001Full House I appreciate you coming after the Pledge of Allegiance we really will have a moment of prayer if you remain standing appreciated 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 Lord Jesus thank you thank you for our schools in Wabash County I just ask that we may open our eyes our eyes of our heart that we might see you to know you to be able to help us in all of this fill our schools with your love and compassion where no student not any student will be going alone rejected her loss they just ask that you might also make us your physical presence in the hallways to accomplish this
002so we'll be there in classroom in the offices on the ball fields in the gyms just to appreciate your ability to work through us and give you the praise give us wisdom in our decisions and all this I ask and wonder and the power of your precious name amen amen future future board meetings will be May the 23rd and then we move all the way to June the 13th and then all the way to July the 11th so we have some weeks in there that we miss because of the summer revisions on the agenda tonight are just small addition to an addition basically to the field trips and also to donations we'll move into donations right now we have a 500 donation from Aaron and just to ollie the Northfield junior high chair we also
003have a 150 donation from Oasis Baptist Church in Abdi for Northfield lunch account previously in the last board meeting I wanted to clarify a couple of things on donations we had a 500 donation from gimmon law office and that was for Southwood Elementary robotics we also had 224 dollar donation approved from Rich Valley tenderloin announced for Northfield baseball and the last one was a thousand dollar donation from renbarger farms and that went to Shark Creek robotics so I'll take a motion on the first two new ones that need approval so a second all in favor all right opposed really appreciate the donations Spotlight the theme all right we have a couple so I would like to have Mrs Campbell come forward and this is Augustine so this is always a fun time to do the
004spotlight and so today we're going to Spotlight um Melissa um look at this Michelle Campbell and also parent uh Miss Janet if you can go ahead and just share a little bit about uh I have it here just in case too okay all right well that's fine okay I've had the honor of being here today to start like Michelle Campbell I started working with Michelle a few years ago when I took over as kids hope director for the north schools I knew immediately that there was something special about Michelle when almost every time I was in the office a child would come in and they would go straight to her and give her a hug I have not been in a school where I've seen an administrative assistant that is so low when our daughter
005Indiana started kindergarten this year at Mentor North my appreciation for Michelle excuse me only group and he was very anxious to start school and those first few weeks it was difficult for her to even get in the doors that changed when Mrs Campbell started walking her down to class she let Andy know that she was not alone and she would be safe in school she made the world of difference for Andy and our family and I'm so thankful for her all right let's give her a round of applause and so oh we haven't finished up here and so again of course First Farmers Bank and Trust is the one that actually helps us with this and so we have a card for you it's forty dollars to redeem at our online store so you can
006buy any kind of prepare what you want and before we go on though Mrs Moore would you like to share anything else I will um um Mrs Campbell is exactly what you want greeting your parents each and every day from the moment she comes into the building so way after she leaves for the day she has the interests of our students and Seth at heart and everything she does um it's choosing an incredible Administrative Assistant um but she embodies the mission of our district and we are very fortunate to have you every day so thank you and I would I would agree to that you know sometimes when I walk in those same things happen all the time just appreciate you very much very much and Mr I appreciate you though too with doing the
007kids hope a very great program and um are you still doing is that something you're still doing right yeah and so that's kind of an added bonus here when we're talking about things uh having kids hope in our in our schools is excellent it's just been my right hand woman for that for sure so again congratulations thank you for coming thank you and I have one others and of course you are welcome to stay but um most of the time people have other things they want to get to so you're welcome to lead too so I'll give you I mean you're going to miss a lot of things I'll watch it online great come back that's good so the other one we have tonight they were unable to come but I want to uh just
008Spotlight in a Bobby shawl and I will read that to you here real quickly and then we'll go on if I can find wow okay Southwest Junior Senior High School Food Service staff Bobby Shaw was nominated by grandmother Linda Reynolds these words were shared she said from the students I'm here she is fun and a great salad bar lunch lady I hear how she decorates the salad bar and enjoys her job and most of the kids so we do want to congratulate Bobby and thanks again to the grandmother has learned about that because we do allow anyone in our community to go ahead and Spotlight one of our staff members so this is for Bobby Shaw I've already talked to her she was unable to come tonight and so I will give this to her
009later so I just wanted to stop by um foreign next we'll just continue on with our school recognitions if that's okay and we'll start with Mrs Moore perfect um so last night we had a ton of artists from MSC and neighboring districts honored at the Honeywell Center for our spring art show and banner contest and it's just always exciting for that recognition for our art teachers as well as kids and their artwork so from Metro North to me Arendale Laughlin Mass Abigail Molin Brantley bit sir Abby Grossman Garrett Lawrence Leah scheidler Holden stalker miloscope Braxton Bristol Allison lavellet Kinley Merrick Easton Olinger Skyler Sloan Meredith Williams Natalie black Colby Hopper Lily long Serenity McDermott and then Rowan Perez were all recognized for their artwork we also had three Banner winners just like they did in
010the winter with the banners around Honeywell Center they do this for spring and summer and our three Banner winners were I'm gonna make sure I get the right ones Leah scheidler and kindergarten Braxton Bristol and then Rowan Perez and then Garrett Lorenz was the elementary best of show winner so I'm just pretty exciting and it's wonderful to honor them as well as Mrs Gray for the work that they do um are a little more preschool and our little Knights preschool and the last month were recognized for achieving level three house quality which recognizes you know our commitment to ensuring high quality Early Education learning experiences and providing a safe loving caring environment um there's a lot of paperwork that goes with that level three and so I'm just very appreciative appreciative of our little nights
011and little more staff for making sure that we have everything we need for that site visit is a piece of cake where they come in and look at our classrooms and see the awesomeness that happens it's the bucket of paperwork um that is a little tedious but completely worth it because it allows our families to apply for on my way Pre-K tuition support as well as the ccdf vouchers so um also in the month of April and May our little nights had their um llep visit which is just our licensing site visit and they pass that with flying colors as we need that they could so I'm just super appreciative about just teachers and support staff members because it takes a lot of extra time on their hands um the last thing and it has
012really nothing to do about Metro North but just about MSD and it's our robotics team and you know we have five six six six okay wrong were there four in Shark Creek one in south or the one in Northville uh there were six I can be wrong um I probably miscounted on a Sharp Creek team and I apologize we had more than a handful of MSU robotics team traveled to Dallas for the Vex world and it's an exciting time for the kids and um exciting and exhausting time for the parents but the amount of time that those coaches put in to make sure that that experience it's phenomenal I can't even begin to imagine um and those coaches just do it and make it look so simple and easy you know from making sure parents
013know what time to be have their kids ready what shirt their kids need to be wearing um what time to be where when to queue when to be on this stage or that stage it they have it down and just do an amazing job of communicating that to students and to parents and I'm in all of that um because you know just with my little second graders getting them to a Saturday competition it's not an easy task and they're just making sure that it runs very smoothly so you know as a administrator and as a parent of one of the kids on those scenes just kudos to them because it's amazing in a great it's great in existence all right thank you and I have a few more so it has been our culture here
014to go ahead and share a lot of different things with recognitions and spotlights and things like that and so sometimes I have people come to me and say how can I recognize it I said well we can recognize by doing this during a school board meeting so I had a parent Kayla Paul who wanted to recognize bus driver Katie Arwood she's always noticing when her daughter um her daughter the little things that are noticed are important thank you she does a good job with the kids and so just want to recognize that and Melissa ball our transportation director will be coming up later but she knows all the great work that they do and all the things that she does to help lead that the transportation department also I'd like to go ahead and share
015with you some other things I've learned and actually Mrs Lawrence the one that actually shared this with me but I thought it'd be great for all of you to hear so we had a Northfield graduate uh not Norfolk I'm sorry south of graduate Logan Arnold who actually won the John R Emmons award for outstanding seniors at Ball State University and so if you remember the Evans name a past president this award or annual award name for former University President John R Emmons goes to the most outstanding senior most outstanding not outstanding but most outstanding senior for contributions to the university the recipient's names there's one of two so just one of two are engraved on a permanent plaque that is in the LA fittinger Student Center alumni Lounge so a great honor to for one
016of our graduates at Ball State University and there are also a lot of other students that do great jobs there too um and I would like to at this time quickly share with you a video and I'll talk about it first a little bit so our art Department Adams Weeble at Northfield um he'll share a little bit about in this video but the reason why we're doing this is we do have an internship Mrs Johnson who's been the internship teacher is now our assistant principal at Southwood but she also has connected a lot of people um into our community as far as having internships and one of them was with our own Laura Laney Bartles our director of communication Community engagement Lily Hobbs and so Lily Hobbs has been working on this video to learn
017a lot about the specifics of the video so I just want to just show this to you it's about 3 minutes and 42 seconds but I think it's very very worth the time you know I mean popcorn I apologize for that but I think you'll enjoy this if I can get everything at first watching that sorry it's okay so um it's eight years and Peru and myself Visual Arts here at Northfield Junior Senior High School um I thought I taught the last eight years at Peru and this is my third year here what made me fall over the park I always like being around people I was really good at math I was always really good at learning I used some sugar kids in high school with mathematics so I always know I wanted to
018be a teacher [Music] but when I had my high school art teacher Mr Lauer he told me I need to I ain't going to teach America it's like I'd be aware of if I didn't even what inspires me to take students is like the light bulb moment who get a lot of them here just like we might have kids in there taking art before take apart because they're required to to get into your account to get a nice little diploma they can come in here and then some of the kids it just clicks they get really really good at it I'm a junior this year doing collect at the end of this freshman year at least one national awards he just won a new Jordan out of Wayne University where they actually paid money and
019he was literally just taking part of it because it was required and now he actually just came back from college visit he was also the person where he wants to pursuer here we encourage free thinking creative thinking and problem solving and there are the way are employment opportunities are going in our culture nowadays as we like anything freely and creatively problem solved versus black and white a b c you're still more crazy than that we offer tons of opportunities supported visualized Department we offer 3D reducing sculpture we also offer a ton of two new classes withdrawing painting photography and Design next fall we will actually add AP 3D art design AP 2D art design and APK drawing so that's worth three credit hours for the college class so we're going back here I'm also a
020very very competitive person so we enter as many shows as possible we enter the Wabash County show and our Banner competition the inner Scholastics and most years we win something nationally or anything like recent uh we also enter several High School student-led art exhibitions at universities we just got done with one at Women's University we actually had best to show and tomorrow Legends next year we're going to throw another show again how you talk about just to get our students a little bit more experience get our hard work out there and make them out there and talk APR is not very commonly offered especially in a small community and I like the fact that I was going to put up and then I had students who were so involved in their art and I found
021love with art and clinical Center that they're like AJ I would really like to do anything so I went out and wrote a facilities for VIP classes and I already had a good time we offer as much as larger schools do I'm a well-rounded student I'm a practicing artists I can show you awards that went on Words and sculptures in one Awards and photographers Awards and Ceramics so we're not just this like oh he's just a Ceramics teacher you can Awards in every campus and the most well-rounded Fire Department in the area of a child who wants a well-rounded mounted address well my name is Adams wiggling with my teachers um but you can see it's just a great to see what they've done not just with the the heart department but also this is
022an internship also with our own director of communication and Community engagement of what she has taught Lily and Lily actually comes to our office and when she comes to our office she is not the students at norfield she is more of the professional she's dressed up and it's just really neat what they have done with that that program but also then highlighting just one of the programs that we have at MSD and this one was with the art I know Mr Zeebo is he was a little concerned that you know maybe some of this was a little too much over the top as far as all the competition part of it but it is a fact about how well they have been doing and you notice there are a lot of things that Mr Snyder
023will put on there as far as as far as all the awards that they have been winning and so it's good to have that competitive Spirit also he does some coaching and things like that so he brings that into the classroom it's really neat to see though how someone just takes art like he said just takes art for the credit but it kind of falls in love with it and now we'll be going to Ball State to be able to pursue that career in that and so that's great to know so I didn't read this earlier but Laura taught her Lily about the video creation this semester everything from crafting the vision script creation interviewing filming and even editing with Advanced software so it's really really great to see that thank Mrs Johnson too for
024continuing that on next year we'll be doing something different with that but we'll continue the internship so I have that and I believe um let me check and make sure that no other ones that someone put on here at the very end I think that's it for the recognitions so we can move on then all right so now I want to go ahead you want to introduce Mrs ball yeah so Melissa is our transportation director she does a great job and so she tried something new this year and I'll let her explain that and I want to steal her Thunder do you want me to stay here or you can stay there okay it's fine um so we've seen a few other schools do this around the state uh to test drive with us so
025we have been Dr and I have kind of been talking about for the last year excuse me a year or so and um we said we're doing it this year so April 22nd was the day we did it at norfield it was really a perfect setup there uh weather was uh it was okay but we we went we got through it we had um I'll read a little bit of what I have we had regular Rock drivers there to help we had everybody from experience of five years all the way to 40 plus years of being a Carla Gaines she's been doing this for quite a long time so she was there so we had a lot of good questions asked of these uh drivers and some good information uh the biggest thing everyone is
026sort of afraid of is how big that vehicle is so we they got to test that out we had them do a little pre-trip inspection just to kind of go around the bus to see what is there they did a small obstacle course and then we had a mock pick up a student so they used their lights and their stock arm we then had them go around Northfield to Sharp Creek and had them pull in like our buses normally do in the afternoon to do afternoon pickup to just feel what that's like to pull into a parking spot um and then they came back and we actually had them back into the spot where they um started and we had quite a few that were pretty excited afterwards and they're they're really amazed at how
027they said this wasn't as bad as I thought so um so I had about 10 CDL manuals that I got from the license branch I gave out all 10 and actually waited about three to four more so I had them go to the BMV and I've gotten back about five to six replies that they're on their way into getting everything accomplished so if we can get more than that my Hope was low so I'm actually super excited because we're going to have our trainer very busy this summer and that's exciting for him and for myself to get some more drivers so we have a couple people who are retirees um I even go to the next ones sorry Mike so there's our drivers who helped um it was a little chilly that morning but they
028got to warm up on their bus so we had like I said Carla and then Tom our trainer um Nikki prom is new to us this year and then Susie's been around for a while uh Cheryl Barton's been around um Juanita and then um Teresa Sears all great people to ask some questions also highly appreciated their help that day for sure um and then if you go to the next one there's one there's just a few of the obstacle course we had them go through um um yeah those are kids we picked up for the day so um but it worked out really well um it looked beautiful but it was mighty chilly that morning so uh I was just thankful no ring and it didn't hit until right at noon when we were done
029so we were we were very blessed with that um and just the people who came out like I said we had a fella who was getting ready to retire and he's very interested in having something to sort of fill his days maybe not anything permanent and we even have a couple of ladies who one is from California moving back this way and she had a house all of her stuff from California we just have to transfer over um and then we have a young mother who is interested in doing this to be on her schedule with her kids so um it was very like looking in the mirror 20 years ago I can't believe I can say that but she's in the same position I was when I very first started and I'm super excited
030to talk to her so um she's she actually contacted me today so she's pretty excited she's getting everything done so actually the funny thing about that one was she walked up and she used to ride Cheryl Barton and Cheryl said what are you doing here she's like well I'm gonna try it so now she's very interested though that was just a little full circle moment but it was a very exciting day and we do want to do another one next school year probably in the fall and we will try it Southwest just to kind of split it up and you know get some more interest out stuff maybe um so be looking for that how many people did you have attend we had um we had about 25 sign up that we had about 20
031to 22 attend we had a couple people who didn't even sign up happen to see us out there and they they stopped in and we're like come on in yeah we'll take you so I just Earl I want to say kudos to Melissa I mean this is all all her doing uh you know her and I have had conversations about recruitment because we know that many of our bus drivers are getting to that point where the retirement age and so we need to find replacements and Melissa has really stepped up to that challenge I think she's trying to do things that are getting people comfortable with driving a bus and making things as easy as possible because it it does take time and effort you know one of the other things that she has done
032is she's worked on making our area testing site for part of the testing process I don't know what it's a pre-service class that everyone has to do and it's hosted by the state it's a it's a theory portion of the CDL program and the state is who host that puts it on but other schools or other areas host the site for them to be able to do that and a lot of the places it's um Fort Wayne Muncie Kokomo so it's an hour away which isn't terrible but when you're going an hour that day and then you gotta go back the next day and back the next day in the back and kind of being so we're having one at Northfield at the end of May and we're going to try to do that again
033I've already talked contacted the state and you know try to do that again for next year so I said I appreciate all that Melissa's doing to help I'm just doing a great job so we cover all the costs right of applications yeah we cover all the costs as well it's reimbursement we reimburse them signed one bonus so we're still doing those things we've been doing those for a couple years now um you know we also encourage our staff our current staff that may be half the time to to do those before and after school routes to participate we actually have one school teacher that does that for us and we have some AIDs that are doing that as well and we encourage a lot of those staff to kind of fill in too if they
034can um get extra income that's right on top of it so besides Asylum too we also have the referral programs so thank you Melissa thank you thank you very much all right I'll go back to our agenda and Christian will go ahead and introduce yes so I have three wonderful managers one of them is actually a food service director as well um just to kind of give us an update it's probably been oh I would say almost probably pre-covered uh the last time that they came in and just kind of gave us an update on food service so I just asked them to come in and kind of share some things as far as what what is all involved and what they do to help provide meals for our students so thank you oh great
035I'm Becky Bradley I'm the business director slash Southland High School medic right now I've been doing this I hate the minute at the end of maybe 30 years I've done a manager for 23 the director for sale and I guess I was our first official resource director they hired so [Music] um I have three managers currently I have a Suzanne Bethel which is down here she's Southwood Elementary application manager she's been great to cook for three years manager for two years and I'll let these lovely ladies introduce themselves I'm Amanda Rhodes and I'm the manager at Northville High School I'm sure Creek Elementary and this I'm just finishing my ninth year and I'm Ashley Schaefer and I'm the manager at Metro North Elementary um this is going to be my second in a few months
036year finishing this school year as a manager and I started out actually as a sub and a dish room so [Music] then we go outside um currently we are serving about 500 breakfast a day and about 1300 lunch today but we don't have schools um a lot of people don't realize that there's a lot to menu planning we have a lot of paydays we have no patterns we have restrictions we have calorie ranges sodium ranges that rages did we have um six different sub vegetable groups we have to work into so all this has to work together with Wicked on the deal so if I get the calories right within the sodium is too high so we'll break down the sodium the calories are off so we try to work everything in that we can
037plus you have all these kids say well I don't like this but I like this you try to work that out so always try to change the video every month there's always somebody wanting changes seriously I'll get it all done did we change that on one so but we try to change the menu up we try to stay with those trends like we got the popcorn chicken today is one of our biggest days we have a Asian day where we answer you know since our pork Cheryl says um we got a lot of favorites right now um garcella marks ardal really good this year but it's by slowing down which it does every year but we're still trying to keep it going um on the ordering part when covet hit it was like a nightmare
038but we got through it we uh ordering is picking up now during code with probably half the stuff we tried to get in we couldn't get so we were running between schools trying to take borrow still being food but started this school year out I think is it about much better or maybe a couple items every time we order but things are much better now so thank God and I felt bad for her and my other manager that's not here because they were thrown in during coveted and they survived I remember Mike calling me a couple times [Music] but we did it so we can survive covered we can do anything um right now we're struggling with Staffing we've had them some days you'll see us castle with salad bar cancel this or that is
039because of staffing issues we currently have four openings we got three filled but not until it will fall and we still have one poster so we're really really trying to get everybody we got two of them on the side right now so I'm just gonna find that right here this summer we'll have the summer feed in June and this is Metro North Elementary this is more setting that up we're heading up these two lovely ladies and volunteer to do the food Portion so they'll be working the food cart um it's running the month of June and we'll leave Monday through Friday and we have breakfast at lunch um it's all reimbursable it's like you know everything else um we highly encourage anybody that would like to to visit our schools we are always welcome welcome
040anybody on the board or outside parents or anybody how many school lunch or breakfast um that's the best way to sometimes see what we served with his um it's they get quite a variety and we're always trying like I said try new things so always still welcome to come visit the school eat lunch with us get back maybe you show up I will buy your lunch come and visit s please [Music] and on the 24th of this month we're having our Southwick High School annual cookouts we all love to come to cook opportunity so and this year it's great it's in charge of the grilling so you'll need a helper so no no I need no help on the grill Mr McDaniel Mr uh critical I used to do the grilling but hey one's gone
041and one says no so we'll approach everything else we took out so interesting questions we do provide free breakfasts for all of our students yeah and that's really that's really a sales and breakfast this year probably double D because like I said in high school I know we were doing 30 40 breakfast today now we're up over 100. and Southwest Elementary I think they've doubled the third numbers your breakfast is about the same but yours is doing really well too so the breakfast program I think is very very good breakfast for everybody so and we give a offer free lunches for our police officers not just our sros but any depth so metal Reserves so I'll be show up off here okay that breakfast thing is a good idea great idea for the sun homes
042I just I'm always amazed that they could squeeze it out in them before school starts but they like their breakfast Style and as far as Staffing I am one to say I was a bus driver and a cook so that works out very well if anyone is interested in doing both it was quick early too so that's a good place to pick up extra hours we always encourage it we have we have those shared boxes too I don't know you want to talk a little bit about that try to help eliminate some people where's your abilities school and when the kids get done and something that's not open that's still still they put it in the shareable which is on ice and then as our students could come up to take that eye for free
043so that way we don't have as much waste okay it's going pretty well I most of the schools yes from the high schoolers the elementary kids that do that I appreciate all of their work and I know sometimes they have to go to the bottom of the sub list and give me a call whenever they uh are in desperate need to come and help but I do appreciate the folks we all appreciate all of you everything that I do thank you so you're welcome to stay or you're welcome to go ahead and be this amazing they're missing out too thank you guys thank you thank you is there any public comment on agenda items from anyone if not board I'll entertained motion to approve minutes any questions on that minutes so yeah all in favor
044say aye my answer reports questions on claims before we vote to approve as you're looking at those real quickly I want to mention I did a gift from Mr Martin there were four teams at Shark Creek so we did have six that left so just to verify that for sure I moved to approved nine let's look at that in the opposition payroll nothing new with payroll as you can see it's kind of dropped back down to more of a normal level but again those will start going back up because we'll get into the end of the school year so we'll have academic ECA claims coming in and we'll have end of the year Spring sport coaches pay coming in through May and probably part of June but even in June and July we'll start summer
045school days so that all has an impact to be able to you know amounts and payroll this is the lowest it's company for a while probably yes excuse me I have a motion for approval I'm going to improved payroll secondly all in favor of approval say aye all right Financial Services no just in the month balances for April as we close on that education fund sits at just shy of 10 million dollars and our operation fund sits just shy of six million dollars so everything still looks to be good and continuing to Trend in the right direction did you want to comment also about the 24 budget calendar it's on oh yeah yeah I didn't yeah and it's coming up so can you say one of the things can you mention the reason why some
046people don't remember the reason why we have the negatives on these others and when we yeah so the negative balances those are those are more towards the end of the uh fund list and those are at the end of The Funnel list because those fun types are federal funds which are reimbursable funds so we spend the money first and then we have to send that in to get refunded back those dollars so they always sit in the negative people might not remember that I just when I flip through those you see and we never really comment yeah so every once in a while we'll come up right and if you see the overall fund balance it's just under 20 million dollars so um and then to your question for your comment Kevin um it is
047getting into budget season so I had laid out a budget calendar uh for all of you just to kind of start to map out that process yeah obviously it's not set in stone things can change but because there are deadlines for certain requirements I need to map that out and so that I can make adjustments as we go uh through that budget season and make sure that we can still meet all of our statutorial deadlines and so that just kind of uh informational only just to kind of show you uh what is going to be coming your way in the coming months related to the budget process but if you ever have any questions about that feel free to email me or give me a call or just ask me I always appreciate your timeliness
048on the matters like that Chris that's all I have all right under HR this evening [Applause] underemployment we have Tracy Kennedy summer secretary at Northfield High School we have Amber Lewis principal at Southwood High School uh Noreen Ramsey cook Northfield High School retirement William Gray maintenance team North schools Bridget hammer head custodian Metro North Elementary I'm relieved there are two the 157 and number 158 and you can see the leave time from notice or whatever it's hard it's hard to see it looks like an end but it is an R it's harmer foreign Kathy Lyons under transfer that's from a three-hour cook in Metro North to a four-hour cook at Northfield Michelle Campbell transferring from secretary at Metro North to a three-year-old preschool teacher at Salford Elementary [Music] motion a second to prove the HR
049list tonight if you want us to decline the one um and I encouraged her to apply for that Michelle's work there this is for bachelor's degree and appreciating the first person in her family to do so and working with kids is her passion and so I'm super proud and that she has accepted into place work group tonight that are heartbroken at the same time it was very yellow maybe she'll be moving back to Metro north sometime motion is second all in favor post group okay I'd like to talk about a few of them first of all I want to talk about our retirees so uh William Bill Gray retirement after 20 years all North schools and so I want to congratulate him obviously you know that we also had another one another um Steve knows
050that very very well another one North that's also retired we've already talked about him I'm also Bridget Harner I'm headed custodian at Metro North uh she has I got a little more information from her she actually started as summer help in June of 1996 at Southwood High School then she became a custodian at La Fountain Elementary for one year and then she transferred to Metro North to all the rest of the year so she has been with MSC of walrus County for 27 years so again um uh congratulations to them but also we have a large loss of of actually two head custodians and two maintenance directors this year with a lot of years experience and Steve's back there shaking his head I know don't rub it in things like that but there are four
051of them that early heat overseas and so I want to congratulate them and also I want to welcome now officially uh uh Mrs Amber Lewis as principal at Southwood Junior Senior High School and I'm going to read just a little bit of what was written earlier and I'll let her speak for a little bit here so Mrs Lewis served as a school administrator for approximately three years so far and she's taught Junior High and high school students in several areas think about these subject areas too chemistry physics ICP Agricultural and criminal justice outside of Education she has worked in agriculture been a crime scene specialist and also working United States Secret Service as a special agent and so she has a vast array of yeah everybody's like a mass array of experience in a lot
052of different areas but know her passion as far as coming back to this area to MSD of Wabash County into south of specifically where she also is a graduate of Southwood and so I want to congratulate her on the acceptance officially tonight being the principal of Southwood Junior Senior High School we're very excited I know she's very excited and I'll let you share anything else that you want to share I just want to say thank you for your vote and I had the opportunity to visit with staff and meet some students this morning that was it just felt like home as Mike said I graduated from Southwest of being back in those hallways just felt right and felt good and I'm excited to continue the right work that is already happening and get to know
053the students and staff better thank you and so officially it says on there August 1st but like we've done before since we have hired early if we can get her in a little bit earlier we'll do some other things but it's official August 1st but other things and we're going to talk about that later too if she has any time if she can get in um because there's things to get started August 1st anymore is not a good time to start because there's a lot going on before August 1st with hiring um just getting ready for school and so again congratulate Mrs Lewis and we are very excited to have you and so I believe that's all I have for the bandwiders yes and and so Mr Lewis Brandon Lewis I don't know if you
054heard about all the situation but um you have to help a lot too yeah but anyways it's a team effort and a lot of times spent but luckily close to school and and uh your children being there it's it will be fun to have them be a part of the the school of course not the high school right away I don't think we'll move them up quite that quickly but uh just be a part of the system and moving up as a as a knight so cool so friend you want to not say anything in here too all right okay yeah about 10 days ago we hired employment at work to take over as a director of Heartland he'll have big shoes to build from Mr Hobbs and then that same night we had a
055presentation from Garmin Miller on what I don't know how apartment needs some things looked at you know maintenance wise and building with stuff wise and it was kind of a huge sticker shock 13.5 million and that's not including any expansion that's just what they went through the heating and cooling and different things here there's a lot of things that could be done but I'm afraid that I think we'll get better because of the way the schools are hooked together but I would like to see expansion before we did a whole lot of improvements like that because that's something that's a critical need I mean the building still works but there's a lot of things that could be done because it hasn't been touched as what 1967. how will those decisions be available our board and
056superintendents will have to have a big play in that because they're the ones that handle the money and one thing they talked about there there's short-term and long-term right short term is like the five years and then the long term is 10 years but also that garment are supposed to come back and share what those priorities are too to look at those priorities that's really really needed just like uh Mr Holly Steve Holly with um the priorities that we have in buildings of course you know roofs HVAC systems those are the priorities other than you know you have to have those things before you have other uh improvements and so I'm sure they'll come back with some of those recommendations that's just the starting process but I was kind of surprised at the moment what
057there's a scary thing with money you know I guess the only good thing is that's that's includes everything though that's the softball yeah that's going to be positive about that yeah that's all I have thank you superintendent report yeah like I mentioned before I did want to share a little bit with legislation so this will take a little bit of time but I'll try to go pretty quickly here so just to give you an idea this is 123rd General Assembly uh there are 1162 bills are introduced 223 bills on the Indiana school boards Association tracking list uh 252 actual new laws that the governor has signed and of those 252 19 or 48 were new K through 12 education policies school or local governments or child related laws so again that's a huge number again
058and and most of them are out of things there's only like one of them that's like repealed maybe a couple of repealed so some of those that are 48 are not always all negative necessarily A lot of them are possible too and so there there are several uh ones actually in the last six years in education related there's 233 new bills laws that's a lot um so we'll be talking to our attorney um so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Dr Cooney he's going to share a little bit about probably one of the biggest ones that actually was finally approved about you know the Friday ending at like 3 A.M so about the budget and then I'll talk about all the restaurants sure so the budget is really the only thing
059statutorily that they are required to approve uh over their biennium I wish that would maybe be the only thing they focused on that we wouldn't have for about 200 and some other pills but it is what it is and so um as far as education is concerned they increase tuition Support over the biennion which is two years to 1.47 billion dollars so we're very appreciative that that includes your traditional Public Schools your voucher and charter schools so anything that fits within that K-12 education is covered in that dollar amount how that impacts MSD is that we would be seeing about a 5.2 percent increase in our tuition support uh for year one and then we would see about a 1.3 percent increase of tuition support in year two uh if ADM stays flat or level
060at where it's at that's roughly 000 more in Year One and roughly 275 000 in year two so a pretty good increase over the last four years uh so we're very very appreciative uh of those uh new dollars some things that we will need to learn a little bit more about uh is they are eliminating textbook rental fees so they have set aside an appropriation of 160 million dollars um for schools to be reimbursed for textbook rental fees and we don't know a whole lot about what is included in that as far as textbook rental fees are concerned uh but we will not be able or allowed statutorily to charge for any type of textbook or curricular material for next school year and upcoming school years um and so questions will be is how they
061will divide that 160 million dollars out between the school corporations and then how much of that will cover what our needs are for textbook or curricular materials and so some of that a majority of that will probably come from that reimbursement but they'll probably be some that we will have to find other avenues within our current budget to pay for those things so still a lot to learn on that there's not been really any information uh yet in regards to that so hopefully that should be coming uh soon the other thing is uh count days we still will have two count days but the fall count day will be moved from a September 15th count day to an October 2nd accounting so it'll be later uh in the year about three weeks and so not
062sure how that will impact us as far as you know if we are losing more students after that first count day back in September 15th or gaining more during that time but that does provide three more weeks of school before students are kind of important other than that there were slight increases in special ed dollars slight increases in CTE dollars and so some of those are additional dollars that make up some of our tuition support but in the end uh it really depends on that 80 number when it comes to those copies Quick Trip did they change the formula for the CTE is that coming out of the different funder no they added it back into the budget and so they kept it all the same except for the high level courses they've increased that
063by I think anywhere between 30 to 50 bucks for those students that take those CTE classes but everything else stayed the same I know there was a concern because we were talking about throwing that back into the general funds yeah right yeah they put that back as its own separate of that one and to go along with that Matt one one thing that we've learned though too it's very very important to stay in tune with what is going on you know our lobbying group our associations that we have because a lot of things that have changed over the course of this legislative session was because of all about communication and so um not that you always want to get involved and and you know be negative about things but you have to share your concerns
064that you have for your school corporation so everyone else does the same thing for example um the second year of the biennial was not going to be even that small increase that we received if a lot of people did not get involved with that because it was it was a lot lower going into it and that's why they it was a historic session because it went through the budget five different times with the how well the governors the house the Senate and then the CCR they did that a couple times and so it ended up being better for us you know we're always going to say that would be nice to have more because even though those percentages that Dr gave you we are probably going to be spending some of those funding for our
065curricular materials but we don't know that yet exactly because if you take the figures of 1.1 million students in Indiana with 160 million dollars you know you're talking about 150 dollars per student whereas ours a lot of other ones are more than that on average and so we will be doing some of that but we don't know exactly what what can be charged or not charged as far as other kinds of fees so that's still to come so I will go ahead that's all I need as I think so I'll just go ahead and give you some other ones all these are house and rollbacks all I want to save each time the hea 1002 the education workforce and development there's still a lot of guidelines to go along with that but there's eight different
066various funds and some of that deals with CTE also the housing one the 1005 um the tip remember how you used to have to do a resolution and you had to vote on that like the residential tips that has been repealed they can just do that on their own but you've already agreed to those and I don't know if there'll be any more here but any other ones moving forward you don't have it removes the board resolution so they can just do the tips live streaming And archiving meetings that doesn't start until 2025 but we've been doing this for a lot of years so that's good but it's going to be all government meetings so whether it's a town meaning you know even any of the Town meetings that we have they will have to
067do that but not starting until 2025 they're giving a lot of time to figure out the technology to do all those different things oh there's one on 1177 handgun training for teachers it has nothing to do with us carrying handguns or carrying guns but yet there's different processes for it as far as if you want to do that to have the training for teachers also the 1447 education matters it talks about third-party surveys you know we're going to have that permission from parents we typically don't do that many third-party surveys uh possibly the Community Foundation of Wabash County we do sometimes with the promise program that we have also we're going to do some things with the catalog of Library materials which we already have a lot of those online some other procedures that the
068board has to approve and I'll get with you on that later as far as removal looks appeal processes and things like that school safety uh there's some uh that's a 1492 uh having a county county-wide school safety commission which we already have which is good also school safety committees we'll talk about that more in our administrative meeting tomorrow also School Board to approve or disapprove all schools safety Specialists if you disapprove any of them then we'll have to sign you to that one when you go to all the training and all that so that's just me saying that so just kidding because we already have a lot of them already trained it takes a lot to train the full training is a two or three I forget do you remember it was all online um
069and also changes the duties of SRO which they have sros that they haven't talked about that but expands eligible uses of the Indiana security School Grants which is going to be nice too and they also increase the budget a little bit with the school safety Grant so we appreciate that um also another one 1591 various education matters as far as you recall what Dr King talks about the 45 that would pay on the tuition support to teacher salaries now it's going to be teacher salaries and benefits but it's up to 62 percent and they change the definition of teacher in that particular law and that's an adjunct teacher also a regular classroom teachers and then also guidance counselors so you know we didn't necessarily we didn't quite hit the 45 Mark which there's no a
070hammer to that but we are going to try to get to the 62 percent uh different reasons why we can't get to that but we've explained that before to uh if you call the powers the video also letter grades are a little longer you know we haven't had letter grades for a lot of years but they put that in legislation that we won't have they're all normal grades this school year and next school year because we do basically the GPS the dashboard and so the letter grades are still out 1608 prohibited School Corporation are teaching human sexuality in pre-K this is more through third grade um so I know you'll do that anyway so but uh permits to teach ideas academic standards and instruction on child abuse requires teachers to notify a parent if a
071student requires our student request to change the student's name pronoun title or other word to identify the student and so we were required that if someone asked about that to let the parents know interesting some of these laws here also what has been repealed is under 1638 annual performance Report law so that's the one that cost us uh quite a bit of money to put in our in our newspapers but the annual financial report also the annual performance report also annual pregnancy reports and then also this is an interesting one I don't think I've shared this one yet the student presently enrolled in a public school May retake a virtual course that was previously completed by the student at the same public high school Under certain conditions it's interesting how they throw all these into
072different uh and different law or different codes here this is interesting you guys should know this in SCA which is the Senate enrolled act now 177 School Board candidate filing they've changed that definition so in 2024 next year it will be the filing will be May 21st so write this down gentlemen May 21st to June 20th at noon so basically it's generally 14 days after the primary so the wording in the law says no earlier than the first day after voter registration begins following the primary and no later than noon 30 days thereafter easy to say this next that next year will be May 21st to June 20th there are in 391 in rollback 391 Charter Schools there's four pilot counties there's four pilot counties that share record and share referendum dollars so it's a
073pilot so that may happen to all schools or All Counties 92 counties but right now it's just a pilot um and I know this is not getting you guys are excited about the induction um so let's try to finish up here I forgot to say there's a test afterwards but 486 though education matters transfers some required teacher training to teach your preparation programs which we'll appreciate because right now we we have a list of about what would you guys say 12 13 14 trainings that we do beginning of the school year at least at least and so now some of those instead of being in the first of the year they will go to the teacher training ones but also this is one that I have told the doe a long time it says a
074permits the IDE to create an online portal that provides teachers access to additional training or required training right now uh Mr Brian Miller our TI guide from the technology integration he actually has developed something through one of our programs that we do that now but I always said it would be good that the whole state has the same thing instead of everybody trying to do their own thing and uh doing those trainings allow School corporations to develop their own staff performance evaluation plans before we always you guys had to approve those I had to take it to the Teachers Association and then we would do those but now we can do things on our own we probably won't make too many changes but one thing we cannot change we cannot change the classifications of Highly
075Effective effective needs Improvement warrants and effective um let's see permit uh this is interesting permits principles to discuss teachers working conditions or issues impacting education or quality of students with individual teachers or groups of teachers as determined by the principal so the big change about that is typically we had to have discussions with the teacher Association we are still going to do that at MSD we are in the Communication business and we should be discussing you know different things like that but one thing the principles the principles will decide how that works it can be individual teachers or it can be a group of teachers it doesn't have to be necessarily Association but it can be the association too and so I won't be talking about that later also there's some other things about robotics
076about the science of reading about next level computer science grant programs also the ASVAB that we talked about earlier so just a lot out there again but we'll try to digest all of it and put it into practice as we go along but I believe when I went to the meeting yesterday last night to the school boards association meeting in Kokomo you know everything has been signed so it's all law so now we just have to start getting busy to get things taken care of so sorry for the long no no problem in fact if you get some of the very important ones behind us in France anytime you might distribute them once I have a little more specifics about things there's a lot of things they're still doing General so you've got to figure
077all that out yesterday on that note the science materials we keep putting it all the way through that interpretation and so we uh we're going to do our best at the end of that and so I plan on having some materials to show and have here for public review at our next meeting it's going to make it kind of difficult to do our ordering because now we get into the summer before you can actually get approved but that's how legislature is coming out and so maybe that uh we're in the middle of Island testing and we've got some results back and we'll have more and more of those and so I expect to be able to share those with you probably not for a little while because there's a fetal process for grades all that
078stuff but we are looking at graduation so all eyes are on that for especially for our seniors and making sure they finish strong even though maybe they're a little bit by a bug and you know spring and not quite quite want to come to high school anymore so we're working with them so that'd probably be about a country curriculum thank you and I did go ahead and you remember last time Mr Drake wanted me to find this and so I went ahead and put it on I told him I put this on but these are the trainings that you get in your packet but we don't always talk about it so anyway a lot of them are this wmap but it's interesting to see all the things that they've done so and for our audience
079to see too all the things we've done for this month all right move on to new business this evening the first item would be recommendation before is to approve classified administrators raises and then we also include updating the employee handbook with that information you know classified election result so and when we first started we had actually made some changes to our pay scales for our classified staff and so with that we typically did raises every couple years so this past school year we did one of those rounds of races and we felt like our balances were strong enough to look at it back to back ask in helping our staff increase their wages in certain areas that we always look to see how we match up with those that are around us and around the
080state so that we can provide a fair and adequate dollar amount to those working hours so we are asking for another round of classified administrative raises not that we will always do this yearly but in the past like I said we've only been doing it every couple of years and so one of the benefits we would like to increase is insurance benefits that we do offer some of our classified employees and also the retirement match that we also offer some of our employees and so we would like to raise that amount and then also increase their hourly rates um or if they're a salary position increase their salary and so I we feel like uh this will be a another positive uh in increasing that uh those dollar amounts to a fair working wage still
081work to be done and we'll continue to monitor that some staff like like we've done in the past we evaluate each staff and make sure that in the market that that it is consistent with those that are in similar positions and so we would ask that we approve another round of classified administrative races for next school year you know just a couple things to mention to add on to that too especially for three of you that have not been involved as long but typically in when we when we first started the three of us and I started this one year earlier in this office we had a lot of different ranges of uh years of experience as far as different positions what is a custodian Food Service secretary treasurer all those different things there are
082some of them that would go from one zero years to 10 years so they would have an increment situation and some of them would go up to maybe 18 years similar to what the teachers were but what we felt like was a better way is going zero to one plus so some of the things that you see on there so in other words if you're a zero years experience then you have a rate that that we have given you if it's one plus that's another rate so that's one plus and we feel like you know learning them understanding you know doing the evaluation after a year we know how they're going to to do their position and so that's why we will do this at least every other year if we we can because if
083not they're not going to get any raises whereas before they would get raises but the problem with that too is that they started at a low rate a very very low rate and it wasn't competitive at all and so we decided to go to the zero and then the one plus so in other words there's only two levels that's basically I want to say but then before it took maybe 18 20 years but yet the starting side it was so low it was not competitive at all so we moved those up you know several years ago and also just like Dr said as far as classified we feel like what what has been going on with our budget and our funding that we could do that for administrators who do put an incredible amount of
084time in not just during the school time but in evenings sometimes in the middle of night with doing different things with looking at things that we have for safety purposes and then also on the weekends and so that is our recommendation from both of us what word is this I mean you say competitive or does it put us so many of these accounts over the last I don't know two rounds were well below average and so now many of them are not only above average but some are kind of at the top tier again so you feel like the improved that significantly over the last few rounds of raises that we've been able to accomplish okay and just say one other thing it's always it's hard to compare sometimes though with like the full amounts
085as far as a 260-day contract which is a you know 52 weeks out of the year five days um compared to a lot of our staff that worked 180 or 183 days so when they see that bottom line but as far as the dollar right now yes right it's I mean I think we've almost gotten everybody up to 15 an hour there's still a few positions that were getting up there but if you look at that that's uh in just a lot five six years ago it was a lot less than that so we're moving up so and we still work to do do it gradually you know I appreciate your effort on this because I want it MSB would be recognized it's a well-paying if not a very low paid School Corporation well you
086kind of get where your paperwork too you know I'm saying withdrawal that in you know so the best pay raises sure all in favor say aye aye opposed second item under new business would be recommendation to prove the memorandum of understanding with the msdwc EA that didn't say all that out metropolitan school district of walrus County Education Association too much all right so Dr has worked a lot with our vendor for 401a and then you can go ahead and just jump in all in any of this but presently right now our match is two and a quarter and so since we are not starting negotiation yet because we are not allowed to be able to start negotiation for the next contract until 20 or until uh basically September 15th of 2023 we have this memorandum
087of understanding to be able to raise the match to three percent and I will let Dr Kuhn explain a little bit more about this yeah there's actually two changes to the teacher contract because mou the first change is when we well this is before my time when the retirement benefits were set up the match was going into two different pots uh 50 of it was going into a 401a and 50 of it was going into Aviva account now what we've learned over the time is the Viva accounts weren't really designated as a retirement plan they were more for uh Bridges to retirements but they weren't really set up to be retirement plans because if the individual passes away that money cannot be passed on to Independence and so they passed away and they didn't use
088the money then it came back to the district and so we felt like one to streamline the process and two to make sure that the people that earn the money can keep the money uh we we decided to move it all into a 401a account and so that is the first change in the teacher contract and we'll be actually making that change for all employees uh and then the second change was the match was at 2.25 and we would like to increase that at three percent and instead of waiting until negotiations to do all that stuff it's easier if we can do it now so that when contracts start in August we can start those payments then versus having to do them later uh in the year and so that allows them to get the
089full benefit for their actual contract unit and so again this would be something that's obviously that you also approved with the classified staff as far as the three percent matching is concerned so that would be the same one for all staff as well and so those were the those were the two uh changes then that we had agreed upon with the association to get started for this coming school year instead of waiting until negotiations to do that it's not enough so teacher associate has approved it and so then we just need the board approval then to make that happen oh discussion or motion under the memorandum of understanding all in favorites say aye follow the same sign recommendation to approve corporate authorization resolution yes so this is a requirement through uh the bank when we
090have a new staff that we want to add on as signatures to be able to sign off on checks we require two signatures and so that involves the principal the bookkeeper and myself and so with the departure of Mr McDaniel and the addition of Mrs Lewis we just need a resolution to approve Amber as a signee um and then I don't have to sign those checks anymore [Laughter] but that would be Mrs Amber and Mrs King's job then and then I sign up as a president in Kansas foreign [Music] extended trip for a field trip for Northfield cross country to the center off Campground that'll happen this summer on the 19th to the 22nd of June so all in favor of approving a field trip that's not a lot of fun by the way guys
091[Music] [Laughter] I did some of those were okay hang on finished business I don't think I don't think we have any board policy none public comments oh thank you well I want to say other comment about Chris that Chris talking about the classified staff idols and I was a secretary for what 13 or 14 years I just don't feel like 15 were classified anymore as a very high salary and I think we should be paying the most to get the best and our grandkids work at Panera to make 18 an hour and so I would just really like to see us look as hard at that as we can and get there sooner rather than later I mean I talked to a former classified person from Marshall and she said she was making like 10
092an hour and that's terrible and and I'm sure she was very good at her job and we want to keep those people so I just think we should be as fair to them as we can um another question Chris up for you is will we be able to charge for computers as part of that textbook or is that is that have to be paid by the corporation also that's probably going to have to be paid by the qualification so I don't know what all the definitions are yet of curriculum materials but I would assume the device is going to fall into that and how much does that mean how much do we usually get that from parents for that so we charge 110 dollars let's do a student so that's huge yeah for all corporations
093not just MST it's huge um on Heartland I know there's projects there's repair projects it's adding on projects there's upkeeping all that is that how are those paid for is it like over a 20-year period and is it based on the five corporations and their assessed values the portion and then what happens is that a majority vote and what happens when you have one maybe two corporations say uh-oh we don't have any money what do we do next question uh that's going to be part of the discussion how do we do it do we do it according to assessed value where MSD can start worse when you do it according to education fund and how Mr David we could talk that better than I can yeah there's a lot of things that are going to
094go into all that so it's going to be and we've already had some of those conversations but there are five school districts and so um getting everyone together that's that's going to be the challenge just to make it work so we're doing a lot of discussions Mr mcmurt is going to be the one leading that what do you mean with with the uh with the board doing next so there are common school loans so there are some discussions that that common school loans basically come from the state um that is a loan that we pay back through our education fund and schools do that there are lots of different schools rather than do those kind of things we have never done in our I don't think we ever I know we haven't done a common
095School model but that's also an option with some different ideas but there's an agreement with Heartland career center and so right now if we follow that agreement um you know we have for example I think approximately 37 percent of the AV of the five schools so we would be um in charge of paying for 37 percent of that and but is it does that have to be a unanimous vote or can what do you do can't get blood out of turnip because what was it about two years ago we tried to do that because we established more towards the education fund and uh the formula the formula that we got shut down that was to change the agreement so yeah there's gonna be a lot of discussions on that for sure any other questions items
096from the board 7.5