001i 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 welcome everyone it's good to see you all we don't have any main real revisions to the agenda so we'll just hop right into it future board meetings are september 13th and 27th and october 11th all here at 6pm under public recognition we have a recommendation to approve a 225 donation from wabash elks for northfield cross country and a recommendation to approve a 15 000 donation for the 2022-2023 year from ford meter box that is something they do for us every year and that's something that is greatly appreciated so we appreciate the voltage helps for their donation and afford me to monitor theirs but officially
002we have to approve those into the bolts so i'll somebody make a recommendation on a motion on that i need to improve those donations expect that motion and second to approve the uh donations from the walmart shelves out of four meter box all in favor say hi moving on to school recognition yes i just had a couple uh mr daisy first of all actually both of them are from mr martin at shark creek first of all shark creek students and staff would like to thank our custodial staff of howard washer and tim smith for the time and effort keeping our building clean and safe we also appreciate the important work of mr steve holly and his maintenance crew and also welcome to our new staff members for 2022 2023 kami ross teaching third grade jacob
003watkins teaching sixth grade and melissa metz working with students of various grade levels as a paraprofessional we're glad you are here so that's all i have for today okay so we will move to the uh public comment if there's anybody that would like to make any public comments okay um that was for agenda items only will open a backup period of that for all answers moving on to the consent agenda items uh first up is the approval of the minutes from our last meeting on august 9. motion and second to approve the minutes from our last meeting all in favor say financials claims um [Music] a second to approve claims as presented to us nothing uh to talk about payroll that actually concludes the final payroll for the 21 21-22 school year so the august
00430th pay will be a reflection then of payroll for 22-22 [Music] uh we talked about uh end of the month balances already at the last board meeting but this is just a representation of uh cash flow if you scroll down a little bit up sorry we sit at almost 8.2 million in our education fund and if you look at the progressive months you can continue to see that to be built up there so that's always a good thing when you're not losing money so we're looking in good shape when it comes to our education fund and then as far as actually go back to the education fund for a second i'm going to highlight a little bit of this when we talk about my presentation earlier but if you look at transfers out you notice
005that we transfer money from the education fund to the operation fund and we do that for the mere purpose because our operational fund revenue does not cover all of our operational fund expenses and so you can see you know we've been doing about 165 000 a month that puts us around 11 to 12 percent of our revenue goes into our operation fund to cover those costs so you know you're looking this is about what we typically do around 1.92 million dollars a year we're transferring money out of our education fund to cover those expenses that are not covered by the revenue that we receive in our operations fund so i just want to kind of make that point a little bit uh i think everybody understands that it's just been part of school finance now
006for the last few years in covering those costs um when they made those changes to the fund how much does the state allow percentage um you're not supposed to do more than and we've been historically around 12 and a half percent and right now we're actually under 12 so we're probably going to increase that a little bit more because we obviously want to make sure that we are covering our costs uh in our operation fund and not trying to absorb all of those costs in our operational fund because that takes away from things like capital projects and so forth from the operation fund side of things if you look at our fund balances you can see we're sitting at about six and a half million dollars in our operational fund uh budget but that cash
007flow works a little differently because you know the big thing that our major revenue source comes just twice a year and that's when the taxes are paid out and so june and december and so you see big bumps in cash flow and then you see decreases because you're spending more in those other months and then at the end you see another big increase there so you know anticipating ending around 6.8 million dollars or so when it comes to our operational fund balance any other questions with cash flow there are some salaries out of operations there are yeah there's i'd say probably 60 of that budget is for salaries and you're talking you know your bus drivers your custodians your maintenance staff uh those type of costs uh from a salary perspective sometimes that's not understood
008it looks so that's all i had with with that uh so then i guess that can get us into our 2023 budget review we've covered all of our estimated budgets for um 2023. i want to talk to you tonight tonight a little bit about what they call the form 4 review which basically entails our tax rates and how that is determined for our 2023 budget so um we all understand how taxes are used and created and so if we go through the slides here some things that you always want to look at when we talk about tax rates uh is the first thing is assessed valuation okay so assess valuation uh when it comes to your property that determines uh how much of that tax rate then that is your paid in your property taxes
009from a school standpoint it's similar in the fact that it controls the tax rate that the school entity puts out is is affected or determined by the assessed valuation that's one component school districts have no control of what the district assessed valuation is but it is a factor in what helps determine tax rates for the school district the other factor that is a big deterrent in in tax rates is the levy and that's schools do have a control over that they don't have total control over it because there's things put in place that caps those so that you can't you can only tax so much but we do have control over the levy and the levy is the amount of money that we're asking for to cover our budget and the two budgets that depend
010on uh taxes are our operation fund and our debt service fund okay and so those two funds we determine an amount that we need to fund our budget for all right and then that levy along with the assessed valuation will determine the tax phrase so the higher the assessed valuation if the levy stays the same then the rate can go down right so it works like on a sea salt right and so um i just want to clarify yeah i understood that but i just want to make sure that we were yeah so the assessed valuation and to your point today the next slide you can see that the higher the assessed valuation as long as as long as the levy remains the same okay so if we ask for a 5 million levy for
011example the higher that assessed value is the lower that tax rate is going to be okay if we ask for five million dollars and the assessed value is lower then that tax rate is going to increase so that covers that amount that you're needed to fund your budget next time can we add pictures like different people so we always want to look at our assessed valuation and the history of our assessed valuation because that's a determining factor on when we build our budget you know if assessed valuations are going up that's a good thing when it comes to the tax impact so we look at our assessed valuation over time and we can see that it's increasing it's sometimes easier to look on a graph so if you look at the next slide this is
012a graph historically what our assessed evaluation has been over the past 10 years or so we're actually a little bit more than that 12 13 years okay and you can see dips in it you can see a time frame from 2009 to 2015 where it was on the increase you can see a time between 2015 and 2021 where there was some ups and downs and you can see now we're in a position where that is increasing okay from a business manager standpoint if i look at this i would be suggesting that in those times that assessed valuation is increasing are times that we want to consider i don't say spending money but looking at what projects we have what our debt sits at so that we can do things that maybe not be so much
013of a tax impact on our taxpayers right so that time between 2009 2014 15 might have been a good time okay i would have suggested that's a good time to really look at our debt see what we have see what we need to do from our from our building standpoints so that we can do things and maybe have very limited impact on the taxpayers and so as you can see i feel like we're getting into that kind of window there where we're seeing an increase in assessed valuation where it's very important for us to look at where our debt is at and look at what projects we need to do so that we can make a just a conscious good decision on how we want to improve our facilities all right that anticipated 2023 or
014some of the numbers in the formula already how was that projection done so that comes from our county auditor of what our assessed valuations are most likely to be that doesn't mean that they're going to exactly be that but that comes from the county auditor okay and so that's what we use then when we're building out our budget percentage that's going to be a significant percent increase yes i didn't know the farmland component coming in will drive that even further probably well that that i would assume that that would have factored that in that 857 million would have land value component there's also some kind of other numbers besides just real estate value is there an audience [Music] jim probably knows it's a gross trial or kind of thing there's some production and problem the
015calculation's much more common but then it impacts that and we're also seeing that like you i think you're suggesting is that the real the farm base value has started to climb again and then ultimately that you know will be going into next year and so on but this year that number reflects the start of that process because there's a short lag time yeah is there not yeah there's a lighting and so if you go to the next slide this was the [Music] study that we had policy analytics work on us as we were looking at the future um and this were this was their projections uh based off of all the information that you're talking about there and what assessed values may look like in in the future for the for the corporation and you
016can see they have it increasing as well and this projection actually is not increased as quickly as what the actual may end up being from what we got from the county auditor so that's good when it comes to like we said higher assessed valuation lower taxes when it comes to our calculations to fund our budgets that's all i have for that as far as our corporation assessed value is concerned we can compare it uh we've done this in the past we compare it to our border schools that's usually the easiest to do and you can see huntington county has the highest assessed valuation uh and then follow down there through that and then you can see even there's a little dot there those dots represent what the corporation assessed value is per adm so per
017student you can see that from assessed valuation standpoint our district is pretty strong when it comes to the number of students that we have for assessed valuation yeah i personally found that interesting and enlightening so go to the next slide this is a historical view of our tax rates since 2012 the different bar charts represent different things because of different funds that were around during that time but the two funds that we deal with now that are related to taxes are the debt service and the operational fund some districts have a school pension debt we no longer have a school pension debt we paid that off it looks like in 2017 so we didn't have any pension debt in 2018 so we only have the debt from any money that we borrow for projects and
018then rates for money needed to fund our operation fund this is kind of hot off the press uh i uh i always like to listen to larry devore i don't know if you guys are familiar with that name he's an economist from purdue he doesn't work for purdue anymore he's retired but he comes and talks and i hadn't been to a presentation in a while so i asked if they had this information so he shared it with us but this just kind of shows property tax rate percentiles for 2022 and it just kind of shows you know counties cities counts and schools would be more to my interest and then it just kind of shows our 2022 tax rate was 83 cents and where that falls in the state from attack property tax rate uh
019comparison you can see we've fallen that lower uh 25th percentile locally we can compare from our border schools again using the same comparison for 2022 you can see locally then our district has been or is the lowest and historically has been one of the lowest in the areas i just throw this up there as a comparison i just kind of like to look at it if what this comparison does is it shows what the tax rate is and then what the levy amount that is generated from that tax levy so like for example if you use us msd wabash county we sit at 80 um 83 cents and we generate a little over six million dollars six to seven million dollars in revenue uh with that tax rate and then you can look at another
020school corporation that may have a higher tax rate but their levy doesn't generate as much and again that's a lot to do with assessed valuations and those types of things so i mentioned debt service operations our local tax support funds so we look at those comparisons and then we also want to look at what type of impacts we may see that may cause us to not generate all of that revenue some examples would be like tax caps okay those taxpayers that hit the tax caps those monies don't we don't collect those monies so those are considered revenue losses for us and so we factor that into the amount of revenue that we potentially may or may not get our tax cap impact for this coming year is estimated at 243 000 again that comes from
021the dlgf site that comes from the county portion on the dlgf that kind of estimates those and and that's pretty accurate uh i think we lost close to 180 000 last year and it goes up every year as our assessed valuation grows that also leads to more individuals reaching that tax cap so the goal when we build the budget for the operation and debt service is to advertise a high rate and a high levy so that we can ensure that we collect the full amount of levy that is needed to fund our budget so to do that we advertise a low assessed valuation which creates a higher tax rate but that all gets factored out and evened out balanced out once the true assessed valuation is determined okay so some things to keep in mind
022along with that for debt service there's really no max so it's just dependent on the money that you borrow for the operations fund there is a max that's determined through what they call the max levy growth quotient so for example our max levy for 2022 was 4.4 million dollars our max levy for 2023 is 4.6 million dollars okay and that is determined like i said by the max levy growth quotient so it went up five percent so how do they figure that if you go to the next slide they use the indiana non-farm personal income six-year average to determine that okay and so as you can see in 2021 we had a high non-farm personal income increase and in 2015 we had a much lower one so that's going to come off of that equation
023that average calculation to get to that five percent so you can see it was four point three percent it moved up to five percent you can see how it's dipped uh and ebbed over time since 1995. but you can see that's the highest 2021 is the highest growth that we've had for a long time which has caused an increase in that growth quotient so i brought this slide up we talked about this a little bit at our last board meeting here or i guess two board meets ago and we were looking at cash flow and i alluded to it a little bit when we were talking about cash flow from the education fund so what this represents this shows what we what our expenses were in our operational fund okay expenses only uh that and
024a lot of those expenses do not include capital projects because we we use our fund money to do those capital project expenses but these were our actual expenses expenses for 2020 2021 and 2020 estimated two from that cash flow we just looked at the revenue that we're showing are the actual revenues that we received from just the local property tax amount okay that is our biggest revenue source is the local property tax levy okay so that revenue represents just that levy the second major revenue source in that operation fund like i mentioned earlier in our cash flow comes from our education fund so we're having to transfer at least this amount of money from our education fund over to our operation fund just to cover those expenses because the revenue from our tax levy does
025not cover it okay and you can see that is growing and that will continue to grow um over time which just means we have to transfer more money in from our education functional operation fund which could cause problems because then you're taking away monies that you could have for programming and salaries and benefits on the instructional side to cover those costs from the operational side one of the things that our referendum project does is by moving from five buildings to three buildings it helps us avoid some of those costs in the future we're working on figuring out kind of what that is we won't ever get it exact but what some estimate cost avoidance is would be in the future some early calculations suggest that it's going to be around six to seven hundred thousand
026dollars that we would potentially avoid in cost by going from a five billion district to a three billion district and that would be per year and that would be per year whereas these costs are going to continue to be there every year in our current structure so we're going to continue to face that that challenge okay it hasn't been a challenge because our education fund has been healthy and our operation fund has been healthy but the point of that is is that our revenue still does not cover our expenses and so that could be a big challenge in the future um as things continue to increase and so forth but i just wanted to highlight that a little bit since we're talking about operation fund levies and those types of things uh to just kind
027of get that process started thinking about as we bring out some other things when we share information in regards to the referendum and so forth um mentioning about the referendum as far as the capital construction class construction compared to operation say as far as if if we cost avoid six to seven hundred thousand dollars each year that would be money that would not be transferred out of the education fund to the operation fund which in reality for a referendum there are two different types of referendum there's maybe there's more experts here than me but it's either capital or called construction compared to operation so in reality with just having the capital or uh construction referendum this would actually in theory help us with a operation referendum even though we don't even we're not asking for
028operations because it allows for more money to be in that account in the education account where we pay most of our salaries i would agree with that i mean this referendum although it's capital could also be viewed as operational in the cost avoidance that we would have which would also help out our education fund if we're looking at a 20-year window on the referendum bill value and your hundred percent a thousand that would be 12 to 14 million over that period of time whereas if we continue as such then that that number is going to you know continue to grow and build if you used a million dollars there that's two more dollars for that period of time so there's some food for thought as we talk about some of those things in the future
029so boiling that all down okay then it gets into what what uh tax rates we'll be uh advertising for our 2023 budget so if the first two columns on the left represent uh what we did in 2022 so it shows what we advertised in 2022 and then what the actual was for 2022 and so in 2023 we we're showing what we're going to advertise so we're going to advertise um a 20 cent debt rate and a 67 operation rate so it's going to be advertised 88 cents with the reality b depending on what the actual assessed valuation income comes in that is if we use the estimated asset valuation and true truly it's going to be more around 16 cents for debt and 54 cents for operations and the debt is decreasing you can see
030from 2022 to 2023 because we we're paying two bonds off this year so for 2023 we only have one bond payment which is about two million dollars or so just over two million of ours left and that would be our last debt i think at that point in time so with that then we'll have our budget hearing uh september 13th we'll kind of go over everything that we went over in these individual meetings put it all together present that to the public and then the following board meeting would be our budget adoption any questions with that so since we're talking about tax rates kind of leads us into our next presentation and this refers to the referendum and the ballot question in particular we knew the valve question was going to be an issue uh
031we we discussed that earlier in one of our work sessions but just so we can go over some things here i just want to mention before jim talks a little bit about it um we had a process that we had to go through and we had to complete by august before we get the ballot question uh put on the november ballot uh so the about question was finalized and approved by the dlgf the county election board and the county auditor and that last approval was done on july 27th it was released at some point by the indiana education insight after that time sometime in early august the ballot question is not something that we create it meets the parameters that are set by indiana law in indiana code 6-1.1-20-3.6 on april 12th we had a
032work session with ice miller when we were talking about the referendum and we talked a little bit about the ballot question um so the language and parameters that about question were somewhat discussed during that along with the complexity of that ballot question and how it's not really a true reflection of the individual taxpayer there were concerns early on when we did the referendum that the taxes were going to go up two to three times two to three times what they're currently paying so on may 31st when we're actually doing our referendum hearings uh mr elizondo went through uh an example of a tax bill showing that indeed the tax was not going to increase uh two to three times uh and so to help people better understand that we created the tax calculator right and
033so that tax calgary was put on our website because that is where you're going to get your true reflection as the individual taxpayer of what that tax investment will be for this project so then the ballot question comes out and um obviously our goal is to make sure that people are as informed as in pop as much as possible we want them to go to the ballot with as much information so they can make an informed decision and anybody that doesn't do that and goes up to that question it's going to appear that your everybody's taxes are going to increase by 124 and so without any background information of that what people or most people are going to vote no i went to that i had no idea what that meant i mean i'm going
034to vote right so we want to try to make sure we're getting the most accurate up-to-date information out there publicly as well as on our site our site is a very good resource for that information especially with that tax calculator so we want to make sure people use that and use it correctly i think i've ran into some issues where i've helped people with that tax calculator that it's only as good as the number you put in that the information that you put in the head so if you put in the wrong information the wrong number in there you're not going to get what you should expect to get and so i you know i've worked with a few people on that and in in some of those cases in both those cases they still
035put in their gross assessed value and that's not what's being taxed it's the net assessed fat you in so they get a lot different number when they use that gross assessed value then when they use that mass test five so again i just want to read at the point when you use that calculator to make sure that you are using that assessed value and that's what we're here for to help as well a little bit with that too on the right hand side when you go to that it'll say use the taxable assessment and so when you first go into the tax calculator for all of you probably know this but maybe other people that are going to watch this later you will see gross assessment first and in the actual county uh website uh
036when you go to the lobby county government but then the next one will be the taxable assessment so it is the net but it's actually labeled as taxable assessment that you need to do that gross assessment so again we talked a little bit about the complexity of the ballot question i asked mr elizondo to come and speak because in the law there's a certain formula that you have to use that comes up with those percentages so i asked mr alexander to break that down a little bit for us so that we can get a better understanding of that question so well the question has never been written to help the municipality get through the referendums okay they have always had various iterations of it but it has always been a sticking point uh this is
037a new question this year versus past years in the past this question would have read you have are you willing to support this with a tax rate increase of 84 cents and that's all all there is and it says the name of the project so then the legislature decided well maybe they could do something that could tell individual investor professors it's individual property owners uh when they're looking at the ballot what is my impact well their attempt at this is trying to look at what impact does it have on the school corporation's tax rate not the total tax rate that you're paying for a tax industry for the school corporation's tax rate and then it always will use the maximum payment that we talked about early that does not account for anything else in your
038debt service so i'm going to go through a few things let me go to the next page before we go have you all read this do you want me to read the question okay uh so i kind of highlighted we're going to talk i'm going to talk about three different things how they calculate the prop the average property value how they calculate the average tax district rate and then the percentage tax payment uh change so we'll go to the next slide yet the average property value is a real simple arithmetic average it's take the total dollar assessed value and divided by the number of homesteads or the total assessed value for businesses and divided by the number of business properties pretty straightforward not as much of a an issue in calculating that because you know
039it's pretty straightforward that's a way to find an easy average of those values this i'm sure the legislature chose it because it's easier to calculate than doing some type of median or average weighted weighted average the next one gets a little more interesting and i think has room for improvement um again it is simply an uh average but the way they take the average is they add all of your total tax districts your tax industry so your nine tax in districts we take the total tax rate for each of those districts add those up and divide by nine gets us that average of 2.04 uh two dollars and four cents again it's easier to calculate i'm sure that's why it went that way but it doesn't do give any credence to the weighting of values
040so as an example you have a part of that calculation is papa township and how many properties are in papa township versus how many are in you know wabash city portion of your district there's no waiting at all to the number or the value of homes and so it makes it a little harder that you know that simple two dollars and four cents is our first issue when we try to look at it ourselves and figure out how much our impact is going to be because none of us have that two dollar for none of you have that two dollar four cent tax rate that's not one of the nine choices um it's the average of those choices so that becomes an issue but that's the way it before the state the legislature dictates it's
041calculated we have to follow very specific rules in calculating all that and i'll go through that in a little bit but next the final part is the question the question has to include the maximum increase on this project standalone so ignoring anything else in your debt service fund it's what is the maximum increase of this issue by itself and that's our 83 cents that's the total red section that's also 83 cents and at the av assumptions we use we're locked into that now based on this new av rate that growth those numbers will be a little lower tax rate wise but we have to live with where we are from the point we put this on the ballot what you'll see and what you'll remember is we're looking at the actual impact versus 2021's rate
042is 54.17 cents which is that incremental increase from our existing debt so as our debt pays off we've structured this in behind that debt so if we look at a 2021 tax bill a tax rate we're now looking at what's the incremental increase not the full 83 cents but that 54 cents that does not appear in the question anywhere and hasn't ever appeared in the question even though many school districts would have have done this where there has been no incremental increase but they still have to show in the question an increase of you know let's just say it's the 83 cents so it's it's always been uh misleading from the standpoint of a uninformed voter walking in they would have no idea and that's part of i think what chris just talked about is
043this is that period where education of your voting public is very very important to realize what that question says and doesn't say next that we can't read but i'm going to zoom in so that's basically the entire worksheet that we use to calculate and in this case policy analytics did that calculation for you and this is their worksheet if we go to the next page i zoom in and take looks at pieces of it as we go and this was done sorry interrupt but this was also done with the county auditor too because that's part of the approval process yes the auditor also has to go run their numbers and compare it and have to accept that so um so the first part of the item is we're going to look at the homestead page
044first but this is the simple map at the very top we have 577 000 of gross assessed value for homes 4 382 homesteads that gives us our average house value pretty simple pretty straightforward from that we take that 131 000 we take away the standard homestead deduction of 45 000 and then the supplemental uh homestead deduction which is 35 of the remaining that equals that 30 000. that gets us to our net assessed value of 56 so that's the number if this particular home was using your calculator that's the number you would be putting into the calculator is that net assessed value that's what's taxable this formula takes that and divides it by a hundred to just make the following math work but basically that's the way we calculate taxes we take your net assessed
045value divided by 100 and that's what we multiply times tax rates so we move to the next section i'm not going to come out okay please well i was actually going to slow me down and stop me i'm just going to put so what you're saying there too though on step 2 letter b 56 378 that would be that average like if that was um someone's average then we would plug that into the calculator correct correct yeah and just to just to throw that out there too uh i'm putting that in the capillary right now so that would be monthly of 25.45 so write that down because i probably won't remember as i keep talking but i want to compare that with how this generates it that's 156. and it depends on which tax district
046that's in which do you know which district that's in uh oh no you don't have to own yourself you don't have to um and but it will be interesting here uh next we look at uh the tax the calculation for the tax rate that's just as i described we take all of the individual tax rates from the dollar 27 in waltz to to the high of 337 in wabash city wabash county schools gives us our 18.39 of total tax rate divided by the nine districts gives us our average cost or tax rate of two dollars or four cents again i don't see two dollars or four cents in any of those combinations and that's where we start to run afoul of this being useful you know as far as actually calculating but typically nothing's going
047to be useful to that taxpayer that walks in day one without any education they're going to be ready to vote and you the education has to occur before then and then finally the bottom half of the table gets to their calculations so we go back the adult the 1152 is the tax rate on that that's the gross tax rate on the average property at that average 2.4 cent rate gives us that 1 152 from that you have a property tax replacement credit rate of you get that credit of 233 dollars brings you down to a net 918.77 tax bill for that average home in the average taxi district then we look at looking at just the school rate so we so this has all been on the total tax rate now the question requires what's
048the impact to the school rate and so we look at the 83 cents represents your total school certified rate we take that and figure out the share of that 918 that is is scoring and that's at 375.83 then step seven is the 83 cents that is what we're talking about the impact from the referendum the gross impact okay we take that 83 cents and calculate that that gets us to 467 dollars the math is simply how much does how much growth is there from 375 to 467 and that's how they get that 124 tax increase that is only on the school portion if you were to look at your total tax bill the number would be less because we're starting with a much larger starting point we're actually starting with 918 and we'd be increasing
049by you know 90 some not roughly 90 over the over the 1000 or the 918 percentage is noticeably different next page what if we put the 54 cents in the 54 cents you can see that that changes this equation to show that there would be 81 again much lower than the 124 but it also is only reflected on that school tax rate not the actual tax bill that any of you would be paid on your total taxing district so trying to say that this number isn't real relevant but it it has to be an educated voting populace that shows up because there's nothing in the question that helps you if we go to the next page let's open it if you take the 467 minus the 375 it's a 92 increase you divide that by
050the 375.83 that's a 24 increase not 124. right oh so and that's misleading right there oh yeah no it's the the the math from our legislature i i wish i had some answers yeah it should be 24. and then if you have your calculator take that same 90 something over the 918. the 92 over the one over the 918.77 cents that should be the whole property would be your whole property tax on that average property so you and i would look at our bill so going on business we do the same calculation the only difference in the business there are no homestead credits and exemptions so we then move back to the same page i do the same exercise that goes from 99 to 64. go to the next page that's what the question might
051look like if you really use the 54 set number but again going to the final page i believe the only way you and your voting constituents can find out what's really impacting them is to get to that calculator i mean for the reasons i say the calculation the average value is pretty straightforward the calculation of the average taxpayer is not and then the growth calculations or the increased calculation is very misleading so that's i i wish there was a better answer it's not a good answer but it i think chris wanted me to come and just reiterate or go through and help us understand but then reiterate that ultimately your best tool is word of mouth in your community and getting to that tax calculator now tax calculator is not completely perfect but it's pretty
052pretty close so you can get into there and get a much better feel for what your tax bill might look like and then realizing with your av growth things should actually be better than that but you know that's more just a side note as far as you know what what that's looking like okay i'm going in the future going to ask a very dangerous question because i'm not going to be a lawyer here and ask you a question i already know the answer to so i'm totally i could be you said he's going to ask the finance one what do you want the answer all lawyers are known to ask a question you already know the answer to i don't know the answer to this question so it could go up in my face but
053so on the tax calculator and i feel like that's still the best tool and you said that you know there's some short falls and pitfalls one of the things that i hear a lot in that tax calculator is that when you go to the site for the tax calculator it is for the last published and collected tax year not for what people just recently got in the mail telling them how much their taxes are going to go up so they see other assessed values going up and so they see that as we're being deceptive when it's the most accurate information that we have my question then is is there a way to gauge based on what that went up to this year for the assessed valuations of of how much to okay so yes this
054is how much it says it's going to go up but because of that slight difference it might be just that much more i'm sorry actually you probably will be less because of the fact that right because this is how you went wait yeah i i didn't think about that with the assessed value that's going clear up that's going to be we've been talking about that all night that the higher the assessed valuation is the lower that tax rate becomes so for people who are concerned when they plug that in and go well that was last year's tax rate well this year we're having that we have a assessed valuation going up so that tax rate is actually going to come down yeah so there that's excellent point the tax rate calculation would be a lower
055tax rate however when we have a reassessment or an increase it's a real allotment of taxes among taxpayers so you may have had an assessed value that went up ten percent yours may have gone up three percent yours might have dropped a percent and that becomes a new alignment so if your if your assessed value individually grew greater than that average you may not see a decrease if you grew less than the average you may so the problem is we don't have that solution one possible solution if you do receive your reassessment and have access to your no you didn't take i did i looked at mine said i'm not going to challenge us so i threw it away if you have yours that is a better number than the going on online online will
056catch up now that we have the new certified write out our assessment out there there we know those numbers are back there someplace it's how quick will they actually get into a usable database but so yes there but no there isn't a good way that i would feel comfortable saying well decrease this number by a percent or something it's just with that much of an assessment change some of its new property you know there's new new property or new businesses added something to the others it's a pure change in your in your assessment or in your neighborhood a bunch of houses sold at very attractive prices and in others there were no sales you know so it's a little tougher that way to be able to pinpoint it and that is one of the weaknesses
057or you know in that calculator is we can only it's always good as the data we can put in it yeah my problem is the two guys across the street putting some [Laughter] another clarifying question jim i think some people are also under the misconception that if the impact would take effect immediately in 2023 and so just for some clarity when would that impact take place if the referendum passed in november we are projecting if the referendum passes in november we would sell bonds sometime in 2023 so the first you as a school corporation would be able to levy taxes would be in so we're still out of the ways and we don't know whether that will be an incremental snap or the full full piece it depends on the schedule and things like that
058but the first you would unless you sold bonds this year there is no way to put anything on the tax rule in 2023 for this project and we wouldn't know necessarily what our bonds that we would take out would be until we get bids and those type of things because 115 is the cap which includes not only the the new school but the rent uh renovation of the two high schools so it could come back less or yes for those of you you you were all with us but during the project hearings again we set those as maximums and the payment stream has maximums with the idea that if there's ability to borrow less or different repayment terms shorter whatever you know all of those things could potentially bring that down the biggest impact would
059be if you borrow less just like with our home mortgages it's more of the amount we borrow than the final interest rate you know makes the biggest difference table and that 115 only includes the renovation of the two schools but soft costs and other types all of the costs that would be used up front it does not include the interest the interest is in that payment the interest is in that 84 cents or 53 cents or 83 cents 54 cents um but as far as all costs are included in that 150 right how does a borrowing gym or bonds line up with the expenditures that when it's over a period of time we don't borrow all the bonds at once it can it can vary um depending on the markets depending on if you have
060bids up front typically on a brand new school you would probably borrow most of it up front or all of it up front where did where does this school corporation park the money it would be with your trusty bank and then you could invest it and with today's short-term rates there would be well construction earnings that would occur to offset some of those costs to the extent you ended up with your architects deciding that the new building would occur completely ahead of the renovation so you have places to move everybody and that's a very much possibility i don't know you could phase that by selling you know enough for the new construction and then wait a year or two and sell for the other there are some it depends on the market if we think
061the interest rates are going dramatically higher you don't do that but if you can wait that is less that's less interest you're paying on stuff you have aren't spending on as well as it pushes you a little further down the road in amortization so we still could borrow for no more than 20 years but maybe overall that's 22 years of amortization instead of 20. so that'd be an important decision yeah and i think that's very will be very um important as you develop the final plan to work with the architects on how that phasing how all that fits together it's different today because we can actually earn something on the money if we're parking a hundred and ten million dollars or 115 million dollars away to spend over the next two to three years when
062we were earning nothing that's different than today you know earning something reasonable on the short-term uh reinvestment rates so yeah i'm coming from a long history of us being not earning anything on the construction funds for oh my god i would skew the tax tax impact to the decision that that makes oh you're exactly right to the extent we and we took a very conservative approach and did not account for any construction fund earnings but to the extent you earned there that is additional construction funds available to borrow maybe only 80 million yeah and and the way you could structure it beginners yeah yeah no those are all you know we tried to go as conservative to give you those choices but you know you're exactly right those are uh items you as a board
063will have to decide as we get further down question underlying under all of this is the agriculture farmland does it come in similar to that 80 actual or because where we said that's a huge component of the property tax is the agriculture plan what i will i haven't run any individual farmlands but i know the base farm assessed value that you then calculate your production values off of one there has gone up this year and the projections talking to learn more i'm just talking about that 124 percent oh and then the business at 90 whatever it was what's the agriculture look like i haven't run that i could we can try to give you a rough idea like there i will have to the hardest part will calculate the app kind of an average um
064because that again is something policy analytics has all that data for but i think we could it's a big that's a good question okay that we encounter personally i i've got it at 64 okay now the accuracy of that i told somebody earlier in my math but it would be interesting to know and yes i agree every parcel is different right but at least you know that that's almost 50 of what the ballot is going to read on the residential yes i find it interesting that the legislature only chose those two categories um now they are the two extremes the one in the three percent properties rather than the two [Music] prior discussions over the past years it's about 40 maybe that contributing component okay we can try to do some more research on that
065at least have that as information for you it obviously won't be in any question but it will help you as a community prepare for the it should actually be on the ballot question too i mean that's the part that's surprising to me that it shows the two the two and not the third because they live in the city they're our friends in indianapolis that's right [Laughter] a weird question um are there other calculators out there like does the dlgf have a calculator does the dlgf will put a calculator on there okay and again that calculator will be biased towards the 83 cents okay it will not it will it does not factor in the yeah the rest of our calculator is the one that needs to be the rest the rest of the calculations will
066be very similar under underlying uh they typically don't in your case it's going to be very similar to the extent it's your district had tax cap implications and things like that their calculator is more different you're not addressing all of that but the idea that they'll be looking at the 83 cents okay is there a reason we wouldn't want the public to use to do assessed valuations if they have the preliminary exam because we will it will artificially increase their tax impact from the standpoint that the 80 or the 54 cents has not been modified downward because of the av right yeah so we have no benefit that we're going debt free in a year yeah well you'd still have some benefit but not the full benefit on their calculations so i would say to
067encourage people to stay with the 21. yeah i mean and realize that that probably will yeah it probably is still going to be higher unless you're one of those properties it really grew a b wise individually just because the the tax rate will the tax rate that 54 cents realistically let's just say we went to 50 cents you take your save av you have a lower payment if you try to make the adjustment you might be the same you might be higher you might be lower but i think you're you're right the only one part of the equation would have been changed if they use that new new ap so it's reasonable to say with the 54 for 54 cents that the school portion of the property tax will go up 80 percent but the
068overall property tax that mr visceral figured out will be closer to 10 11 for the overall property if according to the way we look at that yes and the 84 or the 80 it based on their calculation would be more realistic but when you look at i think it's important to remember it is your total tax rate that you're actually all looking at your bills none of us pay our bills separately a check to the school a check to the township and they're checked so the 80 is only the school portion of the property tax not approval but in the end if you have a true reflection of the individual taxpayer you use the tax calculator yes can't stress the tax calculator no any other questions for jim thank you um so i met somebody
069in the community who doesn't hasn't met you yet and so she was questioning you know just how trustworthy and reliable this data was earlier that some of this is verified by the auditor okay so all of all of the question and all that table you saw the otter has gone through and verified all of those items as part of the certification of the question the process the school submits their question submits the data they then verify they have to sign off on it i'm trying to convince her but i so we have three different layers here that made sure that this was accurate information and actually the basis to a lot of this the policy analytics has every parcel in their database and so from that standpoint they they get a very deep guide into
070the assessed value side and the calculations of the averages and things like that thank you jim thanks okay ready for this yep so then the last thing i need is just approval uh to advertise the form 3 which advertises our tax rates that we went over earlier and then advertises when our budget hearing and budget adoption times are so we have a recommendation to approve the advertising of form 3 and gateway to make the motion what would you approve so motion in a second to approve the advertising of form 3 and gateway all in favor say hi okay moving on to personnel under resignation we have julie gogoleski i think that's how you say your name julie sorry if i am wrong uh cook at sharp creek elementary also under resignation uh rebecca metz cook
071at norfolk high school under employment we have tim morissette bus driver from the south gene fields cook at southwood elementary amanda watson athletic secretary at southwood high school team tammy tucker uh health services assistant and jeanette lyons paraprofessional at metro north elementary under transfers we have katy singleton transferring from long-term support full-time teacher and kelly taylor transferring from health service assistant to health health service supervisor under leagues you see those for the dates and times for those employees 140 141 and 142 and then under coaches this is from northfield high school for uh for this year uh carls delgado varsity assistant softball and faith lemming assistant cross country motion in a second to approve uh the personnel recommendations is read all in favor say hi all right report heartland career center matt do you have
072anything for us we had a short meeting the other night but the highlight of it was the number of students that are enrolled i'd give you a piece there 627 students are enrolled at this present time uh go across the bottom there you can see how each school has quotas and so on but they're packed to the gills so the future growth there has to be some way to get more room a lot of kids will turn down because i'm not enough space programming so it's a good problem to have to happen kids wanting in there that fast a few years ago we were just hoping for 100 500 kids so it's a lot of growth that's it uh superintendents report what's your key paper yeah i just want to mention a couple things first
073of all of course with the information that's been talked about tonight we still want to make sure that we are directing everyone to the tax calculator our referendum page on our website it's very important to read a lot of that information to be informed we will have some different meetings to actually answer more questions and actually talk more about this uh we'll be at uh several uh football games volleyball games we'll also be at a cross-country meet um then going to uh give me some tours of some classes some golf outings but specifically if you want to come and really hear some of the other presentations that will have even more information the first one will be on september 12th i'm at 7 pm at northfield and we just are calling those new high school
074project informational meetings and then i'll read one more and then we'll wait on the other ones until later because we'll have other board meetings but uh also in uh september 17th i'm sorry that's the actual wall-based founders festival parade um on september 24th at southwood then i will also have a meeting that will be at 9am that's on saturday and so those people that are not available in the evenings we also have a couple of saturdays here too so we've been sending that information out it's on our website it's on facebook page it's on an email that's going out to over 6 000 people so we're just trying to get that information out to make sure they know that they can get the information because again we want people to be informed uh prior to
075november 8th before they go and see that valid question mr greg yeah i have shared with you with our sat scores um just to kind of get catch up because so much of the testing real changes so often uh the state of indiana replaced the istep for high school for school accountability um and for graduation with the sat and so i'm just going to read this to you here uh indiana is going to use the sat different field assessment requirements listed in a code for high school accountability obviously as this is the sat we're familiar with the test mathematics reading and writing for juniors other kids can take it but the schools will be assessed based on how their juniors do or their 10th grade or their level of papers i should say all students
076are expected to participate schools that have at least a 95 partition participation rate will not receive punitive measures and so if you choose not to test juniors then as a school you're held viable for non-testing so the 95 95 uh threshold is whatsoever a caveat that we should all keep in mind while high schools are held accountable for these scores the department of education has allowed students to find other ways to graduate which is a good thing right not every kid is going to go to that s.a.t to get covered board because like might just mention department career center gives kids great career jobs however those students are still expected to take that snc right and so they don't have to for their own graduation purposes they can graduate with a career pathway to heartland
077however our schools are held accountable how those foods perform on that sat so i think we understand that might impact the scores negatively um even still uh it's a data point that we'll try to use and you can see here these are the spring 22 results um and so this is relatively recent it's always hard when they do the colleges because that's so many years for them to collect that and i can tell you for roughly comparison purposes um i can't the department of education did give us percentages of students that participated but i do have student numbers and so northfield and southward together tested 120 juniors to produce that result manchester tested 116 and wabash city schools tested 109. and so we tested the most juniors who knows what percentage that turns out to
078actually be for those schools um i want to say we had all the two juniors and i wouldn't put the principles on the spot but i'm pretty sure we had a very high participation rate some kids were sick and because of the s.a.t there's a very tight window when you can offer those so if they're not there they're not there and we have students in the old rise school classrooms that would be counted as juniors and so you can see there obviously we'd like for those to be higher um and so we principals are aware of that and it is a part of our conversations to try to prepare students to do that even knowing that some of these students that take the test it's not a part of their future at all so it
079might be hard to motivate them to do to do what they can just do and they're just mark it's a three or four hour test um you know and so that's a challenge for most students anyways that are that are driven to do well on it and students that see no reason to take the test and it says percentage meaning benchmark what's the benchmark yeah so the sat the college board sets a meeting rate and so it's that's typically the 50th percentile for the whole globe and so that is what the indiana typically has chosen to use for its benchmarking roughly 1080 out of 1600 because it was generally it but it will change based on how the average student does very excuse me the student average not the average student so anyway i just
080want to keep you updated with that all right moving on to new business we're going to be discussing the norfolk southwood and white's junior senior high school improvement plans yeah originally originally they were going to read each of their plans um we thought we would do something a little bit different here tonight though so we're just going to do it in alphabetical order so we'll start with mr snyder northfield all right well i thank mr great for privacy but we have two main goals and all that what we're working the most on is two main goals number one academics the two things the state looks at for seventh and eighth graders it's island and for juniors it's sat starting last year last year was the first time like he said that all juniors and it's
081good because kids don't have to pay for it they don't have to do it on saturday there's a lot of benefits to it negative is we've got a lot of kids that don't plan on they go right to work after graduation they don't care how they do it and so keep them in perspective so like northfield 47 of our kids were considered proficient state average was 49. i'm not happy with that everybody knows that northfield we want to be at or above the state average but i'm not going to name names you can ask me after the meeting we have one kid who's very very intelligent couldn't take the test that day if he would have been there they would have been there we would have been at the state average it's a lot of
082times that's one or two kids that so no fault of theirs but they know because their mom and i even talked about it but that's the way it was and that was for the english part 47 state average 49. so we're right there where we want to be at or above for the math the math test must be really hard because the state average of juniors being proficient was 30 who were 28 but again one or two students when you put it in perspective and that sounds really bad when i tell you those numbers but then you look at the state average and then the whole nation was also 30 on the map so our kids aren't doing too bad and you got to remember we're in a part of the country where i believe
083it's hard to motivate we got in perspective we have 55 of our juniors and seniors utilize heartland and they're looking at careers and entrepreneurships and going right to the workplace so to motivate them is a challenge you guys are shaking your heads when tim was talking so you get it so i won't go into that stuff too much so how are we going to improve that number one look at priority standards there are certain standards that obviously are tested more than others so instead of trying to teach all of them we're going to tim's have created the document to help us identify what should we spend most of our instructional time on so that's one way and then the other way is content area literacy especially on that reading part this the new state standards
084i don't know tim's probably told you 60 to 70 of those reading standards are non-fiction texts you get a lot of your literature in english classes where do you get your non-fiction texts science social studies math those content areas become very important because those periods those kids are in there that's why we got online textbooks and mr drake just helped us get physical textbooks back in social studies and all those different content areas because kids need to be able to be they don't take those home and read them at home we've got to spend school time digging into those and teaching kids how to get information from non-fiction texts so those are the ways we're going to try to get up and above that state average the other goal we have is school environment and
085northfield mr ellsroff worked a lot on this and it was that way before i got there but i worked on it at sharp creek and i was working with the state to be designated a family-friendly school doing the things that make people feel welcome and all those kinds of things it's not hard to do but it's nice to get the designation and we did a lot of school safety things we still do norris honor where you'll see on our facebook page once a week we're highlighting a student that did something great around the school and then student councils planning activities for the student body i guess the biggest thing for school environment and climate right now you guys did when you told us we did quick contact tracing last year because we've had more kids
086in the building and my personal opinion is that's the right thing to do and giving more power to parents and keeping kids in school and that's really helped the climate and it's been less stressful as parents students and staff and then closing comments i guess school's off to a great start one thing we're going to change at northfield is kids need hours for like honor society and key club and i think southward's already done this but mr pinnacle has something set up but with the new ad and with kids now being able to do more things because of less restrictions we've had our custodian have to go out after friday night football games and have to pick up trash and stuff that doesn't make it in the trash cans and now we're making it easy
087hours to keep from an honor society for service because they stay after football games and help and then all the custodians have to do is go take the barrel little things like that is really helping uh culture and climate so we have those two goals school environment just keep the morale of the kids and staff up and then the academics with the primary standards and content area literacy focus about that that's the nutshell of the power of real pages i think he's tired of doing that all right thank you mr snyder mr mcdaniel you're up i was i did have a 54 slide presentation but i didn't want to talk about the changes that we have this year so we have a new assistant principal mrs johnson um she did her internship her administrative internship
088with us in the office last year and so she's been a pretty seamless transition into the office into that role she's still retaining the internship program so we're we're getting our money's worth so dr dr smiles over there we also have a new math teacher coming over from whites the josiah whites we have amy and she's doing a great job amy wilson is uh fulfilling our special education teacher's role we did a change in the way that we handled special education coming into this year with the addition of the sixth grade if you think about the building we have a lot of tests a lot of curriculum and a lot of differences in our kids from that age range of 6th grade 12th grade so it's an easier it's an easier responsibilities list to have
089a 6 7 8 and 9 special education teacher and then a 9 through 12 special education teacher and so amy wilson has taken over that role for the uh 639 and she is she's just a just a mother into those little little sixth graders she did a really great job we really liked her in pe i wanted to find a teacher as good as dan snyder and so i got an insider to come back this year to fulfill that role um and we've also gotten a new sixth grade teacher and chloe kindle and so um some wonderful additions there the sixth grade has come into the building we did a lot of planning for that last year and um transition has been pretty smooth every once in a while you find something that you didn't
090plan for or you didn't you didn't consider uh but we're rolling with punches and doing pretty well the main complaint that i've had is they're a little noisy in the hallways so um the other thing is steve hawley was their hero the other day we put in a gaga pit i i shouldn't say we steve hawley and his folks his crew put in the goddamn pit and so that is an intense uh incredible environment for the kids um so i'd also like to talk about uh mrs france and the work that she has had in several weeks over the summer we have had nearly 30 new enrollments and she's in charge of two moments so these are kids coming either moving into the district or kids who are choosing msd or southwood over other schools
091that they could go to so i'm really appreciative about her efforts and so uh mr driscoll you mentioned heartland career center first thing it seems our 12th grade crew we have 63 of our 12th graders accessing classes of portland 45 of our junior class and then 16 or 10th grade class and so we we literally we fight for spots um uh and so we really really advocate advocate for southwest kids to get those spots um in our school improvement plan we have a mandated goal of being better than average with the island scores and so seventh and eighth grade about sixth seventh and eighth grade math and language in particular and so we've done pretty well with the seventh and eighth grade with the exception of the seventh grade math didn't fulfill that that state
092average um but we also look at our graduation rate and our attendance rates as well i want to take a look at last year we really really hit home on the issue of students failing classes and we tried some new strategies one of the things that helped us out jay mentioned kids being in a classroom so we didn't ask teachers to change necessarily their assessments or or their standards but we we met on a regular basis the grade level teams talking about kids and their specific issues and how we can touch base with those kids how would you maybe just nag them if that's all that they needed or a phone call home so i would like to tell you quarter one failing grades we got a 32.5 reduction in failing grades on quarter one
093grades quarter one failing things for two failing grades 29.5 reduction semester one thirty point four percent reduction in failing rates quarter three fifteen point nine percent reduction quarter four twenty six point six percent percent reduction and failing grades and then some semester two uh twenty two point six percent production failing grades and so um i guess to sum it up we're off to great start we're busy we're we're running around um i i i am now a high school middle school and elementary school principal so um but they're great they're they're fun kids and um we're rolling with the punches and saying we've got good people in place and so i'm really encouraged by the way that you're starting okay thank you very much taking some notice of some good information here to ask you
094about later too and for more too on that so now we're ready mr mcdivot at white's junior senior high school thanks mr paper um really we have uh two main things that we're working on white i think everybody here knows essentially we have two different groups of students we serve the students that are with us residentially and the students that we work with in our online credit recovery program so even though the goals are similar there is some distinction between those two little umbrellas but so number one our primary goal is to help as many of our kids graduate certainly you know if we compare our scores to any other school in the state they're not going to be good now we still have goals there and it's not that we don't work on but
095ultimately we're looking at the finish line for our kids and that includes both the distance and kids and the kids that are with us residentially and that is to either one uh help them to get their employer to graduate or get to the point where they've caught up to where they need to be for their age or for their work right there so um our goal for our graduation rate is going to sound pretty low but for our kids it's a good rate it would be 67 that is what we want to get to it looks like we're about 55 this year which is about where we're at last year so we've got work to do there and so the key component for us as we were talking about sat scores at northfield and southwood
096our kids aren't going to graduate with their s.a.t scores and so in box three is where we have to focus and the hard part for us we can't send our kids to heart to get those career concentrators done that's not an option for us however really mrs boone and her team have been a big part of this tommy actually has been a big part of this is just exploring avenues where we can get career concentrators uh we do have one that we think will work well for distance edge and that will be fully implemented this year so we do anticipate that's going to help our kids get to a place where we can get to that 67 graduation rate uh it's just i think everybody here understands kids residentially really can't go to heartland is
097it possible yes but it's just it's hard and then of course the distance air kit that's not an option so we do have again it's a business career concentrator that can be done all online that we think could be really help us move the needle on that graduation right so that's our primary focus uh why it's both really with our kids residential and for distance advocates okay thank you very much okay so we have no unfinished business moving on the board policy without well let's go ahead um if you can approve those plans we need to oh we do need to improve those yes and it doesn't say that other actions so at this point uh we have a recommendation to approve those plans so sure motion in a second to approve this to approve
098the school improvement plans all in favor say hi okay now we'll move on to the foreign policy uh the second reading and vote for the school board policy number 3160 as revised as for the uh any other code there that you see and i'll let mr key paper speak to that yeah just the two things that we're mentioning they're highlighted a little bit later so or contracting with uh was added to this policy that was already in our scuba policy 3160 and then also at the end just the word immediately and then of course the legal reference of indiana code 2026 14 9 so recommendation after the second reading here to approve this policy i'm here to approve that policy second motion second to approve the school board policy 3160 as provides all the people
099say hi okay public item a public comment for any items okay any items from board members yeah i've been sitting here thinking about the 21 assessment versus that 22. i just want to re-emphasize stay with the 21 yes because you're getting incomplete and if anybody's still watching this late [Music] and obviously this question was developed by legislation and so he made the point to be fun is that no one wants to believe what the government says but when the government puts something like this out then everybody wants to believe yeah all right any other items board members all right hopefully people are still watching because i have a prepared statement i would like to read on behalf of the 2217 students and the associated parents and guardians teachers and staff who selected the metropolitan school
100district of wabash county as their educational choice we wanted to respond to a recent letter published by some members of our community the letter advocated for educational reforms to ensure a positive future for our community and for our schools our goals as board members of msd of wabash county are to be inclusive transparent and make decisions that are in the best interests of our students both those enrolled now and those who will join us as future graduates that is why we embarked on a series of community meetings in the fall of 2019 and continue to receive considerable input before presenting the public in 2020 with a long-range strategic plan for our wabash county schools that plan realizes the goal of dream big a key element of our commitment to public education here in wabash county
101it was predicated upon making sure that we offered the taxpayers of the community a vision that provided quality educational options maintained a priority on the use of tax dollars and charted a future that used all of our resources to dream big for our students that plan zeroed in on several tangible and realistic goals first we will continue to develop and enhance quality programs to improve student achievement by ensuring that our curriculum offerings prepare students for life after graduation our students will continue to achieve at or above the state level on various measurement tools second we will continue our efforts to attract and retain students that means we will develop the organizational capabilities to expand our marketing and branding for the wabash county school community and highlight the quality of life in wabash county to attract
102new families third we will build upon our strong fiscal of strong financial resources and ensure fiscal responsibility and stability for the residents and taxpayers of our community by doing that we will recruit and retain highly effective faculty and staff and continue transparency on fiscal obligations and solutions via all operations finally we made providing safe and efficient learning environments a significant priority we researched ways to optimize facility utilization and security we explored ways to reduce duplication and increase efficiency these potential upgrades would support our students in the classroom and save taxpayers dollars by making the investment needed now and not delaying them and facing spiraling costs for the future those reviews led us as the locally elected school board to make the decision to invest now in a new high school with the goal to make
103our wabash county schools viable and sustainable for our community's future the new high school will continue to combine the latest in designs to ensure constructability and sustainability for generations we will make better use of our facilities we will offer our students the latest in the state-of-the-art classrooms the new high school will be a welcome front door in our effort to make wabash county a place where our present families will want to continue to live and an inviting place for future families the new high school will be ready to serve our community if voters approve in november we realize and agree that every one of us both the public and private sector should work together for what is in the best interest of our children our wabash county schools are ready to turn dream big into
104reality we welcome the active support of everyone to help us achieve that goal for this and future generations thank you and that is on behalf of the entire school any other items before members return