001and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay future board meetings as a reminder we don't have one in the second half of june so we'll be back here july 13th july 27 and august 10th at our regular times we have nothing no revisions to the agenda except a few things added under hr and we'll move on to public recognition we have a recommendation recommendation to approve a four thousand dollar donation from the community foundation of wabash county for metro north elementary the little north preschool three-year-old program a recommendation to approve a 100 developed gift card from hardwood freight at marion for southwood high school robotics we'll take a second to approve the donations all in favor say aye all right next public recognition
002and if it's okay i will wait i have some things i want to say during the superintendent report but um perfect timing mrs boone just took a drink of water right there so she's going to share with us about the bridge program formerly known as the car program and uh just do a presentation and share some updates to for us so you're on thank you um i shared a google slide with you just now i did i don't know if you might it's not necessary to put it over there with the visual and then also help keep me from rambling what happened to you i'm sorry because yes it does first reveal what was your key favorite close that up a lot of fun however he came up with car and they tagged on your
003vehicle to success at a time where this program had needed some type of definition other than distance learning or blended learning and he came up with that very creative idea and it was an easy way to explain that we are an alternative situation and we do focus on credit recovery so as much as i like to teach you mr key favor i do respect the fact that you did that and that was a pretty catchy slogan we did decide to shift this however um because car was difficult for the people that we work with to catch into they were calling a car they had no idea what it really stood for and to say create an alternative recovery every time was a little bit of a mouthful and we still had to explain it so
004we tried to come up with a single word that defined who we are explains who we are and then capture that in a picture and laura laura lange bartles was a huge part of helping us come up with this and then kaiozan and his group helped us as well so with that we are moving officially to the bridge and our our focus is staying the same our mission and our vision is not changing we are going to continue to focus on those students who are in need of an alternative situation because there was some kind of barrier or something preventing them from being successful in the traditional school we're not looking to become a traditional virtual program that's not who we are we are focused on those kids who are at risk and who have
005struggled to find success in the traditional school and you can flip to the next one before you do though i want to say that this is a great memory though this student one of our students that we had last year summertime we were at the honeywell center a lot of family there of course that's her daughter too they had a professional photographer there to be there also so they are big deals with a lot of different situations and so you know of course this was during coven and all those different times but that was a great graduation that i was able to go to too so um that's an actual picture of one of our students that graduated last year and her family traveled from wages to meet us so we definitely are outside the
006box and how we operate and that's one reason why we have found ways for this type of student to be successful again just the reason why we chose the bridge because number one we're about bridging gaps and students educational um journey and providing second chances and helping them get over those risks and get past those obstacles that have prevented them from being successful quickly who we are very flexible learning environment we do serve only 7th through 12th grade students but our focus is on credit recovery those junior high students who came to us are typically been expelled or they have missed a lot of school because of social emotional issues that have led to truancy and extensive absences that have where students are on the verge of being withdrawn or being recommend recommended for truancy
007so therefore they come to us but they have a little bit more flexibility and again we we serve you can go to the next slide mr key favorite kind of further defines we we currently have over 300 students with us across 44 indiana counties we do use an online curriculum that allows us to meet every student's individual need when they come to us no matter when they come to us so everything is focused on that individual student at that moment when we see them and we are getting them enrolled and getting them moving forward we have five full-time staff and this is part of the exciting part right now we have five seem to be seven thanks to our leadership and the support that you all have shown besides the five full-time staff we have
008ten additional msa staff that help us get our teachers and are helping us um manage case loads of students we try to keep that case low between 15 and 20 to make that manageable because they are doing that other piece where their full-time job is in the classroom and they're doing this on top of and it takes a lot of effort to connect with our kids and get them engaged and keep them engaged so we have all of those we have that group of teachers and staff working with us and we're very appreciative i've served without you all with that before about how engaged and how persistent they are and going after our kids and doing everything that they can to make them be successful help them be successful just a few points of data
009and these are the reasons why kids come to us i know that's not hard to leave but every one of our kids come to us for a purchase or for a reason and none of it is just because they want to come to white's high school to bridge program it's all because they have been referred to us they've been recommended to us or they've heard about us because there is a struggle or there's some kind of obstacle keeping them from being um being successful the very front one with 500 and some of them we look at 528 and this was run this is not an updated one we've had a lot more since then but this was run between february of 2018 and the 21st these are all the applications what we've had 528 of
010those are in credit recovery mode right now 75 of our student enrollment is came to us because they are in credit recovery and in danger of not graduating another 25 of them outside of the 25 who are not in credit recovery mode of that group has been expelled and so they don't have options right now so that gives you a little bit of an idea of who we've got in our program and who are focused on and who are serving the other large the this outside 748 students that's because they just that's kind of cover-all where they've come to us because they weren't being successful in the traditional school and they needed something different than traditional public school and then that next highest is social emotional which is a huge piece of our student population
011especially with coped the social emotional aspect and you're fine to move ahead this next one this is we have as of today we have served over 513 students throughout this school year the 2021 school year it is a little bit down again i can only assume that a lot of that is because of the pandemic and lots of other virtual programs popping up however we're already starting to get a lot of referrals from other schools where those virtual students are now truant and have been expelled so it'll be interesting to see what next year holds as far as that's concerned and our graduation rate is something i'm really proud of do we have room to grow absolutely because we take kids in credit recovery mode and so it's a huge obstacle sometime to get them
012to that point sometimes we don't make it on time on their 2021 cohort but we do our best to help them hit that 2021 cohort if they don't we do not drop them we continue to work with them as fifth year seniors and try and get them through in our fifth year cohort as of today we graduated 78 students this school year and we are still working we've got a whole list of seniors we're still working to get through so our goal is to get them through by september and have them on this year's cohort get them graduated on time um i think just to highlight the strengths of our program were very relational because with our student population if we don't have a relationship with them they are not going to buy in and
013they are not going to engage so our focus is on building relationships working outside the box to meet our students and family's needs i am blessed to have a team of people that are have bought into this mission and are very passionate about working with this group of students and helping them do whatever we need to get them to succeed we excel at credit recovery and we also are very blessed to have licensed and highly qualified teachers working with us and working with our kids we do provide synchronous and asynchronous options so kids can be online with our staff if they need more accountability and are struggling with just being independent learners and then the one thing that i continually like to point out is that unlike other schools we've identified a very specific need
014across indiana that nobody else is plugging into yet and my guess is with covid other schools are going to try and figure out how to meet this need with some of those students but there's going to continue to be this growing need of mental health students struggling with mental health kids getting kicked out of school and a lot of schools do not want to touch that group because of the accountability and so again the i really appreciate the leadership in the district that really allow us to take this on because it really um isn't is daunting at times and the accountability is a factor with graduation rate that these kids aren't getting help anywhere else so we're just continuing to focus in on this group of students which makes us different than other programs like
015ours and then finally the things moving forward that i'd like to highlight we are in an effort to better meet the social emotional needs of our students you saw how many kids come to us and obviously truancy expulsions all of those things whether they mark that they have a social emotional hindrance or not all of that plays into that there's something blocking and something skills that they need to learn better coping skills so we are working on hiring a mentor position a licensed social worker who is going to be a mentor and bridge help us bridge that gap get in there meet families where they are see them in their communities build out resources in home communities and then whatever identify whatever barriers are keeping those kids from being successful and start putting in interventions
016and getting kids to move forward we're also adding a math teacher when we look at our scores with and with pathways coming down the line testing is critical to meet that graduation goal and so we've got to figure out a way to shore up those academic skills that kids have missed out on and as you all know as parents and educators that math is critical because it's building and when kids miss out on here it's a problem so we're going to have a math teacher who's providing direct instruction with kids that is going to be part of a system where they are shifted and have to do online face to face with that math teacher and obviously all of our goal in adding and adding positions and trying to continually improve is to increase our
017graduation rate and decrease our dropout rates and then another thing i'd like to highlight just real quickly one thing that's been exciting is we're working on developing a locally created pathway is we've been able to really network with some key stakeholders and communities that we serve johnson county huntington county and wabash county are our largest concentration of where our students are and we've really plugged into some leadership in the business world and in the just different agencies within those communities ivy i'm talking with ivy tech in johnson county who wants to partner with us and hopefully open up doors for our kids to receive certification to meet graduation pathways down the road and um she is also going to help us get things set up in the community for kids to start networking getting jobs
018getting job shadow opportunities job skills those types of things so we're really excited about that opportunity that's just a quick update i appreciate the time and you listening and if you have any questions i'd be more than happy to answer okay when your graduation percentages say you take the kid against the fifth year he graduates how does that affect the percentages for your graduation rate for our graduation rate yeah i mean just because he doesn't get in for the fifth year does that still count towards your it will count against our four-year cohort but it will go toward our fifth-year court cohort the deal with the state they allow for a fifth year cohort graduation it's not optimum but they allow they allow for that they don't allow for six but they do allow obviously
019for four it's traditional but they do allow for five also and they get different rates i mean yeah it's different so does that bring like you were 92 you're right 98 row high and then you were 78 this year well that's the number of graduates that's the numbers right yeah the percentage is lower that and because of all the situations you think about it sometimes you know tonya would get a student um that is really in the cohort of a graduate that might only have three or four credits and they need to have 40. and so yeah they're going to move them forward but that doesn't mean they're going to move forward that quickly just like white's residential is this the percentages can be low because of you know when they come in and also
020once they leave then they also if they don't go into another school and they drop out and that becomes another negative on the percentage for graduation also you mentioned indiana counties are we licensed or we just don't get out-of-state kids or is there a reason that we don't do that we're not working with honesty students right now just because of funding one thing that we have done is if they've been our student and some life circumstances for instance i've got one student i'm working with now and life circumstances dcs removed him from the home and sent him to his dad in chicago i'm not going to drop that kid in the middle of school here we've gotten funding for him so we're going to see him through this school year and then i'm in the
021process of helping him transition to a school in illinois for next year is that the big logo yes there it is it still looks like a car i saw that too actually that's not the we did shift it a little bit because when i saw this all i saw was an elephant or a car and so the font has changed so the font is going to be slightly different i haven't gotten the final one back yet but it's this is the basic of it the d is going to look like a v instead and i want to say one other thing too this kind of came up that the board knows about but not all of this so senate bill or house bill 1008 um i talked to you about the you know we've got
022the grants through all the wallabies county schools through ymca and then the one that was with real wage county through the internship and that uh meet their expectations so that did not pass but also tanya has had a connection of the person that she mentioned um as far as that helps uh and what is it what county is now she she well she's over the state of indiana but she has started her own she's a former teacher and she saw the same need that we did as far as kids falling through the cracks and so she started her own business and she called it was called indiana tutor and her goal and vision is to extend beyond indiana so when she pursued this this grant they actually changed their name to [Music] a bigger name
023so it's not just indiana tutor it's comprehensive tutor and she has listed us as one of her partners and she is now a referring agency to us so when she gets a kid that she knows needs our type she's sending us students left and right so we're part of that grant no we're not personally benefiting from the money other than we are getting referrals and she's upping our numbers yeah so just those connections really helped it was interesting i was going through it and i told chris to tim i said man we have we're part of this grant didn't even know i didn't know too much i didn't know anything about it basically and then i called tanya because when we had our graduation we talked about on this person and so she's the one
024that connected us not knowing that we'd really even be a part of it and like i said we're not getting the funding for it but yet we will indirectly benefit because she will be um pushing those students towards our program so and her staff is in the halls so and she took a list of where our kids are and so she's starting to set up tutors in those areas specific for our students do you actually need a personal a person that is dedicated to making outside contacts and the relationships with those that give you referrals that's that's going to be part of our mentor's role and it's part of my role that it's just been my role so far but that's been part of our mentor role and why i requested that position because that
025person is actually going to go out into the communities meet with our students meet with the families and then start networking with some of these key stakeholders to build out resources in the communities because it is relational it is and we did receive very positive support and even excitement from some of these agencies that we talked with in the local communities because they see the need they're business men and women they see the need so i'm excited about the possibilities for the future but thank you that's a great question i appreciate it all right this is limited to indiana because ohio is not that far away yeah just unfortunately we don't get funding though so the way that we can figure out funding we break the borders but there are kids that i would love
026to keep because they've done well with us and just because of circumstances we've had to let them go right okay we'll move out to the public cabinet agenda items only facebook land catching i think we have kind of a light viewership tonight as always consent agenda items approval the minutes from our last regular board meeting on may 25th [Music] financials claims i came across [Laughter] foreign if you haven't noticed payroll is significantly higher than what it typically is and you can see that is primarily from the uh sr2 fund account 7931 there which is what we use to pay out the stipends for the staff members so that's the difference when i saw that i was pleased for teachers and recipients of this type of that i'm thinking to myself that foolishness has to stop
027yeah i need a credit card bill at the end of the month so you do get a bill yeah so that's that um the next payroll will reflect a little bit of finalizing of the eca's with the spring sports um and summer school pay so it will be a little bit you know it'll be a little bit more than average but it won't be like it won't be like this so looks like a second to approve payroll on favorite salary financial summary doctor uh usually i just give you the end of the month report but since we this is our last meeting of the month i also threw in the cash flow stuff not much has changed with any of that stuff um i bel leave june 15th we usually find out what our revenue
028is uh for the next month so i'm hoping that will then show us what our estimated adm with the increases in student funding will reflect uh moving forward for that second half of the year um but i kind of threw out you know my best guess estimations with with that anyway that's always been reflected there but have a little bit more of an accurate amount coming in but things are still looking good uh currently have 6.5 million in the education fund you know and balances appear to continue to improve over time but again that's not a reflection of what our revenue outlook will be along with increases to the new teacher contract that we will be negotiating in the fall okay there are any questions before i go move on to hr under hr got
029a lot of stuff happening under employment chelsea kirkland preschool teacher salford elementary tracy kennedy and lori brewer summer secretaries tracy of northfield and gloria tara hopper summer school special ed metro north liz little silver school transportation south tom carthy summer school transportation door deb elliott paraprofessional shark creek elementary carla varner math teacher for the bridge program sample shoe paraprofessional northfield high school jeff fitticle pe teacher southwood high school excuse me tim gleef uh network tech assistant at white's jody chenoweth bus driver south jordan cheddar with summer school transportation for the south and that's just for the summer under resignation we have kayla frank paraprofessional metro north elementary holly robbins paraprofessional at southport elementary and a good height teacher at southport elementary and sandra harness data and financial specialist wmap under retirement jeff smith a teacher
030at livergood elementary teacher at southwood elementary janice speaker paraprofessional at southwood elementary and chris sigmund band at southport high school transfers phil special ed teacher moving to northfield a wolf prayer professional moving to northfield kenny etzer very professional moving to northfield jessica holly very professional two three year old preschool teacher at metro door barbara stanford cook going from four hours to 5.75 hours in northfield excuse me jade kendall sixth grade teacher to kindergarten teacher at southwood elementary school and finally matt brown sixth grade teacher the fifth grade teacher at church creek elementary and if you don't mind i'd like to read um we talk about relationships all the time and i'd like to read a couple of the retirement letters um and i will start jeff smith i i do not have his right now
031but jeff um i think some of these situations that happened he wanted to go a little bit longer but some family situations with health um he is also a farmer and so he is the primary farmer in that particular situation and with the health of his relative that it wasn't going to work out and so he's he's retiring a little bit earlier than what he wanted to but he uh really talked to us and just really said it was a lot tougher i'll just tell you he's a lot tougher than what he thought it was going to be when he came in and said that obviously very emotional um and that is good to see though it's not like you know tired of this or whatever you know very emotional not really wanting to do
032this yet even though he can with his age and things like that so that was really neat um i'm going to read part of jody liver goods too says my journey at south of elementary began as a kindergarten student in 1963. my mother had moved here her class from somerset when the building opened in 1965. as i look back the other day i realized that there has been a liver good at southwood elementary for the past 56 years i was fortunate enough to teach in the same building with mom during her last year at southwood in a way the southwood staff has been an extension of my family i have thoroughly enjoyed many years of being part of msd family as a student and then as an educator it was my pleasure to be part
033of the staff at sharp creek as a paraprofessional and mentored north as a beginning teacher before finally moving home to southwood thank you for giving me an opportunity to serve the children of this community even though i'm leaving the classroom i look forward to finding a new way to help the children in this community learn and grow and i will preface it too that she actually wanted to go a little bit longer too but some other health issues that prevented that and so this was addressed actually to myself mr boone and the board members so uh just just good history and the relationships that's happened um this is actually from joy edding which we talked uh accepted her retirement last time um spanish teacher she wrote a letter to um all of northfield which actually
034i get also i thought it's very good and fitting to read it says i've worked in several different school systems as our family moved from city to city yet nowhere did i find a level of dedication to students that i found here nowhere did i find the acceptance of one another by staff and willingness to work together for the good of all nowhere did i find administrators willing to jump in and help at every turn nowhere did i find a community that was so humble and hard-working that was instilling into their children these same values it was a pleasure working here and i thank you for welcoming me as one of you and god bless each one of you our children in this place i thought that was excellent and then i'll read another one
035here uh chris hickman um who just put in his uh retirement uh this is just mr mcdaniel but he said it's been an honor and a pleasure to work with you and thank god for the opportunity he has provided by placing you in my life you have a love for kids a passion for learning students staff and yours leading by example as well as making the tough decisions you've been willing to listen to me encourage me to give me perspective find solutions and help me be the best i can be you have cultivated a safe environment where teachers staff and students have a sense of community i've enjoyed our talks and your what can we do to make this work spirit you and joe lacy put students first you make them a priority and they
036know it you are a great team i continue to pray for you both as you shape the lives of our students it was not an easy decision but i officially announced some retirement from teaching the end of the 2020 2020-2021 school year i pray god's blessing on you your family and southwood so just a sampling of the relationships that have been built with our staff members okay on the report unfortunately i was in the field during the last schedule so fortunately that's how you make money okay just a couple of things here first of all um you probably have seen on facebook and everything as far as our teachers of the year and our staff of the year this year and i might have even mentioned it before but i want to say a couple
037other things so for metro north elementary it was jennifer cox at sharp creek pam campbell northfield shelly myers southwood elementary natalie unger south of high school cynthia bell and white's high school wendy gray and then for the staff of the year metro north was kat halpert at southwood or sharp creek connie wolf northfield tammy olbermann salvador elementary theresa baker itself in high school beth weissel and white's high school nick perlick and what will happen now just today i ended up getting all the information to find out who the district staff of the year would be and also the teacher of the year and they actually write some things that i've asked them to write different questions and then i submit that to an outside person to judge those and then finalize those and i will
038say this year we're going to do something different we're going to follow what the indiana department of education has allowed us to do to actually pick an elementary and a high school and so hopefully once that is those people are chosen then we can go ahead and not we but they can go ahead and actually apply for the indiana state teacher of the year so really congratulations to them a lot of interesting things when they write the narratives that i ask them to write it's just really interesting to see what they have to say and we have a lot of great people and i just want to share that and hopefully you've seen some of that if you're on facebook if you're not on facebook you probably haven't seen it so anyway that's that i
039also would like to say um you know we didn't have any recognitions as far as what the principals sent out but you know a lot of success has happened and i just i'll bring up some of the ones maybe you don't know about first of all our clay target league what we call the northfield clay busters and southwest clay busters they actually went to state they did not go on to nationals but they actually improved from two years ago because of course last year they did not were not able to compete of course you know about our baseball team at southwood that won the sectional got beat the first round of the regional but that's the first team in south of history that actually won um the football sectional the basketball sectional and then also
040the baseball sectional so congratulations to them and of course we have the softball norfolk softball team who this is the first year they won the sectional first year they won the regional and first year they won the semi-state and of course they played friday night at 5 30 p.m if you're interested afterwards see me because i'll send you the link because the only way you can get tickets is uh through the link so we can give and then it goes to the public after that so if you're interested i can send you that link and then finally we did have five of those students from southwood that sang in the indiana state honors choir on friday and that was the first time ever that like susan kieffer that the five that actually auditioned for that
041also made that so we have a lot of good things i'm probably missing some things also but a lot of good things that are going on i told these two gentlemen here that you know we do shameless jokes and shameless plugs at kiwanis great thing great organization but at quan is there it's costing a lot of money because i have to give a dollar every time i say these things so here it's free which is nice but there's a dollar each time but it's great to be able to charge you when he plugs kiwanis actually we had a fundraiser one time in the rotary that was there one month so anyway so that's that and the final thing i have is as you know and as of now um the governor has uh declared as
042of now that indiana will no longer be under a public health emergency as declared by him on july starting july 1. and so mscwc will be working on an announcement as far as the return to school practices and basically what we have to do and part of even what we have with esser is to have that return to in-person plan of course we had that last year and i believe that has not been decided but when the board looks at some different recommendations that our standard operation procedures that we've had pre-coded would probably exist so in other words we'd be following our handbooks following all of our policies and not really making any any changes to what pre-code would be but we don't know that yet but just want to make sure that everyone knows
043that we will be making that announcement then as a in july is it july 8th or whatever july 13th i don't know why it's not august 8th july 13th and so more than likely uh what will happen is that we will return to school um and it will be very traditional to what we have pre-code um i think most of us agree to that the positivity rate and things in wabash county have been good for many many weeks now we had great graduations with very few restrictions that went well and that is our hope and i believe the board will agree to that but we'll have to wait um to make those final decisions later in july okay and i would like to publicly congratulate and thank southwood boys baseball team for being pioneer because
044i have a co-worker who is a board member there and every time pioneer beats msd i have to hear the trash talk so thanks guys is that the end of the superintendent's report yes okay we'll move on to curriculum but instruction nothing to share nothing for sure okay moving on to new business second reading and vote of the 2022 high school handbook and as i mentioned to you the only change that we had and i didn't have any questions from you but the only change that we had was uh based on the um whatever it's called now they used to call it was not the worker permits they had worked for meds starting july 1 that is no longer a system we still had in the handbook that we would uh take away their driving
045permission or driving permits um working permission let's slow down here um yes work permits but we are not allowed to do any of that so we just took that out of there so i would recommend that we approve the second reading of the high school handbook for 2021 2022. motion and second to approve the high school handbook for the next school year on fair sale second reading and vote of the 2021 2022 elementary hitbook uh no changes there but going back to what dr kuhn just said we can take away their driving permits to the school though i think but we're not going to do that for elementary though so but i really didn't mean to work permits though so i do recommend that we approve the second reading of the elementary handbook the 2021-2022
046to approve the 2021 2022 elementary handbook on february second reading and vote of the 2021-2022 bridgehead book i'm sure you have like 10 15 questions mrs boone's here to answer any questions uh from the bridge handbook but i do recommend no changes from the last time we spoke recommend this also for your vote so sorry motion second to approve the bridge handbook for 2021 2022 all in favor say aye aye recommendation to approve an extended field trip for the northfield key club to cedar point in sandusky ohio playing for later this month or early july 2021 we're doing so no unfinished business no board policy probably comment on anything give another 10 seconds or so any items from board members okay