001I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which his hands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all our lord Jesus may we know the peace and the compassion the comfort of your presence in our lives I ask that you provide this board with wisdom so that we can go about making wise decisions I also ask that your love and grace will flow through every administrator teacher and staff member to every student so that they will know of their infinite value and their infinite value to you demonstrated through your salvation all these things I'm praying here most powerful and self-sufficient made Jesus thank you [Music] future board meeting for September the 26th and October the 10th followed by November the fourth Kingdom history
002about divisions of agenda I believe we have in addition to donation and that was available on HR you know that's all right okay how to write recognition tonight we had some donations that I'm going to highlight and that will take a vote to approve the first one being a twelve hundred dollar donation from cie LLC for Salford Ag Department we also have a 3 100 donation from uh 3 000 of that being Bingo charity gaming Wabash out and the other hundred dollars Jerry schoenefeld and that's the Northfield wrestling we also have recommendation to approval 400 donation from Rich Valley United Methodist Church and that would be for Northfield robotics appreciate the donations on it I look at the executive animations all in favor approval say aye all right thank you under staff recognition Mr Keith
003Urban yes tonight we have with us our transportation director Mrs Melissa ball and she is wants to recognize our bus mechanic Kyle highly and so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to her and we do have some pictures also so if you want me to use pictures first or just while I'm talking about it okay and foreign we have some uh very interesting and great information to share with yourself well we have a magazine school transportation stars and Kyle here got nominated by 13 people in our in our district to be one of the garage Stars featured in the magazine for August um but and truly we do appreciate Kyle so much he and I work very well together um and along with Dr Kim with ordering buses and seeing those needs
004and fitting those needs and I just want to read just a couple little paragraphs of what we kind of said about Kyle so um Tom Holley is a one-man shot going on his eighth year and people Transportation but 28th as a heavy duty truck and equipment mechanic he attended our Heartland career center while in high school and always had a passion for fixing things adding that he started his career as a mechanic before even graduating high school he he came to MSD of Wabash County when transitioning from the County highway department like I said he was nominated by 13 various members of our school corporation and Kyle had to turn in some quotes and some things that he found important with his job and one of those was that he found satisfaction in solving a
005problem so that it does not become a recurring issue um and he does learn to talk about that quite often problem solving is one of the key components that um adds to our Corporation so one of the other things is that Kyle has had some interns from the career center to help get them geared towards some heavy duty mechanic work and one of the most recent ones last year went on to also work at standard Tire and Battery and further his education there so I think Kyle is a great component of our community in that way too so we appreciate that in many ways um and he again he is in one manner we found that out yesterday Mr King David had to help go take some buses we had two buses break down at
006the same time so um if you want to show a couple pictures so a lot of what Kyle does um there is a lot of this behind the scenes so every year we have inspections summer inspections of our school buses the equipment um and he also gets the Heartland Care Center monies prepared for that inspection as well one of the things that Kyle has done the last several years is heat pressure sprays under the buses to you know prolong their life and just also can find some new things going on with them we have just recently added these lists so I'm going to let you talk more about that because that's your Forte so um you can kind of mention how that helps you out the mobile column list that we purchased have just been
007100 asset I am no longer up and down on four multiple times per job or per day uh makes pressure washing like that much easier I can imagine everything underneath there instead of just like the edges and sort of in the middle and they've just it's been a lifesaver honestly I mean I I go home and I'm not just feet down at the end of the day so I greatly appreciate it and I appreciate the staff all of them that I worked with have not been a bad person here yet so and Mr T baber Mr Grace yesterday morning jumped in you needed a bus take them to the Fountain area they took it I went back later and picked it up with the record brought it back here when I got back was the
008one that I was bringing in that was a little bit slow moving so we adapt and overcome you know if we we do what we need to do to get the job taken care of and get the kids to school as quickly and safely as possible so and he shouldn't have said anything about the lift here because it looks like he's holding the bus up with his rings [Laughter] um and that was obviously looking down the bus that he's able see quite a bit with those left so they definitely have been it's just a little picture of him pushing a button to get those in a thin but that's yeah and that can go much higher um and we've recently done some reconfiguring of our garage doors um we put it in two new garage
009doors and fitted those with high lift openers so I can raise the buses up a full 50 inches with the doors open uh doors closed I can go 57 or so you know and it's that's ample room to be able to do what I need to do and see what I need to see and I'd like to mention one thing too I'm Dr May too but one thing I always really enjoy about Kyle bus drivers will come in or they'll call on the radio there's something wrong with that bus component and I'm sure some of it um and if I was driving too would be the same way like okay this is happening before you should know but he's very patient very professional and just basically tells them um exactly at least on the radio
010it tells them exactly exactly what needs to be done to do that and so it's just it's it's really really good because there's so many more safety components on buses now that sometimes are very very difficult with all the bells and whistles that aren't necessarily all the fun bells and whistles but just the things to make it safer so we appreciate uh Kim and his patience and endurance and professionalism when he works with the bus drivers and I'll pay you back off of that patience definitely is what I'm very impressed with besides being a very good a great mechanic and very knowledgeable I do appreciate your candy attitude and your positiveness when it comes to things and on I trust Kyle to let me know what he needs and we make sure that happens so
011and he's working with our new software the software we've had he's getting to use it and his world out there for um inventory and we're excited about that too early I think Melissa for uh doing all the work with this and also asking to bring him here because we haven't done that before and he does a great job so let's give him a honorable all right you guys are welcome to stay but you can go ahead me too my dog's having puppies so we're gonna head down [Music] thank you thank you Kyle won't be as a patient if his wife wasn't tonight all right so some other things um to share I know Mr Snyder had a couple things or at least one thing here so you want to share that Mr Snyder or can
012we read that that you had on that recognition sure I can share it I think a lot of people know but I just want to mention it here since I was here tonight the biggest thing we've had happen as far as a student accomplishment was Eden Hoover was able to get 1 000 receptions in one thousand Digs at uh the tomahawk tourney in North Miami which was earlier in the season but whenever we have a student reach those kind of milestones in a career relaxation that was it okay and I'd just like to share one thing so that this is from the Northfield and Southwood students so the city of Wabash is running up um running for the two million dollar uh it's the okra Community Development block grant program and thanks to being named
013the finalists in the states uh preserving Main Street program and we had several of our msdwc senior internships that helped during that day when the selection committee came they were the in-person in-person site visit by that selection committee and basically they waive signs and things like that and so really I believe our schools were the only ones that participated in that I won't read all the names but there were approximately 26 students I will put that on in the papers and things like that and the different places when we send out our information but we just really appreciate the students helping out with that because obviously we're part of that too we have our district goes into the water City Limits and it's just great that our students were able to be a part of
014that too and we'll wait and see if they actually uh get that two million dollar footprint that's all what happened all right thank you any public comments on agenda items if no I'll entertain motion to approve minutes if you could be reviewed second all in favor approval say aye aye all right we'll move on to claims questions it's a large one for Southridge M4 it said final so I'm sure we've had walked through and all that there's a few things as far as base trim that they need to fill in some gaps for that [Music] second all in favor say aye aye all right payroll payroll reflects our first pay of the 20 23 24 Square I'm going to accept payroll second okay all in favor say aye all right thank you anything under financials
015tonight just uh the end of the month balance report for your feeling show us where we are at the end of August in each of our fund balances go ahead and continue yeah so we're heading into our last phase before our budget hearing for 2024 and so this phase we like to review what they call form three and form four um as leading up into like I said our budget here and so this is related to levies and property taxes so it's your key Vapor so we'll take a look here I'd just like to take a a dive into our tax rates one thing that we look on when we're deciding uh what our upcoming tax rate will be for our new calendar year is our assessed valuation and so our assessed valuation is something
016that we as a school district do not control but it does have an impact on the dollars and the tax rates that we may receive in those tax supported funds the levy is the money that we collect uh based off of that assessed valuation and that tax rate we do have some control over our Levy however there are some um legislative things that may control uh uh certain tax rates or certain Levy amounts where we just can't it's not a free-for-all for the school district to say hey I want eight million dollars and then this is going to happen that way so we do have some control over the levees but not total control and then just to clarify uh I think everybody understands is that we do not receive any State dollars in regards
017to anything operational for our school districts and so our Levy is a fixed Levy and so it is controlled by our assessed valuation and or tax rate so depending on the levy amount that we're wanting so example if we need four million dollars to fund our operational fund balance that four million dollars is going to be received but it's going to be controlled by the assessed valuation that will determine the rate so a higher assessed vibration a higher assessed valuation is going to be an in a lower tax rate lower assessed valuation is going to be a higher tax rate so one area that we always got to pay attention to is our assessed valuation and how that looks historically so this is a 10-year look of what our assessed valuation has been up to
018the 2023 budget year and as you can see it's increased over about 200 million dollars over a 10-year period of time when we were looking at the potential referendum uh with our one high school project we had a study done that kind of forecasted out with those assessed valuations may look like into the future so that we can determine how taxes would be impacted over that period of time and so the blue represents our actual historical tax rates or excuse me assess valuations and the red represents that projected evaluation our 2024 assessed valuation looks to be coming in about 941 million dollars uh so again a significant increase from the previous years which is good because that lowers the tax rate based off the levy that we are anticipating as a comparison this is a
019comparison of assessed valuations amongst our border schools and you can see we are second amongst those County schools with Huntington being the largest because there are a long time possible District um the tax rate historically this is our tax rates over a 11-year period of time and you can see right now the green is what covers our operational uh fund and that usually covers around 50 to 55 cents and then anything in that tan or each color represents debt borrowed money paying back in our best service so for 2023 our tax rate was 71 cents that falls in the 10 percentile uh districts around the state of Indiana and just as a comparison for our border schools this is where we would fall as the lowest in comparison to our surrounding school districts so again
020our tax uh supported funds our debt service and operations that's where our tax rates have an impact uh in collecting Monies to operate those funds and so the main thing that we look at again is our assessed valuation and then we also Factor any tax cap or circuit breaker losses that we may have and so for this coming year the estimation is about 150 000 which means that those are dollars that we will not receive so for example if we're asking for four million dollars we will only get 33.8 billion roughly because we won't select some of those because some of our taxpayers their and then Tiff districts can also impact that because that's not new assessed valuation that we will see so when we build our budget and we look at our debt and
021operational funds we want to advertise a high rate and a high Levy so that we can ensure that we collect the full amount that's needed to cover our budget uh and so we use a lower assessed valuation than what we anticipate typically which will create a higher rate and that's just to make sure that we cover anything in case things come back differently from the dlgf that we can cover what we need to operate we factor in any potential tax cap losses and then we keep in mind any max Levy funds that we would have in those funds for Debt Service there's no Max for operation fund we do have a Max that is set this year the new Max is 4.8 billion dollars last year it was 4.6 and that's based off the uh
022maximum Levy growth quotient which by law now a new law is capped at four percent and so if you go to the next slide the the levy growth quotient is based off of the Indiana non-farm personal income growth rates and average uh I believe of six years and we were due for a five percent increase but because of the new law it was capped at four percent so that would be less dollars again that we would have anticipated on a normal basic computer I guess we talked a little bit about this uh during our referendum process we just want to make it clear and understood that the levies that we do receive from our property taxes especially in our operations fund is not enough to cover our expenses and so what we have here that
023is shown are our actual expenses and our operation fund and what our operational fund with Levy was for that that fund and you can see that on average of those three years it's about a million dollars short and so how do we fill that Gap you fill it in one of two ways we transfer money from education fund to operation fund to fill that Gap or we have to take on some bonding or borrowing to cover things especially if we have long-term projects or more expensive projects on the horizon this just gives you a 24-year perspective on where Bond rates have been we are still in a historically low Market we just finalized our 2023 bonds at just over a 3.5 percent rate so that was pretty good so when we look at what we're
024advertising for our levies I I have in the left side just kind of what we did in 2023 as a comparison and then in 2024 we are advertising that column there uh our debt service will probably change a little bit it'll be on a lower end uh but that is like something we've used to fill in for the time being because we weren't sure where we would come out with the uh the closing of the bonds and so we will be advertising a dollar 34 tax rate however when it all shakes out we will be in that dollar 10 tax rate uh Market with our debt service probably being around 59 cents and our operations fund being around 51 cents um for a total of a dollar ten for the 2024 budget per year our
025next board meeting will then be our budget hearing meeting well we'll kind of compile everything that we've went over the past couple months into a little presentation and then we will have our budget adoption for the following board meeting in October any questions with that it's a rationale west side behind that limiting growth quotient so I imagine to keep the max rates lower so then the property taxes are lower would you agree with that elections [Laughter] that's my impression any other questions no so with that then I just ask that you give us the permission to advertise that in our form three so that we can put that on the dlgf website for our upcoming funding here second then all right motion 104 in a second all in favor say aye all right all right
026we're moving on to what we're going to refer to as a preliminary determination hearing the first one if you're there with me I'm going to read some of this the next item on the agenda is for the board to hold a preliminary hearing on the proposed construction project after a presentation by the administration in your its advisors it'll be an opportunity for you as a public to make comments about the project the notice of this preliminary determination hearing was published as legally required in the Lopez Plain Dealer so at this time I will ask that uh Chris and whoever might explain once again the purpose of a hearing yes so pursuant to Indiana code 6-1.1-20-3.5 the school corporation must hold two public hearings and adopt a resolution to preliminary determined to issue bonds or enter
027a lease agreement for a project which has a total project cost in excess of certain thresholds these public hearings are the very beginning of this legal process I failed to mention after we go through the presentation anyone that would like to speak about this is that's free to speak um we will now hear from Mr and Mr Keith Williams started yeah so we've had several work sessions and a few meetings to discuss our options in relation to Sharp Creek the board had voted to pursue I believe it was option three which was looking at moving the third and fifth grade grade levels to Northfield while also adding on a cafeteria space at Ultra North Elementary and this is all in relationship to our continued strategic plan obviously a strategic plan number four which deals with
028facilities efficiencies and items like that so we talked about it many many times and to support the determination and there are no Graphics like this to confirm correct right right um as well um I brought some backup in case it's the same plans you've seen uh very minor revisions to help Dave with some estimating this last time to confirm numbers uh I can give a little more detail Christmas description is about as great as I was going to give but as far as sizes or sport footages if that helps um but but at Northfield the existing CTE program space on the northwest side of the building would be removed that's where the elementary Edition would go grades three through five and then we on the south west corner of the building extend the corridor and
029create two larger classroom spaces for CTE to live that's the basics of the project and then Chris Merchant the cafeteria Edition be on the west side of the gym at Metro North extend that Corridor to the west to allow students to get there dedicated cafeteria space very simple Edition size for the school Dave do you have anything to add to that ever um no other than along the way as we've been having our meetings and looking at the different options a couple of different times we've been doing some high-level costs estimating uh to give the school system an ideal on the value of this project I think the last I didn't bring a copy with me so I'm going off memory um I think the last estimate we did it was inclusive of not only
030our costs um but um soft costs and design piece and everything was around a 33 million dollar number um so that that was the last estimate we did and that included a little bit of a chiller boiler upgrade at Northfield to accommodate what we think might be a potential need or additional capacity we're going to need to provide heating and cooling for the additional square footage that would be added to the building hmm any questions no appreciate working with the United States process so far they came from here we'll now hear from stifle [Music] sometimes it would grow yes Jim's going to tell us about the proposed project and how it'll be financed as well as the information about the effect on typical property taxes thank you with that introduction I will try to keep
031all city and towns made out of my business I'll put it on the next slide so we want to start with your operations fund we're looking at your total tax just as the budget it was introduced we're going to look at your total tax rate the operations fund you can see that with the a b growth it's pushed down your tax rate for operations fund and then with the maximum growth quotient we do figure that in there in our modeling at that four percent where we were anticipating five percent in our prior models so that's changed that little dip and then starting the uh 30 in 2012 we start to assume zero assessed value growth at that point but in the operations we're also just holding the backstroke cursor we're only at five percent at
032that point assuming that the legislature doesn't renew their hold on that that we give back to someone of a normal World quotient there we move to the next slide we want to add our current debt service rate so this includes the 2023 everything you've done up to that point and you'll see that pushes us up a little over 70 cents we go to the next slide forward the bonds we just sold um fit right in here uh that was the 9 million 955 000 that we just sold we're closing now is October 3rd and you'll see that that brings that tax rate up to that dollar 10 that Chris just spoke about in your budget as a total tax rate and you'll see that we paid those off very quickly to leave flexibility for this
033project and other Deeds we go to the next slide this is what we propose a 39 million dollar bond issue again that's a very conservative number for what you've just heard from The Architects and construction managers so we're trying to still stay conservative so we're estimating no more than a 30 minute 9 million dollar bond issue staying completely within that dollar ten total tax rate we're structured it right now with the idea that we would hold that rate for a couple years and leave flexibility for other needs you may have um that's the way this is presented to the extent no other needs were were to materialize most schools always have needs but to the extent we could always shorten the payments and close that Gap but right now so the best in working with
034the administration to leave that future flexibility in there all stayed within that dollar 10 tax rate that will be established this coming year from that that 39 million we would just State cost of insurance and if you recall cost of issuance or the attorney's fees underwriting fees that's selling the bonds rating costs um Title Insurance any of the things that happen above and beyond the brick and mortar and construction soft costs uh we estimate it does be a little over 000 leaving you about 38.4 million of brick and mortar and construction Hearts off cost to go towards the project there are a few items that as you proceed will be in your final resolution after your next hearing and I want to highlight those the first three are what I just covered that's the um
035the breakdown of the costs next we always have to advertise the maximum interest rate my model is on based on an average of five percent but those rates because we have short-term long-term range up to six percent as a worst case number based on that we have to put our estimated maximum interest cost we show that at twenty two and a half million dollars that again is based on that uh five percent average it has the bottom we just sold that they were three-year bonds the average rate was just around three and a half percent however the one the two-year Bond rates are higher than the 20 year bond rates right now so we're still in that 3 three to three and three quarter range for a 20-year bond issue so again we've got a
036pretty good cushion in there and that 22 and a half million dollar interest number maximum term 22 years if you remember last time we could only sell bonds for 20 years for more than 20 years but we advertise the least slightly longer in case there are delays we don't have to go back through the lease process so the lease is in place however the lease term once we sell bonds that lease will cease at the time the bonds are paid off so we advertise the lease a little longer to give us that flexibility our maximum annual release payments are the most we would see in any given year and again round it up and conservative because with all of the assessed value fluctuations we want enough payment there that if you have another strong year
037in the year that this first payment comes on we need to have enough room in that pavement to try to protect your tax rate again those will all pair back down to exactly where the bonds are sold at so that mat when I say six million it's not six million for 20 years and you remember that chart we have high payments in those first two years and then it lowers for the remaining years those will all come down to the actual number of when and if bonds are sold and then we have the maximum tax impact of that uh it's 37 cents on its own but because we're looking at the impact with other debt coming off and structured in around return payment we're looking at zero net increase next slide a couple other things
038we do have to publish your current debt service Levy this is representative 23 Levy that's a million 514 current debt rate is your 2023 rate of 1766 cents um your there are a couple ratios that have to be included and I think we shared those in our previous hearings but these are all adjusted so the first one is your total debt payments including any projected payments divided by your current assessed value and that comes in at 0.61 percent small and that's a low number as we look at it Statewide and nationally the the ratio that's more important to the bond market is taking your outstanding debt including the proposed new debt and any outstanding debt of any of your underlying or overlapping tax taxing districts divided by assessed value and that's kind of giving the
039market a ratio of your debt to your your value and that comes in at 5.42 at today's assessed value that is what I would fits in that low to moderate range it's not on the completely low but still the very low to moderate and as far as your peers and Nationwide buyers of your bonds very attractive number uh with the broader markets this legislature asks for but to me this is one real number that they've asked for that means something um and then finally we do have to publish uh 10 years of the estimated Debt Service tax levy and tax rate going forward with this model and you'll see that we do show The Debt Service rate jumping just a little bit in the Years 24 and 25 and then come working its way down
040but because we're incorporating this in and around your total tax rate we have that tax rate going up a little in debt in the places where your operations has come down so that's why that looks that way but that is this flat outer requirement that we must publish that table as part of this requirement at this point now literally do I have another side no okay there's another slab it's not yours yeah okay I'm sure I'll mispronounce something there but so um at this point I'll turn back on you but these are that this is the same presentation that we'll use in your next hearing unless there's something that comes up that you you need to change or modify but this lays out everything that will be included in the resolution you're considered next week
041questions again I guess I have a couple so our bond rating stated double A Plus or right so that'll help along with the financial indicators to make it a yes attractive interest rate for us yes you're a double A Plus over a plus the double A Plus represents the state support of your debt and the a plus represents your underlying credit you stayed right where you were I believe you moved up a little bit from the standpoint of having a very strong balances but not enough to move to the next rating level and part of that's dictated by uh other social economic uh local environment not just the school district but you're still very strong and well above above the average in Indiana or in the you know as far as ratings for schools you
042know that's good news because I guess my second last question is when you're figuring that half a million dollar expense for issuance how is that figured it's not a percentage because you don't know the billable hours for lawyers yeah so so underwriting fee so an underwriting fees which is what you pay us uh are a combination of a fixed um that's not a fixed fee it's three quarters of the fee would probably be going to paying our Brokers so we have to have enough fee in there to get Brokers to look at your bonds against other bonds of the market and then the other part is a management fee for what I do and then there's a risk portion of that so that one's all a variable based on a percentage of the bondage attorneys
043fees are uh there are hourly but on the bottom on the bond Council side typically they Quote us a flat fee and they keep track of their internal hours but it's a flat fee local attorneys are all different some are on retainers others are per deal and we try to use an estimate in talking to Josh and others trying to get those offices in the rating agencies they Quote us a fee and that's typically based on the type of credit not your rating but the type of underlying security and that is a fee based on size so again that variable cost title work is based on its size trustees are based on a fee for their services so it's a combination of those that we tried to do a conservative estimate not knowing what you
044said where we are today we want to end up high and bring that down and so forth your firm brings all those costs together and you summarize yes okay yeah and with your last bond issue as a matter of fact I forgot a page for Chris we have that delineated as part of that cost of issuance so Chris has that and bills come in and offset right now I have a rough scratch sheet of all these pieces to get to that number but as we get closer before Bond sales we actually get the final quotes from everybody where are you today what's your actual numbers what kind of reimbursables do you have Etc so we know all of those numbers down very close you just push these bond issuances out into the public Marketplace or
045does somebody try and Shop them for the lowest interest cost yeah so our our stifle has a full National group of institutional salesmen and then we have retail salesman or Brokers throughout the nation so every year bond issue every maturity so every six months we have bonds maturity and I don't know if it's easier to look at this last deal we did those three years so we had six different maturities we would have broker selling those and looking for buyers at each maturity so it's not like going to a bank or one buyer that says I want to buy this entire package and here's what I'll do for them on a 20-year bond issue we will have 40 or so different maturities and we have different buyers and the one to three year range we
046have buyers that like the three to five the big insurance companies really want the 15 to 20 year range or the 10 to 15 it all varies the market changes um there's also very we have buyers by size so if you have some small maturities smaller maturities up front on on our last issue some of those maturities may not have as much interest so we have to invest with the rates a little bit and work hard there but then as an example say we have maturity of three million per maturity that brings in a whole other set of buyers and so the more buyers we can get in at every maturity the more competitive that rate is and so we get to push those against each other but it is truly a process of every
047single maturity and finding different tier buyers for different pieces rather than one buyer that has to absorb everything and we believe that in it in and day out that type of process and what we call underwriting Bonds in the public market yes they're being sold public but they're also being so very definitively at different levels brings that rate down versus finding one buyer for a project yes that answers my question I guess was is somebody working on our behalf to make sure that the broadcast is this economical as possible well my goal is to do that so you want me back but yes but but ultimately I try to keep track of that I'm representing you guys on a stifle side now my buyers the Brokers want you to pay as higher rate as you
048can pay because it's a lot easier for them to sell bonds so that's where our underwriter fits in the middle and I'm pushing lowest rate they're pushing higher and somewhere in between supply and demand Works its magic based on that underwriter absorbing all that and making sure that every maturity has people looking at it and people calling on it pre-marketing makes a difference we also will as your bond issue gets closer recovering to fruition we start pre-marketing your bonds so buyers on the day we sold bonds isn't the first day they've looked at your deal they they know your deal is coming they know you know the people that don't know work Wabash Indiana have to be contacted people in San Francisco need to be reminded this is the Heartland these people pay their bills
049etc etc people in Indianapolis or Chicago know Wabash and it's a different sales pitch but it's the idea that we've got to get out in front of people early because any given day today we're in parking before we come to schools there are four deals in Indiana that sold today you want to make sure somebody's looked at your deal rather than it showing up on their stack this morning and they haven't made a decision so there's a lot to go in in there we hope we do a very a very good job at that you know I think you do I appreciate it no this pair just watching do HR now I stumbled through that yeah all right well now I'll open it for public hearing if you have a comment about as a board
050or willing to listen gain information if not I'd like to thank you for listening to all this you know I learned something I appreciate it uh please note this is just the first step in the legal process no boy action is legally required of this hearing but credit is hearing solely to Pure public comment board will continue to work with Administration and its professionals to look for efficiencies to conserve tax dollars on meeting our educational needs the board will hold a second public Hearing in this boardroom on September the 26th at 6 pm appreciate it all right thank you for all that participating in that it's welcome to stay inside all right next time up is human resources it's very few this evening we have Deb Elliott paraprofessional at Shark Creek is designing to transfer
051we are Kathy Lyons transferring from cook at Northfield to a paraprofessional position at Shark Creek and Mark Smith transferring from custodian to Ed custodian at Southwood High School now is affected handball I moved to the hotel all in favor of approval say aye all right all right thank you anything tonight from Heartland monthly meeting either next week Mr P Baker superintendent yeah I just have a couple of things I want to celebrate again this might could have been in a celebration and recognition of Staff but uh on August 24th you know that we had our first volleyball game at Southwood on our new gym floor and it was actually worked out very nicely that uh we also celebrate Tom Pinnacle being inducted into the Indiana high school volleyball coaches association so with over 800 wins
052coach Pinnacle ranks in the top five of all-time Indiana volleyball history so a lot of a lot of fun that night so um Mrs Lewis can share more if she wants but it was a really nice evening a lot of people thought they were there because of the gym floor probably had some people there because of Jim Ford but a lot more of it was because of the celebration of Coach clinical also time does why we're already past the midterms for grinning period for the first nine weeks so we're in the second half of the first nine weeks also on Friday we had a great day with a lot of professional development with different different employee groups but obviously the teachers did a lot with the state standards I read I learned changes and blueprints
053and resources nurses and codesodians had some various meetings in the morning and in the afternoon we had a great uh presentation To Us by Thomas Blackwell who was once again on target going along with our admission statement of inspiring our staff so we've Inspire our students and so it was really really neat though we don't do that very often as far as having all of our staff members in one room but we did I did have a selfie done and I was in the self at first because I wasn't working out the Thomas Blackwood did a selfie we were going to push that out but unfortunately it was very blurry for all everybody else so his picture was great but everybody else looked like a little worried people here and there also hadn't done just
054for fun too I on the rolling parade that was Saturday they actually had the retired teachers as a grand Marshals and so I had fun driving a activity bus unfortunately with all the safety protocol just like we talked about with Kyle you cannot stick your head head out of those windows anymore because it only goes so you can't stick your head out but they try to throw candy out and they did that and that was a lot of fun so and there was some teachers from all over not just from MSDS so that was neat to see all them but we had MSC teachers too and that was a lot of fun and also um just kind of announced that uh class reunions sometimes asked for different tours of the building uh so gave a
055tour uh Friday night to the class of 68. that was 55 years and then Saturday morning the class of 78 45 years and so if any classes are interested in tours I love to do that principals can do that also but it's always fun to hear them and really when you do the tour you have to be very very patient because they haven't seen each other for 55 years and sometimes they just want to talk all the time so that's why we have the attention room so we put them in there that's all good so that's all I have for tonight a lot of great things happen at MSD and um love being a part of it all right thank you Mr King favorites that was arriving tonight yes I think it's fair to share
056this the newest MSD member arrived about an hour ago chance of a pilot oh all right Nate and Chloe yep they both uh Chloe is a social worker at Metro North Elementary and Nate is teacher at White's Junior Senior High School so now we have another one in our family that's great thank you for sharing that I knew that that was that was close yeah [Laughter] well thank you for sharing that uh anything to present from Mr Drake uh no okay I think he found some stuff over I don't know if you saw it I just gave it a quick over and we got testing scores sent to us today well what that was that was a newsletter um that was a newsletter from Laura about a lot of different things but that also included
057a lot of test scores appreciate the information all right first item new business is school Improvement plans Northfield flights Southwood junior senior highs and we're going to go in that order this time my selected that order because uh just because I did so I guess it's by seniority so seniority gets to go first as far as uh principal here at MSD so all right Mr Snyder you're up all right rather than going through all 30 pages after the other long presentations we have two main goals in this plan though and as I look at the plan everything that falls under these two angles which is academics and environment and so academics like the scores that you just talked about with uh that attendant Laura sent out not that every kid's a test score they're way
058more than that but that's what we have the gauge and measure ourselves so we look at it and compare ourselves with surrounding districts and the state and so I learned for sixth through eighth grade and PSATs 18 for sophomores and juniors along with some nwea in between there but one thing that um we're very happy with his graduation rate and success after graduation so one thing that Northfield sometimes is a little lower on we're pretty good but because we do have the right room I've talked to you all before we have some people graduate on a non-diploma track or their severe needs students that sometimes affect that our graduation rate for this 2023 class will be 96.8 which is still pretty darn good so we're proud of that and then other success after graduation everything
059in the state's doing is rolling over to this thing called Indiana uh GPS or graduates preparing to succeed or something like that and so we're trying to change some of our school Improvement plan to that and on that site it says the state average for enrollment or employment after graduation is 85 percent so you look at our graduates either going to college trade school or working 98 percent of our graduates are either in college or working or enlisting in the military or doing something and if the state average is 85 percent 98 sounds pretty good to me so that was something that um we looked at that we were very happy about because one thing that we aren't always we try to be at the state average on everything our SAT scores are right there
060we'd like for them to be hired but it's hard to motivate Juniors and seniors that are planning on going right to the workforce to get a great score on an sap and in our community here we encourage them but as you all know living is working around here not all of our kids really care that much about their SAT score that's just the bottom line um we get them try to encourage them we're close to the state average I'm talking just a percent or two away but what means more to me is when the state's saying 98 of our graduates are moving on and being successful in other things and so that was a number the other thing is uh environment so that's pretty much the academic piece and you can ask any questions about
061that if you haven't an environment we're trying to make Northfield a safe place and a fun place just to go to school and be every day bottom line be accessible to parents be accessible to families answer their questions and that's something we really work on honoring those kids for positive Norse honors paying attention being responsive to parents that call student council and Key Club planning on Homecoming coming up here in a couple weeks and fun things for the kids to do that week in regards to homecoming and just making that school environment and experience the best it can be the last thing that goes into all that environment and academics is attendance and that's something the state change I'm used to just looking at straight attendees of course attendance for kids to do well they
062got to be there but I'm used to just looking at a straight percent attendance which we've always been around 96 to 98 well if you look on that Indiana public website everybody can see the state average is 60 percent and the Northfield average is 61 percent well what they're doing is the state's calculating that now saying the number of kids that miss 10 or less days so what it's saying is 61 of our kids are missing less than 10 days a year that means we have you know 40 39 missing 10 or more days so that's something we're really paying attention to that's been a problem to be honest with you for a lot of the schools ever since the pandemic but a few of them that just want to stay home and that's a
063possible battle but that's part of school Improvement that's a big part of it so that's the main things we're focusing on in the Northfield school Improvement plan if you have any questions all right thank you Mr Schneider okay Mr we give it yeah thank you Mr key favor uh I think everybody knows but just for clarity even though the white Junior Senior High School is one high school we really have two pieces of our school so there's a residential part and then there's the bridge part that it all falls into the same high school and so what that means for our school Improvement plan is that while we have the same goals some of the strategies are just going to be a little bit different so our overall graduation rate so this graduation rate again
064this is both Bridge students and the kids that are with us residentially uh has been incrementally increasing the last several years and we just missed this is nothing compared to Southwood or field but we just missed 60 this past year was like 59.7 we really want to get that to um why do we pick 70 67 66 once we break that threshold the state will take us out of a school we're like in a special status not in a good way um of high schools around the state because our graduation rate is so low so but once we can get the 67 that takes us out of a certain type of category certainly we'd like to do better than that but just in terms of our historical Trend getting to 67 percent of our graduation
065rate would be a significant Improvement we also want to work on our intended trait which honestly this will also and long-term impact the evaluation rate and most of this is going to happen on the bridge cycle you might think well residentially that your kids come to school yes they do that's a very good attendance rate residential but what happens with Ridge because it's a credit recovery program uh and it's it's full of students that historically have not had a good track record of attending school and doing well in school those are the students we try to specialize in but one of the things that bridge staff has been doing very well for the last couple of years is making sure those students are engaged and so they have a they've implemented a process where the
066students not engaged they're contacting them via email or phone call if that if they're not engaged long enough they will eventually remove them from the roles that a lot of times what happens those kids don't re-enroll anywhere else and so they become job balanced reverse the graduation rate but it's still the right thing to do to accept these kids we are a school of Last Resort but one of the things bridge is doing to impact attendance is to not that they weren't doing this before but even more intentionally following up with kids that aren't engaged on a regular basis try to re-engage them and hopefully create a little bit of success and keep them involved and appropriate so we're really pleased about the progress we're making uh I did know that at the time you
067wanted to be here tonight not that she was going to speak but she didn't learn just this evening but her grandfather pray about it was 100 years old passed away today but actually Tony it's no big deal we got to cover but we're pleased with the progress we're making but again we really are working to give that 67 threshold okay thank you Mr mcdivitt we'll move on to Southwood Mrs Lewis all right so our first I'm very pleased with how cohesive that sixth or 8th grade group has become I think it really helped with sixth grade moving to the Bell scheduled at September 12th there's no one they've integrated very well this second year and so looking at our sixth through 8th grade team focus is going to be on improving those I learned math
068and Ela scores and there's always room for improvement looking at this year's scores we really would like to see a goal of at least 50 percent of our sixth or 8th graders meeting that adequate growth status and right now I'm just looking at the data that was coming in from last year or some of the 8th graders of mine were about 46 in ela and about 31 in math and our sixth grade right now is about 69 in ela and 49 in math overall prevention Proficiency in math is only 35 so we have a lot of work to do in math Ela was a little bit stronger right about 45 percent so looking at what we can do with that sixth through eighth grade team we've started to restructure our home run our nighttime a
069little bit different we've limited clubs and organizations to meet only on Mondays and Fridays that allow us to save through Thursday to focus on interventions academics our homeroom teachers I'm using the phrase or the term accountability partner so our home runs are very small like 10 to 15 students per teacher and so that really allows that teacher to come in build that relationship with the students get to know that student and then come alongside them as accountability partner to stay on top of them if they're on that F list that comes out every week then they can come alongside them to guide them in the direction they need to go or help facilitate giving to the teacher that they need to during the week so that we can improve that and then I'll also be
070working with our six through eighth grade teachers during professional development and then morning meetings to start facilitating how do we use the data because a big hurdle for our teachers is we've got this data we don't know what to do with it you know we can look at it but we don't really know how to take it from that step that we've we've received it and move it into something applicable that we can do with our students and really start to Target groups of students and work with them on that remediation staff so that's what's coming ahead with our Junior High team starting next month we also are going to focus on attention attendance and graduation rates there's always room for improvement I would love to see us meet that 100 graduation rate this year
071not quite sure if we're going to get there but that is our goal um attendance we have shifted in our revamping our PBIS program a little bit so that we can have more proactive positive interventions for our students to try to get them to be present in the school we have the handful of students that struggle to get to school but we've been very proactive so far this year a lot of thanks to Mrs Johnson and SRO ladybirdos for really stepping up and taking hold of that to to commit that and provide um before it gets to be too much of a problem for our students also I I like to think of this year as a year preparation looking ahead academic wise I would love to see us start moving to become stem certified
072we have some fantastic teachers on our staff right now um who really can lead the way with this they're already doing incredible things in our classrooms with this this is a two three year process it's very rigorous but I think we can start that conversation this year with our teachers uh building a live to get that process ready so that we can really Implement that and do what we need to do full steam next year the other area that is an area of preparation for this year Headed into next year is taking a look at what our course offerings are we really need to have something in-house as far as Career and Technical education we have the staff in-house the programming in my opinion is just not quite where it needs to be in order
073to offer those Pathways in-house so um we need to give our students as many academic options as possible and we need to have that CT component in-house as well as industry certification so just a couple areas where you can start looking at it next year when we start next month looking to what we're going to offer as far as courses and we at Southwest are going to be in a very unique position um coming up where we're going to have some flexibility with our staffing with some potential retirements that we can start to use that to our advantage with your Staffing Within in order to offer and provide our students so thank you very much Mrs Lewis and so I would just ask that you approve these we will come back next meeting to have
074the elementary come but I'd ask that we have a motion to approve through school Improvement plans all right thank you a lot of work we have a second item of business recommendation to approve Joel Martin as principal at Shark Creek Elementary is a district school safety specialist Yeah so basically according to Indiana code 10-21-19 we have to designate a school safety specialist for the district that is not um a school resource office and so I did send to you a memo basically just outlining some of that and some of the chance that he will complete but also complete with a lot of help from our school resource officers other principals and other school safety Specialists so I just ask that you approve him as our district school safety specialists all in favor of approval say
075aye all right third item is the overnight camping trip for Shark Creek fourth graders to Camp Tecumseh Brookstone that would be the fifth and sixth of next month so [Music] all in favor of approval say aye all right last item this evening is recommendation to prove the extended field trip for Northfield FFA to attend National FFA convention and that would be the third of November do you know where that is usually thank you to moved exactly all in favor say aye that's the last of Independence in the eyes on the board of always good a little bit too quickly got first reading a board policy 42 30. yeah this is a real real easy one so 4230 seclusion restraint the only thing that wasn't in this document that needs to be updated and we actually
076did receive some information that said that we actually had a very very good policy but we did not have a time frame so the only thing that's changed is this paragraph as you can see highlighted in just really 24 hours of parent our Guardian must be notified of use of a physical restraint and or isolated time out with their student within 24 hours of the incident and so that is the reasonable time that we have put and typically that's already happened we did not have a 24 hour 10 there so that's the only change there's no vote tonight put on the second reading on this next meeting you can go to like that public comment all right it's Rewards