Board Meeting Regular Session - 5/12/25

001Exactly guys names the kids right here. Good evening. They got these stands out here. Oh, nice. I didn't even notice that. Good evening. Uh Mercer County Board of Education is in session. It's May 12th, 2025, and it is 6:00 p. p.m. Uh we're having an early meeting tonight to uh begin our budget work discussion session. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Tommen. President Pach, I have Leslie Wellman, our treasure, director of finance or treasurer here. And uh not director of finance, it's Yes. Gotcha. Miss Wellman has a a sheet that she gave out to all of you guys and uh and lady and uh she'll hand that out. We got it already, but uh she will start with this presentation of the budget workshop. All right, we need you need to have

002a mic. Supposed to get several mics. Thank you. need just get these little headsets like they have at the plays and everybody put everybody have one on then they'll be ready to get all I talk with my hands so this is a challenge I'm not going to lie. Um so we'll mention that again next year we hope to get back on track having the workshop after the um mandatory meeting in April right after we'll have the budget workshop were delayed this year because of the late legislature um legislative session. So, we were late getting some of our revenue numbers. We still do not have um all of our federal program numbers, but what we wanted to do is just kind of highlight where we are and go through some of the things that we've already

003done um up to now. Our state aid is increasing. That number did not look right. That number is actually not correct. Our state aid, I'm sorry, very first one. Um, I was working out of two files today by mistake. Our state aid is going up 54 about $800,000. I'm sorry. one last question. Let me get through the first. Let her let her let her do her thing. So So the what we're looking at here is Yeah, that first paragraph. I'm sorry. So our state aid is 54.5 million. Our county taxes are 13.8 million. and our excess levy is 16.7 million. In total, our revenue is going down $19 million, $19.9 million. However, that is due to construction from the SBA as well as we had some of the ESSER funds in FY25 as well. So,

004basically, we're going up about a million and a half dollars between all three of those funds. We do not have our title one, two, or four numbers, any of our titles yet. They have estimated that or they told us last week that they do not expect this to be finalized until July. So, we left those the same this year as we did last year with no change. And Lauren, if I'm correct, that's all personnel right now. Um, so we might have some shifting of some of those budgetary numbers as we go along once we get that final budget in July. Our total head. Do you have any questions about revenue? Why are we getting an increase from the state aid? The state aid Oh, the state aid increased. We got an increase due to an

005additional 26 secondary third grade aids for the third grade success act. 26 23 26 I had 26 in in my notes, but that's the primary driver of why we're going up from state. So our budget's essentially flat in SHF. And Lauren just reminded me that our PIA allocation's going up as well since that went up as well. So, it's really just kind of to help with cover those expenses. It's not an increase in funding. And the board, Merch County School Board or schools is paying the additional what? 80% of the 14% increase. And the employees are picking up the 20 and Lauren can talk to that a little bit more as we get down to expenses. Okay. Our professional headcount, this is new to Mr. Toman because when I reviewed it with him, we were

006still working on numbers. Our professional is over 14 and our service is over 49.66. That is um that is something that we still need to to work with personnel on. The reporting from that is is a little bit rough, but what we show is 22 of those are related to employees that have contracts greater than 200 days and 27.4 46 are due to true overhead count situations. Um, so I'm confused. Yeah, me too. So our total headcount is 49.66 over, but they only fund 200 day contracts. So if we have an employee that works 261 days, we fund those 61 days. It's about a third. So they go in the count if we they go in the count. We put them in the count based upon the number of days. Do you count them as

007a third or do you count them as 1.3? So a 261 is 1.3 employees. Okay. So we have 20 no 74 total 74 total employee service employees that are over 261 or 200 day contracts. 74 employees that have contracts more than 200 days. So we have to employ to fund 74 times 30% of their salaries which comes out to 22.2. 2. So those Oh, go ahead. So we're not actually over 50 employees. It's 27.46 numbers. 27.46. That next total is where we're at. Are those ones that are longer contracts mostly like custodial and maintenance? Yes. And central office employees. Okay. So the 27.46 is something that we still want to work with personnel on. Actually, once we we were delving into this today, I did reach out to Roger and Dr. Philipek to to see

008it's it's a struggle sometimes matching. You've got vacancies and people on leave and so some of that 27.6 could be employees that are on leave um and still have days, their contracts still active, but they're on a leave of absence and so they're still being paid. So we in that case we um you know we might have an extra employee that that we have compens cover covering that. Historically we've been in the 20s over on service personnel. Is that not accurate? Yes we have. As well as the professionals. Yeah that 15 or 14's about where we've always been. Well not always but since 98 at least. Yeah. I I will say um this year Miss Huddle and Miss Mrs. Mitchell worked very hard on the those positions um especially reducing some redundancies and things. So

009these would have been much higher if it had not been for the two of them. And you think 14 professionals is lower than we've traditionally been at times? Is that what I'm hearing? Kind of a little bit. A little bit lower. 21 last year. Okay. So, that's good. All right. Then the hard part also is when you lose enrollment, all of a sudden that's kicks that back up. You think you're winning and then you lose 200 300 kids and that that kills the numbers right there. Right. So, last year we were 17 over in professional and 21 over in service. So, the service has gone up more. Um, so that's the the issue that we're going to be researching with Dr. Philip Good. Okay. Do we outsource any of that stuff service-wise like custodial and

010and things like that? No, can't do it. No, not if we have a position. You all would have to make that decision to do that. So, oh, I'm sorry. Just wondering. So, is the headcount of 126426 a hard number? I'm sorry. Is the headcount of 126426 a hard number? Is that actual positions? That is what we have in the budget for next year. Yes. So, does that include the the 1.3 employees? So, it's not actually 1264. Correct. You would take 22.2 away from that to get an actual head right around 12. That makes sense. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. I'm going to let Lauren talk about the next section. I will have to say that again these ladies they do so much. They're intimately aware of this. We could not do this without them as well. So

011I'm going to let Lauren discuss the next section. Okay. So some other key um factors within our budget is you all are um aware that there was not an state increase for salaries for fiscal year 26. So we did not have to worry about any kind of increases at the state level. Um RHBT was a decrease for this year. last year um it was $34 per employee per month um for any employee who had what is that? So that is for the retiree health benefit trust. Okay. Um so if an employee has health insurance through PEIA, we are required the employee is required or the employee is required to contribute per month um to that trust. Is that what they call the unfunded liability oped? The other No, that's something different. So, this is for

012those employees who retire and um which um the newer employees don't have subsidized insurance premiums, but the the employees who have been around for a while and have that subsidized insurance option when they retire, this goes to that um trust. Um so, um for 206 that u monthly fee for the employer is $12 per month. So, $144 and that is in addition to what we pay for the other um insurance. So, we did receive for the employer portion of PEIA a 14% increase for fiscal year 26. And just a fun number to throw out for an employee who has family coverage with plan A, we pay $19,476 per year for an employee with family coverage. We pay we pay that is Mercer County Schools for one employee. So what's considered a family? A family is

013husband spouse plus dependence or just husband spouse. It could be husband spouse or husband spouse and children. So they're they're considered the same. It's either single or all other. Well, if it's single, it's not as much. is probably about whatever is about. So if it's just a husband and wife versus a husband wife and three kids, they pay the same. They pay the same. Correct. That sucks. Unless they they have the additional search charge as well, right? Which will be 350 next year. And that and that is Yes. And that's passed on for the employee upund bucks. So why the increase? Because PEI said so. Yep. Yeah. So, um, that's going to work on it. It's going to be a special session. We'll see. Yeah. Um, and just another thing whenever we go into budgeting,

014it's not just the salary that we have to look at, but also the fixed cost. So, employer, we pay 7 and a half% for retirement. We also have the 7.65% for social security. Workers comp, there's three levels of workers comp. Um teachers, we pay I think it's like um uh 03% for teachers um and administrative staff, but then we can go up to like 3% for bus operators and maintenance and that sort of stuff. So it varies. So about one and a half% is an average and then plus the PDIA. What's that percentage based based on what? So that's the rate the ben the rate that that the workers comp is charging. Yeah. And that's going to be all based on our e-mod based on you know all of our claims and everything like that

015and how you know how fast they get back to work and all that kind of good stuff. Do we have a pretty good safety record? Where is she? Okay. So, um, while there there's a lot of factors that go in to making sure that we, um, we cover and probably about 80% are just our employer cost, making sure that we have enough to cover our fixed costs plus our salaries. So, our fixed costs are a good portion of our employees for our employees. If we hire an a who makes $30,000 a year, she's about $48,000. Yes. It is not $30,000 to hire that employee. We are looking closer to 55 $60,000 by the time we pay those costs. So, like we talked about with um the salaries also comes with fixed costs. Right now in

016our budget, we have $107.4 million budgeted for salaries and the fixed cost of all of our employees. That's across all the funds whether they are um funded through um county money um the state aid um and then any of our special revenue positions that are funded as well. Um and like Lauren said that usually makes up about 80% of the budget there. Um another note of increase in our budget was utilities. Um the dollar amount that we increased our utility budget was $26,800. Um they usually say rule of thumb is about 3% to increase it. We did about 5.5 just because just about every utility company around here is asking for raises. So we wanted to kind of raise it just in case so we will have enough to be covered if any of those

017do go through. Hopefully they don't and it benefits everybody, not just the schools. Um, but we do like to be prepared just in case with those. We ought to be one of the loudest voices at these rate cases. 55 counties looking at at that kind of increase. I mean, I talked to Jim Brown about it and he said that he couldn't get any any consensus to get people start that would be willing to participate. But Jesus, you know, we're looking at over a million bucks. Oh, per year. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Total utilities were about three million. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. 3.9 million is budgeted for total utilities. That includes disposal services, water, gas, all all of those. Um, just to to add to what Jordan said, the 107.4 is 81% of our budget. Our total

018revenue next year is projected at $132 million and 81% of that is going to be salaries and fixed costs questions up to now discussions or do you want to talk about some of the projects that Mr. Atkins and I have talked about and reviewed with Mr. Toman? I just have one question on the income part of it. When when is the number set as far as number of students that we're going to get funded? Last October. So, this coming year. So, we know for sure what that number is. It's based on those numbers from last October that we got. Okay. Yes. One thing that um we we debated going back and forth whether we were doing a full presentation for tonight or making it more informal, but one of the things that we wanted to

019point out is that our so we get an allocation for state aid and then they take funds back for charter schools. It was 350 this year. It's 1.4 million for FY26 that we will lose to charter schools. So, it's almost a million dollars increase. That is primarily the the failing virtual school. Did I say that out loud? Well, if you go by test scores, they're pretty bad. So, so that does not include hope. That is just for charter, right? So, we lost about a million from that perspective, even though we don't have charter schools technically in Mercer County. Yes. I I didn't hear the answer to Jim's question about our safety record. So, Dr. Philip handles our workers comp and our E-mod. I'm I don't get those reports. Um, so I I know a little

020bit about it to be dangerous, but kind of like me. Um, you know, I I know we had some significant claims last year that affected our EMOD. We've not gotten it back this year, so I really haven't seen a report on that yet. Um, but we are actually we did do an RFP for that for the agent of record. Um, so we are looking at maybe changing that at the next board meeting as well. Lauren and I and Dr. Philipek will be on a committee and open those tomorrow. Other questions? Moving on. So, within the excess le levy, we have about $3 million budgeted for maintenance and major up repairs or upgrades. We know we need to spend about $350,000 on the PM Princeton Middle School man. We got a grant for $50,000. We don't

021have time to do it this summer. We will start on that next year and it has to be finished by 2026. So that is funds that within the excess levy for next year. We want to designate for that. Pike View High School needs it. It's going to be ongoing for the next several years. It we're going to be coming to you all with just you know request to designate about $250,000 a year. Sun Valley needs a new septic system. Um it is not only where the building needs to be built but the leech lines the leech lines are not leeching. Um so um we anticipate that that that's going to to need to be replaced and Tom has already spoken um with an engineer. We do not need a full system. We can just use

022a septic tank with the lines. We'll have to dig that out and replace all of that. So we we proposed doing that next year as well. Um the last year we paved Montcom High School and the softball up to the softball soccer field at Pike View. We would like to do next year the um to the baseball field. So that Mr. Atkins has requested that. We think it we we already have a quote. It'll be about 25,000 next year. That's just the gravel road from the parking lot down to the field. Down to the field. Yes. They drive on that frequently and it's gravel and we constantly have to repair that. It's getting rut. It gets ruts in it and people spin out gravel and Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. Um and it's I think

023that that might be other than Mcom High School's softball field. That might be the only one that we haven't paved. Okay. And we are doing part of that this year. Um, so I have also I'm also going to ask that we put aside at least half a million dollars for contingencies for the flood repairs and then any unforeseen business need or building needs that we have. You know, we frequently have something die that you know, right now we're working on some units on the auditorium at Bluefield High School that that we thought were working and two of them died. So, we're just we are going to replace those this year. So, that's for that. One of the reasons um I did have a meeting with FEMA last Friday and found out that Spanishberg is not

024only in a flood plane, they are in a flood zone and that means it is a natural flood path. FEMA does not normally fund anything rebuilt in a flood zone. So, I had my request to FEMA, which is also going through the SBA since it's a large project, has to now go through an eight-step process for them to decide whether they will fund that if we rebuild there. if they said they might give us funds to mitigate, but they cannot commit to that at this point. Not to mitigate, to move or relocate, but they they typically do not pay anything to rebuild in a flood zone. So, we have another meeting next Friday. They're doing a site visit next week and then we have a meeting two days later to discuss that. So, I'm not

025sure how much funds we have a h we have a half a million dollar flood insurance coverage. It is going to exceed that. So, I'd like to have some reserve for next year's levy to be able to look at that. Is that per location per event? Yes. Per location. What's our what's our population at Spanishburg? They're down about 30 kids this year. But about twothirds of that school is above that. Yes, it is. The gym and the office are the biggest issues, frankly. Um, the rest of it, there's a music room. I mean, they need that, but the cafeteria, 95% of the classrooms now 100% now are above the flood plane in that area that's built up. And the water did not reach that. The new section, the new section. Yep. The water was right

026at that new section. Did not go in. So with that said, we will have decisions of course to talk about and we're analyzing that and a lot depends upon FEMA and what they're going to do, but I do want to make you aware of of what they said a flood zone. They will not rebuild. Um however, they did also say that, you know, maybe the state will have some funds to help us too. So I will go down every path that I possibly can. Govern doesn't have any money. It'll be the first to tell. Um, given the increase in our utilities, is it not time to revisit uh solar? Solar. I know we had a nightmare with it. I didn't I know nobody I know nobody loved it. It it was just a cluster. But

027if it's free and it it's stable as terms of our utility cost, it's worth it because AP is not done with increases. It's going to continue for the next 25, 30, 40 years. We we briefly talked about that when Leslie and I met that. Uh I left it off. You talked about that before. I saw it turned to hell. I saw that. Yeah. I saw I had a feeling you do that. I got I did not I did not I didn't say a word, did I? No, you did not add it. But I will say I've got one person helping with bids and it's it's a backlog right now. there there's you know there's just the two of us that doing bids and it I get that we I do we have a lot and

028um you know Tom's had people out I have it's hard to get people to come to work every day even um when someone misses 60 days a year it's you know it's difficult to get things done um sometimes 60 days so maybe that was an exaggeration it's simply a a function of if they will install them 36 days if they will install them for us and I talked to I've been the last two times I've been at who was that guy board association meetings there had been somebody there with and you know they're talking about it sounds like a much better long-term plan for us than the one that we initially talked about because the they'll spread it out over long periods of time. we can get ownership quicker. It's guaranteed longer. Things that have

029us concerned about the first process. Um it's it's certainly worth looking into at least and I did Mr. Toman also sat um sa sales rep on me. Um we are looking at other she said I saw Mr. Toman yesterday and I'm like he was and I said I know I know I'm supposed to. Um, if you remember ESG that we used uh for our energy savings contract, they have they they have the ability to manage projects and I'm going to be frank, that's another issue that we have. We do these projects and then we have to stay up on them and somebody has to go to the meetings and manage them and things like that. They they did do a good job with those projects before. So, Mr. Toman asked me to set up a

030meeting with them. We're also talking about other options whether we, you know, have to look at an RFP for more architects, engineers. We need help. I I'll just be honest and and I have begged and pleaded pled um and I know ZMM's working hard, but the turnaround time is slow right now. Um I I still I need to bid out the flood jobs. You know, I can't do a bid unless I know the specifications. I don't know what type of sheetrock or someone has to help me do that. and Stafford when Stafford was here they were wonderful. ZMM has been wonderful to date but I think they they must be just have a lot of projects going on because the response time quite frankly slow. Well, Mr. Toman and I he he knows that as

031well. He had already asked me to set up a meeting. We're going to we're going to have to do a new RFP for architects anyway. July 1st, are we not? No, I think it's like March of 26 is when it expires. Okay. But it's coming soon. It is coming soon. Yes. So we estimate our carryover is going to be 2.75 million. That's a conservative estimate. If anything, it will go up, but not significantly. Um for that portion of carryover, what we're coming to you with is asking for guidance as well on what to do with that carryover. While I said that, I I also wanted to update you on we had three projects last year. All of those are in place. Um the Athens weatherization, we had a contract back in March. We're having a

032trouble getting that vendor here. So, we're having to prod them and we actually got ZM involved to pro to prod them to get that done. They've got till the end of the summer to get that done. Um Tom has his crew already in process. I think Steve Thornton's working on those. the 200,000 at Pipy High School, the pavings in process at Bluefield Intermediate School as well. So, as we think about the carryover, any other projects you want us to work on, I wanted to mention and Mr. Toman and I met with these the Sun Valley building, the disposition of the buildings we're closing and the related costs related to that. There may be asbestous that has to be abated, etc. Um, I I will mention that that had been Dr. policy that we were not

033going to leave buildings to fall down in our community. I personally support that as well. Um I think what we did with Memorial, it cost the board, but Memorial and Whitethornne has have been assets to those communities versus just leaving dilapidated buildings. Um so I would like to mention that we need guidance on disposition of the property on Route 20. I know we've all talked about property for a new school in Princeton. We have a Montcom high school building we need and I'm sure you have other things that you're going to give us as well. So I kind of just need some guidance what you want done with that 2.75 and then any other projects you'd like to see us make. You know we went to SBA for money for here. Is this 2.7 that

034is in addition to that? Um when when we shut the doors at uh brush, how quickly will they come in making payments? We have already that's that contract and demolition's in place. June 23rd is when they will come pick those buildings up. Mr. Atkins and I have already been involved with them. He knows what he has to do. Unhook electricity, unhook all the utilities. expense. We don't have July on. Correct. We've been paying I thought it was closer to 100. It's a hundred. It's a h 100,000 a month. Yes. Yeah. We're in the wrong business. When desperate times calls for you got it, right? Capitalism. Got to do what you got to do. the the disposition of property on Route 20. Is that what I think it is? Tell me what that is. That's the

035property that we chose not to build on. Do you want us to You mean selling that property? Yes. Yes. I think with a reserve with a reserve. We can absolutely do reserves. Absolutely. We're not going to do anything with it. I would I would like to see a focus on finding property for a new Mercer Austral. I mean, I know everybody's pretty, but I think we're way past the eightball on that project. Not to add to your all's stress level of new projects, but and who knows what funding is going to be, but we can't even apply for funding if we don't have a location. And I just we I think that the problem with the prime primary property that we've identified is it belongs to an organization that is so valuable that that little

036$300,000 piece of property is a an accounting error. and they're just not it's not high on their list of things to do. I think we may have to find another piece of property. I mean, I know it's not that's easier said than done, right? We we did we did have a we did have a a local realtor go and look and there doesn't seem to be a lot of options. I mean, that that to me the best property would be the old part of the uh um Dean Company property. That'd be a perfect location for that elementary. Um, but the city is interest, but what they've told me is the city's not interested in that. That's what I understand as well. And you told me that Princeton plans to expand out? No, I don't know.

037Somebody told me. I I know who told me. The guy at the Mountaineer Caravan the other day. Um, the COO, whatever his name is. I'm not sure. Um, I've heard it several times, but traffic would be a nightmare for school buses and parents and everything else over there. Anyway, uh, well, we just have to start looking again. I just don't want to wait until Mercer's falling down, which could happen. I mean, I know that we keep it up and I know it's well built, but it is like my grandfather went there in 1912. I mean, it's old. So, uh, and Australia is not in great shape either. So, I don't want to end up where we're like we've had to do a brush fork and have temporary $100,000 a month and potentially two other locations

038and be five years away from being able to build a school. I think something too we got to consider is we're looking for six plus acres and that the SBA wants that, but we we can ask for a waiver if we can find a smaller something. I think that's a valid point. We may have we may need to consider anything industrial area when you cut over from Stafford to get back on Main Street. There's the the old building that you had with that. He sold the B the empty property behind it to that survival store. So, I don't and I don't think personally that we would want to demo that and get into any regulatory issues that might be I know there's a main um is it a sewer line or water line that comes

039right under that building. One of one main from that side of town comes under that building because it used to back up all the time. Um so I I don't think and then over where the daycare is on the sanitary board is that is in a flood plane. we would have to build up if we did that. I I we probably shouldn't discuss thoughts of where we want to do it because the prices will go up immediately on that real estate. Uh but there are I mean we need to we need to get back on it again. U shake the railroads if we can out here on Stafford. Is it still in business? It is. And to Tom's point, do we know what the smallest property we can make work is? Do we know what

040that is? How do we find that out? to be looking for property. We kind of need to know what the minimum is that we have. How much is how much is Bluefield Primary sitting on? Got an idea? How many acres? How many acres? Anybody got any idea? I can find it cuz that's going to be that Princeton intermediate is going to be larger than that skullwise. It's going to be a bigger building. Well, we can go up too though because it's three through five. Whereas we had to have a bigger footprint since it was prek through That's a good point. So we can and we have to have separate playground too. But we we do have two stories at at uh the primary in bluefield. We do on the second grade wing, right? The only

041second grade, but but we can we could do the whole thing could be twotory. Yes. Cuz how many students for Mercer Shley now combined is 300 320. Yeah, around 400 because it would be the same as Princeton Primary essentially, right? Okay. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It would be the same as Princeton Primary, which is crazy to think it's only 450 when Kate was there. 600 kids at Princeton Primary, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Um, so you would like us to have someone take the lead on finding property? We need to keep we need to be looking at Mr. Toman will assign that person. He's not listening. We can I'm looking at the acreage. We can contact with the dealer with a realtor again and let them do the looking. I'm going to interpret Leslie's look who

042should be in charge of it. Should not be Leslie. Well, an acre per 100 students. They do not recommend more less than five usable acres. I want to say while I agree that we definitely need to be looking with that property, I think we've more or less committed to the Sun Valley building and that ought to be priority, top priority here. We can't just they raised the money we've talked about. Now we can't say forget that. We got to decide how much we're going to spend on it because I'm crazy. Tomorrow at 1:30 I have a meeting with the architect to basically value engineer that that project to get it down as low as we possibly can and he can tell us closer to 1.2 million is is the budget that I was given. What

043can we get for 1.2 million and that that is in addition to the 250 for the sewer treatment that we're going to do. Um so we'll come back with a better budget but well you don't want to hear this but I'm going to say it anyway. If we were our own contractor, we could do it for half of that bid. The same qualif subbed out the slab and we subbed out the building cuz those metal buildings come cheap comparatively. You can get a building, a large metal building for comparatively cheap price. Well, we agreed we can do cheaper, but it has to meet fire code. It has to meet snow load. It has to have the correct number of exits. It has to have, you know, a fire alarm system, HBA system. So, all of

044that is included in the estimate that they gave us. Um, just put those big ass fans in there. That's what the company's called. Big ass I know. We just had that at all. They're at all the all the horse shows. Yeah. Well, they make some of the parts right here at at Custom Manufacturing. I didn't know that. But yeah, that was a big topic was the big ass fans at TO. Um, you know, again, it this is this is me and Tom and that's all we got right now. Um, managing these projects. So, we will we can do it within our realm, but I I cannot sub all of that out and manage. Sure. I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't think there was anybody we currently have that could do that, but you could pay

045someone to do that and still save money. If if this doesn't come in, that might be an option. Well, I've talked to a couple contractors and they said that's way more than it should cost to build. That's what they said. So, just telling you. And and again, that total number included the parking lot that she wanted it. It included a lot of other things that, you know, ideally would be great that we might have to do in phases. We did some of the other projects in phases. I don't know if you remember that, but I remember one of my first jobs was bleachers at Australia. They didn't we built it. We didn't put bleachers in it first. We did it later. So, and Melrose had to build their own concession or office area. So, we

046have done that and and we'll come together with that. I do not think we can get it to 1.2 just with construction cost, but I'll eat I will eat my words if if we can. Someone mentioned I think does the plan include a a bus circle around behind the No, the school is still going to have that crowded front. Well, she she asked for a parking lot on the side if you're facing the building all the way on the right. She wants that kind of to have a parent loop over there. But the way the building is designed, you can't take it all the way behind um and still get that multi-purpose building in the back. The way the building presently there. Yes. Yes. And then the way that she wants that building and then

047we can get a parent loop parent loop that'll that would help similar to kind of how we did Melrose. That that's exactly what we're looking at. Yeah. Okay. That is a dangerous. So what we could do is take that 2.75 and put it in capital projects and that way it would be reserved for whatever we you all you know see fit as as we get the Sun Valley project. We could also even put the proceeds for you know if we sell some property we can put the proceeds in the capital projects fund as well. Um is that your recommendation? That's my recommendation. Good for me. Yeah me too. I I personally agree about the disposition of the old schools as well. I don't think that benefits anybody for us to leave buildings that are dilapidated

048in our community. I don't know. Case is interested in how much I'm supposed to say, but I'm going to say what I can. There is interest from a entity that we can donate the land to to turn I know we got stuff there is really the brush property into a park but they don't want the building but they told us they thought they might have a way to fund destruction of the building. So there may be a way there may be a way to de I'll tell you later when we're not when it's not public I've been there's interest from people about purchasing blue well in its current state too which I can't imagine who would want that well it's big in the ATV community right now and they would just maybe demolish it or

049use parts of it in blue you know they need they need a bigger school feeling they would use part then the my concern with that would be like what happened in the past where somebody had a temporary business and then it doesn't fly and then everybody says Forever old school board left this old dilapidated school cuz that's kind of what's happened in the past. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It might service to if Case is interested it might we might maybe if we demolish it then we could sell the property to somebody who wants to do something ATV related. I would think that would be marketable too. The Lust Boys might like it. But I spoke with Mary Turner a couple weeks ago and she was asking me what we were going to do with Blue Well

050and I asked Ernie if it was service without spending a month. We also are required I believe by state law to hold the property for three years. Am I wrong about that? No. You might want to look into that. I think No, we did not hold White for Memorial. We did. I think that was before the law passed. I think this has to do with charter schools. Really? I think there's a section in the law that says you have to hold it in case somebody wants to buy it for a charter school. Really? You might want to look into it. I could about the building intact. I know that I know the legislation was out there. I thought it passed. I could be wrong. You're talking about holding the building intact before you tear it

051down. We have to hold it intact before Well, somebody better talk about that. I don't think we have to worry about the the That's ridiculous. It probably did pass. Hopefully, it didn't. It's hard to keep the It was in It was in process. I don't want to get in trouble with that. I do recall now that you said that seeing something about it, but no one covered that passing. But again, they didn't cover everything. So, it may it may not have it may not have passed. I think actually last year's I remember. Do you think it passed though or you're not sure? I thought it was free. It wasn't. We didn't have to sell it to them. just take but that we weren't allowed to dis just dispose of it willy-nilly, right? Oh, yes. At

052through public auction is what we would would have done in case bought the last building at auction. They bought Cumberland at auction. So, you know, we would we would do it by public auction or if you chose to donate, then we would have to bring that to the board and and do that. It was just it was a a request that we might want to look into if because part of that building is is got to be demolished. It can't be right. Cumberland was in better shape than Blue or Brush. Absolutely. Cumberland was in much better shape both of those. Um so regardless, we could always donate, you know, with the contingency that they have to demo or something like that if that's what you choose to do. That's okay. Um, so with that said,

053what we plan to do then is move that carryover into our capital projects fund at upon your agreement and then we will hold a public budget hearing at 5:00 on the 27th to we'll have a PowerPoint to go over all of this as well. Right. The 27th just Oh, was that the next meeting? That's the next meeting before the next meeting. I'm not going to be here, but I don't think that's I can get you the I can get you the power 5:00. Everybody get that 5:00 on the 27th. You think maybe it didn't pass, but it was an AI request, so we don't know if it's entirely true or not, but we'll check in more detail. Everyone start, but I hope it did not. Um because that could really hurt public schools having to

054Did you want to ask Dr. take care of these. Have you gotten any notification as to whether our workers comp is going up or down the rates and everything? Cuz were you asked what claims were? Yeah. Did we have a good we have a better claims year this past 20 24 than we did in 23 24? So the latest data that I have is based on January and we have less claims but we've got some high dollar claims this year. Yeah. Um, which regardless of how many claims you have, if we've have those high dollar ones, that affects her mod. Without asking particulars, what types of claims? Slips, trips, and falls, slips, trips, and falls. Um, some, uh, shoulder injuries from lifting things. From what? Lifting. Okay. So, have you gotten a any idea what

055the the rate or what our the cost is going to be for the upcoming year? I have not received anything like that. I typically don't receive that information. I get that. Oh, and that's what I told you. We're putting it out to bid right now. We open the bid tomorrow and Dr. Okay, cool. Anything else to inform us this evening? Thank you, doctor. Yeah, I apologize for the mistakes in the at the top of that. That was my fault. I promise I changed them, but I had two different documents out there. All right, give us 50 push-ups. I think I can one. I don't think I can do one. Not even modified. Jordan volunteer. She's old man. Okay, volunteer. I've got to have a friend. Um, so We will take care of all of this

056and bring it to you all by then. And Mr. Prudish should ask me to make sure that I've pointed out that we do plan to meet 3% carryover. We will make we will meet that to get those points for our evaluation. And that's that they this state department almost insists that we have a 3% carryover, do they not? Yes. when we when we are graded um I think I went over that at the um last board meeting what the finance requirements on for 2322 2322 um and one of them is we we lose points as I mentioned because I'm a new treasurer we lose you know points for that automatically we lose points if we do not meet this 3% carryover rule and then we get additional points if we have 16% carryover over. Um

057so we did have that um a good carryover last year because of ESREF. So that helped us out with our points, but we do not plan on having um you know those same years going forward. We use that money wisely. Yes. And we did up to now. So did you say before and Tom this might be better for you. the um when we had the winds in Bluefield last September and they tipped over a couple of the big HVACs, are they covering them or are we covering the Actually, we were we salvaged them. They're still under warranty. They set them back up. They were operating perfectly. There you go. I just thought a question I forgot to ask. Um, and I'm probably can't answer because everything's so uncertain, but do you anticipate any possibility of

058losing federal funds? So, we have not been told that we are going to lose federal funds. Um, it has been, you know, the title one funds, the federal funds for for special ed, we've received no indication that we will lose those funds. The only thing that that we have received some communication concerning is gear up that that that that Doge is looking at gear up. So what we have done we have you know Gail Webb and Jenny Collas that they are phenomenal have so much planned. We know we have funding through August 31st. So we did bring you a revised board memo for her contract but they just said that there's some great proponents of Gear Up. They hope that they step up and and help, but gear up is the only thing that right

059now we we're not very confident in. Okay, we will take a brief recess and we'll come back at 6 o'clock. Thank you ladies for your presentation and your hard work. from a brief recess. Uh we had a budget meeting before this and now we're going to do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Yeah. So, we always like to say this is the best part of our meetings when we get to recognize our great students who are doing wonderful things. And so, that's what we're going to do now. We want all the students to come up here and we want them take time. If you want to

060get pictures once we get set, come up and take pictures. Um, okay. As President Prudich said, this is always our favorite part of any board meeting when we have an opportunity to recognize uh staff and students. We are going to start with an award for certificates of achievement and this is for the golden horseshoe and we will call all of these students up together um to get a group picture. Then as he said parents you're welcome to come up to get your own pictures and things like that after we get them up. The Golden Horseshoe Test has been administered in West Virginia each year since 1931 and is the longest running program of its kind in any state. The top scoring students in each county received the prestigious award and are inducted as knights of

061the Golden Horseshoe Society. The Golden Horseshoe has become known as a symbol of scholastic achievement to honor students who excel in the study of West Virginia. So, we have six Golden Horseshoe winners this year, and I'll call them up uh one at a time. We have, if you'll hold your applause till the end, please. We have Sudter Gerald from Bluefield Middle, Lucas Lambert from Bluefield Middle, Emily Hancock from Bluefield Middle, Colton Bennett from Pike View Middle. You guys can come on up. Madison Arnold from Montcom High, and Savannah Wood from Montcom High. These are Golden Horseshoe [Applause] winners. behind everybody. Big smiles everybody. So, for the folks that don't know this test, and it's a long time ago, but I did take this beast of the test. These young people did an outstanding job. I

062doubt that there's anybody in this room that knows as much about West Virginia as these five young people because they haven't test they succeeded. So, Anybody want to take another test? Oh, come on. When was the found? Well, Jim, I know you know it. Anybody know the highest point in West Virginia? There you go. The whole test is full of things like that, but much more complicated and it's a really hard test. for what they know because I'm telling you what to sit down and take this test by the time you got done you'd be exhausted and feel like you didn't know anything about what to do because it is a tough test so we want to thank you guys for doing such good job and commend you for your hard work okay [Applause] our

063next recognition is certificate of achievement for governor's honor Academy. The West Virginia Governor Schools are prestigious tuitionfree summer programs designed for highly motivated students in grades 7 through 11. These selected programs offer immersive, hands-on experiences in fields such as the arts, STEM, computer science, entrepreneurship, and tourism. Students are chosen through a competitive application process that evaluates their academic performance, creativity, and leadership potential. Each Governor's School is hosted at a college or university across the state, providing the students with a residential experience that fosters both personal growth and academic enrichment. Participation in these programs is widely regarded as a significant academic honor and a valuable opportunity for students to explore their passions while connecting with their peers with similar interests. The following students from Mercer County have been selected to attend the Governor's Honor Academy this

064summer. And again, we have six students. We'll call them all all up here for a group photo. Sophia Castro from Princeton Senior High School will be attending the Governor School of Art Studio Art. Think Miller. Princeton Middle School, Governor STEM Institute at Greenbank. Goldie Argo, Pike View Middle School, Governor STEM Institute at WVU. Noah Calfie, Pike View Middle School, Governor STEM Institute at WVU. Ya Burka, Glennwood School, Governor STEM Institute at WU and Zoe Byers, Pike View High School, Governor's School of Tourism. And these are our Governor's Honor Academy students. That's perfect. That is perfect. Another awesome opportunity. Again, you don't get these offers unless you're doing something really good in the classroom or in the art department or in the music department. They don't just come and say, "Oh, well, come on." You have

065to be excelling at what you're doing. This is a really good thing you guys are doing. We're really proud of you. Can't tell you how much we're proud of you, but we want to give you the certificate. Uh so you can recall that we were proud of you when you did this because we're all so excited for you because you all love to have done this. Every one of us would have loved to have done it. This is a great opportunity. Take every moment of it and enjoy it. People don't come around very often. Okay. [Applause] Okay. All we say here you are welcome to stay. [Music] That's a good And I don't know. So, I wonder what made Keith Taylor decide to resign. We need to turn them on. Turn your mic back on.

066I turned it back on. I turned it off earlier. Yes, I've been off right now. Okay. The next item on the agenda is superintendent's opening remarks and presentations. Yes, sir. President Purich, I just want to let you know the teacher of the year and the service uh person of the year applications were due today and were all checked and uh in compliance and those were submitted to the state department. Uh one was submitted I think last Wednesday and the other one uh should have went today and uh all good. Also tomorrow Mike Mlanahan uh with AD Balum Balerim uh management will be meeting with our leadership team at 9:00 tomorrow morning. You got administrative meeting on Thursday at 8:30. Got retirement ceremony next Tuesday, the military patronage pledge that is uh just amazing what Mrs.

067uh Cost has put together. And uh we do have guest speaker, former P Jessica Lynch coming. And then also u I have uh Stanley and Mrs. Harden, Mr. Belchure is out with our uh robotics uh in Dallas and we have a ASA transformation intervention consortium trip to Google headquarters in Stanford University. That's Kelly Stanley, Kayla Harden, Derek Belchure and I, they're going to give a brief update. Also in the audience, if you see some orange lays out there on their uh around their necks, we have the happiness advantage orange frog train to trainer workshop that we have uh Jordan uh Angel U Crystal Philipc, Emily Huddle, and Amber Refe. And then I just want to update that you guys did have the Mr. Bailey and President Purich went to the uh school board association training.

068You guys got an update there. I did watch uh that I could not hear the questions on online, but you could see everything else. But we had a double dose of that at the Association of School Administrators meeting on uh last Thursday and Friday uh the second half of the Thursday. We got the chance to get with the Army National Guard, go through some of their programs that they offer along with the um Mountaineer Challenge Academy. And Dr. Atkins and I both got to ride in a Blackhawk and that was uh that was amazing and and different. Uh I think I was worried about Dr. Atkins being green, but I ended up turning green by sending some of the videos to Mrs. Harrison and doing some of that stuff. Also, we have graduation ceremonies coming

069up uh on the 30th and we'll finalize where you are going to be and where we are at and where we'll cover from there. And then uh Mr. Atkins put together you guys seen some every every Monday or late Friday we get an update from him and it's pretty amazing seeing the transformation uh of those weekly updates there from Timberwood Elementary and also he gave you a document there that you have also and with that if I can answer any questions regarding that but I have Mrs. Stanley Mrs. Harden and uh you're ready to go on teams maybe from you're going to get him from teams. He hit me up he hit me up late Friday and says why don't you go with me? So I don't know if we could have got a plane

070ticket or not but then he I guess he left Saturday. So bless his heart for coming on. Thank you Mr. Murphy. That might be too good out. Be careful. Can you guys hear me? Yes, sir. Yes. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It is good so far. All a little background something there, but we we got you. It's very clear. Okay. Um, so I first of all, we want to thank you all for allowing us and for Mr. came. Um, we applied for this, of course, but invitation to attend this trip. We had an absolutely excellent time. Uh, we had a lot of fun, but we also learned a lot. Um, so we had the best of both worlds for the the days that we went to the consortium and learned about

071AI. Um we spent time at Google and we spent time at Stanford and um both both things were just a phenomenal opportunity and again we just are super appreciative of the opportunity to go and being able to share all those things with everyone, you know, as we're planning on what to do and that's kind of what we wanted to share with you guys today. Um I will start. We went to Google first and um which is pretty amazing if you all um you go to Google and you meet all the Googlers and you you meet um all the Googlers that walked us around and all the the wonderful things that they have there. Um they have their own transportation system that is for free that all their employees get taken home if it's in San

072Francisco or there. They have charter buses that run every day. They feed them in their all their cafeterias. There's 90 buildings. There's 60 cafes. There's kitchens everywhere. There's the rooms that you can work on your own. There's an equal amount of outside seating as they're in inside. They want everyone to be creative and to do and to be innovative and to also fail. And that's a little bit of what we learned about and how they think um AI is going to work with education. We actually met with the the head of the education for Google for North America. He came in from New York City and led our session for the day. And so that's all he works on is the education part of Google. So we did learn a few things. You know, we

073don't use Google platform. We use it. We all Google every day, but we don't have Chromebooks and and use Google their all their information. However, we're all aware of it. So it still was applicable to us. Um some of the things that they hit on are things that you hear. Um are we just teaching kids to cheat? Is it plagiarism? Is there safety in it? is the content um how do we navigate those kinds of things um the cheating the bias is it accurate and so we talked about those things and how a AI works AI has been around for 10 years it's not a brand new thing it's been out there and their focus is on how we can make it work for education help with burnout rates of educators help us work a

074little bit smarter and it's not just about the things that I think about with AI which is making funny pictures or rewriting writing something really quick. You know, all the things we play with it for. Um, it's really how you can have kids think. And I'll let Kayla talk about that a little bit. We we talked to Stanford at Stanford about that some as well. Um, we learned about some new internet safety. It's called um Be Awesome. Be Internet Awesome. It's a free program that we can use in our in our primary levels. Um, it's free curriculum. It talks about AI. It talks about how to be safe. and we have other tools, but it's never hurts to have something else. Um, Kayla and I talked about that, especially at our level. Um, and in

075my instance, I really think how my teachers can utilize it to become more productive in what they're doing and working smarter and not harder. And I do think there's some avenues that we can utilize as educators, as professionals, that will help us do things quicker and easier. And it doesn't mean we're not thinking, and it doesn't mean we're cheating. and that and we'll again we'll talk about that a little bit more. It is here to stay. We are not getting rid of it. And so if we don't teach our students how to use it correctly, I do think we're going to fall behind on and what we need to do because it's it's there. It's it's not going away right now. Um we had a little uh student that spoke that goes to Stanford. She's

076from somewhere in Chicago, like you know, not a nice place in Chicago. Let's just put it that way. And she said one of her professors has a platform that she can ask questions to the AI, but it's like she's talking to him and his course. So, you're getting the right kinds of answers to your questions because it's based on his course. So, it's just like asking ChatGBT or Gemini or whatever platform you use, but it's all the information he input into that. So, she gets the answers for his course and they really encourage their students to use it and to use it correctly. So that was also extremely interesting. Um also at Google, let me see if I with the certification things that we can do. Notebook LM um Miss Harrison, Dr. Atkins, Mr. Toman,

077they introduced that to the administrators. Our last administrators meeting we went through a whole session on that. That is a Google platform. Um you can for example, and he showed us how to do that. They uploaded a YouTube video of a board meeting into Notebook LM. It created the entire transcript of that meeting. It made it into a podcast that you can ask questions about. You do have to ask questions. You do have to review it. You just can't take it at face value. But it made that so much quicker. It takes all that information and creates that transcript of everything that happened. And he did that in front of us. Amy taught us that the last a board meeting with used it with data. We listened to the podcast. We did that again. So

078kudos to Mercer County for giving that to us a little bit earlier than I think a lot of people even knew about it. A lot of people in that meeting, we had about 100 people, most of them had no idea about that and they were like, oh, you could see them on their computers like starting to download videos and see what was going to happen, how that was going to work. Crisis policies. Yes, it was like crisis policy, whatever it was, you know, they were they were putting those in there. Um, Gemini is, of course, Google's AI. It's like chat GBT or or you know, if you use Perplexity or something else, Gemini is what Google has. If you Google something now and you notice it comes up with the AI summary first, right? That's

079Gemini talking to you. I won't bore you with the gems that we can put in the parameters that you can create. I mean, you can create something to have those parameters. So when you ask it questions, it will stay within that. And so they gave us laptops in the afternoon. They gave us their brand new Chromebooks that they use. And we got to go in and create and use data, use information, figure things out, and see how we could actually use the gems in Gemini and Notebook LM. I think did we do all those? I think we did. Um, trying to see what else I think that was most of Google. I I will tell you like I said just being there and just seeing how they they run things and the Googlers and the

080they they test their googliness and what that comes down to in interview process is how reflective you are and if you can be reflective if you come across a problem how it's not that you're wrong but how can you reflect upon it to get better and they talked a lot about that um there they have passion projects for their employees and one of the passion projects which means you go to your supervisor and you say I want to spend 20% of my day working on is this is my passion came Gmail. Gmail came out of a passion project because the employee didn't like the email that they had. So they created a whole new system just because they didn't like what they were they were using and that's one of their most used platforms is

081Gmail now. So just little things like that was super interesting. Failures too. Oh, lots of failures. They they would put a whole list of failures up. These are all the things that didn't work that we tried. We had a whole slide full of them. These are all the things I didn't even know most of them. These are the things that didn't work but that's okay because we to get better we have to fail and to be able to succeed. So that whole mindset and how that works within that industry and just how awesome it was. The Google bikes everywhere the you know they you just get a bike and you bike over to the other place you leave it there. It's all good. It just let you do your thing. We walked around. It was

082it was amazing. It really was. Sure. Uh before I move on to Stanford, let me talk about the gyms for the Gemini. Okay. Uh so example guys, you could upload teacher schedules into the gym and then it can create a special ed schedule for you. I know. I know. If you've ever had to make a special ed schedule, you know what I'm talking about. All right. It's tough. Anyway, uh Stanford. Wow. It's always been a dream of mine to make it to Stanford and there was just so much invaluable insight that you really couldn't have gotten anywhere else. It was amazing. It was a school for innovation. There's so many great things that come out of Stanford and I don't know if you know this or not, but Stanford helped to create Silicon Valley. So,

083all of their students that came from there, they always push them to be entrepreneurs and push into the tech world, which um I don't know where we would be really without them. But um they like to push that AI AI that empower it empowers and augments. It does not replace. Uh like we said, we're not escaping AI. It's never going to replace human connection. They still need us. And then the um the artwork that we saw was the question. Um we asked AI, we asked it how they would interpret like any picture you put in, how would you interpret this artwork? And so that would not only make you think about it differently, but also opened your eyes to ways you never thought it could. And so it's about expanding your thought process and expanding

084your your process on things and then thinking about that. So it's not just about, like I said, creating funny pictures and rewriting a paragraph. It's about what can we do to expand our thought process on something and how it can make us better. Yes. Yes. And how it can make education better. Okay. Um so we learned a lot about academic integrity, the ethical use of AI and uh tools and resources to to help students understand how AI works. Again, it is a teachable machine and you have to program it to get the responses that you need. Uh just like with teachers, if they wanted to upload their content for it to be a tutor in the classroom to ask questions about the content that you taught, you have to upload that first. You have to

085give it the information that it's feeding that it's giving back. Okay. So, it's not just coming up from the air. All right. So, it's not really that scary. Um, did we lose there? Maybe. He Oh, did we? Is he there? He's just muted himself. Okay. Good deal. Um, so yes, we hear you. It's all about uh teaching real real world skills. So, we learned a lot about the design process, design thinking, and um and we would like to kind of start there with the kiddos, start with design, design thinking, then integrate on up into computer science and with AI. We'll talk more about that a little bit if we get a chance. Uh so, Stanford is all about teaching real world skills. Um it's important to keep our skilled educators and building strong community connections.

086And Stanford is what are they changing the name of Silicon Valley to? Learning Valley. Learning Valley. Yes. Okay. Uh let's see. Derek wanted What did Derek He talk about special ed? Derek, are are you guys there? Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, yeah. Um, and I I mean I started looking at it from a teacher perspective and just, you know, what what could we use AI to how could we use AI to make our life simpler from a teacher perspective and looking at it from uh from a special ed world from something as simple as putting the students strengths and weaknesses in to help write a little bit clearer um present level for example or being able to tell it to take that present present level and compare it to the college readiness standards or

087to the alternate standards to help uh pick out and identify parts of the goals based on what your kids go at. So, it's not something that our teachers can't already do on their own, but it just made it so much faster and so much quicker to help them do, you know, be in the classroom more and be more engaged in the actual academic content rather than being bogged down with just constant paperwork. Um, so that that's a a big interest to me, uh, being over special ed at Princeton High School and we've got 160 kids on our case load. So, it's that's a ton of meetings, a ton of paperwork, a ton of time spending those those things that we have to have and and looking at ways that we can make that a little

088bit simpler from the educator standpoint so that they can do what do what we want them to do more than anything, and that's teach. So, so how do we how do we you begin a curriculum for our students to start learning how to use a platform like this? I like that question. Yeah. Okay. First of all, West Virginia has developed a standards for AI use in the classroom. So, that's basically your pinpoint of where we will start. And what's excellent about us that we're allowed to turn it off? Okay. Anyway, what's excellent about us that we're able to go is that Kelly specializes in primary. I'm elementary education. I usually spend most time with third through fifth grade and then Derek is secondary and he also specializes in special education. So, I feel like we

089covered all those areas and bringing your understanding about these students. And so our plan was uh to first start with educators and we will use that with times that we've already had scheduled throughout the years for trainings like when I do Jason trainings always add a special AI element to it and so I think we start in the classroom and me being a technology integration specialist I get to go into the classroom and work with teachers I have that time and I think it needs to start first with their educators and getting them comfortable with it. What was the statistic on the usage? Like 30% of the teachers are using it. 36% of teachers at 86% of students 86% of students are already using it. So I'd like to show them some tools that would

090help them out to make them more comfortable and then come and do activities with the teachers and the students uh to integrate AI and how the teacher or how the students are using AI to create and I think that would would help. But then with primary, we're still working on design thinking, hands-on, makerbots, and then in media, lots of the cyber safety and basic computer science skills. AI tinkery. Oh, the AI tinkery. We saw that at Stanford, too. It was really cool. Um, so it was it took kids step by step with thinking, finding problems and solutions and how to train a machine, a teachable machine. like what kinds what kinds of questions do you ask? So how do you ask the right question of AI to get the answer that you need? Because you

091can ask all kinds of crazy things, right? But you need to ask the right type of question. So Stanford has created what they call AI tinkery. It's for little kids. It's online and they go through a process and practice asking questions based on the information that they need because that's kind of where that has to start. You don't know what to ask it if you don't understand what you're trying to find out. And that's why it's not just about because what you will hear even from students and Dr. Atkins and I talked about this. They're being told it's just like a cheating tool and it's so much more than that. Yes. Can you can cheat with it? And we forgot to mention this. Stanford did a study that they started way before AI. They've continued

092it and added AI types of questions and literally the same amount of students are cheating before AI and now which to me makes perfect sense. if they're going to cheat, they're going to cheat and figure out a way to do it. It was like 56 57 actually lower. It was a little lower, wasn't it? 53% maybe. And so they and they told us the whole process of how they did it and all the things when we were in that meeting. But basically the same number of students were cheating before it became an option and after. If you think about kids, they're gonna figure it out even if they don't have something to use to do it, right? So that was I thought that was interesting that it it really was the same. So we talked

093about when we can deliver this to not make it another thing to do. I do think it has to start with our educators so they understand it before we can lay it out give it out to our students. So you you mentioned the state has has a policy for AI. Have you looked at it to see does it make recommendations on how to begin where to begin? What to do? It basically it talks a lot about the ethics also, but it it does it gives some standards and ideas and how to use it in the classroom. And you all received that when it came out from the state department. All the board members and everybody got that copy of that when it that was released. I have it in my files. I can forward it

094back out. We're one of the first states to have that. I think there's only Yeah, they they said that seven to 13 or so. I can't remember exactly either. and number three to actually have guidance on it um as a the country. So I mean we're kind of ahead of that in the way of education right now. I'm I'm curious about the cheating thing. You said the numbers were about the same. Are they cheating more efficiently now? I guess they ask those questions but maybe not. They may not understand. I don't know. Yeah. They said it was pretty much the same kids that were cheating before are still cheating. If they're using a AI or not, I think it depends on the good So, what's the plan? How how are we going to roll this

095out? How I mean, have you got to that point yet? We we've tossed it around. We've kind of tried to think about um a time and you know, Kayla said the Jason learning trainings that we have monthly. We thought about piggy sailing on those a little bit. I thought about doing something a little bit more with administrators. I know they're they're working with that. Um and just trying to see how we can get it going. We don't want to make it something else. We want to make it part of what we're already doing. Um, so we haven't nailed it down completely, but we did talk even like on the flight home exactly what we could do and how that could work. The the reason that is that there's a healthc care is jumping in both

096feet and the you read these these stories from these doctors that say I'm getting more information from my patient now because I'm not having to remember what they told me when I at the end of the day when I'm doing charts and I'm seeing things that I didn't think of at the time because AI is taking care of all of it for me. my notes are more thorough, more clear, and so there'll be things we haven't even thought of yet to use in the classroom to eliminate some of the because one of the things I see is eliminating a lot of administrative tasks that everybody's doing that's taking time out of the classroom. Well, and they were the first I think it was Google that told us and maybe Stanford, I don't remember that AI

097has not really like embraced education of what it can do for us to be honest. They've looked at other areas but it's on the brink of what AI can do in education because that is a little bit different kind of platform but making the tools specifically for educators. So I think that's also coming more and more for us and on the medical side the robot and the other thing that they were doing from China is two neat things. Oh yeah. We um we got to see you know you know I love robotics. Everybody knows I'm highly involved in robotics. We got to see the robotics lab at Stanford. Listen, like that was like they created a robot that is the size of a peel. Okay, it's tiny. And so what they're developing is um a

098way to treat cancer patients. So it's a form of chemo that will go directly to the area that it needs to go to rather than going through the whole body. Wow. Yeah. Pretty cool. And it it's robotic and so it go it's magnetic, right? That's how they helped drive it. It's It's magnetic, but it was really tiny. But this this is what we have these young kids doing over there. And um and they were creating robotic arms to help clean power lines and stuff like that, like dangerous jobs, things that could help us in those areas. But um a very very impressive stuff. And I don't want to brag, but we may have became good friends with the director at Stanford. Don't want to brag. So, Kelly got the book by uh Isabelle How and

099it's Love to Learn and she even wrote her a nice little note inside and she did speak to us a few times. Yeah, super nerd right here. We came into Stanford for the room and she came over and said, "Where's Kelly? Where's Kelly? I need to find Kelly." And that's how she connected with pretty when we had our first reception that Sunday evening. Well, you know, with uh with everything with this trip, you really can't replace the connections that were made. And you know, we have Mr. Toman here, who's really good at networking, by the way. Um, so we made some really invaluable connections with people that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to get. Um, and just uh lots of great ideas. I didn't take notes on conversations that we had, but lots of

100fantastic ideas. They they worked uh the hours they worked on that trip from on the airplane to everything was amazing. I was whooped and I'm still tired. I tried to tell you I'm a nerd. Like I love to like learn new things and we both were just right there. And Steven Bushy that they mentioned that at uh Google the the head of Google education over the North America North America. Guess what he does? He count he's out out in Google now but he is a on the board of governors at Bethany University. Really? And we connected there. So already got already got contact couple messages when we do some things there but he comes in to Bethany and Bethy's up in the northern panhandle close to Brooke but uh we connected pretty good right there

101and uh got a dear friend right there. So is he alumni from there or what? I think Google and I think innovation is his connection. Is he Bethany? Oh do we need to start creating a county policy? Is it too soon? Hello. My gosh. Great question. That maybe what do you think? Do we even know what to put in it? I don't think that's it. It's moving so fast, Mr. PR. That's really good. That's really good. Maybe that's what we should try. You know, I think um I'm not sure. I know that, you know, there there's ways to see if if like a student wrote a whole paper just AI based. I think there's ways that teachers can see if that that's the way that they wrote it. I think that is important. You don't

102want kids using it that way. Um, so I don't know if you need another policy for that if you're it's like plagiarism. Um, basically, so I'm not sure you would, but I think it's something we need to think about, but it is moving extremely quickly. We're already behind. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's But we use AI in everything that we do, and that's what people that are that don't want to use it don't realize how much they're already using it. and everything that they do. I mean, according to Joshua, the Terminator's already landed on Earth. Yes. I mean, it's ready to take. I forget the barcode story. Mr. Toman, what was the the shovel and the barcode? Just that what a tool a barcode is that we've been utilizing, how long that all the

103information in this barcode that we have no idea, but we're afraid of AI and all that, but it's been here what we're It tells you how much, how many they have, how many in stock, where it come from, when it was created. Everything's on that that we have no idea what it says. But just like the shovel is a tool, this is a tool also to what they were able to do some things faster. And one thing I saw on the news the other day and I screenshot it and sold but uh they talked about 122 hours that you're gaining with AI and that's uh you know the workplace of getting stuff done and that's 17 days if you look at 20 days vacation right there you're saving 17 days of work that you've done

104that you wasted doing that now AI can save you that much time. And then two little quotes I saw the thing that uh you know AI took my job has a guy there and it says AI took my job and in the bottom it said and made it better. And then another one is AI is that brainiac assistant that you need. That's what AI is. And that was another little thing that I stole from when I was in New Orleans that I shared with you all. And Amy's and and Ernie and everybody's taken off with it. So Amy has people from other districts calling her about how to do notebook LM and and what's the other one now that I don't know. I told you about it but you took off with it. So if

105you just get online and and search different AI platforms, it is one of the things Stanford is researching heavily is targeted um tutoring with AI which a lot of the companies are trying to do with all the like how you progress and you know but they really talked a lot about that targeted they talked about um teacher evaluation with AI like you could record a teacher teaching and then give them feedback on what they the kinds you could say the kinds of questions that they asked. Was it in-depth enough like really dig? And so they are playing with all of that. Like there's ways deep feedback for teachers. If you use um different like if we used our rubric and put it in there and then they they we recorded their teaching it could give

106them feedback based on were they this and this during that particular lesson. And so they're already researching all those things. We heard from every the philosophers, the education, everybody at Stanford, all the scientists and how everybody is using AI. They have an accelerator for learning. That's what Isabelle is. And she takes the college of education and all the other areas at Stanford and they come together to see how all of it works together. And so that's what we heard when we were there. I have a comment on how you was going to introduce this and you said you didn't want to add extra to them but if you look on balance it could be if everybody gets it does a little extra they're going to get a lot easier that's true and so really you

107don't want to deprive them by not teaching them right that's true that's true and so we just need to we just need to sit down and figure out what's the most efficient way to do that because we're going to have some people push back for sure you know that I mean And the next the transformation of innovation the consortium that we're that you guys allow me to be a part of and then for them to go is just an extra $200 per person and plus the travel and all that. But the next trip we've got an online meeting coming up but the next trip is where in Phoenix. Phoenix. Yeah, Phoenix I think is and these these three applied and they wrote an essay but they wanted to come to you guys and say what

108do you want to say it out loud? Do we want to go again? Yeah. They said, "Do we have do we have to apply or can we just get the board to rule that they get automatically get a go?" They wanted to tell me that. So, I thought that was cute. So, but uh it was it was awesome. They were they excite you about everything, too. But thank you three. That was amazing. Derek, thank you guys very much. We appreciate it. Sounds like an amazing experience. Especially I know the I don't know all of it, but I know the amount like with Emily's people, they're covered up with paperwork after paperwork after paperwork. and if there's a way that this platform can help cut down on the hours that all of her teachers have to

109spend and her um the folks that come out into the field. I would think that they would they wouldn't be quite so overwhelmed. Yes. And that's start with that. Yes. It's how we become more efficient. I mean honestly that and that really is where we can start and then teach our kids how to use it as a tool. Yeah. Well, with all, you know, with all the the IEP paperwork and 504 stuff, um, it I would just think that that would be a great resource. It might take a lot of time on the front end, but if you could make it easier if the federal government or whoever's responsible quits changing all the the forms about three times in a year's in a year's period. What a great way. If you input the standards from

110the third grade and said create a lesson plan, it should be able to do that. It will. Now, it may not be you might have to go in. Yes, you have to. Yeah, absolutely. You That's why you have to know what you need out of it and it just can't be the I just do what it says kind of thing because like you said, it's a machine and we have to tell it what to do and make it right. Garbage in, garbage out. the microphone. My my students are already good at this part or my students really struggle at this part or something. It kind of helps you tailor it what it needs. It's already got the standard there, but it's tailoring it to your experience. Is he hiding in a box over there? It

111would have went off this one here. Thanks. All righty. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you all. May I have to use that now? Our orange frog celebrities. Thank you guys. Kayla, Derek, and Kelly, thank you so much. All good ladies here. Yeah, I saw you coming. Oh, thank you. I can too. Thank you. So, a little a little intro to these ladies as we talked and and and you all and I talked about togetherness and team building and how we can do some things here. And we found the orange frog the uh happiness advantage. I found it at the state uh or the national conference that I've been a part of. I saw it presented at Portsmith, Virginia about three years ago. I met with about five to six of them said, "Who's interested?" These

112these four said, "We are we are excited about it." I think they're still excited about it. And they went to the training. We had others that wanted to go and I apologize that not everybody got to go. Um they're all leaders other than Miss Jordan's in the finance department. Leslie had so many things to get done along with the budget that she was originally going to go and then Jordan volunte uh I uh I've got a orange frog lapel that I wanted to wear tonight but I lost it and found it on the Blackhawk and it was on the ground sticking there and I stuck my foot down and got it but I didn't have the back part but Dr. Philip had come in the first day back and she had what you saw on

113social media. We took a picture of her and had it on there that her excitement with what she brought back to Mercer County. So, if we could just if we can grow with happiness and do some things what that does for our kids and everything else. So, that's the piece we're at here and thank you ladies for taking the time to do this. Also, thank you. I was just hoping we didn't have to hold the microphone. So, before we let me make sure this works. Before we get started, I wanted to say something as a followup to what they were talking about. Okay. Um, I'm a huge advocate for AI. I love it. I I use it all the time. Um, but I also want to bring um attention to the fact that AI cannot

114replace what a a person's going to make you feel. So, when we went to the orange frog presentation, I was hoping I was going to get out of the microphone. Um, when we went to the orange frog presentation, a lot of this happened um and is about how it makes you feel. Um, so one of the videos they did, they talked about this guy that worked in a subway. And I'm kind of hijacking our presentation for a second. Um, talked about this guy that worked in the subway and how, you know, his choice was to get outside of his box. So, when he was hired to be this man that worked in the subway, um, you know, you could be in that little subway box taking the tickets and then as people go through, they're

115going through that little rolly thing. Um, but he chose not to. he chose to get out there and greet every person as they were going through the little rolly thing and saying, "Hey, how are you?" you know, how are you doing? So, um I think it's very important that we continue to keep that, you know, personal, um touch to things and I think something like Orangefall can help us do that. Um but we also need to take part in AI and just embrace it. Um, so I am able life and I was um very happy that I got to go on this trip um for many reasons. Um but I feel like I came back a lot happier. I um also came back wearing an orange shirt the next day and it was not on

116purpose but um you know Dr. Philip came down to my office. She was all oranged out and I was like me too. You know I'm putting all my orange stuff out. I just I feel like it helped me rejuvenate how I wanted to make others feel. So, um I am I'm very appreciative for being able to go. Um so, in an effort to improve the positive mindset of its mindset of its staff, we're not only going to work at um doing things great because, you know, we always want to be the top. We always want to be the best, but as I was talking about, it's about feeling great, too. being happy about what the work you're doing. Um, and being proud of it. So, feeling great. How many of you have ever, and I'm

117gonna kind of bounce here and here because we've got a large audience here today. Um, and I want to include you guys as well. So, how many of you have ever seen a sign like this? Okay, raise of hands. All right, you've seen it. How does that make you feel? Dog. Sad. Sad. Exactly. You can't really see it, but underneath that 500, you see um I think it used to be 400 or 300. You can't I can't really see it really well, but they've raised the price. So, what does that tell you? Missing for a while. They really miss her. It's been a while. What happens to these signs? They fade. Do we People get immune to them after you see it? Nobody picks them up after they find the dog if they find the

118dog. So, we really don't know what happens to the poor dog. Um, do we ever see something like this? No. Now, keep in mind, we're not talking about Facebook posts cuz sometimes, you know, we do get a followup with those. We're talking about the real signs. It's posted out on the uh like polls and all of that. So, we never do a followup like, "Hey, she's home." So that we all do what? Feel good, right? We're thinking, "Oh, you know, poor Sally. We really wish her dog came home." But we don't ever get to hear that Sally's dog came home. Good things do happen, though. We're trying to reset our minds and retrain our brains to see that it's not always about the negative. It's about the good things, too. So, good things happen. They

119do come home. Not always, but we should start advertising that more. We need to start showing that that the good things do happen. What do you see here? this guy. How many of you know who he is? You've probably seen the shows that he's on. So, during co he did this um I think it was something along the lines of um Some good news and it had all kinds of views, all kinds of likes. He got all kinds of followers, all kinds of stars, all the good stuff, right? Why were we watching these things during co? We needed something good. We needed the positive. So, um, he had all those views. Now, we were we're going to do something that I want you all to do, too. And audience, do this, cuz it's not going

120to hurt you to do it. Okay? I want you to grab your phones really quick. I want you to send a text to somebody who's not expecting to hear from you. Okay? Maybe I mean, maybe it's a loved one. Maybe it's somebody you knew in high school. um maybe somebody you've been meaning to reconnect with and I want you to tell them something good. I mean, it could be as simple as, "Hey, haven't heard from you from a while. Haven't heard from you in a while. Just wanted to know I'm thinking about you. All right, you have about a minute left. Took me a while to figure out who I was going to message when I did this. See, what's wrong? All right. No pressure or anything, but the first person that gets a response

121may get a prize. Oh boy. Oh, Michaela. Okay. All right. Michaela, do you mind to share something good? Did you get a response? I did. Okay. Hang on. Let me bring you the microphone. Okay. Okay. So, I understand that this past weekend was Mother's Day and so I texted a friend. This is her first Mother's Day. And so, I didn't text her yesterday, but I thought that's who I'm going to text. Happy late Mother's Day. That's nice. All right. I believe Michaela deserves a frog. Michaela, can you catch? Oh, she was throwing that to me. All right. So, sharing something good. I don't know about y'all, but I kind of got some little chill bumps. Um, that was a good little story. So, um, a part of this is I want everybody to say, "The

122dog is home." Michaela, the dog, ready? The dog is home, Michaela. The dog, because her dog came home. She shared something good. and it made us all have those feels. All right. So, the goal of Shaun Acre was not only for the program to help you become happier, but more importantly to enable you to help other people become happier. So, not only is it about working on yourself and making yourself feel happier, but how can we spread that? How can we make other people feel happier? Okay. So, as Amber mentioned, we went to the training and so the training is based on Sean Akre's famous book, The Happiness Advantage. So, I'm gonna This is my copy. I want it back. You can't. Yeah, we all got a copy already. Is that the one we got?

123Not the big one. So, you you probably got the orange. So, this is his book that he wrote. He wrote this while he was attending Harvard. He did the largest study on happiness while he was attending there. And so, the results are from this book. So his program is all researchbased and so in this book it talks about his different research on happiness and then the big potential is his follow-up book. I think it is. Okay. So I'm going to ask you some questions and if somebody gets something right, you may get a prize. So in a Gallup poll they researched there they asked over 200,000 people in 142 countries how many of them were happily engaged and so I put some percentages on either side of the wall so how many do you think

124the people responded that they were happy and engaged in life what percentage wrong 24 who said 13 13 you get a frog that is right only 13% that's shocking okay that is shocking You would think it would be 63. I think more people would think they are happy in life, but it's not. How many are unhappy and not engaged in life? 63. 63. Yay. You get 10 flies. And and flies are something that we were competitive about. Um Dr. Philip was our accountant in this training. And so we wanted flies because we wanted these orange frogs and all the prizes in the world. Um, so unhapp actively unhappy and disengaged in life was obviously the the last one, 24%. So that's those statistics to me are very shocking because I feel like I'm a pretty

125happy person, but I know that we all know somebody in our life who is very unhappy and negative and they kind of drag you down. You avoid them. Most people do. So Sean said that the formula is backwards. So, how many of you guys were raised and your parents taught you if you work hard then you're going to be successful and you'll be happy? I was raised that way. My parents are like go to college, get a good job, you'll be happy later on in life. That's all you need. So, no. So, he says in his research and it is true when you wake up in the morning you wake up happy and if you're happy then you go to work and you're happy and you work better. If you work better then more than

126likely you're going to get be successful in life because you'll get that promotion in life. So we had the formula backwards. So benefits of happiness in his research conducted at the Harvard Business Review showed that um people who were happy were 31% more productive, six times more engaged, three times more creative, reported 23 fewer fatigue symptoms, were 39% more likely to live to age 94, and were 40% more likely to receive a promotion. So, as you can see, happiness not only benefits you personally, but benefits your job performance. And if a teacher is happy in our world of education, who's going to be happy? We're going to have happy students because nobody wants to be in the teacher's classroom who is mean, yelling, and negative. So, how many of you guys have ever had somebody

127tell you something negative in life? Everybody, right? Do you remember it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it could be like when you were in 12th grade and you still remember that negative comment. So, research says that it takes at least three positive comments to fend off that one negative one. So, that's impactful to me. This program provides the framework to create and sustain a more optimistic positive and resilient framework through the positive psychology. Sorry. Great. So this was a quote that we learned there about the role of happiness. Um and it says happiness played a critical evolutionary role unlike negative emotions which narrow our actions towards fight or flight. Positive emotions broaden the amount of possibilities um we possess making us more thoughtful, creative and open to new ideas. All of these which help create

128um help us to create a better work environment and also improves the quality of our work. And we know with as far as students go when all of your needs are met and happier students are going to be able to process information better and have better work versus those students who are constantly in a fight orflight mode. And so happiness does start with your mindset. We learned that you can um that happiness external happiness or our external world only predicts 10% of our long-term happiness. So that there's 90% that we can choose. Um and like Emilia said, choosing to wake up and be happy, it affects your whole day and then it can affect the people around us. Um the rest, like we said, is made up of our level of optimism, social support, and

129the ability um to see stress as a positive challenge. Being in a happy state starts the production of dopamine, making the brain 30% more efficient. When we are more efficient, we're a we're better able to serve um our students. So the investment in people which is what um the happiness advantage program provides um we would like to roll it out um with our central office admin and our school administration as well. What this provides when we go through the orange frog training it is a one-day training. Um it is they line out how they want everything to go. It's very structured. Um it's a one-day training about 15 to 20 people per group. Um it is like eight to four. They have it structured of where you need to be and all that. So it

130does set you up for success with this. Prior to the training, all the the participants will receive the happiness um or the orange frog parable book and they um are asked to read that and then there is online prep work which is basically just going through the parable and what things mean. Getting them more familiar with the vocabulary because it does kind of have like similes in there to equate things in life to what like things in a pond and with frogs and things like that. So, it does set up that common language that is used. At the end of the one-day training, everybody is asked to um commit to a 21-day challenge and we all did that and chose different things. So, the logic behind that is it takes 21 days to create a

131habit. So, at the end of the 21 days, whichever tactic you picked becomes part of your daily routine. Um some examples are writing three gratitudes every day, three things that you're grateful for. That's the one that I chose. So, every day I write down three different things that I'm grateful for for 21 days. Um, you have the option to journal about a positive experience, 15 minutes of fitness, meditation, or conscious acts of kindness. And then these are some results from a case study done at an elementary school in Illinois after they piloted the happiness advantage orange frog training. 96.3% of their faculty and staff experienced higher levels of happiness as a result of the training. 91% of their K through8 students felt happier at school. 70% of K through8 students felt happier at home. Um

13285% indicated that they could still learn to be even happier. And there was a decrease in attrition from 12 to 3% in several of the school districts. So they had a better staff retention. This slide goes through um how the orange frog equates to all of this and it is a way to reframe work as something that can influence that they can influence to be more positive and something that they look forward to versus seeing work as something that you have to do. Um the orange frog book is a parable about one frog's struggle and success to create a better place for him and his team. It's over a decade of research presented in a fresh and easy to embrace format that appeals to people of all ages and across all organizations. Um, and this

133workshop does allow people to discover how they can create positive culture shift at work, improve business processes and results, all while creating a more fulfilling life at home as well. [Music] This case study doesn't come from one of the richest school districts in the nation. It doesn't come from Harvard. This actually comes from the poorest county in Iowa at a school at Cardinal School District labeled to be one of the bottom 10% of performing schools in the entire nation by the federal government. Back in 2009, there was an opening for the superintendency in Cardinal. like any aspiring superintendent, you go to your mentors, you go to your friends, you say, "Hey, what if I applied for the cardinal position and they flat out said, "No, we do not think that's the place for you to

134start." The reputation was negative. It was toxic. And quite honestly, they thought I had very little chance of being successful at Cardinal. But Joel is a perfect example, living proof of the research we've been talking about here at Positive Psychology and decided to elect to take that job in 2009. We had very few things to be proud of at that point in time. The students would say things like, "We're just Cardinal." And that would break my heart. We noticed our achievement scores were not where they needed to be. Our ACT score was five points below the state average. We also named a persistently low achieving school district, which is the 10% lowest achieving schools in the nation. In 2010, he was at Barnes & Noble and he happened to see a book on the shelf

135with a big obnoxious orange color on it. And he picked up the book off the shelf and started reading through the happiness advantage, which was an entire book validating the very approach that he was wanting to take there at Cardinal talking about this positive psychology research and how we could apply it outside the laboratory. So, we started implementing the happiness advantage principles, which are really positive psychology principles. We started focusing on what is right at Cardinal and not what is wrong. We started focusing on celebrating small wins with culture and with our students. We started challenging mindset. How do we see our kids? How do we see our community? How do we see our parents? Do we focus on what's not right? the poverty, the challenges there, or do we focus on what we can

136do within these walls to make a difference for our kids? By making small conscious changes or habit patterns into a child's life, into an adult's life at any age, anywhere from four years of age up to 84 years of age, what we've been finding is we can trump not only your genes in terms of optimism, but we can actually trump your environment. Raising people's levels of happiness, optimism, compassion, altruism, engagement, even in the midst of some of the worst environments we've seen worldwide, and in the midst of people who are predisposed towards negativity for the entirety of their lives until these positive changes. If that's the case, that there really could be something that would not just be a revolution. Potentially, it would be closer to human evolution where people could actually start to change

137the way that their genes were expressed and how they change the environment based upon those conscious choices. If we could get those into schools, if we could get those as early into the process, we would see something extraordinarily exciting. We are making progress with the happiness of managed principles. But the game changer came when AASA introduced us to the orange frog workshop. The orange frog workshop allowed our whole staff from janitors to teachers to administrators to have a common language around the happiness advantage and a framework that we could implement as a whole staff and also implement it to our students. When adults think about schools, we often times think of superintendent and teachers and curriculum in the department of education. When kids think about schools, they think of the lunch cafeteria and staff or

138they think about janitors or they think about the bus drivers. And so what Joel did is he decided to have trainings not just for the teachers. He decided to have it for the bus drivers and have the bus drivers write those two-minute positive emails or two-minute positive thank you notes to kids that are going to be on their bus to create that social connection talking about emotional contagion with the lunch staff. Finding ways of being able to get this positive changes out to the janitorial staff as well so that the entire school was a place that embraced the idea that happiness could change. Since we started focusing on the power of happiness and infusing happiness into our culture, the educational outcomes have been amazing. Looking at open enrollment in 2006, we were sending $300,000 to

139neighboring districts because families and children did not want to be at Cardinal. Projections for the fall of 2016 show $1 million coming back to Cardinal, which is telling us that kids and families want to be part of Cardinal Community School District and part of happiness. ACT scores are another educational outcome that have improved. In 2009, ACT scores hovered around the mid7. In 2015, we went over the 20 composite score threshold for the first time in 7 years. And the community loves momentum. So, when they see this positive change is occurring, they see that change is possible. They just passed a $5.3 million bond in the community to improve the school. The reason why we believe the bomb passed is because our culture and happiness is rippling out to our community. It's bigger than just our

140school now. Our patrons believe in what is happening. They believe in our vision and they believe that what we're doing for kids at Cardinal is the right work. But all this research comes down to this idea. Scientifically, happiness is a choice. Happiness spreads and happiness is actually an incredible advantage. But the real message that all this research is that change is actually remarkably possible even in places where we thought it would be hard for that change to [Music] occur. So if that wasn't a moving video, I'm not sure what is. But this training actually changed the mindset I think of all four of us. On the surface going in, we're like, "Oh, it's a positive culture. We can do this. We're going to sit and get." But it was not that type of training. And

141that was what was so beautiful about it. The pictures that you saw in the video of people engaged and walking around and all the orange shirts and all of that, that was part of the environment in there. We, Emily and I were able to sit at the the one table and then Amber and Jordan were at a different table, but we were mixed with all these different people from all over the nation that were encouraging and had so many different ideas about what positive culture looks like. And so the atmosphere for the three days that we were there was so high energy and so loving and so encouraging that you wanted to be a part of their organization every day all day because they are happy. I mean I don't care what they're dealing with

142on the outside they bring forth their best foot forward every day and you can you can feel the energy in the room. Am I right ladies? it was just very very um positive. So let's talk about how this would roll out. So we have an individual focus here. I got put my glasses on because I can't see anymore. Um and I'm not going to read these slides to you. You all can look at them, but I'm going to touch on some certain points here. So under individual focus, understand positive psychology principles and brain research enough to buy in and commit to change. So this buyin has to come from everyone, everyone in the organization. And we always like to say it has to come from the top down. Well, I think Mr. Toman is on

143board. If if the board approves this, this is something that I feel like systemically will help benefit our culture um in a a very positive way to where it trickles down to our students and their student achievement. The thing that we have to keep in mind here we have to we have to look at our growth mindset and basically what that is is your abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort. So that's a mindset we have to change our current mindset if there's an issue there that we have the ability and intelligence to change things. Gratitude. We have to practice gratitude. You know that our lives are so busy. Our work lives are so busy. But we have to practice that. We have to make it intentional so that we do better. Strengthbased approach.

144That's part of that um positive psychology. This focuses on a person's strengths and what they do rather than their weaknesses. So, I may have strengths in a lot of different areas, but I have a weakness in finance. Well, who am I going to go to? I'm going to go to Leslie or Jordan or Lauren or somebody that can help me with finance. Those are my people. So, you know, if if if those are people that I need to surround myself with to make myself successful, then that's what I need to do. So, we have to incorporate all those different types of positive psychology approaches in order for us to make a change. The commitment to the 21-day personal challenge, Jordan touched upon that. That was that was really insightful for us because I imagine all

145of us are still doing our 21 days. Um, some of us chose to walk 15 minutes a day just to kind of refresh our thought processes and to um, you know, just just relax for a minute and that will help us in turn move forward in our daily approaches to different activities that we have to do whether they're positive experiences or negative experiences. Um, if I change myself and be that begins to ripple out to other people. If I come in and I'm in a bad mood and I have my four little staff members that come in to me and I'm having a staff meeting and I grouch at them, what do you think their mindset's going to be moving forward for the day? They're going to grouch at anybody that calls them in to

146do something. Rachel's smiling at me because I try not to do that because I know what a rippling effect that can be and I want our experiences with employees to be positive because um sometimes that's maybe the only time that they get something positive during the day. Um the other thing so so those are the things that are individual responses. Let's look at the team or department focus. Develop keen insights into how to improve the environment or or to embrace the benefits of happier more engaged work environment. Now what in the world does that mean? Well some of the research talks about water cooler conversations. Now how many of you all have heard that before? How many of us actually take time to have a water cooler conversation anymore? We don't. You know, if we

147meet by the coffee pot and and you know, I ask uh Dave how his days is and how's his wife doing and you know, you're engaging with someone on a personal level, not just in a uh college level, and you really care about that person. I think we need to take more time for that. And I know we've got a lot to do all day long. Um but in order for us to improve culture um in any capacity, we have to take time to to recognize others and their personal aspects of what they're coming from in their life and be able to um help them through challenges or you know just be there as a support system. The other thing take lunches. Now, I know just about everybody in here hardly takes lunch ever. And

148if we do, it's kind of run and grab and you come back and you work through it because that's the nature of what we do. But we need to take time to reflect. We need t time to get out of the building. Um I saw Dr. Atkins one day last year walking around school block. Now whether he needs that or not, I don't know, but I know that from my mindset, he needed it. He needed it at that that moment. And maybe it's just for exercise. Maybe he just needed a moment to reflect on things. I don't know. Not my business. But I know that we need to take time for ourselves to just I guess refocus our energy, our mindset so that we can make it through the rest of the half of the

149day. Right. The other thing we've talked about um that's based in research is don't encourage people to come in early or stay late. I know that's the nature of our business too. A lot of us stay um late, a lot of us come in early, but we should not be promoting that. We should want people to have that work life balance that we always talk about, you know, and I know that probably would add an extra level of stress to those of us who come in early or those who stay late because we were there for reasons, not because we're dodging our families. We got to get stuff done. We're based on a lot of our jobs are based on timelines and deadlines. So, um you know, that's it. It's hard to um for me

150to to shift my mindset on that one just because I know there's so much to do and it it's hard but we we really need that um work life balance. The last thing I want to say on this one um create and commit to plans to simultaneously elevate team performance and positivity. So if we set clear goals, keeping people accountable, I know Mr. Tone has talked about that numerous times this year. Keeping people accountable. So that's the performance piece of this. While also recognizing their efforts and celebrating progress, that's the positivity piece of this. I think we'll have will promote a more uh or stronger culture or positive culture in our organization. When we recognize that somebody has has done a job, it may not be the best job that you wanted to see, but

151at least they're making progress to the goals. Now, how many times do we celebrate students making progress on our tests? Beginning of the year test, middle of the year, end of the year. If they show progress, we celebrate that. We should do the same for us um that we're making progress toward towards our goal. Okay? So, um, focus on staff equals impact on students. One of the things that I always say to new teachers about this time of year is, you know, we're going through staffing and they they've been dislocated from u the school that they've been at all all year. They want to go back there. And I tell them this, I want them to go back there, too, because I know when they're happy at the location that they're at, they're it's a

152direct correlation of their students and how well they do in the classroom. Because again, if you're unhappy where you're at, what's going to happen? You're going to give off this negative vibe and and nobody wants to be around you. So, if we can get people back to where they want to be in the school location, whatever that they want to be in, then I know their productivity is going to be higher and our student achievement is going to be more positive and higher as well. Happiness is only one leap away. So, one of the activities that we did in in our training is they gave us Blaze, sunglasses, um, what else was it? Frogs, little frogs, headbands, and we all as a group at whatever table that we were at, we went out. They allowed

153us 15 minutes to go spread some kindness to somebody outside of the training. And Emily, Emily and I and our group went to CVS. We spread some kindness to one of the customers there, one of the workers there, and the pharmacist there because how many times do you actually just go into a pharmacy and say, "Hey, thanks for all you do." We don't. And so, um, some people went, we also went to, um, an adult special education assistant. Yeah, it was an assistant. You're going to be there for a minute. And that was that was really um nice because they were so excited to see us in all our get up and um you could just tell we we made a difference in their life that particular day because we were spreading kindness and I'm

154going to my group. They're bragging about their groups. I was in a completely different group. So I'm going to brag on my group. Okay. Um, and my group had some people from like some people from like USAA in Tampa that I got to sit right beside and um, pitch around some ideas. Um, NYAK, which is a community college, and then a couple other people that are in education. But so when we went on that little trip, our little journey, first we walked by, there was a an actual daycare and they were like, "Oh, they were spreading kindness." You can tell they knew what we were doing. uh you know this happens quite often and they were like yeah and you know of course me and um the other that does uh education we were like

155hey kids you know talking to them but we weren't spreading kindness there but um so we decided to go to a couple other places but on our way to those places like our hotel lobby and stuff um a man had tried to go into the daycare the wrong way and they had those spikes that go up and down. Well, he had gotten a flat tire and instantly, yeah, instantly our whole group was like, "Oh gosh, you know, we need to help this guy." But we knew we only had like 15 minutes to get the job done and come back. So, we said, "If we can go spread our kindness where we had initially said we were going to go and make it back in time to help the guy change his tire, we would." And

156like, what other way is that going to I mean, that's like the win. We're spreading kindness and he gets his tire fixed. So, we get there and I'm gonna keep this shorter. I'm We get there, he didn't have a jack. One of our members was like, "I'll go get the jack in my rental car." So, she went to get the jack out of her rental car. They jacked it up. We were going to be late. So, we reran back and a couple of them stayed. Got so close to changing the tire and then something happened and the jack fell down and he ended up having to do a tow truck. But I think personally I we saw that was like true kindness. Like that wasn't about trying to uh you know win the contest. I

157don't even think it was contest but it wasn't about winning. It wasn't about giving everybody an orange leg. It was just true kindness. We really wanted to help the guy and we did the best that we could. So I I think that was the best win of all. But so I just wanted to brag on my group. So everything is a competition with Amber and we love her for that. We did not have the most flies of the of the three days. No. True. This is true. So um I think to Amber's point, everything has to be genuine. It can't be superficial. And that's the problem with a lot of the positive reinforcement activities that a lot of organizations do over time is it's just surface level stuff and it's it's superficial. Nobody really wants

158to do it but we're doing it because somebody's asked us to do it. And so um I think with this training in itself it really um goes deeper than that to where you genuinely make those connections with people in in order to move the organization further. So orange orange frog sustainability. Now just a key point here. Um typically if you would do this on the outside without let's say this um organization being a part of our bagging per se, it's one and done and there's no sustainability with it. Um you move on before those deep conversations ever take place. And so again, it's that superficial yes, we're going to sit and get and there's no active participation afterwards on um us doing it independently. But if we go the orange frog way, we've got this

159longevity of support and resources and um you know engagement with the trainers that we have. Um, and one of the main points on this that I'd like to point out is autonomous and contextual with implementation. That's a mouthful, but what does that really mean? It means that not one sizefits-all. There's choice and flexibility in what we do. And people have the freedom to make decisions and adapt the approach in which what works for them. It's not just one sizefits-all. This training is not like this. Now, in conclusion, I just have one thing to say. You know, we've had other positive culture type trainings or leadership trainings. The main difference in this training and the leadership trainings that we've had in the past. Um, those are practical leadership skills that we need to learn about. This

160actually centers on researchbased positive approach to culture and how to implement that with sustainability. So I don't think you can compare one type of training that we may be required to have versus another type of training because they're two distinct avenues in which you want to create a positive culture but it's two different methods to get there. And I don't think with one method you're going to be able to get there without the other. That's all I have. Do you all have any questions about anything? Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Brief recess. [Applause] I wrote down the names. I probably should stand up. Well, that's good. I noticed sometime my latter years teaching, walking down the halls of Pike View towards my room, I noticed one morning, hey, I'm either singing

161or whispering every morning. Are you? And a thought occurred to me, you know, I must enjoy what I'm doing. I'm going in your happy every day. Absolutely. And I I just thinking about that when I was talking too. When I'm playing golf, when I'm doing good, when I start out, I quite often have a little something or something going in my mind. When I do that, I play better golf. When that goes away, I screw up more. Jordan, thank you. Crystal, thank you. Thank you so much, Kayla. Thank you. Emily, thank you. Did she get her buck? Yes, she did. Okay. She said I was going to step. You left your lay on the girl. I know. Is that where you're storing it temporarily? I was going to just leave it. Oh, you're not. You

162don't want to take it home. No. Kind of gave me a little bit of headache. I think that's You want it? I mean, if you don't want it, I'll take I also set it so it doesn't pick up. I gave my orange frog had a drawing and gave it to one of the students that I gave mine to a elementary teacher to give away. I've been drinking too much water, man. I had to have a break. I'll give these to the college kids who are now home sometime. Should be able to get through this pretty quickly. Thank you, Amber. I don't need to be there. No. Yeah. Real brief. All that is real quick. I say start without him learners lesson repeated lesson. So maybe learn if you keep going. All right, you're close enough.

163We'll get started. So, next action item or the next item on the agenda is uh 2322. Dr. Atkins. Yes. I I know that we've had two presentations, but I do want to just real quickly share two things that we're very very proud of because I think we all work very very diligently to um bring Mercer County schools not only to excellence for our area for our district or our region, but we're trying to bring Mercer County schools to the the highest levels of achievement uh and productivity in the state. And u an example of that is we are offering or the state is offering a training. This is all part of the third grade success act and it's through Lexia learning. It's called letters and that stands for language essentials for teachers of reading and

164spelling and it's explicit science reading training and it's self-paced. It's digital. It's online and it's a two-year commitment. Um they will start we're in the second cohort. They start this August and I'm very proud and it's for K through three teachers of classrooms or title one or special ed including principles um all of all of the staff working with K through three and um haven't verified yet but unofficially we I think by far have the highest percentage of participation in the state with uh 78% of our eligible staff are participating um in that training and as a result of that and many other things that we've done um the entire team uh working together the uh state department's communication team will be coming down soon we hope we've been working with them for it feels

165like a month or a month and a half and they're going to show do a showcase of excellence on our district and that's working with Kelly Griffith and Harrison Evans uh with Christy Day's office with communications and we're going to be doing some spotlight lights and some showcases on um science of reading, leadership and instruction in our district that will be uh showcased by the state department. So, we're just really proud of those two things and you know that's the way we increase student achievement. Um very much like the ladies were saying is you know it starts with us whether it's AI or positive culture. Same with instruction you know if we improve our own knowledge base um then that leads to increased student achievement. So we're just very very proud of of those upcoming

166recognitions. Anybody else with 2322? I know Dr. Philipek had an email that she put out on certification, but other than that, that's so really explains itself that that they uh the state department put that out that uh check all the different levels because that was one area we got. But you you're on top of that along with Mrs. Lester. Yes, Alicia Lester. She works with it probably more than I do. I just have personnel on it so I take it personally. Um, but we had sent out an email just reminding principles to go through their master schedule, look at those course codes, and make sure people are in the right area so that they're certified and we don't get that 79% um rating this year. Perfect. Anybody else with 2322? I know Dave uh Rose

167is on top of that with transportation that got it two years ago, but we're we're rolling. Anything else? Anybody else? No, that's it, sir. All right, then. Thank you. Next action item on the agenda is the board minutes for let me find my April thing here 20 uh 42425 428 25 and 5525. Is there a motion to approve? Move we approve. Is there a second? Second motion and a second. Questions, comments, or discussion? Then on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I. Opposed? Likewise. That motion carries. Four in favor and none opposed. Under old business, we have approval of the cost for Orange Frog. Uh Mr. Godfrey had a lot of questions last time and he's not here. So, we're going to move it to the next board agenda, so he has an

168opportunity to ask his questions before we roll on this. All right. All right. Thank you. All right. So, consent agenda. Board me is bid number 974, refrigerated maintenance. This was to this bid was issued to establish an hourly contract rate for the necessary repairs of refrigerated equipment in school cafeterias from July 25 to June 26. Uh it also included two preventative maintenance services per year. We got one bid which was $90 an hour. This includes job site repairing disposing broken equipment plus time travel mileage and telephone charges. Superintendent recommends bid 974 refrigerated maintenance of southern air at an hourly rate of $90. This is provide this funding is provided to the excess levy board memo number 352 is bid number 970 Princeton Middle AV equipment installation. This bid was issued to obtain competitive bids for

169the purchase and installation of new audio video equipment at Princeton Middle School. Uh the adver bid was advertised. We received two bids. The low bid was creative audiovisisual for $58,340. Superintendent recommends approval of bid 970 to create a visual audio visual. This is paid for through principal ISA funds and the 21st century grant. Board amendment number nine nine 353 is RFP renewal 2 of 324 telephone repairs and maintenance. Uh, renewal two pricing was requested from communication consultants uh for the maintenance of a telephone equipment at all locations. The price remains the same at $80 per hour. Fiscal year cost for 2324 was $130,180. Superintendent recommends approval of RFP number 324, renewal 2, telephone repair services to communication consultants. That is paid for by excess levy funds. That was a mouthful. Board memo number 354 is

170the Aqualus cooperative quote for installation of synthetic gym floor at Princeton Primary. Uh quote was requested from Tacket Sports to install Omnisports synthetic athletic gym floor at Princeton Primary. The cost is $76,466 which includes removal of the existing VT VCT floor. This does not require competitive bid because we use a legitimate purchasing government purchasing cooperative. Superintendent recommends approval of uh this installation at the gym floor at Princeton Primary to Tacket Sports for 76,446. Board amendment number 355 is also installation of a synthetic gym floor and this is at Bluefield Intermediate. Uh the same uh cooperative contract was utilized pricing from T target sports to install the floor for the cost of 76,466. Superintendent recommends approval of the contract to t track target sports to install a synthetic floor for 76,466. Once again, that is excess

171levy funded. Or a memo number 356 is payment of invoices. Uh attached to your board memo is the payment invoices for the month of May. These checks have been written. They're waiting and being held pending consideration by the school board. The checks will be issued upon schoolboard approval. And I think that's the end of the consent agenda. Questions, comments, or discussion? I assume that this is the first time Princeton Primary and Bluefield Intermediate gym floors have been replaced, and they were both built around the same time. So, they've just lived their lifetime. And actually the building popped up very bad the same way and um she's not finished. I'm listening. Sorry. It's basically just BCT tile. So it's right on the concrete right now that and it's popping up. Bluefield Intermediate, it's really bad. Um,

172could be a trip hazard. Maintenance is tried over and over, but we also have other teams using these floors. It's a very cushioned floor. It's a It's kind of a floating floor as well. It can be designed, laid out. I actually met the rep last week at ASBO. I have one of the books, Shady Springs, has is using this in their elementary school. It's kind of a multi-purpose cafeteria and gym. Several NAI um divisions schools are are using these floors. Very very nice. And actually I just mentioned it to Tom and he said he may reach out to Shady Springs and go see that one as well. But it can be designed. It has nice designs. The principles can lay it out the way they want. Okay. Thank you. What do you mean it can

173be designed? Yeah. Just crackers on it and stuff like that. Yes, absolutely. Just like a regular gym floor. I'll let you look at I I don't need to see it. That's Sure. Okay. It can be colored. It can have logos. It can have mascots. Um, you know, just for future thoughts. I got a question. What's the Princeton Middle School all a new visual? How what's that? It's a new sound system just like in the gym or Oh, it's in the auditorium. It's just in the auditorium. They want to actually we do a lot of training there, but for their choir and music and things, they raise the majority of the money. They raised $51,000. And so then we did ask Brent if he would help us with um 21st century technology money. They worked very

174very hard to raise that money and work on that school. So we would really like to do that. That's great. Can I also mention one more thing about this floor, please? Um the sales rep actually lives in Lewisburg and he gave me the samples. He had a school that did this. So the the seams are kind of heat welded together and the pipes burst in in the gym. had eight inches of water. They actually went in and unsealed those seams, put blowers underneath it, and cleaned out the moisture and didn't have to replace this floor as well. So, um, just for future. So, the floor doesn't set right on the concrete. It's it's a elevated It is. And if those two, it will go directly on that. But, you know, on on a floor that

175we had to seal or something, we had moisture issues, there's a barrier that would go in between there, too, to help with that as well. Will it seem like wood or it'll seem like rubber or No, it's going to seem like rubber. It's going to seem like that's what I assumed. Okay. And and it is much cushioned for, you know, especially kids playing on it and falling on it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Any other questions then on the mot? We don't have a motion. We don't have a motion. We don't have a motion. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. A motion and a second. Questions, comments, or further discussion? And on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Likewise, that motion carries. Four in favor and none

176opposed. Board memo number 357 is the purchase of Frog Street prek curriculum uh for the 2425. That can't be right. I mean, we're it's not 2425. It's got to be 2526. Yeah. We're requesting a onetime purchase of the curriculum for 26 classrooms, including our daycare prek classrooms. uh case West Virginia will be also purchasing this curriculum for their classrooms. The amount for the curriculum would be 127,188-21 and that's levy funds. The adoption will be used in these classrooms starting in the 2426 and adoption will last for 5 years. Uh an additional purchase of three professional development sessions would be purchased if approved for 10,950 and this is paid for using county funds. Superintendent recommends approval. Is there a motion for approval? Which one is that? Which 357 3. So moved. What's the change of the

17720? Do we need to say that the change of the 202? It says it down later in Oh, I see it later. Yeah. Yeah. Second. I'll do part of the state K3 thing. This done by committee. Frog. Frog Street. I'm just just curious. That was my only no because it doesn't say the committee. The next one says the committee. So I assume that the committee did it, but and I'm back. Okay. So, um I I didn't realize that one said committee and one didn't. So, my apologies, but um we did have a prek committee for this and um I want to mention they are here today, a lot of them. Um, and before I even mention their names, I want to um recognize that these were voluntary positions. Um, so all of the time that

178they have spent looking at these uh textbooks and here with us tonight, it's all voluntary. Um Myra Wright who is from Athens, Anna Green from Bluewell, Jessica Reed from Lashmate Mata, um Donna Pennington and Kathy Anderson from Silver Springs, and Britney Codle from Mountain Valley. And then we also had um Tammy Mitchell who was from our Case West Virginia sites. Um she's like the director there. Uh Britney Turner and Tiffany Gibson who were also from um Case West Virginia. And then we extended the invitation to our daycare centers to have someone on that committee as well. Thank you, Myra. Um and uh we did have the committee, we did the whole caravan that the state um offers for us to go to and then we brought that information back. Hannah Green and Kathy Anderson actually

179did that part along with two of the members from the Case West Virginia um department. and then our committee met and they made their decisions. I think I think it was pretty clear early on. Um but I will let them if you have a just a couple minutes cuz um yeah they said they'll be quick. Before we talk about Frog Street, I want to just give you a quick overview of what we've used since be before Frog Street. We've been using creative curriculum for my entire career over 20 years. Okay. Right behind you there. And it is very good, but it lacks a component that bridges prek and kindergarten because creative curriculum is all student directed. They don't like us to do a lot of teacherdirected activities where I get to choose what you do

180and you have to do what I'm doing even if you don't really want to. So, we're kind of taking a little side step from that. There's still a lot of that in there, which is why we like Frog Street the best, but it also is going to have a little bit more of what kindergarten is doing with the teacher guided learning. And we think that will help them have a better preparedness for the kindergarten environment. Okay, sounds good. Kindergarten table shouldn't be I don't really have a whole lot to say. I just I wanted to say that um I heard a lot with the AI about trying to help uh teachers implement things in an easier way and this program is so user friendly for us. Um the creative curriculum was very difficult. You had

181to go through these big packets and look for the um different lessons and things and and this is just laid out and it's going to be user friendly. It's going to be um allow us to have more time with our students and it's also going to be more friendly when you know we have a lot of uh substitutes come in that aren't familiar with prek because we are a totally different world than most people um realize. And um so I I feel like the the ease of this is going to lend to being able to um just really work with our kids a lot more and and be more confident and lay out our lessons e more easily. It's very user friendly and we seeing all of the presentations um and they were all good

182but Frog Street was head and shoulders above the rest. And one last thing to add, one of the components that we talked about in our community that we really, really wanted to have was something that helped us meet our special needs students. A lot of our population is developmentally delayed and we help those children age out of that diagnosis before kindergarten and we do a lot of that on our own. But Frog Street has a whole section that has differentiated instruction for different learners. And I think that will be very helpful to catch all of that population as we help them move past that diagnosis and hopefully into their peer environment. One thing that I really liked about the um program was they will see the alphabet four different times or that particular letter. rotates

183through four times. Um, another thing, this is a program that has um from like six weeks on. So, Case is able to adopt it for their youngers as well. So, you know, we were really excited last year when our math adoption um carried on into secondary and middle school. So, it's kind of going to be the same thing. We're going to have this in Head Start for our earlier um learners that are there, but then they're going to get it in preK as well. So, um, we we did vote. We had a unanimous vote. It was 15 out of 15, including our core team members that voted on this. So, pending your approval, this would be what we would use starting next year. And I think because um it said the 2024 2025 adoption cycle.

184So, it's the adoption cycle that happens this year, but it doesn't go into effect until next year. Thank you. And we were very trying to be very economical when we decided on all of these. And um this is cheaper than uh what we've had in the past. However, that didn't fully affect the the the conversation really at all. Um I think they're they were pretty confident in this one without even knowing the price. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Any questions? And on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I post likewise. That motion carries. Four in favor and none opposed. Board amendment number 358 is the purchase of I Ready Classroom Math Curriculum Associates assessment materials. Uh this request is to approve. By the way, thank you all so much for staying

185with us. Yes. And thank you for being here. Uh but thank you for your volunteer work too. We really appreciate it. Um we're requesting approval to purchase Ready Classroom Math Curriculum Associates materials for the 2526 school year. These are both digital and consumable for grades kindergarten through 5th. Uh we're using levy funds to pay for it and it's 95,84260. The renewal period runs from July 125 to June 30 26. Super recommends approval. Is there a motion to approve? Moved. Is there a second? Second. Motion and a second. Questions, comments, discussion. Ernie, um, I've heard a a lot of different stories about the way that some of the schools are using this. They're and and I'm just asking. I'm not criticizing. This is the math. Well, I mean, but the people they're using I understand, but

186they're doing that's what they're doing is the math piece and the other piece. And they're doing it so many minutes per day. That's a different thing. I know what you're asking. Um, this is, and Amber could probably speak to it better than me, but this is the consumable math textbook replenishment for the I Ready math curriculum that we adopted last year for grades K through eight. It's not It's called the assessment, which makes it confusing. Yeah. But it is the math textbook. Oh, okay. Anything else? Well, okay. I'll keep my mouth shut, but I'll answer I'll try to answer your question. You can still ask it. Nah. Thank you. There's a motion before any any further questions. Then on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose. Likewise. That motion carries. Four

187in favor and none opposed. Board memo number 359 is purchasing studies weekly grades kindergarten 2 grade social studies curriculum. Uh this was adopted. The request is to adopt and purchase the studies weekly as kindergarten second grade studies curriculum for the 2425 adoption cycle. Uh the amount to be paid for with levy funds is is the amount of 79,74775. Consumables will be purchased annually and at the price of labor quoted at 1,957. Consumables will consumable materials are needed as consumable as the book and students are allowed to write in highlight cutout their magazine books. The adoption will be used in classrooms beginning 2526 and the adoption will last for 5 years. The additional purchase of two professional development sessions will be purchased for 6,000. This will be paid by county funds. Superintendent recommends approval. Is there

188a motion to approve? Second. A motion and a second questions, comments, or discussion. Is is this um I think it's a new program, but is it Wait a minute. I think you got two things. is is this bringing more social studies into the classroom than we have. Um, so we had a committee for this as well. And I want to say I cannot tell you exact years, but I feel like we have not had a social studies official adoption in a long time, but that was before me and I'm not going to speak to it. We don't have it. We don't do it very much. Right. So um this was our a part of the 2425 adoption cycle and every time we adopt prek materials we will also adopt social studies. They keep you on

189that 5-year track. Um and then so one year before you adopt you will actually look at standards. So, we've recently looked at preK standards and social studies standards on the state level and um any changes that have gone on that happens one year and then the next year you look at your adoption materials and then the next year you push it all out. So, um this is not in addition I mean we're not saying you have to get rid of anything that you already have social studies wise in your room but this is going to be a big thing for them because we've really not gotten them anything in a long time. Um, so we had committee members for social studies and there were four total. I have three of them here with me today.

190Sarah Shrader who went to the caravan. Um, Michaela Thorne who also went to the caravan. Sarah kind of um spearheaded our primary and Michaela was our um intermediate. And then we have Christy Hollands. And then we also have Kim Bowman who is not here with us today. Um, so I would love for them to have a second to talk to you about the just studies weekly and why we chose two different ones. Um, so Studies Weekly is the magazine that you're looking at and then one side of that flyer that we created for you. Hello everyone. Um, like Amber said, my name is Sarah Shrader. I work at Bluefield Primary and second grade. So, I was really excited to be able to be part of this committee and go to the caravan with Michaela. Um,

191on the front side of your document, you'll see studies weekly and that is the curriculum that we're hoping to adopt for next year for K2. Um, it was one of uh the options that we had for K2. TCM was also an option, but I really want to highlight the reasons why we liked the studies weekly for K2 better. Like you can see in your examples, it's really studentfriendly and engaging. We have um lots of pictures and graphic organizers. Students can write on those. They can cut them, make posters. And the teachers that we talk to and the teachers on our committee really love that especially for K2 um since our um county policies is that we are putting social studies within the ELA standards. So, um, that was really positive. When I showed teachers these

192examples, they absolutely love them. They love that they can use, um, a quick and easy source to be able to teach social studies, but also be able to have the students take those home and share those with their families. They can say, "Oh, this is what we learned about these events." And um, and different things. There's a lot of online components that the teachers can use with videos and other resources that will be included. And there's the schooly component and clever component that will be able to um link as well. And um it also has 100% alignment with our standards which is really important and also the West Virginia standards as well. there's a PDF document that teachers will be able to print that specifically focuses on those West Virginia standards. And so with those

193things being said, TCM did offer some of those things. Um, and Michaela will focus on why we chose that as a three through five instead. But, uh, it didn't have the same the same like way for teachers to be able to teach as far as the cutting and the taking home. And it's very user friendly teachers, especially in a K2 setting where we're not giving a specific social studies grade. It's so important to have that resource to be able to teach and do that quickly. um but also with limited prep. So you are able to teach all of your standards um but you don't have um the big textbooks that we currently have. It's just more user friendly for our K2. Um so yes questions about what grade is this? Um that one that you

194have is second grade. Uh the first grade uh will also it'll be smaller in a magazine size. The second grade is in newspaper style and kinder as well as these children's right here. So a lot of them at second grade can um but it is focused on highlevel vocabulary um and the teacher will be reading through those with them and they'll be able to write and interact with those but we do have students who you know are at that level at second grade to be able to read those. Good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Any other questions by board members? Then on the motion, all in favor signify by saying she was want to talk about the intermediate. Well, I think that's next. That's the next Okay, never mind. That's the next board

195member. And you're right. Well, I can talk on that one. Yeah. TCM's the next board member. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, we need to do this. We need to do this one first. We already did the motion. We got a motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Likewise. That motion carries. Four in favor, none opposed. Now we're at board memo number 360, which is requesting approval to officially adopt TCM teacher created materials as the grades 35 social studies curriculum during the 2425 adoption cycle. The amount it is $122,873.30 for grades three through five and we're using levy fundings to cover this. The committee voted not to purchase consumables as they are part of the dig digital component that will be printed or used in digital platform as on scholy. The adoption material will

196be used in the classroom starting 2526 and adoption will last for 5 years. The initial professional development is free to the county upon purchase of the material. Free is always good. Uh superintendent recommends approval. Is there a motion to approve? Second. There's a motion and a second. Now, I was just going to say this is not something we we would traditionally do. In the past, we've always done everyone got the same thing. Um, so for us to separate this and do primary chose one thing and intermediate chose another, that is different. Um, but as the ladies have been talking about, we really wanted to know what was best for those grade levels. So, K2, we integrate. We try to use it as much in ELA as we can. We're going to train a lot together.

197We're going to send a couple people up to the um social studies standards roll out and then they're going to get that information and come back. That's through the state department. They're going to get that information and bring it back back down to us and we're going to actually train them as part of ELA and social studies and integrate that and really um just connect it all together. So, we had that piece. um TCM could have met the requirements for both, but I think our K2 teachers really um just saw that that Studies Weekly met the needs better for their age group. Um Studies Weekly did not meet the needs of the 35 age group. That's why we couldn't use that one um and just go K5. So, we really thought about it and again,

198it was a lot cheaper for us to split it and do what we did with two different ones than to go K5. Um, and we didn't want teachers to have to hunt and print and do all the extra stuff to make it work. Um, so these all meet the meet the standards and meet the requirements that's needed. Um, and they did not choose to purchase the extra workbooks year after year. Um, they didn't want something that was going to sit on the shelf. Um, however, we do have the option to make those copies if and when needed. So, um, they they do have that option. I'm gonna let Michaela talk. Well, as she said, we just couldn't use what K2 was thinking about at all because TCM was the only option for third through fifth

199grade. That was 100% aligned with not only our social studies um, standards, but our West Virginia specific social studies standards. And it's very important to teach those West Virginia specific standards um and not have to go hunting for those. I know right now I can speak because I'm teaching social studies in the classroom. The textbook that we have in my class has Obama as president. So it's quite out of date. So, this is very exciting for me to have something that I can use in the classroom that's up to date and that is going to be very um age appropriate I think for the kids in third through fifth grade. Um I did pass a small um note like kind of book to you. Um that is one of three different types of books that

200you can see. Um they're not going to have a traditional textbook with this. So each one of your standards will be in a um different pack and those packs will have a different book and they don't have onetoone books. It's going to be like you can push this out on schooly or like digitally or you can have the students reading them in small groups. So what you see is what you will get for that specific unit. That specific that's all that we will get those six readers. Um which is fine because we encourage students to read in groups and that's how they become stronger readers. So each classroom only have six of the for each unit. So per standard. Per standard. Yeah. Um I know she has the example back there if we want to

201look at more of them. Um, but it could either be a reader theater that they will teach that standard or it can be the civics book there. Um, or it can just be a content reader. And I think that what you see is a content reader. Um, that talks about that specific standard that they would be teaching at that time. So, it's going to be rolled out. Each grade level will get one of these boxes and it's going to have everything you need organized by standard and unit that you're teaching. Nice. It is very nice. And um one of the things that I really really liked about it is that it had these primary resources that you can uh show like examples of currency at that time or like photographs from that time, primary documents.

202It was excellent stuff. I'm excited to show the kids those things and let them see examples of things otherwise that they would not be able to see. Um so very very cool stuff. Very very cool. Um, but anyway, I'll get back to um what we were talking about. Um, they include all of the things that we needed in order to teach this and to teach our social studies standards correctly and the way that they should be. Um, we were not able to look at any other curriculum. This was the only curriculum that checked all of the boxes and we were very I was very pleased with it. Um, I speak for all of the committee when I say that the third through fifth grade, I think it blew it out of the water. I was

203very, very pleased with this curriculum. Good. Good deal. Thank you. Mean to get these questions. You need these back. That's a set for somebody and thank you all for your excitement and and passion for that. It surely shows. Thank you. I heard one for Mark. I thought these were ours, but that's okay. Good job. Thank you. Oh, I think there's a fellow social studies nerd there for one. Yeah, you and Michaela can talk social studies after. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Is there any questions or comments? And on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I. Opposed? Likewise. That motion carries. Four in favor and none opposed. Board amendment number 361 is contracted services agreement with Gear Up Southwest Virginia local coordinator. Uh this uh is to approve a contract

204for Gail web to serve as a local coordinator for Gear Up SWV partnership with Concord University for the 2526 school year. It's funded by the US Department of Education to increase collegegoing rate of low-income secondary stu school students. uh the grant funded with an allocation of 48,000 yearly to cover the salary and expenses. Gail web will be paid a hourly rate of $60 not to exceed 100 per year. This is exempt from competitive bid requirements under the bidding section of policy 8200. Superintendent recommends the contract with Gail Web to serve Gear Up Southern West Virginia local program coordinator for the 2526 school year. Thank you ladies very much. Thank you so much for your time. What What do you think Leslie? We just need to maybe put a amendment on that about the August date.

205Just FYI, waiting for federal funds to make sure that's there. So you don't approve that. We got that a little. Okay. So we'll add if when somebody makes a motion, if they choose to make a motion, they should say, is that correct, Leslie? Contingent upon funding, right? We definitely need two months and then contingent upon funding for the others. That will happen in all. Okay. Is that your motion, Mr. Bailey? My motion. Is there a second that Dr. bowling. There's Will get me through that. There is a motion and a second. Any discussion? May. Then on the motion, all in favor signify by saying I post likewise. The motion carries. Four in favor and none opposed. All right. Board memo number 362 is a request to abolish secretary third position at the bus garage. Uh,

206and this is due to the new and increased software and technical skills that we need to complete the tasks and apparently also due to board memo number 363. That's correct. Is that fair to do that one first and second unless you No, it's fine. I you'll be discussing them together because they're but we'll take action one at a time. President Purich and anytime we do this I want to make sure it's in the minutes is what I said since I've been here. Anytime we change something you guys have that and Dr. Philip Pec and Dr. back cuz okay Mr. Rose, everybody put that all together. So, let's talk about abolishing the position first. Uh, if you read 363, it gives you a little more detail on why the change needs to be taken place. I

207did note this will remain a service personnel position. Is that correct? Yes, sir. All right. Um, so what's the difference between a secretary what three three versus this describes that? I mean, I I see what it is, but um I guess Dave, is it just become because of the new everything new you've done for the buses and keeping up with them and the way that the schools are calling and and getting information? Yeah, the the technology and stuff out there has changed a lot. Uh here in the last couple of years, the technology and stuff out there has changed a lot. We've upgraded a lot and it it's things that in the previous position it was basically a parts person secretary. Uh with this newer position, I can get that person to help oversee with

208the fleet soft inventory program. uh report to me with any inconsistencies of the inventory and help uh uh make the supervisor aware of any changes that may need to be made to make to keep the program working efficiently. also uh that person I would have to help support the front office up there because we've had a lot of technology changed up there also with travel tracker and uh travel tracker and Sam Sarah and that person would also uh be working to help support the front office in making sure that uh this Sarah and travel tracker and things like that are being taken care of and to also help support with the making sure that our mandatory state reports are being completed and turned in on time. Uh also working with the travel tracker, helping the

209support front office, making sure the trips are being scheduled and put in on time so that our trips are are being taken and keeping them efficient. Uh in the past, uh the parts person uh secretary and park person overseeing the insurance claims for the transportation department and schools uh as necessary on like academic reports and insurance claims things like that. Uh that position also uh used to oversee the fuel master and making sure the fuel's being ordered weekly. Uh that will continue. uh like I said oversee help oversee the travel tracker and Sam Sarah programs make sure that they're being used and staying updated uh co one of the things that I added to that would also be uh co coordinating with the uh school administrators uh with angel tracks and all reports uh that

210would include like seating charts anytime a bus driver has to change the seating chart, things like that. Uh a lot of times Nikki or and the other secretary would they get busy and uh before I know it they didn't get that report sent in. This person would make sure that any any type of changes like emergency cards, seating charts, corrections to routes, things like that is coordinated with the administrators at the school so they know uh what's going on on the bus. And one person can do everything you've just mound out. Yes, this might help. Yes. Well, Crystal, this might be more of a question for you. Why do we why do we abolish the Secretary 3 position? Well, because the Well, that's okay. I didn't know if it was a It was an HR.

211You can answer it. Go ahead. If you can answer, go ahead, Dave. That's fine. I I just figured it's an HR thing. So, the Secretary 3 position at transportation, not across the county, not anywhere else is being abolished. just that particular position at that particular location. How does the pay compare between the two positions? My question from the secretary 3 to the um what do we call it? Coordinator. I don't think there's any pay difference. Oh, okay. Is it one? Well, I hope so. I would think. No kidding. Just a just a little increase. 15 more minutes for lunch. It's a different test you have to take. Jesus, but it's not a substantial pay difference. Pardon? Not a substantial pay difference. It's a lot. I mean, is this a position that someone within your department

212or anybody other any other service personnel in the county might have the opportunity to apply for and move up the food chain, so to speak? Any service personnel that can pass the exam. So the way that would work is that you have we have several coordinator of services in our our um county right now. So they would have first dibs on the job per se if they they chose to apply and then um you know then it would go from out of classification and then the most senior. So you could have essentially a custodian apply that's had 30 years with us. If they could pass the coordinator of services test that the state gives then they would be issued for the position because at that point we're looking at hire date across several classifications. So

213is this a vacant position or is there a human being currently in this position? So it's a vacant position right now. The secretary is that makes it a lot easier for me. Yeah. I mean, abolishing a position that's not filled is one thing. Abolishing a position that is filled is another thing. You can't do that at this time. And that's why we chose to do it now because that position is making well. It's a good time to do it. Now's the time to do it. Absolutely. I agree. Agree. Okay. Anything else then on the uh board member 362, which is to abolish secretary 3 position at the bus garage. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second? There's a motion and a second. Any further questions, comments? Then on the motion,

214all in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Likewise. Motion carries. Four in favor, none opposed. Board amendment number 363 is to create the new coordinator of services position at the bus garage. Move approve. And there's a motion and a second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? And on the motion, all in favor sign I. I oppose. Likewise. That motion carries for in favor none opposed. Last action item on the agenda is board amendment number 364 which is personnel. You should have received a updated one when you got here today. Tell you which is new. Just let us know what's new so everybody doesn't have to look that you have Jill Teeman uh a teacher at Athens school be transferred to assistant principal take 2 academy mountain valley school. And also you

215have a resignation from Eric Farmer, custodian at Pike View Middle School. Resignation effective today. Okay, those changes. Is there a motion to approve the agenda to move? Is there a second? Second. Motion and a second. Any need to go in executive session on any of the positions? There appears to be none. Then on the motion, all in favor signify saying I. Opposed? Likewise. That motion carries. Four in favor, none opposed. That's the last action item on the agenda. Any administrative updates? Anybody have anything? Leslie, Mr. Nobody. Nobody's going to say nothing. Bless you guys. Great job though. Great meeting. Thank you. See, President, there's a motion to adjourn and there's a second. Good night everybody.