001[Music] we'll call the meeting to order start with roll call christina shark jeremy weller here and jan weetrick here becky engel brian jones and dave wallbrenner are absent tonight first item adoption of agenda and declaration of quorum make a motion that we adopted second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries citizens speak is there anybody here tonight that would like to address the board moving on public hearings this is the time in the place for the public hearing and meeting when interested individuals can express their views both orally and in writing regarding the gateway learning center project and the otomo high school parking lot is there anybody here tonight that would like to speak on any of those two topics okay
002we will close the public hearing and move on to the consent agenda and make a motion that we accept the consent agenda and approve it a second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next item board priority improved student academic achievement through quality instruction and community engagement there is a calendar action item under there thanks morgan tonight i wanted to bring before the board and have a conversation than if the board is interested in taking action on looking at the possibility of moving graduation up a week we currently have it on memorial weekend the thought is we'd move it to the weekend before the proposal i'm recommending right now would be moving it to that sunday before kind of some thought
003process on that is i would say again that's probably the norm for a lot of school districts is that weekend before memorial weekend um it's like this year was kind of unusual because you had school got out so early and we have the same kind of projected date next year so you had school getting out and seniors still going to class up until you know right at the end and then going to graduation after school was out i think it will also make it uh more convenient i think for parents and families travel wise um and allow open up that memorial weekend for families as well uh historically i think from when i researched it was there was discussion probably seven or eight years ago in our district of moving it to the weekend before
004well i shouldn't say that moving it to a friday night i'm not sure it was the weekend before and um at that time the board wasn't interested in doing that um but i think there'd be a lot of support the high school principal is very supportive of looking at moving it to the sunday or the weekend before as well so i'll kind of just open it up for board members thoughts and questions i'm okay with that recommendation i think most people would be okay freeing up their memorial day weekend so moving it up i think is a good idea okay i agree i agree i think the issue about a few years ago when it came up was the friday night and people were worried that people wouldn't be able to leave work early enough
005to get there as long as we keep it on a saturday or sunday i think it's fine okay i agree i think we should change so if if the board's in agreement you still would have the flexibility we could you could take an action to approve it for that sunday before i do know that that sunday is available at bridgeview if we decide to have it there so they do have that open but since we only have four members if next time if there's an interest in looking at that weekend before you want to have it on a saturday or something like that i think we could still change it but it'd be helpful i think for families to know now that we're looking at the weekend before so so for now i'd just be
006looking for a motion to move it to the weekend uh previous to memorial day weekend so moved second i have a motion on a second is there any further discussion the one question i might are you recommending for that sunday or just the weekend because yeah the flexibility to yeah we'll just do for sunday and then later if we decided that saturday works better then we'll adjust it later okay so i have a motion and a second for moving it to the sunday before memorial day is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next item board priority create a positive learning and working environment for all stakeholders through communication transparency and trust we have a few action items here first being the reconsideration committee recommendation uh this evening mike
007steems is going to join me and kind of give you the board an overview of uh the committee work on this what the recommendation is and then we're asking the board to take action um my just a few thoughts on it was that uh first of all i appreciate the committee they put it they took it very seriously i think every one of them read the book they're very committed to you know the process and so i appreciate that a great deal i think also um it was these these type of topics are always volatile in communities and they're becoming more volatile in communities but at least in my mind i i feel like it actually kind of brought our community together a little bit it forced the school district to kind of relook at
008some of the things they do but also i think you know we talk about transparency and trust i think people felt that we used a process that was transparent and i think we built some trust with our community so i think actually it ended up being fairly positive so i will turn it over to mike the reconsideration committee met two times to review the challenge book the committee consisted of parents community representative students teacher librarian and district administrators all the community members read the book and we also looked over a lot of professional reviews and commentary on the book along with reading the book the committee reviewed the formal objection and the specific citations and used that objection to guide the conversations that we had regarding the book the committee requested additional information from the
009seventh grade english language arts team and reviewed the team's response regarding why the novel was chosen and for what educational purpose we also talked about how other districts in iowa and across the country are using this novel the committee discussed in depth the appropriateness of the book for middle school students and its literary merit for teachers to use to meet grade level standards dr anderson shared with us that she'd worked with the english language arts department leaders both at the middle school and at the high school to develop a plan for parent communication beginning the first quarter of the 2022-23 school year the english language arts departments of evans and ohs will in advance publish quarterly the units of study and the resources the texts and the novels that will be used for each unit
010parents will be given the notification of materials and the option to request alternate readings because of that the committee felt a lot more comfortable moving forward and emotion was made seconded for no removal of the challenged material the committee voted unanimously to not remove the book the committee supported the process the district recommends for explicit parent communication regarding novel studies and because of the advanced notice that parents would have we felt much more comfortable about the decision i also want to read some of the comments that were drawn from the committee and from the students the entire process was thoughtful but perhaps the most profound conversation came from our student representatives who felt the book was engaging and interesting they felt the page that drew attention was both relevant to the entire narrative and also
011a very small part of the broader impact the author brought to the story the entire committee felt that with a systematic approach to alert parents to the content used in class parents could make informed decisions and request without any consequence to not have their students read selected materials i think it's worth noting that every member of the committee read the book in its entirety and it was a unanimous decision not to remove the material we all felt strongly that because atomic schools is publishing the novel list moving forward this is sufficient for parents who are truly concerned about what their child is reading to research the materials and reach out to administration with concerns the book addresses so many social issues that students can relate to to me if students are engaged they will read
012assigned readings can be tough enough for a student that may not like to read by engaging students they will read and be involved in discussions within the class as long as parents are able to view reading lists prior to books being assigned i feel it is sufficient then what the parents choose to do or not do with the information is upon them and then i have two statements from our student members of the committee also we were made we made a clear and concise decision that was justified the book is a helpful tool for kids to be engaged and learn important lessons about life and the depiction of social differences in the book mirrors our own community thanks mike does anybody have any questions on the recommendation i think we had we've kind of talked
013about that a little bit as far as did the committee talked about the age level i know you're wanting certain standards to be met so was it pretty much the standards for seventh grade is that this is why yeah so we talked about how it would meet the specific standards that were being addressed um sam our librarian brought up an interesting point when he was talking about the book about how often we use books where the reading level typically is the age of the protagonist and the protagonist in this book is a freshman in high school and we had talked about how it could be used in some of the schools that we researched it was used in middle school and some in high school and as a committee we felt that our decision around
014the no removal made the most sense and that we would continue to have we would encourage continued conversations from a curriculum side about when the most appropriate time to use the book and what standards it would be meeting okay yeah i would say i read the book too mike and i really appreciate everybody's time in doing their research and digging into it um i thought it was a very good read i thought it was a good story um i would feel a little bit more comfortable with it if it wasn't used at the seventh grade level but i have no issue with the decision to not remove it at all i'd like to see it used at some place in our curriculum i think maybe eighth ninth would make a little bit more sense but
015thank you for everybody's time and in going through the process so was that the decision of the reconsideration committee to come forward with the list of upcoming readings for parents i think that conversation had already been started but it was accelerated because of the work of the committee okay i love that idea uh in general i don't like censorship or removing books banning things that kind of a thing having that stuff in place makes that more realistic parents are knowing what's coming if they have an objection they're able to object i love that we have it both ways we're not censoring stuff but we're also giving parents a chance to make a decision about what their children are seeing so again thank you for your work and i like the recommendation if there's no further
016questions i'd be looking for a motion on the topic and make a motion that we accept the recommendation of the reconsideration committee second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next item athletic safety equipment transfer john's joining us to go through that he'll go through action items b through h um john is is do we need to take individual action on each one or can you take it as a group what i'd probably recommend is the first one uh as an individual and then c d and e are all related to a bond issuance and we could put those together okay and then f g and h are all kind of separate so i think those would be the best way
017to approach them so for the first one the athletic safety equipment transfer we do this each year for one reason or another we can't buy protective equipment out of the general fund to support our athletic program it has to be purchased through the student activity fund this action allows a transfer from the general fund back to the student activity fund to reimburse for that and the amount we're using this year is twenty thousand dollars on that budget fluctuates based upon the needs of the departments our activities football baseball they supply a list of the personal protective equipment they buy and then we authorize this transfer so are there any questions on this item so we'd be looking for an action to approve that interfund transfer i'd make a motion that we approved the transfer of
01820 000 to the student activities fund a second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries okay the next three items uh c d and e are all related to sales tax bonding what we've got item c is the bond council engagement letter with ehlers and cooney the district's legal counsel the item d is a financial services agreement with piper sandler who serves as our financial advisor and the issuing agent on the bonds and then item e is a resolution fixing the date for the hearing on the proposed issuance of those bonds the figure we're using for this hearing is 30 million we do not plan to issue that much in bonds up front but this initial hearing will cover several planned
019issuances that we have as we move forward with the capital projects that we've discussed the learning center any projects at ohs the dalma facility so we do this initial hearing and then issue the bonds as they're needed as we go the plans uh initially are to have the first hearing that would be at the july meeting we're looking at a 10 million dollar issuance and the reason that we keep it attempt to keep it at 10 or below is that the bonds are issued on more favorable terms because they can issue this be issued as tax-exempt bonds so they're more favorable to the entities that buy them so we'll do 10 million that'll help fund the learning center project uh the ohs parking lot expansion and it'll also start building the funds for the dama
020project and the timeline for this one would be there'll be a public hearing on july 11th and then we'll proceed with the bond issuances in august and it should be finished up about the first of september and then we'd have the funds available so those the three items there are the to engage the two ailers and piper sandler and then to set that hearing date for the proposed issuance are there any questions if there's no questions or further discussion i'd make a motion that we approve letter c d and e second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next item is for the renewal of our workman's comp insurance uh through emc for the 22-23 school year there's some notes on
021the board agenda that you can read but i'll give a brief summary we saw a pretty significant premium increase from about three hundred and sixteen thousand to four hundred and seven thousand almost a thirty percent increase uh there's a couple key factors that played into this uh the first one is our insured wages just as we've added new staff that number has risen from about 35.8 million to 38.4 so we have more staff that we're covering and the other big factor is our mod factor and that's a the measurement that the insurance company uses to determine our risk and all that for work comp claims we rose from .87 to 1.06 a mod under one is generally considered favorable and we've had that for the last couple years uh but back in fiscal year 2018
022we had this same 1.06 level so we've moved back and forth it's mainly based on the claims that we'll see on our work comp insurance so we've had some claims that come through that have risen that what we're looking at there's limited options available for public schools for insurance options but there are some so next year we're going to go forward with a quote process uh we didn't it's a little late in the game to solicit the competing quotes and and typically like i said there's limited options but we are going to investigate those and go through the process next year on both the workers comp and the property casualty insurance and just see what options are out there i did do some research and spoke to other districts both large and small in our
023area just across the state and this is a fairly common theme is that the insurance rates have been rising fairly significantly just because we're we're getting a lot more uh claims running through um specifically for atomo we just had several work comp claims and we'll have good years and bad years and we just had a last year that that was a little higher so in addition just something that we do to be pre proactive is we'll look at some additional employee training resources so just things that we share with the new employees and the staff that are most susceptible to workplace injuries and just share that information try to educate them but for the most part the work comp we're recommending approving the work comp renewal we have set aside additional funds in the management
024levy as we were anticipating an increase so the district will be able to do it without having any negative effects to the the management fund are there any questions did we have any big claims or was it just a lot of claims we have we didn't have any very large claims well i should preface that with it depends on what your definition of a large claim is they can escalate pretty quick dependent on the injury we had some that exceeded six figures based on the injuries for the employees and medical care that's another thing the cost of medical care is rapidly rising so we see those claims rise and the number we had it wasn't was higher than last year but it wasn't anything exceptional we've had similar numbers of claims in the past so
025just kind of a rougher year on it and just moving that factor up okay yeah because that mod factor is going to follow you even if you're in quote so it's not going to help you much no it's kind of a rolling three year so we've got this if we have a good year next year which we're kind of hoping if we can get it down a little bit that'll factor in and maybe reduce it because it can jump or fall just as quick so okay any other questions for john on that if not i'm looking for a motion i make a motion that we accept the workers comp insurance renewal second i have a motion in a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries okay the
026next one is an audit services agreement we put out a request for proposal for audit services once every three years this was the year to do that we put out a quote to several auditing firms we did receive two responses the low bid came from terpstra hoke and associates you notice the name is a little different than what we had before it was hunting associates what we actually had is several members of that firm broke off and started the auditing business separate so it's the same auditors same group that we've been using in the past just at a different firm they completed the rfp to our satisfaction it covers all the bases and they'll perform our auditing services for a small increase over the prior year and they were about five thousand dollars lower than
027the next competing bid so we're recommending approving the agreement with them for audit years 22 23 and 24. i make a motion that we accept the agreement with the audit services second a motion in a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries okay and the last one in this grouping is the student fees for 2223. we solicited feedback from the buildings athletic and activity departments uh for their recommendations for fees for the next year's student fees most of them are staying the same with the exception of athletic fees and we spoke to the athletic director who informed us that the conference made the general recommendations so they're raising the admission prices by a dollar or two dollars in most cases that is in line with the other
028schools in our conference and kind of they look to keep them all the same so you're not paying different monies when you go to a game here versus any of the other schools in the district or in that uh conference outside of that the rate the other fees stayed the same and we're looking for a recommendation to approve this fee schedule for next year any questions i would make a motion to approve the student athletic or the student fees for a second i have a motion in a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries thanks john next item board priority address district facility needs to provide world-class educational experiences for students we have an informational update on construction so dave and lindsey are going to kind of
029give the board an overview of what we're working on right now as you'll see there's a lot going on a lot of them are really small projects but they're exciting what's happening and we just wanted to make sure the board was updated on that and then we do have some following that some action items that we'll we'll go over with the board as well all right thank you uh we're gonna hit the buildings uh lindsay and i myself will tag team this but our our first building up i'd like to cover with you is uh our horseman projects we have plethora of projects going on there as you can see the bid release will be on june 21st and that will include the admin edition out front to also include the hvac uh system plan
030on bringing those bids back to you they're going to be due on july 7th and we'll bring them back to you in the july's board meeting uh with a public hearing for you to reconsider uh other projects that we have going on there is uh which have been previously approved are our playground case k2 and a35 uh we've been working with the building staff uh about adjusting our parking lot uh format there with that hopefully next month we'll bring you back a sketch that how we can improve the pickup and drop-off process there along with that uh the billboard company if you remember the billboard that sits there just south of the school we've been working with them about purchasing uh the ground they own probably about half of our playground grassy area they have
031approved uh selling that to us for for a dollar uh with a long-term um lease easement to keep the billboard there so currently our attorney's looking at that agreement to ensure that uh districts uh interests are protected and hopefully next month we'll bring that back to you too and that that would make a great spot for our our mini pitch system that i think we showed to you last month or the month before so uh our phase two of our horseman projects after the admin edition done is we'll move we'll remodel the old office into restrooms so now we'd have the boys and girls restroom in the center of the building and then that will allow us to remodel the old restroom into additional kitchen space with that so next on our list you know
032we'll talk a little bit through this one how we're coming along at wilson it's coming along good and some of the slides we're going to show you later on trying to present in a little different so bear with us but we got a good start rolling into it we'll get the secure entryway done the classroom done before school starts the mini pitch the the system should arrive the 14th so here in a few days uh next month we'll come back for a more comprehensive kitchen remodel plan we got a few things here later to go over if you approve that we can start this summer and get completed before that comes in so this is a visual that and help make when you walk into wilson on the backside of the playground now those wooden
033doors there will be removed now the opening has been cut you can go right to the right where there'll be a locked door the secretary will sit right there in front of you with access to the nurses office and also to allow somebody to come in and when you go around to the left from there they'll be able to enter the building itself to the right here though also again another door into the nurse's office which does have a bathroom in it now in that back right hand corner and also the sink will be to the left when moving further down this will be ruff's office and this will also incorporate a conference room in that room with it when we get back to going out of the office here we'll go to the right
034there will be a closet straight ahead to keep their their papers or copy machine stuff and the copier and printers are all going to be located in that corner you can also get out of the office area from directly behind the camera will turn here in a minute to go out right out to the hallway and as you can see up straight ahead of you will be the classroom that where you've started remodeling it as well as that the old office area so the next slide shows what that classroom will look like we've got rid of all the exposed conduit all the outlets phone lines everything will be recessed in the wall all the walls will have level five finishes and repainted and it's just really gonna clean up those rooms it'll be a good
035example of what we can do to rooms later on let me go to to james if there's no questions on that the new hallway flooring has started you'll see in some of the slides coming up that you can see they've got a good start on that the playgrounds as well as the everything you've been approved before still starting in july we've been working with jay a little bit on improving the parking over there with the playground to the north or at the top of your screen in the right it will no longer be located there anymore it'll be off to the left so we feel we can put a majority of the staff back behind to open up that front area for just parents and visitors and it's it's a really low cost improvement so
036we think maybe potential for bus drops to be there the sheds get moved off to the back and give it it'll look way cleaner and then we'll go to the secure entrance on this building too that we're hoping to get through the school you'll be able to start it but i think we'll see how things come in but off to the left hand side there where beside the red doors there's uh a wall that we could incorporate a sliding window in so there's a possibility of the first day of school all these buildings we've been talking about with secure entries could could very well have them this one would be maybe an exception that might be some delays on it but we'll just have to see where they go to uh that's an example where
037the red floor you see that's where the corridor would go through but i got lazy and i didn't finish that up so with if you're not familiar with it walking up here right where that crease crack is in the concrete would be we'd put a new wall starting there we'd still have access to that door and that door and that's the wall the window would get cut into and the secretary could then decide whether they could enter the building from there and then if she did they'd just come in and go to the immediate left and that's where we would relocate and rebuild the office nerfs and secretary area so and again this is relatively simple and quick when we get down to it it's something that we're going to do all in ours and
038here's a visual of what it could look like it's it's a little rough my apologies but that window right there where dave's showing you is where we kept the sliding window you'd still walk up in this glass front we would try to make it try to make it as much glass as we possibly can to resemble horse man there's the sliding window that the secretary would be able to open to take a bag from a parent or a visitor or whatever and then at that point decide whether she needed a ring rung in to get into the building one thing i want to mention on that is for the board and also for our community and our staff is that we have really um emphasized what can we do to make sure our buildings are
039more secure and safe and what you're seeing is uh you take james for example is i i think a lot of people would say they don't even know right now where that main entrance is is it in the back or is it in the front and you have a scenario where when a parent or a community member walks in they have to go through the whole building to get to the office those type of things i think all these changes are really going to send a strong statement to our staff and our parents how much we are emphasizing are the safety of our kids and so at a really uh low cost really and overall and i give lindsay's crew a lot of credit for being able to do a lot of this internally and
040do it fairly quickly that uh it's exciting to see lindsay so thanks a lot well then we'll move on to the the pec click here and i'm gonna take the first part of this and dave's gonna take the second part the second part's pretty boring so the additional classrooms we've converted what is there four clas and then into classroom space that they are finished up we do however we're still getting the sinks installed in those areas but it'll be ready before school we've started the parking lot road around there most of what you see on the top there will be concrete before school starts but we need to get that road around there to do the playground surface on the south side of the building so the parking lot's there if you get time go
041look at it it made a lot of room back there uh the additional playground again we're gonna that's what the roads for to get the concrete back there we should hopefully buy the next time we meet that playground surface should be poured and dave's going to talk to you well we got the additional furniture that will be coming up later and that additional furniture will cover what areas are covering but with staffing just let you know that we are interviewing on friday for uh the two secretaries at at pickwick we will have one uh uh at the main entrance and then we'll also have one uh near the kindergarten entrance or that rear entrance of pickwick along with interviewing uh secretaries on friday we're uh working with mrs ledger the new building principal uh interviewing
042uh assistant principals on friday and then we'll have one interview on monday also uh just let you know that we've we have the two family advocates on on board uh with that uh our halftime counselor we'll be sharing with that and then we've got a full-time sale there too so we're gonna have a lot of support there uh with that and then last month you guys approved the hiring of the new director so we're excited about that and we've got a nice team assembled there so on eisenhower a couple things just going on the playground uh has been removed and it only took a few days to be removed we we worked with the staff and the in in the families and parents to on the design as you were to keep that castle theme
043was very important for for the eisenhower family so we ensured that we kept that design along with uh uh the there's some memory bricks i would call them that we're going to incorporate into the process also we're looking at uh when we get to the mini pitch uh eisenhower will be one of our top priorities too along with horace mann of of having a mini pitch system out there along the road with that storage upgrade some storage in the in the media center and then the code hangers if you're familiar with that with their they're all uniform now up and down that hall or they will be before school starts uh the liberty did i skip a page liberty projects um looking at some additional fencing rearranging offices refreshing uh the paint in the cafeteria
044another there's very little need at that building currently right now until we go down that six seven uh when we start moving this the grades around dalma we are currently continuing to work with our architect on that edition there and you'll get more information more so next month as we get further along in the process the relocation of the playground will take this summer with that and the teachers furniture will be moved next week i think they're ahead until the 17th to have everything packed up marked and we'll get them moved to their new locations there we'll go on to evans the the hvac in the auditorium as well as the gym the demos i'm going to call it 70 percent complete so as long as material keep coming in there should be no delays
045on that i want to stress the like the auditorium roof that is something that's needed done for a lot of years and it's it's getting done to where we can go and then and and do more things within the building also the auditorium entryways and the gym entryways are something that from my understanding have been on the books for a long time that in july that should start uh taking place we'll continue to work on painting where it's needed uh down in the right hand corner we've made an office up there for now dave what was that for ijag and uh jrotc we're gonna have ijag uh in the morning and then we'll offer our jrtc in the afternoon as you can see we we built the roof of that with with tgi so all
046the wrestling mats and everything that are always laying all over the floor there we'll have a nice storage place for them up out of sight and out of the way we're gonna keep moving on that and one thing with that to add that uh all that ventilation that's in currently in the ceiling at evans is gonna be gone that's gonna be clean and and sharp looking up there and we'll have two or three four songs four socks coming coming along the uh the court for uh fire ventilation ohs uh uh one thing that's uh uh we've been working with is improving the entrance there i just wanted to show you here that uh for next year the students will use the main entrance the steps and and then we'll still have the eat the fourth
047street and the second street entrance open 2-4 before school after school starts this will be the entrance that parents or students late coming to will still have the 2nd street or the 4th street entrance available if we have a handicap accessible need but just wanted to show you where this just inside the front doors we have a desk welcome desk coming in that they will be able to buzz uh guests as they get to the top of the stairs in and out in and out of the building uh in the building uh with that so that's exciting and then we'll we'll cover the parking here uh shortly that we're going on but just to give you a view of what it would look like coming in the main entrance uh with that uh jeremy can
048you hit play thank you that's gonna be an awesome view coming out out of that front entrance of of ohs as you walk up upstairs and uh and then as you can see those glass doors you'll be able to see the welcome desk right there between the two flags and the parents will get buzzed in into these doors just so that we're secure and secure in the entrance of ohs so and for individuals that don't know is that what's good about that too is that all of our offices are located right there at attendance office the principal's office and so forth because we have a scenario now when you come into the high school you have to go all the way through the building up to the second floor and it's just not a very
049secure situation this kind of segues into the next agenda item on the ohs facility update with that just to bring the board up to speed on it we've worked with our blt our building leadership team administration uh with that and our head coaches on our what do we want ohs to look like in the future so uh we've worked with lego architect and the two questions they uh posed to our team last month what does it mean to be the best and what do you need to be the best and the and the group uh focused this around our vision of excellence of you know we want to become the best school in the in the state so the questions were what does it mean to be the best and here's some a few of
050the comments from the staff and the administration you know want to be a target destination the wow factor uh have something for for everyone in in our uh remodel of our uh uh of our ohs and some comments of what do we need you know uh the staff and um administration excellent facilities cte fine arts competition gym auditorium upgrades uh a facelift pretty much for the all the classrooms ceilings and floors with that so that led us into we worked in small groups uh they broke us into small groups we had four different groups and each group came up with some different designs and and thoughts uh on what their their priorities were uh or that group priority and you know arranged from rearranging the fine arts uh department closer to the auditorium to the
051competition gym where they felt the competition gym should should roll with that um that group came up with one location right the whole group came back together shared out what our priorities were in the blt at the high school uh uh was going to recommend that option one for the competition gym they felt that being able to connect it to the to the facility was uh was key for them and just the location of it so we took that information back to our head coaches and uh we talked to them about where they felt there they would like to see if we moved forward with the competition jim at the ohs and the head coaches also agreed that uh option one was the option that they would like to see along with the remodel of
052the current current facility uh the wooden gym and the rubber gym at the high school so that group came back together and and as you can see on the bottom that the three priorities for the high school were the security competition gym um and then improvement in structural spaces for ct and fine arts so with that if if the board feels that these are the three priorities they want us to move forward with we will cont we'll start to work with our architect on a plan to bring back to the board of directors to consider on some options that we can move forward with uh the security following these three priorities now this would be our first phase uh we see this being a multiple phase uh operation since uh especially once we move the
053ninth grade out they'll give us some space that we could probably do some ongoing remodeling um and probably using our own people to help keep the costs down with that one one thing i'd add to that too is that one of the priorities in jan jumping if you want to add something too is was to look at um remodeling current classrooms when it's appropriate so for example if cte if you're if we're going to remodel or move that program it wouldn't make sense to to maybe do those rooms immediately but rooms we know we're going to you know what we're going to utilize them for to start that process sooner than later as far as remodeling those classrooms much like we did probably at the elementary level on the north side and that's something we're
054going to look at as well during this process too because it's relatively inexpensive and the great scheme of things but uh it has a big impact on on a lot of staff as well in students so are those three priorities i i guess in line with what the board is wanting us to look into and if so then we can uh we can push forward and get additional information and support from the architect yeah i think it's in line with what we've been talking about over the past few months so all right all right we'll work with them and keep digging in on it all right would it be possible dave to go back just to the front of the high school a picture of the front of the high school okay um maybe we
055don't have one i got one you know okay so where we tentatively have talked about the secure entryway becoming would be off the cafeteria there an addition would come out from there where you would house your also your administrative offices and that would be where people would check in it'd be right out front there much more convenient but also much more secure uh and seems to be a logical place but we haven't finalized anything but just so the board knows that's that's one area that they've talked about maybe becoming that secure entryway are you talking about off of the cafeteria okay i think the last one i had heard about was adding a a lift to the steps were you still thinking about that um i think so what are your guys thoughts on that
056i think i know they've talked both i think we left it off just with the elevators that we currently have in place in the chair lift that there wasn't really a need for it okay yeah we talked about having that um the committee talked about having that in that four-year courtyard just off the cafeteria because we could put guidance we could put the admin team all right there okay uh ground floor level entrance for families and then we could remodel the the current second floor areas back into classrooms okay so you're moving the offices down to the people rather than get the people up to the offices okay that makes sense so that was one option that was discussed so if we do that if we put that down by the cafeteria will they still
057use the front steps to go in right correct they would those still would be open in the morning for kids to go up and down obviously then if they had to report to the office they would just take a left and go into the office before but the office wouldn't be there anymore if we move it right right but i guess i think that's what jeremy is i guess that's why i'm going we're going to have them utilize the front steps but then we're going to move everything away from the front steps down by the cafeteria to create this secure entrance and i thought that's what they were doing when they walked up steps were going to a secure entrance right now for us to be able to get a secure interest in their interest
058without a lot of cost we can put it at the top of the steps those students still would use that those steps before school to get into the building the only change would be with if we had parents coming after school started or students start coming after school they'd have to go into the office okay going up the steps i think is a temporary secure entrance yeah i think that's you know that it's a really good question is that we see this as a temporary address make our building more secure but long term this probably is a better option for us got you all right that leads us into our first i believe our first action item sir from come up uh ohs parking lot we uh the ohs parking lot's been out for bed
059uh bids came in today at uh two o'clock uh we have we had four bidders and as you can see up here uh you know by the time we count the side street parking everything we'll have close to 130 150 spots in in that area with that um mr berg's going to go over the the bids and then we also have our engineer if there's questions yeah and for this we'll do two pieces we'll talk in general about the bids and then we'll also talk about the large capital project fund and how these things are affecting that um we did go out for bid we got four respondents for the bid the low bid was tk concrete at 626 378. we had initially estimated the proposed cost of this engineer's estimate was 545 000 so
060we're seeing an overage of around 80 000 for the project if we could share the financial piece and if we scroll down to the bottom a little bit that's good about in the middle of that on the left-hand side you'll see ohs parking lot expansion so what we've got to do uh in consideration of this is look at some of these projects we're seeing some of the bids a little higher than we'd at anticipated and a little more than we'd like this is kind of the story with everything in the construction field capital projects we understand uh with this project and the next one we're going to be talking about is the time-sensitive nature of some of these we've got some changes in play to use that ohs front entrance as a secure entrance and
061we're also having discussions about that competition gym using some of the existing parking lot out front we purchased that property we understand we need to have some additional parking out there for the students so we're looking at um having this fit on our capital project by taking that 80 000 overage and looking at our annual facility repo remodel repair figure that's two uh two two lines down from that with the volume of projects that we've completed in the last year a little over two million dollars we've gone through a significant amount of what we've had on our capital projects list from the past before we had our voted approved pebble we would have a couple hundred thousand dollars annually that we would throw at projects so we had a lot of stuff waiting on there
062but to be the best we brought a lot of those up to the front of the line and were able to go through and get those done we also increased the annual amount that we're going to use for facility remodel and repair up to 800 000 which is significantly higher than we've had in the past we're confident that with the amount of work that we've been able to get done through the projects that we did last year and then this summer that reducing that budget just from eight hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand next year uh isn't going to shortchange anything we're still gonna have sufficient resources for those annual projects that just come up during the summer a lot of things you'll see where we get into the classrooms and refreshing freshen them up
063um and as dave went through on the slide we've got a lot of that already scheduled for completion so we're using the resources we have up before that um to get those done so the 700 000 we're confident with that and it doesn't affect it we're just moving it from one field to the other to be able to absorb that but it's mainly just because we know that parking lot is important uh to get that additional parking if we're going to go ahead and switch the entrances we really need to have the space out there so as much as we hate bids coming in higher than they need to be or we want them to be we're able to reallocate some resources to make sure that it still fits in our capital project budget is
064there any questions on that no i appreciate you explaining that because i know privately i've been talking with mike a lot of these projects that we're doing seems like everything is coming in high um so with as many projects as we have coming up that's something i've been nervous about is what's this going to do to us financially if we're taking 10 20 hits on every single project we do and every bid that we get um so seeing that we have that kind of money allocated just for maintenance that we could dip into next year uh helps make that a little easier thanks to swallow and we didn't want to come across as we're taking anything away like we're moving any projects off that list too that's why it was important i wanted to stress
065that we've done just a ton uh an amazing amount of projects that we a couple years ago would have never had the resources for so we've kind of jumped ahead a little bit on that annual project so taking a little bit away and still leaving 700 grand we're very confident we can address the things that come up and the replacements that just need to happen uh due to the aging buildings and what what i was going to add to it this has caused a lot of consternation for superintendents across the state is exactly what morgan was saying is that it's so it right now construction is just it's unpredictable it's it's it's it's in a scenario where nobody knows the future so i think it requires us as a district to be very pragmatic about
066our projects and really step back and decide and i think we'll talk more about this at our next board meeting is you know with our dowma project for example is that um i'm leaning towards looking at just going with one bid rather than having three different bids from the premise that if you go with three different bids you could be over cost at the first and second which are smaller bits and then when you get that large bid you're already so far in that you can't really turn back what going to one bid would allow is for the board to look at that bid and say is this the right time to do that and to move forward with that because i think in the back of my mind one of our obligations is obviously
067the dalma but it's also to the high school and to make sure we do it the right way at the high school and then we have the money to do it the right way so we don't want to be caught up in you know if it means we have to do something a year later on some of these projects we may want to look at that just to save that amount of money because like the learning center and and the parking lot were they're over but they're it's not a significant financial burden on the district but when you start talking about large projects and you start getting twenty percent over then you're talking about four to five million dollars and i think as a group we have to step back and say is this the
068right time and it may be six months from now when we get those bids back it may be a perfect time things may have come down but nobody knows and so i think we just have to be really nimble we have to be really flexible and our goal at least in my mind should be that we have enough money to do things the right way so if that means we have to you know pivot i guess as a business term but if we need to pivot things sometimes i think we'll need to look at that so so would the board want to discuss anything with the parking lot or do you want us to share information on the next one the learning center um i think we'll go ahead and just vote on this one
069and then we'll move on so i'm looking forward to making promotion that we approve the high school parking lot bid second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries all right item b john gateway learning center project so for the gateway learning center that was another project we had bids come in on uh if we can go back to the there we go that'll work we uh put out a request for bids on this one we had two bids come in one from bi-state contracting one from rg construction uh the low base bid was bi-state it was five million eight twenty nine zero four seven this number uh was again another one that came in higher than we had originally estimated and
070and as costs continue to escalate uh what we did put in the budget uh initially for this project was 5.1 million so if we can go back to that financial document i'll talk a little bit about what the changes we've had to do with this one so if we scroll up just a little bit well actually the top line on it as you see there is the learning center we've got a small amount that we've paid this year that's for the kind of architectural fees and the getting ready to this point and then you'll see 4.6 million there how we how this project is being covered and this is another one where we understand that it's another time sensitive project we've got kids enrolled in these programs a significant number of kids enrolled it's not
071something that's it's easy to press pause on and try to scramble and come up with a plan for next year as we wait to see if the construction environment improves but we also have to look at how we address an overage of around seven hundred thousand so what we did is the dalmatia campus we had allocated a couple hundred thousand dollars from our esser funds to address indoor air quality and if you see about halfway down on there you got s are funded projects that says district hvac and other and in the second column that 6.9 million this is the amount that we've had we've got some of that allocated towards a couple other hvac projects across the district but we haven't allocated all of it yet um we have set it aside for just
072these type of things for hvac the most the largest part of the learning center bid was uh hvac out of that 5.8 million i believe it was was it 2.3 about 2.3 million was hvac uh which was significantly higher than estimates um and we've talked to the contractors and they've got multiple bids in multiple places and this was the low one there were actually some higher so it's uh just an area that's really seeing some price escalation with that being said uh since we have the resources from esser to address the hvac uh that's the route we're going to be able to to fit this project in is that we're taking some of the monies that we had just set aside as a placeholder for hvac without being positive what projects it was going to
073apply to and we're going to apply a larger allocation to this project from that group so we're able to use those essay resources for the capital piece so that we're not negatively affected as mike said on some of these future projects we've still got the resources there through the sales tax funds and the sales tax bonding to help fill that gap so i know the clock is ticking on our esser funds when do we have to spend those when's the deadline we've actually got through the end of and there's talk i don't believe it's finalized yet the state has to make an application that they're going to give districts another two years to spend it for those capital projects so the there's federal legislation pending the state just has to submit an application but it's
074pretty much going to be allowed that we've get we've got additional time uh so as these projects get pushed back and i think that's what they're seeing is uh there's a hard time getting projects done in a timely fashion the environment is not really favorable so you've got a lot of districts kind of waiting and everybody's trying to do the same thing at the same time so there's a lot of pressure on the contractor so they're going to give us some extra time so we had anticipated just having this next year and maybe the year after i think we're going to be able to add about two more years to that to help facilitate the capital side of things and so of that 6.9 district hvac other um you said some of that is allocated
075to hvac and other buildings yes we had the i'm just going to get a little more detail for you here we had it the evan or not evan's hvac project where they were doing it in the auditorium in the gym and the gymnasium uh we've got about 900 000 allocated towards that project we have the horace mann entrance and hvac project and i think we still have the costs pending on that one that's the one we're putting out for bids today or the public hearing setting the public hearing for next meeting the give me just one moment please i guess ultimately what i'm asking is how much of that was unallocated gotcha um before the learning center it was about 4.8 million and we're taking about seven from that so we've got 4.1 million that's
076still outstanding for hvac projects the the 6.9 2 million unallocated in there four million unallocated oh and that and that hvac fund yeah okay quite a bit then yes and i put it in that year just because the timing of when we're going to use it i'm still not sure of so i just put it all in one year to kind of assume that it's coming out there okay but yeah we've got so that's essentially 4 million that we're not sure what we're going to use for yet well we've got it set aside for capital capital needs uh we have done that so we're not using it in the instructional program but it's not set aside for like this is a horseman hvac right right yeah correct okay yeah that makes me a little more
077comfortable using it if we don't know what we're going to use it for right now yeah um i wasn't sure exactly how much of a time crunch this building really was so i was kind of leaning more towards just putting it off we have space at indian hills we could get more space in indian hills temporarily um but yeah if we have four million dollars that we aren't sure what we're going to do with and it's esser funds that have to be used that might be a good use of those so again i appreciate the explanation yeah thank you yeah a good example uh lindsay what the evans project hvac was like 9 9 15 was it 915 i think if we bid that now you'd probably be talking about 1.4 million just that's how
078volatile it is right now as far as hvac well everybody's got this esser money yeah right there's only so many hvac technicians in the state right that's right and that's what i mean like in a year maybe it'll slow down yeah to where this will dry up but yeah but yeah because right now everybody's clamoring after the same uh same skill set so right yeah and the one factor is just there's not a lot of certainty as to when the price shift will happen so it's one of those where we could wait you know six months and it could still be the same or it could totally reverse it's just there's so much uncertainty normally we can get some trend data but the architects and contractors are all kind of giving us the same they're
079not sure answer so it right one one option we looked at we talked a lot about should we look at re-bidding it and see if we get better bids and across the board our architects everybody construction people said your bids will be higher right now if you re-bid this so well if we re-bid it immediately but if that's what i mean yeah if we waited six or eight months then you don't know what the future brings right but right but you are in a sense gambling that it's gonna come down and it could go up so you never know um it's nice to know that we have funds here that are currently unallocated that we can use that aren't going to dip into our solvency ratio things like that so right so no that's this
080is good information so with that information does anybody have any further questions if there are none i'd make a motion that we accept the uh gateway learning center project bid second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries and the last item pickwick furniture bid flip it over oh we only have item c pickwick furniture bid this one's pretty straightforward it's the three rooms that we remodeled to make in the classroom it's furniture for that along with uh some cubbies that go under the desk for the kindergarten classrooms that never received them last time so like i said it's for three rooms in the existing kindergarten rooms anybody looking to make a motion there i would make a motion to approve the
081pickwick furniture bid second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries item d the wilson lunchroom uh what's up with that um part of our commitment to improve our hot lunch program we're looking at uh we could replace the the floor in the ceiling uh with all the led lights and then the uh drop down ceiling along with a uh epoxy floor system for 48 195 if we get that approved we we could potentially have that completed by august so kids would walk into a brand new luncheon in july we're bringing you mrs johnson is going to come back and bring you a comprehensive plan on what equipment we're going to upgrade in in just not wilson but the rest of the
082district too i make a motion that we approve the wilson or yeah wilson lunchroom a second i have a motion in a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries and finally it looks like we set need to set a public hearing date for that horseman project sir we'll have the bids due on the 7th of july and we'll bring you those bids on the 11th so we would need a motion recommending a public hearing date for july 11th i would make a motion to approve the public hearing for the horse man project on july 11th a second i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next up superintendent report yes the first thing i
083have for the board is that first i wanted to take this opportunity to thank our a club uh had a wonderful golf outing friday it's a it's a huge fundraiser for the a club but it's a huge benefit to our staff and students and we just thank them for for their willingness to to support us at that high of level um next i ask stephanie if you want to come forward our new communications person you can get to see how well stephanie communicates here is uh she will update you on on on our uh event that we have coming up here on john hart stadium event and before i do that we're just really excited to have stephanie join us she's got a background already in school communication she's coming from fort madison and she
084has so many ideas of where we could grow in and so forth and already implementing many of those so we're excited to have you stephanie thank you so this thursday on june 16th we are hosting a dedication night for the john hart stadium while we're also securing the name of the american legion memorial field we are very excited to be able to honor the heart family and everyone who has worked in the legion ball program we are putting together well we have put together a ceremony that will happen in between the varsity games we have t-shirts we have extra t-shirts for anyone who still needs one and um we have a program set with uh the ceremony to happen with a plaque and and then an honorary pitch made by the heart family the two
085boys are coming in from texas to see their father for the dedication night so we're really excited about that then i think there'll also be an unveiling of the unveiling of the heart sign it's going to be an exterior on both sides of the stadium that has his name so it's a it's an exciting night i think there's going to be a big crowd there and yeah so and actually the other thing that's kind of neat is the the the kids will be wearing the jersey that john's number was i believe that he wore and so forth so they're going to wear that for the game and so i think they're just wearing it for the second game or the first game too i can't remember i think they're wearing the t-shirt for both games
086both games okay okay so that's kind of a neat idea any other communications you want to update us i think our next board meeting is july 11th so that's all i have morgan thanks mike next item board member topics if there's no board member topics next item's german make emotional adjourn second i have a motion in a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand meeting adjourn you