MSD of Martinsville School Board Meeting 8/19/2021

001it is seven o'clock and i would like to call this meeting to order would you all please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you my name is don lips and i am the president of the school board to my left are heather staggs vice president to her left jackie deckard secretary to her left michelle ball board member and to her left matt hankins board member to my right is our interim superintendent dr william roberson better known as dr r on behalf of the board of administration i would like to welcome you to the august 19 2021 school board meeting i

002thank you for attending and showing interest in our school district this meeting excuse me this meeting is a meeting of the school board in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting opportunities for participation will be permitted in accordance with policy b 250. like to take this opportunity to welcome you a second time and this time i'd like to welcome you to the beginning of the 2021-22 school year it's a new start it's a fresh beginning for all of us the board sitting in front of you this evening started its time together in january of just eight short months ago during those eight months we have welcomed the opportunity to host community workshops where we've listened to secondary teachers elementary teachers parents and

003community members we have also created a forum here at our monthly meetings where we have opened up our public excuse me to where they can address certain uh comments that they have or questions that they have we have listened we have heard you we thank you for all of your suggestions and we believe that your input helped has helped us make decisions that has helped our school district to prepare for this upcoming school season for all of you that are in here today that work inside our buildings we would like to wish you the best of luck during the school year to begin the program here this evening we have a couple people that we would like to recognize i would like to at this time ask dr jill vulcan to please stand uh we

004are recognizing uh dr vulcan this evening for her achievement for completing her doctoral degree a little background information on jill jill has served as a teacher an assistant principal and a principal and she started out as a first grade teacher for the last or this is her 13th year in our district serving as a principal at poston road dr vilcan vulcan earned her undergraduate degree from indiana university her administrator license from butler university her educational specialist degree from indiana state university and finally her doctorate degree from oakland city university dr volk and her husband chris have two children carson age 16 and emerson age 14. i will not tell you what her favorite color is but her favorite food is pizza we do have a pamphlet out there or a little folder out there that

005recognizes jill so if you'd like to have more information feel free to pick one of those up but jill congratulations on your hard-earned achievement [Applause] next up is our focus group for the evening from martinsville high school to introduce our group i would like to introduce mr ron dunn who is the head of the department for our vocational department at martinsville high school mr dunn you i'd like to say a couple words right as i introduced the department that we have is very great the high school itself the area vocational schools most of our students go to hoosier hills in bloomington so just briefly i would like to tell you a little bit about our department we have an ag department which is which includes uh small engines and welding it's a ag power type

006class the stator the state is changing course titles and such so forgive me if i get them mixed up from current to what's coming up and we are going to be changing so that those are going to go from one to two credits each we have animal science we have the management classes that go with that we have uh our greenhouse and things of that nature in our agriculture department we also have criminal justice that we have added recently in the last couple years i hope many of you are aware of that we have broadcasting most of you have watched the ball game online for which eric meyer has been championing that for quite some time we have uh let's see i'll skip to automotive most you know about that program it's been there for

007a long time we can run all students as desired through two beginning courses they're called principles now and everybody can learn how to change their oil and how to inspect your vehicle and maybe save you a bunch of money down the road sometime we have precision machining and we can do the same there give people an introduction through two principles courses and we have dual credit with automotive and we with the precision machining also so they can go on in those classes as well as the construction we're going to talk about as juniors and seniors providing that they have enough credits when they get there they have they haven't lost credit in some other class so they can have an opportunity to get 12 credits in those classes at high school also we have engineering

008and technology which that is my basic uh degree industrial arts when i started you know since i'm a kind of almost a dinosaur which we're teaching some basic engineering drafting which is intro to engineering and then we have other engineering courses at the high school in addition to that architecture mechanical drafting and let's see what else was i going to say the advanced manufacturing program we have some equipment there 3d printers we have a laser and then also i skipped in our precision machining we have two full-size tool computer controlled a mill and a lathe and we also have some models that we can use with advanced manufacturing we are very blessed that way mark the community and the school board and for many years have been behind this program here and you guys are

009very very fortunate to have this in your community i'd like to finish by introducing greg wiese he is our construction trades teacher he's been there for over 10 years and they build a house every year or so depending on the size of it so greg thanks ron thanks school board for giving me the opportunity to speak at this meeting uh something about ron ron is an excellent excellent chair to our department he fights for us if we need something and he goes to back force so ron really is excellent what he does so thank you ron and to touch on what ron was saying about the school and the school board and i've been here 14 years this is my 14th year and the school supports this the principal support and the community supports this

010building traits program they're really behind this and it's it's nice to know that that when you're when you do a job like that people are like man that's great and we're behind you like if i need something from like the local like vendors or somewhere like that they are more than welcome to help the building trades out so the community is behind this program 100 so you know ron touched on a little bit and i thought i'd touch on that but i'll introduce myself i'm greg wiese i am the building trades teacher at martinsville high school like i said this is my 14th year i'm married my beautiful wife right there carol i have five children i have eight uh grandchildren and they're all boys so i know how to deal with children and they're

011all boy boys so so that's a little bit about me i've been in the constructing industry for over 30 years i've ran my own business for over 30 years and i'm i've probably worked on some of you people's houses out there and a lot of people know me in this room some people work for me that are in this room nate dilley worked for me for a little bit over there so he's a good worker a little bit about the building trades program is i have juniors and seniors it's a program for juniors and seniors available to anybody that's in the high school but they've got to go through the lower classes first and what we do is we go out and we build a house we start from the foundation all the way to

012the ridge cap and we touch every bit of that house it's usually a two-year project sometimes it may drag on a little bit last year cove had got us you know we're a little bit behind we didn't get the house in the ground until after the first year but we're doing pretty good we got her under roof and we're moving along really well um some of the things i want to touch on is this year i was kind of wondering with covid and online and all that what was it going to be like when i got back i mean are we going to be fighting and i'm telling you what i have never seen the enthusiasm so far at the beginning of the school year that i've seen ever i mean these kids are fired

013up i send out paperwork they can have paperwork signed up usually it's like some of them are dragging on for weeks every video every bit of it's back already tool belts i give them a list on what tools they have to have i mean sometimes some of them don't ever get it and i'm probably at 90 percent right now they've all got their tools ready to go so i've got um i normally have about 30 i have an am and a pm class and normally it's 15 and 15 sometimes it's a little bit different and that's kind of that's kind of tough i mean i've got 20 in the morning class this year and you try to keep 20 of them busy and it's it's tough but i can and 20 of them that want

014to be busy that's the thing they are they're wanting to work i mean it's it's it it's it's i don't know i mean this is crazy how good it is to see that that they want to work and the future is bright and and for them the future is bright and the construction trades the construction trade is hot now that any trade is hot the money that they can make is unbelievable and what what i like to think of with the building trades is am i going to turn out master electricians and plumbers and no no if i can teach them work ethic show up you know work as a team it's it's a big team build too i mean you got to work as a team as you're out there there's four usually four

015three to four on a team team building skills that's stuff that you're going to take on i don't care if you go you know be a doctor or whatever nurse or in the building industry team building you're going to use that so there's stuff that that we learn out there that you take on the rest your life it's not necessarily in the building but with the building part of it the opportunity are endless and i have connections the guys back there jay's got a bunch of connections with a lot of of the carpentry the operators union we can plug them in to a job that pays a lot of money four years down the road that can be making forty fifty dollars an hour and what we are we're like a stepping stool that they

016can come and we can get them up the ladder just one more stool one more step you know we can get them into that next job you know we just come on help them out help them out because a lot of them that it may be this is it i mean they're going to work the rest of their lives and construct them and make a good living you know they can make a good living in it but if i can help them move on to that next level in their life and help them go on i mean that's that's great i mean um i want to give one one story about when i first started i started in 2008 14 years ago and boy did i didn't know what i was getting into you know

017don alkier hired me i think don was the athletic director over there at that time and i said sure i'll do it i coached a lot of little artie's and you know i'm just used to dealing with kids and i thought well i'll do this you know oh boy is it different but i the kids came in and uh this little kind of short stocky kid came in big ol arms on him i thought man there's a football player if i ever seen one i think fred just took over not too long before that i thought we'd be a good football player for fred and it i said hey i'm mr weaves he said well my name's josh carey i said oh how you doing well josh turned out to be probably one of the

018best students i ever had i mean he was great and i got to talking to josh and i was like why did why did you why'd you come to building trades you know he goes well my dad's a mechanic and i thought maybe i'm going to be in the trades or a mechanic and he said we lived in mooresville and we were going to move and at that point mooresville was eliminating all the vocational stuff they sold out all their equipment everything and he said well we visited martinsville or looked into it martinsville had a vocational department that was pretty good you know so josh came into building trades well josh was really good so when josh graduated i said hey i can get you a job i know a guy needs a job josh

019worked for that guy that guy's like man this josh is great about five years later josh is like hey i think i want to go into union cooling i said well i know somebody the connection with williams comfort era said here here's the connection josh got a job there josh is like one of the number one techs there he makes great money and it all comes back to that he came to martinsville because of the vocational department you know i mean a lot of people you know will go there because we're going to play sports or whatever i was like i thought he was going to play football because he was all buff and everything but he wanted to come because of construction trades i was like really it's kind of weird but so that's

020a success story and there's many many many more i could tell you about hundreds of them up here that kids that are making over 100 grand a year that graduated four years ago but um i'll leave you with that i brought a couple students along with me tonight they may want to say a few words so i'll give zach zach gross you want to come up say something hey everybody uh i'm zach groves and i just wanted to come here tonight to talk about the building trades uh department and mr greg wiese and uh building trades is really an experience that i will cherish and use for my whole life i mean that the principles and the fundamentals of everything we've learned so far you can't really find that anywhere else in the high school

021so so i mean we built that house from the foundation and it's got a roof on it now and i've we did all that and it's just really an incredible thing to learn and i know i'm going to use it my whole life and my whole career and it's just awesome and i couldn't be more thankful for it it's quite the experience and up next comes blake reigns thanks zach hello everybody i'm uh blake raines i come from the high school i'm gonna be a senior this year uh someone comes saying thank you for even letting it be a thing that i can being building trades because it's a great opportunity for most people i i think i've learned more in that class than really any class in my career in high school i think

022that you're not only going to be using it for that short 12 weeks 24 weeks or however long you're in that class for but you're going to use it for the rest of your life not only for building a house if you want to go into the construction trade or if you just want to build your own deck on your own house for your wife and your kids so i think it's a really good opportunity for every kid or everyone in the high school i think everyone should at least try it thank you again for having it i really appreciate it makes me want to come to school and have a good time with my friends over there i know a couple people from different schools that uh have said wow like that's a really

023good opportunity i wish i had that class instead i'm stuck in this and this and that well i mean i'm glad martinsville had that opportunity to give me that class and i really appreciate it and that's that's all i got thank you mr ruiz before we let you get out of here what's the location of the house that you're working on now i meant to say that sorry i didn't leave notes it was up here uh we're working on a single family home three bedroom two bath at 10 35 south kofak street so okay if you want to drive by and look and see it and that's the thing uh what they'll do they build that house and they take ownership in it and they take pride in it and i can guarantee you that

024when they get older they'll drive down that street and they'll drive down there with their kids and say i built that house i guarantee you i mean they that's what they do they take ownership and pride into that building and and i don't it's once you get to teaching it really is kind of easy because it does flow they want to be there and they want to learn and and i don't know i better be quiet all right well thank you very much [Applause] okay before we move on with our agenda today we're we always have an exit plan for our guest so those of you that have just been recognized you're more than welcome to stay here for the meeting if you would like to stay but we're giving you an opportunity here if

025you would like to exit now's the time to do it [Laughter] and that's usually what happens okay next on the agenda uh public comments courtney do we have anyone who has signed up okay uh the consent agenda we as a board member here are given information from the superintendent's office six days in advance of our board meeting this information on this consent agenda includes payroll claims payroll reports budgetary claims the certified and non-certified personnel report so we've all had a chance to look at this and ask questions at this time i would like to entertain a motion to accept a consent agenda as it's been presented i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda can we have a second all second okay the motion has been made and seconded all in favor of passing

026the consent agenda as presented signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign i the motion passes next on the agenda is letter d student field trips and professional travel dr roberson yes poston road uh just on good yeah poston road has a opportunity to go to new mexico to a dual language immersion conference paid for through a grant there'd be three teachers an administrator and then there's three other spots available i'm not sure who they'll be but and that's a 17 000 grant that pays for that so i would recommend approval okay i would like to entertain and excuse me entertain a motion to accept the recommendation for the dual language immersion conference i make a motion to approve the conference we have a second a second any discussion all in favor of approving

027the dual language immersion conference in new mexico signified by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries dr roberson okay on reports there's a form nine for the first six months of the year uh that's required by the state of indiana and a financial report and then there's a 2021 education foundation grant recipient and that education foundation was denied the growing up at global citizens grant due to content so that had been tabled but that's been denied so it's off the table okay looking for a motion to approve the form 9 report i make a motion to approve form nine do we have a second i'll second that any discussion all in favor of approving the form nine reports signify by saying aye all opposed same sign motion carries dr roberson okay so we're

028moving on moving on to the financial report okay recommend approval okay i recommend we approve the annual financial report i'll second that okay any discussion on the approval of the financial report on favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion cares okay resolution 445 additional appropriation what happens to the with the budget in the state of indiana is you have doctor excuse me i think we missed uh three on the reports we already did that that was that grant that was denied it was tabled and then denied okay we have curriculum instruction enrollment update i don't have that i don't know okay oh yeah i do it's up here at the top it's got a staple there okay okay so we do sorry it was stapled hi i'm susie lips and i'm

029going to be giving instruction curriculum just some tidbits some sprinkling of information from our district hopefully this information will be interesting and information you feel like is important first i want to start with the religious education program the martinsville school district is a participant this year with the morgan county religious education program under the direction of mr john schaffner our third and fourth grade students have the opportunity for involvement with the program both groups third graders and fourth graders meet 45 minutes per week religious education is a program that the community of martinsville has embraced for over 40 years probably over 50 years and we want to thank the representatives and leaders of the morgan county religious education program who have dedicated their service as our community partners if any representatives are here this evening

030mr shapner or any of the teachers or leaders please stand and be recognized i know they've attended some of our previous meetings thank you mr mitchell thank you thank you for your service the community uh [Music] thank you mr mitchell and also we want to thank um all of the the teachers and the bus drivers and the people that are involved with that and the the community members who have supported that and embraced that program for so many years next i'm going to talk about free breakfast and free lunch for all students this year all students will be receiving free breakfast and free lunch at school the usda united states department of agriculture has extended free meals to school children through the 2021 2022 school year as part of the national program to reopen schools

031safely however because the state of indiana will still use the free and reduced lunch forms we still need to apply our discounts for textbooks and curricular materials we're still asking families to complete those forms you can find the form the free and reduced lunch form online we also have paper copies i know that mr bodell our district's food service director is here this evening mr mo bodel where are you here wave that okay he's in the back he's here tonight if you have any questions the good news is everybody gets free breakfast free lunch and the paperwork part of it is just to help with the the fees with textbook and other curricular materials mr bodell's here are there any other food service employees here like for you to stand and be recognized are you

032here this evening anyone okay next daily curriculum and technology the academic curriculum in all of our district schools is being facilitated via touch screen devices for k1 and chromebooks for grades 2 through 12. right now our k1 have chromebooks we have ordered the touch screen devices and those will be in the hands of students probably within the month our district technology director mr brian freeze is in the back mr freeze and some of his team members i know are here could you guys wave and be recognized these people are in our buildings helping teachers helping students every day and their work is endless and without technology the curriculum doesn't run as smoothly as we all know with our own personal phones and our tv sets at home we have to have that running to make

033it work to make things in our life smooth and with these people that are helping to do that here that's possible um also besides technology and curriculum we've got teachers and our district is proud to have 30 new teachers this year who are all happy to be part of martinsville school community hope you i hope you saw on social media and in the newspaper they were all wearing red shirts we took a picture we've had some training sessions and they're all excited and along with those 30 new teachers we have over 300 other teachers and staff members who bring the learning experience to life every day for our students teachers and staff members who are here this evening please stand and be recognized to your for your dedication to students i know you're here because

034i've seen you coming in and any retired teachers mrs maxwell mrs smith retired teachers staff members miss burden thank you thanks for all you do a national hot topic that we're all aware of because we're part of social media and in the real world as dr rob roberson said and stated in the july school board meeting critical race theory is not being taught in martinsville schools we are connecting with community members and those who represent others to explore to discuss to seek resolution about questions as those questions surface this evening i see shelley campbell here and her father and others that have been at other meetings and shelley represents a group of concerned community members shelly and i have had many positive conversations in an effort to keep our community members secure and united on

035this front so all of you that are here that are are helping to unite our community thank you so much we appreciate that the communication flow chart hopefully we created this today the instructional team um created this flow chart for communication i like the graphics the important thing is we're all working together um this is van diemender i think mrs burke has some of these and they're over here you're welcome to take one on your way out the the purpose of the flow chart is this if you have a question you have a concern or you see something on social media what do you do so sometimes it just festers with you or sometimes you call someone and then it gets worse because you don't really hear maybe what's happening so because we think it's

036so important to have open lines of communication what we've done is if you hear something or see something or you believe something but you're not sure did you get it from your child or did you get it from a school representative or did you get it from social media and then depending on where you got that piece of information we've put you know what's your next step i will reach out to my child's teacher the bus driver the coach the club sponsor to ask and we have kind of a a guideline this might not be what you want to follow because hey you just want to pick up the phone and call me and if so i've got a cell number and i'll be glad to share it with anybody so call me if you

037have a problem call me if you have a concern and if it's something so hot some topic that is so serious that you can't sleep call me that night we go to bed late i get up early we get up early and most certainly if it's a problem for you then it's a problem for our district and we want to take care of it we want to work together on these kinds of things so that we have a smooth united front here in our community for our students especially since we're modeling for them um so i'm i'm talking about the communication flow chart and i introduced sort of but jane burke in the yellow is our community relations director and she you might get her on the phone sometimes she answers questions she's also involved

038with a lot of the information that's up here we have a short little welcome back newsletter just a one page it talks about the free bus it talks about securely securely home it also talks about free breakfast and lunch so we have a bus app where you can track where your bus is once it gets to a certain location mr dennis mills our transportation director uh has can answer any questions about that and also there's some other pieces of information i would suggest grabbing those on your way out because they're for you we have those for you so that you know what's going on um next enrollment another big issue because public schools everyone's wondering should i send my child to school and as the vocational department said kids are excited kids are excited about

039being here and we're happy for that so yesterday we checked the enrollment count and here in martinsville we were at four thousand and two students last year on the state's 2020 adm which is average daily membership count day our enrollment was 3846. therefore right now we're 150 students enrolled extra than we had last year at count day count day isn't until september it's september 17th so we still have opportunities to gain people and to lose people so that's why it's really important for us to help answer any questions or any concerns that might be out there so that we can keep our students engaged in our schools continuing on today before i left school though that was earlier today four thousand and two it was four thousand and twelve so somehow today 10 students were

040added i know one was a family of three but i don't know where the others came in so we're encouraged we're encouraged by the numbers and the excitement of our students and family and i want to thank the teachers group who's worked so hard during the summer with the reimagine grant they wrote a a grant and mrs adams shannon adams i know is here wave if you would shannon and her group wrote this grant and facilitated it to bring joy back to the brick and mortar of our school after a year of covid so that was our goal the teacher's goal was to bring joy back to the brick and mortar and that's what we're aiming for not just now not just to get it started but the whole year artie's online this is a

041school this school year our district is providing online instruction as a choice for all students currently we have 64 students enrolled in grades 7 through and 3 students enrolled in grades k through six the district's instructional team of mrs jenny oakley mrs tiffany oswald and mrs tiffany grant is creating the curriculum platform and facilitating the instruction for grades k-6 and the secondary students are under the direction of dr misty dorito all which are enrolled in indiana online courses mrs oakley's here and mrs grant's here please stand and be recognized or ways everyone knows where you are [Applause] the reason that's such a big topic for us is because last year we didn't have um online as an option and you know several several people several community members said you know i'm taking my my child

042to another school district or you know another facility or another service because we don't martinsville schools don't have online and so this was something that through the feedback of community at the workshops that we felt was very valuable and important so um that's that's been established also the alternative education program this year we're going to maximize the vision there and the vision for the alternative education program for grades nine through twelve is to create graduation pathway plans to accommodate and serve all of the students curricular needs interest and real life schedules internships night school customized plans and helping are helping to make this happen mrs melody bentley she has served our district well 20 plus years and she was with the alternative education program for 21 previous years she's going to serve as a coordinator

043to help regenerate some of these areas so that we can make sure that if a student has to work during the day we have night school opportunities and if a student has to take care of his child or her child and or a sick parent at home that we can customize the schedule so that that student can still graduate everyone will be on a graduation pathway plan mrs bentley stan to be recognized if you have any family members or people you know or neighbors and they say hey i really want to graduate i really want to get my degree but i've got to work or i've got to do this or i've got this problem mrs bentley she's the magic school bus she brings joy to the brick and mortar for everybody and uh being

044part of that program is something special so i'm glad that um we're moving in that direction as you're driving by martinsville schools or peeking into classrooms through social media and the reporter times article or the wcbk reports you'll see martinsville students involved in participating in recess on the playgrounds lunches in the cafeteria science labs fine arts programming vocational foreign language project-based learning project lead the way stem and so much more our curricular co-curricular and athletic programs have had success for generations and we're excited to see that in full motion this year our district believes that our small town feel that coziness that that warmth contributes to students and families embracing the msd in martinsville and continuing the successes that our parents and our grandparents have talked about around the dinner table throughout the years thank

045you for this opportunity to talk tonight i welcome to talk to you individually artesians are united thank you dr roberson do you have any questions or school board members i have a question sure on the students who are leaving our corporation this year are we still tracking the reasons why or reaching out to them or doing exit interviews certainly are um here's what's happening i see we have a couple principals um here in the room not only dr vulcan but we also have mrs manley mr setteroff and they have personally been making phone calls obviously they have exit interviews at the schools if a family comes in and says i'm moving to arizona well we're not going to probably be able to change that path but if a student is just going to say hey

046i want to go online and i don't want to do artie's online or i you know i want to go to homeschool then these principals are reaching out personally not assigning it to someone but they're personally reaching out and sometimes we we reach out together or we meet the parent and we might like for the for example the other day i talked to a family and they were scared about the intermediate school concept they didn't they're worried that they wanted their child to be in elementary school longer and i said well the intermediate school is a gradual transition it's the next step they're still in pods they're there's the teachers are still close together they it's it's a feel of elementary and we went over there and we talked and they're they're back on board

047with us and sometimes it's just those conversations and and offering them to ask questions and to express their concerns that we can try to take care of that so mrs deckard besides the school then also if the school is striking out because maybe it's something at that particular school a chemistry or an issue that they just feel uncomfortable with we've got a lot of schools you know we have seven elementary schools and um you know if it's a teacher or a class we have different teachers different classes we can make adjustments we want to customize schedules we want to accommodate families and students we want to have them happy at school and so yes we are making those exit calls i'm making those calls too we're doing home visits we're doing everything we can to

048keep our our students our martinsville students on our home team thank you yes the enrollment numbers are awesome and i know that uh mrs adams and yourself worked on that um that back to school or that grant so do you roughly know how many students you you guys did by canvassing and getting you know that incentive plan do you guys have a number on on how many we got with that well you know when you're going out door to door i mean you might if you drive through the brooklyn area and if any of you live in the brooklyn area you might see some of our martinsville school signs and because when we went door to door and they said yes we're in we gave them backpacks and we had them put signs in their

049yard and we took pictures of them and you know we've shared those so i mean personally for me i i know of at least 26 families that we gave signs and we gave them the four we helped them fill out the enrollment forms too because sometimes people don't feel comfortable with the technology and so we tried to help them by you know going into their homes or staying out in their driveway and filling out the forms with them but you know i don't really know if they were for sure takers mrs ball because they might have said yes and and a great thing was mr mills the transportation department director he offered to take a bus out in this one particular area that has a big turnaround and to pick up a big cluster of

050students that had a transportation issue and because of him and his drivers were able to to get them to school here every day plus we have after school programming we partner with the martinsville youth development center and the ymca and students and i told these families this and so i'm sure ms adams and mrs randall and all of us that were out canvassing that if you have baby you know child care issues our school collaborates with other organizations and your children can stay there and get their homework done and be there till six o'clock at night and some of the programs even bus them home to a certain area so um you know we're just we're just trying to be creative get in the trenches it's not black or white it's not right or wrong

051if whatever your needs are for your family we're trying to make it happen any other questions or all right well thank you so much thank you [Applause] dr r back to you okay next on the agenda is a resolution 445 additional appropriation what happens in the state of indiana is when you get a budget and there's three funds basically that either have state tax money or property tax money in it the state gives you an appropriation to spend it you can have all the cash in the world but you can't spend it unless you have appropriation that is the state giving you permission to spend it okay we have a couple coming up here that we need the board to approve an additional appropriation because the fund in the debt service was short sixty one

052thousand six hundred and fifty dollars so i would take them one at a time and recommend approval for that okay i'd like to entertain a motion to pass resolution 445. i make a motion to pass resolution 445. can we have a second i'll second okay motion's been made and seconded is there any discussion okay all in favor of passing resolution 445 signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries okay um both of these two are from the 2020 budget not 2021. permission to advertise a rainy day fund additional appropriation of 333 688.71 cents previous administration spent money in rainy day without permission the state of indiana the state of indiana called us they are not happy so we need to approve that okay i'd like to entertain a motion to pass the

053advertising a rainy day fund additional appropriation i'll make a motion to advertise the rainy day fund additional appropriation do we have a second second okay motion has been made and seconded any discussion or any questions all in favor of passing the advertising of the rainy day fund additional appropriations signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries i need to add one two that's my mistake didn't get it on but we need uh permission to advertise the 2022 budget cpf plan transportation plan uh we advertise that that that'll appear this year no longer appears in the newspaper you'll find it on our website and you'll find it uh in the on gateway in the state of indiana if you go into ido or dlgf and look at gateway you'll find find the budget

054but it no longer appears in the newspaper but that came from the state of indiana so i need permission to do that because in september we'll have a public hearing and then in october we'll ask for an adoption of the 2022 budget 2022 or 21.22 2022 22. okay so this is just to advertise that it's just to advertise it yeah okay okay can we ask uh i'd like to entertain a motion to advertise for the 2022 bus budget i make a motion to approve it i second it okay motion has been made and seconded any questions all in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries and i know many of you probably follow that in the paper once again it will not be in the paper anymore and that's come

055from the state of indiana not from us look on the website the school website and it'll be on there sometime in september uh if we when we have the hearing and then in october we'll ask for an adoption it'll be on the website here and it'll also be on gateway so if you go into probably dlgf would be the best place department of local government finance and look for the budgets you'll find it okay authorization to sign agreements for alternative services and private residential school placements updating this because of new leadership okay i'd like to entertain a motion to authorize and sign agreements for alternative services and private residential school placements i make a motion to approve a second motion has been made and seconded any discussion so word the director of special ed will

056be over this then right okay that's correct okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries school officers contract addendum chief richards is here good evening since the establishment of an agreement between the msd of martinsville and the martinsville police department attention has been drawn to the difficulties of finding officer coverage for the school district one of the reasons for this deficit and officers willing to work in this capacity is hourly pay for off-duty employment although the 25 per hour fee is respectable on its surface the ability of officers to earn higher pay part-time has expanded in the area surrounding morgan county in comparison to the mooresville school system prior to the institution of a school police department officers were compensated at approximately 36 dollars per hour the state

057is providing compensation in the amount of forty dollars per hour for services associated with the i-69 project there are also monroe county businesses that are compensating officers at rates between thirty five and forty dollars an hour this has had an effect on the coverage that officers provide for the msd of martinsville schools staff and students an increase in compensation from twenty five dollars an hour to 35 dollars an hour would bring the school security officers to a fair compensation in comparison to the surrounding schools and businesses as well as provide the district with complete coverage without shortages during school hours does the board have any questions thank you thank you okay i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the pay raise from twenty five dollars an hour to thirty five dollars an hour for

058our police service in our schools i make a motion to approve a second motion has been made and seconded any other discussion or questions okay all in favor of approving the pay raise for school um police protection signified by saying aye aye all opposed same side motion carries okay thank you chief richards thank you uh pre-k title one aids salary proposal uh there's four aides recommending increasing their hourly rate to be this is out of title one funds to be compensate with the library assistance position so i think i think you have it in your packet so i recommend that we have a motion to pass a pre-title one aid salary proposal make the motion to approve the title 1a salary proposal we have a second a second okay we have a motion in a

059second any discussion any questions okay all in favor of approving the pre-k title 1a salary proposal as presented signify by saying aye all opposed same sign motion carries food service attendance incentive uh this is the perfect attendance for a month paid from food service budget uh kurt's here if there's any questions somewhere back there so he's uh trying to do an incentive for attendance of being uh being here so uh it's out of his funds [Music] recommended approved you want to talk about kurt never passes up a microphone go for it kurt so uh as everybody knows staffing is always a challenge ever so now with our current situation so we're just asking to recognize our staff and by giving an incentive when they have perfect attendance over the course of a month um and

060we also do this in some other positions within the it's part of our teacher contract to do an incentive there also for attendance so we're kind of just mirroring some of that there so that's it any questions it has nothing to do with the increase but our kids back in the cafeteria and everything's kind of back to normal for your staff for past the i mean i know last year they were getting fed in the classrooms but are we so we're in the cafeterias in all of our buildings right now um five days a week we're working towards that um but i think as we um just make sure we have correct spacing and just keeping kids safe um we i mean we're we're moving back to normal if that's such a thing mr bludell

061just so everyone understands food services is a self-supporting entity so the money that's going to come for these incentives going to come out of correct unlike um your operating fund and your general fund we don't have to have those appropriations and so we're based off of our um employee compensation and thing is always it's all proved through you and then um us as a team we manage that kind of each building based on participation and needs and those like things okay thank you you're welcome any other questions for mr bodell thank you okay i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the food service attendance incentive i make a motion to approve the food service incentive program i second it okay any discussion questions okay all in favor of passing the food service attendance incentives

062signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries kurt and his staff do a fantastic job as to all the people that we have this is a great school really is i'm impressed um two uh mf sab buses five year lease to own many school districts do lease to own by the way um uh from curl and bus and it has spirit paintings on it and i know dave dorsett's here from curling if you have any questions for him about the buses okay i'd like to ask for a motion to approve two capital multi-functional school activity buses on a five-year lease to own dr roberson just to clarify we have the money to do this it's for the at least to own yes yes like to entertain entertain a motion i'll make a

063motion to purchase or rent tile on the buses okay do we have a second i'll second that okay we have a motion or we've initiated a motion we have a second is there any other discussion or any questions and i know there was some discussion like who all will get to use these buses like i know we have two so i know we're gonna you know let voice the boys athletics and the girls athletics use it but is like the band going to be able to use this and yeah these will be used these are activity school activity buses we call them spirit buses they will be used by all schools they will be used by all curricular activities they'll be used on they can be used on field trips okay so they'll be used

064by all of our students okay thank you i would say too i think this is great marketing and i would like to say i came up with this idea but it was shared with me if there was some way we could put a qr code on those buses so when people see these really neat buses you take the qr shoot it with your phone and it could link you to our district and we could share all the great things that are happening here so that would be something that i think would be really neat to add to that if possible okay again i wish i came up with it because i think it's a great idea and just so everyone knows too this has been in the proposal since i believe the fall of so

065it's been something that our district has been looking at purchasing uh for quite some time i think we were ready to purchase and then covet hit and it was put on the back burner we were close to purchasing at the beginning of this year but we didn't have the at least to own options that particular time so now we do so we'd like to take advantage of this okay so the motion's been made and seconded um all in favor of the purchase to own the two uh mf sab buses signified by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries i tell you many schools have these when these buses roll in they know the artesians are there yeah it's pretty powerful okay eca 2021 financial report uh you have that i don't know if

066you have the one that has the red on it but uh a few of these are up and most stayed the same you may not have the red i don't know okay i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the athletic event pay scale excuse me eca financial report i move to approve the eca 2021 financial report a second motion has been made and seconded any discussion any questions okay all in favor of approving the eca financial report as presented signify by saying aye aye all opposed same side motion carries athletic training contract with franciscan health and what franciscan health offers to schools and sports medicine is unbelievable fantastic it's great to have have them involved so i would recommend approval i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the athletic train contact contract with

067franciscan health as presented i'll make a motion to approve the athletic training contract with franciscan health i'll second it okay any discussion all in favor of approving the athletic training contract with franciscan health signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion cares have i skipped around on this no i don't think so okay we're ready for uh substitute teacher handbook i think we're ready for the athletic event pay scale recommend approval it's been a long long evening yet yeah it's a longer gender like the entertainment motion to approve the athletic event pay scale for 2122 as presented i make a motion to approve the athletic pay scale event pay scale i second it okay motion's been made and seconded any questions okay all in favor of the athletic event pay scale 2122 as

068presented signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries substitute teacher handbook had been tabled uh we've added uh in yellow new class of pay for retired msd teachers 100 a day recommend approval or any thing you want to that this has been tabled okay and i would like to uh as we go on this if you were here for the last board meeting um you witnessed a discussion where we were considering how we could pay long-term teachers who are retired teachers here more than what they have been are being paid now to give them a stipend at the end by law when we have a long-term teacher they get paid a daily rate for the first 15 days and then on day 16 they are paid a beginning teacher salary so we

069would like to consider having a pay increase for those long term substitute teachers that are retired msd teachers to where they can make up for those first 15 days we haven't figured out legally yet how we can phrase that our attorney is working on this and we have a couple other things that we would like to do with this but we need to pass this here tonight so that we can start paying our substitute teachers that are being substituting now and then we can come back whenever we have this decision this from our attorney and then we can add an addendum to make that change for the long-term subs so at this time i'd like to entertain a motion to pass the substitute teacher handbook i'll make a motion to pass a substitute teacher handbook

070a second motion has been made and seconded do we have any discussion or any questions all in favor of the substitute teacher handbook signified by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries we have several donations on behalf of web season to the mhs football and boys basketball program 1 850 we have a donation from first insurance group to mhs cheer for hundred dollars donation from indianapolis colts foundation grant to mhs football one thousand five hundred dollars and we have a donation from sharon tuttero is she here by any chance um to mhs baseball team of one thousand dollars from an individual so i think you unless you have a question you can do all those one motion i would like to entertain a motion to accept all these donations i move that we

071accept all the donations a second motion has been made and seconded any questions discussions all in favor of accepting the four donations signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign motion carries okay that leads us to the public comment portion of our board meeting at the completion of the school board's regular business a visitor who wishes to speak may do so at the discretion of the president the visitor will be required to state his or her full name and will be given the opportunity to speak using the same guidelines that is used for agenda items not to exceed two minutes for each person and each person is allowed to speak one time per board meeting it shall not be permissible to orally present or discuss complaints against individual employees of the msd of martinsville

072at any board a school trustee meeting such charges or complaints shall be presented to the board of school trustees in writing and shall be signed by the person making the charge or the complaint boisterous conduct shall not be permitted at any meeting of the board of school trustees not with any defamatory or abusive remarks to be tolerated so at this time do we have anybody that would like to speak well the first thing i would like to ask i had people ask me that once come into martinsville school system what is a wedding what is the winning percentage of each sport they want to know what the winning percentage is because they want to be on winners teams they don't want to come here and just play basketball or football they want to have a

073winning team so i would ask if you could put out a percentage of what each basketball or each coach percentage he wins during the school year boys and girls and then the next thing i've got is uh we're having a little trouble with kova on the school buses i'm a school bus driver and now we're having trouble with girls and boys not wanting to wear the mask or and today i had a person put a child onto my bus with i know hazkova and his normal buses and they won't take you've been putting them on normal school buses and not better parents take him home and i had a parent the other day that got called in and he had to walk all over one of the one of the schools to get his child

074because they wouldn't come out the front door he had to go out a certain door well the parent didn't know where a certain door was at they was lost so i would make a suggestion maybe if you're going to have kobe kids get them up front where the parents can get them rather make them run over the building without mask and everything else because parents are walking in there you know they're opening themselves up for kova too and they're not vaccinated children because we have a lot of people don't want to get vaccinated and so that would be one case and that would be good enough right now but those two items have come up oh and another thing i wanted about forgot talking mr mr r there i had a meeting the other day

075with mrs lips and mr r about handicap accessibility to the sports complex that was last week and i was told tonight there's going to be more improvements and i just mentioned some more things to them tonight and they're going to work on that because as older people we're all beast fat and can't get along very good on wheelchairs walkers and so the state laws federal law says we have to have certain kind of things for children parents in school to go watch your kids because when they go to watch sports that's money in the school buses school pockets and parents can't get there because they get they can't get the facilities without being helpful so they require certain things by this federal government to give for the individuals to go watch your kids because the

076parents help pay for that sport every time you pay five dollars that's ten dollars that's more money in your pocket so if you have a family of two that don't show up the meeting because they can't get there in the in the seating or some kind of way that's ten dollars that school system loses out of every family and a lot of parents said they can't go grandparents and great-grandparents can't watch your kids play because they can't get in this to the athletic field so they're mr r is telling me tonight they're working on it very fast him and sam arms so i appreciate you guys for getting on that so fast thank you bill yes sir thank you sir thomas tackett citizen and patriot i noticed in my observation tonight that uh well-disciplined well-mannered

077uh state of affairs but in your procedures i didn't hear one nay to your proposal mister list is did you have one do you recall i did not know i don't believe unless i missed it there was not one day i if i've been on the school board there would have been a couple days for me but that's just me that's a comment not a criticism i appreciate your service point number two i think this country and the direction that's going and this is not necessarily martin's school system but i see a tide coming and it's starting from on high in d.c and i'm sure that our school systems will be affected i know the crt program i've been told by numerous officials that's not in this system marginal high school and i hope that's

078the case it certainly is in other school systems if you can believe anything you're either online my suggestion and there may be one or two other people feel this way i think our school rooms need to be monitored other than the principal occasionally dropping in the classrooms during the class sessions i think we need cameras and i think they need to be independently contractually installed and also monitored by an independent citizens group approved by the school and the citizens of this community i think that is a in order to safeguard our students and i have a vested interest in a sweetheart of a 12 year old it's in the school system otherwise you wouldn't probably see me here but anyway i believe we do need an efficient monitoring system that we don't currently have and

079whether it's cameras or what it is exactly so i would ask if their school board and dr allison at least consider some of the efficient method of monitoring what is taking on going on and being taught in our schools and i thank you for this time tonight thank you mr tackett good evening my name is monica nicole hutton i'm a long time resident first time attendee so kind of piggybacking off of his comments i know that miss lips said that we were not doing crt i do have some concerns about the sel program that is based in our curriculum so just to throw this out there i know everybody here we have great teachers i love the school district i love the community i'm still here born and raised so i graduated here all the

080good things right just want to kind of put it out there when you sign up for programs or free trainings or free lunches sometimes those come with strings that you all might not understand but the teachers are the ones that have to implement this and they're the ones that have to deal with the the parents on the front line so looking out for all of the best interests i just want to share some examples with you and the audience some things that were concerning to me across various grades so first my i have two sons one's in fifth grade now but towards the end of his fourth grade year he was given a fairness assessment that he was asked questions so as a fourth grader my son's very literal and doesn't necessarily understand all the

081words um do you believe that people of all races and religions should be treated equally and then he was given a fairness score and told you know maybe you need to work on your fairness or hey you're a super duper fair person um probably not really a science project or a science assignment that should have been given out for fifth grade i mean we're only seven days into the school year so for fifth grade he came home and was very concerned at a survey he was given at the beginning saying are you worried about your weight are you worried about your teacher not liking you are you worried about anything do you feel like you're being bullied that's day one in a new school that i have a little bit concerned with i wouldn't have

082known it teachers didn't share that information it wasn't made available i wasn't asked to participate um i have more examples my time's up but i'm really concerned with the freshman honors english course they are being instructed they're given assignments about disobeying your parents rules i'm not okay with that so these are things i'd really like to look into and it sounds like i need to work with miss lips and i'm more than willing to do so but i just wanted to make sure that that was shared in this audience tonight thank you thank you mike you may want to make sure monica that you get one of those flow charts yes it hi i'm shelly campbell i got a flow chart but i do have a meeting with susie next friday so we're all good

083i just want to point something out that is very bothersome to me and i've gotten many calls about it there's so much focus on pronouns in this classroom all classrooms and you know our kids are behind from last year and i don't want them to focus i don't want there to be a focus on she her and them i i just want them to focus on educating our children and so i would like for the school board to adopt a policy that you we use the child's first name period i had three kids gave them all the first name i would not want you to call my child to her or she or it i'd want you to call cindy shay or mia so i think i'd love for you guys to take to take

084that offline talk about it but if we could adopt a school board policy that would remove pronouns obviously we have to use them when we're dialoguing but in addressing a child just address them by their first name i think it's that simple because it it creates chaos and chaos is not good our kids are struggling enough and and i just i just want you guys to take that offline and like to hear what you did with it next month thanks for the flowchart dawn yeah and shelly can i ask you a question real quick sure last month you had um spoke about an interview you did with a student and when you were talking about that i thought it was an msd student and then i was informed by somebody else that it wasn't could

085you elaborate a little bit more on that for me yeah i shared that with susie and i see susie's shared it with you um yes it is and we do reference a lot of schools like miss dr r reference morrisville a lot we write because we're all the same i mean we're but it wasn't but i interpreted it as an msd student it was not was it not an msd student no okay thank you thank you i just wanted to clear that because that's kind of the way i interpreted it and i wanted to just make sure and i should have clarified that susie asked me to clarify it last month and i did not but here's the thing i just want there's so much confusion around critical race theory we are teaching it unfortunately

086we are well i just wanted to clear up that that's right you know right political views that was not at our school district so if we just right okay thank you i appreciate it yeah i know you're welcome and and it's none of this that i say is directed to any of you personally we have 4 000 kids we're responsible for and one day hopefully they grow up and pay it forward and pay into medicare so that we all can have a nice retirement right so i'm not picking on any of you up there i appreciate what you're doing i would not want to do what you're doing but i want you to know we're out here and we're aware and the reason why i'm so vested in this is because my 23 year old

087daughter is a senior at iupui and she had an english class and her professor asked her to identify herself by a pronoun she had to say her name three times she said i'm not going to do that my name is mia campbell so it's out there it is out there thank you i appreciate it you're welcome sandy young hello my name is sandy young and my granddaughter goes to south elementary and i've got a real concern of the masked mandate uh none of the children are wearing masks my granddaughter does because i have underlined conditions i have breathing problems which you can probably tell and she comes home every day and she says grandma a couple of children have asked me why i wear a mask and i tell them because i want to protect

088my grandma she's had surgeries she's got underlying conditions and i thought that everyone would understand that the covet is still here unfortunately it is still with us and it could be for some time the mask i think really help i know everybody doesn't have to be vaccinated and i know that everyone doesn't want to wear a mask i don't want to wear a mask it stops my breathing it helps it doesn't really you know it affects me but if i can help our little children not just my granddaughter but all your grandchildren all your children it's a scary thing i have a nurse that i know that works at bloomington hospital and they have told me about having to flip these people from their stomach to their back to their back to their stomach every

089few hours just so that they can breathe so it's not something that's gone away it's still with us and it could be for quite some time and i just think that the mask mandate is really really a good thing for our children especially the little ones that can't get vaccinated right now my granddaughter she can't she's only eight years old if she could i would have her vaccinated i've been vaccinated but she can't so i just want everybody to kind of think about that and think you know these are your children too and i love all kids and i don't want any of them to get sick none of them to go to the hospital and die and it's happening all over the place not just in missouri or not just in kansas not just

090in texas but right here in indiana so that's my that's my grievance is the mask and it doesn't cost anything and it doesn't hurt anybody you know i mean it really doesn't hurt anybody it's a piece of cloth but if it can save a child's life or an adult's life or teachers you know then i think it's all worth it and that's all i have to always say but thank you so much for your time and just consider it if you would thank you because i know that it's not mandated but it's kind of gone i talked to senator braun's office and they said that it's kind of up to the individual schools and the the school boards so if you guys might just think about it a little bit that would be wonderful because

091it scares me and i want my granddaughter to stay in school i want her to be here with her friends and have fun and she loves the schools so you know but she says i gotta protect my grandma oh so you know and thank you so much for your time thank you thank you sandy good evening council members how is everybody tom not to pig back on you again too but cameras would give me a peace of mind too because things are changing um and some of it's not for the good uh but also and there's a money problem i got that and we're all trying to get the numbers up because the numbers are low that count comes in in september we got that i think a grant that somebody screenshotted me something about

092two hundred dollars for teachers and staff to get kids enrolled gosh what other could a good kind of stuff we could have done with that two hundred dollars and um talking about your flow charts maybe you could get those grants maybe where we can see them read them study them maybe you could put copies of them over here so the parents and people here at the meeting maybe can get them and also while you're at it i'd like to know about the reimagine grant i'd like to know where it came from how much it is um is there any stipulations in there can a person a taxpayer a grandmother of i see i forgot how many is in the system eight can i get that information and is it available to me um because i

093think we all know that the numbers are down and they're doing stuff to get get them going but i think we know that we're it's going bad again with the cobia i got one sent home today at nine he said memo i don't want to go to inland or grandma i don't want to go to back to online learning i said well you have to do it he said no why can't they just send me home a packet of my papers and let me do them on papers he said you know how bad i got last year yeah i know yeah they were at my house because all my kids work so yeah it goes on us grandparents to help and make sure you got that that computer stuff going so that they can do

094it there's your house and he was serious he's nine going on 40 and if anybody knows him from smith school he come home and begged me not to make him go to school i said i'm not your parent and he said just tell that school to send my homework home in the mail and i do have a friend that told me in another school district that that's what they did they got a packet and they sent it home in the mail the kids completed it they mailed it back or or you could drop it off to school because he's really upset about this he hurt his stuff at school and kids are getting sent home his cousins got sent home i think one of my grandkids said wear a mask on the bus and he

095was um exposed to covered so he's out for 14 days he comes home his parents come home to crying kid because he can't go back to school but anyways i am interested in all that information to do with those two and i think i talked to michelle about it and was wanting to know about you know that 200 incentive to our teachers and stuff um you know that tells the story that you know we really need kids back in this district before september for that count but in other words some of that money could maybe go to i'll elaborate on that a little bit that was a separate group and a grant that they receive that's not coming from the district what's up that 200 stipend is a separate group and they are paying that

096money that is not a school district fund that that is coming from oh okay so we're not entitled to that information okay all right that's all right yeah if anything to do with the grants they could be put over here but yeah that's all right thank you for your time miss adams is in the back do you would you like to speak to this miss adams okay yeah and shannon correct me if i'm wrong but it was a couple months ago when you did talk about that grant yeah yes yes yeah and that's how we had our community event a couple weeks ago that was phenomenal thank you do i have a time limit there's it's just a big grant there were eight pieces it starts now start yeah so um i heard a handful

097of questions there so i'll do my best to answer in may we i think it was late may we became aware that the national chapter that represents our local teachers union saw that our families and our kids felt disconnected with our schools and what they wanted to do basically they scrounged around they found pockets of money that could be pooled into one large chunk of money um aft i think we have about 1800 locals 20 of our aft locals actually represent 20 million kids so it's in some areas it's very large so they took five million dollars and they contacted all of our local presidents and they said if you want to do something to engage your community to engage your kids and to bring joy back to your community write us a grant it's

098pretty open-ended if there's something that you want to do that you think will help you connect with kids and families we want to support you in that that's the purpose of the grant um i've called it the reimagine grant it's some kind they're using back to school it was i think 18 000 339 so just a little over 18 thousand this grant basically what it did was it funded our canvassing program it funded 750 of backpacks with supplies by the way we gave those out to any kid that wanted them they didn't have to be martinsville kids you needed a backpack you got one with some basic supplies in it it did fund community night that we had a couple of weeks ago so that's how we paid for that it funded some postcards we

099sent out to kids it funded the 4 300 invitations we sent out to every single kid in the district to come to community night so let's talk about the 200 piece because what it looks like is that you're like get us a kid we're going to give you 200 that's not what it is and i'll use my own personal example when i was canvassing i met a mom this mom had been at one of our elementaries with her three kids the previous year they had to move due to covid and they were now in a spot where they couldn't she couldn't get her kids into the elementary she wanted her kids had some special needs and so she was really worried about it i spent four hours talking to her talking to the principal of

100a school that was closer to her getting answers for questions that she had about specific iep needs and i called the principal and i said and went back to her twice talked to her twice went back to her twice contacted as many people as i needed to to answer her questions called the principal had the principal on the phone the second time i went there and i said this gal's got some questions i can't answer and i held my phone up and for 25 minutes that mom who wanted our kids her kids to be one of our kids again talk to that principal about what her kid needed to be successful those three kids did come back into the martinsville school systems we were able to take care of a transportation issue and in all

101fairness to the group i had a lot on my plate i didn't turn it in i don't i know those kids are in our schools because i've asked that principal had to contact other schools to get that special information i told you that that mom the questions she had there's paperwork behind that our principal at the mom's request contacted another school and said hey can i see we need to see this kid's stuff because we're they're thinking they want to come to us and we need to make sure we can meet the kids needs so the principal was working on meeting the community members needs i worked on meeting the community member's needs i just met her through canvassing i didn't submit it i could have but there are a lot of conversations that happen

102before those initials or after those four to six hours before that mom even knew she could come to us there's a lot of follow-up work that is associated and so the 200 is to reimburse staff who are spending dozens of hours being a contact person taking care of communicate like technology or communication issues individualizing plans for kids and for a lot of these staff people in fact i would say all of them it's just not when you when you become a teacher no one looks at you and says it's your job to go find a kid that's never going to be in your school because i'm like at the high school you know so i may never have this kid as a student no one says it's your job to go out and be a

103contact person for a student that you've never met in your life and our teachers spend hours in these programs the 200 is to reimburse them for some of their time that's it if a teacher puts 20 hours into supporting a family and the kid doesn't stay the money doesn't go to them we had to pick a deadline the deadline i wrote in the grant was september 30th it's not count day it's about being their person what we see with families and what we saw with covid and what we continue to see is that a lot of our people feel disconnected it was an attempt to help us reconnect and when you look at all of the pieces of the grant proposal there were rings of connectedness an outside ring is a mailer broad audience not

104as personal but maybe it piques your interest a booth at the fair that may not seem like much but we all know how popular our fair is that narrowed the ring that put teachers in individuals paths if they were in the merchant's tent or the merchant's booth so that tightened the ring then we went with canvassing brought the ring in a little tighter and then we went one on one it was all about rings of getting out into the community and reaching out to our people who didn't feel certain about whether or not they wanted to be in our school whether or not they felt okay about covid maybe they had electro or technology issues last year and they felt like they didn't get taken care of there are a lot of things that factor

105into people's decisions to come to a school so all we tried to do was create rings of engagement with our community that's what it was there's no here's the string we want kids in martinsville schools because we think we do the best job for them that's it i'm passionate about that my kids here he's been here his whole life my husband was here his whole life i'm not from here i'm from a small southern indiana town but i believe that what we bring our kids is the best opportunity so we wanted to do everything we could to put our communities kids on the best path and that was getting them back in our buildings so shannon on the mcta did vet this uh grant so like everything's kosher right because you know the 200 stipend

106it does sound a little i'm sure i have athletics so you know ihsaa that just sounds a little bit like recruitment so sure you vetted that right there was nothing wrong with the stipend so there's a couple of things there one it had to be approved by a committee at the national level so that wasn't just i say it and you're like yeah let's give it to you i mean a lot of people ask for money right and martinsville actually asked for a significantly smaller chunk of money than a lot of locals because we were focusing on really what was grassroots um you know not we wanted it to be hometown proud and when your hometown proud you go out and talk to people right like you have the personal connections so it was approved

107by the aft in the state of indiana there is a code that says that schools cannot use the district money to recruit kids this is not district money and this is way more this is about way more than putting a belly button in a seat it's about connections with our community are we good thank you so much for your time thank you [Applause] courtney any other sign up okay time to move to the interim superintendent's comments dr roberson well i just had one comment we had this a really good start to the school year i've only been here seven weeks but i've worked in a lot of school districts this and i'm not just saying this is a great school and when i go over to that high school and i see all the championships

108you walk into that lobby and all those championships you turn a left and go down that hallway i've never been in a school with anything like that it's unbelievable i've been to all the buildings a couple of times i'm going to go to brooklyn and centerton monday morning i'll be there so every day i try to get into at least one of the buildings if not more just just want to be around the kids talk to people see if there's anything they need anything we can do to help them it's a great school but it doesn't surprise me because i've said this before i've been superintendent at monrovia mooresville and martinsville and i've been at yorktown i've been at south henry morgan county is kind of to me i'm born and bred in morton county

109i haven't lived anywhere else and i wouldn't live anywhere else this the people in morgan county are honest people they work hard and they'll go to the podium and tell you what they think and i like that you don't see that everywhere so this is a great school it really is and people in mooresville have said well what are you doing because there's kind of a competition between mooresville and martinsville but because i played at mooresville and got beat by martinsville several times but i said that that's good that's competition martinville will make moresville better more as well make martinsville better so competition's good so it's a great school you should be proud of it i won't be here much longer but i feel blessed to have been here and always be a great memory

110for me so i thank you dr r board members comments i have a couple i just wanted to give a congratulations again to dr jill vulcan dawn did a great job introducing her and on top of being a wife and a mama and a principal she accomplished getting her doctorate in a covered year while running a school that had coveted and e-learning so just again that's just a humongous accomplishment and i'm very proud of her she shared her video where she was being told that she had passed and her face just told it all she she teared up a little bit and sorry if i'm paddling on her but she just she looked so happy and relieved all at the same time but congratulations to dr jill vulcan again also congratulations to all the fall

111sports getting underway they have been fighting some adversity um some contact tracing and they just want to have a season and they're all starting we got football this saturday at noon so just come out and support these kids they just they're doing what they've been wanting to do and that's play the sports get back in the classroom see their friends so congratulations to all of the fall sports and then finally we as parents are on the same team we fight battles every day for our children the last thing we need is to be criticizing each other because it's hard at last month's meeting i was told that i didn't deserve to be on the board because my husband and i decided to move our children to a different school system i was not asked why

112nor do i even believe they cared it was a decision we agonized over we love the school system the people and especially the kids we've watched many of them grow up over the years i believe as parents we have the right to make the decisions we feel our best for our children and no one up here or anywhere else have the right to question that when i am deciding how i will vote on different items i want to be informed i ask a lot of questions and try to do what's best for every student i will not be bullied into stepping down because of a decision that we made for our children this is your board we represent you but you are the best advocates there is for your children stay vigilant and do not

113be silent because your kids are counting on you thank you anyone else i will so this week for you that don't know me we took two kids to college so i'm gonna try not to get very emotional um when you drop kids off college there are a lot of worries and concerns and we were driving home today and i looked at my husband and i said you know what the one thing i have never worried about is were they ready for the education piece i knew they were prepared i know they're prepared i see a lot of you out there that have impacted our family and taught my kids and i thank you from the bottom of my heart because i know they're prepared and they're going to do phenomenal so thank you to everyone

114k-12 that has touched my family's lives absolutely and you know shannon you were talking about you know your passion and and i know it because i see it we've seen it as parents over the years and i'm going to brag just a little bit too because most of you who know me know that meredith plays basketball at taylor university taylor university women's basketball is number one in naia for gpa i've never worried again about my kids being prepared because i knew that they were when they left here and even though that's a team effort i know what her gpa is in three years and i know that that's because of the foundation that she got here at the university of martinsville that's because of the education that she got here from all of you guys

115so thank you as well and i mean that sincerely okay i'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn i move that we adjourn motion's been made and seconded all in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sign meeting is adjourned thank