MSDLT Board of Education: Board Meeting 3.14.22

001i pledge allegiance to the right of the united states of america under god indivisible with liberty and justice for thank you on this beautiful beautiful monday evening and with that we have a beautiful day today as we have special recognition so at this time uh we'll go down front and get started good evening president mcgregor dr spencer school board tonight we're very pleased to honor several of our elementary teams for their academic success we're going to begin tonight with our vex robotics winners we'll be honoring our co-team work awards representing two different schools and our excellence award i'd like to ask our proud principal of crestview elementary natalie schneider could come up to introduce her team and coaches as they are one of the two teamwork award winners good evening so excited to be here

002to announce our winners from crestview for our vex robotics teamwork award first we have our coach happy birthday [Applause] seal perfect perfect all right let's do one this way and then we'll use the other camera one two three [Applause] congratulations that's bringing up our second teamwork award winners our proud principal of oakland elementary is jennifer sheep good evening i want to introduce my awesome robotic team little brandon we have our coach jennifer mosher we were fortunate enough to have a mentor from our robotics team at the high school noah mosher we work with our students as well and then we also [Applause] okay um okay [Applause] congratulations to oakland now to introduce us to our excellence award winners and vex robotics the proud principal of indian creek elementary mr kevin all right tonight we have

003with us our 2019 teacher of the year lego master educator and the coach of our vex robotics we have logan drook kemper and not with us tonight is josh whitaker let's hear it for indian creek [Applause] oh you okay stand up outstanding [Applause] um congratulations again to all of our vex robotics teams [Applause] tonight i'm also proud to bring to you our academic competition winners and introducing that team as our proud principal of the winning school mr jared pennington of amy beverland elementary [Applause] thank you dr huss brown first and foremost our wonderful coach mrs jenna chris chris followed by anthony meacham audrey mcelroy jeremiah jefferson isaiah jefferson jocelyn jenna maxey mary claire mcwilliams ian young and tyler working also on the team not present j.j brown laila ozienner and hunter branson congratulations to our

004stars congratulations [Applause] thank you for coming to be with us and i see that you've already gotten the memo um as exciting as the rest of the meeting is going to be um you are free to go home and make dinner and get that get that homework done eat a piece of pie for pi day thank you thank you they're used to getting the hardware so we are glad to be able to celebrate with our families our students teachers administrators and all those involved with seeing our kids not only are learning in the classroom or able to apply what they are learning as those are the skills that we will be requiring and i say we as in we as in companies so thank you for all the work that we have done at the

005elementary level thank you dr brown this time we have our blue ribbon update president members aboard dr smith again uh ellen moving along that's the main entrance uh third floor and working down and also uh hopefully in two weeks the cabinetry will start going in all three floors and phase two continues on the dance floor and a couple other classrooms in that area i also wanted to mention about lc uh we will be uh starting the clearing of the land there north of uh the current baseball diamonds so we're excited about uh the site improvements as they continue ln new edition uh brick is also started on that so that's uh another good sign and new addition inside going well with utilities and phase two continues is the performing arts in the art areas and

006the pool we finally got some walls that will be coming so we'll be able to finish up the exterior walls and start on the roof on the new pool and of course faulker valley and belser middle school continue on with the hvc uh hvac upgrades any questions for mr smith on our blue ribbon update thank you mr smith sale of the transportation center yes we did have a an auction on the old transportation facility and we did receive a bid and it was the uh average of the two appraisals that we finished uh with that uh facility stints construction company uh put in that bid for 2.265 [Music] million dollars and we would like to an action item recommend the board approve the sale of the old transportation facility i think mr smith for the

007public and for the board would you explain just a little bit more on the detail of how we have if we want to sell property what's our process the appraisal and then how did you go about doing the sale because that needs to be on the public record the first process was we did take the average of two appraisals of the property and that was the starting sale price uh with that uh working with our legal counsel we did a kind of an online uh slash uh bid that actually they had to submit the first time in a hard copy form and then they had three day we had three different days that they could respond after that if they wanted to increase the bid so in this case we did have one bid and

008that meeting our starting bid of 2.265 million thank you mr smith any other questions or comments i had a question sorry please um so on the sale of this since uh on sale of property does that get rolled back into the district the funds that's purchase okay the fun yes the funds do go back to the district in this case it is helping to offset some of the costs of the transportation facility and we had factored that in when we took bids thank you thank you any other questions pertaining to the sale of the former transportation center thank you mr smith thank you mr shrees request for public hearing for site improvements for lawrence central and lawrence north high school mr president dr smith members of the board as we move forward in our high

009school renovation process there's some outdoor site and facility improvements that we have to do and we needed to hold a hearing for that and to explain that better than i can i've got mr jeff quackenbush from barnes and thornburg here to do that for us thank you thank you thank you uh mr shreves uh mr president members of the board dr smith it's a pleasure to be with you this evening jeff quackenbush with barnes and thornburg so tonight what we will do is describe the process that you'll be undertaking over the next couple of three months for this outdoor site improvement project that's related to some of the work that you're doing in the interior part of the of the two high school buildings uh tonight we are going to ask for you during the

010action items to approve and authorize publication of the notice of what is known as the 1028 preliminary determination public hearings under indiana law you are required to have two of those uh we have those scheduled now for april 11th and april 25th at both of those hearings you would present the same type of information regarding the projects that are being done the cost of the projects the financing anticipated for those the repayment terms and then on the 25th after the conclusion of that public hearing and after you've received public comment if any then you would consider adoption of the resolution which is known as the 1028 preliminary determination reimbursement resolution we would then shortly after that published a notice on the 29th of april uh of the notice of preliminary determination and we would also

011mail that to the county officials that are required by state law that triggers a 30-day waiting period uh during that 30-day waiting period you cannot do any activity related to designing the project bidding the project anything of that sort so then at the april 25th meeting as well we are going to ask you to approve subject to that end of that 30-day waiting period authorizing publication of the notice of the bids for the site work we want to try and get that site work underway as soon as possible and that would give us the ability to then publish that notice at the end of the 30-day period around june 1st after june 1st you would then publish the notice for the construction bids to be received receive those over the course of approximately a month

012and then you would award the construction contracts for that work sometime either in your late june or one of your first july meet when you're july meetings at that point we would then during that same period of time be moving forward with all of the financing authorizations under the old law and then once we get through those around the end of july 1st of august is when we'd be looking at trying to sell the bonds for these projects at that point in time and lock in your interest rates um so that's the timeline in a nutshell tonight we are just asking you to authorize permission to that first advertising and all the resolutions that we do after this we will be asking you for permission to do subsequent advertising such as the preliminary determination notice

013such as the lease hearing notice and those sorts of things but this is a very similar process to what you've gone through on many of your other building projects both at the elementary level and at the high school level and then we will be probably coming back to you for some other projects in the future i will point out that the good news here is that based on the assessed value growth of the school corporation over the last several years that even though we have inflation on prices we are anticipating that these this project will come in at a tax neutral position so there will be no tax rate increase associated with it and that's due also in large part to your other bonds being paid off so that's sort of a little uh teaser

014for what to come at the april meetings so i don't want to give away too much so you'll you know come back and enjoy those as much as as you always do but these are tax neutral projects at this point so i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the process or regarding the information i've covered this evening and then i will be back with you on april 11th when we have the first public hearing and then also on on april 25th questions comments for mrs freeze or mr walkenbush sir i think you laid it out very clear and i think we know what we need to do so we yeah we have a little experience doing it so he did yes you did there was a time when i was like

015what's up 10 28 doctor well i think i know [Laughter] which is good news for the district thank you very much and if you do have any other questions i'll be back here on the 11th of april to address those at that time if not before thank you again thank you for being with us today curriculum advisory committee recommendations thank you mr president members of the board and dr smith each semester we bring together our curriculum advisory committee to review recommendations for additions to the curriculum for our high schools and as director of secondary education mr andy harsha facilitates that group and he brings to you this evening the recommendations from that committee good evening president mcgregor members of the board and dr smith uh as mr notre mentioned a little bit of background there

016each semester um our secondary teachers get together and they talk about uh course recommendations offerings that we would like to add to our uh our current list that group is made up of district administration building level administration school counselors and teacher representatives um from all of our schools on the next slide you can see we had great representation from both of our high schools principals counselors department chairs same from lawrence north high school and then we also include in this process our middle school principals mckenzie center for innovation and technology and some of us from central office to round out that group the state of indiana does provide high schools with a list of approved course descriptions and titles so obviously we want to make sure that anything we are bringing up is on that

017approved list in our efforts to continue to align all of our work to our pathways any electives that are brought forward are also we need to make sure that they are aligned with our pathway work and just a reminder that the courses that we would be uh recommending here this evening would be approved for the upcoming 22-23 school year pending your approval so the first three courses that i'm going to bring to you this evening are part of phase two just a little bit of a reminder our graduation pathway and next level program of study work was divided into three phases phase one was for the 21-22 school year earlier in the fall we approved the first part of phase two and the three courses that i'm going to bring to you this evening are

018really just round two of phase two and then we will get into phase three for the 23-24 school year so on the next slide uh the three nlps courses being recommended are personal finance digital marketing and hospitality management and that will round out phase two of the nlps coursework on the next slide uh we get into our core courses prime math is currently being piloted at both of our high schools and that is a course that is a mixture of algebra geometry algebra 2 and statistic skills and it is really intended for students who have achieved their math minimum credit for their diploma but are preparing themselves for college-level math work and that has been a great course addition at both of our high schools and both were eager to recommend that we continue to

019offer that moving forward english 12 is a study of themes in literature and so these two recommendations would fit into that one is rock and roll literature and the other humor in literature and then the final course is um an ap african-american studies pilot the college board selected 68 schools from across 31 different states and lawrence north high school was selected to hold a pilot of this course this school year so lawrence north teachers will be trained and the course will be offered at lawrence north high school but i do want to make sure everybody understands that that course will be open to students at both of our high schools and again for the pilot is just limited to that one pilot but our hope would be that we would be able to increase that

020offering down the road questions comments pertaining to our curriculum i guess i'm just curious how lawrence north was chosen did they apply for this was it how did they choose the 68 schools across the country uh yes so that lawrence north did put in for the course and they were selected by college board great mr noah mr harsher let's let's just kind of help educate our community a little bit you know there was a time when we talked about curriculum and it was just uh great now you start talking about curriculum trigger words from some communities sure uh so let's let's just help them to understand so when we bring curriculum recommendations that comes from who so those are sorry did you want me to respond so those recommendations come primarily from our teachers it

021starts at the school level the teachers then bring them to their department chair they are also brought in front of the principal and then once it's gone through that process it's brought to this committee and then again you saw on the previous slides there are a whole lot of perspectives that are brought uh through that process conversations are had um and any conversations or questions about any of those proposals are able to be discussed and then we bring them here for board approval in addition to that i would add there's two different types of recommendations that come the first set nlps next level pathways of study that's really required by the department of education as they're making the transition in cte and so while we're reviewing and bringing it to the board for approval it

022really is an expectation of the state other courses that we bring although as mr harsher said teachers may initiate the recommendation typically it's because there's a student interest or a student need remember when you approved als as an additional language a few years ago or asl as an additional language a few years ago that was because of demand from our students and from our families and so outside of those that are required by the state typically there's a community need that we're trying to meet with the recommendations in each case uh in each one of these courses can they fit into a pathway can each one of these courses fit into a particular pathway so the elective courses definitely into a pathway the other courses are core courses and count towards those graduation requirements for

023english for example the two courses being brought forward this evening count as english 12 credit thank you any other questions or comments yes i have a joy um could you please briefly expound on the core course uh the rock and roll literature and the humor in literature i'm interested to see what that the overall premise of of that is so the english 12 course is themes in literature so there are a variety of approved themes that follow through literature that can be approved uh for the english 12 credit and so really this is just two of those specified journeys through literature that were brought forward by our schools that they again to mr notre's point are interested in teaching but also the demand from our students those are two genres in literature that they would

024like to explore for their english 12 credit okay thank you all right thank you as a boy we are glad to see personal finance i know there are student interests and parent interests absolutely digital marketing uh hospitality management these are we are fortunate in this district to be able to offer a wide array of courses that benefit students when they leave our high schools and go into society i do think and on behalf of the board we want to continue to [Music] be able to offer such courses to our students as we want them to be able to be productive in whatever they choose to do i commend us on comme une ln on the ap african-american studies course the title can be misleading but that course has a lot to do with the history

025and the shape of the nation so i commend them on that any other questions or comments for mr harsher or mr notre thank you our 2022 jump start and summer school opportunities super assistant superintendents good evening again president mcgregor school board members and dr smith we bring a team to you tonight to give an overview of our jumpstart activities for the 2022 summer and this summer we will be hosting students rising kindergarten through sophomores and so students participate in their next grade level we'll be hosting on every school site from june 6 to june 30th with the exception of monday june 20th an observance of juneteenth holiday we will have instruction monday through thursday both academic and enrichment instruction and the elementary day is eight to two and the secondary day is nine to one

026and our goal is an 18 to one student teacher ratio in addition to instruction and enrichment other services will be offered to our students all free of charge no cost transportation food service after care service until 5 pm friday camp service we will also extend that camp care service into july and we also have orton gillingham small group tutoring in our elementaries through and through the school day and through camp care so as we're we're planning our instructional design for jumpstart 22 it's important to take a look back at jumpstart 21 and did we get results so we've partnered with the purdue university department of business management graduate program to help they're helping us analyze that data to answer the question did our students who went to jump start last summer perform at higher levels

027of student achievement this school year and so the group of graduate students is still in the process of finalizing their report but they did give us their preliminary answer their preliminary indication of that question and they're seeing a significant positive impact found for those students that participated in summer 21 and so that is really good data for us to to recognize that the instructional design that we had in 21 made a difference for our students coming into this school year and so as we move forward to the next slide we are looking at a very similar instructional design for this summer where again a focus on stem focused on humanities trying out some potential pilot curricula which summer's always a good time to do that but this year we are also including as dr haas

028brown mentioned orton gillingham small group tutoring for reading and instruction we're noticing in our data particularly our second graders that we need to do some extra support to make sure that they're caught up in reading as their their education has been more impacted by the pandemic than any other group of students that that we have so we've added that piece through a partnership with marion university this summer we also will have enrichment opportunities for our elementary that is a little less academic but more hands-on and engaging for our students at our secondary level again a focus on stem and humanities and then electives that will be aligned with our graduation pathways as we did last year we'll have pre and post assessments to measure growth for our students and we will have a focused program

029for our life skills students as well um just this past week dr smith approved for us to have an el newcomer jump start opportunity at our secondary schools for our students who are new to the country as always we will continue to offer our ltch virtual program as well for high school students we will be offering service to all of our early learners our preschool students we'll have two different options we'll have a multi-age preschool that'll be for our students who are three and four and then we will have year before kindergarten is what we call them now this would be the summer before kindergarten for them it will be all through june and july so june 6 to july 29th we want to really get more close to the opportunity for families to have

030year-round preschool and care options we know from feedback from our families that that's something that that they're needing so we're fortunate that this is going to provide that we will observe the holidays of juneteenth and 4th of july so we will have care for our littles at no cost to families for the entire summer monday through friday eight to five we will follow our licensing ratios so that's a ten to one teacher to student ratio for our multi-age preschool for our students who are four or five that goes up to twelve to one and we are pleased that we're going to be able to offer this at every one of our preschool sites so all of the elcs including forest glen and styles test this summer exceptional learners will also be involved in the jumpstart

031program we will provide resource and therapy support at all grade levels for students and with those needs we will also have our life skills programming like we did last summer and those will be housed at amy beverland elementary school in lawrence central high school and our whole goal is to help support and align the with the classroom instruction as well as support students transitioning to the new schools in addition to all of the jumpstart programs already described we wanted to let you know that we will again uh have a very successful ltch at the high school level which is virtual primarily asynchronous however there is a synchronous component that was added last year after some lessons learned through our virtual instruction the last couple years there are 33 different credit bearing courses offered at the

032high school level this is open enrollment and last majority large portion of the summer june 6 through july 15th this does have a cost of 25 dollars per current msdlt student or 50 for a non-student we've heard of all the offerings we're going to have and you're probably thinking how much is it going to cost and how are we going to pay for it especially at no cost to the parents well fortunately we have cares funding that we've set aside money for this for this summer we've budgeted a little over four million dollars of those cares three dollars and that's as you can see it's based on 50 student participation last year we were 33 so we're hoping to get to 50 to as mr notre mentioned the partnership with marion university for orton gillingham

033that will provide up to 450 000 of funding for the tutoring for those grades one through three and those funds include transportation all of our staff as well as the aftercare and the development of the curriculum so just so you know where we are in the timeline of all of this back in february we sent out a staff interest survey to staff to make sure that we would have enough staff interested in helping us out this summer to do this a very positive response rate of over 450 teachers and classified staff wanting to help us out this summer we followed up with a staff application back on march 4th and principals right now are busy piecing together their team to support all these jumpstart programs for this summer and student registration will open up next

034sunday on march 20th our team would be happy to answer any questions you may have i'm sure the board gonna have questions comments so i'm gonna call on them individually let's start with you ms norman any questions or comments um first of all thank you for this again i have two questions um last year i believe it was up through sixth grade elementary it was offered to all students and then 7th through 12th was on a recommendation basis is that going to be the same for this summer so we'll be open enrollment for the elementaries and then middle school will be open enrollment as well this summer oh and then just the high school program will be invitation okay thank you and then my second question or comment is um thank you also for expanding

035with the exceptional learners offering i just wanted to verify for the record that is also a new offering this summer correct or was it offered last summer no we did offer this oh we did okay oh okay okay thank you that'll be a huge impact thank you mr freezey thank you mr norman so with respect to the funding for this as you look towards 2023 will we have any funding for special programs in 2023 or what is that potentially looking like so we do have budgeted for the same type of jumpstart program for the summer of 2023 as well very good austin i do have questions um food service um if children are staying until five o'clock does that include dinner or will that be two meals a day what can our parents expect we

036always offer breakfast and lunch um in the past we have not offered dinner um throughout the summer but that's definitely something we could look at we do it right now for four of our sites that are the 21st century in the evening um orton gillingham is that is that largely for dyslexic readers or is that for readers in general um yes and both often times it is an intervention for students who may have indications of dyslexia but it's really grounded in the science of reading and really skills that all students need and as i mentioned we're noticing with our second grade cohort who have had really interrupted schooling for three years they really need this support great um preschool forest glen and skyles test will those preschools be open only to those who will be

037enrolled in preschool and therefore will be taught in spanish and english correct okay um l-tech i'm very sorry i don't understand this you know what i'm going to ask synchronous and asynchronous so just a reminder asynchronous means that the it's not live instruction necessarily students work through a canvas course uh communicating with their teacher back and forth but not necessarily a live component but after we did have the shutdown with coven and we learned how to do that a little bit better we added that piece last year where there was a little bit more direct support from students and their teachers uh from teachers to the students to make sure that they have that piece so direct and indirect learning right okay thank you i just didn't know what that meant and then my last

038question 458 teachers will that be enough for the 50 you're hoping participate at the secondary level we believe we have enough i can't speak to elementary but i know our principles are busy right now piecing that together with who they need whether they have enough or not and if they don't they'll be recruiting some more to help out and support but we're pretty confident with the number we have that we can support our enrollment well i guess one other last question will the rate of pay be at what it was last year okay yes it'll be 50 an hour for certified 25 an hour classified great thank you good question thank you miss mustin miss puckett yes actually my questions were asked from previous members um i have a concern concerning the budget future forward

039so mr preachy thank you for that and this month ms mustin uh addressed the concern for the um immersion program students so thank you i have no other questions thank you going through the slides hearing your presentation this is uh why we consider ourselves a district a destination this is really impressive just as much as we're excited about the selling of the transportation center mr smith this right here is very impressive to me a lot of times what we see is really not a cost it's just an investment and a lot of times we won't see the movement of the data of those whose improvement we won't understand the students are going to get across the stage because of this actual work here but strongly i strongly believe that this is the game changer when

040we started talking about performance at any level any gaps catch up acceleration this is it preschool is important to our families and to our students especially when they get beyond the third and fourth grade and fifth grade there's just something to be said about oh that must be for us probably in preschool so whatever we need to do mr shrees after 2023 this right here has got to be a discussion that the board of lawrence township will be having to make sure we can keep this in place this this is the district of destination with this kind of program thank you this is this is the one we present across the country this program mr chris almost had a heart attack over here i know and he's looking at me and say dr smith i

041hope you're still around what mr mcgregor saying is that we in our lobbying efforts right that we continue to talk to the legislators and the public we're really blessed from the federal dollars that are giving us this opportunity to stand out 50 of our student population have these extended opportunities and beyond the federal dollars we will continue we've always had these programs on a smaller scale but to expand to 50 50 is a is truly a blessing it's outstanding it is and miss mustang just so we we were smiling about feeding the kids in the summer because we we always do that but we do want to put on the record that mr roger smith and his team team will have a summer feeding program which is done throughout our community during the summer months

042we didn't put that in this presentation it'll come out to families later where we go out in the community we do summer feeding so that will definitely be a big part of what we do during the summer even if kids are not in school we still have that program so just want to put that on the record as one of our summer programs ms mustin be glad that you don't know the difference between asynchronous and synchronous yeah be glad that you don't know the difference though that's just a big deal it's a big deal any other questions or comments on jumpstart outstanding update a request for rfp of apparel company it's the trees mr president dr smith members of the board a few meetings ago we asked for permission to send out to receive proposals

043on our apparel for our athletic for our school and our current one expires this summer so we've received those results and i'm going to turn it over to dr nesbitt to present those results to you it's in time for bracket thank you mr shreves mr president members of the board dr smith uh you might recall some of these slides from uh when we got permission from you to advertise for rfp uh just to review again we're doing this to really save money and help out our athletic programs and schools uh by leveraging that lte brand and uh and getting that economy at scale for us our current status uh we're currently with team pride who bends adidas and you can see uh kind of the bottom line there we get 196 000 of promotional gear

044and that's how we outfit our coaches and administrators and uh can help out some of the kids that need it and then also uh buy one get one free uniforms and this year we received two proposals that's somewhat what we expected um those came from bsn sports who vins nike and team pride who vins adidas um adidas came in at um 125 000 uh worth of promotional product which is a decrease from what our current agreement is um no buy one get one free uniform this time around and then the 125 did have a caveat of minimum purchase requirements otherwise we'd have to pay the money back and then uh bsn and nike uh was uh increase uh 240 thousand dollars and again right now we're getting 196. so a 44 000 increase in promotional

045product and then there's some more the the fine print so to speak but some of those other deals buy one get one free on a to the team sports uh e-commerce store rebates um 35 off of nike apparel and whatnot um so we look at a approximate value of 340 000 um over the four-year agreement for the district with that uh the recommendation that we'll give to you in the action items is to approve the bsn sports nike agreement and i'd be happy to field any questions or comments you might have so one question i had in looking quickly over the draft contract or proposed contract that was included i didn't see the buy one uniform get one uniform free memorializing that maybe i missed that but i was wondering if you guys could i

046would never tell a board member they missed something uh i i that's why as well as dr nessa yeah particularly an attorney uh i'll review that again but uh i i feel pretty comfortable in saying that um those eight team sports listed there are listed in there for and the difference in this contract was that uh when our current contract it was a one-time buy one get one free uh but it did cover all sports this one it's the eight team sports uh listed there and it is as many times you'd like to do it so if you want to order uh you know if you want to do a you know oregon university thing and have five different sets of football uniforms well you could do it you could get buy one get one

047free um on all of those but i'll take a look at that yeah after i yeah yeah i i may have missed it it was just i saw all the others mrs blankenship can you pull up the contract that we had out there if you go to page two under additional benefits the last paragraph it states there that we get buy one get one free so that's where it's located very good thank you so i'm curious also you know this you know adidas had you know a strong offer the last time you know kind of a weak offer frankly in comparison this time and even against their previous commitment what do you make of that or do these companies target different districts that they're going to put more money into than others yeah it'd be

048speculation of course uh i know anecdotally i i can say that when we did the last one i know that the bsn really wanted to get us and and uh you know adidas beat him to the punch on it so i think they came out more aggressively uh i think with covid we we had some some issues um fulfilling um some of those contracts in our last agreement and so i think they backed off a little bit um and i most of those are attributed to covet and you know we found in you know whether it be in construction buildings or whatnot cove whether or not that's the the reason for the delay or the people not meeting obligations it's at least what they're going to tell you it is so so you know we

049may not never know that but yeah but i i do think that they they try to get a bigger foothold from time to time and and i think it's really how much adidas and nike give them that marketing dollars that's how that works they give them those marketing dollars to use in different regions and i assume that's a national or global thing that they're they're targeting areas yeah yeah thanks i i certainly do think it helps that we do so well in sports i i think that's why uh i i can tell you people call whenever we do all these deals and they did four years ago a lot of people were calling me and asking how did you guys do that and as well a lot of it's the investment we put into our

050young people and and the expectations we have for them to do well in sports because you get color photos in the front of the star and you know when you're in team state championships whatnot that that gets the attention of the net that's marketing and and so we we have a tremendous value to these companies and and that's what we're seeing through these rfps thanks given just the nature of the economy the pandemic were you surprised by the proposal from bsn no i i wasn't i know that uh their reps we had talked to and they they had called before we put the rfp out asking when when we were going out they had they had that date circle on their calendar they knew when we were coming up so i knew they were really

051coming after it aggressively man that's good news for our families it's great news teams and coaches yeah yep mr bush i guess we put away the adidas stuff and bring back out the nike stuff huh thank you you know the question of comments michael and grant that's after the board approves it in july one is that correct yes i want yeah okay so yeah it provided the board to prove this we we would begin meeting with those people and outlining things because there is a long long lead time on ordering things and i can tell you right now even if we you do approve this later probably passed football you may still see adidas gear on them this fall and that's that's something we've already discussed with the reps as we went through the process

052it's not unusual particularly here with with the supply chain issues that's a good comment thank you any other questions or comments i just had a um quick question as a former athlete on the buy one get one incentives on the uniforms does that traditionally so you pay for the away uniforms and then you get a like a home jersey or is it just buy fifty get fifty essentially yeah okay so it's yeah yeah that that's that's a good way to put it as anything oh okay or just cut the price in half however you wanna you know sure okay thank you i was just trying to wrap my head around it yeah that brings up a good question we've tried to when when we designed this we did it for four years on purpose because

053we like to cycle uniforms every four years uh so you don't you don't have a you don't go through high school and have a young person that has this uniform that was born a long time ago particularly football because the most expensive that that's a traditional cycles every four years you know so they come in as a freshman in the senior year so dr nasmith and mr chris our cfo let's just put on the record the board of education doesn't buy jerseys for teams is that correct that's correct okay by statute we're not allowed to buy those for the athletic teams so the athletic teams raise money through fundraisers or parents have to purchase so a contract like this giving 50 off of is a big deal for our families and for our school corporation

054so they're making a great investment in lawrence township and we'll and we will look good when we go out and you know we do that anyway we always look good there's a reason and a contract like this has a significant impact on how we look and how we're perceived when we go out on the athletic field are we allowed to put other patches on these jerseys rolls-royce mr mcgregor we could be doing that that's a whole nother rfp yeah there are rules on that between the national federation of high schools and actually there's certain size limitations and and whatnot so mr mcgregor if you know someone we can start their rfp process pretty quickly this is good news i think warm-ups could probably be okay though uniforms there's some rules but we could probably work

055something out if rolls-royce is interested this is good news for families thank you for your work in this uh in this endeavor permission to advertise for our lease proposals for the one-to-one devices yes mr president dr smith members of the board this is something we've done every year since we've been on the one-to-one devices we go out and we lease the portion of the device that's paid out of curricular resources because it takes four years to collect the full amount for that so we tie the lease payments to that process so that we don't have a big hit in any one year in our curricular resource fund for those questions or comments mrs freeze thank you sir our district student student equitable outcomes report this should be our second part right yes part two thank

056you mr president members of the board and dr smith as you may recall in the our last board meeting i brought to you the report from our district equity committee an overview of the action plan and so this evening we're going to dive specifically into the action plans for the first half a through e so if we can skip straight to the slide that begins with this one just a reminder of the recommendation and finding categories and again this is based on thousands of data points that dr mayfield and her team analyzed and these were our finding categories and each of the audit action plans fall within these categories the next slide is just a reminder of our process and this evening we're looking at sections a through e this first one is our strong

057principal leadership category and the recommendation is as we begin this work that we frame it within the context of our existing work in instruction and curriculum and professional development and so the two action plan areas that you see the first one is really about design of professional development and ensuring that professional development goes across all job classifications and that it includes three specific elements our core values our board policy as part of that a focus on positive student identity development and then for our teachers framing that within our instructional framework and this would apply to every job classification across the district the second one is about our professional learning community process and so just as a reminder our plc professional learning community process is built in to our day for our staff and teachers meet

058up to three times a week to plan curriculum discuss instruction review student achievement data and we need to rework our framework for plcs with the focus on equitable student outcomes and so that process is in place now and pending board approval would then be implemented for the next school year the next finding category this is everything in the b category is about human resources and so this one specifically is about our alternative licensure program and the need to get that word out uh to in a larger scale to our community and so each of the actions that you see there are a strategic focus around how to get the word out that we have alternate licensing alternate licensing program that our employees could take advantage of and so as you can see one as simple

059as translating all information that goes out about our debac program that's something that we've already been able to accomplish along with collecting data you'll see that as a theme throughout several of the recommendations a data system so that we can really evaluate who's in our programs who's completing the program are they hired where are they a few years out from the program and this last one hiring a talent acquisition specialist that was already in the in the pipeline and in the work even before the the committee met so it's nice when the committee actions match with plans that the district already had the next one again is that theme around collecting data and we know that one of the board goals for many years has been to hire employees that mirror our students so that

060our students see themselves in our employees we need a really robust data system so that we know who we're hiring where they're from do we retain them do we promote them all the pieces of human resources that go into the lifetime of an employee so that data system is absolutely integral to this recommendation the second one is really formalizing and providing space for affinity groups so just to give you a quick example of an affinity group that has been meeting informally would be our teachers who come to us to work in our bilingual immersion program both one way and two way they come from all parts of the world so bringing them together to be able to share and network and connect with each other and give us feedback on how to make their transition

061even more positive would be an example of an affinity group that would fit into this particular recommendation and then perhaps the most important one on the the screen is creating a pipeline for our students um we have some teachers that are currently with us who came through lawrence township and represent the type of of diversity and bilingualism that we're looking for but we really need to work to formalize that and follow students through their four years at the university get them back for their student teaching and then be able to hire them when the time is right as we move to the the c category the c finding is about our shifting demographics with the focus on language learners specifically spanish-speaking parents and so this particular recommendation is specific to our transportation department but really

062the action plans should be followed by every division and every school that we have in our district developing that culture where parent voice is valued and appreciated and acted upon i'm surveying our families from time to time to determine what their um satisfaction is with with our services monitoring the types of communication that we're having with families so that we can make adjustments that intentional focus on hiring more bilingual staff that should be universal across our district but again specific to transportation here working with our transportation and operations division to become visible at our school events and accessible to our families both from a service point of view as well as a hr recruitment point of view and then that last one and this is true across the entire district as well training to meet

063the needs of our spanish-speaking families and students this one very similar but a little bit of a twist in that it's specific to the communication practices for our spanish-speaking families and really meeting them where they are and asking them what's the best way to communicate on a larger scale with our spanish-speaking families and so integrating that type of of information seeking into our existing systems that we have working through at the building level that need that we constantly have to update contact information when we have parent square messages that go out that doesn't work for every family and we get reports back that particular families it's unable to be delivered what do we do with that information do we have a system to act on it do we have a system to figure out if

064they're not getting this message we've got to find another way the fourth one down is offer a hard to hire stipend for any bilingual employee and potentially investigate the possibility of multiple hard to hire stipends to attract employees with the type of skills that that we need the next one is to in the process for requesting translation services we've got to make an attempt sometimes we look at a family's last name and we make an assumption about whether they speak english or not and so working with all of us as a district to what is that practice to communicate with the family and if you find that you're not able to communicate effectively because they speak spanish and you speak english what's the process that you follow and really formalizing that instead of just assuming

065that if you have a last name that looks like it's latinx assuming that you can't communicate with them and the last one is really important in continuing to create and develop our partnerships la plaza is a really good example the indiana latino institute another good example the next slide is very specific to hr and around the the specific action plan to recruit and hire identity additional spanish-speaking personnel and so looking at it through that human resources point of view um several of these we um have begun the process of um if you'll go down to the the fourth one down again partnering with organizations like in the last one but then developing a pipeline beyond spain and puerto rico so that we have diverse spanish speakers in our school district just like our students are

066are diverse in where they're from across the world and then finally monitoring language needs of new enrollees um right now our language that's growing the fastest is spanish but that could change at any moment and we've seen an increase in haitian creole recently as an example and so we need to continually monitor that as we move into d the d category is discipline and there's several recommendations and action plans around discipline i'm continuing that data theme this this one is specific to discipline and that the recommendation and action that already has occurred is to create a discipline data dashboard for each of our schools so that they have their data at the ready and they're able to more quickly analyze their discipline data and put into action steps and that's the next two actions um

067what are they going to do with that data how are we going to intervene how are we going to change the trajectory how do we recognize when a student needs more support than what they're getting and so that's what those next two action plans really get to d2 is really thinking about how to transform our approach to discipline and moving more to a restorative type of perspective when it comes to discipline how do we restore relationships how do we keep students in class instead of excluding them from class and so there's several action plans to help us meet this particular recommendation the first one of course is training what are we talking about exactly when we're talking about restorative practices and what's that look like in terms of a common language across our district the

068next one is to involve our operations divisions with our public safety officers and those de-escalation strategies that are part of restoring relationships and ensuring that all of our divisions who touch students in the way of discipline have that same training the next one is about connecting with the community and making sure as we're doing this work that we're bringing our community alongside what does it mean to be restorative and what does that look like and what's the reason for it versus punitive discipline for students the next one i really like in that we have students who are highly capable of restoring relationships and serving as mediators and there's often things that happen particularly in our upper elementary middle schools high schools that our students can be the ones who facilitate that restoring of a relationship

069and oftentimes are more effective at conflict between peers in resolving it than some adults are sometimes and so i think this is a really good one that that will be innovative in terms of the approach and then the last one of course is back to the data analyzing and synthesizing our current data to determine where our focus area should be to initiate the the restorative work d3 is defining our terms making sure that we are clear from a language point of view the difference between a concerned about behavior and a an infraction a behavior infraction there are a lot of things that happen in schools that we're concerned about for our students but they don't necessarily have to be written up as a disciplinary infraction and so working through that list of definitions is in

070progress developing then pd sessions for our teachers around those practices and particularly as we begin to integrate restorative practice language into that that will be critical um monitoring our common language as we're reviewing the data is are we following through on that at the building level and then this this last one really is um about some of the work that we're doing with dr laurie decitels around applied educational neuroscience and understanding how the language that we use can promote positive outcomes for our students when when there's a crisis when there's trauma when there's an issue that's occurring d4 is again data but it's specific to our elementary alternative program the leap program and working to make sure that we're following clear guidelines on what acceptable what behaviors are acceptable to warrant a referral to leap

071and that we're consistent across the district with that and so the first one is tracking that data um in a in a very systematic process um i just mentioned dr laurie decitels that's the second recommendation um to help us really get a better perspective on what is insubordination and what's lack of respect or what is part of the neuroscience that we need to understand that a student might be manifesting implementing guidelines on the behaviors and referrals to leave just tightening that process and then the last one is is really appointing a planning committee to review our current programming and make recommendations for how we might improve that in in the future so a program review for the leap program and the last one that we're going to review this evening is access to resources so

072the one of the measures that we're using to determine our effectiveness in this work are our graduation rate numbers particularly for honors diplomas and technical honors diplomas the highest degree that we can award students is as they graduate from us we know that that work doesn't begin at the high school that work begins in our elcs and our elementaries and so these action plans are designed towards educating our community educating our elementary students and getting to them as early as possible so that they can see what could be what can be for them in lawrence township and so the first one is the guide that has been developed and disseminated to i mean integrated into curriculum within our middle schools at this point really mapping out what that pathway process looks like and having students

073as young as sixth grade beginning to think about what that pathway might look like for them the next one there's several actions that are involved with this but it's about our elementary schools and connecting our high school students with our elementary students so that our elementary students can see what that pathway might look like for them college and career-wise in lps wise we saw an example with robotics this evening of one of our high school students that was serving the elementary robotics team that type of of initiation on the part of our high schools and connection to our elementaries and then utilizing the nepers program and this is a program where we can can connect with industry professionals around the world and with technology bring them into our elementary classrooms so that students begin to

074expand their vision of what they could do with their lives the next one is looking at our high schools and how is it that we can offer in addition to our jump start programming some other academic and ccr focused camps for students we do a great job with athletics lots of kids involved in our basketball camps and our volleyball camps and and all of that type of athletic opportunity let's look at that from the academic point of view as well and the last one um is a big one this is implementing a comprehensive review of our elementary high ability program the last time we did a program review for elementary high ability was the 2014-15 school year so it's time to to take another look at that and that came from this particular subcommittee of

075the the district team so i'd be happy to answer any questions regarding a through e we'll cover f through j at the next board meeting thank you mr notre i'm sure all board members gonna have questions and comments so i'm gonna call on them individually i'll start with you ms puckett questions comments pertaining to our equity update yes i do actually uh mine is in reference to slide let's go back to b2 um i just wanted to ask or to clarify so we do not have a current system at all right now concerning collecting data for diverse higher retention that is my first question there's a second part to it mrs johnson would you like to address that question we're definitely in the need of developing a system what we have now is a report

076and it's very hand calculated okay then my second part to that is do we have a best practice model that we're following or looking at as far as developing one and if so what is that if we can share that i think that will come into some of our research as we're working with the technology division to be able to create a database so that you know at a glance we can just pull up that type of data to track our employees of who we are retaining um in all of those areas that we're currently able to do they're starting okay got you got you to my second question would be um it will be on slide d2 but a similar question concerning if we have a best practice model concerning the restorative justice portion

077mrs bush would you address that question please absolutely hello miss puckett we do have we do have uh we've been in talks with peace learning center to help us with our restorative practice training we have worked with peace learning center for a number of years and they are very experienced in uh in the field of restorative practice so we do have that starting this summer awesome okay well that's helpful peace learning center got that i have another question can i wait on that i'm still you guys know that i'm processing so it's still forming can you please come back to me you want me to come back okay mister thank you okay um one question slide 14 talent acquisition specialist will that be a central office position in hr yeah yes that will be a

078position within the human resource department um to be constantly 24 7 looking at applications employees scouting and we've probably been looking for that before and i've been we've posted a couple of times but we have really expanded our search just beyond our own apple track and we are looking at about five candidates at this time to bring and so yeah that's good um we have some options um i i'm looking at at the slides and they really mention spanish and english and um in keeping with equity for all um stipends for bilingual is that only in spanish or could we consider that for instance as you said uh haitian creole could we consider that if one of our schools has a larger population of different speakers um what are what are maybe the third and

079fourth most spoken languages in our schools so haitian creole and arabic and we have exactly one staff member that is bilingual in haitian creole and so your point is is well taken for this particular report this was based on the data report the data that was incoming to dr mayfield and so of course our spanish-speaking population was the the most well-represented in that data however we do have a need for haitian creole in arabic and so as that changes we as those numbers change we'll be looking to those families for debac positions etc um and parent communication in other languages we'll be doing that as well absolutely um i think that's it thank you thank you you need me to come back to you mr you i'm done okay mr freezey so i i think

080that's those are really great detailed areas of focus and i think you know if we execute well uh that'll really move us forward so speaking of execution could you talk just a little bit about how the organization is internally and you know is there like a project manager maybe that's you troy or or what's the accountability of making sure this stuff stays on track yeah so we've got uh two different processes that are occurring now we have the district level process which is for for your information this evening and hopefully in april for your approval and there will be accountability measures built into each one of those once once it's approved however we also have our building level processes so each of our building teams has an equity goal a student equitable outcome goal and

081that goal is specific it's measurable it's actionable some of them align to the the district report that we've just reviewed others are very specific to their building and their building data and improvements that they want to see in their building and so that accountability then is to that measurement whatever that measurement is that the building chose then in monthly updates that our team has as well as dr mayfield is consulting with each of our schools and then measuring whether they achieve their goal or not yeah i mean i i can see the benefit of having some decentralization so you're getting down you know absolutely to the local level if you want to define our individual schools is the local level but at the same time it seems like there needs to be and i guess

082it's probably your division it is this is equitable outcomes moving forward and staying on track yes ms norman this is all great the only question i have is regarding i think it's slide 20 on developing the peer mediator program i think that is a valuable tool i had two quick questions about that number one would this mostly be at the high school level or would it also be middle school that you would be developing peer mediators or am i jumping ahead but well maybe a little bit but i'll just let you know how peer mediation is set up it can be elementary students so it's really about turning that process over to students and mrs bush we're not quite in the detail phase of that yet but it could be as young as elementary okay

083great and my second question was that is it sounds like do we already have some peer mediation programs that already exist that will then be expanded upon you know several years ago probably about five or six years ago we had a small amount of training in peer mediation that actually saw some success at both middle schools um and that is something that we intend as we you know go back down this road we we intend to approach that again um and start that again it was also through peace learning center so we're just bringing it back thank you thank you mr norman miss bucket actually i think i do not have any more questions the only comment that i would say is um thank you language and terms are big for me and so um

084i'm excited i'm happy that we see the importance of linguistic capital as it relates to equity and student achievement going through the pages seeing terms as monitor common language defining terms positive proactive language um really good lean ins that made me smile but we are being extremely cognizant of that not that i didn't think that we wouldn't but i thank you for that that's it thank you boys so troy along the lines of dick was going at so this is a lot of work this is a whole lot of work uh so we'll be approving both the recommendations and the measurement system so you'll be approving the document that you have in front of you and then in future updates we would bring you as we flush out exactly what these action plans look like

085what's the most appropriate measurement to put to each action do we know which of the cap so it's 10 categories i think right 10 i think right of the categories though is there is there a prioritization of this one here is the lever that get us the biggest bang for or we and i i know in any action plan you don't move linear i mean you just address issues as either resources come available or the need comes available but does just seem like there's a lot to manage for the activities that we already have started right there's some activities on here that's already started yes will it be like somewhere separate that we like we don't have to prove this we're already doing this work so i'll give you an example of the the discipline

086data even prior to the equity audit we knew that was an issue and we knew that we needed to begin to figure out a system that we can use to have dashboards for discipline so we had begun that process simultaneous to dr mayfield's data study for for our audit and it just so happened that was one of the recommendations and we already were beginning to initiate that work so some things have begun um simultaneous to the equity audit being completed so so i just want to make sure our community understand as that we have this these recommendations but there's work that's already been has been done being done in lawrence that is not waiting for our approval in april absolutely that is that is taking place now so i just want to make sure they

087understand that because there's a lot in here and i noticed some things in here that oh yeah we we i think we talked about that last year so absolutely so and as we i guess get updated we will have some idea like this action has been completed here are the results of those of that action yes and there's some actions that are finite like that so developing a technology-based data system for hr that's checked been developed at the time now the results of that will come out in lots of different ways and so being able to analyze what our hr data looks like and and change practices or improve practices then is the next step and so i think one of the um contexts that i'd like to give for this is this work will

088never be done you know this is our ongoing work as a district that's committed to equitable student outcomes so we may complete a task but then it's the next step beyond that what's the next step and so one of the and i don't want to get ahead of myself but one of the recommendations in the next one that we'll review at the next meeting is an ongoing series of equity audits how is this not just a one-time thing how is it that we implement this plan for a period of time and then we analyze ourselves again to determine okay we've been successful here now we need to continue to work here so this really is about continuous improvement and so we will obviously be able to give reports when items are completed however there will

089be second steps and third steps and four steps that we need to tag and to be clear so your department your division oversee the district plan and all the school plans yes okay and we have all the resources in place to take care of this and all the other issues and other things we need to address around student success so the the first i didn't see anything in here in recommendation of adding staff i was no um the the first um area the first finding category was strong leadership and so in the recommendation within that was don't make this something separate equity can't be over here equitable student outcomes can't be over here that it's got to be integrated into the work that we're already doing to me that is the powerful piece that allows

090us to think about this in our daily work and not have it be one person's job to do or you know one division's job to do my division is coordinating this but you've heard mrs johnson speak tonight you've heard mrs bush speak tonight this really is about our entire organization so mr mcgregor on board you have an organizational chart that starts with you at the top and goes through me and through the people that are here on the cabinet the building level administrators all the way down through our teachers and building level every single person on the organizational chart is a part of this equity work it's not one individual it's not one division it is everyone and as mr notre pointed out you heard certain people come in or chime in because that's their

091lane and my staff know that we're very big on that and i mentioned that to the board that we've got individual experts in areas who support that is the only way we can do a report a comprehensive report like this this touches our entire district now one this is not the first time we've done this we've done do i need to remind you strategic planning this is very similar to that but this is very specific to equitable student outcomes so mr mcgregor as you know we haven't announced to the public but a strategic plan is due up for the district because our previous plan is a five-year plan that is done we've retired and we'll start working on that plan but this is very specific to equity okay thank you sir any other questions or

092comments thank you mr notre and the entire team thank you for your update on this financial update yes mr president dr smith members of the board as you look at the general fund you see green check marks on everything except for the top line and that has to do with our estimated medicare funding that's withheld from our for the federal portion of our basic grant and that's just a estimate as we go through the year but as you can see all the other lines are green so we're moving in the right direction there and transportation we're slightly under where we'd anticipated but that's primarily due to the added cost we had in january and february getting ready for the inspection now moving forward i'm not quite sure how the fuel is going to impact this

093next fall we'll have to see where it goes we've got our rate locked in for the rest of this semester so at least our fuel costs for this semester are known but next fall we don't know where that's going to be yet so that could impact as we approach the fall anything else mysteries questions or comments for mrs trees thank you sir thank you for being on top of it the best you can thank you it will be board committee chair reports we'll start with policy so policy as you all know the general assembly finished their work uh last week so there certainly are bills that pass but uh thankfully and thanks to the good work i think of our lobbying team and others around the state uh fewer pieces of legislation were passed than

094might have been so that is good news for all of us but also particularly good news for the policy committee too we will have less work to do fortunately and we will still we will still have adjustments to make the policy but that'll that'll be a few months down the road i think probably before we have anything for them for the board thank you sir lawrence parks and recreation just uh two updates on the spring fling the annual community egg hunt is april 16th from 10 to 12 at community park this is put on by the ymca and the city of lawrence we encourage our families to come out and then also the youth sports leagues oio fc pride soccer baseball softball sign ups are still going on for the spring you can see some

095of the signs out here at some of the schools and on our social media thank you foundation had an extremely successful gala we had a ton of fun and i would like to introduce to any of you who have not met her our fearless leader jen gibbs who stood up after five weeks on the job and led a fabulous gala and perhaps jen you could give us an update on the foundation hello everyone come to the microphone she's new folks hello everyone we are excited about the results of the gala thank you all for your attendance we are looking to reach our goals things like every auction item was bid on and we hit that goal we are almost at fund the needs and we look that we may exceed that and we loved having

096the students there and their presentation of fundraising we thought they were most excellent um so we are off to a great start with that huge event and now we're looking towards alumni and we're looking towards the golf outing and so it's my honor to be here thank you thank you anything else no i'll save it for the for the good of the board okay thank you for your committee updates board on to our action items first action approval of sale or of the former transportation center mr president members of board dr smith i recommend the board approve the sale of the former transportation center as submitted so moved second move ms norman's second by mr freezey because we have miss puckett in the virtual space i will call on us individually are there any questions

097before we vote ms norman yes freezie yes yes miss puckett there she is thumbs up okay can you guys hear me yes she said thumbs up yes i vote yes motion motion is approved thank you approval request for a public hearing for site improvements for lc and ln high schools mr president dr smith members of the board as mr quakenbush so eloquently illustrate presented earlier this evening the request to hold the public hearing on our 1028 at our next board meeting for the upcoming projects i would ask for your permission to advertise that for that so we can hold that hearing so moved second most of the movements mustang second by miss norman and just let me clarify for the record miss puckett did vote yes i could see her thumbs up but she did

098vote yes any questions thank you any questions or comments before we vote is norman yes mr fridgey yes mrs mustin yes miss puckett yes and i vote yes motion carries thank you approval of permission to advertise for lease proposals for the one-to-one devices i would recommend the board allow permission to advertise for lease proposals for one-to-one devices as previously presented so moved second second motion by mr freezy second by ms mustin question of comments miss norman yes mr fridge yes ms mustin yes miss puckett yes miss bucket yes i'm sorry my audio it's fine but yes i heard you i just couldn't i'm telling you wendy you're going to be glad you don't know secrets 86 i'll vote yes motion motion carries thank you approval of curricular advisory committee recommendations mr president members of the

099board and dr smith mr harsha presented the recommendations from our curriculum advisory committee earlier this evening and we recommend that you approve those as submitted so moved second second question by ms norman second by mr friji question comments before we vote miss puckett i'm gonna go to you first miss puckett yes thank you mr monster yes mr freezey yes ms norman yes i'm a yes motion carries thank you approval of the apparel company i would recommend that the board approve bsn sports as the apparel company for the msd of lawrence township as submitted so moved second motion by ms mustang second by miss norman questions or comments before we vote miss puckett yes ms mustin yes mr fridgey yes norman yes and i'm a yes motion carriage thank you mr president i move we treat

100agenda items 4.7 through 4.12 as a consent agenda for the board's consideration second that been moved by mr freezey and second by ms mustin to consider items 4.7 through 4.12 as consent agenda items questions or comments before we vote miss puckett yes ms mustin yes mr friji yes miss norman yes i'm a yes motion carries thank you i move approval of the consent agenda second i'm i'm sorry doctor smith over here talking to me who made the most of it no i moved approval of the consent agenda i seconded that okay um move by mr motion move by mr freeze to approve the consent agenda and second by miss mustang question comments before we go miss puckett yes ms mustang yes yes mr friji yes is norman yes i'm a yes motion carriage thank you

101with that approval miss johnson this evening the school board of the metropolitan school district of florence township unanimously approved the appointment of mr victor bush from the position of interim to permanent principal at belzer middle school mr bush has served as both an elementary and high school administrator in the district he also has previous administrative and district level experience outside of lawrence township he assumed this role in january of 2022 after most recently serving as an assistant principal at lawrence north high school his teaching experience was in social studies according to superintendent dr smith mr bush has done an outstanding job leading belser middle school and his broad array of experiences and strong leadership make him a perfect fit for the bowser community an indianapolis native in 1989 lawrence north high school graduate mr bush

102attended indiana institute of technology in fort wayne where he earned his bachelor's degree in finance he owe he holds a master's degree in education from indiana university his second master masters is in from butler university where he completed the epp sp program he's a specialist in education earning his distinction from indiana westland university regarding his new position bush shares that he would like to thank the board of education and dr smith for this opportunity and for their continued support serving as the principal of belzer middle school is a true blessing he has as a belzer parent he's always recognized the qualities of students and staff that make belzer a special place now as the principal he gets to serve a dynamic staff a caring community and awesome kids mr bush maintains strong personal ties to

103lawrence township his wife sean bush serves as the director of student services and their three children attend school in the district thank you [Applause] thank you mr mcgregor members of the school board and dr smith for this opportunity dr smith any mission that you've ever sent me on always [Applause] excuse me i've always uh given my best effort and i'll continue to do so my um i like to thank my wife and my little brother that's really helping me out a great deal a reflection on friday i met with every member of the cabinet and i see why lawrence township is a district of destination because i knew everybody that entered the room but didn't realize how great they were until i got to see them on the front end and i can truly appreciate

104everyone and the support they've always given me since i walked through the door here in lawrence township i'm uh i'm a little emotional at night because my um my grandmother just passed um yesterday and i know she's looking down on me today and saying that's my boy that's my grandson and she's taking credit for me standing in here because let her tell that she raised me and my mother didn't have anything to do with it so that's not true but that's just my grandmother and i love her but again i'm sorry for taking so much time but thank you for the opportunity and i look forward to making great things happen at belgium middle school and throughout the msdlt thank you mr bush the tradition is you have to come down and shake all the

105board members hands okay since we're at the desk he'll come down and little birdie told me that he also was a member of the 19 dr nesbitt the state champ lawrence north wildcat team is that true that is true congratulations congratulations all right so we'll give a plug to the wildcats because he is wildcat not anymore i'll just be confused just to be clear on 56th street uh mr franklin you still bush number one and this is bush number two on 56th street oh [Laughter] we are extremely proud and honored for you to serve our schools and all the work you've done up to this point and we do look forward to success as bells of middle s belles of middle school under your leadership we truly thank you and we will keep your family

106in our prayers as you are celebrate your true matriarchy board comment miss puckett i'm gonna start with you it's kind of like espn cnn you ask the question i can do they even hear them talking then they talk to them is he frozen they let him know i'm coming back miss norman first of all happy pi day um the kids had it um for all the math people out there um i took a pause at 1 um this afternoon i think i got it right yes to acknowledge the day but on a serious note um i just have some thanks to give out i want to thank the foundation and the gala and all the donors because as you saw tonight the vex robotics programs are made possible through the donations and the work of

107the foundation the field trips that the students take and there's just so many more things so you're really a blessing we we thank everyone that's been involved and then my last point i wanted to thank our school of exceptional learners because march is developmental disabilities awareness month and all of our resource teachers our therapists everyone you provide such a valuable support to our students and their families so thank you thank you miss norman thank you for bringing that to our attention it's frigid nothing further from me really [Music] talk about the ncaa tournament draws if you want got a lot of indiana teams that we can be pulling for i'm not particularly optimistic about any of their long-term chances though all right miss mustard well i disagree with you a little bit about the college

108basketball scene scene i have some numbers for you number 11 11 4 and 4 university university of iowa i have in-laws that live in iowa city that called us ecstatic after a concert i played yesterday they have been following our dear alum for a couple of seasons now so go tony he finally got that win that he deserved downtown in indianapolis and uh we were all very proud to see that i'm sorry i brought this up i'm really happy for tony perkins and eventually but i can't say that i was very happy with the anything else thank you miss mustard miss puckett has thank you [Music] cabinet community it's an honor to just be able to serve this time uh with all the work that's being done in the district the work behind the scenes

109that people just don't know about here we are getting ready to sell off a property and dedicate a brand new property uh nike's back on board but let me just talk on saturday i had the opportunity of uh volunteering for the show choir classic choir classic at lawrence central high school and to be quiet and i was really concerned and was nervous mr bush how are you going to put people into lawrence central high school around the construction and without the signs and just just but they put off an amazing show everybody was coming in they can't wait to come back to lawrence central it was impressed when they came up on the parking lot they wasn't impressed with us trying to get them parked but they was impressed with what everything was taking place

110they couldn't believe the work that was being done in that school uh and they couldn't believe how everybody just kind of let's really just went over and beyond to accommodate everybody in that in that building so wonderful turnout hands off to hatch off to lawrence central for pulling pulling that off i'm sure uh we probably need to contact some contractors because there's a lot of people in that building hitting a lot of walls doing a lot of things in that building in the new india area so but job well done and then of course uh to get the report of our students down at the vex robotics state championships and to have our teams go off to a thousand world championships to hear everything's taking place in our percussion group in the performing arts to

111know that we got a long downtown plan in the ncaa the wrestling teams it's just amazing what this district is doing to support our families and that doesn't go unnoticed by the board so we say thank you for all the work mr thank you we look forward to working with the foundation thank you for all that you're doing for our families it's just truly an honor to serve and it's amazing the work that we do that you all do that we get to sit back and see you do so thank you for all the work dude i do want to say one more thing and i'm sorry to be so focused on basketball not very centric to our business march march march in indiana berated by my spouse when i get home in case she's

112monitoring this thing i would call your attention to the third seeded iu women's basketball team and i will be pulling for them uh in the tournament too all right all right thank you mr president board thank you for your vote a few years ago that allowed for us roger smith to build new auditoriums at each high school which mr bush allows for us to be able to offer an invitational at that level so what you saw on saturday showcases the excellence that we're trying to build in lawrence township schools and the board you had a lot to do with that you approved that project a few years ago in order for us to do that let me just give a quick thank you jim we know how to throw a party in lawrence township called

113our gala we have kept the tradition up it was a beautiful evening and we're going to continue that so thank you to you and barb alston i want to put that on the record because i know barb was behind the scenes working with you to make sure that that event was pulled off live so we really appreciate that and then lastly i just think we need to put on the record thank you michael shreeves who sits on the greater lawrence chamber of commerce we know we hosted the state of the city's address two weeks ago prior to this board meeting we just want to thank the chamber and the city of lawrence and the mayor we had probably 400 people that were here for that event and lawrence township was on the map supporting these

114two great organizations and showcasing our lecc so that's all i have tonight mr president thank you thank you aboard our next meeting keeping just reminded this will be our only meeting for the month of march our next meeting will be april the 11th we'll begin at 5 30 pm again our next meeting will be in the month of april on the 11th and we begin at 5 30 p.m if there's no other comments or actions i will take a motion to adjourn second mood and second by consent we are adjourned thank you for being with us tonight you have a safe wonderful evening