001all right 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 right we're going to open with the annual uh Board of Finance meeting as all of you are probably aware and we constitute the board of Finance and we'll begin with the election of president and denominations in the past have we not done it just with the same board same officers of people I think what can I make a motion for that that makes it simple yeah for every position okay yeah as soon as I won't favor that say aye aye opposed all right we have a board elected Chris you're going to report all Investments and lead us through the presentation so certain
002questions um so this is just a financial statement as far as any Investments we don't really have any Investments however we do earn uh interest um and so there's just a little bit of information on how our um current accounts are with our first Farmers Bank a few years ago we asked to have a kind of a floor put on those Investments um that was kind of during that coveted time when our interest rates were dropping considerably uh which they did oblige to that and so we've maintained that it will be um the rate for for this this coming school year is at Point 15 percent if you look at what our interests earned for 2022 is significantly higher than what's been over the last couple years and really that's due to just the increase
003of interest rates and the cash balances that we have sitting in our accounts and so our bear our rate has varied this is through the whole calendar year from anywhere between point one five percent which is our flow rate up to 3.81 I think I think we're even over four right now so um that's good because of our cash balance and because of the higher interest rate uh we were able to incur um a revenue of interest of a 208 thousand dollars for the calendar year 2022 which if you look at it historically that's one of the higher interest occurred that we've had in a long long time so that just fluctuates like I said with my interest rates and then the amount of cash balances we have in our accounts there any questions with
004that [Music] sure and moving on by Indiana code we are to have a finance meeting and discuss certain things within that meeting and so I just created a PowerPoint here that will go through and look at those things so um Jeff a lot of this stuff will probably be new for you but back in the fall we adopted a budget for 2023. and when we adopt a budget then we submit that budget to the department local government and finance who then approves or tells us that we need to reduce our budget and so um that First Column there uh the budget we have to submit is only representing uh four funds and that's the education operations Debt Service and rainy day funds for County year 2022 it shows what we actually spent in those funds
005the second column shows what our budget was that was approved in that fall meeting for 2023 the dlgf told us what our budget should be in those funds after we submitted our expenses and revenues there were no reductions in any of those budgets that we submitted so those numbers remain the same as far as what we approved and then as part of our 1782 notice it gives us what our assessed valuation is for a corporation and our tax rate for our Corporation and you can see that our operations fund has a tax rate of basically 54 cents which will generate should generate uh 4.6 million dollars and then our debt service has a tax rate uh 17 cents essentially and it will generate uh 1.5 million dollars of uh Revenue in those funds and then
006the last column represents what the anticipated tax cap impact will be uh which shows that we could lose uh as an estimate up to 243 000 of that we wouldn't collect basically um so this shows what um our budget will estimated at total and what percentage each of those were obviously our education operation fund is the uh bigger amount not much changed with that since nothing changed with our Appropriations foreign estimate budget that we set shows what that 14.9 million dollars is separated out into uh primarily salary and benefits it's your bigger chunks of 91 percent after an adjustments um you know because we set our budget in September we don't even know what our like negotiation salary raises and all that type of stuff that's going to be so there's obviously changes that need
007to happen we don't know what our vocational dollars are going to be and all that stuff to like December so we make those adjustments then to that budget that we set as long as we don't go over the amount of dollars that we request that we said we would spend um so you can see it changes but it doesn't change drastically typically so we're still at you know so 91 of our salary benefits for the most part uh that we won't necessarily have to go over but I just kind of laid out some historical comparisons when it comes to what those budgets have been over the past several years just as a comparison uh net assess valuation again we look at that when we set our budget we get our final numbers when we get
008that from the dlgf you can see that our assessed valuation improved almost 13 percent so it went from 760 million to 857 million which is important because that the higher assess valuation uh can lower your tax rate and still generate the same amount of dollars this is a historical view of what our assessed valuation has done over time the blue is the actual and the red is the estimate and if you remember back in like April May when we were talking with the referendum we had policy analytics come in and kind of give us a preview of what you know anticipated growth might be in our assess valuation and so that's what that red represents um budgets are completed for uh taxing units this is a comparison of ours um it's not updated on the
009program that I use so I kind of updated with that black line to show where our 71 cents would kind of sit uh for 2023 as a comparison to previous the past 10 years or so this is a new slide that I got back in December um Isco puts on a a session and they usually invite Dr Larry the board who is a Purdue he can Economist I guess um and so these are where our School District would sit compared to other school districts across the state of Indiana as tax rate is concerned so uh 71 cents is below the 10 percentile um where the median is around a dollar two dollar three and that was for 2022. uh this is a comparison again 2023 budgets are completed but they're not updated on the on
010the software So eventually we'll review this again at another point in time but just looking at 2022 this is where we compared uh tax rates from our border schools and then the graph on the right just shows how much Levy amount of dollars were generated from that tax rate for those school districts this also came from Dr deboer's presentation uh kind of shows you a historical uh rate interest rate for municipal bonds and you can see that Mutual bonds are on the rise but still historically low in comparison uh from many years and so right now they're sitting um around three and a half percent so they went down even a little bit operation fund um budget that we submitted I broke it up into different categories because our operation fund really covers so many
011different uh operation overhead sides so you can see you know how much of that is General Administration some of that is marketing technology maintenance custodial all those different types of services we provide uh in capital projects and so forth so you can see that breakdown of that 8.9 million dollars that we anticipated uh spending then you go to the next slide and then that's the actual budget for 2023. again the appropriation amount does not change but some things may have changed based off of other things that have happened between between the time the budget was submitted and the end of this calendar year the last thing we have to review is the school corporation fiscal indicators that do ad which is the distress units appeal board puts out um information or data related to every
012school corporation and they highlight certain Financial aspects of that school corporation determine if there is any distressed units and so this is found on the website of the duab which stands for the distressed units appeal board and they highlight every school corporation so we have to review our school corporation's fiscal indicators so there it shows you what our 2122 student fall count was and what our 2022 net assessed valuation was and the estimated population in the county from 2019. understand that this information that they are showing us sins on December 2021 so it's not even December 2022's information so it's a year behind so they're always a year behind on this data that they share so this is based off of 2021 end of calendar year so one thing they look at as a physical
013indicator is ADM obviously that's a huge Revenue Source uh for our education fund and all the other school corporations education fund and a big fluctuation of ADM could have an impact on School Corporation so this just shows what our spring and fall counts were over the past several years you can see we've been kind of stabilized for the most part at least the last three or four years we can see from this graph you know we've had that huge drop for about eight nine years and then we've just been kind of fluctuating up and down a little more steady over the last three or four years the other thing they look at is your fund balances um they want to know what kind of balancing that you have in case of emergency situations and if
014you're able to kind of fund and pay for things that you need to pay for on a daily basis and so you can see there um all the different funds back in 2019 they combined funds and so that's why you see some of the different colors and some of the colors no longer really existing the education fund obviously is a big fund for us that's in the orange you can see the increase there operation fund is a big fun for us as well that's yellow you can see the increase in there and then though One Fund that you might notice is the one that is in the negative uh which uh was a big negative back in 2015 16 17 18 that was a self-insurance fund you can see that no longer exists and that
015was that was corrected and taken care of back in 2021. can you point out too as far as the federal funds so federal funds would include things like our Title 1 title two title three title four grants that we receive dollars for uh that also include any Esser funds that we perhaps have spent but typically federal funds are in the negative because those are reimbursable funds so we have to pay those monies out before we can get reimbursement from them this just shows you kind of something similar but in a line graph I've I kept track of this myself uh on this line graph you can see how our education fund has grown over time our operations fund has grown over time and our food service fund has grown over time those are the funds
016that I usually keep cash flow spreadsheets on uh because we want to kind of make sure that we have a better understanding of those funds and what's coming in and out of them the next thing that the do app looks at for fiscal indicators is um if there was any deficit or Surplus from year to year and so this represents all of our funds and it shows in green the revenue and it shows in blue the expenses uh and then any surplus would be in yellow and you can see that we've done well over the past several years and um controlling our revenue and expenses so that you do end up with a surplus at the end of the year this is my own graph of that I kind of I just like to look
017at this visual because what I've shown here is that um and this is for the education fund the basic Grant which is the dollars we get for students compared to the total revenue in that fund which is the green compared to the expenditures so what I like to do is make sure that our budget is balanced by making sure our basic Grant and expenditures are pretty similar and so then the total revenue anything above that is just extra for the most part building up those balances um for Surplus for things that may come down the road uh for uh salary improvements and those types of things because you understand that most of the money that's being spent out of that fund or for salary benefits you can see how that compares to our ADM which
018is that line graph in there [Music] as well so the next thing the doab looks at are your fun balances as a percent of operation expenditures and you can see out of all of our funds we have a fund balance that is 80 of our expenditures so pretty strong there the next thing they look at is your Revenue stream and the type of Revenue that you're getting in and seeing if there's any major changes in Revenue growth or decrease and so this just shows you that as far as you know kind of where our federal revenue how much of that is federal how much of it is state revenue how much is it is debt Revenue how much of it is local property tax revenue Etc so you can see how that plays out there
019as far as our total revenue was concerned and local tax revenue is called a flat line isn't it the next indicator doesn't apply to us but it's something that's that the doab considers important because if you're having to borrow a lot of money I guess to continue to operate I guess we would see that as a potential negative we don't have an operating referendum so we don't receive any revenue from local property tax through an operational referendum just so you know Jeff is a referendum that school corporations would put out that would fund salaries and benefits which is different than the referendum that we tried to pass for capital projects and then I like to review our SWOT analysis uh at the end of the year as we talk about our goals um so we
020went over this before we talked about this back even when we were looking at the referendum but you know some of our strengths of the corporation we feel like are as our assessed valuation the fact that we have debt falling off we have a good cash balances we are impacted um as much by tax cap impacts and then we do have a good student transfers from other places called side of our district some of our weaknesses uh you know uh student capacity in some of our buildings which is different than I consider that different than um programming capacity in our buildings because obviously programming is driven a lot not only by us but but by through the doe through changes and requirements that they push out double services in some of our buildings primarily our
021high schools the age of our buildings and just needing some facility updates and you know just really a lack of a long-range facility plan and a lack of a debt plan that would play into that facility plan especially with the debt falling off optimal times to um focus on those things and build those things out and Dr and I discussed this a little bit about the lack long-range facility plan we really worked on that and obviously we had a plan but that didn't go through so something else we will continue to look at so but the referendum would have passed I think we would have taken that off of there as far as leaving us so but I did not so we're moving forward then looking at low Opera opportunities uh again with our good
022assessed valuation that allows us to manage our tax rate with our tax rate being low that's an opportunity for revenues to fund things like capital projects um develop and manage some type of tax rate plan and that plan with that Capital project plan uh we can always look at continue to expand and build on our out of District transfers through some of our marketing and other things and then just you know that developing of the long-range facility plan or long-range other planning kind of goes hand in hand with the tax rate at home threats and these things can happen at any time and you know unannounced for the most part you know decline in enrollment you never know what your ADM is going to be from year to year we have another ADM count in
023February coming up February 1st will be the next count you could have more students you could have less students if you have less students you lose the money that you've already built your budget for so you know those were always threats that can come and go State legislation this is a big year uh for State legislation because it's a budget here so they're building out their budget we could receive funding uh increases we could not uh funding could go to other things so that that always has impacts on what laws they put out there as well impacts school districts resistance to just facility needs and upgrades um you know things that are going to improve our ability sometimes people may not really understand or or want to understand the importance of some of those things
024uh Tiff impacts there are some test districts that sit in our district those usually have tax impacts but I think we have three test districts maybe four now some of those housing projects and now we have four yes but you know those are things that can be good and can be can be harmful uh if not taken care of and then um other threats just you know the programming that I talked about and there's a lot of things are always mandated by us but you know sometimes we have to offer try to provide things that maybe we're not ready for or we don't have the facilities for uh and then just any unexpected growing costs pandemic was an example of you know some unexpected growing costs inflation comes and goes from time to time there
025are other things that can happen that you know you just don't plan for um that have an impact on on districts including us so and I'd just like to add the declining role like Dr said it is it could be well it's always a threat but fortunately the last two years MSC Walbridge county has increased uh both in the fall and the spring last year and then a more significant one this fall and then next Wednesday is our day again so February 1st and it gets really tricky when when you even get a little more specific with it like you have a grade level that has a very small amount of kids and then how do you prepare and plan for that um that type of stuff so that can go along with it as
026far as financial goals are we set these goals a couple years ago and I just like to review them I think they're good goals to continue to reflect on and pay attention to so one of our goals is to maintain an education fund balance as equivalent or better than three months of expenses while being able to increase pay benefits and other programming needs so I've laid out the last three years just to kind of show you what that monthly average has been the last 15 years of expenses out of the education fund what that three months average equates to and then what our end of the year fund balance actually is so we're we're doing well uh with those rules the second goal is the same except for the operations so there it lays out
027what our monthly averages have been in expenses out of our operation fund and what that three-month average is and then how that compares to our end of the year balance then the last goal is to increase our rain day fund to 10 of what our education operation funds budget is so our budget for 2023 out of the education operations 23 million for 23.8 million 10 of that would be 2.3 million uh and our end of our beginning of the year balance in for rainy day sits at 1.6 million so 1.7 million so we're getting closer to that role but that again that just takes some time as I continue to build that up wow 6 28 we were anticipating 30 minutes two minutes of questions or thoughts for Chris excellent presentation Chris appreciate the effort
028that you put into all of this so the rainy day tried will increase this year so to build that up to 2.4 basically will take a number of years to do that so I just really felt something right right which we've built you know I guess one of the positive things with the self-insurance issue is that we built that pattern into this uh with the rainy day so we have that kind of strategy strategically built in so we can at least for now I'll continue to um put some extra funding into that rainy day fund um to build it up as we go well you have to remember too that with that it was a little over three million dollars so if you add that three million dollars to this okay um look at what
029that would have been too but that's kind of my point too Mike that fund is not very old yeah it was used to get rid of Self insurance so it's it's a it's a great thing and then when we set that up we have parameters or whatever what right so that fund can be used for and I forget all the specifics but it just gives a resolution yeah Chris I was wondering on the operations fund what have we've done to make it I mean our monthly average just went down over the last three years so what's been done to drop those expenses I guess uh well first some of that is um again not necessarily Staffing just some adjustments in Staffing over time we've done some things to kind of uh help within our buildings
030to be a little bit more efficient uh like we did the lighting projects at Northfield and Southwood where we retrofit everything to led to kind of cut some of those types of costs we've done some things which uh we'll talk about another time just even like with some vendors that we use like I'm changing over our insurance to another vendor which is going to end up saving us some money in the long term um but we've also had some bonds that we've been able to work off of as well so that we don't have some of those larger Capital project expenses coming out of the operational Center student enrollment do you expect to bump up and get them like previous years in the spring yeah yeah not this yeah we looked at that right now
031and so it should bump up not maybe a significant as it did last year from Fall to Spring but we looked at those numbers so we are anticipating yeah a little bit of an increase foreign [Music] all right we're called to order the regular board trustees meeting for University of Wabash County future board meetings will be on the 14th and the 28th of February and also the 14th of March all of that here at the regular meeting time and the regular meeting place no rehabisions of agenda apart from the human resource additions so we'll move on into public recognition and approve some wonderful donations we have a hundred dollar donation from an anonymous donor for a Southwest wrestling three thousand dollar donation from United Airlines herself with softball and then the 250 donation from Craig
032and Tanya uh compass for South for Northfield FCA I moved to accept all those donations again everyone in favor of approve the donations say aye aye op close we want to thank them again can you thank the amount of stormers staff spotlight all right this is one of the favorite part of our our meeting so I would like and I know you just came in perfect timing so Mrs shinkle if you can come up here and I have not met Mrs Swig but you are hi nice to meet you so we we typically would have our introductions prior but we had the board of Finance earlier so just come on with over there so um yeah there we go so actually Dr cute has a camera right there on me now so yeah you are
033on Facebook live so then you can see this afterwards but um yeah it's gone up uh since you just came up here so anyway so our staff Spotlight from Shark Creek fourth grade teacher Mr debb shinkle and Mrs swick is the one that nominated her and so I'll just give you an opportunity to go ahead and share what you wrote in the application so I had nominated Mrs schenkel because my daughter was new to the district this year and she came in kind of a little reluctant with reading like she could do it but it was it was painful so we had gotten this letter in the desk and Mrs like had this the child at the end of the school year write a letter to the new student kind of what to expect and
034in there I said we hope you like to read and she was like I'm not going so then I was like it'll be fine but you know Mrs schenckel does a really good job doing like read-alongs with the kids and then giving them small goals so that it's achievable so it doesn't feel overwhelming so she I guess I was just told that is the top reader in her class and she's routinely found up past bedtime reading and um in there apparently as of this morning so she's doing fabulous and I thank you because that's like a lifetime skill that you can give to somebody like she can find any answer now because she's confident so thank you so much and so while you're still up here why don't you go to introduce your daughter and
035your other guests so we know who's here okay this is Elizabeth in fourth grade and my mom Tina McMullen thanks for coming Elizabeth and it was interesting reading what your mom wrote though because I thought it was interesting that you were staying up a little too late but it's great that you're reading you do you need your sleep too though speak that in mind so yeah yeah um Mr Martin you want to say anything while you're I just appreciate that a mother would take the time to uh to be so kind as to say what anything and share this and in the corporation doing this and and Elizabeth is there anything you're specifically liking reading right now what kind of books are you I don't know what you got there is there a series or
036anything that's yeah babysitter's Club it was very popular for a while yeah and and the well-deserved that's a shameful good for you it would you like to say anything yeah just thank you all right so let's Get Around the Clock what we've done over the years First Farmers Bank and Trust is kind of like our sponsor for this for some donations and so typically we would have different things but MSC of Walbridge county is starting their own um and so you'll get a 40 voucher when that opens up to buy whatever you want from it could be an MSD but obviously it could be a Sharp Creek item also too so anyway that'll be nice and we should probably give you something because that's how we should get it done okay anyway let's give her
037a round of applause no thank you we'll move on to school recognition yep so Mr Martin I'll let you go ahead and do your thing as far as introduction of the people that are here and what they're going to do and I guess I do need to ask do you want me to get I do have that you may connect to it okay let me go ahead and connect uh get out of here would you like for me to do a couple of other recognitions that I've just typed on sure go ahead while I'm getting that that'd be great um Sharp Creek Elementary PE teacher Gary Norman recently submitted his retirement letter effective in the end of this school year and also tonight I hope this isn't out of line but it will become official
038of Mrs Tina Riggle will retire from teaching at the end of this school year so this time on behalf of all Shark Creek Elementary students and staff and that's both past and present I just want to say thank you to Gary and Tina for their many many years of service for their dedication to the very serious responsibility of of inspiring and motivating kids to to dream big work hard and we're going to miss them both and I just wanted to make sure I did that tonight because I'm not sure that there's a workout for me personally but uh very happy for both of them in their next big challenges or whatever they take and then also um I just wanted to recognize the paraprofessionals we have at Sharp Creek who are doing a wonderful job
039this school year and we have quite a few Deb Elliott Sarah ederman Tammy Sloan Teresa Coe Melissa Metz Tricia miracle and Carrie Pugh and we're just so fortunate to have also Lisa Beaver who's our technology assistant in the building and her wisdom and knowledge is available to both students and staff but but that group like paraprofessionals including Lisa Beaver they are a big part of what we do every day and they're working with kids on a regular basis and it all is a very positive Arrangement so thank you to them and now I'm ready to give a quick video okay uh so we have with us our shark treat fourth grade teachers uh this evening and they're going to do a presentation a brief presentation on Camp Tecumseh um which is uh a trip that
040all of our students as fourth graders have the chance to uh the opportunity to participate in each year uh we're fortunate to have teachers and staff members and many volunteers whether that's parents or others who are willing to do their the work necessary to provide this great opportunity and learning experience that is unique and memorable and so closest to me is Mrs Kim bear you've met Mrs Deb shankelman seating and this is Kelly Ross this is our fourth grade team and I appreciate them being willing to be here share just a little bit but this is this is an example of what MSD Sharp Creek I mean it's just amazing to me the trips that our kids get to have and the opportunities for all the grade levels so this is an example of a
041really unique and good opportunity so ladies I'll be quiet anybody that's right now back to the wall if you want yeah I have the TV screen on the TV show all right so we're just going to tell you a little bit how we got with Kim okay so Camp Tecumseh is located outside of Brookston Indiana so it's about an hour from here excuse me and it is a YMCA Camp and they have a year-round program for students and then they have facilities that like church groups can go in um Boy Scouts Girl Scouts I mean anybody so we um are involved with the history side of it and we do what's called Pioneer Heritage so that's our group that we took this year so if you go ahead and flip it again please um how
042we got started is years ago when Mrs Baker was teaching fourth grade and I got the privilege to work with her we got this pamphlet and I said this looks kind of interesting and she took it and she came back she goes I think we need to go because it'll be all Hands-On for the kids not just the textbooks and so we went and the first year we went we went in December and of course all the kids it was called um Christmas in the colonies and we told the kids you got to dress really warm you know you're going to need hats and you're going to need snow suits and all this we get there and it's beautiful they don't have to wear their stuff it's sunny it's warm no rain and it was
043a really cool program um as I said it was Christmas so they um they Yule logs they got to shoot BB guns those kinds of things they make quilt blocks and so then the next year we got to go back and but it was way below zero when we were supposed to go so the school board said so then we got switched to May and it was like 90 degrees and mosquitoes everywhere so we switched our program to then the Pioneer Heritage and um it's a two-day one-night overnight stay so it kind of gives the kids a little bit of what's going to happen when they go to fifth and sixth grade camp um it's just close to home um one night and and then he seems to have great time so that's how we
044got started there and we've been very blessed to be able to go I'll tell you how many years I think I saw 1985. I think Kim and I were talking with fourth graders they do get to experience a lot of Hands-On and some of the things they get to do is have fin fishing or they just have a stick and a string and a hook and this year we actually had quite a few of the coffee she just won a real-time fishing they do some animal trapping they do Yankee Ingenuity which is where they take ropes and wrap them around the picture right here until they came to build a bridge or a ladder um they also have a Schoolhouse with some of the pioneer ways of teaching um I think some of the kids
045they get to experience the dance count a little fun with that um they have hand-up candle making Mrs Ross she's looking scared that um cooking I mean Johnny cakes and biscuits clothing there's a sample of the clothing menu and here's the Shanker usually prepares all that for the kids do the outline sewing Pathfinders they take a walk and they use like the landmarks and directions to find their way to move the trail um they have Barnyard games and learn about animals and then they have cabin building too so a lot of hands-on experience is about 10 different stations for your students with the slide and then we eat and have a dinner meal there at camp we sit with eight to ten people students and adults where they eat family style and then they are
046given a slip of paper where they have a skit that they have to go back to the cabins and work as a cabin and tell and try to perform it they go then to the campfire that night and we sing songs We Do the Campfire um usually they ask Mrs shinkle to pick some of the chaperones and there's an adult one where did you ever go Scott okay I didn't so they might get parents involved in a skit and then one of my favorite things is we have a night hunt there's no flashlights there's not supposed to be any talking and they take us around through all over the camp and they tried to take us back to the Pioneer spot and if it's nice weather um one year we laid down on the ground
047all in a circle and we can look up at the constellations and they told us a story um and then we walk back but it's just that's my favorite and it wasn't even something the kids mentioned this year but that's but I don't think we did so then we go back to our cabins get ready um take showers kids stay up a little past the bedtime and then we're ready for the next day pictures um the quilting and then the other two are the Pioneer cooking where they grind they have to grind corn um like the primary suit and then um getting ready to make the biscuits looks like there's a person familiar in that one I want to take a picture she went as a student and as a parent because you've only been
048doing it 10 years and then our last slide is I just kind of talked to the kids and this was some of the things that they said I like the one that says I was worried that they were with their family because some of them had never been away from home overnight um but they said listen that's good and one should I didn't have to talk to my brother yeah so we just thank you for the opportunity to let fourth grade go um we've enjoyed it and hopefully continue on I've been to several of those unfortunately we're fortunately that's right the nighttime thing is the hardest thing for me but scared of the dark yeah right that's what I my one was probably close to that and I um what I really loved about I
049love about these kind of opportunities is that the Ingenuity some of the kids that there's a lot of Hands-On and so they don't get to experience that I mean my kids are on a farm they get to have all kinds of that but there's other kids that they don't have that and so when you see some of their brains just start working when they're tying knots or when they're trying to figure out a good way to cook a fish or things like that it just kind of you know they're too much on these when they don't get the experience outside and so I I wish we could do more well you know when it comes to those kind of things it's just quite amazing well thank you let's get them around thank you very much
050if you're you're welcome to stay but you also can leave if you like and Elizabeth I would tell you that you know you might be able to stay up a little later tonight I don't know what's going on yeah it's a better alarm because she thought that she needed to be online for the e-learning by nine yes so she didn't want to be late we have not made an announcement though we'll have to wait and see from what happens thank you thank you oh I appreciate that that makes you approve that true but generally yeah I had no idea what happened or what goes on there I don't know what it's too late it was fun you didn't do it and they as a kid and it was a kid no no he just missed
051it generated foreign so I have a few more of the scooter recognitions and staff recognitions and I'll go ahead and begin with Southwood so Southwood is proud of Duke Sparks and Caitlin rank they will be performing or they have performed actually at the Indiana High School All-State Honor Choir at the embassy theater this last Saturday qualifying for this choir is a very challenging process so we're proud of these two two students also south of Junior Senior High recently received an exemplary behavior report from the IHS double A submitted by one of the game officials the report read I was at whitco on Friday and that was actually on Friday the 13th and I want to give a huge shout out to both teams very kind and promoted sportsmanship there was always a thank you or
052yes sir even in a tough situation these small things do not go unnoticed keep up the good work guys from Northfield then Mr Snyder wanted to recognized Ella France and Ella Yale who advanced from the regional to state for Northfield girls definitely a huge congratulations to sophomore Ella Gale for winning an individual state championship Ella pinned all three of her opponents at the level state level on her way to the championship and I also want to recognize that it's not in the script here but William Carroll who is our new editor new editor at wall base Plain Dealer he's been putting a lot of good articles in about the great things that are happening at MSD of walrus County so we appreciate that also Northfield a couple weekends ago Visual Arts students from Northfield competed
053in a Scholastic art competition the national art competition Norfolk students did an outstanding job awarded 26 different Awards students who won awards include Emma bone Brianna lucer Lane Deaton elegale Emmy Haynes Anna Kissel Jason Crum Schuyler Lamson Victoria Lane Sage Martin main new career Jessica Ray Peyton Turley and Emma Warnick congratulations and good luck as your projects continue on in the competition and then also the last one I believe I have from Northfield Northfield senior Addie France auditioned last September and was accepted to the Indiana All-State honors choir just like the Southland students as sang at the embassy theater in Fort Wayne on Friday the 13th and Saturday July January 14th she joined a handful of other students from Southwood Manchester Wabash that made up a 300 plus singers from around the state they sang
054a number of advanced choir songs that required many hours of individual practice this was Addie's third All-State honors choir appearance we are proud of Addie and her accomplishment of making all state honors choir three years in a row I think so excellent we have those students that are doing well in Fine Arts so students are doing athletic and those students are doing academically too so we just really appreciate the principals and all the staff who work with these students and then also take the time to put it on the recognition so you guys can hear those good things that are happening so that's all I have for that tonight maybe thanks Mike for sure before we move on I've missed in my notes to make a motion to approve here donations step by step thank
055you any public comment on agenda items if now we'll move to approve the minutes from both the prior reorganization meeting that we had on the 10th of January and also the regular meeting that followed on the 10th we'll group those together I have a motion don't move any questions or claims tonight all in favor of the motion to prove minutes for both those meetings right here at one on dark hole stock price of the cold cyber security program that uh we purchased to help keep us out of trouble with any type of it's usually ransomware or anything like that this is the first year for that uh I think it's a section and just to keep the board updated on those kinds of things also just another school located here locally but north of us
056not in Wabash County had an attack of ransomware attack and so a lot of things that our tech department and Dr is doing to try to make sure that we don't have that because it will really really want to disrupt the school district so I'm going to do everything we can to make that work I move diploma all in favor aye payroll uh this is just the first payroll in January instead of nothing out of the ordinary motion for that thing on your payroll all in favor all right anything then on financial or we're skipping that tonight or no since we went over most of it the last four meetings no I don't have any programs can you grab your HR we have underemployment this evening to consider we have Samuel Cole Tana cells Brenda
057Carey Tiffany livesick and that's all on your employment you can see the positions there Tiffany would be head volleyball coach at Northfield for the coming year transfers we have Amanda rigney moving from English teacher at White stainbridge teacher for the bridge program Chris Whitaker transferring from classroom supervisor to that English teaching position at White's High School retirement is mentioned earlier as Tina Regal I believe we have some other sports Northville for spring coaches Choice Troy Shaffer stancox is baseball Brayden rip ripplinger baseball junior high or JV Greg Tomlinson varsity baseball and Joseph Mitchell varsity baseball Matt Burkhart varsity baseball Marianne Milam good tennis Casey Dyson JV tennis AI uh senenko I just want to take a shot at that no I'm kidding I'm sorry [Music] emphasizing their own consonant Kyle France softball Carlos Delgado softball
058Abby Hunter JB head softball Emily Pennington assisting JV softball Jordan Ekman also a volunteer assistant in softball Nick gallato volunteer assistant softball Gary Hunter Matt schreider and Jeff Crum all volunteer assistants in softball for track at Northfield this coming spring we have Heather Hayden head track Larry Vaughn Boris the assistant Krista Hoover also Varsity assistant Tricia Oswald Junior High head track Sarah patterman Junior High Assistant track and Michelle rice also assisting in junior high track I moved to improve the HR approval yes all right foreign coach Carrie Hamlin assistant track Chad Andrews assisting you know Jacob Marlow assisting in track Jeff Hobson doing Junior High track uh Danny basis Junior High track and Natalie younger Junior High track and then Gary Dale heading out this head goal that's Southwest to recording us through the skull
059emotionally okay all in favor of proving HR all right getting opposition thank you Mr Bowman if I can just mention though I know that Mr Martin already talked about Tina Regal but we do appreciate um she's had 36 years on the embassy of walrus County so a great run and we just thank her for all those many years and just wish her well but we do know that she has a few more months that she's going to work as far as weekend to continue on with their students but again that's a long time and we appreciate all those years of service of 36 years we have a couple big shoes sets of shoes that have no doubt which is foreign just a little bit uh we had our meeting last week and the one thing
060that Mr Hobbs he had a possible concern I think it's House Bill 1002 yes um where there are the states looking at changing the way CTE monies were distributed uh they're looking at a different way to fund CTE services but is it similar to like the educational fund that money that's what following the kid students to different Career Centers so I can create a mess or a possibly but he doesn't think it'll affect Heartland too much because we have five member schools and those positions are all taken or could be taken so you wouldn't have people coming in and say well I want but that hasn't passed yet you can give more about that no and there's also another part of that is for general education it's already being done with special education Arizona is
061the one state that's doing a lot of that already and I think Indiana somewhat some of the legislators are trying to tailor it after that but we'll just see what happens it's one of those things we don't know exactly what will happen but something that we're keeping an eye on other than that that's it just something to be aware of the funding may change again superintendent yeah I don't have anything um formal tonight but I did just want to mention that you know with this imminent uh possible I guess eminent impossible they'll match up together um but uh when we're talking about weather maybe we'll say that a winter storm just a reminder to everyone that we if we are canceled we will transition to an e-learning day of course this year we had the
062new schedule with the counting the minutes but we are continuing to have e-learning on those cancels days unless we go multiple days in a row but we'll just have to wait and see about that part but would you appreciate everybody's flexibility especially the flexibility of a two-hour delays also we know that that's a situation that for parents you have to be flexible and that causes A disruption in their lives too but we are looking at being safe with our students and with our staff and everyone involved so I just appreciate all of that flexibility and understanding that's why yeah I included just a little bit of report here first Purdue University and Indiana University of kind of Flagship universities for the states and we send stuff out for advice we try to listen to that
063and so I just pulled a board off from something they sent but basically just saying make sure your kids are taking some AP classes there's a big push for dual credit and that has its place so they say oh you can read it there but um uh that kind of supports our mission and making sure we offer those for kids that many of those challenges um might be a balance uh underneath that then another bill uh kind of like Mr Jessica brought up on this one pertains to education pretty strongly uh we have books for standards for math and science and social studies for every grade and for every class and the general assembly has passed the Department of Education with reducing those standards which most teachers will tell you is a good idea we
064have so many standards some not possible really to cover them all and amount of time we have or to at least cover them in a way that kids can actually you know understand what you're trying to get through and so by law they're going to have to reduce those 25 or 33 percent and so they've started that process but we will be getting new standards for the teachers for our classrooms like and so it's it'll just kind of it'll give us a chance to kind of revamp where to ride with that but that'll happen in the next year or two hmm and then finally that bottom I think we mentioned this before but just to remind you we're starting to look for science material actually tomorrow is the day we were supposed to go to
065Fort Wayne so so I'll be heading to Northfield to get an activity bus to drive our science teachers to Fort Wayne tomorrow should we not have increment weather at either our school or at the Fort Wayne Community Center yeah so we'll have to see you here whether we get traded on 69 with uh yeah so the textbook Caravan which ironically last year we did math at this time and the same day the school system had a delay but we've forged through and made it up there but this time they're offering a virtual presentation and so we will if in clinical weather comes up we will connect with those vendors virtually and then get their materials and we are looking to get print material as much as we can textbooks to have kids to promote that
066reading and University and Science and so the timetable right now the goal is to get all this stuff so we get to you guys by March by the March so we can have it for public preview before you officially the development let's make sure the community for it so much a few favorites to make his decision early enough early enough so I don't have to drive anymore let me kind of you know save me that trouble I think he sees one snowflake [Laughter] actually it's a cloud all right we have three items under new business this evening the first one being the approval of the 2020 or the 23-24 calendar which is subject to change yes and so you don't really want me to go through everything here and I'm not going to do that
067but I do want to say just like Mr Bowen said this is definitely subject to change due to current and or possible new legislation so as you know from last year the state of Indiana said that we could only count three a maximum of three asynchronous days and you could do as many synchronous as you want but you can only do eight uh three and then the doe came back and told us talk to us a little bit more about the 1003 flexibility waiver which you guys did approve the the resolution we applied for it it was approved and so we're counting minutes this year instead of actual 180 days so that was just a one-year waiver income and so we will continue to apply for that waiver but there's talk that it might be
068more difficult to get through that process this year so we don't know what's going to happen for sure and there has been some talk to that maybe the state would go and allow for more asynchronous days so again I will stress that we will put this out to the public upon your approval but it is something to change due to current and or possible new legislation and we did have to change the calendar last year late in the year because of that legislation and we do know that the the session will last through April would be longer about through April so there might be some changes late and so we apologize for that but again we know people are flexible this calendar is very similar to last year's calendar Christmas break is a little bit
069different because it's the two full weeks it's still 10 days for students and last year or this last year this was 10 days also but since Christmas falls on a Monday we go through a Friday and then we come back on a Monday and it all depends typically on when Christmas Falls and so it is very similar to last year's account so I would ask that you would approve this calendar with the caveat of the double asterisk at the top I moved to approve this schedule I know this question all in favor say hi hi one thing I did fail to let you know part of this whole discussion is that we have five number schools like Mr Driscoll talks about as being a part of the Heartland career center so we try to match
070those up as much as possible with the other four school districts that feed into uh Heartland career center and also Wabash Miami area program knowing that there are some tweaks here and there but it's my understanding that we are going to be fairly simple are similar we already know that North Miami had already created their own calendar for two years and so it looks almost identical Wabash and Manchester are still in conversations about that but they told me probably would look the same but they don't know for sure and they have some other different ideas too and then finally Prue typically does things more with some of the other Miami County Schools I.E the kind of call but theirs might be off a little bit but hopefully a little bit closer to match up so
071far second item a new business would be the recommendations before us to approve the administration moving forward with bonding process for a little summary and fall projects in 2020. foreign Council and trying to figure out filling out a debt structure like we talked about in in the finance meeting a little bit in regards to um uh some relatives that we have potentially upcoming that we'd like to get in this calendar year about sport getting started I moved to the recommendation of the bonding process for coming for our projects I have a motion and a second on that item of the business called famous AI opposed okay thank you the third one is recommendation approve overnight out of state field trip for Northfield 7th and eighth grade choirs for the music in the parts of Kings
072Island on the 19th and 20th of May and I believe they've done that before right now I believe this is the new one we've done other things with like physics classes and things like that to Cedar Point or Kings Island yeah out of state field trip second all in favor of the motion all right proposed nothing under unfinished business but we do have something under board policy this evening the first reading of arise revised number 4085 on attendance yes so our handbooks um were changed a couple years ago as far as attendance and the actual policy needed to be changed really because of some Indiana code and doe recommendations and so again this is just the first reading so if there are questions that you have afterwards we can talk about those because we don't
073ask for approval of this until the end so if you look at the second page there basically we're talking changing the eight to five as far as absences per semester we do not have our handbooks and our policy match and so we need to get that matched and this is the proper way of doing it as far as the five and not the eight so those were the changes also making some note about language from truancies to unexcused there are definitely different definitions for truancy compared to unexcused also just changing some minor things as we look at it from social worker to staff because we have guidance counselors and social workers so we just group it up to staff and then we took some language out to make it just more to go along with
074the handbook the work permits that was still in that policy we no longer schools do not deal with work permits anymore that's Indiana code also and so we had to strike all that out and then the attendance policies we're just really asking um having the parents or actually this policy say that it's more based on what you look at as far as the handbook because we know sometimes the handbook is more specific than the actual policies so actually there's quite a bit that's been stricken from the policy um but it all goes back to your hand mode too which you approve on a yearly basis so if there are any questions now or later but not asking for approval now or just through the shows bottom line This brings it in line and correct question
075under attendance procedures I maybe I'm not reading right the pattern of excessive attendance develops how do you have excessive attendance is it coming too much they come on Saturday I can't keep them away that's a good point probably Charlie Charlie yeah yeah and that's what I think yeah the words written in there well we can talk about this too because ill regular I guess when we're talking about ill regular that word is can be associated with other things too and so um that needs to be changed so we don't encourage accessibility yeah actually it's accessible actually there will be some students tomorrow if we cancel that would rather be in school so I guess I beg to differ on some of this but uh all right Josh what did you say would be better on
076that so I think it reads the pattern of absence yeah yeah because it was written previously irregular attendance now it's excessive yeah absence that's why we do this that's why there's a first and second reading so we can make sure we catch boys [Laughter] [Music] all right all right thank you anything else that looks so regular about that so impossible for the second reason we'll try to get that correct we'll check it okay opened up the public comments on all items for this evening I haven't seen the board anything yes now and we're doing 2014.