001Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all. like to call this meeting to order and check. Uh, Dr. Cryver, are there any public comments? At this time, there are no public comments, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Um, so I'm going to go ahead and turn the meeting over to you, Dr. Cryptover, to get us started. All right. Thank you, Mr. Music. Good evening, everyone. Appreciate you being here this evening for our monthly Stowboard meeting. I also want to welcome those that are watching our meeting live streamed online. So, welcome and we appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to view our schoolboard meeting, but
002more importantly, thank you audience for taking the time to be here with us this evening. At this time, what I'd like to do is introduce to you the principal here at Virgil I. Bailey Elementary School who has some information she would like to share with the board and I understand so make some recognitions of some of our Bailey students. That's something we always look forward to is putting our students in the limelight a little bit and bragging about our students, their good works and their accomplishments. So without further ado, Miss Kim Hayes, principal at Bailey Elementary. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you board and everyone for joining us tonight. Thank you everyone in the audience. This is amazing. Um I'm I'm so thankful that you took the time out of your evening to come uh
003share the wonderful things that we're doing. So I am I'm old school, so I'm going to read my script just so I make sure I cover everything. Um, and then I have lots of other staff members that I'd like to bring up so they can also share good things about the students um, here at Bailey. Um, thank you for the opportunity to share some of the wonderful things happening at our school this year. We've had many positive and we've had very positive and productive year and I'd like to take a few minutes to highlight several of our recent successes. As you know, shared at our last board meeting, Miss Havens and I have con are continuously working hard to align both of our elementary buildings together for cons consistency. Mrs. Haven shared with us last
004month all of our amazing things that Liz Arisco and Ginger Bailey bring to the table. They are definitely two of the main reasons why things are moving in the right direction at the elementary level. And I'm going to Mrs. Bailey's here in the audience if you want to. I know I think I don't know if anyone here has met her before, but she's she's one of our amazing people and Mr. Prrisco could not be here this evening. One area we continue to grow is is student involvement and collaboration within our school setting. We've maintained strong participation in our student clubs such as art club, spell bowl, and math bowl. And this year we were excited to introduce a student council for the first time. So that's a lot of our red shirt students here. That's
005they're here to they'll be up here shortly. It has been fantastic to see our students step into leadership roles, helping with school events and speaking up as rep representatives of their peers. This group truly gives students a voice within the building and a sense of ownership in their school experience. Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. Shriveley are the two sponsors for the group. Mrs. Richardson will be sharing more information here shortly. To support student motivation and positive habits, we've introduced several recognition and celebration initiatives. Each week, our attendance trophy is awarded to the class with the highest attendance percentage, which has encouraged a healthy sense of competition and accountability. At the end of every quarter, we celebrate the winning overall winning class that has had the most highest percentage of attendance for that quarter. Mrs. Bailey allows
006them an extra the teacher gets an extra plan time. Um and then PTO is graciously um given treats to the kids as well as to the teacher. At the end of every quarter um we do our award ceremonies to celebrate the students. This year or last year we implemented um the very last one was our red carpet award ceremony. Everyone dressed up. It was really cute. We have a had a red carpet. I'm not sure if we're going to have that this year. Um, but that will be the last week before we end for the school year. With all of these award ceremonies, it is my goal and this and the teachers goal to make sure that we recognize every student at some point throughout the school year to celebrate their growth and accomplishments. We
007continue to recognize students and staff on the morning announcements um with my fifth grade team that is up there every day helping us. We celebrate student and staff birthdays, academic accomplishments, random acts of kindness, and this year we began um celebrating our staff on Wednesdays with our WOW winners. These staff members are nominated for someone witnessing outstanding work. So they when their name is called, they come to the office, we have this big little fancy wheel and they get to win a prize. So it's been a huge hit in our building. Thank you to Mrs. Bailey. That was one of her ideas that she brought to the table. Looking ahead to next year, several staff members have already expressed interest in launching new student clubs and activities, which will further enhance our culture of engagement
008and belonging. We've also seen a significant increase in our PTO involvement since I've been here. Where she's at? She's right there. There's a couple of them here. So, thank you ladies for helping almost every day throughout the school year. I don't know what we would do without you both. Um, we have lots of school dances this year, weekly treats on Fridays. We did a staff appreciation week which was amazing. And then this year we came up with student appreciation week which we started off with an awesome assembly with a science wizard. I don't know if your students came home talking about it but it was my mind was blown away. So I think they had a great time too. Um so we just want to keep recognizing them for all of the good that they're
009doing. And then back to my PTO members. I just want to thank you all for all of the time and energy you pour into our building each week. Um, and then one of the things that I did uh bring to the school this year was um through Northwest Indiana No Child Hungry. Mrs. Gretchen Mercer is the individual that I've been working with to allow some of our students to have buddy bags, which is um they can sign up for a buddy bag, which is non-perishable items they can have through the weekend at home. So, I'm excited to continue that into next school year. So, if that's something that your child wants to sign up for, we can definitely make that work. All of these efforts, big and small, are helping us build a school culture
010that is positive, student center, and student centered and full of opportunity. Thank you for your continued support, and we're excited to see what next year will bring. I have to have a couple reminders that I want to share out. Kindergarten enrollment is open for both Bailey and Hamilton. Um, if you know of a child that turns five um after August 1st, let them know to enroll. Um, and then last but not least, North American Games is next Friday. Hamilton and Bailey will be fighting. I'm sorry, not fighting, competing for the bell. Hopefully, it stays here. Okay. And then I do have several a um certificates that I like to pass out. Um, kind of recognizing some of our students. I will start off with our spell bowl students. So, if you are in Spellbable, if
011you want to come on up here and line up and then I'll call out your names and we'll pass out certificates. Mrs. Scartozi. Sorry, I think Mrs. Ellenburgger's here tonight. You girls can come over here. I'm going to hand over the microphone to Mrs. Gartosi and she's going to say some wonderful things. wonderful things. No, they were awesome. The kids were great this year. Um they worked very hard every week. We worked with the words and um they did very well. We're very proud of them. Congratulations, girls. Thank you for coming. So, I'm going to hand out the awards that we have here. So, we have Jose Flores Cvantes. Awesome job. Ruth [Music] Alcarez. I have Ava Ellenburg. Oh, here it is. Ava Ellenburgger. And then the students that were not able to join us
012tonight, I would just like to recognize their names. Alexis Coleman, Jonathan Lassard, Cassidy Bridgewwater, Naa Prince, and Silus Clark. A round of applause for all of our spell team. Thank you. and math bowl. Mrs. Shively could not be here this evening. Um but she wanted me to share that these kids are incredible. They are so intelligent, hardworking. Um anything is within their grasp. They she says thank you for being a part of the team and thank you to parents for making sure that they showed up to practice every week. Um so I'll name off the or call off the names. If you're if you're here, come on up. Arthur King Xander Mitchell, Jonathan Lassard, Jose Flores, Cervantes, Harmony Jackson, Silus Clark, Brooklyn Brown, Ruth Alcarez, and Alexis Coleman. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Math
013Bowl. You guys are awesome. Great job. And I have one more award. Um and then I'll hand over the microphone to Mrs. Richardson. So last year when I came over here to Lake Station, Mrs. Havens and I um had chosen to give the IE assessment to grade two. Um so this year it's mandatory, but last year we opted in. Um, so this year, so the students have to pass it in order to be promoted to fourth grade. Um, so our second grade students this year, um, did a great job. And I have one student that earned a perfect score. So it's like for never we it's not been heard of here at Lake Station. Um, so in second grade, she earned a perfect score on her I read. And this award goes to Miss Khloe
014Johnson. So, that's a huge honor. Um, you're one in a million, girl. We're so proud of you. All right, Chloe Johnson. Oh, and I'm going to singly call out Miss Alexis Coleman. She has several awards up here. So, you are mathful and spellable. Yes. Here you go. Here's your math bowl and spell bowl. Turn around and see everyone's. All right, Mrs. Richardson, come on up. Okay. I just want to start by saying how incredibly proud I am of this group of students. Um, if you didn't hear the first Bailey Student Council, so round of applause for that. Look at you. But honestly, these kids came to meetings. They donated their time, volunteered their time after school. We've had weekend events, and they show up. They also come prepared. They have shared so many ideas to
015increase student involvement, have a leadership voice in our school. They don't just come to the meeting for the snacks, but they do enjoy the snack. But they do come with ideas. They have been in charge of all of our spirit weeks this week. They or this year they come up with our spirit day ideas. Uh they have come up with different ways to celebrate teachers, students, increased some involvement of just letting the students have a voice. But it has been amazing to watch your leadership skills develop. I have noticed, other teachers have noticed you helping the younger students. We've had some instances where you big kids, that's what we call you in little kid land, just kind of step up to help out along the way. In case you have forgotten some amazing things you
016have already done on your first year of student council, we walked the homecoming parade on very short notice, but we did it and we looked great out there. You also reached out into the community. We did an activity with the senior center. We provided cards and candies for the senior center at their Christmas holiday dinner. Um we have done student uh appreciation time. We've uh are working on some things for next year. You also have helped decorate the building. They have just really stepped up the role of using their voice in a positive way. I am so proud of you and I really hope that you come back for student council next year, but continue to use your voice in a positive way. The little steps of kindness that you put out here, you have
017really helped change the culture of our building as well. So, I hope to see you next year joining student council wearing these red shirts and being amazing. You really are amazing. Thank you. And that's all I have. So, thank you for letting me share all the good things. Thank you everyone. Well, thank you, Mrs. Hayes. Thank you, Mrs. Richardson. And one final applause for all of our Bailey students and their accomplishments. Please, as I said a moment ago, one thing that we like to do as a board and as administrators and teachers is we really like to put our students in the spotlight because our students are very hardworking students doing amazing things classroom and for their schools, for their friends and we really want recognize that. And one of my favorite things to do,
018as I said, is to brag about our students. So, I appreciate you allowing us, Mrs. Hayes, to have that opportunity to show off our good students and to brag a little bit about them and their good accomplishments. So, we really enjoyed it. Thank you. At this time, we are going to be moving into the business part of our agenda. So, we also are conscious about dinner time and homework time and bedtime. So, if any of you need to leave because you have some of those things or other things you need to address, we will pause our meeting for just a moment and allow you that opportunity. However, we really like where you stay. It goes quickly. It's not very long. But if you do need to leave at this point, we certainly understand. So, we'll
019pause for just a minute allowing people to do that. All right. Then we will go ahead and continue with the business portion of our school board meeting this evening. The first item, Mr. President and members of the school board, I'd like to recommend that you pass the consent agenda as presented to you this evening. The items on the consent agenda our approval of minutes, financial, fiscal, extracurricular, hiring and resignations, and donations. And if I could take just a quick moment, I'd like to recognize those people that are making donations to our school district. Friends of Bailey School has donated $600 for the end of the year assembly. The varsity football program received donations from J&J's Pizza of $500. Raw Auto $300 for the football program and Cut Up and Die $300 for the football program.
020Smok and E Barbecue donated $500 and coach Glenn Gully of the varsity football team donated $53029 to the baseball program. Jennifer and Wallace McCormack have donated $50 to the baseball program. And a donor that wishes to be anonymous has donated $100 to the baseball program. for high school girls track. Mary Marquez has donated $25 and Edison Student Activity Fund Costco Workplace Giving Campaign has donated $93.50. I just want to thank all of those organizations and individuals that have made donations to our school corporation. At this time, Mr. President, I would recommend that you approve the consent agenda as presented this evening. We've heard the recommendation. We have a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll second the motion. Is there any discussion? Discussion. Uh I'll just pause for a moment. I I do want to thank
021everyone that donated. It's uh awesome to see those donations come through for our programs and we really appreciate that community support. Um with that, we'll go ahead and call a vote. Uh Mr. Bips. I. Mr. Baska I and I vote I. Moving to the next page or if you've taken copies of the agenda that out on the table, you would just go to the back page. We'll move on to personnel items. Item number one, recommend to the board this evening that they approve Linda Scartosy's request for an unpaid leave of absence that ended on May the 9th, 2025. Heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second the motion. Any discussion? No. All right. We'll take it to a vote. Mr. Phillips I. Mr. Pesca. I. And I vote I.
022Item number two. I recommend to the board that they accept the following teacher resignations. Courtney Gray effective May the 9th. Amber Ratcliffe. Ashley Parszic. Linda Scartosi and Kylie Eldridge resignations effective at the end of the school year. We've heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make the motion. I'll second the motion. Any discussion? Discussion. Okay, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Phillips, I. Mr. Pesca, I. And I vote I. Item number three, I would recommend to the board that they approve to hire Diana Flanigan to be the principal at Edison Junior Senior High School effective with the 2025 2026 school year. We've heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Any discussion? No discussion. Um I would like to just say something about uh Miss Flanigan.
023Um, this past year has been a tough one and she has really stepped up at uh, you know, every step of the way with everything that we were working through. Oh, there she is. I was looking for her. Um, I I do want to say that we really appreciate everything you did. I know, you know, you came into this year as, you know, an assistant super assistant principal and you had to step up and take on all those extra roles and with a lot of uncertainty going around. So, thank you very much for everything you did. Um, any other discussion? Congratulations. Yes. Thank you very much. All right. So, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Bilips, I. Mr. Poesca. I. And I vote I. Next item. Under personnel, I recommend to the board that
024they approve to hire Kevin Jones as dean of students at Edison Junior Senior High School effective the 2025 2026 school year. We've heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I make the motion. I'll second the motion. Is there any discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Phillips, I. Mr. Poesca, I. And I vote I. Next item. I recommend to the board that they approve to hire Leverne Marquez as a school bus driver effective immediately. We've heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make the motion. I'll second the motion. Is there any discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Phillips, I. Mr. Poa, I. And I vote I. The next item I recommend to the board that they approve the recommendation to award Mrs. Flanigan a one-time
025supplemental payment of $10,000 for accepting additional leadership duties at Edison Junior Senior High School. We've heard the recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make the motion. I'll second the motion. Any discussion? I just want to thank Mrs. Flanigan for taking on the extra responsibilities and giving so much care to our students here. Thank you. I would like to echo that as we were just saying, we appreciate everything you did and this is how we want to make sure we show it. So, um, thank you again for everything. Any other discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Bips, I. Mr. Poruska, I. And I vote I. I'd like to recommend this evening to the board that they approve to hire Eric Reese as dean of students at Edison Junior Senior High School
026effective for the 2025 2026 school year. We've heard the recommendation. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Is there any discussion? Um the one the one thing I wanted to point out as you might have noticed a couple of uh points bullet points ago, we did hire someone else's dean of students for the junior high and high school. So, what we are doing this upcoming school year, we're trying something a little different. There will be two dean of student positions at the high school, but there will not be an assistant principal position at the high school this upcoming year. Uh, obviously Dr. Kryp and Miss Peipa can speak to this more if uh if they would like, but it's something that we've explored. We feel like it could be a better fit
027for the the teachers and the staff at the at the school and be able to be more supportive for for them and our students. Um, and if they would like to expand on that, they can. Well, just as Mr. Music said, uh, we are restructuring the junior senior high school administration by having those two deans. Both of them come with very good experiences. One good experience working with the junior high students, the other one having incredible career and education working at the high school level as well as from time to time working at with junior high students. So by having this good diversity with a junior high teacher and senior high teacher working with Mrs. Flanigan, we feel that this will be a good opportunity to readjust our administration at high school to really support
028and reach out to those two grade levels, the high school grade level as well as the junior high school level. So, we're looking forward to having those gentlemen come on board if that's the pleasure of the board and to really develop that team effort that has been at Edison's Junior Senior High School for many years, but this year we've kind of lost that. We have felt the loss of that teamwork with the administration and we're anxious to restore that for the upcoming year. Thank you, Mr. Music. Is there any other discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote, Mr. Phillips I Mr. Peska I and I vote I the next item under personnel I recommend to the board they approve to hire Haley Hman as an elementary teacher in our school district for the
0292025 2026 school year. We've heard the recommendation. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second. Is there any discussion? Okay. Um the only minor detail to point out is that Haley would be um hired as a you know elementary teacher. We haven't found a specific building or grade level for her at the moment. But our uh principles, as you may have picked up from the earlier presentation, they work very closely together and they would uh you know be making those recommendations as far as where teachers should be placed next year. Um is there any other discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Bips I. Mr. Mr. Poes. I and I vote I. Next item I recommend to the board, excuse me, that they approve the recommendation to suspend Miss Godby
030without pay for five work days September 15th through September 19th with her returning on Monday, September 22nd, 2025 for board policy violations. We've heard the recommendation. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion. I'll second the motion. Any discussion? We'll take it to a vote. Mr. Bilips, I. Mr. Poesa, I. And I vote I. The last item under personnel, I'd like to recommend to the board that they approve to hire Mia Weinland to work as an English teacher during our summer school program. We've heard the recommendation. Is there a motion? I'll make the motion. I'll second the motion. Any discussion? Um the only point of clarity for this one for me is that you may be familiar with Miss Winland if you have any kids in the uh in the school system. Uh she is
031actually an employee through the uh NYSE co-op. So us hiring her for the summer school program is just because she is not officially uh part of our school system. She's through the co-op. But we do use her skills over the summer for our summer school. So, uh, with that, any other discussion? All right, we'll take it to a vote. Mr. Bilips, I. Mr. Polesk, I. And I vote I. Mr. President, I have no further business to come before the board except to remind everyone that our next monthly schoolboard meeting is will be held on Wednesday, June 18th, 2025 at Edison Junior Senior High School. And that meeting will start at 700 p.m. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Does anyone have any parting comments? Mr. Phillips, thank you to Miss Hayes and her staff for
032uh hosting us uh this meeting. And uh to all the students who got awards tonight, great job. Keep up the great work. And uh for everybody coming out, thanks for joining us. People watching at home, thank you for joining us. And that's it for me. Mr. Plesca, just like to say thank you to Mrs. Hayes. Thank uh congratulations to all you students. Keep up the great work. Thank everybody for attending and thank you for tuning in and watching us online. Thank you. Yeah, I would like to say thank you everyone that came out. This is probably one of the probably the biggest meeting since I've been on the school board to see all this attendance. So, I really appreciate you all coming out. Um, and I appreciate the kids what they did with the math
033bowl and spell bowl, the perfect score on the iid, especially as a second grader. That's amazing. So, congratulations on that. Student council starting uh starting at this level. I'm sure that's going to be great for you, especially as you move into high school. Uh, get an early start on that. So, you know, great job working on all those things, putting those things together. I get the unique privilege of, you know, calling out my nephew Jackson over there. How you doing? Um, but thank you all for, you know, coming out tonight and thank you for hosting us. Dr. Kryper. Uh, yes. I do have a few announcements that I'd like to make our community members aware of. Soccer is coming to Lake Station for ages 6 through 14. And you can register for soccer by going
034to the website soccer, all one word.com. And at the table as you enter the gym this evening, there are small flyers that you can take with you to give you more information about the soccer program. Also, I'd like to recognize the Lake Station School Board for being recognized by the Indiana School Board Association as being an advanced school board for the year 2024. So, congratulations to our school board members. There are some there are some upcoming community events that I would like to inform everyone about. on May 31st is a touch a truck program at Riverview Park starting at 10:00 to 2:00 p.m. They will have a different variety of trucks, police cars, fire trucks, dump trucks, plow trucks, a whole host of trucks that children and students as well as grown-ups can touch, sit
035in the cabs of those trucks, and get to know a little bit about what those trucks do. So, that will be coming up on May 31st at Riverview Park. On June 7th and June the 8th, the Northwest Indiana Pride Festival will be held at Riverview Park from 10 in the morning till 10 p.m. And June 21st and June 22nd is the Hooers Veterans Festival where we pay recognition and honor to the vets here in our community. that will be held at Riverview Park from noon to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday and from noon to 6:00 pm on that Sunday. So, we encourage you to come out. There'll be food trucks, activities for the students and our children to participate in and it's a good family event, all three of these events. So, we encourage you to
036come out and be a part of that as your schedule permits. My last announcement today, prior to us having our schoolboard meeting, we had the senior awards program held at Edison Junior Senior High School. And we gave a variety of awards to our students for their hard work, their leadership in their classroom, their scholastics, also in their athletics. But one thing I want to highlight is we also gave scholarships to those graduating seniors for a variety of things. This year's graduating class at Edison High School has earned in scholarships to further their education in the amount of $2,491,000. That is what's going to be distributed to our graduating seniors this year for them to use that for their furthering their education. I'm astounded by that that we are able to give that much in scholarships
037with what we have in foundations, dollars for scholars, 21st century and other programs that provide scholarships to our students. So, I just wanted to point that out to you and congratulate those graduating seniors for their scholarship winnings. Thank you, Mr. President. Miss Peipa, I have a a couple closing announcements for myself. Um, one is congratulations to all the students. It's always a great joy to see all the wonderful things that you're doing and for you to be recognized for your hard work and dedication. So, thank you very much and thank you to the teachers that are sponsors and and helping our students achieve success. Um, I'd also like to thank everyone for the mug and the goodies that we received. That was very nice. Um, thank you, Mr. Music, for being the president today. I
038appreciate you stepping in and the other board members for being here today. Um, I'd like to congratulate Mrs. Scartosi for her retirement. Uh, the the years you have put in. You have touched thousands of lives and thank you so much for all your hard work. I um, congratulations to the seniors. That's amazing that they earned that much money throughout all the scholarships and them researching what's available out there and submitting their applications and and having the grades and the and the scholarship of um community and so forth that it takes to to earn those scholarships. So, congratulations to them. Uh I would also like to congratulate Mrs. Flanigan. It it has not been an easy year. We know um you've had to uh uh double time a lot. Um I believe you may be able
039to get 20 minutes of sleep this evening. So, thank you so much for all your time and congratulations to you. It's it it's welld deserved and we're excited for the next school year. Uh and I'd also like to congratulate all the new hires. We have um exciting things happening in our school district and we welcome everyone to our Lake Station family. So, thank you all for being here. This is fantastic. I hope everyone comes out next month and we appreciate you being here. Thank you. So, um just just keep in mind it's never too early to start thinking about those scholarships. As we said, over $2 million worth of scholarships. So, as you move into junior high and everything like that, look out for that 21st Century Scholar Program. Fill out that application. Jump through
040the the hoops. They're they're not too bad really and uh you know start focusing on that. But thank you all and uh we'll go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Thank you.