001welcome to our monday april 4th board meeting if you'll join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance all right we'll start with our agenda approval deletions additions dr veraco thank you mr seuss you do have one amendment to the agenda and that is some additions under mrs mooch's personnel packet roman numeral 7 b1 thank you do we have a motion motion to approve motion by ms kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes is there any correspondence this evening mrs kelly uh no there's nothing to report this evening thank you we'll move on to our liaison committee updates and we'll start with mr marshall no report on personnel interviews thank you mrs kelly same for me nothing to report this evening on sheriff redevelopment or
002parks thank you dr medlin nothing to report thank you dr macko we are going to be recognizing lake central education grant recipients this evening and they are here so that would be part of my education foundation report that dr baraka will take care of and i believe he has legislative on his agenda so i will wait and defer that to him and i have nothing to report on dire parks at this point thank you and i have nothing for saint john redevelopment nor on the dollars for scholars so we'll move on to our official school board business topics consent agenda dr barack thank you again seek board approval for the minutes from our last meeting on march 7th and approval of the claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures are received in your packets last week move
003to proof we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr malcolm any discussion all in favor motion passes thank you uh there's no public comments this evening on action items so we'll move right into our official school board business topics regular agenda dr veraco thank you and we're happy to kick it off with some non-action items but some recognition items and we're going to begin with mrs cruz from kohling who is down coming down to share some exciting news um so and i'll uh address all of you and of course everyone in the room but we're here today to recognize this is elizabeth the step we call her liz or miss a step in front of the the children she's a paraprofessional and we asked for the board to recognize a very special
004day i asked for our assistant principal mrs reddig to come with me she was actually the woman in charge that day i was not in in the building and she had called me and told me about this special moment so we're going to talk about something that liz was a part of but she is not only here to represent what she did on this particular day but what i think so many of your classified staff is able to do and we sure do end up on the better side of that deal for all that they're willing to do for our kids and so i'm going to hand this over to mrs reddick because she has all of the details but again this is not just in recognition for how mrs step stepped in but to
005bring to the board's attention and to our community's attention all that staff at all of our lake central schools are willing to do and go out on olympur kids so during lunch i got a call that a student was choking in the cafeteria and everyone ran in that direction and by the time we got in there i guess what had happened is um another para wasn't sure what to do and they liz just took over gave him the heimlich and saved the students life so we're so proud of her so liz we have a certificate here on behalf of the lake central school board that states our serious thanks and gratitude for your quick thinking in order to keep our students safe we don't ever expect that we would have to actually perform a heimlich
006the new maneuver and see a chicken nugget fly out of someone's mouth but she stepped in without any hesitation and did put that into action so thank you can we get a picture and i did forget to mention we have one person that i want to recognize who gave up tonight to be here i'm handing flowers one of our teachers um if it weren't for her we wouldn't have liz um [Applause] okay mrs novak we're ready for some high school achievements at this time all right thank you president sue's lake central school board dr veraco central office administrators i am very pleased to recognize some outstanding work with um our students this evening and i'm going to start by recognizing our national merit finalists and it is outstanding that we have three national merit finalists
007this year coming from lake central high school so quite an accomplishment um one thing that i do want to say first these students have scored in the top half of one percent nationally on their psat test and were chosen out of 16 000 candidates so we have three of them with us tonight so we will first start with britney gear [Applause] next is carson palm [Applause] and next we have ethan shashberger one more thing about mr shasberger ethan has also recently been recognized as an indiana academic all-star only 40 students in the state of indiana out of 289 nominations were chosen so congratulations um [Applause] aaron before we go on can we recognize any parents or family members who came with our students this evening they could stand to be recognized thank you for being
008here erin would it be appropriate to ask the two gentlemen that are in attendance i know it's early in their academic careers but do you have any particular direction you would like to let us in on where you're headed in the future go ahead and stand up [Applause] thank you so the next group i want to recognize is fccla which is our family career community leaders of america this was the first time that our club was allowed or was able to compete at the state level so i am going to introduce their sponsor mrs jennifer schmidt and she will call down the students okay all right so um as mrs novak said this was our first year that we have ever gone to a state competition for family career and community leaders of america which
009if you don't know what that is um it's probably it's probably how your home economics or um what homemakers of america has evolved now um so it's within the school of family consumer science but instead of just focusing on um home economics it's kind of catapulted forward into career paths so early childhood education interior design fashion design culinary arts hospitality and tourism management and our students who are within this club brought projects within those realms and competed against other schools in the state and we had a wonderful showing and this speaks volumes because really we went in blind okay you're given a rubric but um having not gone before students didn't know what to expect so this was really outstanding achievement um so the results that we brought home uh sydney bacher and karen skipper
010marion wright and autumn pomeroy all brought home gold in the fccla in action category bella bayard and athena binu brought home silver and fccla in action kayla and jillian jacobs jada parks and aya kanan earned a bronze in their star events alexis jones and amelia dominic competed in the baking and pastry arts which was a grueling two and almost three hour competition in a kitchen they had never worked in before and they were able to bring home a bronze medal in that category so we are very ecstatic about the achievement at our first showing at this state level competition so we are going to recognize the students with a certificate [Applause] uh [Applause] uh athena bino kayla jacobs [Applause] alexis jones and amelia dominic [Applause] congratulations all right [Applause] thank you okay the final group
011that i would like to recognize um for lake central high school is our business professionals of america group and i am going to let mrs danielle carr the teacher who has been working very closely with these students introduced them and their accomplishments okay so business professionals of america is a state competition and then a national nationwide competition and we participated in the state competition throughout the whole state of indiana and i would like to recognize a few of our students i would like to recognize kevin ahara here in sixth place and qualified for nationals and visual basics he start programming i'd also like to recognize ella budak for earning fifth place and qualified for nationals and c-plus plus [Applause] programming um trevor pulaski who earned the 10th who earned 10th place in c plus plus
012programming [Applause] karsten palm earned second place and qualified for nationals and java programming [Applause] and then abby beauchamp for earned fifth place and qualified for nationals in python programming [Applause] excuse me the can you tell us more about the did you say a national competition that one of the young ladies qualified for to go um nationals it's in dallas texas and they're able to go with their families if they choose to okay okay cool very good okay i'd like to invite mrs talent could we have the parents stand up at those last two groups parents yeah not yet mrs talent i need to invite mrs logan up first we're going to talk spell bowl first thank you members of the board thank you for allowing us to be here this evening we're so happy when
013we get to be here and in person tonight we would like to recognize for many years in a row the vivid spell bowl team i'd like to call up coaches michelle snow and ellen o'rourke [Applause] so this year on november 15th participated in the elementary spellboat competition that was held virtually throughout the state the team of 11th fourth graders was led by our coaches ms snow and miss o'rourke and vivitch placed third in the state out of 65 teams this year [Applause] so we would like to recognize those students i'll see yours sharia bianca [Applause] jc baxter [Applause] jackson bowles [Applause] angel diaz [Applause] caleb gregerson [Applause] anthony kalinsis [Applause] cameron nugent [Applause] samson perez taylor reddick [Applause] avery smotrilla [Applause] and adam wilson [Applause] and could we give a round of applause for all
014the parents who did drop-offs and pickups and studied those words because [Applause] okay let's quickly move on to our education foundation mrs talent mrs wolf mrs schweitzer mr selgen whoever is going to present let's do it first we'd always like to say thank you to the board for allowing us to come this direction to present and tell you the people that have written grants for the lake central education foundation and have received the grants also so do i face this one is that let me use the microphone oh gosh okay turn it or whatever it's hard to do okay well this is our 56th grant round this time we've awarded 10 grands for a total of twenty seven dollars and six cents um overall since the foundation started we have given 614 grants for a
015total of three hundred and sixteen thousand six hundred and seventy six dollars [Applause] schweitzer are the um presidents together mike selgen is our finance officer and i'm melody wolf and i'm grant chair so first one we want to address is danielle carr she's been very busy she she's from the high school she has 739 dollars and her grant was the audio how do i say that arduino thank you kits for the computer science lab she's asking for a set of boards for realistic and hands-on experiences which follow the indiana university computer science curriculum for all her computer science 1 students tracy caposi where's my tracy tracy is from watson she wrote a grant for 718 dollars which is cooperative learning literature circles the goal for cooperative learning literacy circles is for all students in second
016grade classroom to be exposed to and read the i can book series at differentiated reading levels also to grow the literature circle group members without working together to discuss books in depth with each other while using the reading strategies to grow as strong readers and those of us in primary know how important reading strategies are for students okay aubry nelson there she clark and she wrote a grant for 741. titled spectacular sequels audrey students will engage and increase reading by reading sequels including drums girls the dangerous pie out of my mind gregor and the overlander and the giver they'll be reading the books in class and out of class and then the books will be donated to the library so other students can read them also so that's awesome [Applause] our next grant recipient is
017allison castle from clark her grants her grant is six word bursts of writing for 730.76 words have a dramatic impact on what we know how we interact with people and the decisions we ultimately make words can influence us inspire us or just as easily bring us to tears ellison's grant will facilitate power that power in a positive productive way for her students with the use of a six-word memoir oh i can't wait to read those congratulations i'd like to next i'd like to recognize jennifer frazier and joanne pratt from bibbich hi congratulations congratulations they received uh 748.50 for their who is this history-making person grant students will read biography books at their reading level and complete a google slide research report based on their person of interest to present to their peers [Applause] um one
018was allison clawsgrove carl grove thank you sarah complain us and ashley are we still cause stillnet thank you miss ashley and lori rosini they also receive grants but we're unable to come next we have a special presentation called a seed grant what a sea grant does is sometimes there are things in the corporation that people write grants or look for funding and miss talent's going to tell you about this special one first of all board thank you so much for your support always dr veraco for your support for the foundation and we want to also recognize our newest board member zach selgen who is here tonight so thank you zach for being here we appreciate it yep he's my son thank you to the community for allowing us to be able to give away this
019over six thousand dollars because if it wasn't for your generosity for what we do out there we wouldn't be able to do this so thank you very much and when our grant recipients write a grant they have a criteria in other words we just don't say here here's your money they do go through a very specific uh checklist it's not really hard just follow the directions and it's only a two-page grant some grants are 15 pages miss redick you know about those so we have a system that we go through we have a rubric and when the grants committee or people that are reviewing the grants looks at them we get all these brainy ideas and sometimes they fit right into a category like what you guys have received this evening and other times they
020don't quite fit just like that but our grants team is pretty amazing and so they think outside the box and we really want to support lake central teachers lake central staff so tonight officer kissinger would you come down please and mrs mucha [Applause] um mrs mucha is the chairman of our safety committee and this safety committee that's at lake central high school is bar none it is just i just can't say enough how wonderful you guys are and it's because of the leadership that's here and officer kissinger and by the leadership if i have this right of miss kimberly kweczynski decided to go ahead and write a grant for in round 56 and they were going to put together a grant for uh one bucket right or well more than one bucket several buckets for
021kaler middle school now we usually ask that our grants be a dynamic unit of study and i hope i'm not taking too long i promise dr barack will hurry okay so then um i'm a teacher too so it's like okay but anyway so but it didn't quite fit for that dynamic unit of study affecting uh more than a classroom so the grants committee was with melody's direction said let's think about a seed grant so tonight we'd like to present to you and it was mr selgen's idea so thank you very much mike on behalf of the education foundation we are going to provide a 10 dollar matching grant for the emergency buckets ladies and gentlemen these emergency buckets are amazing in the fact that if there is a lockdown if there is an emergency situation
022and students need to stay in the room and can't go anywhere and we experience that september 8th here at lake central high school erin and company oh my goodness and those students had to stay there so the emergency buckets will contain things like basic human needs during a crisis [Laughter] so the emergency buckets are for basic human needs during the lockdown and you know september 8th we experienced something that we had students locking down for hours on end and this bucket is for them to help with any kind of needs during a crisis so and that's something that we want to you know expand throughout the whole lake central corporation so i want to thank the education foundation this is huge i'm usually not lost for words so [Music] so thank you like to contribute
023since this is a matching grant this would be a wonderful opportunity absolutely so again thank you thank you very much appreciate it so we do have to have a picture and then we'll get out of your way guys ah [Applause] for those of you not familiar with the matching grant the grant is for every dollar that comes in for this project the education foundation will match a dollar for dollar up to ten thousand dollars so thank you education foundation and we will be sending out some information on how you too can participate in contributing so we can get the full 10 000 from the education foundation this is the part of our meeting where we transition into school board business so those of you who have other things to take care of homework grading papers
024other basketball this is the time to quietly depart and have a good evening and thank you so much for coming out what a nice girl cindy see what kind of results we get under your leadership um yes our kindergartners should have hurt yeah good evening i'm coming before you tonight seeking approval for the professional life requests you have in your packets move to approve the professional relief request and i will second that any discussion this is for the professional leave request under dr bracey all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you thank you i think we can all agree that we are never too old or too young to stop learning right so we have some amazing and very important people from our school district here tonight we have a lot of five and
025six-year-olds from miss ali duran's class at home elementary school we would like to invite them to come down come on down guys they're going to teach us everything they have learned in kindergarten [Applause] well first of all you said the magic word because now they're now they know my first name they didn't know i had a first name so we made a few posters together we made um we talked about our favorite favorite part of kindergarten and all of the things that we learned together so first i want to introduce who i have with us today we have connor we have michael we have savannah layla abby and rylan and this is just a few of my amazing amazing wonderful smart silly group of kindergartners this year so are you ready are you a little
026nervous that's okay so let's talk about first your favorite part of kindergarten so we had everyone in my class brainstorm a little bit of their favorite part of kindergarten and hopefully you can see some of them up here connor would you like to share your favorite part of kindergarten what's my favorite kind of narrative his favorite part of kindergarten is the sight know which one words is [Music] [Applause] learning new things miss layla i love to learn new things learning new things too [Applause] what is your favorite part abby um brain breaks brain breaks yeah and mr rylan i love math can we share one of the things that we just finished on our bulletin board for the month of march could any of you share about what we just finished as a class for
027the month of march so we did a march book madness of all of the wonderful books that we've read this year would one of you share which book won pigeon found a hot dog yep that was our favorite this year so they also shared most of them talked about this as well but they shared some of the things that they learned with me this year um some of them were we learned how to build a ramp right we learned about force we learned about counting by tens and fives right we also learned the pledge of allegiance i hope you did it this this evening when we did it all together we also learned about using a number line and how to write a how-to book right is there anything else that you want to share
028about kindergarten you do come here what else do you want to share um we do sometimes we do um treasure box and how do you earn treasure box if you have warm fuzzies now how do you earn warm fuzzies by doing good things they earn warm fuzzies when they do things extra wonderful that make my heart feel warm and fuzzy so thank you dr bracey for inviting us is there anything else anyone wants to share you do now you do making new friends it's okay anyone else want to share anything no we're a little nervous tonight right that's okay so thank you for inviting us thank you for allowing us to share thank you you're welcome thank you for coming good job boys and girls and thank you to your teacher say thank you mrs
029duran and don't forget to thank your parents say thank you mom and dad and one more person where did she go where's oh say thank you to your principal mrs tucker thank you good job guys great job guys [Applause] i know if i was a teacher that's what i want to be kindergarten all day every day stick thank you for coming thank you bye bye [Music] too cute which they're just as cute just as cute just a little more challenging some of them okay so we will um go back to my part of the agenda i just wanted to update the board really quickly on a couple pieces of legislation that caught our attention in the last couple of weeks um one was house and roll act 1073 the limit to e-learning days you've had
030this document in advance i really don't have any information that since i sent this to you but we will sit in on the april 22nd meeting to hear the details been contemplating as you know limiting how many e-learning days we do at least in the current format for next year anyway so we'll resume conversations with our teachers association once we hear what the indiana department of education says about you know what requirements there be to do e-learning and how much direct instruction from teachers is required to have it not count as one of those three days so that's what we'll be looking to hear from and i'll report back on that piece another thing that came our way and evidently it was in dr jenner's newsletter from the ido and it was passed last year
031and it didn't catch our attention because it's not effective till this year which is not usually the way the legislation is passed right i mean normally they say it's effective july 1 of the upcoming on the calendar but it does require us on student ids to have help lifelines for various reasons on the back of their id card so we've already uh mrs mucha and our providers have already worked out and uh we'll be ready to go on that for next school year i just wanted to know we're on top of that piece and while the law says grades 6 through 12 since our middle schools are 5 through 12 we'll do it on 5 through 12 so we can say we're covering it for our secondary schools and then the final piece is some
032clarification in senate bill 331 to the 45 rule that mr james has talked about in the past we mentioned that there were some glitches in that legislation that was passed the prior year where schools that were part of a special education co-op or in our case we send students to the hammond area career center and we send money to the career center or to hammond school corporation to pay for the teachers who instruct our students but we didn't get to count those dollars as going to the classroom under the current formula so they corrected that piece and it's a start we still need to get the fringe benefits included because as many people know and as mr james again has shared at this meeting at one of these meetings before we have a healthy health
033care plan for our staff we believe that that's peace of mind for our employees and we believe it's an excellent recruitment and retention piece but when you're putting a fair amount of money into a fringe benefit like healthcare we believe that it should be taken accounted for regardless of whether it's for teachers or classified staff members or whoever we just think it needs to be acknowledged and so as they work through some other gyrations in order to be able to more easily run those calculations we expect another update to that 45 percent rule in the next year's legislation during the long session i just wanted the board to know that we get some relief in terms of the hammond area career center of course we're not part of a co-op in special anymore we do
034our own but those other schools were getting uh a much lower number than what the state was suggesting because they participate in a co-op and that was that's not fair for them either so just wanted to let the board know that we continue to follow the legislation even when the session is over because we have to be ready to react to it and we also need to keep our eye on things because some of the stuff that was defeated in the last session could come back at us next time around and we need to be prepared for it any questions about legislation discussed or not when you're talking about the identification or the information on the uh id cards you're talking like hotline numbers like for depression suicide pardon me do you have human trafficking
035on there too i you know years ago we talked a lot about human trafficking and we kind of left it but i i know it's it is on the list it is okay good good no that's my only question thank you thank you dr varko so 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 be approved but i do want to bring your attention as i usually do to people who have given more than 25 years to education it would be milly hinton with a total of 27 years ruth bonacci with a total of 27 years of teaching and judy whitaker a bus aide who has spent all 30 of her years here at lake central [Applause] so we
036have a motion we have a motion by miss kelly second second by excuse me by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you very much i'm also asking as my second item for approval for the professional leave forms that were in your packet move to approve the professional leave requests we have a motion by dr medlin second second by miss kelly any discussion wait wait i'm trying to find him further down the list here i thought i had a question but uh it's for food service and transportation no not a question on that thank you all in favor aye motion passes thank you we also have our handbooks that i sent to you last week in an email um first i wanted to ask for your approval for our elementary
037handbook all right do we have a motion motion to approve motion by ms kelly second second by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes and thanks to cassandra and her crew for putting that together and thanks for the middle school people including barrio who put together the middle school handbook so i'm asking for approval for the middle school move to proof we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr medlin any discussion you know i i really like to have a reference sheet in there i believe in the middle school calendar or in your handbook are you too sick to come home are you too sick to be at school do you remember that i thought that was very handy i just noticed it in the middle
038school so i don't know i think it's in all three of them okay well i didn't have the full copy of the elementary so i didn't know that but i thought that was nice that's a good reference point and then i had a question um on the very end where there's the form that they find out the sign in and they put all their textbook information there's something mentioned called challenger software or challenger something at the top of that it's a challenger oh yeah do they go to the challenger the field trip see the challenge okay do all middle schools go there now all three okay good thank you any other discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye ocean passes and for our handbook from the high school i'd be carrie regan and
039her committee asking for approval we have a motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion yes mrs novak i loved your flow chart that you had in there do you know which one i'm talking about at the beginning at the very beginning the arrows point down and this is your chain of command that you follow and in light of our conversation earlier tonight as a board members it might be maybe that's in all the handbooks i don't know but if it's not it might be something to think about doing it was very handy thank you any other discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you very much and we've already been with dr bracy so we'll move on to our director of secondary education this is castaneda thank
040you my first item is to seek your approval for the professional leave request is presented motion to approve a motion by miss kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion did you have discussion i'm so sorry but i'm sorry to always question you this um when i saw the request for the automotive it made me think about the um machine shop he usually takes the kids down for competition too is he going to do that this year terry richards i haven't heard any information about that yet but for precision machining it's upcoming in the spring correct i believe it's later in the spring we haven't received any requests from him yet okay yeah because he always does that so obviously yes this is the state automate automotive one which is why mr wester is taking
041the students okay that'd be nice that'd be nice okay that's a new addition and then you've had your fccla go so that's even broadening the spectrum which is very nice that's all all right all in favor aye motion passes and then my second request is for the field trips that were presented in your packet so moved we have a motion by mr marshall and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you and then my last item is just to let you know that we've had to revise the summer school dates just by one day um with the federal holiday for juneteenth taking place technically on that sunday but then being celebrated on monday we're not going to have summer school on that date so what the high
042school is doing that week is they're going to be off on monday and that's they're going to be in school on friday which is a little different we've tried to avoid fridays with summer school because attendance is a little low and then at the elementary and middle school they also will have no school on that monday um there will be a replacement day for it because that's the last week of summer school and we didn't think we'd have good attendance if we had it on that friday and then for our extended school year services um they are broken into groups so there's one group that attends on monday wednesdays another attends on tuesday thursday so the monday wednesday group will go wednesday friday that week in order to meet the minutes that they need for
043extended school year any questions on that that should be interesting because that's something new it is so that will be very interesting we're excited and that was all thank you thank you we'll move on to our director of student services mrs gramala good evening my first item tonight is to seek your approval for the professional leave requests that were included in your packet so moved we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you my second item was just to update you on a professional development session we provided recently so we received grant funds through the american rescue plan to be spent on services for students with special needs and so that grant we decided to spend the majority of it
044on training for our teacher professional development and also materials and supplies for teachers and our students so at the beginning of march we hosted our first professional development session funded through our american rescue plan grant dollars and that was a presentation on social thinking which is a intervention for students to help them kind of understand the world around them so we had 35 staff members participate which is fantastic and that we were able to train that many people and do that right here we had occupational therapists speech therapists counselors teachers and our school psychs participate social thinking is a methodology that focuses on helping students learn how the social work work social world works and really how we share space effectively so much of what we do in our world is just being able to
045navigate socially and participate with other people i mean that's really something we're seeing students struggle with especially with the effects of the last two years so it teaches students to kind of observe the world around them and understand it before they act and a big part of it is focusing on defining expected versus unexpected behaviors so what might we expect from someone else in another situation and also what will they expect from us so then when students maybe engage in a behavior that is not something we would want to see we would label that as an unexpected behavior and talk about what the expected behavior is so we had a really good response from our staff i sent out a survey following the session 22 of the 35 people who participated responded they all said
046they felt like it was effective and valuable to them i asked what they might need and several of them said they would love to be able to purchase some of the materials to go along with the program so we are going to use some of our additional money from this grant to be able to fund some of those materials for staff members so just wanted to share what we're doing great so may i ask who did the training um it is a social thinking has their own trainers and so she came to us from her name was carrie zwiebe palmer and she's from minnesota she's a speech-language pathologist who's trained in the methodology there's a lot of good strategies that work really well with our general ed students oh of course yeah and so that's
047everybody who participated kind of works with both populations um so we had our you know our counseling staff who works with anybody and everybody and the idea being they could take that back to their buildings and and be able to use it with everyone thank you thank you thank you and now we'll move on to our director of business services mr james good evening um the first time in my section is to prove the resolution authorizing uh three appraisers of the appraiser process for our biblical expansion project um that is the next step and uh so seek your approval for the resolution that was in your packet motion to approve we have a motion by ms kelly second seconded by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you
048and i seek your approval for the professional leave requests also in your board packet we have a motion by dr malcolm second second by dr meddling any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes third i'd like to seek your approval for the donations that were listed in your packet kelly any discussion that's a huge donation to the girls golf team it is yes nice and i also want to point out that um the high school recently had their saint faldrick's fundraiser i listed in the board packet here even though the school isn't making that donation that money raised went directly to st baldrick's but because of the dollar amount that was raised i wanted to bring it to the board's attention for all those watching at home um the high school raised a total
049of 18 526 dollars and 41 cents that's also included more so informational purposes but so i seek your approval on all those all right motion to approve we have already kelly and then we have a second by dr malcolm any discussion hearing none all in favor all in favor aye aye aye motion passes we wanted to be really sure that one be sure that one really does sure okay uh so then my last thing is just to give the board a little bit an update on the 2022 tax property tax rates um you may have those bills have been computed you may have received your statement in the mail in the last three or four days like some of us did if not check your mail today it's there if not it's online and you
050know we've always prided ourselves here at the school district of being conscious of our taxpayers and keeping our tax rates as low as possible so just in general at your stations you have some charts and graphs and some summary here but um so there's 16 school districts in lake county and as you can see our tax rate this year is 79.18 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation so that is the fourth lowest in the county the three school districts that have a lower tax rate than us are highland whiting and east chicago fine school districts but they also don't have you know much debt their buildings are a little bit older whiting's got a one building district and so um that's one of the reasons why they're able to keep their tax rate low
051too so again we're very proud of that our tax rate has dropped since 2020 pretty significantly in 2020 the our school tax rate was 93.53 cents last year it dropped to 83.72 and now we're down to 18. so it has decreased 15 in the last two years um if you recall lots of that was due because of the refinancing that we did on the referendum debt a year and a half ago but then also assessed values have increased and the higher the assessed values of all the properties in the district well then that means a lower tax rate is needed to generate all that but as you know your tax rate or what you pay as a homeowner is not just the school rate there's the county the city or town the library the township
052and so forth all the way down the road so really it's the bottom line that most people care about what's my tax rate of living in shareable or living in dyer or saint john or unincorporated area so on the next set of charts kind of show each of the town rates now there are 50 some different taxing units in the county because you could be in lake central schools but actually live in griffith we have a little portion there so that's their own column because they're a different combination of all the different overlapping taxing districts but on this next chart and graph is pretty much if you lived in dire central if you lived in sheriff proper or crown point or munster what is your total all-in rate and you can see that saint john
053and shareville have the two lowest tax rates in the county dyer is on the lower third dyer has a little higher tax rate they have more debt than the other two towns do and so because of that they need to generate a higher tax rate so you can see on the chart that we're proud that not only is our school rate low but the communities that we are serving are able to maintain lower tax rates and so you know in essence well what does that mean so i'm not going to go through all the details but on the last four pages i've given you some examples of estimated tax bill now estimated here is the key word because not everybody may have a mortgage deduction not everybody may have a homestead they may have some
054other parcels or buildings on their property there's property tax credits but materially this is pretty close so if you had a each page is if you had a hundred thousand dollar home or a two or three or four hundred dollar thousand dollar home you know what would that property tax bill be if you lived in cheville or st john or dyer then i do a tri-town average and then i kind of compare that to our neighboring districts or cedar lake crown point griffith and munster our neighbors and you will see that regardless of where you are the cedar lake rate and the crown point rate are about 12 to 13 percent higher than ours griffith is 41 percent higher than ours as is munster so in essence if your same home was in one of
055those communities you'd be paying that much more in not only the dollar amount but in the in in the percentage and that's important because that is what attracts people um all these places i mentioned have good school districts and so having lower taxes is what often drives lots of the migration from illinois over here and if we can keep our taxes low it means more students coming here that we can serve so any questions on that hopefully your tax bills went down anything else no thank you thank you thank you rob thank you all right do we have any public comments for this evening no public comments all right move on to our board comments in consideration of future agenda items mr marshall thank you um i'd like to make a general statement the last
056two two and a half years we've had a number of very interesting board meetings highs and lows to say the least that having been said i want to place in my mind tonight's meeting with its recognition of our students parents staff in sros i place tonight's meeting very highly at the top of the list i want to thank everyone again thank you thank you this is kelly well i can't follow that so all right dr madeline no comments dr malcolm well you're going to be really really surprised at this no comment all right no seriously i i guess what i get so amazed at is these children and students of ours that work so hard during the day then they go home at night and they do the extracurricular and they are just such hard
057working individuals and i feel very blessed that they have leadership from you that keeps them going because i think all of you as i look at you are well grounded individuals you know right from wrong you know when stress is getting too much and we need that we need that type of leader that knows and can read that when it's happening to our students we had a little girl over at clark and the only one that noticed she was stressed was her classroom teacher and he said something to her and it really impressed that little girl so the little nuances like that can make a difference in a child's life so thank you for being there and doing that share that with your colleagues please now i'm done and i will follow up with i
058believe i read coach huppenthal was the girls basketball team coach of the year so congratulations to him and you know i just want to say thank you to our two guys jeremy and aj you guys you've been here every meeting and you've made all of this work so we appreciate you and if you please come see us afterwards we just have a card of things so with that i will turn it over to dr morocco for board calendar or future activities yeah we'll be back here in two weeks on the 18th uh banquet season is upon us so please uh pay attention to your email as you get invited to things and hopefully you can attend one or two of those other opportunities to celebrate student success all right with that do we have a
059motion to adjourn oh wait i have to share something really important did you know mr huppenthal was a student manager when gene katie was coach do you know gene katie perdue he was a student manager i just thought that was interesting there you go a little fun fact all right do we have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn we have a motion by ms kelly second second by dr madeline all a favor