in our state the money follows the kid and that is one of the concerns and questions is if that if that money in its entirety goes to the kids or excuse me to go follow that student to the family and then say for instance to home school and then they all of a sudden want to come back mid-semester we're not going
024to see those funds and so it is going to put a it is going to make things uh tricky and difficult for us because we have to we build our budgets based on right and expected allotment of funding yeah that's that's really all i guess i guess the only other uh i don't know we need to make a motion first or if i'm free to go ahead and comment now or but i um i just want to thank jeff we asked him to let us know when things like this came up so we could contact our representatives and he make sure we know so we then contact representatives so i just wanted to thank him for that is there a way jeff that we can put these much like kristen and some of the other
025teachers association presidents did in the county can we we put these as letters to the editor and the banner or something to just yes absolutely i can i can share these share these with them or draw up basically put it in a letter of support absolutely okay those are two very important points yeah just i just think the lack of lack of the potential lack of transparency is is really dangerous too as we take you know schools are already strapped man and just as we you know potentially take take funds away and and take it to some place that maybe isn't as accountable um i mean that's just that's just just dangerous with with tax dollars um and and i don't really see how it helps public education at all so let's just now in
026fact schools with the higher you know higher levels of poverty are actually getting hit the hardest um based on the complex complexity in index so coming out of the pandemic you know is that really a time to take away more tax dollars from those students the students in schools that needed the most probably not in my opinion so these are just bad bad bills okay can i get a motion to approve this second resolution i'll make a motion i'll second we have a motion in a second any further discussion hearing that all in favor aye all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is other business does anyone have any other business i have just a couple of questions jeff the governor talked about giving more masks and testing to local schools who apply
027did we do that yeah so the binax kits and masks we we take any and all supplies that they're willing to give us because those things come in handy we don't have the capacity to administer those tests um here locally place too much of a burden on our staff but we did request them and we'll be sharing those or passing those off to the health department but certainly then distributing masks absolutely and then this is just kind of a random thought for the future next year year after green castle is kind of an interesting group when it comes to snow days and a lot of green castle was pretty clear i understand the safety issue out in the country we need to make sure those kids are safe but maybe sometime we can look at
028snow routes or something like that four days is a lot to be gone but we want to make sure everybody's safe at the same time so yeah absolutely we can we can look into that and you know i think you'll see people make changes to learning moving moving forwards too and just trying to maintain the continuity best we can but also provide an equitable experience if we did have kids in person versus those at home but yeah that's absolutely something we can look into and work with the association on yeah i just wanted to throw i didn't i didn't comment when we were discussing the the vaccine but i we've said it um before and i just want to say again man i think everybody uh the teachers and staff and just everybody um i
029i think we've done a really good job you know with a with a really tough task and uh and and so i hope i hope that there's some some years opening up to the to the need to do that the the talk about opening schools and doing that widespread across the country is is something that just gets talked about and talked about and and you know it can only help to do that and so um so just you know one i hope it happens and two i hope everybody you know i hope people are talking about it and and you know it's not just just us but you know legislators and and to just reach out and talk to anybody you can to get the word out because it's it's important and you know it's
030just going to be a slow go without it in my opinion indeed anyone else okay no other other business last on the agenda is adjournment can i get a motion to adjourn motion okay have a motion in a second all in favor all opposed ocean passage thank you all for coming this evening and be careful going home see you in a couple of weeks you