001join us in the pledge of i pledge allegiance welcome to our monday june 6th school board meeting and we'll start off with our agenda approval deletions editions mrs mucha who's filling in thank you very much you will see under one number eight under mine for certified appointments under two you'll see some of those changes under um personnel thank you do we have a motion second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor motion passes thank you is there any correspondence mrs kelly none to report this evening all right we'll move right into our liaison committee updates mr marshall i have nothing reported this time thank you mrs kelly i have nothing for the redevelopment commission for cherylville cherylville parks department the splash pad construction has been pushed back a little bit due to
002all the rain we're looking at hopefully ribbon cutting july 20th and the improvements at rorman park are either finished or any day now and that's all thank you dr medlin nothing to report thank you thank you dr malcolm um i have something to report sorry something to report about um lake central education foundation from mrs talent the board president they're going to meet on monday evening this coming monday if any of you are interested in joining they will be discussing additional fundraisers the 5k race which is in november and looking at another fundraiser more details in the future a reminder to everyone that that grants can be written by lake central school corporation staff members and they would be due september 26th thank you and i have nothing for legislative and nothing for dire parks
003except that they have changed their meeting now to the third tuesday of the month if anyone is interested thank you and uh for the saint john redevelopment commission i have nothing for dollars for scholars we are gearing up for homecoming 2022 if you're interested reach out to mrs rana resnick and we'll let you know when those meetings are so we'll move on to our official school board business topics consent agenda mr mojo thank you i am seeking approval of the minutes from the special board meeting of may 16th in the regular board meeting of may 16th also approval of claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures i move to approve both sets of minutes and the claims payable and expenditure second that motion we have a motion by dr medlin in a second by mr marshall any
004discussion all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you there are no public comments regarding action items so we'll move right into our official school board business topics regular agenda mrs mucha thank you we have some exciting recognitions this evening and we're going to first start with mrs tucker and with home in school thank you for allowing us to be here tonight um we would like to take a moment and just recognize the holman math bowl team and before i we start the recognitions i would like to call the coaches up that help this team excel in the competitions and that is mrs lynn mello testinic and miss tina miljevic [Applause] on april 12th holmen participated in the elementary math bowl competition that was held at kahler middle school the team of 16 fourth grade
005students was led by our two coaches mrs lynn melissa nick and miss tina milduvik and holmen placed eighth in the state out of 64 teams we're so very proud of them and now i'm going to turn the mic over to the coaches and we'll we will call the team down for the recognition [Applause] lauren broome [Applause] victoria bustos kamora conwell emily zado logan gorlick zoe hemphill johnny jordan iii [Applause] you patel kyler richards aubrey rozick violet sante preston scorbina anderson smith [Applause] lucas treasurer and gage weber thank you very much yeah you guys come here also [Applause] now one from kaler middle school we have miss barb kepchar the present for this excuse me parents before you leave home and parents would you all stand so we can give you a round of applause because
006we know you're a big part of this success home and parents thank you you first of all i would like to invite our coach mr david sidler up here [Applause] our academic super bowl team scored first place at regionals and third place in the state in english they also scored first place at regionals and the top 10 place in state in social studies i will have coach zidler go ahead and announce our team and present the thank you so certificate ivan kerry couldn't be here today so keep that for him madeline mcnabby [Applause] jocelyn mcnabby [Applause] attira neckway [Applause] alexis grosskirth [Applause] good job that's it um thank you very much appreciate your recognition oh i'm sorry that's yours i know this is not working thank you very much [Applause] and not to leave out
007the high school mrs reagan would you like to introduce our skills usa team good evening each year some of our students qualified to compete in skillsusa skillsusa is a partnership of students teachers in industry working together to ensure america has a skilled workforce a non-profit national education association skillsusa serves middle school high school and college and post-secondary students preparing for careers in trade technical and skilled service occupations skillsusa is recognized by the u.s department of education and the u.s department of labor as a successful model of employer-driven workforce development this year six of our students won medals in the state skills usa competition held april 8th and 9th in indianapolis some of these students attend our hammond area career center that we partnership with and we do have some students that went to skillsusa through
008their class here at lake central so the first one is joseph hubiger who won gold in cabinet making i got the pleasure of seeing him tote that cabinet around during our bring anything but a backpack day to school it was very nice the next one is caleb bracey who won silver and criminal justice [Applause] the next one is vincent villa who received a silver in automobile maintenance and light repair [Applause] the next one is dylan derringer who won bronze in precision machine [Applause] the next one is cadence kissinger who won bronze in digital cinema and our last one is hunter helsin who also won bronze in digital cinema thank you [Applause] so that must give you a good feeling mrs castaneda to see these students perform like that with all the energy and effort into
009that skills classes that we have same thing to the high school staff good job so ready um i'm also seeking approval for the school board policies a through l that were in your packets that you have discussed at the work session previously i have a motion by mr marshall second second by miss kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye motion passes thank you thank you we'll move right on to our director of human resources well here we are i'm recommending that the following personnel be approved that was in your packet motion to approve a motion by ms kelly second second by dr medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you i also included the 2023-24 school calendar in your packet that had already been approved by
010lcta so moved we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr meddling any discussion i just wish we didn't start so early that's all i wish but i know that's the trend that's out there so uh we just go with it thank you i think the high school teachers were also interested in finishing before christmas all right um we had a motion in a second all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes thank you and we'll move right 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 that were in your packet move to approve the professional leave requests we have a motion by dr medlin second second by mrs kelly any discussion all in favor aye
011aye motion passes thank you for my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip request motion to approve the field trip request i have a motion by mrs kelly and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you and then for my last item i wanted to inform the board of a change that we're going to be making with the high school core 40 diploma requirements when the core 40 diploma was started in the state of indiana many high schools including lake central set our requirements above 40 because of the opportunities that students have to earn credits if you think about it whether on a block schedule or a typical traditional high school schedule students have seven classes every semester so if they have
012eight semesters throughout their entire high school career that's 56 opportunities for credit which is why a lot of high schools felt like raising the bar a little bit above the 40 minimum that the state had put out however as i've shared at previous board meetings we're now under a new model with graduation pathways if you recall that went into effect in 2017 and it's fully into effect with this year's graduating class of 2023 and that brings some extra criteria to the table for our graduates if you recall from that there's three different things they have to accomplish the first is achieving that core 40 diploma at minimum the second one is demonstrating uh the employability schools through project work based or service based learning and then the last one is the post-secondary competencies and they
013can demonstrate that through either test scores ap courses cte courses and a couple of other different things so all those things now land on our students place and what we're starting to see then is a trend amongst the other area high schools in northwest indiana and around the state where they're backing down back to that core 42 requirement so just for a little perspective over the past few years crown point munster valparaiso portage laporte and michigan city are now requiring only 40 credits because students have those additional graduation pathway requirements to achieve chesterton out of the doomland conference is at 42 but they're actually looking at walking that back in the next year or two and then maryville's at 45 but they're on trimesters so every year their kids have more opportunities for credit even
014than our students because they have three different sorry grading periods so we're currently sitting at 46. as i said some other schools in the state like carmel west lafayette center grove schools that we try to mark ourselves against they also have dropped to 40. so we believe with the rigor of the graduation pathways that we want to follow suit and drop down to that core 40 true 40 credit requirement so that way our students can then focus on meeting those additional criteria from graduation pathways and so that's how we're going to move forward starting next school year i know it's a lot of information do you guys have any questions i'm sorry i didn't hear what the first criteria was with the graduation pathways what did you say the first one is the diploma itself
015the diploma okay okay if we're dropping down to 40 will that impact have an impact on staffing needs no it should not we talked to the other school districts who have already dropped down and they said they haven't seen a change in students um graduating early which i think is kind of the big concern that everybody has most students want to stay in high school for four years before they have to make that decision about what they want to do after they graduate and so they really didn't see a huge uptick in the early graduates okay and since you're talking about diploma do you mind if i ask you a question um there's the core 40 and then there's the technical diploma there's the core 40 with technical honors and the core 40 with academic
016honors and so students will still have to go seven credits beyond the 40 in order to achieve those seven credits beyond correct okay okay and to achieve the technical endorsement so many classes that are required they have to take so many classes within cte in order to get the technical honors and there also are some requirements for what their gpa is in those courses okay all right sounds good thank you you're welcome any other questions thank you all right thank you thank you we'll move on to our director of student services mrs gramala okay my first item tonight is to just give you a little update on some professional development we've been doing um and this is funded through our american rescue plan grant which was designated for designated funds to support students with special
017needs so we had a group of teachers spend a lot of time this school year and i wanted to bring this to your attention we had four teachers complete 14 hours of independent study and coaching through pcg and those were teachers in our applied skills program and it was called a teacher boot camp to help them work on inclusive practices and strengthening their curriculum then we had two teachers who were completing the second year of that program so this was their second go-round in that and the second year really focuses on inclusive practices and those teachers also completed 14 hours of education throughout the school year and then we have a group of four teachers who is giving up time in the summer to work on curriculum mapping and so that's specific to the content
018connectors for our applied skills population so we're partnering with crown point to do that which is nice so it gives them an opportunity to work with a larger group of teachers and we have teachers from each developmental level we're going to start focusing on english language arts but then hopefully be able to take those skills and carry on to our math also we've also the other thing we've done so far with our american rescue plan grant is work with our occupational therapy staff and our resource teachers to provide more sensory materials to our schools so we let the teachers and the ots work together on that purchasing things like flexible seating light filters for the classrooms fidgets trampolines sensory pathway activities so that's where we're at and some of the things we have going on
019right now any questions of course just because that's who i am not because just because it's it's me but now that you have a year under your belt where the students have been back in school in a somewhat normal environment um could you and i don't want to put you in the spot if you don't want to answer this but what what are you seeing and maybe that would go to mrs dr bracey too what are you seeing with student needs after the pandemic and the issues that have occurred i think all of us would agree that we are still seeing some pretty significant effects for our students we've all had conversations about things we need to do differently moving forward a lot of need for social emotional supports for students in particular academic gaps
020that we are still trying to fill i think part of what we're doing with summer school this year is trying to continue to close those gaps i think we have the largest group for summer school we've had in a long time so there's there is a lot of need and we will continue to talk and plan together to work towards addressing that but it's definitely not um normal by any stretch of the imagination i think we're still still in recovery mode wow yeah i was reading some grants for an agency out of maryville today and i saw reference to the covet pandemic and the impact has had on their family units and the drug and alcohol abuse that has surfaced so i know we're not exempt from that i mean i mean we're going to
021be affected and of course i will say just as i say every year i would love to see us add an additional program at the primary level be it developmental kindergarten or transitional or something to help those children but thank you both for sharing did you have anything else and that's actually a conversation mrs castaneda and i have had even with our middle school students where we're seeing gaps in phonetic awareness they're not right so we're talking about ways we can address that with our older students as well well good luck on it i mean that's a big project phonemic awareness is so important we have a great team too we have a great team yeah yeah and i know that i speak i believe for everybody on the board that you would have our
022support with anything that you would come forward with to augment and try to get those positions a little bit more defined for our students thank you thank you appreciate the support nice i'm sorry can i ask just a quick question it's actually with regard to the um professional leave request which which is of course is fine but um i i had to google it i'm augmentative and alternative alternative communication so i'm just that i have to do like with pragmatics of language first aac which is what the augmentative and alternative communication is those are um communication devices and methodologies for primarily non-verbal students okay um so we use primarily what's called the lamp protocol which is language acquisition and motor planning but they are computer-based devices that students select picture icons and then the device
023speaks for them so it gives the student a voice what we find is that when we start that early it really helps to develop spoken language as well so this particular conference is one that is in my professional leave request that i'm going to ask you about next that is uh specific to indiana and it's some speech language pathologists in indiana that have really been supportive of slps across the state and developing those skills thank you i didn't mean to i could have emailed you ahead of time about that so that is my next item to seek your approval for the professional leave request motion to approve motion by ms kelly second second by dr malcolm any questions hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you thank you thanks becky we'll move around
024to our director of facilities mr ledger ah thank you uh tonight i have uh five items three i'll be seeking your approval on on the first one is to seek your approval award and execute the contract for the coleen west parking lot and the south end of the west lot by the gym for resurface and paving we did i had three people bid the project milestone which is formerly walsh and kelly and wreath riley and site services and site service was the low bidder at 116 465 dollars so i seek your approval award them that work to approve we have a motion by mr marshall second second by dr medlin any questions bill did you say walsh and kelly changed their name yes they did they went into a larger group and a larger group
025bought them out so they are now milestone contractors i was not aware of that thank you that's recent yes all in favor aye any opposed motion passes oh thank you my next item is to seek your approval award execute the contract for the clark middle school west entry drive and parking lot milling and resurfacing as well the same three bidders bid that work and site services was low on that as well for one thousand four hundred five dollars so i seek your approval award site services that work as well so moved motion by mr marshall second second by mrs kelly any discussion all in favor aye motion passes ah thank you my last action item is uh to seek your approval award the contract for the east exit drive actually i will second that any
026discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye motion passes thank you and all that work will be completed this summer so i'll award those contracts uh tomorrow wednesday uh my next item is just a brief update on the vivid project um the drawings are completed uh the advertisements are out for bid we are getting bids on june 28th um i was at the town of dyer last wednesday and we got approval from uh the storm water management board as well as the planning commission so all the approval process for the for that has been done with the exception of the permitting process but without approval now we can go for our permit right now we are in for a we have a site permit issued to the town we've got the drawings are in
027for all that we have the state design release for that portion of work so hopefully here in the next couple weeks we'll be getting the permit and we're hoping to start probably right after the fourth of july holiday breaking ground and such so um with that um we are i'll send you some options for the oac meetings we're going to start having those it looks like the week of the june 20th so i'll i i have your email i know what dates are good and bad so we'll be talking about that my team and i this wednesday uh so so we're moving right along with that so i'll report to the next next meeting i'll let you guys know i did not have on here because there wasn't really anything to report but just to
028let you know on the summer projects as well the grimmer hvac project um the town called today and i my permit's ready for that so we're going to start that work this week too so i'll give you guys an update on that next uh next board meet as well but that's going to start this week so we've already kind of started doing floor protection everything for that as well any questions on three of those projects sure lots going on in the region i see that uh they're adding down to timothy ball over crown point also and then they got the big project at hanover crown point crom point is adding on to almost they're doing something almost all their schools if their bond holds out with the money because with the inflation and costs i
029will tell you just uh we did do some bids last week for the project and the market's real tight right now um there's so it's it's very weird market right now with the stock market falling the inflation soaring but construction is and the workforce is very very low so it's it's really it's a hard it's a hard market right now it's very competitive very much so okay very much so you know you mentioned that the drawings were done from bibbid school may we see them or may i stop by and see them well there's really hard to i can what do you want us i mean i'm just talking a bunch of electric and mechanical and oh you don't have the exterior framed out no i i if the next i'll i'll bring the elevations
030you want to see elevations i'm just curious about the design yes it pretty much is trying to match the existing okay and then you mentioned something to cindy about an a or oacb what's that stand for owner architect contractor meeting uh cindy's the board liaison so okay got it thank you bill on on the summer projects can i ask you a question that was my next item oh so yep okay so as you have the three columns here awarded started and completed so if they're awarded that means that basically you've decided who's doing the work right some of those are just annual maintenance which we did back in january right okay i just want to make sure i understood this thank you and i was back on that to dr malcolm i'll segue into that
031uh probably i have 98 of stuff awarded uh the good news is the only really item i'm having an issue with is probably gonna be postponed is the replacement of the kaler pa um that's lots of electronic uh chips and stuff and as you guys all know that's hard right now it looks like i'm not going to be able to get all the parts and components for that almost labor day but they've worked with me and we're going to work it out he's going to he's going up his labor for me over the winter break and we're going to be able to replace that winter break so that's one item that's not gonna get done this summer because of the supply chain issues uh we started a whole bunch of stuff today i mean this
032was our big day today because the last week was short give the custodians some room to clean out but we've got all the landscape mulch done all the playground mulch is already done we started the concrete replacement work today at grimmer um i said we started the hvac work i've got um we were going to start paving holmen today but with rain we did not so that will start tomorrow and i've got fence repairs starting the high school wednesday at the athletic fields so things are going to be going all summer long so that's the update hang in there thanks thank you our director of business services mr james thank you um first i just want to give the board an update on the financing for our vivid project uh the bonds um so prior
033to going out to say a lot to market we go through a bond rating with s p standard and poor's and i'm happy to report that s p increased our rating from an a to an a plus and i was not necessarily expecting that but i was very glad to see that as well in this volatile market as bill indicated with economic uncertainty um the fact that s p had um more faith in us that was great and so i just want to uh hats off not only to my staff but to the board because one of the things if i included in the report was that they like that we have strong reserves and in case of a downturn and the fact that we haven't over extended ourselves by adding personnel adding programs that
034aren't being funded so you know dr malcolm you mentioned the k thing but we wouldn't get any money for that so it is a problematic where if you want to add something like that what do you want to cut it and so it's always been an issue but s p really likes our reserves they like we don't extend to overextend ourselves so i just want to bring that to your attention got the great bond increase rating on may 10th we went out to market and we sold the bonds um capital one came in and in essence bought all the bonds at 3.55 percent and we it was about a half a percent less than what we were kind of guesstimating it was looking because the market and rates have gone up uh steadily since january
035and things that we're seeing in the market were over in the four percent range so uh we're happy that capital one took a interest in us and uh we will be closing on those bonds this friday on june 10th so um things are looking good then we'll get the bond proceeds and i'll let bill continue on with this project so any questions on that you know i think i just want to make a statement about the cutting something to add something that we might need that made me think about the operating referendum balance and where we are with that will you be giving us an update on that soon in july at the end of the quarter okay because it'd be nice to know where we are with that operating referendum money well if yeah
036we are pretty much running at the margin we were running in the positive on that account since we started it at first but we made the conscious decision to pump a lot of that money into teacher salaries this year that's why our teachers are able to get the pay increases they did so in essence we've maxed out we're pretty much running at the margin for our revenue in is what we're spending out of our uh referendum at this point there is a cash balance it's probably about one year's worth of expenditures but we have that you know just in case we'll see what happens in in six years but um i will say there isn't really much wiggle room in there to add things to we just we working with the team over here look
037at things that regarding you know as they mentioned hey we need to put more money into adding these things that we already have where we need to put more focus on we look to see that because if assessed values go up we get a little more money in that fund and therefore we try to see okay we have a little more dollars where can we best put that to serve the kids that we're already serving so okay moving on uh my next time is to seek your approval for the professional leave requests in your board packet move to approve motion by mr marshall second second by ms kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes and my final line was to seek approval for the donations that were listed in your
038board packet move to approve the donations we have a motion by dr medlin second second by ms kelly any discussion all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you thank you and we do not have any public comments this evening so we'll move on to board comments and consideration of future agenda items mr marshall uh i have nothing in particular however i've been thinking about this in light of what's transpired in our society over the past well it's been happening for the past decade i just want to make a short comment we have to get ourselves together and get this corrected we can't have children adults people being massacred on a daily basis i know this may not be the appropriate forum for discussion on that but i have some very strong feelings about control
039and i hope our congress gets off their duffs and gets something passed thank you thank you miss kelly uh no comments this evening dr medlin no comments thank you dr malcolm well you know i wasn't going to comment but howard you you're right on that and and i think about at our local level the gun controls that are in place it occurred to me while driving the other day teachers have to go through correct me if i'm wrong mrs mucha but teachers have to go through security every once in a while right every so many years they have to be updated they have they have security things that they'd have to do every year yeah does a go no gun opener are they periodically required to update themselves on guns yeah the teachers no no
040no no no howard was talking about guns right so what so my point is that teachers if you remember not too many years ago they started that cycle where the teachers have to be what reissued a new license or based and all those security questions have to be asked are you talking about background checks yes yes that's that that we are on a cycle with that and mrs patterson takes care of that and they have to complete those background checks on so is is that true with owners of gun i mean it's a rhetorical question but that's where i'm going with this but anyway maybe it's not the right format so i'm going to be quiet now thank you i just want to say it was a nice graduation ceremony so thank you to all
041at the high school i know we had some some new newbies and they did a great job so thank you um our baseball team i understand they lost to penn the other days so they are done and our softball team they went pretty pretty far also so congratulations to them and that's all i have for this evening and we'll turn it back over to mrs mucha for board calendar future activities we will see everyone back here on june 20th for our next board meeting thank you do we have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn do we have a second second all in favor all right