001foreign welcome to our tuesday january 18 ford meeting if you please join us in the pledge of allegiance all right so we will move on to our board of finance meeting mr james yes mr marshall do we have a motion a second all right all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes also madam president i would like to nominate jennifer as secretary in the absence of nicole for secretary of the board of finance i will second that any discussion all in favor aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you all right thank you uh the next item of the agenda is to go through um and present the fiscal health of the school corporation and just to backtrack a little bit this is our annual board of finance meeting it is a statutory
002requirement that we not only school corporations but all local units of government hold a board of separate board of finance meeting in january every year for schools in 2019 there was a committee that was put together from the general assembly called the fiscal indicators committee and it really won what the purpose is is to develop markers that school corporations could have to assess their the health of the financial health of the district so that everyone is kind of aware of where people are and so that school districts that are having financial problems can work with their board and with their community and really there's no surprises um so this committee originally came up with i believe eight different indicator points um after a review after the first or second year that is now down to
003six and so now we're just going to go through each one of those and i have included the charts and graphs in your bore packet and we will go through each one so on the first indicator is a review of our adm count and you will see that from the bar graph our adm count has been relatively very steady for the last eight years that has shown on this chart hovering around 9 400 kids or so per year last year we did take a dip because of less kindergartners that came during the pandemic however as we previously reported it's not shown on this graph for the 21 22 school year but we are up 62 students last this year as compared to last year so a red flag would be as if your enrollment was
004declining that means less revenue but that is not our situation we have a good healthy uh study enrollment uh any questions at any time just feel free to jump in uh the second indicator is to look at fund balances so that fund balance is what's your cash on hand in all of your funds in total and you can see that from 2013 through our cash on hand was steadily declining and that was because of just really our state funding not keeping up with you know the educational programs that we wanted to be able to implement here at lake central but as you know in 2019 we started to receive operating referendum money that helped with our cash balances and you can see that over the last two years that has increased to a stable level
005that is more um that is fine and we have good reserves um here this this chart is a little deceiving because this is a snapshot of your 12 31 balance and as a taxing unit we get our tax money tax draws right at the end of december so we get a lump of money for our debt funds for our operating fund for our operating referenda fund in which we then spend over the next six years so in reality our average cash balance is less than these but there's still healthy amounts that we operate without any issues the next chart is showing what the annual surplus and deficit is for all your funds so you know you can't deficit finance and it's important that we don't overspend the revenues that we have coming in we monitor
006those revenues it's all again based on our adm count and when we're deciding how much of a teachers raise and how much more money we can put into the classroom it's all based on that revenue and you're familiar with the budget process we go went through so as i've stated in a few in prior presentations here if you look at years 2014 through 2017 it looks as if we deficit spent and had more expenditures and revenues and in reality it is true but there are many things that occur that sometimes you get money at once and then it takes you time to spend it so for an example we were doing a construction project here in 2014 we received dollars in 2013 and in 14 15 and 16 we were finalizing those costs so all
007those expenditures count toward this graph but not the initial revenue for that snapshot of the year similar with pension money that we pay out to retirees and teachers we sold pension bonds in the early 2000s we received that money we have it here to pay for our severances but we don't receive any additional dollars for that it's just paying out those expenditures so it's not really a clear snapshot of how we're doing but if you look at the last three years you can see that our revenue has exceeded our expenditures each year we are very careful about that and that yellow bar that shows how close you are to the margin uh you know we really want that to be as close to the margin as possible we're not in a business of um raising
008extra money from our taxpayers and just holding out to an afford that money is going to the classrooms and we want to spend as close to our total revenue as we can and so you will see that here in 2020 calendar year 2020 that amount of our surplus was a little bit lower and that's good you know if we have to dip slightly under to use some cash reserves we're okay with that but we monitor that and make sure that we still have a healthy balance any questions on that okay uh the next indicator is your fund balances as a percent of your expenditures we have talked over the years of how you have to have a good cash balance the prudent range is somewhere in that 10 to 15 range for on your regular
009operating funds this graph actually includes um all of our operating funds meaning our education fund our operations fund rainy day fund and so forth um so as you can see 2013 through 2018 we were very much below that prudent range of having cash on hand with the operating referendum money that has helped shore up our fund balances as we talked about earlier and now we have a healthy reserve as a portion of our operating expenditures similar to what i said earlier this is a snapshot as of december 31st so when the 2020 percentage says it's 27 percent it's actually less than that because that is a snapshot of that money we just received on average in year 2020 we had about a um cash balance as a percentage of our expenditures now there's a couple
010pieces of that because of our edge our education funds where we pay for all of our classroom expenditures our teachers there's not really too many unknowns there it's 90 some percent payroll and benefits we are very comfortable having less of a percentage in there because there aren't as many unknowns we don't need to have a large uh balance there so we usually keep that balance somewhere in that maybe eight to ten percent range just for cash flow purposes but when it comes to our operations fund that's transportation that's our facilities and maintenance that's our kind of like our savings you know a boiler goes out a roof leaks you're not getting any additional money it's what you have on hand so we need to have a higher cash balance in that fund just because of
011the unknowns that would pop up in one of our facilities so when you net all those together we're hovering around the 19 percent again healthy reserves but not too much importing money from our taxpayers the next chart shows our different revenue by type and this is either federal dollars state revenue local dollars and local tax revenue so the bottom line uh it's kind of like a i would call it a coral color is a local tax revenue that has been pretty steady for every year on this chart we get about 35 million dollars for our debt fund our operating fund and operating ref um not referendum fund through local tax revenue the big part in the blue is our state revenue and as you know state funding is what it's all about for schools and
012that's why that is the biggest chunk that incorporates about 65 million dollars for us the big section in the middle for the purple that is other local revenue and that has tailored off because for up until 2019 that is where the westlake co-op expenditures ran through with that co-op being dissolved and that money no longer running through our books that amount has shrunk and so really that money there is textbook rental money lunch money just kind of local fees so that has dwindled and you can see the amount of federal dollars at the top that has maintained pretty steady throughout the year so again we are highly dependent probably two thirds of our money through state revenue and if the general assembly continues what they've shown in at least the last couple years you know
013i hopefully that won't be decreasing and they'll maintain that funding levels and we are appreciative of what they did this last session and then finally the last chart is uh your if if a school district happens to have an operating referendum which we have had for the last two years uh what percentage of the revenue is that of your total revenue so in case that does not get renewed how much of a hit are you looking to take on your revenue and therefore your expenses and you can see here that i'm in 2019 and it's about seven to eight percent of our revenue um that we have that we bring in and as you know we use that for teacher salaries our sros um oh and additional counselors that we promised the community when we
014went on that campaign so overall you can see that the district is in good health by all the indicators shown and i would open up to any questions that you may have this is the document from the state that we knew was coming yeah this this is for every school district um across the state um it's on the fiscal indicators website and um yeah this is something that is put out either every december early january but it's fairly new to the state of indiana yeah it's only been three or four years right yeah okay thank you sure and i think it all happened because of the situation in muncie and uh perhaps another school corporation right uh yeah gary kind of gary muncie that simulated this because of how their financial you know the districts
015they kind of went down and the legislators want to implement something so that those things didn't happen in other school districts uh across the state absolutely um and there's absolutely nothing wrong with sharing this information with our board and our community as you know we talk about lots of these things all the time anyway yeah we need to do it formally until the end yeah it looks good sounds good thank you okay the next item is to review the investments of the lake central school corporation for calendar year 21. in your packet i've given an analysis of the interest that we have earned and in 2021 we earned a total of thirty two thousand one hundred and seventy six dollars and nine cents between our accounts at centier bank and at people's bank um as
016you can see that is less than we did in 2020 because halfway through 2020 interest rates bottled out bottomed out excuse me because of the pandemic so you can see the history there well from 2014 through 2017 it was minimal uh interest rates rebounded um in 18 and 19. we generally have had the same amount of cash in the bank this steadily um it's always you know it's clearly indication of interest rates so we don't do any sort of in other investments um just because we honestly we don't have that much extra cash on hand in order to make long-term investments we want to operate we get the money and we're putting it back in the classroom so that is the review of the investments that we've had for 2021. and then so our next
017item would be to formally adopt our annual investment resolution this has been included in your packet the resolution states the types of things that we are legally allowed to invest in for indiana code and then this resolution resolves that we continue our banking relationships with two local banks that we are happy to work with center bank and people's bank both do great jobs for us and i so i seek your approval to adopt the annual investment policy resolution move to approve the recommendation offered we have a motion second we have a second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you and then the last item is to seek your approval to remove old outstanding checks that have not cleared our bank per indiana code
018and all outstanding checks that are unpaid for a period of over two years as of december 31st in which they were written can be uh should be cancelled so in essence it's any check that we still have outstanding from calendar year 2019 doesn't matter if it was written in february or october and so forth so when you pack it i've included a listing of those checks it's actually it's a very low dollar amount only 931 dollars and four cents and so i seek your approval for the removal of those checks so moved you have a motion second we have a second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you all right thank you that concludes the board of finance right now all right
019do we have a motion to adjourn yes or no sure okay thank you when the conversation threat starts off the original one then i can't find the original one on this oh so that's the problem sorry about that all right we will reconvene for our school board meeting uh we'll we'll move on to our agenda approval deletions editions dr veraco thank you mrs seuss uh you do have one amendment to the agenda and that is roman numeral 8b 1 some additional personnel requests from mrs mucha we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes i did speak with mrs kelly she's not here this evening there was no correspondence so we'll move on to our liaison committee updates mr marshall uh yes
020in the arena of personnel interviews we have impending interviews coming up it's a little premature at this time to have any discussion but we do have some personnel that are either retiring or moving on dede tonight thank you all right could i ask a question about that in past we've had two people on that committee why is there only one on there uh may i answer that no i'm asking there was not two people somebody else that they have the knowledge absolutely answered there was not two people there was one as a backup in the chance that i was not able to attend the the one exception was when we replaced mr gandalfi with mrs mucha that was a central office position and we did have two and i think that's important to have two
021people on it i really do it's a very big corporation and that's a very important position i think it should be a discussion when all board members can participate in that conversation so i will motion that we [Music] have discussion about that and we'll put that on hold for the work session hopefully and i know that's going to die and i know it won't get a second but you know nothing gets a second that i say but that's okay um i really think it's an important position and it would help our communication which seems to be falling apart we can put that on the work session thank you dear appreciate it mr marshall did you have any other anything else you'd like to say no i have nothing else to report in that area thank
022you dr medlin no updates thank you thank you dr malcolm well i yes actually um i am not on wellness committee i was there as a stan stand in in case sandy couldn't make it sandy lezantine so my name should not be on here it would just be dr medlin education foundation is um just working really hard pardon me oh what's on there the revised agenda smith oh on the revised agenda i'm sorry i don't have the revised i'm sorry i don't yeah i don't use the revised do you want to okay good we've got that off thank you gene i appreciate that uh education foundation they're just working like crazy just keeping their focus on doing what's best for kids in the classroom uh legislative i think dr baraka will be addressing the legislative
023updates so there's no need for me to speak one thing else that i would like to suggest but i'll wait till we're done with these committees go ahead mrs seuss i'm sorry all right um and then as far as uh st john redevelopment committee i have no nothing to report dollars for scholars this friday at 2 30 they will be having a meeting immediately after school to review with any seniors that would like to put in for a scholarship to dollars for scholars this friday if they you cannot make it due to work short notice whatever we will have a link you'll have to reach out to mrs resnick as she is our dollar for scholars liaison school liaisons so um and that would be after friday after 3 30. so i'm sure to those
024scholarships coming in who's the liaison mrs resnick registrant okay and that's all i have did you have something else you wanted to say um i i could do that right now or i could do it later um in light of the way for some reason with this group the way officers are handled um first of all i'm not opposed to a slate of officers i think that's a great idea but i am opposed to the clandestine manner in which it was put together i i don't know for a fact if everyone on this board knew it was coming as a slate of officers except me i had no idea it was happening that way so i started thinking about that and i thought maybe it's time we put together a nominating committee and that would
025just take care of all this ugly stuff that happens so and so called so-and-so it's it's just ridiculous um drama that happens behind the scenes so i'd like for us to talk about a nominating committee also at our next work session as as much as we've worked as a board to be clear and transparent among ourselves and among our colleagues i found that to be very unprofessional the way it was handled so that's all i have to say thank you all right dr veraco official school board business topics consent agenda thank you again mrs do seek board approval for the minutes from our work session on january 3rd as well as our regular board meeting of the same day and then seek board approval for our claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures that you received last
026week we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes there are no public comments for action items so we'll move right on to our official school board business topics regular agenda dr veraco thank you once again my first two items are to have the board appoint liaisons to both the dire parks department board as well as a construction liaison for a plan that we are going to rule out this evening regarding pivot elementary normally the board president appoints these at our org meeting but since we didn't complete that last time i thought i'd put it on the agenda this time and have the board actually take action on it i'm not sure that that's necessary but i've been told by mrs seuss that
027dr malcolm will serve on the dyer parks department and that mrs sues herself will serve as the construction liaison appointment that sounds great all right so we have a second all in favor aye aye any opposed i just have i just have a question because i also wanted to be on the construction liaison committee um and i know when we had the high school construction i think there were three school board members on there so if we could have discussion about that at our next work session too sure thank you all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you just as a point of clarification we did not have three because that would constitute a meeting but we did have two at the beginning of the big construction project no they didn't join we never
028had more than two because that would have constituted a public meeting and we were meeting with our architects and our construction managers and sometimes talking about some of the okay flies in the ointment so to speak okay my final item is just to talk a little bit tonight with the board about house bill 1040 if you followed what was going on down at the state house last week there were a couple of pieces of legislation regarding education in the area of curriculum and additional requirements that some folks wanted to do if you'd watch the youtube piece where the senator state senator from noblesville was explaining to the committee that he didn't want teachers to take a stance on the isms you saw the con comment from the teacher who pretty eloquently shared why some some
029things you just have to take a stance on but this 1040 is going to have some of the same pieces that sort of went away from those pieces of legislation last week but they also have a couple important items i think maybe even some of the folks who are here tonight will be interested in and in this 1040 one of the key components is that it includes a parent opt out for any school that has a mask mandate and i just want the board to be aware that effectively at least for us and probably from most school districts the amount of paperwork that would be coming in and keeping track of who has completed the opt out versus who hasn't will likely make most schools optional um it it still creates some of the problem
030with quarantining because you know it's one of the main reasons why we've stuck with the masking to keep our quarantining to a minimum and so it will it won't solve all the problems but it appears to me from my contacts down at the state level that when this latest wave drops off there's a good chance that that will get passed through the general assembly there's also a piece in there that any school who wishes to have any students under 18 participate in any kind of assessment that has to do with anything related to mental health would need parental permission this would likely jeopardize some of the youth risk behavior surveys that are conducted by the state of indiana themselves so they may in that legislation also just say they're not going to do those anymore
031because again it becomes unmanageable to to to to have so many opt-out opportunities it's interesting that one of the pieces of this legislation also repeals the provisions enacted in 2019 that would be specifically indiana code 20-19-5 that required the indiana department of education to develop sel activities so we'd go back to square one and all of those types of activities that help a lot of our students and i understand some people have taken exception to certain parts of it but i don't think throwing the whole thing out is the answer but that's what this bill aims to do and it requires the indiana department of education to develop a complaint form for stakeholders to use should they take exception to content or lessons utilized by teachers and probably of all the stuff i've heard that's
032the one thing that i personally don't have a problem with because i think we already do that and so um if somebody says this is the formal process and this is how many days you have to meet and or talk about what it is and analyze what the problem is that's probably the one piece that we could live with the bill also includes a clause that says the list of communicable diseases may only be expanded by an act of the general assembly so how they're going to decide and maybe it's that it's never that never will anything be termed a communicable disease again it's clearly you know because they don't believe that the covet thing is communicable and then other issues relating to the committee evaluation of lesson plans um that were halted in last
033week's senate bill 167 and a different piece from the house some of that stuff we expect to be rolled into this piece of legislation i did speak with representative slager when he was driving down to indianapolis today about some of these topics and he's confident that it's going to come up later this week at some point and so we'll continue to follow that legislation closely because it will impact us any questions about that or anything else happening at the state house sure tell me more about the opt-out so what would that how would that be handled i mean the paperwork itself would be overwhelming yeah so if they say that the department of education will develop an opt-out form and each school district will put on their website it's at that point that i would
034recommend that we just go to optional because there's no way we can be keeping track of who's supposed to be wearing the mask and who's not and we're not going to arm bands or anything else like people have you know said you mark people and so i think they will effectively make the decision for all of us because it just will be too cumbersome got it so they are going to be having they meaning the state leaders will be having discussion about the the mask wearing and the requirement and where we are with that is that something on their agenda then that's what one legislative tour put in his bill and i believe they're going to discuss it soon okay that's okay that's good to hear thank you and i appreciate you talking to mr
035slager earlier this morning on the phone sure i appreciate them calling me yeah any other discussion i will move on to our director of human resources personnel mrs mucho thank you very much we are asking that the following personnel items be approved but i do want to bring to your attention a retirement of a very special person who has given 26 years of service to lc and 33 and a half years to the field of education and that is mrs dede logan [Applause] i've had the privilege of working for dede for many years and i can say she's certainly an excellent principal and great representative of education absolutely so can i have your approval yes we have a motion move to approve i have a motion and i will second that any discussion hearing none
036all in favor motion passes thank you very much also in your packet i have a request for an additional fee raises for our substitute teachers for each different level a raise of ten dollars we have a motion by dr melco second second by mr marshall any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you in the many different layers of food service we did forget one layer when we made our raises and that was for the people who cater for us so we are asking for the same raise as given to the other food service personnel yes we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr meddling any discussion all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you and for your information there is a conflict of interest form in your packet thank you
037my last item is for a professional leave form for our director of food service which is virtual so the cost is very reasonable move to approve we have a motion by dr medlin second by dr malco any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you very much all right so we'll move on to our director of primary education dr bracy good evening there are no approvals for tonight but i would like to update you on our high ability assessment let me start by saying our schools have done an outstanding job with testing our students it hasn't been easy but we only have a very few makeup well we only have very few makeups left of the 1 students tested 86 students have qualified iowa testing will be administered to 261 students to determine their proper
038placement that's additional testing and then only 42 students still need to make up kogat so kudos to our staff for executing kogat with excellence during these very difficult times thank you thank you thank you thank you yeah and thank you for the report you sent out earlier today to about i read and ireti could you send me a hard copy of the report you just gave this report sure i can send it to you tomorrow thank you appreciate that you're welcome thank you we'll move on to our director of secondary education mrs castaneda good evening for my first item i am seeking your approval for the professional leave requests we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you and for
039my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip requests that were in your packet move to approve the field trip requests we have a motion by dr medlin second by dr malcolm any discussion yes i heard from a friend of mine who was at imea the lake central hamburg choir almost composed the entire handball choir for the state so the all-state handbell choir was well represented by our lake central students yes and mrs novak gave them kudos today on the announcements as well they did an outstanding job do we know how the choir did there i do not okay could you get that information for us please thank you all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you thank you and we'll move on to our director sorry business services mr james
040okay uh the first step my first time tonight is uh dr bronco mr ledger and i are going to do a presentation regarding a our upcoming vivid elementary school expansion project there are multiple steps in this process and this will be the first step and we do a preliminary determination hearing in here so i will turn it over to dr brockett so we want to give a little background here on how we got to today and um you know i think the first thing is i want to say again thank you to our community for allowing us to do the substantial work at lake central high school back in 12 and 13 and then rebuilding the protzman school as well it's it's been a big bonus to the students there and the staff there to
041have those facilities and and equally important when they're new just like when you build a new home there's not much maintenance to do in the early days and that saves money that can be used elsewhere but for us today you know we're really in a situation where the number of empty classrooms we have across the district uh is is getting pretty low it's getting low to the point where we think it's time to add some capacity to those classrooms the second bullet point you see there though is to honestly acknowledge that some of this is um brought about by our own commitment to have smaller class sizes in k to two um we know that smaller class sizes benefits students at all levels but we especially believe in it for our youngest learners and the
042biggest example of being tight is calling so they're in their second year right now of operating at full capacity um and we've already probably done the other thing that we could have done to try to add space and that was to turn a piece of the library into a classroom as well the last time we had our demographic study revised by gerald mckibben was in december of 2015 remember that when a demographer looks at your information he's doing what you would call forecasting and not projecting projecting would be just to look at past numbers and try to draw correlations using fractions but he's taking into other considerations using demographic study from the census as well as uh other things that he gets his hands on like housing starts in migration to the community out migration
043and some other housing patterns it's important to know that you know the green spaces the farmland in our district is running out but if we go back and look at how we end up with an overcrowding situation at kohling it is in fact because even though we have six elementary schools the territory of the culling uh is somewhere a little over 40 percent of the land mass of st john township now i'm not trying to you know kick around anybody who preceded me in the job because it was farmland and so that's the way it got divvied up but it is the the reason why calling is more overcrowded than the other schools in our last demographic study the one thing that jumped out at me was that as we have turnover of our mature
044neighborhoods we could see an increase in enrollment in our district as mr james said earlier in the business meeting portion of our meeting you know we've been pretty steady for the last three or four years really i mean we've gone up a little bit we've gone down a little bit but we're hanging right around 9 400 kids total so this new census data it may indicate a different forecast and so i'm going to probably at some point recommend to the board that we incur that cost and have dr mckibben and his staff update that with the 2020 census data but it's important for the board to know that our recommended expansion tonight is based on the actual need for classroom it's not based on projections or forecasts it's based on how tight we're getting right
045now go ahead mr james so we have looked at other things in the past because we haven't just started talking about this in 2021 if we go back to um the second bullet uh a previous board i think only howard was on the board at the time we talked maybe janus too we talked about uh having calling you know between the school and the bus barn putting up a third and fourth grade wing the board at that time really did not like that idea of having a 900 student or a thousand student elementary school when elsewhere in the district we have a couple schools in the low 400s and so that that got pushed out we looked at a 7th elementary school on the property at blaine or at burr in sherville and you know
046the the price tag of the protzman school was around 31 to 32 million given inflation we projected that to be closer to 40 and based on what some folks are telling us who are starting their construction and getting bids they're even seeing bids 12 to 15 percent above what they thought they would be six or eight months ago so the classroom edition can meet our needs without creating a separate issue with a significant tax increase it makes sense to go to either bibit or pifer they're the two small schools i mentioned earlier versus a new elementary school um bibich is our choice at this time based on the the capacity where they're getting tighter as well and part of that is because we we put some schools that came in or some houses that came
047in new in the preserve we pushed those folks to the bibit school um and we would also while we're at it at bibich we would redo the original hvac system and and redo the ceilings then after we do that project so while piper also has space on the property that project would be a little more extensive because the renovation to move the cafeteria would be a lot more expensive than what we have to do at bivich um but i will keep it on the radar because you know the next time if there is one where we need some capacity piffer would still be a really good candidate for that and then back to the timing on this you know we are very sensitive to our taxpayers we like to keep score mr james is going
048to show you charts maybe tonight maybe later where we are against our peers in lake county in terms of school taxation rate but we like being low we think it's important to only ask for what you need but at this time we don't think we should wait any longer given the now that we're down to just a few classrooms empty across the district short term and i say short term because we think the new construction can be done in about 18 months and then we'll need another half a year plus that summer to redo that hvac in the original part of the building but there is a chance that we could see cl some class size creep up until we can get the extra space and so we share that um in addition to the
049fact that some of the other projects that you hear about going on uh people are having trouble with supply chains and getting materials and so we're not exactly sure that where it's going to go but um anyway without going on we think the time is right to consider this project i'll turn it over now to mr ledger to go through some of the timeline and other key factors with the land itself well thank you dr veraco i just want to kind of go over some preliminary design ideas we've come up with as well as attentive schedule what you're looking at now is the existing site plan of vivid the dark blue areas would be the three areas uh where rob is okay well rob's over slow down there uh uh right there right there would
050be a a 10 a that'd be a 10 classroom edition right there coming in right off the main entry for uh dr malcolm and mrs logan that's right we're behind where room one is uh we had four rooms there on the fourth grade wing and for a total of uh 14 rooms it'd be a net gain of 12 rooms i'll get in that with the floor plan because we have to get we have to lose two classrooms there for bathrooms and then access to there on the back there is about a 2500 square foot addition to the cafeteria um we'd also add uh we're gonna add about 92 give or take parking spaces one there that one's i think we've kind of moved that one then between the two new editions that's going to be
051a separate teacher parking lot one of the biggest things here too i want to point out again dr malcolm and mrs logan can attest one of the biggest issues we have babies right now is parent pick up and drop off and you can see if rob goes on the west side there we have a parent pick up and drop off which will add a separate lane for that and it's about a 900 foot staging area so we'll be able to have a lot more cars there as i said dr malcolm and mrs logan are clapping because they know the they know the problems with that there and that will also separate out front in the parking lot we'll have a separate bus pick up there for 18 or 20 buses there so that's in will
052also improve some of the site drainage with the site work the next slide is is the floor plan um as where rob is pointing out you can see the four classrooms on the fourth grade wing the 10 classrooms here these classrooms here will have a separate bathroom to accommodate extra first and kindergarten grades again it's a delta of 12 because we're losing those two classrooms one and two there again the cafeteria expansion will be as i said about 2500 square feet we'll also enclose the kitchen line the kitchen itself add a serving line um as dr rocco said too the gray area the existing classrooms in phase two that's gonna be an alternate to replace the aging hvac system as well as the ceilings uh this is the tentative schedule i wanna make sure you
053guys understand it is tentative um with the pandemic uh the market is very volatile with as far as uh uh workforce and even more so with uh materials availability so right now um you know we're here doing the presentation uh in february next board meeting we'll have another uh approval and public meeting uh we hope to hire construction manager by end of february uh the goal right now the architects we as you can see the preliminary is already kind of gone and we hope to have the site drawings done in april and we would bid the site package in may and then we'd have the building drawings done it'd be a separate package in may as well we'd hope to break ground sometime in june after school that's out and then the uh we bid
054the building package in june as well as dr veraco said we hope to have the first phase the new additions complete by december 23rd by of 2023 and then in january we'd start phase two the existing hvc and ceilings we'd we'd move kids into the new classrooms and we'd separate wings and start that phase and then uh you have that done in the summer of 24. ready for school in august any questions on my section yes no i'll turn over mr james so as of right now the project would have an estimated cost of about 17.4 million but as dr rocco and mr ledgert have said we won't know that exact cost until bids come in and things are very uh in flux right now we would enter into a lease agreement with the multi-district
055building corporation like we have for most of our other building projects now the cost of this expansion does meet the definition of a controlled project by indiana code it's subject to public hearings challenge process through indiana code and other steps outlined and which is this is just step one this project is below the threshold requiring a public referendum but instead there's these other processes that are outlined in code for 2022 our debt service funds have currently have a total tax rate of about 31.87 cents and it has generates a tax levy of 17 million 125 and there should be three fours there dollars that is what we used to pay the debt for our previous projects this 17.4 million dollars in bonds would be paid back over 20 years we're gonna estimate the interest rates
056at three and a half percent currently they're somewhere in the one and a half to two percent range but you never know what could happen between now and the time we would actually sell the bonds so we want to more so estimate high and take all that cost into consideration but hopefully the rates will be less more like to where they are now um so this project would add approximately two and a half cents to the tax rate and be about 1.2 million dollars annually to the levy in order to pay the debt back just as a reminder to the board and the community we did refinance our series 2011 2012 and 2013 bonds in 2020 and decreased our debt payments by 1.4 million dollars annually and that lowered the tax rate by about 2.
0572.6 cents starting last year in 2021 that saved approx almost 17 million dollars over the remaining life of all those bonds so it's actually pretty coincidental that we did that completely independent of this and now this project to help alleviate the space that we need we'll be coming in to right around the same time almost the same dollar amount and tax that with the money we freed up from doing the refinancing and as dr brocco mentioned earlier you know we are very conscious of the tax rates for our community um in the last three years we are proud that our tax rate has gone down 14 cents from 93 and a half to just under 84. and now here for 2022 it's 79 that will be on the people's tax bills uh when they get
058their bills in april i believe um now when it comes to your tax bill and everybody's tax bill you know we're just one piece of that we're the school district there's a city in the town there's the county everybody has their own sort of debt and so we're required to uh compute how much debt is out there for all what they call the overlapping district so if you live in shareville how much is the town the town's debt plus our debt plus the township's debt plus the county just and so forth and currently that stands at 216 million 15 844 we have an assessed value of just over five billion dollars here in our school district and that is the value of all the properties in our area um so if you take that uh
059debt amount divided by the assessed value it competes to a debt ratio of about four and a quarter this is a schedule of all of our current debt uh we have some we have pension bonds this is some qsas are some construction bonds we did in 2010 we do common school loans uh every six months that the board approves us that goes pays for our technology and we have bonds from 2014 2019 the 2020a are the the referendum bonds for the high school improtsman and you can see come we have about 10 years left on that and those go to 2032. and everything else is being paid off uh before that so the this proposed lease amounts um you can see we're currently we're at that you know 37 cents with nothing else on the
060books this would be the only thing left on the debt side this is similar chart but is a 10 year projection even though some of these amounts here in the common school loans none of this stuff has incurred because we only do those every six months at a time but um i think it's fair that we've been doing these every six months for the last 10 years and to say that we don't intend to replace our technology would be false so for the next 10 years we've put in dollar amounts there of to be realistic of loans that we'd have on that aspect and then finally this is a a bar graph showing all of our current debt that we have um it's lower than it was when we went for our building project so
061we're happy about that and you can see um 26 we do have a little bit of a drop and that the big drop occurs when the high school and prospect bonds are paid off and then we have a big drop there as things currently stand at this time we can't predict of what's going to happen in the future so the green bar at the top represents the little piece that would be paid over the next 20 years for this big expansion project and that's all we have so that's just our presentation for tonight at the next board meeting uh we'll kind of give a summary of this again and then we would have um possibly for comments and then there'll be some resolutions for the board to pass and that will just be the second
062step of multiple after that so does the board or anyone have any questions at this time yeah thank you i believe we are still on with you mr james [Music] okay my next item is we just finished the end of the quarter and so as i do at the end of every quarter i give a summary to our financial position to the board it's kind of similar to what we did a little while ago except this is for uh calendar year 21. the first spreadsheet you'll see in your board packet is for our education fund again that is our main fund that we're all of our classroom expenditures on going across for this on the revenue side you will see that we had approximately 63 million dollars worth of revenue you have to have those
063first three lines together overall we had in this calendar year just under 64 million dollars of receipts and revenue into the education fund on the expenditure side we chart all of our expenditures mainly as you can see mainly comprised of salaries and benefits this year it was a transition year in which the state developed new um accounting codes for various different positions we used to just have one code that was for certified staff and a second code that was for our non-uh non-certified staff and it was pretty simple but because of some legislative changes now we separate separates out certified staff members who are actually in the classroom teaching as compared to guidance counselors and speech therapists and school psychs there a separate line we differentiate between the aids and the paraprofessionals in our classroom
064as compared to other classified staff so that's why you will see from january through all excuse me january through july lots of those lines are zero but really they're just embedded in the other rows and now they're broken down in total we've been very consistent um let's see so in total for this calendar year our education fund as i said had just under 64 million dollars worth of revenue and our expenditures were 63 million uh in essence almost 500 000 so for a delta of 500 000 to the good um that's probably that's like around one percent so we're pre uh we're not the pat ourselves on the back but we will as i said we want to keep that as close to possible close to the margin because we really don't want to you
065know raise the cash balance in in this fund too much any questions on that particular uh spreadsheet up in the upper right-hand corner yes certified wages percentage of state support that 49.2 is yes that related to that 48 we here that is that is related to that 45 legislation that was passed in the in the um in this spring and so even a school district like us that puts a high emphasis on that we are very close to that 49 we're at 49.2 percent um as the and the one of the reasons is for that is that that as we've said before that only includes the base salary of actual teachers in the classroom it doesn't count the taxes the teachers retirement and all the things that we are required to pay on top of
066that and so we're working with legislators to see if you know it's a give and take one we'd like to show what the true total compensation is for that teaching staff uh two we like to include everyone who's in the collective bargaining unit um and three we like to see the percentage actually risen and if we're going to add these other costs into it you know maybe it should be a higher number as well so we'll see what comes out of the general assembly on that but yes i wanted to bring that to the board's attention and the number right above that one it's our education to operations fund transfer percentage um that general assembly wants that to be no more than 15 percent um that is the amount of state revenue you get how
067much you transfer to your operations fund uh we are at seven and a half we're not even in the ballpark of where we're having issues that we're keeping more money here in the education fund and and rob i i'm sure that you've explained to us why this percentage came about the certified wages percent but can you refresh my memory why did why did this surface what was going on um i think there's just been a push to put more dollars to the classroom and this is a way of knowing that it's going there yeah 45 literally i want to say just came out of the air there was a year a little over a year ago there was a governor's commission on teachers compensation of trying to figure out ways to get more dollars to
068the classroom and in there it said they rec they had this 45 recommendation um the problem is that what the data that the commission use is different data than what is currently in code for the definition of a teacher and what's being used so the commissioner recommended 45 but they were using a higher amount of expenditures in that in that calc so um it was very last minute in the session last year um i believe you know there's lots of of people in the general assembly who may not have had a full concept of how this is really working in the weeds and that's why i'm thinking this probably is a good chance i might get cleaned up a little bit this year so thank you okay uh oh and the other thing is there
069on the top in the middle i show what our average cash balance was again i talked about earlier you know somewhere in that 10 to 15 percent range we are averaging 11.75 percent at any given time in this fund so it's right where we want to be um okay so then we'll just move on to the second chart and um or spreadsheet um because in reality now since 2019 we can't just look at our education fund because we transfer money from there into operations we have operating referendum money all those three funds together really play into how we operate on a everyday basis and they have to be looked at as a whole to really give a better perspective in my opinion of how the school district's doing and so this one is the same
070snapshot except it adds the education ops fund rev referendum operating and the rainy day funds all together i'm not going to go into all the details here you can look at it and ask me any any questions but in total for those funds we had revenue on the far right you can see about eighty nine thousand three hundred eighty nine million three hundred thousand dollars and our expenditures were just under 85 million seven hundred thousand so we operate about three and a half million to the good this year uh that is good it's a little bit again the timing issue we talked about because we get a lot of tax revenue right there in in december um but because one of the other reasons for that larger operating to the good was because of the
071money that the general assembly is putting into into the school funding formula now and what we've turned and did is we're able to give a good raise to our teaching staff this year who you know they're going to get paid that out throughout the rest of their contract here so um we did a retro pay in december to get them from september through december but then that will be spread out you know for the rest of the time so um again we're we're in a healthy position uh here for the close of the calendar year and uh any questions on anything on here okay now thanks for keeping it all together though for us good job all right moving on my next item is um i guess because dr braco and i were talking and
072and there seems to be a misunderstanding with a lot of our legislators about this so your unit the iasbo is going to be working on that clarity and they have been and i know also in conjunction with the isba and the superintendents association now what happens with that we never we have no idea but you know we're trying we're working so okay my next item is to seek your approval to transfer on the fee portion of a textbook rental fees from the transfer from the textbook rental fund to the education fund just to remind the board when a family pays their textbook rental bill there's the course fees and then there are general fees for agendas and ids and technology while those general fees are paid out of our education fund the class fees are
073paid out of our textbook rental fund but all the money is sitting in our textbook rental fund so what we do is um every six months we run reports and we do uh we find out how much was collected uh for fee money and so from july 1st to december 31st it was a hundred fifty two thousand seventy nine dollars and twenty seven cents and so in order to follow the money as i say uh requesting to transfer those funds from the textbook rental fund to the education fund move to approve the transfer of the textbook money funds second we have a motion and we have a second any discussion an example of the fee money would be agendas student ids technology fees to pay for um not so much that that we don't charge
074the that's not on the student's bill so our work workbooks that go with textbooks considered a fee or a textbook now say it again the workbooks that would go with that that's that's still that's not part of this that's that money stays in the textbook rental fund anything that's okay the book you know your science kits your novels things like that are they're all part tied to a specific course they'll stay in the textbook rental fund got it thank you okay all right all in favor motion passes thank you my next time is a secret professional leave request um for myself that is presented in your work pack so moved we have a motion second we have a second by dr medlin any discussion all in favor aye motion passes thank you and then finally
075i seek your approval on the donations that were listed in your board packet so moved you have a motion by dr malcolm sec dr meddling will second it any discussion you know the gender or the the kind the kind donation done by debbie and rosie at grimmer middle school to pay food service debt of children can anyone do that that would like to do that sure we'll just need to reach out to you um it's probably best to reach out to our food service department because they can have a better handle on um you know i don't know students individual food service balances so they'd be the ones to reach out to all right thank you all in favor aye all right motion passes thank you all right thank you it's all i have all
076right we will move on to our public comments portion just want to remind those that will be addressing the board this evening we ask that you refrain from personal attacks or derogatory statements about any school employee fellow community member student or anyone else while they're in attendance or not the board will allow each person three minutes each with a total of 30 minutes when you are down to the last 15 seconds mrs mucha will announce that your time is nearing completion after 30 minutes i will pull the board to see if they would like to continue to hear public comments if the board agrees we will do this for each 30-minute segment if we continue to hear the same things as previous speakers we reserve the right to end all public comments for the evening
077and you come to the podium if you please state your name and your address first speaker is mrs jablonski good evening me again uh as i have promised oh my name is margaret jablonsky i live in crown point on matthew street as i have promised before i will keep showing up as long as it takes for us to feel like we're being taken seriously i know too well what the world looks like when those in power ignored the citizens it's not pretty and i'm not gonna play that game i'm curious to see if any of you are beginning to see the light have any of you started questioning the guidance issued by the public health and government agencies so easily influenced by powerful lobbies please refer to the cdc quarantine recommendations and how to delta
078airlines communication with cdc affected public health policy are you aware of how the definition of fully vaccinated has become very fluid and tentative do you not find it fascinating and thought provoking that cloth masks that so many have been wearing are now proven worthless we have been saying that for months these suggestions and many others are not have not been grounded in science and are very arbitrary fear driven and ridiculous if you ask me which i know you're not um this has gotten a little messy is the school board the new community's health and safety protector making allowances for natural immunity and what its recognition could mean for attendance numbers we are constantly reminded of how these issues have become political here's a novel idea how about you remove politics and politicians from your decision-making
079process by law the ball is in your court you as the local school board have the authority to make choices best for the kids in your district well please do start making decisions that are actually based on science and common sense start allowing options and choices respecting individual freedoms and different circumstances it is after all what this country was founded on what its citizens have prided themselves on and what builds a just society isn't it we the parents have certainly done their homework for you all you need to do is listen to quote martin luther king the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in a moment of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy make sure you stand on the right side of history because
080the tide is turning stop mandatory masking stop unnecessary quarantines stop discriminating the unvaccinated start focusing on the kids thank you mr buckman [Applause] mr good evening um robert i live on 83rd lane and crown points um i don't know i kind of like to have a theme when i come and talk so i guess my theme today would be incentives incentives work um when you incentivize a hospital to mark a patient as you know their death is coveted related we've seen from the cdc that they can't tell you the difference between a covet-related death and a death with cobin if you get hit by a bus they mark you as a coveted death they get an extra dollar when the bank you work for tells you okay it's time to get vaccinated or you will
081no longer be employed i get vaccinated i'm not going to risk my my family's comfort on my principles when a school board has a decision to make about this free money that they hand out um and you just gotta jump through maybe a couple of hoops i believe it's to the tune of eight million five hundred and ninety two thousand dollars and you just gotta fill out some paperwork and make these kids wear masks i think we've we've determined it's not based on the health of the children it's based on keeping them in class or perhaps the amount of paperwork that you have to fill out because it's too much paperwork to fill out i mean let's switch to optional um i think again we've so john mayo clinic came out and said the masks
082are 5 effective which i mean makes sense you can choose one or the other right either the ox the children can get oxygen through their masks or the kovid can't escape it's it's one or the other i don't believe masks work one way um actually i think i've come to the end so um i guess i'll leave it with just one more little comment i i don't blame you for for wearing masks i really don't i would be embarrassed to show my face as well good night mrs abel before the next speaker i just want to clarify that the money we're getting in s r funds has nothing to do with mass mandates thank you hi um christina 904-32 place in st john first of all i'd like to state that i've never met any
083disrespect to any of you the teachers or any of the school employees all anyone has ever wanted this entire time is the best for their children with that being said myself and others have presented you all with studies facts and other doctors opinions that have been suppressed by politicians in the media medicine medical advice should never have been politicized yet here we are in this gigantic mess these days are getting second op these days the days of getting second opinions are gone and we are in a one-rule order under fouchy because he is science i'm glad to hear that legislators are finally doing something but when we told you that the pcr tests were inaccurate unable to identify between code and the flu we were wrong when we told you that hospitalizations and deaths were
084overestimated and that they were including everyone that came in and tested positive regardless of the actual reason for the hospitalization or death we were wrong when we told you that cloth masks and basic surgical masks that even stated on the box that they did not protect from covid were not working we were wrong yet here we are as the media is finally changing their tune the ptr pcr tests are inaccurate and rare and rarely used now because they cannot differentiate between the flu and covet the cdc and fauci have admitted that covet deaths and hospitalizations have been overestimated as by as much as 75 percent there is a huge difference between being in the hospital or dying of covid versus dying with covid added to the fact that the pcr tests weren't working properly doling
085out huge amounts of false positives and now on top of the medical advisors it's one of the top medical advisors of cnn has finally admitted that cloth masks are and i quote not appropriate for this pandemic it is not appropriate for omicron it was not appropriate for delta alpha or any of the other previous variants either because they are we are dealing with something that's airborne they are nothing more than facial decoration look at this picture this this is real life right now this is how our country looks right now are you proud of that what we are doing to these kids is ridiculous i'm not sure if any of you watched governor holcomb's state of the state address the other night but if you did you would have seen him unmasked walking through crowds
086of people hugging and shaking hands not a worry in the world so why are we literally allowing everyone else to go about their normal lives while we continue to enforce masking of our of our children we have been right the entire time and i will tell you we were also right about the medical psychological and developmental effects of prolonged masking of children reduced oxygen is real the headaches the fatigue reduced ability to concentrate drowsiness etc is real the developmental delays and learning to read and sound out words properly is real and every symptom is not coveted i urge you to listen to us the people that have known what is really going on the entire time because we listen we looked back beyond the headlines and listened to the doctors be the chain listen to
087the other doctors be the change be the leaders protect the children from harm do it now before legislation does it show that you guys can do this thank you thank you miss allison kwakowski good evening allison kweikowski 1701 stillwater i'm a parent of a first grader and a school psychologist so what is the end game here that children are not spreaders of this virus that masks do not prevent transmission due to air flowing through and around the mass constantly that natural immunity helps fight infection better than vaccine-induced immunity that eating healthy changing your sedentary lifestyle can improve your chance of not having a severe case of covid that's what we have known what we now know is that mass contribute to lack of oxygen speech and developmental delays mental health problems and fear schools across
088the country are massless and are functioning just fine that professionals who are censored for sharing supposedly inaccurate data and information were right that the virus spreads not only through the unvaccinated but the vaccinated as well that all the ingredients in the vaccine have not been revealed and people are having adverse reactions and dying from the vaccine that valid long-term clinical trials of the vaccine have not been completed that 75 percent of the people have died from covid had at least four core morbidities testing is inaccurate that just because case numbers increase from faulty testing guts have not the hospitals are filled with as many vaccinated people as unvaccinated that most children in hospitals are there with kovid not because of covid that this virus will be endemic just like the flu according to our savior
089fauci himself so why are we continuing to mask our children who are not spreaders of the disease mask our children even when everyone who wants to be vaccinated already is to severely impact our children's social emotional and physical well-being to harm our children because of your fear to follow guidelines that don't even make sense and keep changing to support the narrative that is falling apart at it seems when is it going to stop when this legislation tells it to or are we going to stand up and say this is the end because this is what is destroying our children not the virus thank you miss sherry true sheree drew 164 promos drive dire thank you um last time i was here i talked to you guys about leadership and accountability and a really funny thing
090happened glenn younkin got sworn as the governor of virginia and he made promises to the people that voted for him and you know what he did on the first day in office he signed an executive order to put the masks optional and make the parents in charge of it and i thought wow that is real leadership that's someone that took a stand someone that stood behind what he promised people kind of like when you guys sent us a survey and 70 some percent of us wanted optional yet you went against what we wanted and did your own policy do you see the difference between real leadership and what he did the other thing i have is i have a seven-year-old son he has spent more time wearing a mask at school than he has without
091he doesn't even know what his friends faces look like it's cool he doesn't even know what his teacher's faces look like he doesn't even know how to respond when people ask him a question because no one can see that he comes home every day and asks me mommy when do you think i won't wear a mask at school because i find it really odd when i see my friends everywhere else i don't have to even a seven-year-old can figure out that this is all for theater and the last time i checked in second grade we don't have theater classes so end the theater now and unmask the kids we will now move on to board comments the consideration of future agenda items mr marshall i'm sorry i i wasn't but we're on to board comments
092okay comments from the board yes normally when another fellow board member makes the comment directed specifically at me based on what she is talking about i let it slide but since i've been called out as the author of the slating motion at our previous board meeting which i initiated individually with no collusion with other board members and for her to categorically label me as being very unprofessional i take issue with that thank you dr madeline thanks mrs logan for all your years at vivid you you were wonderful um i look forward to talking about um goals for lake central school corporation again thank you dr malcolm um yes you know thank you for coming out and speaking again and it is very frustrating very very frustrating i i know that if i had the power
093to change it i would change it but we just don't because we live in a system and all those systems are interconnected whether we like it or not you know it's just the way it is in the in the state of indiana i will tell you that i recently returned from a trip to louisiana and mississippi the hot places in the area supposedly went to a basketball game with lsu in tennessee saw maybe 10 masks went to visit my brother in the hospital massacre not even required in the hospital in mississippi so it was a whole different feeling down there than what we have up here and i don't know the source of all the overreaction i call it overreaction that we have in indiana i don't know the source of it i do know
094that there's some inaccurate data out there from the get-go that was never corrected by our county but moving on um dr medlin i'm curious do you know because i know you keep track of cdc you're you're good about this is there a change in leadership at the cdc recently not that i know okay but the only reason i ask is because it seems like different messages are coming out than came out before and i guess i didn't pay attention to the speaker in past and i i was just curious if this new lady that is speaking has always been do you does anybody else know about that leadership there at cdc yeah they changed when the administration changed oh did they okay all right thank you i did not know that um and um yeah
095so we're part of the a system and that's just the way it is and uh [Music] so i would like to say thank you to mrs logan for all your years of service and thank you for bibbidge and uh good luck to all the winter teams heading into final meets dac tournaments and sectionals i also want to wish our juniors and seniors attending winter formal a safe and fun evening and with that we will turn it over to dr veraco board calendar of future activities our next meeting is here on february 7. thank you very much thank you do we have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn we have a church so i moved and all in favor