001All right. So, welcome on behalf of the school board. We thank you for being here in person or virtually. I'm Heather Stags, president of the school board. To my left is Luke Jackson, vice president. Dan Conway, secretary, Jackie Deckard, member, and Matt Henkins, member. To my right is Superintendent Eric Bolan and Assistant Superintendent Susie Lips. You will all stand and we will give the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. Okay. All right. Do we have any agenda? Okay. So, um, a visitor that wishes to speak regarding an agenda item may do so according to policy 167.3. The visitor will be required to state his or her
002full name and address and will be given a threeminute aotment of time. Feedback or answers to questions will be be provided before the next board meeting and/or during the old business section of the next board meeting. It shall not be permissible to orally present or discuss complaints against individual employees. Such charges or complaints shall be presented to all board members in writing and shall be signed by the person making the charge or complaint. We appreciate everyone's cooperation and look forward to working together for the betterment of the district. Okay. Hi, I'm Jen Knuckles Stafford and I'm to here to speak on um items C1 and C5 of the consent agenda, the regular session minutes and the personnel report. Um neither of those items are available to the public prior to this meeting. Um if you
003go to the board docs website, everything else is there except for those two items. Um I don't know if the board is aware of that. Um I'm not able to come to every meeting, but I make a I make sure that I read through all the items that are online and I make sure to watch the live stream either as it's going on or afterwards to keep up on what's going on. Um, and I noticed four or five, six months ago that the personnel reports were no longer being included in the materials that came out prior to the meeting. And when I noticed that, I contacted the central office and I was told that those that report is no longer included in the prior uh information and will appear online after it's voted on. Okay.
004Um I've noticed the last two months the meeting minutes haven't been there. Um and I don't know if the board's aware of that. You know, you're it's hard to comment on things you can't see. So, um, and as somebody who makes an effort to read through all these things, I for one would really appreciate having that material out there so it can be reviewed, you know, and it could be something as innocent as a typo that somebody's going to miss. Um, but it could be something more. And once you vote on the minutes, then they're they're set. They can't be changed. So, um, on behalf of the, um, legal nerds like me who like to read through meeting minutes and things, um, I would ask the board to reconsider that position and make those meeting
005minutes and make those personnel reports available prior to this meeting. Thank you. Okay. And moving on, now we have our consent agenda. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion, Heather, to approve the consent agenda. Okay. Do I have a second? I will second. And any discussion? All in favor signify by stating I I opposed. Motion carries. Student field trips and professional travel. Okay, get my glasses on now. For student field trips and professional travel, there are none at this point. So, none be approved for you. We added the golf, did we not? Nope, it's not on there. up here. Okay, let me look at your Okay, we do have one. Okay, uh we did have a successful golf outing at the sectionals. Our team came in second place, the boys, and they are
006going to be going to Lafayette to participate in the regionals. Uh they're going to go up the day before, they're going to have a practice round, and then they're going to stay up in Lafayette that evening and then uh participate in the regionals the next day. So, I would recommend approval of this very successful team. Yes, that that event happened Tuesday. So, I think that's why it was added. Um, they went up today and then we'll be participating tomorrow. So, do I have a motion for that? I'll make a motion. Okay, I'll second. A second. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor signify by stating I. I opposed. Motion carries. Thank you for clarifying the dates. I got wrong, too. That's okay. Wow. That's okay. Well, I and I would like to a special congratulations to
007Liam Ralph for that. He is my nephew and scored a 76. So, we're super proud of him and the team um for advancing. Next is a curriculum report. U my name is Susie Lips. I'm the assistant superintendent. Martinsville schools open enrollment for 2025 25 2026 school year is live. Parents in our district and from other districts can enroll their children of any grade level in Martinsville schools for the next school year. Families can enroll by clicking on the enrollment icon on the district website. Martinsville's elementary schools have prek available slots for next year for those with students that are four years of age. Free tuition and reduced rate scholarships are available to all of our preschool program attendees. Parents can call Central Education Center for enrollment information. Martinsville schools offer something for everyone. Free and
008reduced rate prek programming, alternative education programming, customized scheduling, virtual instruction, seven elementary schools to choose from for the next couple of years. Cuttingedge technology for classes and students. Project Lead the Way, STEM, performing fine arts, in-house special education services, dual college credit and AP courses, invested staff members, outstanding competitive educational and athletic venues, and Martinsville is the home of academic and athletic state championships. Staff shoutouts for this summer. Thank you to the food service staff, technology team, maintenance staff, transportation department, coaches, teachers, and office staff for continuing to provide services to our students, recruitment teams, athletes in our community. Also, thank you to teachers and staff for participating in training and planning sessions in preparation for the 2025 school year. Thank you. Okay, the next uh items are first read only for policies. That's items
009under E report 2 through 10 and it's first read only. So if you have some comments or want to make some suggestions, recommendations as you look at those, we can address that. Um I would have a question. Policy 8510, the wellness policy. I know Kurt Bodell is working on it. Was he involved in updating this policy with along along with Jordan um Gallia? Perfect. The Morton County Health. Thank you. Kurt has number of hats that he wears and does a fantastic job. I think it's a great time also to state that we are feeding around 4,000 and not every school district is doing this. Correct. So it is unbelievable what they're doing it is unbelievable. So, we're grateful for him and the staff that's doing that because that is obviously a need and uh I'm
010glad families are and children are able to partake take that. The question I had was on 5430 the grading report. Is there a reason for that change? I've been asked that a couple times and is there a reason that I guess all I saw was the changes on here with the Apex Indiana online and other schools around or not on that similar format. Is there a reason we would change the format we're on? We can check with Niola to find out what what the attorneys because I looked around for other schools to see if there was anything else around and everybody else is still on the old format versus the S plus SS S minus. I mean the confusion of that especially when you're offering different services to different organizations. I know Monroia is apparently
011is not on this I'm assuming there's some other ones but it just seems unique and are you asking about the grade scale itself Dan? Just why why did we want to make the change on that piece of it? I don't know if there was anything more public on that or not. I was asked a couple times and I said I will just ask the question. Yeah, we'll get you some more information. And it's K through four, right? You know, and but even the high school, there's changes on that, right? Uh I think there are a couple uh the high school's changing the apex is going away. They're going with a different version. So that one of the changes that you're seeing there. Well, and the state dictates a lot of the things that we do
012as well is how they come over. The all ed is changing drastically. number one funding and number two parameters along with the pathways the guidelines and the guidance coming from them on that is is a little bit of the building the plane while it's in the air because a lot of things are supposed to roll out July 1st and the caveat that we've received is we'll be getting that information from the I feel for them because there a lot of changes in this last session and a lot of things have to come online so be a lot of movement here coming up. We'll play some catchup for some of it, but I will look into that for you. Any other questions, comments, or something? Okay. Okay. Old business. Old business. Um, we do not have
013any old business for tonight. Jackie wanted me to be quick tonight. Pacers aren't even playing last night. All right. Well, we'll move on to the action items. So, action item number one. Action item number one is the student handbook for the high school. I recommend approval. All right. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the Martinsville High School student handbook. Do I have a second? I'll second. Okay. And any discussion? Yeah. I've got a question. I was curious on the cell phones why we can't have them like the middle school put in the lockers during the day or is a lot of teachers using that or is that a problem? I know some of them use the feedback in classes. There's different reasons and many of the schools are using ours.
014If you remember, we were the ones that were making headlines USA Today and all those whenever we did the cell phone policy a couple years ago and then the state adopted basically our format. Uh which is a good testament to what we were trying to accomplish. Uh but the high school is it's a different animal at the high school than it is at the middle school. And that's what the high school administration uh was comfortable with. That's what the teachers were comfortable with. They've got their uh little things hanging up their cubbies, their different things that they're utilizing and uh we're going with their recommendation there. Okay. I was just curious because another question I had, how are the locker situations? Are the students using the lockers at the high school or that will be
015something they'll determine once they find out how many of those that they haven't used for since 2019 maybe. uh how many of them are usable because they're we've ordered a number of new locks to be changed out. Those are inset locks. They're not the loose ones, but we have ordered some loose ones as well to you know those things have fiveear cycles. So you go in, you have to manually change the combinations of each one of those lockers, right? And after that many years they didn't use them, some of those can't be fixed. So, we're replacing them. So, they'll determine that once they find out how many are available. They would like to use the lockers this upcoming year. Okay. That is their goal. Okay. So, we're doing all we can to move that. We
016have a short summer, but we're trying to get that taken care of for them. Okay. That's the only questions I have. Are the lockers big enough? Well, I can tell you this. I I don't It's a lot different than it was years ago. Back whenever I was there, we didn't even have book bags. right now. Kids come to school like armored turtles, you know, carrying the book bags and stuff and they have to try to put them in and that's one of the reasons they went away from them uh back around two I think it was 2018 or 19 uh they went away from it. Um but it is what it's a very expensive proposition to take out all those lockers and put in the bigger locker things. We're talking about a half a million
017dollars or so. They don't have as many textbooks now. No, with the Chromebooks and and the electronic textbooks, that did loose lessen the load on our armored turtles uh a little bit, but I don't think they're Man, you can't hardly put a big puff winter coat in the thing, right? Not without trying to to rip it, but they would like to do it because there is a safety component, too. And the safety programs recommend having lockers and not having the book bags. And having dealt with a gun and a book bag back in 2004, I know exactly what they're talking about. All right, I have a motion and a second. So, all in favor signify by stating I opposed. Motion carries. Okay. The next one is item number two under action items, substitute handbook. I
018recommend approval. Okay. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve the substitute handbook for the 2025 2026 school year. I'll second. Thank you. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor signify by stating I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. The next one is project lead the way engineering grant in the amount of $25,000. Uh obviously it uh supports our continuing education or efforts in engineering uh in the district and uh that's it's paying paying all the big dividends as we move forward. So I recommend approval of this grant. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion, Heather, to approve the project lead the way engineering grant. I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor signify by stating I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Okay. Items four through seven are donations. I'll read them all and
019then vote on them as a block. Donation from McCullen uh insurance to MHS staff. $500. Donation from the Martinsville Newton Lions to the MHS Decathlon in the amount of $500. donation from Central Indiana Police Foundation to the MSD of Bartensville uh Police Department in the amount of $2550 and a donation from Sai IOTA Z uh to the MSD's special services in the amount of $4,000. I think that's a generous generous donations from each of these groups and I recommend approval of all the donations. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion, Heather, to approve all the grants that's been placed before us or donations has been placed before us. I'll second it. Any discussion? All in favor signify by stating I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Okay. Public comment. Public comment. Okay. Okay. A
020visitor that wishes to speak regarding any district topic may do so according to policy 167.3. The visitor will be required to state his or her full name and address and will be given a three minute aotment of time. Feedback or answers to questions will be provided before the next board meeting and/or during the old business section of the next board meeting. It shall not be permissible to orally present or discuss complaints against individual employees. Such charges or complaints shall be presented to all board members in writing and shall be signed by the person making the charge or complaint. We appreciate everyone's cooperation and look forward to working together for the betterment of our district. Okay, Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell is very scary. Bill is better. 3411 East San Road, Morrisville, Indiana. I have a I
021worked with the school board to get the teachers to get more money from the community for the school board from 4.5 to 8.4. for tax increase. And now if I understand the teacher is not going to get a very good raise. So why can't why can't you buy budget in for the teachers to get a raise without being tied to the administration? Bloomington just done it. They give us their teachers $6,000 on the side the other day. So why can't we why can't we do the same thing for our teachers? Because we got administrators making $120,000. We got teachers making 60,000 and they're $10,000 below Morrisville. Anybody around here, they're below below anybody. So, that's something I'd like for you to see what you guys could do about in your in your budget for next
022year. Uh, and then my next subject is that I know a little bit about t uh bus contracts. You guys are losing a lot of money for bus contracts. You guys can own your own buses and do other things because I rode I had contract buses. So, I'm talking from experience. I don't get my my buses wasn't expected very often, but once or twice a year and sometimes my buses were broke down and I still the people still drove them. Today, in this day and age, that doesn't work anymore because the school's more responsible for everybody's buses. So, if a contract driver doesn't fix his bus and it has a breakdown or has something get hurt and you can't ed the kids get hurt, you guys are going to be on the hook because you
023don't keep the bus. He don't the contracts don't keep my buses inspected. Now, school does school does a fine job of keeping buses in contract to protect the students, but contract drivers do not do it. I guarantee you that. I have I'm from experience because I bid the last time I bid was in 2012 and we had a bidding competition and today there's no bidding competition. there's an agreement that people walks in and say, "I'm going to bid so much money and you guys say, "Okay, the contract signed, you don't agg you don't um debate or try to bring the prices down because I can give you uh okay, I just called Memphis Transit yesterday. A new bus is kind of could cost you $140,000. There's no and no contract drivers drive 140,000 bus because
024you got to pay for it in four years or six years. Most the contract drivers are busing driver driving buses eight and 12 years old and they're getting according to the contracts here, they're making about $200 profit, $175 to $200 profit each route per day. Per day. So see how much money you're giving to giving to contract drivers when you could buy your own buses because you can buy a bus forund a new bus cost you $140,000. A year old bus is $90,000 and it goes down $10,000 every year for every year you got every year that bus is older. So $140,000 they're budget they're if they're budgeting on $140,000 that is not fair to you guys or the taxpayers to be paying that kind of money when they're only probably driving eight and 12
025year old buses which is only going to cost them a hundred or 70 70 to 80,000. So, they're making, you know, you tell you do the math, 365 to $475 a day. And it most generally when I was driving, it cost me about $170 a day to drive.$1 $120 for the driver. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Your time is um exceeded. Okay. And superintendent comments. Okay. Um just a couple of comments. Number one, once again, congratulations to the golf team and wish them well. Um tomorrow, I had the opportunity to attend the Kendrick Foundation scholarship banquet last night. 20 I think it was 28 hope nominees, awardees actually. And I got to see the best and brightest of Morgan County um there at that banquet. And uh nine of them were Martinsville High School graduates, recent
026graduates over the last probably since 2012 14. Um most of them in the 2016 to 20 range. And these are all young people who are going into the health field. And we're talking doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners. Uh my daughter is going into chiropractic. Um, we're talking advanced nursing, some of them want to be orthopedic surgeons. I mean, we're talking really high level uh healthc care um professions and talking with them last night and talking to these these wonderful students, it just made me it made me proud of what uh the MSD of Martinsville has done. And I got to see, you know, Morrisville and I got to see Monrovia and they have to be proud too of their students who have gone on to do great things. And I look at, you know, Mr.
027Mitchell alluded to the tax rate and stuff. I look at the tax rate in Morgan County compared to other counties and we're not we're nothing like them in any way, shape, or form. and for us to do what we've done over these years and what we've accomplished and what the end product has been and having our students when they cross that stage prepared to chase their dreams is really truly uh heartwarming to see and I got to like I said I got to see the best and the brightest chasing their dreams and to hear them talk about what they're going into and doing. They're speaking languages I can't understand in that medical field. And these are our students and we need to be proud of what we've accomplished, where we've been, and what we're doing.
028And we're always evolving, always changing, always trying to improve. That is what we're doing. And uh that's something that's very important task that we take to heart as a board and as an administration. Um we're going to have some turbulent waters ahead with uh the budget uh with with what's coming from the state. You you see what that is. Everybody's uh that's paying attention knows there's some rough waters ahead, but we're positioned to uh mitigate that as much as possible and be in a good position. And I would like to say I appreciate what Mr. Mitchell said about the tax rate. However, each one of those districts that's surrounding M, they all passed referendums. That's the reason. And if you saw the new legislation, they're making it harder to pass referendums because schools were being
029successful. Now, it's every two years that you can do it. And it's different verbiage, different language that you have to use and uh they're limiting what you can do there. So, it's going to be up to us to really navigate those waters and uh our board over the last three years has really worked on the facility thing, the the planning, all of that. We've got new elementary coming on board. We've got a couple of other projects coming on board. All that is done. It's all um in the works and it's going to be up to future boards and administrations to have that fiveyear, 10 year, 15-year vision carried out because this is just the first step in order to make us fiscally solvent and uh provide great opportunities for our students and staff. So, wanted
030to say thank you to the board for that. I saw firsthand what has been done here last night with some great great young people um that are going to be saving lives and impacting families for years to come and it's it makes me proud to have witnessed it and just been a small small small part of that. So thank you for your leadership. You're not in a enviable position believe me but thank you for what you do. Thank you, Mr. Bolan. Um, do we have any board member comments? I have a comment on the personnel. I would like if we could on the high school and middle school is put the subject area if they're English, math, social studies, or science. Appreciate that. I think we we can do that to a degree because I
031want to give Mr. bell and and the administration there. Some teachers are multilicensed like I taught three different subjects, right? And you don't want to pigeon hole somebody to this is the only one they're going to have. But yeah, I think the ones that are moving off to the area they're coming into is best. But we're really trying to take our teaching staff. You are a teacher by contract in the state of Indiana. And I used to be asked the question, what do you teach? I would say I teach kids. Well, what do you teach? I teach kids. What do you teach? Oh, what subject do you teach? Those are two different things, right? And um I think teachers are teaching kids first. A lot of things, the soft skills, the life skills, the all
032those other things that's more than just the subject. The kids I saw last night, they learned a lot more things than subject matter. You know, that's so We'll take that under advisement, put it into the report so you can see what areas we're looking to do, but we don't want to lock it in to where we can't move some in. If that's okay with you, right? I just want to kind of know kind of see which area that we're looking at. Losing because I think it's happening not just in our school district across the state of Indiana. Yeah, there's the pipeline is very it's pretty much empty. Math and science are very much a problem. Yes. In a lot of school districts. When I applied for my job at Martinsville High School in 1994, there
033were over 150 applicants. Now, if you get two Yeah. in the subject area, that's a lot. Yeah. Think about that one for a minute. Couple things I got and and you bring up some good points about what's posted, what's transparent because we don't see that. So I think you know I would ask anybody if you have an opinion, if you have some feedback and I know Bill mentioned it and you mentioned some things. I agree. I think we need to be able to pull minutes. We need to see some things. I'm not sure if we can post everything before a meeting, but I think we need to post as much as we can and be visible and then after a meeting we should be timely to get that done. The quality of the recordings have
034been a discussion. I still I don't know if we're really where we need to be on that. I've heard again I don't listen to them most of the time after we're done, but uh sometimes you'll hear the quality is still not the best and I'm sure you we're monitoring that as we were before, but I think that's important and the feedback we got from you, Bill. I think those coming from that world, you see that world different than we do. So I I value the opinion. I mean, if there's a cost of a bus or if there's a life cycle of a bus and someone else is using them differently, I think we have to have that conversation to at least look at it, study it a little closer. So, I I appreciate the feedback.
035I think that's going to be critical as we move forward. We've got a lot of moving parts coming up and some people won't like everything and there's going to be a lot of things I think they do like. So, I appreciate the feedback. So, thank you. Definitely have to be more efficient. Absolutely. The public doesn't get very much involved in anything. I'm in government. They don't really care, but they see it. when you guys bring it out and put in your uh the paper and on letter, it gets the whole community involved instead of just a few people where the like she said, it's kind of come kind of covered down sometimes on what people know about school systems. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments? All right. Well, then we're going to wrap up our
036meeting. Um do I have a motion to adjurnn? I'll make a motion we adjourn. Second. I'll second. All right. All in favor signify by stating I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Thank you all for coming.