001is the approval of the agenda of the October 28th 2024 tenative agreement meeting and special board meeting entertain a motion to approve the uh 24 101 I'll make a motion to approve 24-11 and a second please I'll second with the motion as a second is ready discussion see no discussion all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed 24101 passes 24102 discuss terms of the tenative agreement of the teacher collective bargaining agreement Dr Brown right so I have several items I'd like to discuss tonight as the tenative agreement summary um and then we will be bringing it uh to you to vote on on November 13th at the next board meeting so the changes within the contract include the following within the extracurricular schedule we created a mentor ECA position the compensation is based
002on the complexity of the position so the mentor leader is $11,000 mentor leader level one mentoring a teacher with over 5 years of experience but new to the corporation's a $250 stien the mentor level two mentoring a teacher with less than five years of experience and new to the corporation or grade level um carries a salary of $500 Mentor level three mentoring a teacher through a training program such as Bloom board or a transition to teaching program is $750 and that would be per year we also created a compensation for Dramatics evening programs for the junior high as follows Dramatics evening program sixth grade there two positions at $100 each Dramatics evening program 7eventh grade two positions $100 each Dramatics evening programs 8th grade two positions $100 each we added Elementary Unified sports two positions
003at $518 each we removed the high ability coordinator because it's been paid for through a grant we added an yel coordinator one position $650 a year high school assistant swim coach for boys and girls it would be an additional $234 for their program for a total of$ 4,832 for um for the total pool for that Sport and then dual credit we added this uh $518 per person per year if they teach dual credit classes additionally um added the following compensation changes so um addressing compression within the teachers contract as the salaries were not accurate based on their years of experience so those were adjusted as presented um in your packets so the average increase to the base is 3.3% across the board additionally teachers with 21 plus years will get the average increase for teachers
004which is $1,811 added to their base and that's also in your com in your compression plan additionally all teachers will receive a $1,500 stien on top of those base increases that I just discussed we're adding language to also put deadlines into the lane change notifications to address Advanced degrees the first deadline is the first teacher day in August and the second is the first teacher day in January we also updated appendix A1 with the following note at the bottom appendix A1 is used in instances when there are no teachers already employed with comparable experience and education additionally we added the following language we added language to allow unused sick days to be donated to the sick Bank upon retirement we included language around the insurance premium holiday that we anticipate we will receive this year
005and how that premium holiday will be implemented in the event the school corporation's health insurance provider declares an insurance premium holiday and then also the addition the school corporation has has picked up 2% of the premium increase for teachers for their healthc care and that summarizes the uh tenative agreement at this point okay thank you Dr Brown we move on to any public comments we may have none no public comments and we'll move on to our presentation Child Care presentation by Mr Rick R welcome sir that okay thank you right well good evening uh my name is Rick I'm with esof Solutions um thank you for having me tonight uh I want to First say thank you to Dr Brown and her leadership team for all of the information they've provided our team uh over
006the past few months as we've kind of dug into uh Early Learning in Jefferson County as well as moving you all forward for uh looking into developing Early Learning Center can you hear me okay all right um so the we'd like to start off by talking a little bit about why An Early Learning Center uh the first thing is it really helps to improve social skills uh as children come into uh a Early Learning Center it helps them to interact with peers and other adults that are outside of their home the second reason is it's linked to Greater success in life so when we look at data Across the Nation we find that um programs children who participate in programs are 25% more likely to graduate from high school and four times more likely to
007complete complete a bachelor's degree later we're going to look at some data that's specific to Madison Consolidated Schools that will reinforce just how successful children are when they participate in your program specifically another reason is that it gives uh caregivers the freedom to study and work so those folks who have children at home are able to go to work or they're able to go to school and um free them up from having to stay at home with the children in addition uh it there's an opportunity for reviewing uh health and behavioral issues of children when children are interacting with professionals they are able to identify developmental concerns and learning possible learning uh issues that could impact children later on and so because they're interacting with professionals earlier we can identify those sooner and take care
008of some of those issues in addition it has a positive impact on society there are a variety of studies that uh look at the return on investment for early learning it can be anywhere from $6 to $10 for every dollar that you invest on in early learning and it's a range of factors that go into that to determine what that uh return on investment is as Madison Consolidated uh met with myself and we had conversations about what might be the the goals of An Early Learning Center we also uh had we so we had this conversation with your leadership team multiple times to calibrate what are your goals and then we also had that conversation with Community leaders and also uh some of you during a work session and these were the goals that we
009came up with uh to provide a meaningful quality experience for children to develop a state-of-the-art kid-friendly space to encourage play based learning we all know that children learn best through play so often you you have professionals who will tell parents or caregivers make sure you're playing with them make sure you're role playing interacting doing doll things that kind of thing in addition um they wanted to ensure full inclusion of preschoolers with special needs so really making sure that we put the we put all kids together so that they can have the best opportunity from learning from each other and kind of building those skills that they need to be successful in the future uh we also want to leverage this as an intraction and retention tool for your staff so as you have folks who
010are coming in to work for you uh being giving them the opportunity to enroll their children in uh An Early Learning Center ensures that they're able to come to work every day because they have child care and then we want to make sure that it's accessible to all so all socioeconomic groups regardless of of which family you're coming from you have an opportunity to participate in this program the next one is to secure pass equality level three so pass equality is a rating system that is used uh to determine how high qu the level of quality of a Early Learning Program there are four levels and so we're recommending level three for you um this really focuses on the health and safety of children it also focuses on the curriculum that you're providing to children
011to ensure that it's the highest quality possible and then finally obviously we want to ensure the financial sustainability of the program all right so when we uh talk to this slide is a little difficult to see but you have a copy in front of you when we talk to or I'm sorry when we surveyed the community they came up with the exact same categories that the leadership team did when we said what are your goals the community is saying the same kinds of things uh they want to make sure that it's safe they want to make sure that it's affordable uh they were concerned about what types of learning materials there were available the hours of service and finally they wanted to ensure that their children were um surrounded by diversity Kim is going to
012come up and share a little bit about your current state of your program good afternoon I'm kons um so I want to tell you a little bit about what we're doing right now currently um so we have 182 children enrolled um in 13 of our preschool classrooms throughout the district um the Indiana family and Social Services Administration um awarded MCS a grant for $750,000 uh for early care and we currently have 18 children enrolled in our birth the two program over at the Junior High School uh preschool uh enrollment we have Anderson uh 73 students Deputy 23 students Lydia Middleton we have 55 students and recers we have 31 uh of those students 47 are on vouchers and 31 are in the special education program um cuteness overload sorry uh first to two pilot program
013we have 18 children enrolled have six in the infant room in the one-year-old room and four currently enrolled in the two-year-old room sorry can't help it not laugh enough uh so we focus on health and safety um so we're a licensed program that uh focuses on health and safety and we are aligned um from the feedback with the from the community survey we follow saf sleep practices within our infant room we maintain child staff ratios and provide nutritious meals and outdoor play daily for our program development all of the children currently are staff families we accept ccdf vouchers and we are planning to expand to another two-year-old room um coming up in the spring and and that will'll provide uh spots for our industry partners all right thank you Kim so uh a couple of
014things we as we kind of went through this model and tried to figure out which direction you might go uh with this program we came up with some study outcomes and so I'm going to talk through each one of those now and use both uh Community data as well as survey data as well as um some per student performance data to show you kind of the overall picture and then we'll get into some Financial discussions at the end so we came up with six study outcomes the first one is that Jefferson County has a dire need for highquality child care the second one is the Madison Community is projected to grow industry partners and residents recognize a need for early care in education The Early Learning Center can meet your community's needs MCS is on
015track uh I'm sorry excuse me has a track record of success with Early Learning I'm most excited about this one and number six an MCS Early Learning Center will be financially sustainable so let's look at the first one a little bit more in depth and that is that uh Jefferson County has a dire need for more highquality child care So currently here are some stats for your community uh you have a population of about 33,000 people residents under the age of five is about 2,300 almost 2400 children there are 21 registered Child Care programs in the county this number is a little debatable because it's self-reporting uh or if you clo if if a center closes or a program closes it's not always reported directly um to the state and so it probably isn't that
016high of a number um there are 551 seats available for early care and education many of those seats are in your own preschool program right now and then also the pilot program that Kim just mentioned and then finally um this is from brighter Futures Indiana which is a um program in the state that provides data as well as resources to families and child care providers there are about 1100 children under the age of six who may need child care the considerable need already in your community study outcome number two is that your community is projected to grow so recently um the Madison Economic Development and Redevelopment commission uh conducted or had a had a housing study conducted and the outcome of that is that this community is about to have some growth so let's talk
017a little bit about some of that data as of 2024 there are 7,2 27 households in Madison and then this table shows you the breakdown of those houses of those households so 39% are younger singles and couples traditional and non-traditional families make up about 34% and finally empty nesters and retirees are about 27% so um 3/4 of your population are younger single coup younger single or couples or traditional families it's a considerable amount of folks that younger couples and singles uh is an indicator that you have a lot of growth population wise that could occur in addition um there is an expectation in from the housing study that there are 89 to 126 additional units per year for the next five years that are going to be built in the community so that would total
018445 to 630 units all together over the five years assuming that those some of those units have children in them that's good for the work that you're doing right certainly your enrollment has the opportunity to increase here's a breakdown of the different types of units that um this that they're projecting out will be a part of this housing increase rental units or rental apartments condominium tow houses and detached houses and the numbers there are beside them all of those numbers are over the next 5 years study outcome number three there's a slight delay when I click it uh industry partners and residents recognize a need for early care and education over the past couple of months I've had coffee with a lot of your community leaders um ask asking them what are their thoughts on
019early care and education what do they feel like the need is and they've all echoed the exact same thing we have to have more we need more uh in addition they've all echoed the same thing that they trust that Madison Consolidated Schools will be able to make that happen uh recently the leadership team uh a few members of the lead leadership team myself Dr Brown and Tara um we all went to to the Madison industry Roundtable and met with some employers to have a conversation about the need for early care and education during that conversation uh many of them well they were all really really interested we gave them posters so that they can encourage their employees to participate in our survey we share with them a little bit about the ideas that we have
020for the program and they share back their ideas for some of their needs in addition they participated in some site visits um they all expressed a trust that MCS would develop a high quality program and they were interested in creating Partnerships to secure some of those seats for their own staff and then finally we encourag them to explore the Decap program which is a program um in the state of Indiana that is a flexible spending account for child care so it's a pre-tax benefit for employees um that if the employer set that up then that would be pre-tax dollars that they would um that you all would be getting for the child care that you're providing uh this slide is uh a a slice of some Community input that we had we asked um we
021one of the survey questions that we asked was how many days this month have you missed work because you haven't had child care and there were 369 responses to the to the survey overall 124 people answered this question specifically one of the reasons that many people didn't answer this question is because uh if they said they didn't have children we just redirected them around this question because it wouldn't be relevant so out of the people who answered this question 58 people collectively missed 158 days of work in the last month because they lacked child care so that's a huge need if we could provide child care to those 58 people then there would be 158 days of more productivity um in the in the community for the workforce in addition we ask them uh how
022many if they anticipate a need for child care in the next two years for children ages birth to five 120 respon respondents anticipate that need in the next two years which is great because that is a considerable number of people who are saying hey yeah we're going to need some Child Care soon and um you're going to be able to provide it study outcome number four is that the Early Learning Center can meet Community needs so we took a group of community stakeholders industry partners and some board members as well as MCS staff to visit a couple of centers we went and visited one in Columbus Cummins ear Early Learning Center or child Cummins childhood development center and then we also went to Shelbyville Indiana and visited Golden Bear preschool uh during the visit they
023we learned about facilities learning environments curriculum outdoor spaces tuition and all about community relations and what what that entails the outcome when when whenever we came back we asked uh those who participated to complete a quick survey just to give us some feedback on what they felt like were most important pieces of that that included childhood or child focused environments a natural outdoor space or indoor playground staff were passionate and enthusiastic there was a lot of natural light we felt like that would be important um a small door low windows and lwh hanging wall decor for child access the small door is the cutest thing you've ever seen so in front of uh Golden Bear preschool there are adult doors on both sides and in the middle there's a little bitty door it looks like
024something from a cartoon and these little kids go into it they open it themselves and they walk through and I actually went through it but I had to duck the child and me couldn't pass it up right um study outcome number five is that MCS has a track record of success with Earth early Lear Early Learning so let's take a look at some data for this one a study in 2017 um indicated that pre preschool participation particip let me say that again preschool participation can reduce special education placement by 8.1% and it can increase High School graduation rates by 11.4% when we look at the data from your District to support this we find that um you have a high number of kids who are enrolled in your program it's well it's usually about like
02525 28% of kids who are enrolled in the Pro in your preschool program so we dug into how they perform on standardized assessments you ready you're already looking at it no don't peek don't peek all right so when we look at I two results this is the state standardized assessment that second graders take um this is an assessment that measures their ability to read and comprehend text when we look at those students who attended MCS preschool 5 almost 56% of them passed the I2 assessment when we look at those students who did not attend MCS pre school it was about 51% so about 4 4% higher if they participated in in your preschool program when we look at I 3 the I 3 assessment this is for your current fourth graders when we look at
026that number 95% of the kids who attended your preschool program passed the IAD compared to 70% who passed and if they did not attend and then when we look at I learn I learn has two components it has an Ela well it has more than two but it has a Ela component and a math component so when we look at your math results for your fourth grade cohort 57% of the students who attended preschool at MCS passed compared to 26% who did not attend who passed so you can see there that it's about a little over double those kiddos who participated passed same thing is true for math uh when you look at the math the students who attended MCS prek the pass rate for those students was about 86% and for those students who
027did not attend prek the pass rate was 38% or 39% so I'll say that again if a child the of the fourth graders who took the math I learn last year in third grade if they attended your preschool 85% of those kids passed if they did not attend your preschool only 39% of those kids passed rounding so a significant difference between the two in the proposed Center that we're discussing if you enroll told all of your students in preschool your pass rate would jump considerably and one of the first meetings that I have with you in in here for a work session uh for a public work session we were talking about Pass rates and the fact that yall want to be one of the top schools if not the top school district in the
028state of Indiana if this data rang true and you enrolled every child in preschool you would be able to do that pretty quickly in fact when we ran the numbers your pass rate would look like this if you had 100% preschool attendance so 100% of your students enrolled in prek your iearned math uh pass rate would be almost 86% and your iearn Ela pass rate would be 58% finally we looked so I think you should get them they're doing a lot of work uh when we look at your financial sustainability for this model it can be financially sustainable so we ran some projections and here are some of the factors that we put in the first thing was class size one of the things that we know about Early Learning Centers we've done this we've
029we've helped several districts around the state open these centers and get this up and going one of the things that we know is that you need to leave a little bit of wiggle room you don't want to fill every room to capacity because you need to be able to move kids in and out as you need to um although your infant room you can only have eight infants we always keep that one full uh the number of rooms that you want to have you can't have a center that's all infants because the cost Effectiveness isn't there and so um we factored that in as well weeks of operation um you have options there you can do school year you can do year round the P the private pay rate so this is the cost to
030just a the general public what will your employee discount look like um Child Care Development Fund vouchers this is a program that makes child care more accessible for All Families um it's a federal program it's administered in the state of Indiana by the Family Social Services Administration or fssa um these vouchers are wonderful because if a f if a family is working or going to school then they but they don't quite make enough to pay for child care the voucher can help offset the cost of that finally we also or not finally but we also looked at your special education numbers again one of the goals was to provide seats for your special education students within the program we also took a look at Staffing and salaries and finally we looked at Revenue what is
031what's the bottom line on this going to be so this is one of the projections that we ran uh going down the side you'll see the number of rooms and so we uh worked with Kim to figure out what the number of rooms might look like or what that breakdown might be as you can see there are fewer infant and toddler rooms and then as you get closer to the three to foury Old range um those classrooms increase that's because you can have more children in those classrooms and and um that makes it more financially sustainable the second thing is you see the weeks of operation uh I believe it says 48 weeks it's a little small on my screen but it's 48 yeah so 48 weeks of operation would be a yearr round program
032that allows you to close the facility for um a couple of holiday weeks and then also some professional development time for the staff as well as allows the facilities folks to come in and do that deep clean that we really appreciate that they do in the summertime time the next thing is the private pay rate these numbers um you're able to manipulate and see what happens as you raised that the reason that the infants and toddlers are more expensive is just because it costs more to provide care to to those children the ratio of staff to students is much lower for infants as compared to preschoolers as to be expected uh the next component is the employee discount rate and so uh you can manipulate that rate we have it set at 33% that means
033that they would get 33% off or the cost would be about two-thirds to your staff compared to the general public uh the next section is the count that count is based off of um based off of your pres your preschool number is kind of a projection but the the infants and toddlers um that is based off of your actual current enrollment and then there is the employee rate that's calculating off of the the discount and then the voucher rates those are set by the state of Indiana and um increased periodically the next portion is uh at the very very bottom you'll see the number of special education students that are involved those those children um are free of charge to the families to participate in your program the way that this model is set up
034okay that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do that way in the end but that's the way the model is set up there are 30 seats set aside and the projection for that currently have 31 um specializ preschools preschoolers in your program and then so today we have because we're not looking at doing Deputy as far as the preschool okay but if I take the other three that's about 160 students plus the special ed that's 190 and what I'm looking here is 301 that doesn't leave a whole lot of kids for or seats for the 0o to threey old right so so the the infants can only have eight children in a room the one-year-olds two-year-olds they can only have 10 children in a room I get that okay but I would think that
035and I'll just use preschool as an example if we have 160 preschoolers now that are third and fourth grade that's basically 80 each okay okay so if I'm looking at zero to one one to two two to three in my head I'm thinking each one of those could be 80 each well it certainly could I guess it would depend on how large of a facility you would be willing to well I I I mean that's one of the reasons why I was looking at you and and the the projections and stuff it's like I look at this as being a feeder program and if we know what we're seeing for preschool and the community says well we have this kind of need and we would be able to feed those numbers in the future or
036maybe they're going to grow that's what I'm trying to to look with my head is how big a facility do we need and this seems understated in my opinion okay um so so if you look at the bottom of the right hand chart uh it will indicate the number of total rooms that this projection would take the total number of classrooms that this projection would take along with the total number of children yeah and there again I think we said that we currently have 13 preschool rooms correct and so we're looking at 23 rooms on your projection so that only leaves 10 for the the child care center or the Early Learning Center uh yes and I I'm just I just don't think that's enough one of the last one of the last things I
037want to do is build a building and as soon as it's built we're planning an expansion because we didn't size it right the first time yeah I I realize we can't build a shopping mall yeah and not fill it but I I hate building something and then it's too small once you cut the ribbon yeah I certainly understand that if you build yeah so we have a couple of reasons why we were looking at 23 to 25 classrooms um to begin with uh a couple of pretty good reasons one just to build the facility 23 to 25 classrooms based on what we're hearing from people and these are way rough because we don't have cost estimates yet for us that's kind of a Next Step um that we'll talk about in November but um we're
038looking probably around 25 to 30 million we don't want to go above that we're going to talk about the financing in a bit with um the people from Baker Tilly nice Miller but we're trying to stay within a range that financially Mak sense for us to take on debt which they'll kind of explain the bigger it gets obviously the more that's going to cost so trying to kind of keep it within what we think are our financial boundaries would be one reason the other thing is and Rick um has shared just sort of a rough tool with you that we've been um using and and trying to determine what makes sense as far as what we would charge how much we pay staff what our costs are again to make it financially sustainable and so
039while I absolutely agree with you that we may need more than 10 infant and like birth to three room rooms um those are very expensive and it's hard to be financially sustainable with the ratios required for those classrooms so you have to be careful with the balance um in order to make it to the point where you can even like zero out I'm not talking about making money but just to stay so that we're neutral cost neutral we have to watch kind of our numbers that we're putting in those classrooms um and and really it's like the threes in the fours where we can have some more students that makes it so that we can maintain it and sustain it we want to build a facility that's you know safe and beautiful and meets all
040of our kids and communities needs but we need to be able to keep it going too financially so those are the two factors right now that are kind of influencing what we're proposing one thing that we are talking about a lot though is that it's important to make this facility if we choose to move forward with it one that we're planning for the future so that we say in three to five years maybe we do build another Wing at that point you know so we want to definitely create a situation as we're building it that we have the ability to add on to it if we wanted to bring kindergarten over in the future you know to create again more space for elementary we could if we want to move fifth grade back to the
041elementaries so we want to create some options down the road in the future by how we um construct this from the very beginning so to you know to your point yes we think we'll need bigger maybe down the road but we have to kind of build it at scale that we can afford now and then plan for the Future Okay if that makes sense yeah so uh the the left hand or I'm sorry the right hand side of that projection walks through the expenses um for staff and uh there you will see that's where the revenue number comes from it's important to keep in mind that the Revenue number doesn't include a couple of things one is Staff benefits that number is variable um depending upon which staff take benefits we do have some projections
042about what that may be um but it's it's difficult to put it down in there uh the second thing is the cost of utilities and so we would defer to the architect for what the cost of that might be um but certainly in this model there there the revenue allows for um some w room in projection two the only difference here is we take it from a yearround program to a school year only program um I I would not recommend this model um for your entire Center strictly because you're going to have a lot of families who need that year round care uh not all families are able to take the summer off and spend with their families although certainly um there are centers that allow for year round or a school year model depending
043on which one the family wants and then they restructure their Staffing during those summer months to allow for that um and allow for that cost savings and then the third one uh the difference here this this is an example of of exactly what you were speaking to which is increasing the number of infant and toddler rooms decreasing the number of preschool rooms in the facility and you can see just that small change in the first box the difference that it makes in the revenue um which would make it difficult to operate a center and um and stay you know out of the red do you have a school resource officer put into the financials for this no sir we talked about perhaps making um having Jacob's office be located there because right now he kind
044of floats and he's in town so that that would allow us to have somebody um yeah okay there's um there's a director a nurse custodial staff administrative assistants uh as well as lead teachers and assistant teachers and then in addition there are a few additional assistant teachers the reason for that is uh with the state guidelines The Rao is incredibly important and you can get in considerable deep uh hot water I suppose uh trouble for not maintaining those ratios so you want to always make sure that you have you're in ratio so if a if an adult has to go to the washroom or it's their lunch break or uh they're taking one child out to go to the office or something like that or take them to the nurse you have to have another
045adult come in and be in the classroom to ensure that you're in ratio so that's those are the projections uh I do have this projection tool and I'd be happy to provide you access to it so that you can manipulate the spreadsheet as well um and see if there's a more preferable model for yourself um so in conclusion with all of these um things being considered you have the opportunity to make a long lasting impact that addresses the need for highquality care prepares for the projected housing growth um recognizes and supports the industry that your industry partners and Families need uh have a need meets the community needs provides increased access to a successful Early Learning Program and will also be financially sustainable and talking to Dr Brown um I think she intends to bring
046a recommendation to the to the November 13th board meeting um to continue on in the process by uh creating a partnership with Schmidt and having them draw up some schematics so that we can be more informed as we move through the next steps of the process if the Bo's agreeable yeah if you're agreeable any other questions for me so very uh informative information I think the numbers speak for themselves with regards to kids attending yeah preschool versus the ones that don't that's that was uh some of them are pretty staggering if we can get them started off early on then it's going to make a big difference for I mean obviously for the for that child but then for the entire Community as well yeah really well a considerable investment yes it thank you r
047i noticed that you left a report for the board as well is there anything in here in particular that you wanted to make sure that to highlight or I I will say the report is uh a written version of the presentation so there are more details in there and more information as you kind of read through it um if you have additional questions I'd be happy to come to your next work work session and answer those questions um as you read through it you can highlight it tab it and we can sit down and talk through it a little bit more thank you Rick yeah absolutely thank you think Jason tanel from Baker Tilly is going to talk a little bit about the funding behind thank good evening members of the board superintendent Brown thank
048you for having me at tonight's meeting my name is Jason tanel with Baker Tilly and we represent the school corporation as your Municipal adviser so now that we've had an opportunity to hear about this Early Learning Center and the potential needs for this project my role here tonight is to provide a very high level overview of how the school corporation might potentially pay for this project through the is insuance of a property tax supported Bond it's important to understand that bonds are typically pursued when an entity does not have the cash on hand that it would need to pay for a project and in Indiana uh the primary funding sources are uh state tuition support that goes to the education fund and property taxes these property taxes are used for the school corporations that service
049fund and they're used for the school corporations operations fund and so with that in mind no that potentially an Avenue to pay for this project is a property tax supported Bond issuance I would like to provide a high level overview of where the school corporation is today in regards to a Debt Service fund and how The Debt Service fund would potentially have the ability to bring on a property tax supported Bond replacing payments as they mature and not increasing the tax rate of the school corporation also important to keep in mind that uh because we are still waiting on cost estimates as Dr Brown mentioned we haven't provided any sort of proposed Bond financing in this presentation this is just to understand that where we are today and the potential to bring on a property
050tax supported debt if that is the board's decision so I do have a very very brief uh presentation here uh that does provide this summary um I will skip this slide because I think the visual is a little more easier to see from uh the TV screen here but you can see here that the school corporation currently has six bonds that are outstanding that are payable from its debt service fund Each Bond is represented by its own individual color and you can see that that very first bar in its totality is just under $5 million and that is this year 2024 the second bar is next year 2025 and thereafter 2026 is a decline in The Debt Service payments and all debt is being repaid by 2031 now to the extent that we were to
051see decreasing Debt Service payments we would also anticipate a decrease to the school corporation's Debt Service tax rate so uh currently the total tax rate of the school corporation for 2024 is 98 cents you're you're right below the state average State average tax rate is about a15 the median is 99 and so the school corporation is currently you know right next to the median and a little below the average uh and then so thinking about its debt service fund tax rate uh potentially here looking at 2026 with the potential for the tax rate to uh decline these maturities there those pink bars come to maturity in 2025 and so the school corporation has the ability to potentially replace these payments with a future Bond issuance by 2026 if it feels it was necessary to do
052so uh also just important to keep in mind the school corporation all debt is repaid within eight years and I think this is a a fortuitous position to be in uh we're on a lot of rating calls with um standard and pors moodies of the like and amortization that is within 10 years of maturity is deemed as rapid so all of the school corporations debt is deemed as a rapid repayment term uh in Indiana the maximum term that a bond could have as its maturity is 20 years and so that is available to the school corporation depending upon the size of the project and its tax rate strategy or its tax rate goals so it's important to keep that in mind as well is that the school corporation has been keeping with a relatively shorter
053repayment term minimizing interest expense uh to taxpayers to the best of its ability but uh potentially again a 20-year term could be available to the school corporation if that's something that would be um under consideration depending upon the size of the project as we learn more of the costs as those come to light so again um really just want to illustrate the point that uh the school corporation's uh tax rate again is 98 cents in 2024 uh it's anticipated to be a little less next year in 2025 about 97 or 965 and again the school corporation has all debt repaid by 2031 uh which would mean that in theory if all debt was repaid uh The Debt Service tax rate would be zero so you have the ability to replace some of these payments if
054it's deemed necessary are there any questions see none thank you thank you very much thanks everyone my name is Lauren Syler I'm here with um ice Miller serving as Bond Council for this Corporation um what is being distributed to you now is a example timeline of um if you all choose to proceed with issuing bonds to finance this project um this is an example of of the legal approvals that would be required to properly um issue those bonds um and to give you a sense of kind of how quickly we could move forward um I want to stress that this is all just very illustrative so um if you wanted to move a bit quicker we could if you wanted to move a bit slower that's certainly within um the realm of possibilities roughly speaking
055the overall process if we were to continue moving just at a a Quick Clip it' be roughly four to six months from start to finish for legal approvals um we based on discussions with Dr Brown and the rest of her team we've Illustrated that it could potentially start in in March of the of next year um but again we could certainly start that sooner or or or later as you um all take time to engage with the community and and see how quickly um if at all you were interested in proceeding with this this this approach um I want to start off on this first page by um emphasizing a process that'll be new to this financing um that the school district has not um encountered on your most recent Bond issuances over the past
056four or five years um typically over that period of time what you all have done has gone through what we call a non-controlled process um essentially the the dollar amount that has been issued for previous Bond issuances um required fewer hearings and you were able to proceed a little bit quicker these first two bolded Schoolboard actions you see um are required in part because the dollar amount we're likely talk talking about to to finance the construction of An Early Learning Center would take uh the issuance above those controlled thresholds and require two public hearings and waiting 30 days for the lesser of 5% or 500 registered voters in taxpayers in the school district um to file a petition requesting that this project be submitted um to referendum and present it on a ballot for for
057voters in this District um to then weigh in on um so you would essentially hold um one meeting we've Illustrated that they'd be held at special or regular board meetings um but that preliminary determination is hearing is what I'm referring to there um and then you would hold that second preliminary determination hearing along with adopting a few of the preliminary resolutions that would be required and then wait the 30 days um to give uh your community an opportunity to to weigh in on on the project um so you'll see that on the on the second page at the top um the end of that 30-day period yes please what is that threshold that amount for 2025 um for the referendum process it's about $1 19 million and so to Dr Brown's point we we don't
058quite have the uh construction estimates to to dictate for sure um you know what the costs will look like but it's very likely to be above that threshold um I also want to stress that if in fact a petition is successfully filed with within that 30-day period the decision then comes back to the school board about how to proceed um so you are not obligated by any means to proceed to um to a referendum or ballot you all would retain the authority to decide based on the receipt of that petition if you still want to move forward with the project if you did and there was a su successful petition filed it would go to um the next election be put on the ballot for the community to weigh in If instead you get that
059petition and you decide hold up we want to take a take a little bit more time to discuss with our community you know why folks might be concerned about this approach um you fully retain the ability to put a hold on the project essentially um under state law if if that petition is successfully filed and you elect not to proceed with the referendum it does put the project on hold for one year um so it you essentially would be delaying you know the potential construction dates of of that building um by choosing to kind of take a step back and and re-engage with your community but I did just want to stress that just if in fact a petition is filed that and and of itself does not obligate the the project to go to
060ballot any questions about that controlled process because that is again different from how we've uh done your most recent bond issuances in past years and this is new it's not new it would be new to this particular School Corporation we have school corporations across the state that engage in these two hearings and 30-day process on a fairly regular basis it's very common throughout the state just based upon project costs um and how they tie into those thresholds I mentioned earlier um but with respect to you all this would be relatively new process um just because you you've been able to issue bonds for a slightly lower amount this would be a rather larger project than what you've done in in most reent I guess I was under the assumption that as long as our tax
061rate didn't increase that we didn't have to go through the referendum process what you're saying that's not true no thank you for clarifying that so the uh 30-day period is that wait period to see if a petition is successfully filed um again that's the lesser of 5% or 500 registered voters and taxpayers within the school corporation would have to sign that petition file it with the with the county in order for that petition to be quote unquote successfully filed um if that does not occur within that 30-day period um then the project would not need to go to referendum you could proceed if you see on the second page we kind of have the uh yellow box there all the steps kind of following that presume that no petition is successfully filed no um ballot
062initiative would be required at that point you would have the The public's um support from a legal perspective to proceed with the project and then as I'll mention in a minute there's a few more steps the school board would would need to take to um authorize the the remaining legal steps um but you at that point you would not be required to put the project on a referendum but thank you for for clarifying that because that was my understanding as well I was saying same as Mr Scott I thank you for for asking I appreciate that question any other questions about the controlled process okay um hearing done then I just want to also uh focus on kind of what follows after that that yellow box so again this presumes that no petition successfully filed
063um that the public um is kind of demonstrating that their support for you all to to proceed with the project um you'll see there's uh two more um Schoolboard actions sets of Schoolboard actions that would be required um and that is a little bit different again from the the bond issuances you all have done most recently in 23 and and 22 um the last two years you all have issued what are called General obligation bonds um those are bonds issued directly by the school corporation um and in this instance um we would actually be taking a different structuring approach um because of the dollar amount that we're talking about so under the state constitution School corporations are limited to how much debt they can issue in the form of General obligation bonds um for this
064particular School District um it's what the actual capacity is would be subject to to when you would be issuing and and how much debt is outstanding but the limit itself is is well below that you know roughly 25 to 30 million dollar amount that we're talking about um so in this this instance unfortunately General obligation bonds loan would not be sufficient um as a as a structuring mechanism to issue the bonds so we would use the alternative uh mechanism which we call a lease financing um this school corporation has done that uh most recently in 2021 and 2020 um so it's not um athma to this to school corporation but just not something that you all have done in most recent years so I just wanted to reiterate kind of what that process looks like
065as well um essentially under elase financing you would uh engage what we call a building Corporation um those folks again have helped you with some of your past Bond issuances but they would be involved in a in a lease financing cure um as an on behalf issuer for the school corporation they would actually be the entity issuing the bonds um to the to the investors um essentially the school corporation would lease a facility from that building Corporation the school corporation would Levy property taxes for Debt Service and would use those property tax dollars to make lease rental payments to the building Corporation and the building Corporation would turn use those leasee payments to then pay principal and interest to the bond holders um so this again is is a mechanism that allows the school corporation
066um through the building Corporation entity itself to access dollars in nexcess of the the Constitutional debt limit um to finance larger projects it's a mechanism again that you all have used in in relatively recent years and it's very frequently used throughout the state by by other school corporations as well um but just again something that is uh a little bit different than the the general obligation bonds that we've done most recently so you'll see in that second page that we've labeled for June 25 but again could could change um but the school board initially after that 30-day period the first step would be approving the form of that lease agreement um that would basically govern the structure of that lease financing and a few other resolutions essentially just reaffirming the need for the project and
067and authorizing and instructing the building Corporation to in fact serve as an on behalf issuer for the school corporation you then on the following page um you'll see we have that building Corporation action um listed there at the very top again that building Corporation would not take any action and would not proceed with issuing any bonds um until and unless they have the authority and direction from you all on the school board to do so uh but they would need to the building Corporation would need to meet uh at least once to um make their own authorizations to proceed with the the bond sale and then you'll see there this the uh final School Board action would be actually holding a hearing on the the lease financing structure holding a hearing on um if necessary
068the appropriation of any dollars from the bond sale that would come through the school corporation's accounts directly and then adopting some of those um accompanying resolutions um that would be the the final official board action that you all would would need to take to um properly authorize the actual Bond sale itself but I want to emphasize a a few other things at each of these hearings the the two we talked about before the 30-day period and the two hearings or the the two um board meetings we're talking about after the 30-day period at all those times the board would be setting maximum Financial parameters um that Dr Brown's team and Baker Tilly would um work with uh work together and with the design folks to make sure that um we've we've kind of satisfied whatever
069again your your goals are financially and whatever the needs are financially um but the actions legally would be setting those maximums at every time until the bonds are sold the school board would retain the ability to issue or to to come down from any of those parameters you can never exceed those once you set them without redoing these legal steps again but at all times until the actual Bond sale I just want to emphasize you will retain the ability to um kind of come down from those those amounts so if you end up finding out get more information that it'll cost less um or that you just have different preferences for how you want to manage the financial process um you'll retain that ability um to to lower those amounts along the way the other
070thing too is the construction team can get into it but even once the bonds are sold um you all will be involved in um reviewing those contracts and bids and and working with Dr Brown and her team to actually um proceed with the construction project so I just wanted to emphasize what we're illustrating here are just the legal steps with respect to actually issuing bonds to finance the project but you all certainly will uh be involved to uh continue your Authority your authorizations and approvals throughout the construction process as you would for for different financing as well so you said just want to make sure I understand the maximum amounts um we can't go higher but we but what about the terms if we started out thinking that we wanted this type of terms as
071far as years and then as we go on how does that impact this those would all be um some of the parameters where you would set maximum so Jason and his team can also get into in more detail and it'll be easier to do so once we have more a sense of cost estimates but essentially you're setting maximum principal amounts um for the bond issuance itself project costs interest rate maximums maximum terms all the ma maximum lease rental payments all the like um and so you would have a typically we a conservative sense of uh what those projected costs throughout the life of the bond issuance would be to uh to taxpayers as an example okay um but those are all terms that you could certainly you know lower come down from throughout the process
072and if in fact you decided you need to increase them for whatever reason it might involve redoing a few of those steps but that's still an option as well thank you any other questions very well said Thank you thank you very much thank you very much that concludes the presentation for the child okay we appreciate everybody's time and uh lot to absorb there but uh I believe there's certainly a need in our community so hopefully we can get to that point but thank you for your time open it up to uh board member comments um I'm going to start off that's okay the Madison Consolidated board of Trustees are elected individually and nonpartisan actions and comments by a board member are solely that member's thoughts it does not reflect the opinion of other members at
073our regular October 2024 meeting in which I was absent vice president Scott gave his personal thoughts on an upcoming Board election which three candidates are vying for two positions according to the Board of Trustees policy each member shall avoid giving their political views in quote playing politics while acting in their official capacity Mr Scott failed to follow this policy by endorsing two candidates vice president Scott has expressed his deep remorse for his oversight and does wish to address the matter tonight before we move on to Mr Scott um Mr B do you have any comments um got to get away from that though just to say like the Harry Potter if you haven't seen it yet it's fantastic the Harry Potter plays three I think five more four more shows next weekend Friday night Saturday
074day Saturday night Sunday afternoon uh that's a great opportunity to go support our school arts program and Mr Kelsey and what they're all doing um our fall Sports has finished up I think we won three or four sectional titles which is fantastic for our sports program so congratulations to them and good luck to the football team this Friday as they look to hopefully make their first sectional championship game since 1992 uh all that being said just kind of what we heard thank you guys all for the information on the on the um the future child care center I'd be hesitant and I'd be shocked to see Mass's population grow at the rate they're saying so I think as a board we really need to consider hard I mean I know Mr Scott you were concerned
075about not having enough I'm concerned maybe we're overlooking so really kind of look hard at those numbers uh my two minutes of research up here says predictions are for a negative 1% birth uh decrease over the next seven to eight years a stagnant population growth so uh 100% we need a child care center 100% we need to make sure we have the best offerings for our preschool our zero to four year olds and I'm a big proponent in if we have facilities we can grow our school and convince people to come in but we want to make sure that we don't go too overboard with that housing projection I just think that's kind of way over what I've ever seen in Madison so that's it thank you thank you sir Mr story I hope we
076get more housing and stuff it's really difficult to get the housing another doing the supposedly a new apartment complex going in so hopefully that gets going because I know there it's really hurting right now uh with the housing but did not go to see Harry Potter this past weekend I spent yesterday watching the movies and stuff so i' never watched them before so I'm actually going this weekend still a little confused about it but my uncle went and said it was fantastic and stuff so I'm really looking forward to that um ready for winter SP for to take off it's hard to believe it's happening this fast we're already almost to November and thank you John and I'll turn it over to Mike Mr Scott 26 days ago during our last MCS board meeting I
077made a significant Mistake by expressing my opinion on the upcoming election my opinion wasn't needed and I violated our code of ethics policy first let me sincerely apologize to my fellow board members MCS employees and Jefferson County voters for my actions and behavior I can assure you this type of mistake will never happen again growing up I was taught two important lessons in life one waiting for a punishment to be administered is often more stressful and painful than the actual punishment itself I've known for the past 24 days that I violated our ethics code of conduct just saying that and admitting to it is painful however I will own it and have to live with this mistake as I move forward in life the other thing I learned is there needs to be a significant
078punishment for negative actions to help serve as a reminder not to duplicate mistakes I have notified my fellow board members and the MCS leadership that I will will forfeit my fourth quarter stiping of $500 in addition I respectfully asked to be replaced immediately as the vice president of this school board and under the circumstances wish to hold no offices for the remainder of my term which expires in December of 2026 life is full of experiences some positive and some negative tonight is something I never ever thought would happen to me I need to be smarter and I need to choose my words more carefully in the future thank you Mr Scot okay at this point we'll look for a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn and a second second motion a second
079all in favor signify by saying I I