001welcome to our monday march 7th meeting if you'll please join us in the pledge of the united allegiance all right we'll move right into our agenda approval deletions editions dr veraco thank you seek board approval for the agenda you were provided last week we have a motion by miss kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes is there any correspondence mrs kelly thank you so um we'll move on to our liaison committee updates and i believe dr malcolm is the only one who has an update tonight okay thank you for the opportunity um it's relating to the lake central education foundation what they wanted me to share with you is that right now the committee is meeting to determine the grant award recipients this is grant
002round number 56 this is a larger amount than usual it's 750. so they thank you all for your support because that 750 dollars comes from various fundraisers fundraisers that we do and or donations that you make so they asked me to extend our thanks to you dire parks i attended their first meeting and they've got some really cool things going on at dyer and i'll tell you more about it at a different time when we don't have such a huge crowd thank you we'll move on to our official school board business topics consent agenda dr veraco thank you again mrs seek board approval for the minutes from our meeting on february 22nd also seek board approval for the claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures that were included in your packets move to proof we have a
003motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes i'm sorry i need to abstain i was not at the meeting we have four yeses and one abstained by dr malcolm are there any public comments or action items there are none so we'll move right into our official school board business topics regular agenda dr varaka thank you one more time and to begin our recognition section i'd like to invite mr graber from clark middle school forward to begin those festivities uh tonight i'd like to recognize first of all our seventh grade girls basketball team on saturday they won the conference championship so congratulations [Applause] anna is the uh actually she wrote an essay for the patriots and essay contest was chosen as the gary of winner by
004the same time vfw uh her with a certificate and a 500 scholarship on february 16th in addition anna also placed second in the district receiving another monetary award so congratulations [Applause] yes [Applause] all right my second recognition tonight is for a gentleman one of my clark students ben kaminski if you could come forward and his coach jen gleason come on forward please ben just an incredible young man congratulations to ben kaminsky he won first place in the future problem solving bull scenario writing competition middle school division in indiana ben will be competing in the international finals at the university of massachusetts on june 9th through the 12th 2022 with students from over 23 countries ben will represent indiana and the united states in the finals [Applause] ben can i ask you a question do you
005attribute all your success to mom and dad [Laughter] i'm just kidding okay moving on to my second agenda item this evening i do want to give the board and the community an update on some legislative happenings since our last meeting the first piece is part of hb 1001 which is now house and roll act 1001 the piece i want to talk about relates to remote participation in school board meetings and this information came to us late last week from isba that with the passage of that act our practice where periodically during the pandemic we had board members participate from whom no longer applies and so for us to choose to do that moving forward we would need to implement a brief board policy to do such so you don't have to answer me this evening
006but if you sent me something between now and our next meeting we're going to be going back to our work sessions to review board policies and when we do that we can include this with that group if the board is so inclined the technology while it exists has not been great for us um in terms of the connectivity um for a variety of reasons but in the past we've always been able to have a quorum by mostly following the schedule barring inclement weather that we agreed to in december for the following year so i just wanted to put that out there for the board the other piece that we were happy to see not pass through the senate was house bill 1107 after some significant amendments by senator rogers it did not survive the the
007rework um and in fact even the individuals who sponsored the bill on the senate side voted against it so it it went down 50 to zero of course if you remember there were parts of it that concerned us with parents and or people in certain cases being influenced by attorneys to not meaningfully participate in a reconvened case conference or in a mediation because um it may be more beneficial to get right to a hearing and so while we agree there are things that need to be looked at in the area of reconvened case conferences mediations and hearings this particular language we didn't think was going to be very helpful and so we are appreciative of those people who decided to think about it some more because in the past we've had some legislation get rushed
008through that then caused us some major heartburn and needed to be reworked in the future so um 1107 is out for now and then of course the big e is the hb 1134 the curriculum piece is what everyone referred to the most controversial piece of legislation in the current session this was the legislation that was going to require teachers to post all of their activities for the future year by the end of june in the summer really hampering flexibility also limiting certain topics in fact the original bill said anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable and unfortunately for you know the way the world is now there's a lot of stuff we're talking about that make us feel uncomfortable whether we're four in preschool or the superintendent at 58 watching the news thinking my word what
009is going on so not talking about it doesn't make it go away or make it better having said that i do think there's you know room for certain guidance or guidelines for what how how hard of aligned staff would take um but to be honest we have not had very many instances in my 12 years where we had to talk to teachers or rein them in for going off the rails so i do think that you know if if maybe the objective was to get people to think about how political they get if they're a u.s history teacher or even a language arts teacher but we're thankful that for now that stuff did not go through do i expect some of it to come back sure and i think um there are no matter which
010side of the of any aisle you're on discussing things is fine um but putting in rules that are unmanageable need to be considered more thoroughly before it goes through the other piece that i wanted to share with the board and i put on the bottom of your talking points notes was it was interesting that the college board weighed in late last week on this and said if certain parts of courses the college board is the organization that is responsible for psat and sat the college entrance stuff they also manage the advanced placement program in america and we get a lot of students i think we had at our recent board meeting uh presentation that included some data on how many advanced placement credits were earned so students in high school go on to college they
011already have some credits in the bank and they get it by taking a rigorous course and then taking a test at the end and scoring high enough on it to demonstrate proficiency but the college board did say if certain topics are banned we're not going to certify those credits in those states that aren't allowing certain parts of courses to be taught and so that was interesting because that was coming from a different corner now a different group weighing in and saying hey let's be careful about this um thing that we're going to start limiting what can be discussed so i just wanted to give the board an update on those three pieces of course the session isn't over uh it will end sometime this week by all indications uh probably wednesday or thursday so we'll
012have one final legislative update in april and then um my last item is that on april 20th they've scheduled our regional school board indiana school boards association meeting in the evening at tables and as you know we always get a a legislative update from uh executive director spratlin at that so i think i've heard now from four board members so i'll talk to the fifth and see if she's gonna attend because it is an informative evening but um that's where we'll also get uh some of some of the details because while we are following the legislation closely sometimes uh late or sometimes even early in in passing a bill there are little clauses that we don't catch that do impact schools and so we do need to follow it closely because usually the legislation is
013effective july 1st after it's passed and so we have to be ready to implement those changes for the next school year so with that are there any questions about legislation before we move on president i just wanted to make the comment that i uh so many people did move forward and reach forward to help with that 1134 house bill including our ability to meet with the legislator only one of the two but i think the thing that i found so interesting about this process is that there were so many entities with from the state of indiana that joined together to say hey this is not good decision making so you not only have the school board association but yet a teachers association the principals association superintendents association so it was clearly clearly a um a
014bill that would serve no purpose other than creating more diversity and challenges among us which we don't need more challenges among us we need to embrace the diversity that would be the only thing thank you director morocco so now we'll move on to our director of human resources personnel mrs mocha thank you very much we are recommending that the following personnel items be approved but i do want to bring to your attention a retirement of adrian belfeld with 25 years of service to lake central [Applause] do we have a motion oh motion to approve i have a motion by miss kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion um the retiree where is she where does she teach celebration i didn't think i had to answer it language arts very good thank you thank you
015all in favor all right motion passes and i am pleased to present to you the new grimmer school principal and his beautiful family we have mr ryan bounce with us this evening i would i want to thank all of you and i want to thank all of you for this wonderful opportunity it is it is a privilege to be here at lake central and uh we are we are humbled and honored to be here uh my better half rebecca bounds my wife uh and i'll go oldest to you i'm a girl dad we got isabella bound she's gonna join me at grimmer in sixth grade next year without the bounds sorry we have elena bounds who is currently in second grade will be in third grade next year and then we have emmy who's still
016in preschool so once again thank you grimmer folks i can't wait to partner with you thank you this is a wonderful school district thank you family you want to get your family sure sure can i get one first of this one and then you all of you guys absolutely one two three perfect thank you anybody else that would like to get in the picture oh you're gonna go back there outside grades thank you thank you my second item is to approve the professional leave form that was in your packet move to approve we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you i do have kevin gardner here a high school teacher who is in charge of our vaping program
017and he would like to give a short presentation on how that program has been going mr gardner thank you terry uh board how are you hi central how are you uh this is our third year for hopefully they have the printout they do all right hopefully you have the print out in front of you and we want to thank dr veraco first of all and terry mucha for heading this out and we started this three years ago and in those three years we've seen 88 different students this year with the first year we've had to present a second class and the second class is now helping them quit so the first one is all about information getting them to understand the the addiction part of vaping the second class that we started this year is
018actually getting them to quit the nice part about the 88 students is the least amount of students that we've seen on second time most of the ada is the first time we've only seen this year only two of the second class so that's that tells us it's working and it's also not only working with our students it's also working with their parents and so we've had some parents call in and they actually wanted copies of the presentation and so we want to continue with working with our students we've worked with other schools we work with the state of indiana their health department we work also with the heart association and the lung association so lake central central's getting out there i want to thank dr veraco and terry mucha because the actual heart association said
019you guys are doing the best job that we've seen yet so that's a hands-off to like central school corporation and just to let you know that program is in the high school and middle schools thank you good thank you we'll move on to our director of primary education dr bracey good evening i'm coming before you tonight seeking approval for the professional leave request in your packets motion to approve we have motion by ms kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you but the real reason i'm here tonight is because i have some amazing fourth graders from bibbich elementary who are here to present to you i think it was last month i was able to visit their classroom and michelle snow and julie moore
020were co-teaching a lesson and it is going to blow your mind so please get ready for this awesome presentation come on up guys [Applause] they're very enthusiastic all right thanks so much for being here with us tonight um miss moore and i want to share with you what the class worked on for we were trying to decide if it was three weeks or four weeks that we were working on the project so what we did was how many of you have ever attended an escape room all right fantastic we've got a digital escape room and it's called a breakout it's from breakout edu so the kids built everything so we're here to talk to you about that tonight so the site breakout edu is what we used and you can see this google and what
021it does is it creates games and these games help you with critical thinking higher level skills collaboration process standards for math problem solving the higher level thinking skills that's what it's all about so it brings a lot of those components and as you can see there's an example of one on the site they have a lap of the day and so you have to use the clues in the picture to try to solve the different blocks are directional color words with all different types of lies so one of the challenges on the site during valentine's time was to create a challenge where the kids would submit different parts would break up like there's introduction there's different clues that you can have and each component so we kind of took our own spin on that and
022we worked together and we decided that the kids would team up and they would make their own breakout collaborative so let them tell more about that absolutely at first ms snow picked sticks for groups to work in then we use the picker wheel to pick our areas to work on [Music] computer lab after that we also use the picker wheel to pick the locks we get after we decided what luck we had we planned how we were going to do it on a piece of paper next we typed the plan onto google's next we type the plan on google slides which is a database that allows you to make a presentation some also used canva which is a site that gives you the power to make posters and things like that then you have to
023create a nice background that helps capture the idea of what you are doing and create a video of what you need to do after you finish your slide you revise review and edit after your slide looks good you submit it to the teacher the teacher then uploads it to a breakout then you finish and you got a breakout uh while we're waiting for that the one thing that i think you guys all need to understand so that you guys google slides breakout.edu screencastify and jigsawplanet jigsawplanet is where we would make a puzzle make puzzles so we used all this for puzzles editing making pictures and editing the main slides some people also used canva google drawings and pixel art to make or draw covers for extra or to make or draw covers or extra photos
024to add on for decoration or hints to find the answer to the lock we also use google earth remove.bg google images and google sites we use google earth to see the life things outside things that we know what it looks like we use remove.ibg to get rid of the background of pictures we use google images to add pictures finally we use google sites to get to the sets we need to make the breakout for the intro we all um we all use google maps google maps google earth to help us to find and see how the roof of bibbidge looked and how the water tower looked for bibbidge for the inside part we used google maps for the indoor part we use google drawings and other stuff that would allow us to take images and
025imported it into google slides and we use that for background images so like you would see it like on the breakout and you try and have to figure it out and then insert the answer in and we would also we would also like link like for example another place to go in where it would be like their own slides and they would have to remove stuff to figure out what the answer is if you get stuck on a slide you can use the hint slides to help you to try and crap what lock you're on or solve it um for the ending uh we had we had um uh answer and we have a question would you want to know the answer and i can't tell the answer [Applause] all right so for those of
026you who want to know why we took the time to do all this during our class time here there's some academic benefits for completing the project there's a lot of problem solving their collaboration was outstanding um the creativity unbelievable they worked on communication skills critical thinking is the biggest part there tearing apart that problem and being able to put it back together they knew what the lock was going to look like at the end but we didn't know what it was going to look like at the end so they had to actually dissect it to be able to put those elements together so that they could give you clues so that you can actually solve it there's a lot of math processing skills and those are the really hardest ones to get to um cots
027to the max that's higher overthinking skills um and then the change in their confidence level from when we started working on this project until when we were done and just to see them up here right now who would have thought that we would be standing up here in front of all these people at this time talking about this project right can we also give an extra round of applause for miss moore too where'd you go to julie oh she's like she's talking right there with the slides [Music] [Applause] yes yo great job boys and girls let's give them one more round of applause and also thank you to all of our parents for coming out boys and girls give your parents a round of applause and one more time boys and girls for miss snow
028and miss moore thank you guys great job and just just think that one day in the future one of you boys and girls may be on the radio answering that problem-solving skill like miss snow i know that's what you're training them for aren't you you're all certainly welcome to stay with us for the rest of our meeting but if you need to get home for something your part's done so thank you for coming out thank you i have to look up that qr code qr code scan it yeah can i just mention that i should have said karen bowman also is retiring and she has 29 years of service so i did forget to say her she was a late edition so congratulations congratulations mrs bowman dr bracey that was a qr code that we
029could scan and do those activities from our home so that'll be on the beverage website okay we'll look out for that thank you yeah right all right i think it's safe to say we'll move on to our director of secondary education mrs castaneda thank you for my first item i am seeking your approval for the professional leave requests we have a motion by ms kelly second second by mr marshall any discussion all in favor aye motion passes thank you for my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip requests move to approve the field trip requests we have a motion by dr medlin and i will second that any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you thank you and then for my last item i'm going to go ahead and bring
030up kerry regan and todd smilinski two of our assistant principals from the high school who are going to discuss some new course proposals at the high school in facts and business good evening to the board as well as to central office staff we have a couple new courses that we would like to present you should have them in your packet i'm going to talk about the business courses there's only three that are new proposals actually two of them are or one of them i'm sorry is a rename so the first one is the principles of entrepreneurship and the next one is new ventures development so basically the entire reason for these changes and the proposals is because the state has switched over to next level programs of study as their pathways so in order to
031try to offer as many different pathways as we can to our students to get them to check that you know graduation box these this is the reason why we are going with these courses um we do have a teacher who um went to some training for us so that the students could actually earn dual credit for those courses as well and even though she's actually on a sabbatical she went ahead and and did that training for us which we're very appreciative of so those are the two um the principles of entrepreneurship and the new ventures development the other one for business is actually just a renamed course under principles of computing that might be on your last page so basically that one is going to be combining what we currently have as our computer science
032one course and our ap computer science principles courses so our computer science teacher danielle carr went to iu she's actually getting credentialed through iu to offer those as dual credit courses students who take that new course well new titled course will end up receiving seven dual credits and they can still take the ap course so or the ap exam i should say so it's all being combined in one but we think it'll be very beneficial for our students good evening thank you for having us on the family consumer science the facts side of things most of what you'll see in here is is more or less a rename because we're offering these courses i think just the biggest change is that they go to a year long to fit their next level course of study
033i put another kind of new course would be the nutrition course on the very top there in the first page we are offering a nutrition wellness as a semester course this is going to be a year-long nutrition food theory course it fits into the the culinary arts pathway which we offer we'll actually offer two two courses that will fit that pathway so that's at the top their nutrition and then again most are are going to be in the renamed because we are offering culinary arts and hospitality but they change over to a year-long course so we're not going to offer the principles of culinary and hospitality we have child development currently in advanced child development to fit our into our education careers pathway child and adolescent development will be the new course title with the
034new number and so on so all these kind of fit into uh into these different pathways we're offering here in our facts department going through yeah and the last one on there is our relationships and emotions if you have any questions about them that's all i have so okay so i know we have these career pathways and i understand that but if i'm going down a career pathway and say i'm in um throw me an idea what am i in what career pathway am i in marketing marketing okay if i'm in marketing does that mean that my schedule is pretty much dictated into that area or do i have any flexibility to take electives or explore other arenas or there's certainly still some flexibility and the one nice thing within the next level programs of
035study is students can take these classes concurrently as well to help them get to that pathway a little bit sooner um but they're still especially their their junior and senior year they do have more flexibility to to take some more elective courses um and the nice thing is these principles courses uh especially like the principles of business management and that could actually give them a couple different pathways so you know if they want to take the entrepreneurship one well that's an entrepreneurship one but there's um the business management and it just just depends on what pathways we will be able to offer we want to offer more um over the next few years but right now we're just we just have to start with a few that we have and the teachers that can teach
036the courses we have but yes there is still flexibility for students schedules so when you talk to your colleagues about this in the career pathways is lakes are you feeling comfortable with where lake central is compared to your colleagues or do we have gaps that need to be filled or what's your self-analysis of of the program the program is still pretty new to us and quite honestly in talking with people from other schools um this has been a very complex pathway to try to figure out they have changed from the perkins 4 to perkins 5 and now the next level pathway so it keeps continually changing however fingers crossed we have been told that this is going to be it and they're not going to change this pathway for a while but i feel like
037we're all kind of in the same boat where a lot of people have been just trying to figure out they just finished the computer science pathway probably within the last few months i see yes so it's just they weren't even the state wasn't even really prepared i don't think to roll it out as soon as we did in my personal opinion well that that tends to happen a lot you know change change change at that level and then they'd forget how dramatic it is for us to try to implement that also if i remember correctly and correct me if i'm wrong but um don't the career pathways isn't there supposed to be something happening at the middle schools also with career pathways that i don't care or am i wrong on that no um okay
038so that's something that the state has changed also there's two things at play here there's the pathways that are tied which is what we're discussing and then there's graduation pathways which is how they earn their diploma oh i'll say that all again would you step to the mic and say that again so i can comprehend this so this was indiana's attempt to try to be more consistent with their cte courses across the state that's the pathways that they were describing i've been here before speaking about graduation pathways which if you recall is the way that students graduate high school so even though we're both using the word pathways they're two different things graduation pathways those requirements for the diploma are something that we discuss at the middle school level because we want them to be
039thinking about that as they're starting planning for their high school career okay okay thank you you're welcome any other questions all right thank you thank you and we'll move on to our director of student services miss gramala i have asked mrs devries here tonight to talk to you all about our ell program um this is typically something we do early in the school year but we were a little busy at the beginning of the year this year so she is going to show you some data on our weda scores which is our testing for english language learners from the 2021 school year we actually just completed our 2022 testing so the information she's sharing will be from last year and then once we get those new scores we'll have more info for you this was
040all in your packets but liz will share this is going to be hard to follow the beverage kids because they were great so bear with me so this is just an overview of who is involved in our program and like she said you did have this in your packet but we have a director or coordinator we now have five teachers and including myself would be six we have liaisons in the building that help us and of course the teachers do the daily instruction and then we also have paraprofessionals the way that the students get identified is by their home language survey once we have that that's how the process starts for the program weda we adopted indiana adopted wida in and the state of indiana became part of that and it's a large consortium and
041these are some of the states that are involved but this is a better picture so it's nice to know when a kid comes from a state that is a weed estate we don't have to re-screen them or do anything they come right into our program this is just the way to access as becky said we give that once a year we just finished our testing it just goes through the different clusters and the different features which we go over a language arts section a math a science and a social studies so these are the different levels that the students will achieve starting with a level one which we consider entering a level five which is bridging and the students in indiana once they reach a level five are considered fluent and out of the program
042and we monitor them for two years so this is currently 2021 2022 we have 467 students in a program just a little bit of information i started this 17 years ago and we had 81 students across all the schools so we've grown quite a bit we have 404 students that are receiving direct services meaning they're active in our program 29 students are in our first year of monitoring and 34 are in our second year and the state still has us make sure that we check on those students we meet with the teachers and we make sure that they are being successful if for some reason they're not then we meet with the committee to decide whether we bring them back in or what the plan of action would be these are this is just a
043breakdown of the elementary a breakdown of the middle school breakdown of the high school and then this is um our testing from 2021 and students improving from 2020 to 2021 and overall the corporation improved at 65 percent now that is the same number as 2020 but with the pandemic with some kids being at home some kids coming in back and forth back and forth i was really actually very happy to see that number because i was afraid we were going to go down quite a bit and we didn't so currently we service students with 30 languages and 29 countries the top languages are spanish at 46 percent of our population arabic is 16 serbian and polish are tied and then vietnamese comes in each year we do hold a parent night for our parents to
044come in we did both virtual and in person it was kind of back and forth this year depending on when they did it but um we actually with the virtual we've had a much bigger attendance i don't know if it's because the parents are maybe don't want to come in but they don't mind getting on virtually so we actually our attendance went up for that so this is just an overview of our lake central families and where they come from um and this is including their parents too we have quite a few students that are born in other countries but this is also their parents included in this and then the essa just follows along to make sure that our students are their needs are being met and um the indiana department of education ties
045that into our program and then just talks about what the way that our students are successful or not is that we measure their growth from year to year and it's not even necessarily their overall growth there's four sub categories and so if they even grow in one of those categories that is considered growth and then the state looks at that and that's how lake central is given um i guess points whether or not the students are successful and that just kind of goes through the essa um i know i went through that really quickly but like i said i couldn't hold up to bibbich but any questions so what are your thoughts about leader now that you've been into it for several years you know i do like it it it does hit a different
046the old test used to just hit language perfect proficiency weed of branches out to the language arts and math not necessarily measuring the math and measuring the vocabulary a little bit more time consuming yeah the test overall probably takes an average of um in every building and some buildings have two thank you liz thank you now we'll move on to our director of facilities mr ledger ah thank you mr seuss um tonight i have one item to seek your approval on um and that's to ask to award and execute the core construction contract for the cma position at the beverage elementary school project um i've sent you guys a bunch of information last week last week we spent two mornings interviewing four very highly qualified candidates uh mrs seuss sat on that committee with most
047of the rest of central office and we had some we had four really fantastic presentations and in the end we ended up picking core construction out of cheryl indiana uh just a little bit of history with core construction i'm there they're a national company and they do they do projects all over the nation and in fact they are the third largest k-12 builder in the nation uh behind turner and gilbane so they have a lot of experience in this on their sheriff office for those you don't know is right there at us 30 and in the five-story building at the crossings there across from tables so it's literally the project's in their backyard as well so with that unless um any other questions i'll seek your approval on that motion to approve we have a
048motion famous kelly second second by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye thank you i would like to introduce uh guys van buren he's he's the director of operations and it looks like tim snuck in here since i since the meeting started as well he's going to be the project manager site so um i just want to introduce these guys they've been great to work with through the through the bidding process and i look forward to a long partnership so uh guys and tim congratulations can you tell us a little bit about you but you have to come to the microphone we so my name is guys van buren i've been in construction for 22 years believe it or not working for core construction just down the street like bill
049said so handle the operations out of that office um and yes this is definitely our bread and butter uh doing k through 12 work and uh and higher education works so really appreciate that uh the opportunity again thank you so much are you from the area here i am yeah i live just uh i live in crown point indiana so just uh by whitehawk there so graduated from crown point no nope i actually graduated from uh iliana christian is where i graduated from when they were still in lansing so yeah yeah and you did your degree work at purdue no i did my degree working actually at prairie state i grew up in chicago heights you did your degree work where at uh prairie state oh yeah yep so i grew up in chicago heights
050that's where i was born and raised so very good well thank you thank you you're welcome thank you [Laughter] this is always so important to me i don't know why but it just helps me get a broad perspective no no no worries um tim stevenson uh former piper pirate former grimmer gladiator and uh former lake central grad of 2000. oh how about that awesome i am a purdue graduate i've been in construction so you you're you're nailing that you know hitting the nail around the head so uh been in construction for 17 years majority of my career has been to chicago but i've been with core for almost five years now so just humbled for the opportunity and it's gonna be pretty cool to work for the old schools what would you think of that
051purdue iu game yeah it was a nail biter oh it sure was but i mean i was i'm not i don't even care about taking out the wisconsin game oh oh she's not important no uh wife's actually a kindergarten teacher at holmen oh really yeah and i have two boys that go to culling one's in kindergarten and once in second grade oh very good well welcome back home and welcome to you too thank you yes and welcome and congratulations thank you and we'll move on to our director of business services mr james thank you my first items to seek your approval for the donations that were in your board packet so move we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes
052thank you um three years ago our school district joined the foo to school purchasing cooperative for our food service for our grocery items for our milk and our bread in your board packet i get there's a sheet in there that shows all the different school districts across the state are part of this co-op it helps for buying power and through that co-op then we do the the bidding process and so part of the current agreement we have through the the cooperative allows us to keep and maintain the same vendors that we've had last year for an additional year so i seek the boards approval to remain with the cooperative um they've been really good with supplies especially in this past year being able to get food for our kids to be served every day for
053lunch where we've heard some vendors have not been able to in fact some vendors have notified school districts that they're not going to be able to supply in the following school year none of these three vendors which are hpc for groceries pleasantview dairy for milk and alpha bakery for our bread there's no issues coming along so we seek your approval to remain the co-op and roll those contracts for the 2022-23 school year motion to approve emotion by ms kelly second second by dr madeline any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes great thank you very much um in your packet i just want to give you an update on our adm count so the we have an accountant that's done in september that's the fall count and then we do another count here in
054february and so i have two pages in there one showing the difference by each school location and then a second one showing the differences by grade overall we are down 81 kids total district wide um now the february count is always less than the mark or excuse me the fall count because of december graduates and they don't count and so of we had 76 graduates here at the high school this year so really if you take those out we're down five which we know we've had some loss of kids at companion it's such a transient program transient program over there but if you look at each school except for the high school pretty much every school has more kids now than they had in the fall and just the decrease by grade is mainly the
055juniors and the seniors at the high school for the reasons i mentioned above so that's where we are we're happy with that their last we our funding for january through june is based on this february count um we've historically we don't get that funding for those december graduates unfortunately which is sad because we're not cutting our expenditures we just don't get the money for the kids because the kids aren't here we haven't gotten money for that in the past we just districts across the state just had to live with that but that being said as of last week there was some verbage in one of the bills to count the february of the december graduates in the february count whether or not that makes it through this week we'll see it was in as bad
056as in the end of last week but as dr bronko mentioned earlier these last three or four days things will begin and out all the time so um if it if it does get allowed to be counted in the future that will be great for school districts across the state so um any questions on the adm count rob i have a question what what date not february was that taken in february one or it wasn't the first maybe the third or the fourth okay but earlier in the month yeah okay so are we seeing more students coming back since the masking issue has gone away are we seeing people come back from say homeschooling or k-12 and not yet okay i was curious thank you i think the fact that except for those two grades
057at the high school that all of our grades have pretty much more kids now than they did in the fall i think is might be just a gradual reflection of that you never know we have so many people are moving in from illinois and here in the first place that is still attractive place for people to come so what the reasoning is you know we'll see how um what happens in the fall with our with our count i'm not sure if people are going to come and bring their kids here in the middle of the year in february or march um but that doesn't mean okay they're done homeschooling them and they're going to send them back here um in the fall you know we'll just have to wait and see so thank you okay
058uh my next item is just to go a little bit over on the funding for per adm that we get for kids so we just talked about how many kids we got and now for our state tuition support is all how much dollars we get per kid and so this is something i prepare for the board i get some of the information from the doe and i make some charts and graphs to share with you so this is about nine pages so and this what this does it shows every school district that is in the state including charter schools because charter schools are public schools and shows the dollar amount that is given per student for the school funding formula there's the basic part which is called the foundation which everybody gets the same and
059then based on your free reduced population determines where you get more in essence what they call complexity dollars so in this handout that you have in front of you all of the schools that are in gray those are charter schools all the ones that are kind of in the orangey pinkish hue those are region schools and i've also noted which school districts have tried and either passed or failed an operating referendum so you can look at that at your plea leisure um i i guess the good thing is that lake central used to be on page nine and over the last years we've kind of graduated and moved ourselves up that we're moved up to page eight now and so out of 372 public schools we are funded at the 336th level so i don't
060want to take too much of your time after that detail there's a chart that kind of shows the schools in our region when i say our region it's lake porter and laporte county and the funding level for each of those as you know there was a big increase in the budget last year four funding for k-12 about four and a half percent this year we're expecting another four and a half percent next year that was more the amount of money put into the formula itself how that shakes out for each district is a little different so on this page you can see how much each school district changed you will see that we had a 5.8 percent increase in our funding per student again the average statewide was around 5 for the schools here in
061in the region the next page is a graph that shows how we compare to the other schools corporations in lake county the 16 districts and we are you know toward the bottom but we're not at the bottom anymore and uh and then finally the last graph kind of just goes it shows an indication of how things have changed in the funding since 2009 and 2009 is the important date because prior to 2009 a lot of our funding came from property taxes from the taxpayer then the state took over the funding with the promise that all those levels were going to be maintained and then some so this craft kind of shows the highest in the state the lowest in the state we are in blue and where we were and if you look on that
062last raft back in 2009 we did equal the lowest funded in the state but i'm glad to say that not only us but the general assembly has made a conscious effort to increase that lower amount here in recent years so we're glad that it's trending upwards you know inflation is kind of big right now seven ten percent um you know will we ever see that no um but you know we're happy that again thankful for the legislators for what they did this past session which since it was a budget year is automatic for the next one as well um this analysis page i gave kind of has a bunch of stats and the difference between the high and the low and where the state is going but for many years the state tried to close
063the gap to kind of bring the top down and bring the bottom up and they got to that point maybe around the 2016-2017 part where there was the smallest gap and now both the top and the bottom are gradually going back up which is fine so um that's just kind of a summary um it's always good to see you know where we compare you will see on that first page as i mentioned so many of the charter schools i know that 41 of the 47 top funded school districts are charters the reason i bring that up is if you recall earlier in the session and even when we met with mr slager there was a push to make school districts at operating referendums like us to share some of that money with charter schools regardless
064if it's even the charter schools located in your district or not um and the reasoning was that they didn't have the ability to raise money from the taxpayers and so forth but as you can see from this chart they're getting the bulk of the money in the first place so i'm glad that died um i didn't really agree with it conceptually and i'm glad many of the senators on this uh on that side felt the same way so again there's 372 public schools 290 traditional 78 charters and four virtual charter schools and it's sad but all four of the virtual charter schools so they're not even really no bricks and mortar no no buildings all four of the virtual charter schools got more money per kid than we got per kid so so it is
065what it is but um any questions on this you can approve it at your own you know rob i do have a question about the private schools they don't receive any funding from the state private schools do not get tuition support no not from the school funding formula not tuition support but don't they get money from other sources well a family can get a voucher which then they can use to pay for that tuition but it's still the same tuition that they instead of in essence the state is paying the parents giving them parents the money in order to pay for that same set tuition okay i i i don't know it just kind of seems that that's an important issue not to forget about yep so indianapolis if i remember correctly did decide to
066share referendum money with charter schools but that bill did not pass for the rest of the state correct that's correct now i think indianapolis is one of those districts that actually operates at least two charter schools of their own within their umbrella under the ips umbrella um those aren't list those two specific skills aren't listed on here because their funding comes through ips they don't get their own separate funding but they chose then to share their funding with these charter schools because they were on they were in essence their schools anyway but not just the two but all the charter schools in the area um maybe i don't know i really don't follow what ips is doing so okay thank you thank you all right thank you thank you do we have any public we
067have no public comments so with that we'll move on to our board comments and considerations of future agenda items mr marshall nothing i have none thank you this is kelly um just wanted to say congrats to mrs biafalt and mrs bowman on their retirement right okay dr malcolm lots of exciting things going on i know we wish the science olympiad students i think at clark in the high school also and perhaps the other middle schools i'm not sure good luck they go to purdue on saturday for that competition it was great to watch the boys basketball game and and also the girls i know that we are heading into track season which is a very exciting time um can't forget those central that's i don't know if you've i think i texted that information to
068everyone that the central let's won grand national champion which puts them in the very top position of over 4 300 schools by the time they group them all together so um another stellar performance and i believe that i heard that our cheerleading team did well too so that was awesome not to mention our handbell choir and it just goes on and on and on i could keep talking but mrs seuss i noticed your comment in the in the minutes from last week and i thought that is very true and i also want to thank mrs nokovic mrs milwaukee for transcribing the words in the minutes word for word so that we all know exactly what we say and we don't get accused of things that we don't say um and i think that's it do
069we have graduation date set is it may be 25 all right thank you thank you dr madeline um i'd like to congratulate mr bannon for his uh 14 to 16 years service with the district um very potent ones thanks and i know that uh spring break is coming up so wherever your travels are going be safe and with that i'll turn it over to dr veraco for board calendar future activities yeah this is an unusual year that uh our meeting falls on the seventh so the second meeting of the month is during spring break so that's why back in december we didn't have a second meeting for march so our next gathering will be april 4th and we are going to move back to the k-trap room unless we have recognition it just is a
070cozier room for conducting our normal business so we'll be back in k-trap except for when we have a large group recognition thank you thank you all right do we have a motion to adjourn still moved motioned by dr malcolm second second by miss kelly all in favor aye