HCCS Work Session - February 10, 2025

001e e e and so uh for those who are watching uh virtually and for those in attendance today this has a completely different format uh than a regular scheduled board meeting there will not be quote unquote action items this evening this is a free flow of uh conversation between you as a school board us as administrators those who are presenting today so you can see that we have a few agenda items to cover uh this evening School Board please feel free uh to ask any questions make any statements uh that you may have on each one of these we have six agenda items to cover um this evening so first we'll start out we have some of our Mr Park and parks and the high school students that are here this evening so um Steve

002we'll turn it over to you and uh your students and um you can uh walk us through uh what you have for us this evening so uh we know Mr Park but everybody around the table may not know uh the three students so um we'll start I don't care which side we start on ladies first how about that ladies first we'll have you go first and then you introduce our yourselves to us and what year you are okay and if you are a senior what your plans are next fall good enough and if you say I don't know that's an acceptable answer okay so go ahead okay um my name is McKenna landram and I am a senior so my college plans I plan to go to Indiana Westland and double major in biology and

003environmental science science and then hopefully move on to a graduate program for marine biology touch this you're good okay my name is Isaac Grog I'm a senior as well I have not committed to a university yet but I plan on going to a university and I uh plan on majoring in business and I'm excited to see where that leads me thank you my name is Max Ro Brock and I'm a senior here at hunson North High School I plan to go to Hudson University to study forestry environmental Sciences as well as play baseball there sounds like to me Mr Park you've had an influence on uh your students here so well the good thing is I'm a senior as well so I guess we all have that income and um well for those of you

004who don't know my name is uh Steve Park and I teach AP environmental science here at Huntington North High School and each day I'm honored to work with Indiana's finest um and you're looking at three of them right here um and so starting probably a couple years ago and then uh beginning uh really hitting the road running uh at the beginning of last year uh group of students uh were working with uh the mayor uh and some of the folks downtown um not by my um pushing but by their choice and so they came to me and said uh what can we do and that's always a dream of mine when some students come and say what can we do um that that's pretty powerful and so starting last year um there were a group

005of students uh that were on the Huntington tree board the City of Huntington tree board along with uh Katherine who's in attendance back there um and we would just kind of um loose L meet whenever we could uh study hall time um lunchtime whenever the kids could get together um and kudos to McKenna for kind of spearheading this and so I've kind of just been along for the right I'll be honest um when you put three highly motivated people uh in charge of something things get done uh and they they pull other students along as well we've got some other students um members of our of our Green Team here as well in attendance and so uh kudos to those individuals who um are wanting to make a difference um not just for uh themselves

006uh but for our campus and for the state of Indiana as well and so um what has kind of come out of this is a new club here at hington North High School that um Dr D um approved a couple weeks ago um and also uh some information that uh they would like to um present to you to uh to make sure that everybody uh is on uh the same page basically uh some ideas some dreams some hopes um and so uh I am going to stop talking so that they can begin talking and I'm not sure send if that's will that go to okay um and so uh we're going to start off with um our short-term goals yeah so our short-term goal our immediate short-term goal is to get what is called tree

007Campus USA recognition at Huntington North High School and I don't know if anyone here has heard of the Arbor Day Foundation maybe yeah okay so the Arbor Day Foundation when it comes to Nature um beautification through uh trees and kind of just all things environmental is one of the top organizations nationally and they have this program called tree Campus USA where uh any school Hospital uh or university which meets their requirements can uh the the requirements are quite simple um but if they meet these requirements they can obtain the cert certification of a tree Campus USA so we have decided that we would love to um meet those requirements and uh go for that recognition the requirements are quite simple as I said there's all you have to do are some uh Community tree planting

008so our plans are to do that at is it Crestview Middle School correct we're uh for sure going to do that at Crestview Middle School U and we also have to do some peer-to-peer education to engage younger students a big thing like as we as we've noted we are all seniors um um we are thrilled that we have this passion and this um Team uh to spearhead this but we also are aware that we don't want this club or passion to phase out after we graduate so a big part of that and also conveniently a requirement is to engage younger students engage uh elementary students engage middle school students and what it is that we believe and uh our passions for beautifying and creating a more sustainable campus and then finally you have to uh

009celebrate some sort of annual nature day so whether that be uh celebrate Earth Day or um what's the other one Arbor Day Arbor Day okay there's a few options there um but just an annual celebration and then we would to after we do these things we would uh meet the requirements for the tree Campus USA so there's a few simple things right but something I want to note is if if I can draw your attention to the bottom right that is the extent of the tree campuses in Indiana currently and those are both elementary schools so to be clear we would be the first High School in Indiana to receive this um recognition and as we're planning never in the planning process was it like hey let's do something to look good but as we

010kind of moved along we noticed a side aspect of this is going to be positive publicity for Huntington North if we can succeed in our goal um we don't know exactly what that will entail but I would anticipate that if we are the first in EST state to achieve something that's going to go along with some positive recognition so if we could move on to the next SL please thank you that as well not I think it's all right so we're in phase one right now sorry for that little miscommunication but we're in Phase One and as you can see we're already pretty far into our goals uh We've assembled a team as you can see we partnered with H&S Administration we uh gave this presentation to them in advance to run things by them

011and then right now we're partnering with the hccs school board so those we're already about halfway there through phase one and then we also want to part partner with Earth Charter and could you explain a little more on Earth Charter um so Earth Charter is just a foundation and Katherine is actually who introduced us to this Foundation because she's a part of it so it's a foundation that's interested in financially supporting groups like ours and high schools that want to just raise environmental awareness and so they're willing to partner with groups like ours and give us financial support and also just other kind of of support and advice in how we can move forward and make change in our school absolutely and the final note on that slide is just the steps that I've already

012mentioned to reach that Campus USA recognition and that's the final step of phase one if we could move on to the next slide thank you phase two so phase two of our plans more of a long-term kind of thing so we've been talking about the okay so I'm gonna have to describe it so the strip of land that's between us in the back of the strip mall where the tailgating before home football games that's what we're talking about when we say the strip of land so we'd like to beautify that and so obviously we're going to have to get a lot of support for this and a lot of okays so that's going to come from both the administration team and the school board once again and we've actually already met with Jake Wyatt and

013we'll have to pair with him in the future but he came during Miss one of Mr Park's Apes periods and talk to us about the native plants that should be planted there because it's a really specific kind of habitat there's a lot of water that stands in that area so that's something we'll have to be attentive to so yeah we actually already talked to him but like I said previously we'll pair with him once again in the future and then Mike Snelling is another guy that we're GNA have to talk to he's the director of GIS so he works with the city engineering department and he's mapped out all the infrastructure beneath the land and both above with too with power lines that we're going to have to be aware of just to decide what

014kind of plants that are going to grow there and then we're going to have to obviously create a plan I mean it's an idea now but when it comes time we'll have to have a conceptual plan with step by step so we can get it done and then funding options so talking with Earth Charters schools or even community members who would be interested in giving us some support for this and then we'll present the final plan to the administration and the school board again so you know everybody's on the same page and we can move forward forward so next slide please so this image here on the screen just represents the red line that's right where we're talking about so that's the parking lot that the students park in and then above the red line

015that's the strip mall that we're talking about right there so that just that image is just representing of the location of where we're talking about and then this image right here just demonstrates one of the challenges that we're going to come in contact with which is just simply put the snow room removal um we're not 100% sure what the solution is going to be whether that's going to be the strip of snow that's just like there or if we want to pile it up or something like that not 100% sure what's going to happen there obviously we need to be in contact with one the snow plow removal um team but also the maintenance team here at Huns North to make sure they're okay with it as well because frankly put high schoolers don't have

016BMWs and Cadillacs they have less than Ideal Cars for most of them so often times they leak oil they leak transmission fluid also sorts of stuff like that and that stuff soaks up into the snow and the snow is then being pushed into the grass so we're going to have to combat that with some sort of way we haven't 100% figured out a solution to that quite yet can I add a note on that slide before we move on um as you can see there's opportunity for beautification right here and that's not a knock towards the businesses there at all that's just that comes always with the rear of a business but we also recognize that our high school is right there and um we talked with Mr digits about this and one thing he

017noted is you know when people come to a school the first thing they notice about it is what it looks like and what it looks like around and you know right now that's nothing fascinating or eye-catching but in our mind we envision an area where plants and trees are thriving and that won't that will take time obviously but that will greatly increase the um aesthetic of this area thank you so the benefits of all. work G to try to do in the future is obviously beautification of our campus like Isaac talked about when people come here if the school looks you know really cool then that's going to be better than the latter if it doesn't and then also privacy factors so something that we've also envisioned and talked about is doing projects between us

018and the highway so that's going to increase privacy for the school so that's going to be another benefit that's obviously way down the road but it is a benefit that could eventually occur and then space for mental health benefits so a common denominator in all the discussions between us and administration for the strip of land beautification is that we want it to be a space for all students to go outside and enjoy for various classes and we know that being outside of nature is often healing so we know that it's going to be a great place for mental health benefits that's a definitely a vision that we would like to have for that and then engaging other young students to continue the program and be environmental stewards that's one of our main goals because like

019Isaac also said previously we don't want this to just fizzle out once we're gone and graduated we want it to continue on and we want not just for the school but we also want that for the environment so teaching others how to be environmental stewards environmental benefits the list is long but those are the big ones carbon sequestering sound barriers water filtration air filtration and reduced runoff but like I said there's a lot more Mr Park could probably go into lots of detail about that and then connection between us and the other High School classes and also other high schools so we've talked about pairing with FFA and other science classes we have a greenhouse here so we envision maybe pairing with other a classes to grow some of our plants because that would be

020a great way to involve other students and just to make them proud of what we're doing so it's not just like oh yeah you know the green team made that pretty cool like give them a sense of Pride that they put work into it as well as us and then other beneficial Partnerships we've talked about those previously so yeah there we go perfect thank you so there's obviously lots of benefits to our goals and our ideas um but there are a few challenges we don't see these challenges necessarily as uh one side wins and one side loses I'm sure you guys see that all the time where a policy is proposed and one group is really upset because they might feel taken advantage of or they might feel like they're Los something but something we

021firmly believe is and we can elaborate on this going forward much more but there's we don't believe that there's an aspect of this where someone is hurt or where anyone is uh at loss and in fact we believe that everyone will benefit greatly um to some extent or in various ways from the uh ideas that we have but there still are a few challenges we might run into the first one is sustainability of the group so how do we make sure as we've noted previously that this does not fizzle out um we've talked with h hnhs Administration and there are a few safety is uh concerns there are electrical lines in this strip of land that we uh specifically talked about also puming and water lines so those could potentially be an issue but we're

022um as we plan this more directly we're going to work around those things precisely and then we also have to make sure that we plant the right stuff as McKenna talked about native plants as um Jake Wyatt presented to our group those are hugee so um obviously all plants are good but native plants are even better in this regard and then this would also take some uh maintenance but we believe with our group and as we continue to grow it the maintenance aspect would not be much of an issue because everyone in our group is super excited about it and they're all willing to put in the the little bit of work that it would take to maintain this uh funding is another issue but that again I don't we don't see that to be

023as much of a challenge as you could you would anticipate it being uh as McKenna mentioned with Earth Charter they they could help fund us and then there's also lots of private donors throughout the community that are very on board with our ideas and then finally uh Max's picture noted there's potential for as well we live in Indiana he said snow comes and if we fill this area with trees there's um that's taking away an area that they pile snow um but we'll have to be conscious of that and potentially leave some space untouched for the snow and at this time that's the conclusion of our presentation so thank you all for your uh attentiveness and your time but I would also like to ask that if anyone has questions or comments um please let

024us know or share those with us now questions comments from any of you um I'll start um thanks for bringing this in front of us I think it's a great initiative I I'm like you I don't see many U negatives to this at all um I do have a question um so how big is your team right now uh currently we have 12 um and that's without any advertising um and so uh as we continue to uh have our Apes class AP environmental science class um that's where we see the sustainability of of the group coming from um and because one of the things that uh we want to ensure is that um looking long term that it's it's not a burden upon maintenance you know it's not um a burden upon you know the

025custodial staff here what have you um one of the things I uh and Mr Hamill who's been really active in this as well uh really wanted to impress upon the students is the fact that um this is how things get done um you throw ideas out there uh people make comments on them uh people ask questions and so um I am super proud of this group for uh kind of stepping up and saying you know this is we're going to go through the right right procedure um and take it step by step and kind of set the foundation for for what's to come next which they probably will never see which I think is kind of exciting that they you know all good ideas start with a dream and and that that's where they're at

026right now and so the purpose of this was to make sure everybody's on the same page um and because you know and we were super excited to be at a work session because that's that's where ideas get thrown out um and so any questions any comments that any of you have uh are greatly appreciated okay other comments questions from anybody thanks for bringing to us early because I think you're going to run into a stumbling block that we need to help take care of help you guys take care of uh if I remember correctly Mr trout we don't own that whole strip yeah so Cindy if you would go back um to the slide with the red line right there so Bard what you see see the two so this is popler Street I call

027it popler Street extended all right and it's ironic the mayor and I were just having this conversation today so see Cindy's cursor right she goes up that there right there about half that red line is owned by the city to about a little further right there and then the rest of that line to Viking Lane is owned by the school district and so um this is your lucky day guys is because um we were just getting ready in the next month with two new St two new school board members to relook at this piece with the city okay because on the right side of that is are signs remember and the city had some concerns regarding code issues with it's technically their property but our sign is on their property but if we own the

028property it wouldn't be a problem blah blah blah we right now as a district do all the maintenance of that entire red strip there the problem is from that cursor down about halfway it's pretty swampy in there because there's some Summers we can't even get a tractor across there to mow and so if you remember right the five of you that were on the board we're just starting to have these conversations last year the pros and cons of us taking over that uh property um along the way and so uh students if the school board decides to move forward welcome you can join the party so to speak and I mean seriously you can see how that entire process works um uh within that but no I don't think that's any reason for us not

029to continue to support this program other than the fact is was we have to work out those details with the city yet yep and I I do know that that's I just happened to remember that Bren keplinger had also re recently talked about that and just reminded me that hey you guys ever going to move forward with that yes because the difference is with two new school board members I was waiting for them to get their feet on the ground and get and get going and then um when somebody wants to gift you something you always have to stop and think about the pros and cons and you guys are exactly right we've done the study with what's underneath the ground there and you hit the nail on the head of everything that's running through

030there um right now uh the history lesson is when this property was bought back in the mid 60s late 60s for whatever reason this parcel right here has never been addressed and so uh you give us a little extra motivation to address it at this point in time and that's what we got coming that's what we have as a board coming forward okay so I I would also say uh it could be a great science project at some point for the AP class to maybe help us figure out some of that wetness there and figure out if there's plants there that could help us improve that as well so you it's been uh it's been a huge benefit to have Katherine as a l on to the to the mayor and to the city um

031and we knew that there was um kind of a gray area I guess with ownership and you know is it these three feet is it these six feet um and as soon as we had uh Jake Wyatt out there um he saw the um he saw all of the Swale the the swamp as a huge benefit um and he immediately rattled off a dozen if not two dozen plants that um could easily be uh put in there not only for uh to to help remove the the runoff but uh for the pollutants as well that we all contribute to uh in that process so it was interesting how you know those of us who want dry land and for some people that's that's not um the the most beneficial thing and so um we we're

032actively looking into those types of issues so board what we will do is it's to prong here is a um if you're in agreement to move forward and for their documentation purposes we could easily place this on the 24th board meeting under consent agenda since we're discussing it this evening to support their progress moving forward which is just another level of documentation they would have two is that um I will reach back out to Mayor strick but to get more information and as us as a board maybe coming up in an you know at the board meeting or a future work session is discuss this about half that property there is what's in question um within that lastly uh the tailgating goes on on just at the farthest reaches left um knowing if you notice

033the last couple of football games they moved that and I think that would even give you some more space there to do what you wanted to do because I think in the future the tail gaining aspects will occur as you can see at the top leftand corner here uh those areas are what's being used and then at the Gate entrance and so on and so forth so I think that could be easily done Mr Park I'll stay in touch with you if we're working with the city and the school board through this and you guys want to with your students watch how that process works um we would um gladly incorporate you into that into those steps so we would appreciate that yes little uh government action to ready to go but I want to

034tell you you three are very impressive um I I I'm not sure at 18 the time that all three of you were talking I could sit there in front of all of us as adults and do that you're you are impressive uh people and I am grateful for each one of the three of you you're incredible credible students and we're very proud of all three of you and Mr Park anything that you touch anything that you have your hands in and leading students is always topnotch and again this is just another example of you and working with kids and students and the impact you're having on students is amazing and so thank you for what you do too uh the smiles on their three faces say it all about that but we are grateful for

035you also thank you board any other comments questions so we'll bring this to consent agenda and then I'll keep Mr Park a breast of what we're doing with the city with the rest of this and we'll keep kind of include you in that process also okay thank you thanks so much for your time thank you um next up uh DOD thank you for your patience you can come up and join the table uh Pat we'll turn this section over to you then okay so this evening we have DOD cman with us from mkm uh architecture regarding the possibility of some parking lots and tennis courts that need to be done uh hopefully this summer if all goes well and the bids come in and uh we're able to do that and there's actually a fourth

036lot depending on what bids come in at if we can uh fit that in the project as well so I'll turn it over to dot um thank you and Mr President is there anything that you would like me to focus on otherwise I can give you a bit of background of who we are and what do yeah well let's do this okay um you're new to us I am uh not new to me necessarily we've met a few times let's we just need to do a little backtracking here um to bring you up to speed here um as all of you know uh we are keeping uh Mr thornsbury enormously busy and quite frankly have just about maxed him out here with the high school the restrooms the salamony You Name It We we've got

037Terry and his entire team um very very busy so in a conversation late fall uh Terry and I were discussing a little extra an extra set of hands so to speak to come in and help us with parking lots so he can remain focused on some of the other pieces and so um Dodd uh was suggested to us as that person who could potentially help us Terry is not going anywhere vidiian is not going anywhere but um mkm is another level of supports with Mr thornsberry that we're using here right now Terry's somewhat got his fingers in on this too but um dot is really helping us make sure we can get this to the finish line so um we thought we would take just a couple minutes to have you explain who you are

038uh your company the work that you've been doing just so they have some familiarity with you DOD okay perfect and thank you for having me tonight um again as you've heard my name is Dodd katman our firm is mkm architecture and design uh we've been around um for quite a while now we're a firm of about 30 people based in Fort Wayne although we have some roots in Indianapolis and um another city soon um we are a firm of Architects interior designers and planners so when we work on um most projects or larger projects we'll bring in mechanical electrical um engineer low voltage systems um we we have a whole gaggle of team members that we're working on currently at Homestead High School between theater consultants and data consultants and food service consultant you name

039it uh you've probably all had similar experiences on some of your projects um I personally do quite a bit of community work I I do work with school systems I do work with Civic organizations um I do work with Life Plan communities in fact several years ago just up the road at Heritage Point um we did a large expansion right across the street from cresview and perhaps my most important quality is I am married to an educator so they they rank very highly in my my um my thoughts and in fact for years uh Deb was a teacher at ronoke elementary school and then from there moved on to Early Childhood learning after that so I have a lot of connections there we do quite a bit of libraries across the state and in fact

040across the Midwest and years ago we uh did the library here in town as well as other projects um schools we do everything from um capital projects summer maintenance work um have worked with different School syst systems uh doing um some work now with um Rochester uh done work with Fort wi Community with steben County um Easttown County uh and and quite a bit of work actually at Southwest Town County so between new schools Renovations additions and the current monster that um we're on six years of the hostage crisis here going it's a very long drawn out uh process of of new construction and renovation that'll amount to about 3/4 of a million square foot uh when all said and done this fall and I hope I don't have to take that back so we're

041counting on that um I guess I I probably have a lot of um values that are consistent I think with teres who you know very well I know and that uh we're Believers on um doing what we say will do and I I wasn't going to go through the brochure in detail I'm not sure that's important to you but I'll say it's either the last page or the second to last page uh I've included a copy of our um Quality Control process which we take very seriously on every project so um currently as um superintendent trout mentioned were um helping you out to um work on um Crest viiew Riverview Salamon and Lincoln hopefully all four of those schools get your parking lots back up to speed questions for uh DOD comments questions um I

042appreciate your you taking the time to to come and introduce yourself to us um honestly it was really just kind of about that we've been very comfortable obviously Mr thornsbury and uh had had a chance to to meet with you or hear from you so taking the time to do this is important to us I really appreciate that so much um I see with the with the homestead project you got time to do anything else I mean I've been by that thing a while so that's uh that's been a monster uh and we're actually we're teamed with a a firm from Indianapolis named CSO so we each have close to half of the architectural plus all the specialty Consultants that are involved on that so it's we're just to um at the end of construction

043now going through progress meetings you know every week and trying to keep that one on TR yeah Terry asked for some extra support and help just from the sheer standpoint of timelines coming up here and trying to get bids in and doing all those type of things um as you know this right now he is very busy just here at the high school with that and for us to get these parking lots in out bid and do that um when Terry and I were having convers ations like I said late fall this is a suggestion of his and one in which I gladly supported with that too so other comments questions that you may have at this point in time for mkm as an as an architect uh what are your qualifications in looking at

044pavement and parking lots um we have we also have a civil engineer on our team I mean I've work almost every project we do um has pavement of some type um and we have a civil engineer that we're also working with um I'm not a person going out and doing core samples okay of the pavement and going through specialty testing um who's your engineer um gensi Engineers Pete gensi is the civil engineer that's teamed with us Ju Just U my name is Aaron Carl I'm actually a civil engineer and L I build parking lots a lot okay so I was just questioning no thank you well and in this case for the most part it's it's Milling off an inch and a half and and putting a surface coat back on and restriping but as

045you can imagine as you know there are a lot of areas where that need more intensive work done so um the art is trying to decide where to start and stop oh and and by the way the project includes uh tennis courts also at cret view so I just getting ready to bring that up yes too so not at the high school at both the middle schools I thought yes okay thank you for your question any other comments or questions for mkm well dot it's good to see you thank you for spending a few moments with us and for them to get to know you we have so much trust with Terry um that we just wanted an opportunity to spend a couple minutes with you with that uh with this process also okay my

046pleasure thank you for having thank you thank you um next um when we met uh a couple months ago uh it was discussed about the possibility of having Mr Stevenson come in um hi Matt hello how are you all right good uh before Matt starts Matt is a teacher here at the high school uh has been with us for a couple of days uh how many years have you taught Matt 22 years 22 years teach here at Huntington North High School and he's also the president of our insurance trust and does an absolutely outstanding job and I appreciate you and your leadership in that uh Endeavor Matt that's not easy uh and so what he's going to do this evening is spend a few minutes with you uh sharing about our employee benefit trust and

047then you'll have a ample time to ask him any comments or questions that you may have about this too so Matt we'll turn it over to you all right thanks John um as John said I teach here at the high school and about I feel really loud um probably about 4ish five years ago I was elected to be the president of the trust I had been on the trust for probably 7 or eight years prior to that um so just a little information about the trust uh the trust was established in agreement with hccsc and the employees of uh Huntington County Community Schools basically exactly 30 years ago um the trust is made up of 10 voting members there are five administrators and there are five teachers um we have four um non- voting members

048um and if as you look on the screen up there our trust administrator is Julie Shear um and Julie is responsible for writing all the checks for claims and everything um so Julie does a great job I am eternally grateful for Julie work she is great at what she does um and just another part of our team is lhd benefit advisors specifically Ben fuel birth we have been working with lhd advisers for over 10 plus years and we have a great working relationship with them and um prior to that we had a gentleman named prior to Ben we had uh Jeff Haden from lhd advisors and he's since retired so you can go ahead and move on um I think one thing I just wanted to mention here as we're discussing this is um I

049guess I don't want to say it's misconception necessarily but mainly just a misunderstanding of how the trust works I think a lot of times people think the trust excuse me that our claims are paid like currently we are going to be working with uh Anthem working starting in this year we started in January 1 um and I think a lot of people think that Anthem pays are claims but that is not true we're a self-funded plan uh and so all of our claims that go through um are paid through the premiums that hccsc pays and that the employees pay for their part so all of that gets deposited every I don't it's every two weeks now um every paycheck and those go into the checking account for the trust and then Julie she takes the

050time to write all the checks for all those claims that come through that are processed through uh currently Anthem and so I've also included the breakdown of premium collection for the general classifications of all the employees um and how much each classification pays um out of their paycheck and how much HCC hccsc pays so you can go ahead thank you um so I guess the big biggest thing that we I need to address here is the plan performance of the last several years that has been the largest nugget that we've had to struggle with over probably since even two years before I was the president here it's just been um rising cost of insurance has just been outlandish so as you take a look at this graph and I will tell you these graphs have

051come from lhd they supplied those to us um this is the most recent graph we are going to be meeting actually Thurs day of this week um and I'm sure we will have a new updated graph for 2024 U but as you take a look look um those bars are just showing the budget and the plan the expenses and you can see since basically 2018 it has been a real struggle and we've we've continued to um although we've not been meeting the goal here in terms of um matching the budget here we've still maintained staying under kind of the trend um I suppose you could make an argument that we're not staying under the trend but in terms of maintaining costs as best as we possibly can at this moment uh we're doing decently so

052you can see up in the upper right hand cor or leftand corner there uh the trust is over 10 years have been increasing by about 4.4% but the trend is 6% so um here's similar graph um and the top line at the top is showing our reserves um and you can kind of see what is that about 2013 2017 we had some relatively High reserves we were sitting pretty and then um again the inflation of in medical costs have really hit us hard um and you can see over there on the far right hand side um after the ibnr um that's the incurred expenses that just haven't processed yet um we were estimating at the end of 2023 again please understand that there's there's data out there for 2024 but just hasn't totally compiled and

053as a trust we haven't gotten all of that just yet we will hopefully have that on Thursday though um but at the end of that year we were sitting at about 22.3 million and again you can see those you know since 2015 we've had struggles to stay under budget so um this is 2024 this is the best I have for you at this point and in terms of what the 2024 year looked like um and this has been pretty typical the last few years as we kind of get to the middle of the year you can see that gigantic light blue Spike uh those are claims and you can see we're at um at that point in the year we were at 103% of the budget um so we were over budget at that point

054um and then we dropped back below the next month and then it kind of kept trickling up and then what happens every single year happens every year not to be un expected there um but come December everybody's getting those last things done having those major surgeries um a lot of people have met deductibles um the the plan just takes a real hit at the end of the year and the hope is is that we've stayed under budget enough throughout the entire year by the time we got get to December that um we can stay under budget with December um but it just hasn't happened the last few years um so the primary driver of our our uh you know not staying under budget here our high claims um if you aren't aware um being a

055self-funded plan we have stop-loss coverage in the tune of $175,000 so we pay all those claims up until $175 the trust does and then once we reach $175,000 is essentially our insurance R our insurance so um we will get reimbursed for everything that goes over $175 $175,000 per member so um last year you can see we in 2024 we had seven members reach stop loss now I I don't have the Actuarial chge to know exactly what the expected number is but through numerous meetings um usually for a group our size they usually say around five five to six so I talked to Ben um he's again our adviser and he said you're running running high in terms of the number of people who've reached stop loss um now that's not the only issue we also

056had 12 members that their claims exceeded $90,000 um and I was looking at the data that we had received and of the of the 19 of those people that were at a restop loss or getting up really high 18 of 19 are still actively enrolled um some of those things kind of fall off because they're just like onetime things but you know some of them might be cancer or you know whatever else that just are that never go away well hopefully go away but um those things are just some of those things are just continuous and they'll be on our they'll be on our books for a while potentially um so last year we had 775 $755,000 of reimbursements from stoploss so I me you think about $755,000 that's more than a month of claims

057that we would normally expect we ideally we would expect to see about 550,000 in 550,000 is in claims I shouldn't say that $550,000 in expenses in a month and you know we're talking 750,000 in sorry about that in uh stop-loss reimbursements for the year so we're talking over a month of reimbursements that we had to get back we had to we had to pay them but then we get reimbursed for those Matt Matt talk a little bit about if you just elaborate why that $90,000 figure so important why we Mark that because it that could be easily lost this uh yes um so the $90,000 obviously is a large number okay so when we're talking about those people that are reaching stop loss when when they're accumulating claims when they get to 175 it's kind

058of like okay we don't have to pay for those anymore but then those people that are over $90,000 you know something else happens for them we still are paying those claims that's a large amount that they're not reaching that stop loss but we are still responsible for everything that they have until they reach that so that 90,000 when when I was sent this information um that was kind of the C off that they use like these are your really high claim amounts that haven't reached stop loss at this point go ahead thank you um so this this data is not completely accurate at this point because it's obviously been two weeks and we're constantly every week paying claims and everything so as of January 31st um the checking account that Julie writes uh claims checks

059from had $251,000 in it um now we do have a I do have a qualifier to say on that in just a second um now back in the late fall I guess early winter um hccsc has dedicated to make bu monthly payments um we were only getting premium payments into the account um one once a month um and that sometimes disrupted cash flow we'd get we'd get it get a little low and we still had to wait a couple weeks or wait a week before those uh claims got into the checking account so having that those premiums come in every two weeks um The Hope is that that will help with cash flow as we're writing checks uh the PNC there's two PNC accounts the PNC operating is basically a money market account um that's

060funds that have been taken out out of the reserve account the reserve account is an uh investment account um and so we have to keep some money in that operating account for um essential emergencies if we have a a claim run that is just too big to bless you um if we have a claim run that's just a little bit too big to cover with what's in the check account then we can use that operating fund to transfer over um so as as of the end of January we had approximately 999,000 that is the lowest I've seen it okay now that two 251,000 again that was at the very end of January since that time obviously more claims have come in we are working on the runoff of UMR I'll talk about that in a

061moment um and now we're also starting to get some new claims from the new insurance year so um so we've we're kind of finishing up the previous year and starting to work on the beginning of this year um and I I will address that a little bit more as we move I think you can go ahead thanks Cindy is is that actually January 31st of 2025 oh sorry that's a thank you that should be 2025 thank you so um the biggest issue is how do we try to mitigate those those costs how can we find ways to um try to keep ourselves under budget and try to grow our reserves um so twice in the last 5 years we've explored moving to Parkview Signature Care um we've looked into that closely we've been been right

062on the doorstep two different times um and both times it was just and again I want to remind everybody that this is a 10p person team this is not a me decision um the team decided that it just didn't make sense at that time uh the primary reasons um I've written up there is that the verifiable savings were minimal um I think the first time we looked at it it would have maybe saved about 2% if I recall correctly that's been about four years four or five years ago um was about 2% and we didn't feel that at 2% it was worth the disruption and care for everybody um and so um that was part of the reason and the verifiable savings and again I'm I want to be careful about what I say here

063but the the information that Parkview will give us is what they say but we have to go by what we know in the factual numbers that we can fully evaluate um and so while they say this is not completely accurate we can't prove that um through the numbers so we can do have them do um repricing on everything um and like I said there there's just things that we can't verify um the other reason that we've we haven't moved to a part viiew Signature Care is because of limit limitations of network accessibility um people have their opinions about Park viw and we just try to keep our Network as broad as possible um and then as you may have heard in the last year or so um actually longer than that is there's concerned about

064part viiew pricing so I'm not going to get into that any further because I'm sure we've all heard that so um a couple years a well it was a couple years ago yeah we started a paid health program we did that for two years essentially that was uh looking for alternative sources of specialty drug funding um so that that was one of those programs that kind of run its course and paid Health was kind of running out of options on finding that Alternative Care so it wasn't as beneficial as it was when we first started um last year we tried to work with Garner Health we did that for a year um what that was doing is sending trying to send members to Preferred providers and if they went to those preferred preferred providers they

065potentially could have been reimbursed for their uh for their care um so that I had talked to several people that had done that and they were very happy with that we just couldn't get people to use it uh the main thing I think they were just not happy with um their choices of people they we had a there was an app that they could use they could get on there um but I just I just think that was the main issues they know though the doctor I want to use is not on the app so we just had low utilization um so that was the reason we W walked away from that um The Wellness incentive um The Wellness incentive oh probably five years probably before I was president was $800 we had um members

066could get their blood drawn um there's lots of different requirements but out of the trust funds um so again hccsc isn't paying this it's coming from the trust funds um we would offer a wellness incentive of $800 to uh the HSA accounts of our members that was a drop down we dropped that down to $700 I think my first or second year on um and then I think the year after that we had to drop it down to 350 because it became obvious that we can't afford to do that um so we're still trying to give them something um and then this year we we did away with it partly because we also had to deal with do away with hsas in general so we were in the process of eliminating that anyway um but

067it's kind of a moot point at this point with our plan um and then the last thing on that list I think I had one more that I wrote down was a we also explored the idea of using a preferred Clinic provider and working with Cardinal Family Medicine we were really excited about this opportunity um working with uh Cardinal Family Health over there beside Starbucks and we were excited about the opportunity of having direct Primary Care with them our members would have had access to to that Primary Care care hopefully working with Dr Fleer over there would have given the opportunity to catch some of those things as they were experiencing health issues and he would be kind of on part of our team to um help them explore and get to providers that he

068he or we deemed as quality providers um unfortunately again the cost risk of that was too high I think we were talking somewh around $500,000 to do that and again with the position that we were in it it just wasn't feasible um so we're hoping that if we can get ourselves back on solid footing we can try that again because again we without the guarantee that people are going to utilize that essentially that's just money flying out the door with no guarantee of the savings coming back to us um so essentially you know we've we've tried a lot of things we've explored a lot of a lot of options but essentially the main thing um that we have control over that we can try to do because obviously people using their insurance is what we

069want them to do but we can't control how much that costs necessarily um is through plan design so uh you can flip this slide there for me a couple times I suppose so let me give you an idea of what the plan looks like as of today and the changes that were made for 2025 so before I start this um there are significant changes for 2025 so we've made some serious plan design changes I've talked to sever several people um I've had several people come to me and said they're very happy with what's going on right now in fact Mr Park just said something to me as before he left um he said he really likes how this new insurance plan is working so uh we have been on a high deductible healthcare plan for

070many years I I can't even tell you exactly when how long we've been on one but it's been for many years so we've switching over to a PPO plan so um we're moving from UMR to Anthem health sync Network Health Anthem health sync network is a PO um and what that does is it makes Lutheran Health Network the tier one provider for us um essentially what that means for members is that's lower co-pays for them and lower deductibles for them Park View is tier two okay and that's always been a struggle to think about that because they are in our backyard um but unfortunately they are the highest cost healthc care provider um one of the highest in the state un unfortunately um so going to park viw will cost our members higher co-pays and

071higher deductibles um now I think there's been some misconception from people um it's been communicated out numerous times but even then still there's still misconception um and so I want to clarify that with all of you that members have full access to both of those networks there is no limitation on going to Parkview or going to Lutheran so I think sometime some members were confused about oh I I'm signing up for Lutheran or Parkview that's not the case um they have both options available to them at all times it's just Parkview will cost them more um and of course when they go to Parkview it's going to cost the plan more so that's why we have to do that um for the first time in uh geez years I couldn't even tell you again when

072was the last time we had copays um so our members will be paying co-pays when they go see the doctor and it's on one of those later slides we'll get to in a second uh dedu deductibles are now embedded um just kind of explain what that means embedded deductibles mean that there is a each member of the family has their own deductible so what that's really good for it's really good for families that have like one particular person in that family who uses a lot of the health care so that person only has to meet the single deductible whether that be2 or $3,000 depending on the plan they signed up for and then they're moving on to you know the insurance is then covering everything with the co- Insurance before it was a non-embedded deductible

073meaning you had to meet the entire uh deductible for the entire family so even if this one person was the one using all the healthare with they that one person had to get to the inductible before insurance kicked in so again that is that is good for families especially um so I mentioned earlier about hsas um hsas are not supported under this plan and the reason are is legally we can't we can't provide them and the reason is we can't provide them is because when people go see their doctor and they're paid with a co-pay um the insurance is paying the rest of that visit so the insurance is paying first dollar coverage for that visit and so because of that just legally we can't allow employees to have an HSA now they still have

074the option of um opening an FSA if they choose to um with American Fidelity but that's their decision um we have TR scrips is our far Pharmacy benefit manager we've been working with him for a couple years um and that seems to be going really well um our premiums for this year increased 11 and a half% um with this switch we were actually looking at a 177% increase if we did not switch switching to this plan we also increased that bottom line to try to help the reserves to try to build those reserves a little bit um so we're hopeful that that amount right there that's 12 and a half% increase will get us more on stable footing help us build some of those reserves as we work through the rest of this year so

075uh I think that was all I need um on this screen are the monthly premiums that members pay um so that there's two Colum well there's two main columns that there's poo plan one and PPN poo plan two uh poo plan one and two are essentially the same thing the only difference is po plan two is a little bit more little less expensive but the deductible is higher so um so there's a little bit of difference I think I said that right there's a little bit of difference between those in terms of the premium that the members pay um so I don't know that there's anything else I need to say about that screen uh I know this is maybe a little hard to see unless you have it in front of you but those

076are the co-pays that um members would pay um you can see they're essentially the same thing from poo plan one and two um you can see at the top under deductible uh po plan two does have a higher deductible so let again let me just try to clarify this if you just focus on PPN poo plan one that's tier two or excuse me tier one on the left side of that kind of redish box so that's if you were to go to Lutheran providers your deductible would be $2,000 if you were in tier two so if you're going to visit uh Parkview or any other tier 2 provider your deductible for that would be 5,000 U but again members have access to both but it's just a higher cost and you can see the uh

077deductibles and Co insurance for those two how they compare um and one of the questions that I had been receiving from from Members um one of the concerns that they had had seeing that there was tier one and tier two and knowing that hey we're sitting in Huntington and the closest emergency care is Huntington Park View um they're they were concerned about that and I said understandably but the thing is that all emergency care is considered tier one so if you get admitted to the hospital um because of that emergency that is supposed to all be under tier one care so under the the cheapest amount now if they admit you to the hospital for something not really related to that um whatever they deem whatever the hospital deems however they code that it could

078slide into tier two if you're at Huntington Hospital but um emergency carry is tier one so that again I think that alleviated some concerns that some of our members had about that thank you um these next few slides are going to be pretty quick um just Delta Dental um we this year we bundled this is interesting because uh Delta is also offering Vision as well they're partnered with vssp which we've had for a while so by partnering with by bundling Delta Dental with Delta Vision which is also vsp's Network um there was a little bit of savings there but um the savings for Delta or for dental and vision are usually pretty pretty minimal so you can go ahead and move on there um oh hello so there was the vision again I don't think

079there's too much a need to say about that uh and the last thing I just want to mention here is one of the things that is always a struggle is making sure our members understand how to use their care and what is available to them and what they can find and the information that they have available to them um so this year um lhd our again our benefit adviser has provided to us a service free of charge and that's creating a hub for us that we have linked on our benefits page this is not really what it looks like I just took some snap some screenshots of what that looks like but allows them to go in and see our the benefit guide very very easily it's right there at your fingertips it's much more

080organized than it has been in the past um so there's a I think if you click one more there's another yeah so this is just clicking on one of the the links there we've got some uh 2025 frequently asked questions so those are things that have been there since the fall when we first did open enrollment we had those frequently asked questions um so they can get all that information that they want um there's also an AI generated question and answer thing on there as well so if they're looking for something specific they can type that in and that should give them a a decent explanation what that is um so I've been working to when I meet with people or when I meet with people and or try to answer their questions uh through

081emails which I usually how to get those things I always try to steer them toward the Hub say this is is the best place you can get their answer your answer I will try to answer their questions the best I can but then try to steer them toward the Hub so um so that is my presentation so if we have questions concerns Mr trout no uh questions for Matt comments nice job Mr Stevenson very detailed I do spouses on our our coverage if they're covered by another plan I'm sorry even if they're covered by another plan so let me let me talk about that just a little bit that is another thing we've looked at in terms of we've talked about that I won't say we looked into it too deeply um and there's a

082reason we haven't um but that has been one of the things we've we discussed in terms of trying to find some ways to save the plan the struggle that you have with that and our adviser said he's he's seen this go both ways is when you say okay we're going to carve out spouses then is he seen it you know pay off well and he said it's been a disaster at times and the very difficult part of that is to get that information from members and to know who really has insurance or who whose spouses really have insurance and who don't um the other issue is that when you start eliminating people how many of those people are going to be your cheaper members and who's not are we eliminating people who are high cost

083members are we eliminating people who are essentially not costing us anything and obviously when you're talking about carving people out you'd want to keep the people who are cheap for you so but again that's that's very difficult data to to get to and to really know for sure um because that has to come directly from the members without a for sure knowing what we'd get into it's just really difficult cliff to jump off of at this point so especially in the situation financial situation we're in if we were in a little bit better financial situation maybe we could explore that a little deeper but yeah just concerns yeah I mean we have um looked at a variety of specific pieces like that that we could do and what Matt has done a great job is

084the data that we have provided that we gave you the evening is our is our best plan moving forward to ensuring that we get to their bottom line right um and so we want to provide highquality Health Care uh for our employees at a reasonable cost um you know I'm not thrilled about on a personal level on the Park View piece but as a whole we felt like this was our best option moving forward for long-term sustainability quite frankly and so we're still giving our members two you know they can they can go either either Direction with that obviously um there's one better than the other but we're still open to that and so when I first came in I'm one of the first ones that brought out uh spous of carv out uh within

085that but Ben has done a tremendous job with the data saying I'm not so sure that's going to get us to where we want to go with that and so um Matt's spot on on with that good what else Deb um are mental health needs covered under the insurance policy um yeah we also have um employee assistance program so that's also linked on the The Hub as well so that's helpful as well very good and do you have a relationship with any of the um Wellness facilities around the area like the or some of the others where they will give a discount to members who are participating in your insurance plan I'm sorry I start speaking before you quite done I didn't catch the very end of what you said I apologize just wondered if

086if any of the any of the um facilities around the county offer a discount for your members like why or well I I think usually those things are usually discounts for the employee way of hunting County Community Schools when they offer those not just specifically for the insur for the insurance off but they do have the they have in the past I currently don't know what I couldn't tell options they have at this point yeah they usually if the Y approaches us they'll do it as the entire uh School Community right so it's not I don't want to mislead you it's not linked to the insurance plan it's more done so hey there's usually the why with the Y quite frankly they send something out very early in the year we have we have staff

087to takes advantage of that but it's not linked to the insurance ins right bership drive thank you thank you very much yeah other comments questions uh Matt thank you um I'm sorry did you have one Aaron just a quick one on the the co-pays and stuff does that come out of the deductible or is that additional so a a co-pay does not count toward your deductible but they do count to your out-of- pocket maximum at the end of the year so or whenever if you get to that it would count toward that so deductibles do not count as a general rule again pretty much any copay wouldn't count so others sorry Aaron didn't see you others well Matt thank you it's very detailed incredibly informative we'll try to put you out here about this time

088every year excuse me the update was spot on I'll see you Thursday afternoon but it's good to see you thank you um up next um we are really excited to share this with you um Tiffany has just been almost jumping up and down for the opportunities to do this I've seen a couple of these couple weeks ago and so I'm not going to steal your thunder Tiffany I'll let you take it from here okay okay well good evening thank you for letting me be here tonight I am really excited to share some new marketing materials with you um last spring The Learning Center was contacted by the donwood foundation and asked if we would like to participate in a marketing campaign centered around Advanced manufacturing um we happily accepted their invitation and anchor films out

089of Fort Wayne produced two videos for us the first focuses on telling the story of one of our welding students and why she chose to participate in our program uh we are thrilled with how this video turns out um we have put this on our Facebook page the district website we've sh it to every eighth grader in the county and then we have a second video also that anchor films did that talks a little bit more specifically about the Learning Center so I'm going to show you both of those now I'm Jasmine Shephard and I'm a welder before welding I I wasn't a very motivated kid like at all I would do my assignments and everything it just if something wouldn't click with me was like too scared to ask about it so I just

090kind of didn't but like after welding being able to see it firsthand it was just so much easier I think it was either seventh or eighth grade I had a class that was for college careers and stuff they showed like a slideshow thing of a bunch of different things they offered with the high school and I saw the welding video and the thing that stood out the most was just the fact that you can be creative with it and also I I just like playing with fire the first time I welded it was I was really nervous I think as soon as like I put the hood down and I got a bead down I knew immediately that I would be doing this for like ever so definitely found my passion so I have a

091chronic illness it's called cyclic vomiting syndrome a lot of teachers thought I was either trying to get out of class or just wanting like attention but here instead of just send me home or brush me off it was like acknowledging it and like redirecting me cuz there was a time where I thought that I would have to like file for disability and everything I didn't think I would be able to get a job so it's really nice to have a job where it's got like flexible hours and everything so when I meet people they'll like tell me I'm lucky that I found it so early because they struggled a lot with what they wanted to do or like went back and forth between different things they wanted it's really cool to me that I have

092found this like so early I think in about a year I'll still be getting educated because I think my goal with this is to learn as much as possible I kind of just want to learn every type of welding there is start something big learn about career exploration opportunities at your child School visit ignite Advanced manufacturing.com for more information my name is Tiffany Drummond I'm the principal of the Huntington County Community Learning Center the Huntington County Community Learning Center is a collaborative partnership between our local school district the community and the industry and we are here to provide that foundation for students to make really good choices for their future we offer a variety of programs in advanced manufacturing as well as health care Public Safety and Automotive here at the Learning Center we really

093stress the importance of transferable skills we talk with our industry Partners a lot about soft skills and what skills the students need to be successful because typically those are transferable skills so it's important to know how to program a machine but it's equally as important to show up to work every day and to show up on time and put forth good effort and that looks the same no matter what industry you're in I think there's a perception sometimes that advanced manufacturing is dark and it's dirty and you're going to do the same job over and over when really in a lot of areas it's evolved and it's clean environments it's climate controlled it's collaboration it's integration of Technology you can do a variety of different things throughout your career and that's something that we work

094to help our students understand and to show them that you can have so many different jobs within Advanced manufacturing Advanced manufacturing it just really involves a lot of technology and I don't think everybody realizes that so our students they've grown up in a tech environment right they're very very comfortable with technology that's such a bonus for them going into advanced manufacturing because it does involve so much technology and so many Hands-On skills and our students are natural fit for that if there's one thing I could tell people about our programs here is that they're an amazing opportunity for their students they get to explore while still in high school they're going to get some valuable industry knowledge some dual credit some certifications The Learning Center is really for everyone and it's a great opportunity start

095something big learn more about opportunities in advanced manufacturing at ignite advanc manufacturing.com so both of those were completed last last summer and we're very grateful to the Don wood foundation for their support with those uh then last fall the Community Foundation of Huntington County came to me and they were actually piloting the ignite your future um campaign program for hunon County and they asked how they could best support the Learning Center and we are constantly looking for new and better ways to connect with our students and to show them the opportunities that are available to them um and so where we landed was doing a series of um three kind of promotional trailers that show the programs that are at the The Learning Center and so those are the three that we're going to take

096a look at now every day we make choices that will determine the rest of our lives let us find our way together craft a stable path forward [Music] and ignite your future [Music] what path will you choose and how will you be remembered join us in this journey [Music] and ignite your future [Music] I want to see you make it to your destination I want to see you build it and I want to see you ignite your future [Music] so February is National Career and Technical Education Month um so as part of our Facebook campaign for public awareness those are being unveiled each Friday so if you go to our Facebook page we're actually highlighting all 19 of RCT Pathways this this month um but we dropped the first one of those trailers this past

097Friday and then they'll roll out each Friday and then on the 28th we have one more video that's almost done it's about two minutes long and it's a compilation um that the trailers are based off of so um those are all coming out this month and those were all filmed at the Learning Center and at our construction site this year um so those are all our students our staff um and we hope to use those in a variety of ways so to educate our community to educate our students those will be available to our guidance Department we'll pushing those out on canvas for students to have access to them um but it's just a way to really show students what they can do because we know that they engage with media differently right like the

098shorter videos um tend to be more appealing so we're just excited to share those on Facebook and Instagram do you have any questions comments questions Tim um those are fantastic I I mean I just told Mr child was like watching a trailer for Lord of the Rings I mean that was um really really impressive and well done um anxious to share those when I see them on social media thank you you're welcome and I feel to mention those were produced by spyy face media here in honeyton um they did the the shorter trailer ones but they did a great job right I was just gonna ask how is everything going with Area 18 and getting that transition I know it's not quite what you're talking about yeah but could you just brief update on that

099while you're here absolutely I actually had a great meeting with the state this past Thursday um and we have been Advanced to the final step of that process so it looks looks like they're going to do an on-site visit on the 20th um they're confirming the agenda but they'll actually come into our programs and then that would be the last step before we get official approval so things are looking good so far good letter letter went today as a matter of fact uh to the superintendent on Area 18 uh from that process also so we are um with an agreement on um purchasing our own equipment back that we got from per dollars through Area 18 we have an agreement on both sides with that and so we're close to getting that all finalized then

100so a letter I submitted a letter today with that with that agreement piece if they accept that we'll be bringing that back to you as the board uh for final approval then so we are really close um in this process right now and one thing I clarified with the state is um could we go ahead and do the local application to secure our own Perkins funding for this year and it looks like we're going to be able to so and I hesitated to think but do Deb and Aon know what I was talking about when I saying that do you guys are you aware cool just want to make sure I some of us have been around for a while and we know that but I just want to make sure you guys are up

101on it anything else for Tiffany Tiffany well done these are extremely well done um I'm excited for our students to see that and see these um I think it's a great opportunity for them to get a little different look into the Learning Center but you're doing a tremendous job so thank you thank you okay thank you thanks Tiffany all right next I just wanted to bring to your attention that the calendar committee uh which is made up of teachers and uh administrators in the district will be getting together soon um we'll be bringing you a set of three-year calendars uh for your consideration um we are going to be or I'm going to be proposing that next year's calendar uh we which you've already approved we're going to remake it taking off the two-hour delays

102okay and so matching that also um we have some request uh from some of our staff that if we would consider uh moving the fall conferences back a couple weeks till after the first nwe grading period I've even had some parents reach out to me to see if that would be possible I think think that makes a lot of sense also all this to say we're just letting you know that we're going to begin starting that process here is in the next I think it's week yeah I got a cal I got an appointment coming up here whe we're going to get the calendar committee back together but Our intention is is to work off of this current Year's calendar uh and try to follow that as close as we can maybe some minor adjustments

103I bring this to you this evening is there anything else that you would like for me to take in into consideration at least initially in these rough drafts um to consider like I said we'll take the two-hour delays off for next year possibly moving back to fall conference dates a couple of weeks uh anything else that you would like to see um before I launch into this with the committee anybody got anything that you would like to see I know there was questions about graduation at least last year has any further discussion been we really haven't um I'm that's on my that's on my list I got a folder full I know that's in there um that's a tough one because I have just as many people telling me to leave it on a Sunday

104for family as I do people telling me that Sundays don't work if you remember I look back history-wise the reason we did that is for um our students who qualify for the state track meet as allowing them the opportunity to participate in graduate and we always seem to have a several that uh make it to that level so that makes sense to me too but that's one of the things that we can talk about too I just I just know that there were some seniors that seem to want to have a conversation but they I think we need to at least reck them know that this is when we're having those conversations so right absolutely the only other question is I did actually just recently got asked over the weekend we don't have the 2026

105calendar out there anywhere to find I didn't see it on the website so Cindy the 2526 calendar was up there on the website but with it having one two hour delay a month in it we felt like it would be best to pull that down so as we don't cause confusion with the public um I can certainly share other dates with people I've had a couple people ask me on some dates and I shared those I I found a draft that was in our board doc so I shared that draft and I said I thought this is what we did but uh they were just looking for some specific things to not cause too much confusion for the only difference for next year is going to be just the two-hour delays coming off so that's

106good yep anything else okay uh items from the board uh School Board any items that you would like to bring forward this evening uh Mr wall I was just gonna give you a brief update uh on the uh board leadership uh board president leadership sem seminar that we both Tim and I will able to attend January 31st I had to think about what the date was it was a couple weeks ago um it was a fun time um a lot of interesting ideas that came out of there but a couple of things that both Tim and I have been talking about since then that I thought would be good to get on the board's uh radar uh one of the first things was we one of the topics that we talked about with superintendent evaluations

107made me remember that we had two new board members uh here that are going to have to do their first superintendent evaluation in June so I thought it might be a wise thing to maybe get together before June and maybe kind of get you caught up to speed on that give you the idea of what how we do that process here and then also then just open up the conversation of is do we want to continue that process or do we want to look for move forward on that um one of the recommendations that they did bring about about that was even having a midyear so this is a little late for a midyear kind of check-in but it may be a good thing to start and then we can maybe even discuss about having

108a calendar of check-ins and stuff like that in the future but just want to get that on your radar um I know my very first year on the board I I came in in January and then June they said here fill this out and I'm like huh so I'm just trying to give you guys a little bit of a heads up uh and I I know that's just one of those things uh out there that we were talking about so um I know Tim has talk to to John about that I think we may just choose another night out of that and have an executive session to just kind of go over that as far as a evaluation process and how that goes and just get in that and just get you guys get your

109feet wet so you're not completely shocked in June it is a requirement that we do evaluate superintendent every year uh it is uh statute wise that we have to do that evaluation and we have to turn that in so that's why it's important to to kind of go over that and take care of that um the last thing it came up and it was interesting then we we had these conversations about that and then lo and behold uh it kind of slowly happened uh one of the things that they talked about uh down there is just having a superintendent um succession plan not so much as as he's gone and we have that process it's more like he's out of the town or something along that lines and just giving that ability to have the

110board have something approved about that um and it does kind of fall in line with the policy that we have if he's unavailable how that goes and that's policy 1260 it actually talks about incapacitation but you know I just look at that so um just another thing to just maybe document you know if John's not available and Chuck sick who do we talk to and stuff like that and just have that something that we review on a on a yearly basis undo that type of thing uh just of things to do that so those were kind of very high level things um as you can see that the book was rather large and it was a good good day session uh with a lot of different interesting ideas there were some recurring themes and I'm

111just going to end on the recurring theme that I actually took away that was actually kind of stuck with me in that and uh it was something that I've heard but it just really hit hard at that conversation and it was and it was mentioned a BN a couple of times but it it was reminding us that as board members we should focus on the why and not the how that the we as the board should focus on the why and the administration should focus on the how and that should be our guiding principle going forward so that's how I'm going to leave it for the day uh and go from there so on that note have a great day thank you Mr wall uh yeah the one of the things you always have to

112worry about if you send a couple of board members to a conference down in Indianapolis we're going to come back with a lot of cool stuff so um yeah we got ideas and so as as Ryan said we would like we're going to try to set up a a um a meeting executive session with the board uh to review some of these things particular the evaluation part of this um it's it is very important it literally is our most important job um so U we'll we'll be talking a lot about that over the next four to six weeks for sure um anybody else I have something Mr trout do you have an update on the property at salamony yes uh Joe uh would you want to give us uh if you want to come forward

113here and have a seat at the table can you give us the latest as of this afternoon about the property at celemony well as Tiffany indicated the area 18 is getting very close and just as I was sitting there I got I received the last piece of information from the town of Warren's attorney attorney um so we are very close um if you recall there were two Parcels at salamony where the school and the track sets and then there was another piece that kind of wrapped around it so there were two separate legal descriptions the end result of what were selling to the town of waren is two Parcels but they don't match the original description destion so we had to go through a survey process uh the town commissioned that paid for that it

114didn't cost us anything and that survey had to go through the DCd process approval of a a subdivision split and a lot line adjustment that occurred last Tuesday the 4th that uh the DCd approved that the survey they hold it for the survey for seven days and so it will be released tomorrow we are very tentatively set for a uh possibly a Thursday closing however these restrictive covenants that I I could show you my phone I just got uh half hour ago I'll have to review those to make sure that complies with what we want to have as restrictive covenants so uh certainly I would say by the end of the month at the various latest but it could occur as as early as this week or the week following so I think we're sliding

115into home we're not there yet uh but the the governmental approvals came last Tuesday and uh that survey will be released tomorrow comments questions for Joe that answer your question question Tim thank you Mr Wy I'm sure you'll keep us updated as things pro progress thank you anything else from members of the board I will entertain a motion to adjourn make a motion that we adjourn thank you Mr wall and do we have a second thank you Mrs Heim any questions or comments all those in favor I I I we're adjourned