001welcome to our monday february 7th meeting please join us in the pledge of allegiance of the united states to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you our first item is our agenda approval deletions editions dr morocco thank you mr seuss we do have a couple of revisions under roman numeral seven b two our stop the bleed trainers recognition will be at our next meeting we had a couple officers unable to attend tonight so we're pushing that out to our next meeting under seven d one additional professional leave requests under mrs castaneda's agenda and 7h2 mr james has added the bibich elementary school property title correction for your action this evening thank you recommendations moved to be accepted we have a motion by dr
002malco second second by ms kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you miss kelly is there any correspondence this evening um not specific correspondence just in general i wanted to say that we we do receive correspondence from our parents almost daily in the form of emails uh just wanted to thank everybody for reaching out to us we do read each and every email that comes in and we appreciate your concern and reaching out to us regardless of what side of the issue you fall in thank you thank you we'll move on to our liaison committee updates mr marshall uh yes thank you tomorrow the interview process starts for selecting a principal candidate for beach elementary school that will take place tomorrow and wednesday as of right now there's no other
003information to report on thank you mrs kelly yes i don't have anything to report this evening for the redevelopment commission for cherylville but the cherryville parks department we have some exciting news three of our parks are going to get new playground equipment this spring that would be rorman park fox run park and smith park also most exciting and it involves some of our home in first graders a splash pad is going to go in at the sherwood park in front of our community center and some of our home and first graders got to weigh in on what they would like to see incorporated into that design so i thought that was kind of cool oh i bet you that was a fun meeting yeah so that's awesome all right thank you dr madeline nothing to
004report this evening thank you dr malcolm yes the education foundation meeting actually is they had their meeting at six while we had our work sessions so i have nothing to report on that yet legislative plans are in the work we're working on some communication with our legislators we will keep you informed about those and gee dyer parks department i'm going to need to reach out and find out when they meet because that'll be a lot of fun good thank you that's all i have thank you and i have nothing for the st john redevelopment commission meeting dollars for scholars the application process for scholarships is currently open february 28th is that deadline it is a solid deadline so i do know that mrs resnick and my husband mr seuss they did a presentation and i
005know they kept saying make sure you hit that submit button so that that's very important at the end of that application so that's all that i have so we'll move on to our official school board business topics consent agenda dr baraco thank you again mrs seek board approval for the minutes from our regular meeting on january 18th and approval of the claims payroll and extra curricular expenditures that you received in your packets last week move to proof we have a motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion mr james thank you very much for your explanations of our questions about the claims appreciate that yes thank you all right so we have a motion and did we have a second bye miss kelly are you all in favor aye aye motion passes
006thank you we have no public comments on action items so we'll move right into our official school board business topics regular agenda dr baraco thank you again my first item is to seek board approval for a couple professional leave requests one to lobby at the state capitol with some teachers and that was actually last week and we went down and visited with five different legislators on a couple key pieces of legislation that i'll get into a little bit later and my second item is to go down this thursday afternoon and overnight into friday to be with the executive director and some other folks from the indiana association of public school superintendents to talk about some future professional development and conference ideas and they are paying the hotel so i will be submitting mileage thank you
007all right do we have a motion motion to approve motion by ms kelly second second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye any opposed same sign motion passes thank you okay my second item is to just give the board a quick update on some legislation that we're following not all of the pieces obviously there are nearly 40 pieces that impact public education but the big ones are beginning with house bill 1107 that we've talked about previously we found out today that this was pulled from the senate education committee docket for wednesday which indicates to us that there's going to be some significant changes and there's even an outside chance that the bill could be tabled the problematic piece is for us as i've mentioned before in taking away any burden from
008families to demonstrate that a school has not met the terms of their iep is we could end up in a lot more hearings instead of resolving those matters at a reconvened case conference and or at mediation and so when we were down there we did speak to all five of the legislators we met with that this particular piece of legislation was troubling um of course you know we met with three senators and two uh state reps and it had already passed over from the house so um don't know if we're making progress but we are happy to share some talking points with our senators uh one of which one of who does serve on the senate education committee so maybe it had some uh benefit the second piece that we're watching closely is house bill
0091134 this is a the item that's been talked about a lot it's the house version that includes many of the same or i should say similar pieces that were in senate bill 167 senate bill 167 is the one that made all that news when the teacher from noblesville questioned his state senator about staying neutral neutral when it comes to talking about things like nazism and that it's really hard to do because you talk about it because you want to share what happened so people don't allow history to repeat itself so you know it appears that a lot of house bill 1134 will be debated on the senate side the positive again is that on the senate side their similar bill senate bill 167 was killed by the senate so hopefully they remove some of the
010pieces that we like the least one of which is that curriculum committee that would require us to have somehow committees for all subjects in all grade levels and have i guess evening meetings to try to go over the information even though in one piece of the legislation they wanted all the work done by june 30th so um obviously the people we talked to said don't get too anxious yet allow things to take their course and we said well we trust that you'll remove some of this stuff but we want to make sure that we've shared with you so no one could come back later and say you didn't complain about any of this stuff or you didn't make us aware of the parts you liked the least so we allowed that to stay in so
011we believe you know the the piece about opting out of certain lessons that most districts already have a process in place for people to talk to their teacher and their principal about that as well as to question selective lessons if they find something disturbing so we think a lot of that stuff already occurs but if they feel the need to put that piece into allah you know i think that's a piece we could actually survive and live with and the final piece is house bill 1072 where this piece wants to force districts like us to share our operating referendum money with charter schools if we have anybody in our district who lives in st john township but goes to a charter school somewhere they get a portion of the money we get from our taxpayer
012there's a lot of details that need to still be fleshed out in that legislation and as once again our concern is will the degree of transparency for those receiving funds be anywhere close to what we share with people and so those those are three pieces i wanted to make the board aware of tonight i think the next three weeks should be action-packed as legislation you know last week passed from one side of the general assembly to the other and then after three weeks whatever remains will go to conference committee where they'll try to iron out all the differences between what the house wants and maybe what the senate wants to see and the general assembly has made it pretty clear that they want to be completed by the middle of march so those conference committees
013would last about two weeks and then they would wrap up the session so we're gonna find out what's happening relatively quickly but it's just important for us to be diligent to pay attention to what's coming out of the general assembly so that we can at least share our feelings even though we don't have a vote we can still share how we think things would impact the students we serve any questions about any of that stuff yes okay on the house bill 1072 what are the requirements for the charter schools do they need to be a part of the referendum committee when it goes out and does its work or have you heard anything about it well the initial version said that they they cannot uh take a stance on the referendum so they don't get
014to help us pass it they just get some of the money now would this be for any uh referendums in the future or what would it essentially be now again that hasn't been uh well detailed yet wow the new laws usually come into effect end of june 1st of july don't they typically yes yeah but i was just asking you know because obviously you mean for that referendum so yeah they'd be privy to that so yeah any other discussion thank you doctor thank you safe travels now we'll move on to our director of human resources personnel mrs mucha thank you very much we are recommending that the following personnel items that were included in your packet be approved and in keeping with me recognizing people with 25 years or more of service i also want
015to talk about dolores strauch custodian watson with 26 years of service we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by mrs kelly any discussion all in favor aye motion passes thank you we'll move on to our director of primary education dr bracey good evening there are no field trip requests but i am seeking your approval for the professional leave requests you have received in your packets move to approve the professional lead requests we have a motion by dr medlin second second by mr marshall any discussion all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you our director of secondary education ms castaneda good evening for my first item i am seeking your approval for the revised copy of the professional leave requests that you receive this evening motion to approve we have a motion by
016ms kelly and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you for my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip request that you received in your packet so moved i have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr malcolm any discussion hearing none all in favor hi motion passes thank you and for my last item i just wanted to give the board an update on the s.a.t if you recall last year the state came out and said that we would be switching the high school accountability test from the istep to the s.a.t this school year so in march specifically march 3rd all of our juniors will be taking the sat this is nothing new for lake central we've given the sat before in the
017spring however what is new this year is that we are giving the digital version of it so as educators we tend to prefer paper pencil testing just because of all those great close reading skills and annotating skills that we teach our students however our kids are obviously very prepared with online assessments because they've been taking the ilearn exam so they'll be ready for that on march 3rd because of some of the proctoring rules that college board has we need to have additional staff in each classroom as well as staff in the hallways to monitor and so in order to meet those staffing requirements we are going to put our 9th 10th and 12th graders on e-learning for that day so that we have enough staff to support the 11th grade students with the new sat
018there has been some news that the college board made about a week ago regarding the transition to the digital sat and also to the digital psat some of that comes into play for us now obviously indiana opted in early to take the test online this school year for next fall when we give our psat like we always do in october that will be digital and then they also have some changes that are coming over the course of 2023 and 2024. they're going to shorten the sat right now it's about 3 hours and 15 minutes they're gonna drop it down to closer to two hours which is wonderful news because our students experience a lot of test anxiety and test fatigue for the calculator section or the mass section i should say they're going to allow
019calculators on all of it currently there's a non-calculator section and a calculator section so those aren't going into effect unfortunately for this school year but it's something that we can look forward to and i think we are excited about the switch from the istep to the sat it's just much more transparent when the test is over we get a copy of the questions we can look at where our kids did well and where there's some opportunities for growth and so it is kind of a step in the right direction in terms of assessment do you have any questions is the sat limited just to math and language arts yes okay and no writing no they've gotten rid of the essay okay and then how many juniors will you be testing that day all of them
020do you know how many are in that class uh upper 700s i don't know the exact number off the top of my head that's why you've got to have all that help huh we do good luck on that and we're good with our technology equipment it's all been yes i think because we've had to do the ilearn assessment that we're pretty well versed in using our chromebooks now for testing yeah and the nice thing is that the the cii platform that istep and ilearn are given on is the same platform that college board uses so there's a little bit of familiarity there too oh that's good that's good okay thank you sarah is the total number of correct answers still at 1600 level it is they're keeping okay no change sir no changes there okay
021this is castaneda um did they give any rationale for getting rid of the uh non-calculator portion just curious they did not give any rationale um i think it's easier to do with the calculator it is and so at the upper levels i think they're more concerned about can they apply the strategies than necessarily do the calculations freehand i don't know as a math instructor how you feel about that you could probably guess people coming out of high school don't know how to do arithmetic so this this would it would be nice that they'd have some type of gauge on that but they won't know so i don't think that's good any other questions no all right thank you our director of student services mrs gramala my only item tonight is to seek your approval for
022the professional leave requests that were included in your packet move to approve we have a motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you and we're moving right along the director of facilities mr i have an update for you tonight um at your stations tonight you found uh the 2022 maintenance agreements throughout the corporation i bring to you this this time about every year i do want to point out despite the supply chain issues and the pandemic and everything else not we didn't add anything to the maintenance agreement with the exception of we're bringing watson elementary school on to the optimization program we brought pifer on three years ago we brought grimmer on last year so we brought pifer on this year and we
023we i've worked with uh the uh schmidt and everything we're basically doing for the same price because we've got the others under control so we got to bring it off at the same price and the overall you can see despite all the stuff that's going on in the world right now we're we're saving 19 000 over 19 000 for what we had last year so that's great with our vendors and partners that we work with throughout the years so that i thought that was really good news in the times we're living in right now so if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer so with tell me this watson is going on with the optimization we're trying to bring up each building it's been very as you know i'll bring some reports to
024you usually nip schools behind they're usually like six weeks behind the calendar year so that we will get the final reports here usually about this time mid february so in some time march i'll bring in like the results our entire optimization but you've seen the rebates we've beginning we've been really good with saving the energy we're trying to bring each building up a little by little so now that we're adding watson our plan is to add vivid next year okay so that's that's kind of what we're doing right now so so then eventually you want all 10 schools that's the goal yes yes and that would not include tap though because it's more of a residential right it's a triplex that's what it was when when we uh when we took it over so it's
025it's pretty much just like your house right right there's not a lot there's not a lot there you can do other than just setting things back just like you do at home right right and mr ledger i must say to you that um i think i asked you about the snow removal company that we use and you mentioned the payloaders that are necessary to get it done and you saw that last week yes i drove by the other day and that parking lot was so clean i could not believe it so the guys worked a lot of hours i mean it was it was amazing and again they were in demand all over uh all over chicagoland because you need them for a snow like that yeah yeah yeah they did a nice nice job
026so i did want to compliment you on that yeah i do that was a very nice thank you and we don't have our director of technology mr mourinho here but dr verraco if you pass along you know our thanks for staying on top of all those spams and everything else so they're getting heavier now aren't they now we're on to our director of business services mr james okay so our last board meeting we dr brocco mr ledger and i did a presentation about the proposed vivid elementary school expansion project uh indiana code requires that we uh do this twice and so we are going to go through it again um for the board and the community members that are here um so so we have encouraged our staff members to view the last meetings um
027archived version because this presentation and it's in its entirety is there and so we're going to go through some of the information again because tonight is uh in addition to us presenting it we have a chance for our public to ask questions or make comments about the proposal and so as we mentioned before you know the number of classrooms we have remaining that are empty across all six of our elementary schools is getting very low the second bullet point is also important though you know some of this as i shared with the divish staff the other day is due to our commitment to having smaller class sizes among our youngest learners because our population is not that much bigger than it was before and yet we we've run out of classrooms so we need to
028be forthright about what has changed and what has changed is a commitment to having smaller class sizes for k to two colling is in their second year in a row of being at full capacity um and as i mentioned the other day we already had you know turned in the i call it the the pit in the library where they used to sit and do some group reading um we we filled that in and turned that corner of the library into a classroom a few years ago i also want to reiterate that um you know the demographics are something that are important our last revision from our licensed demographer jerome mckibben from north carolina former indiana resident was back in 2015. remember again that dr mckibba does forecasting not just um not just um what's
029the word i want to use bill anyway they're not just using projections based on uh you know simple fractions and ratios and moving averages they take other key uh factors into account um we do know from just driving around since we live here that the number the amount of green space or farmland is running out in our township the interesting part about dr mckibben's study and he's done it for us twice now is both times they'll tell you that it is turnover of empty nest households that will lead to increased student enrollment more so than new construction and especially given the price point of our new construction it is important to to hear again from me that after we get our census data and get settled here we probably will want to re-engage with dr
030mckibben to have him do an update with the 2020 census data but it's also really important in bold for me to say again the expansion is based on the actual need today not on what we think we're going to need later we have talked about other options in the past we talked about a seventh elementary school we don't believe we need 35 or 40 classrooms we looked at doing a culling expansion in between the current building and the bus bar and move bus bar and parking to to the south side on the empty space there but at the time that we had that conversation the then school board did not like the idea of a 900 or a thousand student elementary school the other piece that's key to know is you know a 12 room
031addition is much less expensive than a brand new school and then the other piece is okay well you have two schools that are between 400 and 450 students why did you pick bivich over peifer and it does come down to the the reorganization of that school uh is less costly than to do it at pifer but i will again say that should we need to expand again in a few years piffer is still a good candidate for that the complications at pifer really stem around that cafeteria which would require a lot more extensive renovation work than what we have to do at bibich so the timing of this expansion is important too we like to keep score you'll notice in all of rob's budget presentations we like to see where we stack up against our
032peers in lake and porter county especially we do keep score of where our school tax rate is again we're forever grateful to the taxpayers for stepping up and allowing us to rebuild the high school and to fix protzman we've certainly gotten our money's worth and the people in those buildings certainly appreciate both students and staff the new digs um but at this point we just think it's time to do it before we run out of all of all of our classrooms and then we have a crisis having said that though since we do believe and bill's going to get into this in a in a moment that it's you know likely at least a two-year project there there could be some class-sized creep especially at colling until uh we get this renovation and classroom edition
033done so i'll turn it over to mr ledger thank you dr morocco um as we presented last time um this was the slide from last time i have had a couple meetings with the architects we had some site visits and we're kind of on the initial design so rob you go the next slide we can see we have moved the teacher parking lot as i spoke about the possibility of at the last meeting it's between the uh ten room addition and the existing fourth grade weight so that that's moved there it's better access for the teachers and it it lays out better for us logistically too as i stated the last meeting the dark blue toward mr marshall that's going to be a 10 room classroom addition all those tent rooms will have a bathroom
034in them so they could be used for kindergarten or first grade above that is a four room classroom addition on the existing fourth grade wing and then to the right of the screen is the existing cafeteria where we are going to be adding about a 2 500 square foot addition to the cafeteria to accommodate the new students also on the very far east side we'll be adding some additional parking as well so we're somewhere between right now 90 and 100 added parking spaces which will also let have a separate bus drop off and pick off in front of school as i talked about last time what mrs logan and dr malfoy were very excited about it so is the whole staff when doc brock when i actually met them last week is there's going to
035be about a 900 foot staging parent drop off pickup road along with the turnaround right there so that's also going to be added bill bill yes sir before you can revert back there i oh i see that's uh retention or detention areas yeah off that uh close to 81st avenue right we're not sure right now without meeting with the town of dyer but we're we're anticipating we're going to have to add some detention there and that's kind of where from the parking lot yes that's okay we're kind of temporarily locating those right now until we meet with the top uh this is just the floor plan what i talked about last time i talked about we have a net delta of 12 classrooms after a meeting and a site visit last week and some some
036design work if rob the next slide we're going to have a net gain of 13. we don't have to lose the existing classroom number one right now um we thought we might have to but right where mr james is certainly in the red dot we can keep that so we're gonna have a net gain of 13. classroom two the existing classroom two would turn into uh restrooms to accommodate the other students and then you can see the four classrooms there the 10 there and then the expansion of the cafeteria as well we talked about schedule right now you know we're at our second meeting here february 7th we are looking to hire a construction manager this month um we right now i think we can have the site package done april of this year and
037then we bid the site package in may and then the building package we hope to be done by in the may and if everything goes well we break ground in june and then we also did the building package in june there uh phase one is everything we just talked about we hope to be complete december of uh 23. the alternate for phase two would be um redoing the existing hvac of the donut basically as well as all the ceilings within there and that will be done before school starts in 24. as we talked about last time with the volatility of the worldwide market with the pandemic you know the supply chain issues you know it's it's really flexible right now but that that's kind of what we have on paper right now all right now
038i just want to talk a little bit about the estimated costs um what everything that bill's talked about has a currently an estimated cost of 17.4 million dollars of course we won't know the exact figure until the bids will come in how this would work was what the school district would enter into a lease agreement with the multi-school building corporation this is a controlled project by the definition of indiana code which is why we're going through all these uh steps and just noted is below the threshold requiring a public referendum for calendar year 2022 our debt service funds have a combined tax rate of 31.87 cents generating a tax levy of just over 17 million dollars the 17.4 million dollars of bonds would have a corresponding lease agreement for 20 years right now we're estimating
039interest rates at three and a half they're much lower than that now but by the time between now and the spring you never know what can happen so our estimates are based on a higher interest rate having a total interest cost of 6.978 million dollars this project would add about two and a half cents to the tax rate and about 1.27 million to the annual levy i just want to remind the board and the and the public that in 2020 uh we refunded slash refinance three of our bond issues series 2011 2012 b and 2013. interest rates are low and just like how many people have refinanced their homes we took advantage of that and so we were able to decrease our annual debt payments by over 1.4 million dollars and lowered the tax rate
040to our taxpayers by 2.63 starting this year that saves just over 17 million dollars to our taxpayers over the life of the bonds that we've refunded as dr vrocco mentioned we are very conscious of our lake central tax rate we uh try our best to keep that as low as we can and in 2020 through 22 you can see we've dropped our tax rate um quite a bit almost by 14 cents over the last two years um you know when someone gets their tax bill there's multiple things that you're paying for there's the school district there's a city or town that you live in there's the county the library the township and so many layers of government and all those different layers of government have their own debt and added together it's called overlapping debt
041because it affects everybody and so currently the total long-term debt for all the stacked units is 216 million 15 844 the current assessed value of just over five billion dollars computes to a desk ratio of 4.28 this chart shows all the debt that we currently have on our books um referendum bonds here um go in uh 10 more years as dr rocco said we're about halfway through with those this would be the added lease and you can see how the debt payments are significantly decreasing even with this project this is the same thing except we've also added a column here because when we've been fortunate to get common school loans from the state every six months this is what we use to provide the technology into our buildings and we've been doing them every six
042months since we've been here or since i've been here and there's no reason to think that we won't do that because we're going to have to re we continue to replace our technology before it gets bad so realistically we can see that continuing this is more just in a graph form of what our current debts are this in green is the section that would represent um this new additional debt as you can see the majority of our current debt are leased rental agreements from various building projects throughout the years and we do have a big cliff here coming in 32 and that's all we have so at this point that was our presentation so i would ascertain if anyone from the board or the public has any comments to make about what was just presented
043okay no one from the audience board members any how would that fit into that graph that you showed us with all the uh well if you notice that the the green amount for this project in the scheme of it it really wasn't that much added to the total we do have some more debt coming off in the next two or three years it's not the big cliff and 32 with the hopefully assessed values continue to increase so if we had to do a similar project as dr varko said probably be of more of a cost than this potentially or around the same because maybe the number of classrooms isn't the same because we haven't even really got down there i would say it would probably have a very similar impact of approximately two two and
044a half cents but that's just speculation but just comparing now to right right we don't know what will happen do we but um what debt will be falling off that you mentioned some debt will fall off i think the clark the original clark bonds um those were 2005. they were 20 years so we have a few more years left on those we've done some other refundings through the year and so when you do a refunding almost it doesn't start the clock over it you could have done it how many different ways in the past but yeah 32 the next in 10 years is where the bigger drop-off is and we'll have the board and administration will have things to talk about years down the road before we get to that and see what other building
045needs over time but we we worry about that now we don't worry about that now thank you okay um my second item is is what was added to the agenda and during this whole process kind of we talked about in an email to the board today i talked about how the multi-district building corporation works years ago and when i say years ago i mean back in the 70s 80s when building corporations started school districts often had a specific building corporation for a specific project so there was a polling building corporation then there was a separate ellen bibich elementary building corporation and there could have been a separate piper one for all i know um they were their own separate legal entities and it really just became a mess so in 1989 is when the multi-district
046building corporation was formed and that's what we've done everything through since then and then that way that building corporation can do anything for any any building so back in 1977 when bidwich was originally um constructed the lake central elementary school building corporation financed the project just as we described and those bonds were paid off in 1996 approximately 20 years later and at that point the ownership of that area or the parcels of that property should resorted back to us for somehow some way it wasn't on the title side it was before my time and i can't speak to anything on that but so we need to take some steps in order to get that title changed back into our name the elementary school building corporation none of those members are unfortunately alive anymore so speaking
047with our attorney we just have to take some legal steps to get that put into our name so at this point i'm just seeking the board's action or excuse me board's approval to move forward with those in order to correct the title we recommend that the board files a quiet title action and authorize the superintendent to take the actions necessary and appropriate for the same is that on this yes that was what was added i moved do we accept the recommendation of our director we have a motion by mr marshall second second by miss kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye motion passes okay thank you um so the next step is part of the bivich project we have three resolutions for tonight on the first one is the adoption of
048the 10 28 hearing and the 10 28 resolution discloses the project cost and the estimated uh impact of the tax levy as we said in the presentation those amounts were disclosed about uh 2.51 cents uh added to the current tax rate of 79 18 for the debt um so i seek your approval on the 1028 resolution that was provided in your board packet move to approve the 1028 resolution emotion by miss excuse me by dr medlin and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you uh the second resolution is the adoption of the preliminary determination resolution and this resolution states that the school board intends to enter into a lease agreement with the lake central multi-district building school corporation for the bibbich elementary school project it
049outlines the maximum amount of the lease of the one million two hundred seventy thousand an estimated interest rate of three and a half percent at interest for the cost of the lease of six million nine hundred seventy eight thousand as well against stating the estimated tax impact of two point five one cents so i seek your approval on the preliminary determination resolution we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by ms kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you and then the third resolution tonight is the adoption of the reimbursement resolution and this states that the school corporation can expect to incur costs prior to the issuance of the bonds in the summer we've already talked about maybe some architectural work and so forth and um this resolution just states
050that once the bonds are sold by the building corporation that the school district intends to reimburse those costs with a portion of those bond proceeds so we seek your approval for the reimbursement resolution so moved motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you and my final item is to seek your approval on the donations that were presented in your board packet motion to approve i have a motion by miss kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion all in favor aye aye aye motion passes thank you very much mr james if if i could ask him maybe mr ledger will i don't know maybe doctor barack where does this put the safety entrances that we were working on for on the other couple of schools
051i think kaler and clark i mean this project does not delay that because that's out of the building project that's how the cpf right okay i just want to make sure thank you any other discussion all right we'll move on to our public comments portion just would like to remind for 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 a student or anyone else whether in attendance or not the board will allow each person three minutes with a total of 30 minutes when you are down to the last 15 seconds we will announce to you that your time is nearing completion i do understand that we had one person walk in that did not was not able
052to sign up i will call you at the end so when you do come up if you please state your name and your address for the record i would appreciate it margaret jablonski please hello again hi margaret jablonski i live on matthew street in crown point i find it utterly disappointing though not surprising that we still find ourselves here today and during it another groundhog day i will however continue my quest to show my children then when a cause is important to them the fight for it might often times be an uncomfortable one i will continue to advocate for their freedom i will not be deterred in my attempts to showcase the importance of respecting every person and their choices i would also like to engage in a meaningful and productive discussion perhaps your reaction
053to all the materials i submitted over the past week could be a starting point i am particularly interested in your comments regarding the most recent meta-analyses published last week by johns hopkins university concerning the failure of and damage caused by lockdowns and mandates what about the review of over 150 studies that prove that masks don't work have any of you taken a good look at the return to normalcy toolkit i provided you with what about the very informative video by dr shiva of mit on masks and oral health we continue to do our homework we continue to do research we continue to search out new and old information that could add to the discussion what would be the best way to get your feedback preferably in a public forum it appears that the school board
054meetings are not regarded to be a discussion platform would you consider conducting a town hall meeting of sorts to discuss engage and exchange ideas you must know by now that we are in it for the long haul none of us parents are in this to cause our kids harm none of us really want to be at odds with the school board either if they need a rose we would rally behind the board that respected us and what we stand for i think that is the message we are sending with the laws that you currently find yourselves in we simply want you to recognize our rights our intentions our choices and our knowledge of what is best for our children constant regurgitation of the health and safety the need to follow department of health and the
055law or the fear of liability really become moved in light of the other districts implementing optional masking successfully have you reached out to them i think this might be the fourth or the fifth time i've asked that to see what they are doing differently at what their strategy is are they really breaking the law what are the potential consequences what are they doing different that we could learn from are they really throwing health and well-being of the students and staff out the window or could it be that they actually care more about the kids than the potential legal liability have they observed significant rise in cases not that we really should care about this at this point has there been a significant increase in deaths among their students or staff can you really tell me
056with a straight face that mandatory masking does not negatively impact anyone if so please provide supporting evidence you have had two years to collect plenty of it what experts other than the department of health have you consulted with when making a decision to remove options and freedoms from individuals as far as i know there have been no successful lawsuits against school districts with optional masking by the way how would one prove in court that they contracted covet in math class and not at walmart there have been other cases that people are winning especially in illinois i hope you guys are watching illinois is a mess right now don't let that happen here thank you jenna orgazovich good evening board members uh thanks for allowing us to speak tonight um i just did you say your
057name and address please i'm sorry your name and address jenna ogrezovich and i live in dyer indiana um i didn't prepare a lot tonight but i just kind of wanted to sort of express who i am why i've been in this fight with you uh on this mass mandate with you guys uh i've been intimately involved in this pandemic since the beginning of it from the very beginning of the pandemic i'm sure you all remember that some people had jobs that were essential some people were non-essential i run a family business that was determined to be non-essential so for the past two years my business has had no income due to this pandemic that goes to show the nature of this this pandemic throughout has not been about saving lives has not been about the
058science it's been a giant social engineering experiment that we're all involved in and as a school board you have the opportunity to take our kids out of that experiment what the parents want them to to be done but you guys are continuing to just push masking in the name of the state in the name of some law that doesn't exist you know masking normalizes dehumanization not being able to see your faces up there i don't know what any of you are thinking i you're like a wall to me when i look at you all out there i don't know i would love to see some sort of reaction to anything i say or what any of these other people are saying to you tonight i can't read you at all and as a substitute teacher
059in the district last year i went along with the masking it was the most heartbreaking experience of my life to stand in a classroom with kindergartners and first graders and want to see how they were doing and and have a wonderful day with them and i can't see their faces when they come in the classroom are they having a good day are they exhausted do they look like they've been crying what's going on i couldn't tell and i loved being a substitute teacher i actually have nine credit hours to go to have be able to get a regular teaching license i went back to school and i stopped that because now i'm homeschooling my child because i want to take her out of this religious secular religious cult that has been formed around this coronavirus
060um and it's it's my fundamental right to not belong to a secular religion and i just want to say that all of this empowers bullying a lot of people say that kids don't care but what teachers pride themselves on students who don't care um one last thing i have to do christina abel i am going to show we're done thank you christina abel you can leave it right there and i will get it christina abel you state your name and address please uh christina abel 90432 place in st john thank you hi again i feel like this is a once a month thing that i get to come talk to you and nobody talks back to me it's amazing um i would like to go over an article that just came out in the washington
061post on january 25th schools can safely make masks optional with the cdc's new guidelines i'd like to let you know that the washington post is not a right-wing outlet this is a left-wing outlet okay the doctors let me get to it dr sharon darone an infectious disease physician is a hospital epidemiologist at tufts medical center and an associate professor at tufts university school of medicine weston branch element is also an infectious disease physician and is an associate professor of medicine at harvard medical school alyssa perkins is an associate professor of emergency medicine and director of emergency medicine infectious disease management at boston medical university boston university school of medicine they are the ones that wrote this article the center of disease control and prevention updated its guidance on masks this past week stating that respirators
062such as n95s are more protective than surgical masks which in turn protect better than cloth masks i would like to thank you mr marshall because i can see that my speech last time made an effect and you heard me and listen to me because instead of the surgical mask you're wearing the n95 which shows me that you really are caring about wearing the masks the rest of you when i told you that the cdc said that the cloth masks do nothing and they came on on cnn and said that the cloth masks do nothing we still continue to come up here with our cloth masks today so obviously we're not that concerned about it we are just showing this is for show now so anyway um these updates are appropriate from scientific standpoint they also
063offer a pathway to compromise in a place where masking policies are mostly hotly debated which is schools respirators and other high quality masks such as the n95 are highly effective at protecting their wearers regardless of what people around them are doing this makes the old mantra my masks protect you and your mask protects me obsolete as a result schools can finally safely make mask optional for students and staff biden is also sending out 400 million respirator masks if you would like one you can order them and get them for free they will protect you they will not protect anybody else they will protect you so anybody that is in these schools anybody that's a teacher a student anybody that wants to wear them that is concerned can certainly get an n95 mask and they can
064wear them they will be protected if they do not want to wear them they don't have to because the cloth mask that 95 98 of the people in the schools are wearing don't work illinois new york virginia all over the place these judges are putting down these mass mandates they're ending them i encourage you if you would like to show your constitution that you listen to them to please end these mandates thank you sherry true [Applause] sheree true 164 per month drive and dire thank you hello again i feel really comfortable coming up here every two weeks to tell you my stories because i feel like we're really connecting um and so that was a good segue to mine i was going to say what do new jersey illinois connecticut and delaware have in common
065it's not a joke uh you would probably say they're all blue states but they're actually people that are not doing mass mandates for their kids anymore which is very interesting considering their politics there's also many school districts that are around here that are not doing mass mandates and so given that fact there is no law a mandate isn't a law i don't know if you guys have time to look that up but a mandate isn't a law it's a recommendation just like the health department make recommendations they're not elected officials they're bureaucrats that give opinions based on their political divisiveness they want to use to get their decisions and their points across please don't use our children as pawns in this game it's not fair to them it's not fair for them for to them
066to lose their childhood because bureaucrats don't want to do the right thing so please i'm asking you again and i will continue to ask you until this gets done or until we have an election and there'll be new people sitting up here that can make better decisions thank you thank you jeremy ogrozovich uh jeremy ogrisovich dyer um so i have a question to you guys uh is the cdc infallible yes or no anybody yes or no oh they won't all right um i think jennifer dr medlin had the the best quote of the day of the evening people coming out of high school don't know how to do arithmetic that was awesome i think mass are probably going to be a great help with that i think maths are going to definitely help with increasing
067our ability to communicate effectively you know algebra 2 and trigonometry to our high schools high schoolers who are trying to pass the sat you know if the cdc and the nih have a uh a conflict of interest or a uh a dispute between regulations who do you follow um and giving that back to harken back to what was said earlier uh now that everybody else is uh around uh all the surrounding communities are changing their their current standing how does it feel to be on the wrong side of history yeah um to end uh i pulled my children out of this school corporation um you've all fallen short of the standard and i can't wait to vote you out can't wait to vote you out you're all failures thank you amber vladta hello amber vladica
068ginger core dire indiana thank you so headache sore throat sinus congestion body aches headache what am i describing cold coven nobody knows right so when this pandemic first started was 14 day quarantine if you were in close contact you were isolated unless you were in health care then you were forced to work but that's different um so 14 days at the beginning now we're down to five days five days isolate put a mask on for the other five days vaccinated or unvaccinated it doesn't matter what is that telling you if you look at science science shows that as a virus replicates it decreases in its strength this virus it's not the ohm cran it's not the delta it's the og it is a cold we are putting masks on kids my son had a bloody
069nose twice last week during school because of a mask janice i've been watching you and observing for two hours you have been pulling your mask down it's not even up over your nose clearly you can't tolerate a mask for two hours how are we expecting our children for six hours stop projecting your fears on our children let the parents make the decisions if a parent now now they've made it six months and up can vaccinate if you have an irrational fear of a cold please take the vaccine put a mask on i'm not telling you not to wear a mask i'm just telling you not to make me wear one or force my children to wear one so please unmask our kids this is ridiculous let's at least put it on the books to discuss
070when what's the next step how long are we going to continue this for give us a date give us something to go off of give us a little bit of hope this has got to end it's got to end now give us something something that's it something don't just stare at us thank you can i um the person who came in that wanted to speak please approach name is jillian trans i live at 1004 richmond court in dyer indiana and i am the parent of two lc students and a passionate supporter of public education i'm here tonight to state clearly my opposition to hb 1134 not because i think the board or the district has direct influence over the legislature but because over the past months you've heard from folks who support underlying elements of
071the bill and i think it's important that you hear from multiple perspectives in the community excuse me community as a parent my priority is for my children to receive a high quality education that prepares them for college and career in a competitive global economy hp 1134 is not about improving the quality of education but rather limiting the concepts and perspectives that can be taught in schools to align with a conservative agenda most concerning is section 12b which creates a definition for good citizenship instruction this definition requires curriculum to position the economic and political institutions of the united states as quote better suited to contribute to human advancement prosperity and well-being end quote this is a slippery slope while of course i want my children to understand the economic system of capitalism i object to public
072schools requiring it be taught as superior to other economic systems schools should teach students how to think not what to think the united states is a country that has continued to evolve working to learn from the past and do better and that cannot continue if we define good citizenship as acquiescing to the idea that the economic and political systems of this country are inherently superior to those of nations around the world good citizens are informed citizens and this starts with public education as our indiana students move on to college how will they be prepared for courses on global economics political science anthropology and the law if the version of civics history and economics that are they're forced to learn in indiana schools is censored and sometimes incorrect the generation that my kids belong to have
073the internet in their pocket and this bill's attempt to criminalize the teachings of intersectionality the benefits of other socioeconomic structures and anything related to racism should frighten us my second objection to this bill is chapter 12.5 entitled entitled curriculum materials advisory committee which creates advisory committees that are simply unnecessary and put unpaid labor on indiana teachers who are already at the bottom of the compensation for teachers in the nation this bill does not provide additional funding for extra hours teachers and administrators will have to spend in our districts parents already have access to online textbooks study guides syllabi and lesson plans at their fingertips through canvas and skyward and just because some parents aren't utilizing the tools already available doesn't mean we need sweeping legislation that's going to be impossible to implement hb 1134 has
074a misnomer of a title education matters to that i say actually yes it does but the contents of this bill do not live up to that name i hope this perspective provides value to you guys as the legislative session unfolds and i thank you for all you're doing for our lc students thank you all right that is the end of our public comments section and we will move on to board comments and consideration of future agenda items mr marshall i have none thank you thank you miss kelly turn it off we have some athletic teams coming up with some important matches and competitions this next week so good luck to them okay dr medlin i'd like to again thank the teachers and staff for everything that they do for our students i'm looking forward to
075talking about goals for lake central school corporation and uh due to the pending litigation brought against us i will not be responding to any more emails regarding masks thank you dr mayoko yes um first of all thank you for your comments tonight always appreciate those similarly as ms kelly said the dac swimming awards that we brought back congratulations and i think all the wrestling team goes into the next a representative of every weight goes well that was uh for sectionals there was wrestling and then regionals were were nine nine okay no we're moving on to nine for semi-state sorry cool nine going on to semi-state so that's congratulations to coach luke yes and and um i i one of the minutes and you know i kind of rambling right now because there's several things i
076want to say i don't want our students to think that we don't care about them and all their hard work that's why i'm kind of talking about the wrestling that the dance teams that we have the cheerleaders um the boys basketball team was so much fun to watch the girls basketball team was fun to watch so we have so many great things going on around here not not to forget about uh science olympiad the academic competitions that we have it's just a great place with a lot of things going on um one thing that i wanted to express express for our minutes is because the minutes that we approved indicate that i made a comment that i didn't make so i would like for these minutes to state that during our last meeting i questioned
077the use of slate of officers for election but i did not state the name of any board me member relating to this so i did not mention a board member's name and i think the minutes kind of say that i did so i wanted to clarify that did you watch the tape again dr malcolm yes i did yes because that's how the person who makes the minutes gets the minutes yeah i know i did look at it again yeah we'll watch the tape again yeah no you know what it was the comments that were made by um mr marshall at the very end that's where it was stated so okay i received several communications about my comment last meeting and at the end of that meeting i talked about my recent trip to louisiana and
078mississippi in an effort to state my opinion that my opinion in that in general indiana has a much more stringent reaction to the covet situation than i found in mississippi in louisiana even though their death rates are much higher than in indiana in other words what i saw down there in mississippi and louis louisiana was normalcy everything is optional if you want to do a mask you do a mask i was not judging who was right or wrong but giving examples of the differences between the states let me repeat that i was talking about the differences between the states i'm not saying who's right or who's wrong similarly there are differences of opinion up here on this stage there's differences of opinions of those of you in our parent community and our students some are
079saying no mask some are saying optional mess some are saying yes we want mass some are saying vaccination you've got to have it others are saying no you have to have a vaccination and a mask you know everybody's got their personal opinions um and i think that as members of the community of lake central we have followed the rules of covet since 2019 we've learned a lot about covet over those years the the most recent data that i read and first of all i thank you for sending us the meta analysis done by johns hopkins university because we've been accused of not using solid data but the most recent data that i read about is that this is creating difficulties for young children with their speech and their language development and that one really that
080one really bothered me um so you asked for us to give you something you know what and this is not an experiment and i don't know who said that but but i find that to be kind of odd because this is not an experiment i mean none of us consider this an experiment we're trying to use children to control whatever we do legitimately have concerns we want to keep them safe but at the same time i can recognize and honor that each of you are in a different camp you don't all are not in the same camp i have a son who pulled his children from school because they are not required masks so you see it's just everywhere everybody's different everybody's different please my turn okay i didn't interrupt you um so i have
081turned to our legislators because because i understand why dr veraco is holding to the initiative of the governor and of course you know that was renewed again for another month until march so i reached out to our legislator and i asked are you guys talking about this dilemma that we are in and then he sent me some research and it shows that they are talking to the governor about this dilemma that we're in however at the same time i'm a realist and i know that legislators don't make a decision like that so in summary i guess what i am saying is as an individual on the board i would like to recommend that we become optional mask in the very near future now i've been saying that forever but i said it this time as
082a recommendation now i don't know if anybody up here would would agree to that but that is something certainly something we should talk about i i agree with so many of you about it's just time it's just time i go to these places i go to those places and i just please please i just i just think it's time and then we monitor the situation and if it's ugly then we mask up again i just think it's time that we start moving forward with this like for example mississippi and louisiana did yeah but that's my personal opinion all right is that it nope right and i just want to you know echo some of the sentiments up here about the the whole uh sports and you know good luck to those teams and with that
083we'll move on to our board calendar future activities doctor morocco [Music] dr veraco we're united yeah you can come up and chat afterwards um yeah we're we're back here in two weeks that's all i have to say 21st thank you do we have a motion for adjournment motion to adjourn we have a motion do we have a second second all in favor aye