001All right, seeing that as seven, if you please stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all. We have one for public comments. Uh, Victoria Miller. Well, thank you for coming. Do we have a microphone for? No. Oh, okay. Thank you, Desty. Hello. Hello, school board members, parents, guardians, teachers, staff, and viewers in this room and online. My name is Victoria Miller and I am the children's librarian at the Lake Station New Chicago Public Library, home to both Lake Station and River Forest communities. And I am here today for a couple of reasons. One, to show my face to those who haven't met me yet. I would love for you to say hello
002at the library. Two, to bring awareness to some of the programming at our library that we believe is a great opportunity that we don't want the community to miss. First, we are having a school age career fair Saturday, May 3rd from 2 to 4 for the K through 12 students. This is a free event where we will be have gotten members of the community to come out and allow the children of the community to come out and ask questions about their career and what they do. They will be able to get some information about the job and understand what a day-to-day might look like for someone in that field. There will also be resources for parents, prizes to earn, and fun to be had. Please come out and support your local library as we support
003you. Second, our main branch, the Maraveville Library, is hosting an early literacy fair for newborn to preschool age children. April 26th from 10 to 3. This event will have multiple vendors, many different stations for play and learning, all to end with a 1-hour concert by author and entertainer Jim Gil. This event is also completely free. We hope to see parents of small children there to learn some new and fun ways to do literacy that doesn't just involve just reading a book. Third, a 100 books before graduation is for 6th to 12th grade students. This program was just established last year and we are encouraging students to read just like our a thousand books before kindergarten program. Every 25 books is a different prize and a free book at every goal leading up to a $5
004voucher to use at our 3D printer for a project you want printed. And yes, we have a 3D printer. And lastly, our monthly programs involve something for all ages to enjoy. There are story times for newborns to 5-year-olds. I have two Lego clubs, a craft club, and an art club every month for K through sixth grade students. Teen programs involve gaming with the Switch or board games and anime club. There's a craft for teens this month. Adults have crafting, hobby hour, adult only gaming and reading hour. And for every age, we have bingo at the end of every month, all free. So, please come to the library and find something fun to do or just come and read. But however you want to visit us, please visit us. We'd love to see you. Thank you.
005Miss Miller, do you have a copy or could you get us a copy of all those dates? Maybe we can share them on our Facebook and our uh our school website. Thank you so much. Maybe we can share these on our website. Thank you so much. You came prepared. I like it. That was the only one signed up for public comments. So, at this point, I will turn it over to Dr. Krippler. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Appreciate that. The next item I would like to introduce the principal here at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, Mrs. Jennifer Havens Rodriguez to talk to us a little bit about the good things going on at Hamilton School. So, thank you, Miss Havens. Thank you. All right. Um, you guys know I always like to highlight all the amazing
006things going on here. So, I'm going to start first with amazing things our kids are doing. Um, let's see here. We will start with our science bowl. Um, so Mrs. Quig was our science bowl coach this year. She did an excellent job with them. Um, I'm going to read what she submitted for that. Uh, she said, "Our 2425 science bowl was an amazing experience of teamwork. We had a challenge of the rough November to January schedule with holidays and flu and colds keeping some kids away. Uh my group of four wonderful fourth graders persevered through and stepped up to make sure that we kept our team. They talked through the uh the group questions with each other and made decisions together. I could not have asked for better teamwork. We may not have placed but
007they finished what was started. I hope that they will have wonderful memories of working together and h have a better love and understanding of science that will continue to grow throughout uh their school career. The true value is the experience and learning that was had along the way. Uh the 2425 science bowl team consisted of uh Hayden Cassidy, Iris Lopez, Avery Cuk, and Cadence Milsap. I don't think we have anyone with us tonight, right? Good job to science bowl. All right, our math bowl team actually just competed last night. And so we have Miss Leighten here who is our math bowl coach. We have two of our math bowl members. So they started practicing in January. Um practiced all the way through. We competed yesterday and they took second place in their division. Um, so
008I would like to honor you have the certificates. All right. So here with us tonight we have Taylor Brenston. So great job, Miss Taylor. And we also have Mr. Logan Gilman. So good job Logan. Uh, we also two of our members are not here tonight. We had Braden Keel and Jesus Ruiz. Jesus. Uh we have our online con math and the goal is 40 minutes a week. He is a fourth grader and he averages about 400. So he said he wanted to stay home and do con minutes tonight. So he's not here. Um but good job. All right. So talked about students. I want to talk about um staff. So the biggest update I would say to the elementary program this year, I mean one of the things that Kim and I have worked really
009hard is to have consistency across both buildings. So everything I'm talking about, you know, for the most part is is Bailey too. Um, so the biggest change that we had with I think the greatest reward was the updates that we were able to make to the title one facilitator roles. Um, previously we had a facilitator in each building. Um, and we found very quickly that we really had a gem here with Liza Prrisco. And so we were able to kind of update her position and highlight the areas where um, you know, she really shines in regards to data and curriculum and assessments. And then we kind of took a look and said, okay, what are we missing? Like what what have these roles not filled? And so we came up with more of that coaching
010model and we wrote down all these things that we needed and like out of the sky this uniform comes along in Ginger Bailey. I mean it was literally like we had summoned her. Um and so this year they have really um worked together to align the buildings. Um we have much more consistency. Uh it's allowed Liz to focus on her areas uh of expertise to bring about professional development not just for teachers but Kim and I as well um in regards to using data effectively for student groupings, curriculum updates, online programming, etc. Uh Ginger Bailey has been a resource coaching teachers which has been especially helpful here at Hamilton where we have six new or new to us teachers in the building. Um I've seen tremendous growth in our brand new teachers as a result
011of her coaching. Um she's been a huge asset as well helping with student attendance. She reaches out to families, provides support. Um comes with a heavy-handed turny court when she needs to, but uh she's really been a huge asset to us. Um I want to highlight our third grade team here. I feel like they're a shining example um in my opinion of how well Liz and Jinder have worked together to support our teachers. Um, as you know, third grade is a very high stakes testing grade and I was, no offense, a little nervous that we had two brand new teachers in third grade this year. Um, but I am happy to report that that team has some of the highest percentages in the district in regard to the number of students who meet their NEOA
012goals. So, that deserves to be celebrated. Uh, Miss Gray and Miss Leaden are amazing in their own right, but I also feel like the support that they received from Liz on how to, you know, really interpret the data and then bringing Ginger in to model that instruction and put it into practice um, is what has allowed them to take off the way that they have. Um, really hoping that this level of support that we're able to provide now um, is going to keep all these new people that we hired so we're not going through that again. Um, I think it's going to go a long way too in elevating our core instruction. So, I wanted to highlight that program change. Uh, and then two other things I wanted to talk about, um, is shining light
013on two of our specialist teachers. Uh, if you haven't had a chance yet, I would love to see you guys come in and watch Miss Wahhab in action. Uh, she is our new STEM teacher. Everything is like all hands-on. I mean, when you have kindergarten and first graders doing engineering and all these models, I mean, it is just amazing to watch. So, you know, I would definitely love to see you guys come in and see all the work she's doing. And I also want to highlight our librarian here at Hamilton. Um I know you guys were in there and you saw how amazing the library looks. If you know the effort she puts into that physical space is nothing compared to what she puts into the kids. Um you know we recently started Hamilton Helpers
014here and fourth and fifth graders can apply for jobs and everybody was fighting over her and Randy Rob. You know those were the people that they wanted to work with. Um she's jumped in this year. She's filled in an additional specials block for our students and teachers. took on computer science. So, I mean, she's just one in a million. Um, next week she brings the Book Blast program back to Hamilton. Uh, and that allows every single student in the building to get at least one new book. So, we'll we'll send that out and, um, hopefully, you know, people in the community will see that and we'll make donations to that program so that all of our kids can get new books. Um, you know, as always, thank you guys. Thank you guys for trusting Kim
015and I when we come up with these these new ideas and say we want to kind of revamp things. We really do talk all the time how fortunate we are to be trusted as much as we are. So, thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Havens. I really appreciate that update to the good things that are going on at Hamilton School. Congratulations. Congratulations. Our students that are here this evening for the math poll coming in second is outstanding in the district and in the area, the region. So, we're very proud of you. For those students that could not be here this evening to get the duly recognition that they deserve, we want to congratulate you and also remind you that even though you're not here this evening, you are a very important part of the team. You
016contributed a great deal and we're very proud of you as well. So, thank you very very much for that. Good job. One of the things that is a strong goal of mine was to have our elementary schools work together to provide our students with the same opportunities that both of our elementary schools provided. So we had students from time to time that may leave Bailey and come to Hamilton school and vice versa. And we wanted to make sure that those students in those transitions were not lost in their studies and lost as to where they were uh studying and learning in their particular classrooms. And one of the advantages to prevent that from happening is having our elementary school principles working together and our schools working together offering same opportunities, same programs, same instruction, and
017meeting those Indiana academic standards. And I want to just take a moment to express my appreciation to Miss Havens and also to Mrs. Hayes for being here this evening and doing just that. Uniting bringing the strengths of both Bailey Elementary and Hamilton Elementary together. And it has been an amazing thing to see. And our students are benefiting from that through high test scores, improved test scores, and improving that instruction and that curriculum that we provide here at Lake Station Schools. So, I just wanted to express my appreciation to both those principles this evening, Mrs. Havens and Mrs. Hayes. Thank you. [Music] And I also want to express my appreciation to Mrs. Miller. Thank you for coming. Uh I have been to the library several times and had the opportunity to meet you. She does an
018amazing job working with our students and working with children in the library. So we will be putting the information that she shared with you this evening on our website. So that way you can get the dates and the times and also the programs that they are offering. You can get that right from our website. So give us a day maybe even well yeah we can do it in a day. We'll get that up on our website for you. Thank you Kathy Banks saying okay we could do that. All right without further ado if I may continue. Absolutely. we will get to the business at hand and go to our schoolboard agenda this evening. Our first item on the agenda is the consent agenda. And the items underneath the consent agenda will be the approval of
019minutes, financial fiscal information, and approving hiring for our extracurricular programs. Those are the items under the consent agenda. And at this time, I would like to recommend to the board that they approve the consent agenda as presented to you this evening. Hearing the recommendation of the superintendent, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I have a motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Any comments hearing? None. Mr. Phillips. I. Mr. Plesca. I. Mr. Musk. I. Mr. Tinario. Hi. And I vote I. Moving on to items under personnel, excuse me. I I would recommend to the board this evening that they approve the recommendation to suspend Mrs. Godby without pay for three work days starting April 29th, 2025 through May 1st, 2025. returning on Friday, May 2nd, 2025 for board policy violations. I
020would recommend to to the board this evening that they approve that recommendation. Hearing the recommendation. So move. I have a motion. Second. I have a second. Any comments? Hearing none. Mr. Bilips I. Mr. Plesca. I. Mr. Musk. I. Mr. Tinario. Hi. and I vote I. Moving on to items under new business, I'm recommending to the board this evening that they approve to adopt the revisions to board policies as presented for first reading at the March 19th, 2025 meetings. Those policies are policy 2340 field and other corporation sponsored trips. Policy 6250 enrollment policy 8330 directory information. I'm recommending to the board that they approve the revisions to those board policies. Hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion. I'll second that. Any comments? Hearing none, Mr. Mr. Bilix I Mr. Plesca I Mr. Music I Mr. Tinario
021I and I vote I item number two under new business I'm recommending to the board this evening that they approve the recommendation to name the tennis court facilities at Edison Junior Senior High School after a former tennis and basketball coach here at Lake Station Community Schools Mr. Gary Hayes hearing the recommendation. I'll make a motion to approve. I have a motion. I'll second. And a second. Mr. President, if I may, I'm making that recommendation this evening to the board to name the tennis courts after Mr. Gary Hayes because of his record as a boys tennis coach and also the girls tennis coach. If I could just briefly go through his stats as a tennis coach for the boys team. He was the coach from 1981 to 1997. In that time as the boys coach, they
022won 28 matches and lost 86. He had one conference title and won 10 Indiana High School Athletic Association sectional titles. as the girls tennis coach from 1984 through 1991 and then again in 1994 to 1999. The girls tennis team won 151 matches and lost 102. They had four conference titles and four Indiana High School Athletic Association sectional titles. So, we want to recognize Coach Gary Hayes for his outstanding work with our student athletes on the boys and the girls tennis team. Thank you, Mr. President. Any other comments? Hearing none. Mr. Bips, I. Mr. Mlesca I. Mr. Musk I. Mr. Tinario I. And I vote I. The next item under new business I recommend to the board that we approve the facility request from Mrs. Edmonston, the cheerleading coach at Edison Junior Senior High School to
023have a cheerleading camp using the junior high gym and the high school gym for this cheerleading camp on July 17th, 2025 from 11 in the morning to 7 in the evening. I would recommend that the board approve this facility request hearing the recommendation. Motion to support it. Second. Any comments? Hearing none. Mr. Bips I. Mr. Plesca. I. Mr. Music. I. Mr. Tinario. Hi. And I vote I. Mr. President, at this time I have no further business to come before the board except to remind the board and our audience this evening that our next regularly scheduled schoolboard meeting will be Wednesday, May 21st, 2025. And our host for that school board meeting will be Bailey Elementary School. So, we look forward to visiting with Mrs. Hayes and her staff at Bailey Elementary next month. Thank you,
024Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Phillips. Any closing comments? I have none except thanks for coming out, Mr. Pisca. Thank everybody for coming out. Um, great job to the math pole and the science kids. Great job and keep up the great work. Appreciate you. I don't think I need to ask. I know. Mr. Music's got some stuff. Yeah, I've got a couple things, but um just real quickly, um I want to thank uh our principles for being here. I want to thank our our teachers, Miss Quick and Miss Leaden, for what they did with the the bowl teams. Um those things are always uh pretty fun. Um I did science Olympiad a little bit when I was in high school. I know I'm that nerdy. Yes. Um so um those things can be very fun though.
025Um I know Liz and uh Liz has done a great job around here. Um, and I've heard good things about Ginger so far as well. So, it's really great to see everyone working together so well. Um, the one thing that I I did want to touch on briefly, um, as I mentioned on Facebook, um, after, you know, tax property tax information was released for the year, there was a little bit of confusion. So, I just wanted to make sure that I followed up on my posts on the various pages. And I just want to remind everyone not to look at your gross property tax uh, when you're looking at your taxes. Um, there were a few people that were confused at first. They saw that their gross taxes were a certain number. They thought their
026taxes increased a great deal and then when I got to break it down with them a little bit, they realized their taxes actually went down from last year to this year. So, um, just keep that in mind. Don't look at your gross uh, taxes. Please look at your your net tax amount plus any other amounts. And also keep in mind that um if you live in the River Forest School District, our referendum for the Lake Station School District didn't affect your taxes in any way, shape, or form. So, just a quick recap, I have it all on a couple of different Facebook pages. I know I kind of create a wall of text sometimes with all that stuff. Um so, if anybody has a question about it, you can always feel free to send me
027a message directly on Facebook and, you know, I'll walk it, you know, walk through it with you and everything like that. So, um, but I do appreciate people, you know, that do ask me questions and send me messages. I'd rather you have all the correct information, uh, about everything and be able to talk about your concerns, um, rather than just be angry about it, not be able to talk to us about it. So, please, you know, feel free to, you know, contact me if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. M. Mr. Tenerial. Uh, Miss Miller, thank you for for um sharing that information with us. I hope a bunch of our students will take advantage of these programs. sound like some some some fun actually. So, thank you for sharing that with
028us. Um, the young lady, the young gentleman who represented us in the Did you do the math and the spell bowl or just the math bowl? You did, Bo. Well, thank you so much for representing us. You guys did a great job, sir. You too, Mr. Logan. Right. Yeah. Thank you for representing us. You guys did a great job. Coaches, thank you for taking the time and and uh I know it's a lot of work, extra work, so thank you so much for doing that. Really appreciate it. and our principles. Everything that Dr. Kirk Weber said, I am so um amazed by both of you. I think the things that you guys do, especially the way you collaborate all the time and uh I think it's important for our kids when they get to the
029next level that they had the same experiences in both elementaryaries. So the students are at the same level when they reach the junior high and high school. And uh I think what you two are doing are just amazing. So thank you for the great work you do. Shout out to our IT team. These microphones are awesome. Thank you. That's all I have. Perfect. Um, literally everything on my list. No, but uh it's it's repeat. Thank you everybody here and online. Um, Miss Miller, thanks again for coming and sharing that information. I'm glad we're going to share that on our website for you and uh for for our kiddos. Um, congrats to Miss Havens, her staff, and and uh the bold teams and the students. I love coming to these elementary schools and getting all this
030info and seeing what amazing stuff you guys are doing. It makes sitting up here worth every single meeting. I I absolutely love it. Um all staff, you guys are doing great. I know you mentioned um Liz, I just I I gotta I gotta echo your your shout out to her. I mean, she has just done so much for this community and these schools and from all the hard work she did with referendum and pushing info and just I mean just she deserves a huge shout out. So, good job. Uh again, to echo Mr. Tenerio, we said it a 100 times. I'll keep saying it. You guys coming together is is great. Like he said, for these kids to have the equal opportunity obviously until North American games when Bailey wins. I get it, right? I
031get I understand. Um and I'm a Bailey kid. I get it. Um no offense, just you know, that's the only difference. We we'll have the bell. Uh but you guys are doing great between you two getting together and making sure your staff's all on the same page. It's it's a lot and you guys are knocking it out of the park. So great job to that. Um Miss Flan again, thanks for joining us even though you are at the big school. So, it's nice to see you come here and support your your other admin. Um, that is all I have, Miss Bea. Thank you, Mr. Wright. Uh, first, congratulations to the math and science full students. That's always very exciting, and we appreciate you representing our schools and our district. So, thank you. With that, it
032goes along with thanking all of you for the referendum. Uh with the referendum, we've been able to continue such programs as the math and science bowl. Um but already just this school year since the referendum has passed, we've been able to uh um start our transportation full speed again. So our students have been in school for 5 days a week. We've also been able to bring back our afterchool tutoring program and that's for elementary and our secondary schools. With that, we also have a late bus where students then are able to go home from uh using the school bus. Uh we have the STEM program back at the elementary level thanks to the referendum. We were able to add the librarian back to one at each building when without the referendum we had to share.
033Um, we also have increased our extracurriculars, not only with the math and science bowls, but then also sponsors such as Girls on the Run is a program that we've been able to add additional uh staff sponsors because we've had the extra money with the referendum. Also for the fall, we're looking at adding staff and extra programs um for elementary as well as high school, especially with the CTE programs, which are the career and technical education programs. All of those are possible because of our community supporting our schools and we are thankful every day to have that support. um now more than ever with uh guidelines that are happening throughout our nation and our state make things more difficult for our school systems and with your support we continue to have outstanding programs and our children
034continue to be successful. So I'd like to thank our community. Thank you Mrs. Ba. Dr. Cryver. Yes. Thank you Mr. President. I just have a couple of announcements. One of the things that Lake Station Community Schools tries to do is partner with our community and we have been able to do that over the years very successfully and we appreciate our community partners. One of those community partners is the Lake County Health Department and they have set up vaccination clinics here in Lake Station at Edison Junior Senior High School. We had one recently last month. The next one we will have will be in September when we go through once again to offer those vaccinations and immunizations to our students and to our families. The other community partner that I'm very pleased to be a partner
035with is the Lake Station Lions Club. And we've partnered with them for a variety of things. But one of the things that they have offered to Lake Station Community Schools is the Lions Club has partnered with a local eye doctor here in our community that if a student regardless of age level, elementary or secondary level, that needs an eye exam or needs glasses, the Lions Club will help you to do that, to make connections with that eye doctor, and also to assist you as you may need to make sure that your child has the corrective eyeglasses that they may need or to just have a good eye vision care and treatment and having their eyes tested by the eye doctor. So, we are very pleased with the Lake Station Lions Club and appreciative of that
036partnership. It's that time of the year where we need to start thinking about school physicals and sports physicals and we are partnering with Northshore Health Clinic to provide those physicals for our students. So for students in fifth grade through 12th uh excuse me 11th grade that are interested in being athletes for next school year, they will be able to have their athletic physical and sport physicals done at Edison for our students that are in sixth grade through 12. And that date will be Tuesday, May the 6th. And then on Wednesday, May the 5th, Northshore will be coming to Bailey Elementary and Hamilton Elementary to give those sports physicals and school physicals to our fifth graders that are will be moving up to the junior senior high school next year. So, if they are interested in
037participating in the athletic programs at Edison Junior High School, they will have that opportunity. will get those sports physicals out of the way during their fifth grade year at their elementary schools and they'll be ready to go. And I guess the last announcement to some might be the most important, but we do not have school this coming Friday, the 18th of April, in honor of Good Friday. That means students, staff, you get to stay home, not e-learn, no homework, I hope, but to take that day off in honor of Good Friday, but school will resume on Monday, April the 21st. So, with that, that concludes my announcements. Fantastic. Anybody else? Thank you for coming. Where' you?