Board Meeting May 5th, 2022

001[Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] to call this meeting to order welcome to the school city of haman regular meeting of the board of trustees for thursday may 5th 2022. superintendent miller good evening everyone um great to see all the kids in the audience and good evening anyone watching online we're going to start with our wallace bobcats leading us in the pledge and they will go straight into the bobcat pledge after that so if you're part of that presentation please come right up to the mic children and everybody else please rise and face the flag okay for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty i will respect your name i bless your lord as loudly and always

002frederick come stand right here on the first step and we're going to go spread down here naily castro isabel dimas elliott [Applause] adam figueroa [Applause] garcia carmen glover [Applause] monse hernandez monterrat kennedy hunter mr christopher meacham xavier ruiz [Applause] kylie smith right here london smith and last but not least mr bart stevens and this is parker wallace council we do have a few more but they a great job for us they have done a food they have also done action for riley's children's hospital they do um candy grams and grins and giggles for kindness month and we are currently in the process of getting some books donated to the library for our community so that incredible they're always in the building helping out doing whatever we need to do so and this is miss mrs

003glossa she's one of our sponsors and we have one more miss wodelski we could not do it without this lady right here and her whole team so thank you students you did an awesome job thank you for representing us doing so well thank you guys [Applause] yeah any parents or family who want to exit this is a perfect time to to do that thank you for coming and doing the pledge [Music] okay next on our agenda is the roll call trustee murphy president trustee blake king we're here and a shout out to our incredible teachers appreciation week and happy cinco de mayo trustee candelaria present trustee miller is absent trustee zolno is present for present one absent superintendent miller trustees our first presentation of the evening is our irving dual language immersion program an update

004um and i'd like to call principal kindlander good evening superintendent miller president zulno and members of the school board good evening buenas tardes and felice dia de cinco de mayo i am mrs kailander and i am the proud principal of irving elementary school tonight we're excited to share with you some information about irving elementary school's two-way spanish dual language immersion program if you didn't know our program is the only public school dual language program in lake county we've had some recent opportunities to share great things about our program at our parent outreach meetings and yesterday during a visit from the northwest indiana times and we've been looking forward to sharing more information about our program with you presenting with me tonight is our dual language program coordinator christina sanchez sanchez um she is our building

005expert in all things dual language her role includes dual language research and staff professional development teacher observations and coaching parent and community outreach grant writing staffing and program development so christine is going to talk next about our dual language model thank you for having us may i ask that we um go to the beginning of the presentation please oh do i have it of course just point it aim it this way right rich oh yeah there you go it's okay am i going to wrong i am all right okay so currently irving elementary school implements a two-way dual language program model research has stated that the dual language program two-way model is the most effective program model for dual language programming in our building the makeup of our student body in the dual language program

006consists of 50 of our students are native english speakers and 50 of our students are native spanish or bilingual speakers um so we need both or all languages to participate in our dual language programming so that we can support each other um in the acquisition of english and spanish alike so again we welcome all languages currently we have grades k through three we have uh two jli teachers in every grade and in second grade we have three teachers next year we're excited to announce that we will be adding fourth grade so we will be adding fourth grade two fourth grade classrooms and um we will talk about the allocation meaning the percentage of instruction in each language at every grade level okay so at irving elementary's dual language school our program the allocation is listed

007by grade we want to immerse our students in the language and so we chose spanish and english based on the demographics of our community and just the need of our community and so what we have here is in kindergarten we start heavy um with 90 of the instruction um in spanish and 10 in english so we follow the state standards we follow the wida el standards and we also follow some of the common core espanol standards when we're providing instruction to our students so we do everything as our general education population we just do it in spanish as the students progress throughout the years you'll see that we decrease the percentage um the allocation in spanish and increase the english so if you see in first grade it's 80 20 then 70 30 60 40.

008so then by the time that they reach fourth fifth and sixth it'll be a 50 50 model um we hope to see this program grow and move on into the middle school and um the high school as well and we actually want to see our students at the high school level take the um certificate of multi-lingual proficiency exam and this will be an entryway and a gateway for them to apply at universities and even join the workforce all right okay so the dual language program follows um the center for applied linguistics it's the guiding principles for our program and we sit on three pillars of dual language education the first one being cross-cultural competence the second one being bilingualism and by literacy and the last one being academic achievement we also use a rubric that

009they provide to monitor and evaluate our program every year we want to make sure that we are effective and we are making gains in what we feel is needed for our program okay so part of our daily cultural practice we're talking about cross-cultural competence which is our first pillar of dual language programming so we want our students to become cross-cultural ambassadors not only for their school community but the community in a greater sense and then globally as well and so part of our daily cultural practice at irving elementary is that our students and our teachers alike recite the pledge in both english and spanish we also provide a very welcoming and safe environment for our students and staff and you will see that in the ethos and the environment of the building and then also

010our students in the classrooms we do projects and activities that center around culturally relevant topics and content so when you enter our hallways you'll see our emphasis on cultural representation it's evident in our displays and our bulletin boards so you see a picture that is one of our displays that includes a traditional shawl that's worn by women in latin american countries so this is called erboso or a gabon by some additionally we're continuing to add new displays each year that represent the diversity among our students and staff so here are two permanent installations that represent hispanic and african-american artistry i'm trying to represent frida kahlo today with the flowers as many students did at irving um the next pillar we're going to talk about is academic achievement and the goal of the dual language immersion

011program is to support students in reaching high levels of academic achievement in both languages we want to celebrate a couple of students these are two amazing students that scored 100 percent on the i read tests they are third grade students miranda fox is a third grade student in our monolingual so our general education um third grade class with ms cat and darius williams is a third grade student in our dual language immersion program that also scored 100 and he has a native english speaker in our dual language program [Applause] we also have some data highlights that we want to put the spotlight on so here's a data highlight from our winter i ready growth report so this is one of our kindergarten dual language classes that demonstrated the highest reading growth of any class in

012all of kindred through third grade additionally we're also proud to point out that our third grade dual language students on their winter i ready growth report demonstrated considerable growth in math it's important to note that these students tested in english but they received their instruction in spanish so our our third and final uh pillar of the guiding principles of dual language programming is bilingualism and by literacy and we want our students to achieve bilingual proficiency we want them to be able to read write speak and even think in both languages fluently and so we would like to see that for them so we do have our students who would like to present a poem yeah you just need to flip the switch on on the mic does he get it sounds like because i speak

013english i can learn from my teacher and say i love school ebooks friends and someday because i speak two languages i will be able to do twice as much to help twice as many people and twice as i do thank you we have to take a picture opportunity thank you you guys did a great job thank you guys line up for a picture if you would mr president trustee murphy just a quick comment brother muy bien mijos your accents were great i am very impressed with you before they sit down our students actually want to give you a token of appreciation that they've prepared for you so they have a little something for you board members that they have put together and um thank you again students and at this time if you have any

014questions we'd be happy um to answer them for you thank you it's amazing what you've done with them do you want to mention principal kylander on how an interested parent could sign up for the program and who it's open to so the program is open to any student that's within the irving boundaries first additionally any student within the hammond boundaries and then third it's for any open enrollment student that may be interested we do have waiting lists already for the next couple of school years for our kindergarten program students that are interested and we had several families signed up at kindergarten roundup for the dual language program for any parents who are interested and you'd like to know more information we do have information listed on the language development program page of the school city

015of hammond website but you can also call irving elementary school and we'll put you in touch directly with mrs christina sanchez who can directly answer any parent questions about the dual language program if you're in the audience and you have questions or if you're interested we also have pamphlets about the dual language program over on the table that you could take on your way out thank you mr president trustee blake king my question is to mr miller do we anticipate extending this program to any other schools in the future i mean is that on the table so i just actually i mentioned this to the times reporter yesterday i would love to have a second dli school over on the uh east side of town uh maybe morton elementary would probably be the right location

016to do something like that but there are some challenges in in like just we've had to be super creative in finding staff you want to mention where some of our staff have come forward to teach in this program absolutely i'll actually let mrs sanchez speak more directly to that okay um so most of the staffing that we have currently in the dual language program come from our teachers from the language development department so the dual language program is actually part of the language development program so our director ms verdusco has asked the team to see if anybody would be interested in in moving over to dli so that's where the majority of our teachers we've had some international hires yes we did we have a teacher from puerto rico and the nice thing about it

017is that our staff is very very diverse we have a teacher from panama another one from el salvador mexico puerto rico and panama thank you so to answer your question i would like i would like to see it in another elementary um but we we need the staffing too yeah there are challenges here it's a challenge yes did everyone get one yes yes thank you i love it thank you mr president trustee murphy i wanted to hear more about high school i can see how this works um bring it into the middle school but with high school it seems like more like ap classes where you're actually thinking about doing math or science or something in spanish so that that is one option to continue to pursue uh the same second language in high school

018but really one of the things we would really like to promote is the idea of students learning a third language in high school the a lot of the research says once you've learned a second language acquiring a third language is much easier for people to do um so that would be one of our goals is that they actually learn a third language by the time they get to high school that said for those you've been in schools for a long time how many years of english did you have to take in in school you took 12 right every year you had to have english class so the idea of taking spanish for 12 years is not that foreign you might be able to speak it really well but there are mr salinas and i just

019had this conversation there are people who can speak it really well but the intricacies of it the formal writing for example can take just as much time as it would for us to invest in someone to learn english for for 12 years i agree with you but the only other language is mandarin which can be quite difficult and we're doing um asl as well so all right say we keep going with that idea so the students that have gone say k through eight is there some type of test they can take to show the proficiency so they can get it on their diploma or what are we thinking there um that's not my area of expertise i miss reduce would you want to talk a little bit about that when do the students take their

020by literacy exam and all of that and some of this is is you know we're trying to give our best answer now but you know we don't have our students are finishing third grade right now so yeah they would be eligible in high school prior to graduation 11th grade 12th grade they could start taking the exam there is a fee for it so we're hoping to write it into one of our grants and encourage not only our dual language students to take the exam but other students that are in the ap courses and uh taking um you know other languages as well like they can take it in mandarin as well so great i think that would be a a big benefit for them yeah get their designation on their diploma yes thank you if

021there's no other questions our next presentation trustees is on our two middle schools in some of the highlights i'd like to call our secondary director dr roush to introduce our middle schools in our middle school teams who are here tonight thank you children for for the poetry that was awesome thank you [Applause] superintendent miller board of trustees at this time i'm very very excited sorry to introduce the two middle school principals but first we're going to start with principal johnson at edgar's middle school so she and her team would like to come forward good evening good evening happy cinco de mayo to everyone and happy teachers appreciation week i am angela johnson the proud principal at edgar's middle school and i am here with one of my stellar 8th grade students ms ariel smith and

022she is going to help present our year in review at edgar's middle school so there were a lot of challenges of course at the beginning of the school year and so i just really want to say and it's really appropriate at teacher appreciation week to thank all the teachers for hanging in there with us through everything through the school consolidation um teacher shortages return from virtual learning covet of course but most of our teachers hung in there with us and we really appreciate that you're up all right so in august we kicked off our orientation fair at edgar so this was um one of the ideas that we had to really bring our new students who were coming to us from clark from gavit and our returning edgar students to the school so at the

023fair the students receive their schedules for the school year they could receive the student handbook the code of conduct and their class syllabi from all their teachers the school nurse and health aide were there um as you can see in the picture in the middle they provided some immunization um information and vaccination assistance because we did have some students who came already vaccinated or had already started their vaccinations for covet so to have those on file we also had the trio representative there who began signing up a lot of our 8th graders like ariel for 21st century scholars program and then the students were given a tour of the building or they could take a scavenger hunt of the building using qr codes we had a e-girls party in september it was sponsored by r.e

024girls and miss l watson t moyers our ego sponsors kicked off the school year with the all-white party right about labor day this party was sponsored by e-girls club and served as student mentors for our new and returning students of edgar's what is e-girls e-girls is a it's a program that edgar's for girls is really to encourage more self-esteem a lot of girls who may have a little problem with confidence um so it's sponsored by miss moyers and miss uh watson and they basically really expose girls to a lot of different programs they've done a lot so they they almost partner a lot with um student council or any other organizations sometimes they do things on their own i know they have a trip coming up a college tour the university of wisconsin so they're

025taking the girls there and they've also done fundraisers like breast cancer awareness where they participated and raised money for breast cancer by doing a breast cancer walk so they're very active in the school and i believe it was a program that was established by dr ganders and she partnered with her sorority and um we did a lot of work with those girls yes and they still they still are very active um in october we had um hispanic heritage month and this was kicked off by our ldp team um with ms darwish at the lead so in october we had the door decorating of all the doors they also had hallway decorations we honored our edgar's hispanic educators with displays um and then they also treated our teachers to an authentic hispanic luncheon in november ariel

026can tell you about the teacher's games in november students discipline began to improve students wanted to challenge their teachers to a game of dodgeball and basketball students not only cheered on their team classmates but their favorite teachers as well teachers were shooting threes on the kids they were getting the kids out of dodge ball and he was just playing basketball the teachers and i have to say they won but they were probably some sore winners because they ran up and down that court a lot i think the superintendent should be involved next time yeah that's right so ariel you want to talk about the holiday program this was also sponsored by the e-girl so the e-girls also did the holiday program [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was her portion of the holiday

027program but we also had the vocal students um who sang songs band played band students played as well so that was just a clip of layla singing everyone expects her now basically at every program and then at the top of the year we actually got some great news from mr white who called we needed this news we were getting worn out at the end of the school year so it's nice to know that our students were listening and that they were actually getting on their eye ready and actually doing their pathways and doing what they were supposed to do because they actually made the highest growth among the secondary buildings in the district so we're very proud of them for that and so generally on friday nights we have friday night detention so for those

028students who have like minor offenses they have to stay friday nights from one you know usually is one hour to three hours depending on what the offense is so we canceled friday night detention and we actually gave them a friday game night um and so you see students here they um they had a craft room they had a uno room they played connect four this was really nice to see they had an open gym nice to see them away from their telephones um and they actually played you know traditional games that night um and they had their pizza so thank you for the pizza um and then we actually um celebrated our teachers for helping those students grow because of course um it was with their help that they stayed on those students making sure

029that they got where they needed to be on those pathways so this was just a token of appreciation given by the edgar staff for the teachers we just gave them a planner um thanking them and also thanking central office because central office also did provide our teachers with a pastry breakfast that morning in february we celebrated black history month our student council organized and led our school in celebrating black history month we begin the month with decorating doors hallways contests and continue every day with the black history month program quiz by our student announcer alfredo valez we ended the month with the black history program honoring the memory of annie byrne higgs and you can see in the picture i was going with the purpose to two and then in march we had pi day

030um so this was led by our instructional coach miss royal um and also miss moyers and miss tucker were the math teachers that participated they did a math lesson on the meaning of pie so 3 14 and this took place on 3 14 so miss royal provided pie for the teachers at the end of the day um this is uh and it was a short clip of miss uh tucker's math class as well as they wrapped up the pi day activity and just to end our upcoming events which you are all welcome to take part in we are finishing up our teacher appreciation week tomorrow with lunch for our teachers um they had today was your winter day and we raffled off every hour a prize for teachers and then everybody got gift cards at

031the end because everybody's a winner and tomorrow we are having our cinco de mayo celebration again put on by ms darwish and the ldp team our 8th grade dance will be held on may 27th our 8th grade farewell saying farewell to our 8th graders will be june 2nd at the acc and then we have our 7th grade field day that's also june 2nd at edgar's field and that's what we have upcoming at edgar's to end our school year any questions mr president i'm steve blake king thank you i would just ask that you uh send the board the uh june 2nd dates so that uh you know we wish to attend we the farewell yes yes sir as a reminder thank you any other questions thank you very much great presentation welcome [Applause] all right

032let's move on now to scott middle school and principal rodriguez students and your team come on up good evening superintendent miller and board of trustees i am angelique rodriguez-jones principal of scott middle school although this was a challenging school year scott middle school experienced many successes and accomplishments before you hear them i want to thank our scott scorpions for working so hard on their presentation i want to thank our parents for their continued support and partnership and our student services department who always ensures that our students have a voice um good evening superintendent miller board trustees i'm lydia mcneely i'm the lead school counselor at scott middle school what you are going to see right now thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak about our successes what you're going to see right now

033is really a collaborative effort between myself my co-counselor ms amy dudzik our other counselor mr nathan hearts our administration a lot of what you're going to see is a lot of collaboration between us and our administration our teachers our community partners we do emphasize our community partners a lot um it being teacher appreciation week a lot of this would not be possible without um really working with our teachers through all of this um so we want to thank them um we do want to thank our students who are here angel isaac rylan and madison thank you for being such great representatives of scott middle school and angel and isaac are going to begin us out today welcome guys hi hi my name is isaac mendoza from scott middle school i'm a student ambassador at scott

034i've helped many students and parents get to know our school and if they ever need any help getting around the school or with anything else they know they can find me for help i've also made and evented out goody bags from enchanted backpack to teachers to show our appreciation for the work they do i also made a short video for the next year 7th graders explaining what to expect in middle school hoping the video helped them feel less worried about next year and they will recognize me and ask me for help if they need it hi my name is andrea odom and i attend sky middle school in hamid indiana i am a student ambassador a helper for no place for hate track athlete cheerleader honor student and a dancer at my school i have

035assisted with teacher goody backs to show teachers we appreciate them in all they do i have also recorded tons of videos for websites to help them understand our school and no place for hate i help decorate boards and hallways to a student and give parents information about our school i attend meetings during school and sometimes after about student banks and staff meetings we have rewards like mcdonald's cars cookies chips and more scott middle school is a no place for hate school and we want to ensure that our students feel safe when entering our school enchanted backpack has partnered with sky middle school so that teachers feel appreciated for all the hard work they do they have been giving sherpa blankets electric pencil sharpeners umbrellas and more here are some photos of our staff receiving their

036gifts good evening guys all right my name is ron thomas and i'm here with representing scott middle school i was one of the students that went on the field trip to purdue university for the vr presentation and tour of school our partnership with junior achievement both seventh and eighth grade students participated in our bi-monthly ja fa these career cafes give hammond middle school students the opportunity to learn from experts in a number of different fields and wcibs field trips scott middle school students participated in a field trip visualization and simulation as students learn about opportunity could you be closer to the mic please i'm sorry what oh yeah it's on the t it's on the tv right here they're sneaky like that aren't they uh-huh students learned about the opportunities in stem that are available

037to them at pnw thanks and these are some pictures that we took throughout the day the two on the left the pictures on the two side of the on the left are when we use the vr headset to basically play a program for newcomers at steel meal jobs for like what they would do if a fire broke out during work hours um hello my name is madison edwards and i attend scott middle school i am also a student ambassador track runner cheerleader and dancer and today i will be talking about some of the opportunities churro and the counselors have showcased so so far this year um the ivy tech pilot program um the ivy tech trip exhibited their dual credit courses and they also showed us around some of the nursing classrooms the purpose of

038the program is to give students a chance to learn about the i to learn about the college and career opportunities available to them at ivy tech while also learning about their dual credit program these are some of the pictures where we got to do some activities on mannequins and each other like take each other's blood pressure and check mannequins um respiratory rates and in the right hand corner that's the picture where we're learning about other dual credit courses other than nursing um the speedway trip was very fun taking us on three laps around the track and also educational explaining what the first go-karts look like and how they worked these are some of the pictures from the go-kart from the speedway trip where we were in the go-karts and we were having fun with each

039other the 21st century scholars community partner grant sky middle school was recently awarded the 21st century scholars community partner grant the goal of the grant is to increase participation in the 21st century scholars program as well as increase our communities and knowledge of the program next week it's next week at scott middle school in the cafeteria we are hosting a 21st century scholarship workshop uh parents and students are welcomed um these are some photos from the from a youth violence prevention week presentation that we had we had a live er doctor describing scenes in the er and nothing and at the end of the future our brothers performed as a reward to the honor roll students in the in the left hand corner we had and we got we helped out by setting up for

040the future brothers to come and perform so we got to take exclusive photos with them and shut up um yeah great thank you thank you for allowing us to use your time to tell us about our school thank you thank you good job great job mr president trustee murphy i actually have a question for the students so for the incoming sixth graders what would you tell them is what you think is really good about scott and why they should be there wait what was the question again okay incoming sixth graders so i'm talking with parents and scots my neighborhood and why you should go to scott middle school what's great about scott what do you what are you going to take away from being at scott middle school i think the teachers and staff are

041they're really nice and they're always there to help you out and they always are able to make you laugh some of them anyways you know some some are a bit cranky some days but some are some are pretty nice some honesty here i had to say sky middle school is a very welcoming school like it allows you to like really express yourself um all of my teachers whenever like i don't like feel well or something if like i'm upset they always like to pull people out into the hallway and talk to them and they do whatever they need to make sure that you feel welcome [Music] um scott middle school is like a really inviting place but you like have to get used to it because like you might be like oh i don't know

042anybody here but it doesn't take that long for you to like get used to all the teachers and all the students and you'll have an easy time adjusting thank you okay go ahead all right um yeah i'd say scott is a very amazing place to be it's a place where i feel like i can truly express myself with me and my friends and i'd say it's perfect for me thank you very good thank you very much very good so trustees i really wanted you to see some of the amazing things that are happening in our in our middle schools there really are these kids are a great testament to what the vast majority of kids are doing in our middle schools and that's learning and being positive and helping one another and being a really

043strong example in their schools so thank you guys we appreciate you coming out thank you our next presentation is pretty exciting as well we get to hear from our valedictorian and salutatorian at both our high schools dr rauch would you like to introduce the principles okay at this time this is such a wonderful high academic achievement for these students and i know these two principals are very very proud of what they have accomplished at this time we're going to start with hammond central high school and principal verda good evening president members of the board superintendent miller first i just want to say way to go to our middle schools it's awesome to hear such positive things going on at the middle school level i don't think i did any of those things when i was

044in middle school so it's pretty cool and those are things we need to focus on you know there's so much good things going on and but it's just good to see you finally thank you for that uh thank you for having morton high school in hammond central high school here today to recognize our salutatorian valedictorian these students definitely need to be recognized and they deserve to be celebrated you know kind of just thinking about covid and the consolidation process and everything our students have been going through it just shows you how resilient our students really are and especially these two uh from hammond central um and for morton just to be able to go from e-learn e-learning learners to virtual learners up to back in school and just keep their goals in the forefront keep

045working hard it's just amazing so without further ado i'd like to call the first or salutatorian yes lean herrera she has a 4.327 gpa she's going to come up and talk a little bit about what she's going to do hello everybody good evening my plan for the future is to attend indiana university northwest and major in dental hygiene and eventually become a dental hygienist yes that's awesome very good not to put you on your spot what's what was your key to success to being such a great student um my key to success was well i would go to my parents they motivate me to be the best student i can be and i want to be independent in the future so hopefully having a good job and everything yeah that's really wonderful thank you thank

046you congratulations thank you we'll get to hear more from them at the graduation commencements coming up yeah yeah and you know this is my first year with uh yes lean and she's just a a great uh student and just talking with all of her teachers and how hard of a worker she is and how humble she is and how motivated she is to be successful so she's just a great kid next up is a student i am familiar with um we have dominique woods she is standing at a 4.471 gpa so dominique you want to come up [Applause] hi i'm dominique and i am officially enrolled in northwestern university over in evanston and i plan to be on track to be a physical therapist excellent that's awesome i'll ask you the same question what was

047your key to success or anyone you want to give a shout out to or thanks to um my key was definitely my family because they always like set the precedent that my education and my intelligence is something that you know to take seriously it's probably the most important thing in life and my brother too because he was valedictorian last year so he really encouraged me to like want to stay on track and be as good as he is you know you got to keep up with the older brothers that's wonderful thank you very much and then um we just want to just remind everybody that our top 10 dinner will be on may 26th at hamas central in the the walter watkins black box theater i know we you've all been invited some of you

048already reserved the spot so thank you for that and also happy appreciation teacher appreciation week to all of our teachers at hammond central uh the admin team loves you and appreciates you so thank you thank you mr verda thank you hey at this time morton high school and principal hicks thank you president zolo superintendent miller members of the board we are privileged here to represent morton high school i like to echo the sentiments of principal virda this has been a a trying not year but past couple years just within things that have been happening with and without in the school system and just in life in general but we want to make sure that we highlight the positives and we have that positive narrative going today we're going to recognize two students our valedictorian and

049saluda victorian but they represent morton high school there's many things that are going on positive within school city and these two represent uh the positive narrative that we are trying to get out there so one one student you'll know where he's going and another student we also have as well who has a big plan so comes full circle i started off with our saluted external silent victorian ernesto rojo he has a great point average of 4.302 and it's come full circle where i was privileged to see him at the elementary level and i seen him grow throughout middle school and high school and guess what now he's number two in our class so uh it's it's a personal um benefit to myself where i've seen him literally grow and become the young man that he

050is today so he is here today with his mother and father uh that we also like to recognize so ernesto if you can privilege us and come to the podium please to be recognized [Applause] good evening good evening as mrix said i'm the solution of morgan ernesto rojo um i'm here with my mother and father i'm the oldest of three so i'm like the role model for my brother and sister i'm lucky enough to live with them and you know be happy with them at home they're very supportive and i like to thank them a lot because without them i wouldn't be here and well my plans for after high school are attending iub and i'd like to get my bachelor's in social work there it's wonderful iu bloomington that's great um what was you

051kind of mentioned how important your family was any other keys to success during high school i'd say my cousin as well because he's only two years older than me and he was a salutatorian at clark so right now thank you so much thank you guys congratulations and uh next we have our valedictorian uh gustavo vega his grade point average is 4.353 so let's hear for gustavo [Applause] how are you guys doing this evening good how are you great amazing but um well the journey to being first was not easy it was definitely worth it but many hours had to take just focus on school what's your plan after school uh it looks like purdue yeah definitely i'm looking to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering at purdue university west lafayette fantastic that's wonderful that's wonderful

052when you look back on it besides all the hours of study what would you say are the your keys to success um i would say definitely my father being my biggest inspiration one thing you'd always tell me before you'd drop me off at school is don't take the foot off the gas and that's something i never did during my entire four years don't don't start now right yeah see it through see it's real we're really proud of you congratulations thank you [Applause] so i hope i didn't uh oversell my grin with delight when i heard iu bloomington higher education yes it's a great whatever university you choose to go to and if it's iu bloomington you know that so be it but we also like to recognize i know we have teacher appreciation week we

053want to give a shout out to our teachers out there recognize the staff and the hard work but definitely the parent guardians like they say it takes a village it definitely takes uh that that home is first so we appreciate our parents and guardians for being there uh to produce these are four examples of our top of the top within our secondary schools but thank you parents for your support and parents and guardians and those that just support our students thank you thank you [Applause] thank you all very much that brings us to the skillman project updates all right this is our monthly report they should be online yes sir we are can everyone hear us okay we can all right excellent to share our screen here all right good afternoon can everyone see the

054screen okay as well yes we can all right so i've got with me uh larry gutierrez i'm chris with chesky david yancey and scott sherry could not make it today due to the iasbo uh meetings down south of indianapolis so with that i'd like to start the board presentation for the may 5th board meeting our table of contents progress key plan progress photos next four weeks of activities which we're getting real close for uh that to commence milestone dates for an on-site diversity program and the budget we have the layout of the new fields and concessions ticket booths are set interior locker rooms going very well and completed ready for punch list lights are on fire protection commissioned and exhaust fans also ready to go as well same with this one at the com at

055the cleet house on the north elevation here's the uh center line with the wolf going in now there's obviously a lot more progress than this being made the fields actually completely laid and the uh perimeter track has the asphalt on it just due to timing on handing the uh or submitting the presentation in we're about a week back on these photos we've had some rain so far everything's draining well which is a great sign here's another progress photo this is the south elevation of the fields if you folks can see my uh cursor here north of the building we have the donor brick inlay with the benches leading to the ticket booth all right next four weeks complete the turf start the landscaping and seating of the site the tracks actually uh going on we

056mentioned that a little bit ago and surface lanes and install the track and stadium fencing and that will complete bid package three the milestone dates here that we're hitting we're actually a little bit ahead of schedule and uh we have the turf being completed end of may but we are about two weeks ahead hopefully the rain doesn't continue and slow us down a bit uh the actual uh track surface we have to let the asphalt off gas for about 15 to 20 days and then we could get complete with the actual mill of the running track itself and completing the landscaping and seating by the end of may this month all right moving on to morton high school here's the key plan and that project's wrapping up well here in about a month month and

057a half here's some of the classrooms and the science and scott middle school key plan that project is also gearing up to wrap up we're receiving close-out documentation from all the prime contractors and reviewing those submittals same with same with scott middle school and we were actually waiting for some of the kiddos to say hey we we we appreciate the uh the renovation that they're that they're moving into so uh hopefully they they like the classrooms and uh to turn into a great learning environment the newer windows at the north elevations here and working our way around counterclockwise same with the restrooms here in unit d you've got the poured in epoxy floors very easy to clean up new fixtures new toilet partitions soap dispensers mirrors fresh block walls new ceilings new lighting fire protection

058and controls all right plan for the next four weeks continuing unit a second floor science classroom the last event unit will be done unit a and b first and second floor window replacement and continuing on the secured vestibule along the southwest elevation prescott middle school continued unit c bathroom and nurse stations continue with unit b classroom renovations continuing with media center innovation learning and i'm sorry lab renovations let's start with the gym floor renovation and the new bleacher installation and the window replacement will continue and be done by the end of may all right some more milestone dates once again just to rehash the vestibule science rooms by the end of may the windows for morton are primarily going to go into july scott middle school windows are going to be complete a little sooner

059than that complete the rooftop units at scott middle school by the end of july you're ready for this season for the i'm sorry start start of the school year and the auditorium renovation right columbia elementary media center and classroom 206 new carpeting painting ceilings lighting freshen it up completed the interiors and we're going to start the procurement for some of the roofing materials for project diversity we're still teetering in the 20 24 range we are going to see a nice increase to this program once we start the landscaping and some of the uh pellet installation in the turf itself that's what some of those uh large bags if you've driven around and seen those large bags they're going to be starting to spread the pellets into the field here's some of the backup for the

060diversity program and the last few slides here i'll have are the budget everything's still trending nicely no surprises for both the new high school new central and for morton and scott middle school all right with that i'd like to turn it over i appreciate everyone's time and uh that would conclude today's presentation mr miller any questions any questions thank you very much you're welcome thank you all right our next item on the agenda is uniformity of color superintendent miller uh good evening trustees on this particular topic i want to just give some updates and to provide a little context for those watching up until this last school year for some time hammond had had uniformity of color expectations where students had to wear a certain color polo and certain color khakis to come to school

061and then you recall that we reopened our school last just last april and about 25 to 40 percent of students chose to come back and then the rest of the students finished out the year on e-learning um during that time i did poll the administrators and asked them were they seeing um uniformity of color issues or uniform violations where kids were not dressing appropriately and 19 out of 20 that responded said it was not an issue and 20 under 20 said they would be in favor of taking a year to see if having a more relaxed uniform policy or more relaxed dress policies a better way to say that they did not include uniformity of color to see how that would go but that was unanimous of all the building leadership 20 out of 20

062had said that that was what they wanted to try so i recommended to the board last year around this time to issue a one-year moratorium essentially on our uniformity of color expectation and and let's see how it would go let's see how it would go this year so um there was a policy it's been on the website all year that that we shared with parents we sent out the link by apparent square that said these are our expectations so it wasn't that there was no expectations um it was they just was not uniformity of color expectations and um i will say that this issue is one that is hard to build community consensus around um there are definitely pros and cons that i could acknowledge here there are some in the community who say things

063like having uniforms saves money because you don't have to buy perhaps designer clothes but just as many people who say that say uniforms cost me more money i already have to buy my kids clothes so having to buy uniforms for three or four of my children actually cost me more and so you you see this for a lot of the the issues some people say well professionalism would say that we should have all the kids dress a certain way and just as many people say that's safe the kids should have the freedom to express themselves and we're actually not allowing kids of freedom of expression so i'm not saying one is right or wrong i'm really not because you can i'm a parent of five kids i trust me i i can see both sides

064of this issue where it comes and i so i did go back to the administration this year and i didn't just ask the principals i asked them to go to their building leadership teams and to ask their building leadership teams which are made up of teachers counselors assistant principals what was their recommendation for the upcoming school year did they want to keep the more lacks guidelines that did not have uniformity color or did they want to go back to uniformity color of expectations and we have 16 schools right now and the results were nine were in favor of having keeping the lacks expectations from this year so no uniformity of color and seven leadership teams were in favor of going back to the uniformity of color expectations so almost even almost even um with that

065what does what does the data say i think that's a that's a question to to consider as well so i asked our it team to pull the number of times in a year a student was documented for discipline for being out of uniformity of color in prior years and this past year how many documented infractions were there of our more lacks policy and while that's important to me as superintendent the number one thing i want our kids to be doing at school is learning and and to learn you need to be in class you need to be in class and and and i acknowledge the argument that well if somebody's not dressed appropriately maybe they're taking attention away or things like this i acknowledge that but it doesn't mean that we ignore those situations in

066our administrators usually with our counselors if a student arrives who who's not dressed appropriately they pull them aside we'll call a parent we have t-shirts we have things like that to try to try to improve this but the data says that we averaged over a thousand referrals to the office for a year for uniformity of color violations when we had that policy and this year we had less than a hundred so we had 10 times as many violations of dress when we had uniformity of color versus this year when we had less than 100 over the district other concerns i just want to acknowledge in case you're watching this are maybe kids are shamed because they don't have a a particular brand of clothing our veteran administrators say things like well when we had uniforms

067then it became about the shoes so then you you had to have a george you know jay's or or not you know so there was always one more thing that would indicate status maybe there's fears of gangs well there was always one more thing the gang okay i can't wear a color so i'll wear a piece of jewelry or i will wear a certain type of shoes to indicate it so there's always one more thing to police so where i come back to this particular issue is i want my kids in school in class and learning in class and i acknowledge everybody who feels a different way about that please know i do i know the trustees have different feelings about it but that from talking to administration uh my recommendation for the upcoming year

068and we don't have to decide tonight this can this is just a presentation we can take two weeks and and think about it i can get more data if necessary but um that is my recommendation is that we would move forward with this year's policy because it was not as disruptive the data shows that it was not as disruptive as some may have feared thank you superintendent do you have any questions any questions mr president trustee murphy i sent several questions i know they came late sorry and i don't expect you to answer them tonight because some of them are quite involved it was on head coverings rationale why some of those are not to be used the showing of straps on undergarments and my biggest thing is making and this is what i was

069here from the very beginning on this back in the early 2000s and unfortunately even with uniformity of color a student could wear one thing at one school and it's fine and they went to another school and they're getting dinged with a violation and whatever this board does i just want to have the administrators to have that discussion that this is the same across the whole district you know the violations to make sure that this doesn't happen because when you look at the data i am very surprised you had seven schools that wanted to keep it when the data clearly shows they didn't have any problems so why would you go back to something when you're not showing hardly any violations or in some instances zero so when you get a chance if you could go

070and follow up on the stuff i sent you i would appreciate it oh and then the money thing i totally agree with you i actually was the only person that so before i got on the board i spoke at every meeting when they passed it and money was a huge thing um the two sets of clothing there's a lot of people that didn't want to do it um and when morton was passed the thing that i really surprised me this parent came up to me and i voted no on it thank you for passing it now i don't have to buy that 200 tracksuit well i'm sorry you should be saying no to begin with if you don't think that you should be buying something so expensive for your child we're not the parents of

071your child and so this goes back at home um as well as us there's a lot of things that should be happening at home before that child even hits our school and making sure that they apply to the dress code thank you any other questions mr president trustee blake king i'm just asking for structure i mean school city is a business and we're in the business to about making sure our students are prepared for the world now i don't know what you other four board members have seen now but i know what i've seen going into some of these buildings i'm reading the dress code that was developed for 2122 i guess it's saying no two tops halters crop tops tank tops spaghetti straps barebacks mid-drift clothing i saw bear claws pajamas shower caps undergarments

072well no undergarments body parts exposed and i'm sure that's not what we're trying to let our visitors see when they come into our buildings and for for for this violation chart you've given us i think the teachers are just exhausted it's just one more thing they have to police and it shouldn't be in their hands in the first place i understand most building principals have their assistant principles at the doors when the students come in and if they don't if they see a child that is dressed inappropriately according to what already established i didn't establish this you know this is what we voted on but uh that's that's what we see regardless in writing no one's from my vision from my perspective and and from what understanding uh teachers are at the point if somebody

073let a child go from first period second period third period and fourth period and they're not dressed appropriately why should i disrupt my class to address it so that's why we probably don't see a ton of these violations uh actually uh documented so i think we need to be on top of our game of producing the best showing the best i don't think i don't know if it's uniforms but if this is what we're seeing these young people are not supposed to wear and we're not enforcing it it's just and it's like the kids i mean who's the adult i mean kids are kids adults or adults and i'm just at a point we have to get some structure when it comes to this the dress code with our students and i said when we

074passed this i said the minute it is violated mr miller did i not say in fact i went back to the meeting to make sure what i'm saying i know i said it when i see start seeing body parts then we go we need to go back to uniforms or something else i said that and this is what i see when i go into buildings and what parents have shown me you know so i'm looking for structure whatever it is how it is the enforcement should not be in the hands of teachers they have enough on their plate i mean we've got building principles with assistance assistance when they come into these buildings they know right off the bat who is in violation was in writing and we probably need to add some other stuff

075i mean do we are we going to allow pajamas to continue i mean pajamas bear claws shower caps are we going to continue to allow that what's a bear claw there there is that's like a it's a foot footwear with a bear it's like a slipper a slipper a slipper okay well that's what the kids tell me it is i you know i just say what they say i've never even seen him in a store so we need to do something this needs to be addressed and it's something that we need to take our time on and uh i mean i've seen i've heard the thousand pros and cons on both sides but it's what we want to present for the public for our visitors that come into our buildings how our students are dressed

076and that's my take on it right now and you'll probably hear more from me on this thank you mr president thank you mr president trustee murphy i actually follow up on what trustee blake king just said so superintendent miller she actually so when uniformity of color came in back in the early 2000s it was the first period teacher it was their responsibility to send the students down so i think there needs to be some type of discussion when this comes back before the board how does the administration want to enforce this um making sure we're still using dei because i don't know if we should have hair in here too because there's other districts that um just to make sure that there's free expression with hair because some people don't like box braids or other

077things long hair on boys that to me hair needs to be addressed in here or it's under this freedom of expression when it comes to hair because i know it's totally science but just to go back to the what i bring up first who is going to enforce as is stated it's always been the teachers in the past so that's where the complaints where i got from i'm the last the fifth hour teacher why am i seeing students dressed like this when it should have been taken care of by the first hour so i'm not expecting you to answer this now um something for the next time this comes back up before the board how do you feel we should be enforcing the policy that we currently have thank you any additional questions i'll just

078say teachers have always been expected to enforce the uniformity of color in the past you know kids wear coats coming in we don't make every kid take off their coat to like show what they're wearing so when they get to the classrooms that is correct it always was the expectation if a student came and they were inappropriately dressed the teacher would make a referral to the office mr president trustee blake king i understand what you're saying but again classroom time instruction instruction is so important why are we putting that additional burden on a teacher to sit there and because you know these these students you know some of our students going to go back and forth with you know it is what it is and you're taking up time in the classroom you know go

079and you send them down and and but that is done but nonetheless that needs to be taken off the teacher's plate period i don't know we have i mean i i just love i remember when the principal kenwood said how they welcome all their kids at every door and i i asked you then is that something we need to do district wide so that you know that you know who who's who the person might be continually doing this but uh that i think that needs to come off the teacher's plate they have enough to do i'll just that's just my opinion i understand just consider it thank you kenwood's the smallest school in the district it does you know it's much more difficult when you have eighteen hundred kids coming in a fifteen minute window

080to what we need to do we have three suit three principles what is it a principal and four assistants and they and they should know their students after the first two months they know their they should know their their their body most principals do they know their kids it might be a little burden on them but the teachers have so much on their plate you know that the sole responsibility should not be on and that's why that report you sent to us it's not it's not true it is it doesn't reflect the truth because i know what i see um i was a teacher in hammond schools for 13 years and for most of those 13 years i had to enforce uniformity of color for the hammond students i was at the career center so

081kids who were not from hammond i will say that too there's no suburban district that requires their kids to wear a certain color there's not think about it lake central munster crown point island griffith think about all those districts they they don't they don't have this limitation there's a mind it's a totally different mindset mr miller there's no you can't even compare i can't even go there okay we can compare on behalf of our students and um i will just say this i'm sorry when you take attendance as a teacher you're looking at the kids now none of our teachers are supposed to do like roll call anymore maybe the first week you do that but you know the kids so they're doing their warm-up activity and as you and as you as the teacher

082are going around looking that's when you notice if something is out of line so it really is no more time because the expectation in all our classrooms is that when students enter there's a warm up like they're not waiting on the teacher they know that they're supposed to get to work as soon as they come into class so it i i'm just pushing back a little on the concept that teachers can't visually inspire well somebody i mean when a young lady walks in with a halter top that's so that is visible yeah walked in the door principal sees that her that's visible that needs to be addressed i mean halter tops all the other body parts are getting exposed why don't we discuss this further in the next two weeks and we can make some

083decisions after that sounds good thank you that brings us to public expression first period public expression first period limited to items on the agenda first community member is going to be michael yeah michael please state your name address and you'll have three minutes thanks michael peterson 7242 maryland indiana and i listened to the argument about the uniformity of color i am in route sales i go to different stores okay we need a community of standards in our schools no rip chains no halter tops because guess what you walk into any store and you come in with their uniform looking chaby guess what you're gone even with the hairstyles we need a uniform of standards i'm not telling you let's go back to the uniforms because that would be asset and also to correct you on

084something you said mr miller please okay i have friends that are on department heads at lake central um crown point mil munster guess what they have a community of standards for the uniforms i was just saying they don't have color like they don't have them no you said wear the same color they don't have no standards then i misspoke okay we need that in the schools because the object of secondary schools is to get them ready for the real world get their mindset right you know i live between scott and morgan i wish i could [Music] some videotape these people leave in those schools in no offense they look like they should belong coming out of industrial strip as workers come on let's not talk about our kids like that no i'm being serious and

085then we have some that are very presentable because if we don't start holding the kids responsible we failed as adults and educators it's our responsibility to educate the kids for the real world we can't be relaxed on everything we're relaxed we're behind april you know it's something that has to be done it really does because kicking the can down the road guess what the nice county hotel is going to be very very full in ground point and that is statistically speaking we have too many administrators that are over warped into schools they're not appreciated from you guys we are finally getting administrators in and teachers get a little fire back in their bellies to teach we are not as a whole community to quote mr hicks we're sort of failing it's all thank you sir

086anyone else that concludes everyone written in for public expression first period thank you item for unfinished business first reading of the board policies for anybody watching um we spent a little over three hours going over these board policies at last week's public work session that video is on youtube and available online trustees i am reporting to you that all of the recommended changes that the board asked me to are have been updated in the policies and are in board docs for review again for anyone watching we don't approve any board policy changes in a single meeting so these won't actually be voted on until two weeks from now or tuesday the 17th but if there are any additional questions on any of the board policies that would be appropriate right now thank you superintendent mr

087um mr president murphy i just have one comment and this is on the board policies as they relate to federal laws and i think that last email that you got to mr mckay just really hit it on the point and i'm just going to read one sentence out of it very often policy is written using the actual words in the law in order to have the policy compliant with the law so my comment is that some of those policies are chunky they're wordy um if as i said an english teacher would have sent them back with a bunch of red marks all over it and they're hard to understand because they're just full of straight federal law so we have so much work to do i'm just going to let it go but if someone

088reads these and doesn't understand please ask so we spent three hours to make sure we fully understood them the the clunkiness of those policies so we understood them when we were finally done but if someone out there reads this like what's going on please go ask that's all i have to say thank you thank you mr president trustee blake king molly comment i i'm still don't know if we have enough uh information regarding the issues of of how we hire the transparency and it's like trusty um murphy indicated excuse me it's just so wordy and so iffy and it can mean one thing in one sentence and then the other sentence can contradict the other sentence and for tonight i am going to abstain from it because in trying to read your changes and go

089back to that you know that big thick book that you guide us it was really hard to follow mister you really because i asked you should i bring the book and you know there was no response and i understand that but it's just so there's something to reply it was just so much i mean and i can't really i don't you know i'm going through all this i'm not going to tell the truth it was difficult to see where the changes were so i again i'm going to abstain from voting i'm going to go back over everything all of my notes that i took and and you know matching with what you have here yeah we are not voting tonight i know we're not going to understand just for uh thank you for record purposes

090you know i'm just it's when it comes to hiring our people and transparency i have issues with how all of this is good it would help me if um which policy are you referring to i see everyone that pertains to hiring and it was several of them those were not the one you know we discussed it are you talking about like the nepotism man yeah nepotism all right i got you okay i got you okay i'm just not clear i did i didn't make all the changes the board asked to me to do on the nepotism in that so we've got two weeks to review the changes to make sure they got put in yep and then to answer ask any questions we would like to do so okay that will take us into the

091consent agenda do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the consent agenda items a through e as presented second i have a motion and a second any discussion discussion mr president trustee blake king i would like to read into record our accounts payable docket register for may 5th our claims uh came to one million six hundred and four thousand nine hundred and fourteen dollars and eighty six cents and our payroll uh is three million four hundred and thirty eight thousand four hundred and forty nine dollars and fifteen cents mr president thank you any other discussion any other discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee miller is absent trustees only yes motion passes for president one absent president zulun superintendent miller um the board just

092approved the hiring of a new piece of our core leadership team a new cfo and assistant superintendent and mr eric hertz mr kurtz would you like to come and say a few words please mr president and trustees and superintendent miller thank you for the opportunity to join the school city of hammond team i look forward to beginning work with the school for the next school year there's any questions that anyone has i'm happy to answer those or well thank you for joining the team thank you mr president trustee blake king don't you want to share with us your specialty and you know what's the big plus for her well i you know i i have mba from purdue here in hammond i've been in the school finance and operations side of the business for the

093last nine years worked down at hanover community schools and currently i'm at the lake station community schools and i look forward to joining i think she means your experience of the referendum oh i i have worked on referendums uh at hanover and at lake station fortunately both of those were successful you know the state legislature keeps making it a little bit harder but i think when we talk to the talk to the community and explain the importance and as long as they understand how the school corporation wants to spend their money on investing in our kids uh those referendum referendums have been successful any other questions thank you sir thank you i'm sorry i just said welcome aboard thank you thank you sir mr kurtz starts july 1st so we got to wait we got

094to wait a couple just a little bit longer now all right that brings us in number six new business uh looking for the approval of the agreement between echo brands and jefferson elementary school trustees this is a a professional laminator which includes four roles in service contract and training for the staff on how to use it for 565 dollars do i have a motion mr president trustee blake king i make a motion that we approve the contract in the amount of 565 dollars my education fund for the lamination for jefferson school second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor opposed motion passes four yes one absent next up we have the approval of the mou at the gene shepard community center trustees we are in the process of

095developing some plans for when there's an emergency we might have to evacuate students to a remote remote location this particular mou there's no dollars involved but the gene shepherd center would allow our schools that are primarily on the hessville side of town to go there in the case we had to evacuate the building we are developing an actual official reunification plan for the whole district but this is one piece of that do i have a motion to approve the mou at the gene shepard community center president zono trustee candelaria i'm sorry hey move for the approval of the mou with the gene shepard community center as presented second have motioned in a second any discussion any discussion one question mr president trustee blake king mr miller you're indicating that you're looking for this to be

096uh district white where on this side of town are you considering right right now would probably be the acc the career center when we had to evacuate kenwood because of the fire in the elevator that's or the smoke in the elevator that's where we we brought them so right now that's the location thank you any other questions all in favor aye aye opposed one absent four yes one absent item c approval of agreement with the him and port authority the trustees i'd like to recommend we approve the agreement the hammond port authority to for them to provide us access to the wolf lake pavilion for the 2022 commencement ceremonies i'd like to publicly uh thank the port authority for again doing this for us at no cost to the district okay trustees do i have

097a motion mr president trustee murphy blakey i'm sorry blake king sometimes i get the voice mixed up down there i understand um mr president i do make a motion that we approve the agreement with the heming port authority for the use of uh will flake for our outstanding graduations uh hammond central and martin high school second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye opposed before yes one absent next item is the approval of the bid award for the scott middle school building for roofing hvac and electric projects trustees a few months back i believe it was february i presented to you um that we were going out to bid for a major project for scott middle school including replacing all the roofing all of the hvac rooftop

098units and to completely redo the electrical at scott middle school i will say that the the bids came in a little bit higher than uh was originally estimated but we've shuffled a little money around in our sr3 or the american recovery plan money but this is a big contract it is in the amount of 10 million 700 or 698 988 it did go out of course to the public bid process we did review all of the bids and um and we are awarding the bids through through your approval right now to do this work okay do i have a motion presidency award for the scott middle school roofing hvac and electrical projects as presented second i have a motion and a second any discussion discussion trustee blake king mr miller how much more over did

099we go so we thought it would be around 10 million and it ended up coming in around 10.7 yeah so it's not outrageous but we're able to do this for anybody watching out of esser because ultimately we are replacing the hvac the entire hvac system at scott middle school which um if you have any kids at scott you know it's been a challenge for us so that will be gone and taken care of so i mean it will be 100 brand new every single piece from the room to the to the rooftop units is replaced through this project so we should not have any more issues with hvac um at scott another issue is scott has been the electrical that it is the original electrical in the building so we are upgrading the entire uh

100electrical plant um to support the new hvac installation and while we're at it the roof is way beyond replacement as well so we're doing all three of those projects at the same time and that's why it's such a big number okay we have any other discussion any other discussion okay let's do a roll call on this one trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king yes trustee murphy yes and trustee zomo yes motion ps is four yes one ampersand and me the approval of the skillman addendum trustees i am asking that we approve an addendum to the skillman contract that would include project management for the scott project that you just awarded it's approximately six percent of the total cost so that's um paid for again out of the american recovery plan um this a project of

101this scope is is just out of this out of the scope of our guys to just manage it so it does take construction management to to do this work okay do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the skillman addendum as president second i have a motion in a second any discussion any discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee zong yes motion passes four yes one gabson item number seven upcoming board meetings tuesday may 10th we have a public work session here at 5 30 for the minister in the administration center and on tuesday may 17th the school board meeting at 6 pm also in the administration center mr president trustee blake king our public works session on the 10th uh what are we

102is on what um let me let me pull up the email real quick there's there's quite a few items i don't want to miss any i forget the public needs to know sure no problem just give me one minute i don't remember when you sent it to me it in board docs if i pull it up will it be there again okay okay so here are the following items that we'll be discussing at the public works session again for anyone watching there's no voting that happens a public work session that's just for the administration to present ideas to the board and the board can ask questions so we have a proposed bell schedule change it's not changing that the amount of time but the start time to help alleviate some of our transportation challenges mr

103pots will be presenting that we're going to be presenting some capital project needs throughout the district in a proposed way to fund those myself david reyes kyle miller from schmidt will be presenting that one a2z is a group that the board approved to work with our administrators on leadership in a few other areas they're going to present the results of their work from the year they're going to be here and dr super they'll be live or virtual they're going to be in person um dr ship may be part of that as well uh we've got dei that's diversity equity and inclusion dr goodloe is going to be presenting his plan for the district we have virtual academic academy i need to present along with mr white or actually mr white's going to do the presentation

104about what we think is the best way to provide virtual services to our students in the year coming up i've been talking to you about having a presentation on our mentoring program so our leadership uh coordinator lynn lang will be presenting our plan for how we're going to mentor new teachers and lastly is our math textbook recommendation i'm going to believe doctors shift your handle on that one or is the car are the companies going to be here companies are going to be here to present the results of our process for adopting our math textbooks so i need to bring back dinner luncheon perfect we we could always you know you mentioned that and we could always take a recess for like 30 minutes in there and eat dinner if we wanted to oh no

105i'm just kidding it'll be four in the morning instead of two in the morning well i remember when i should be at school board meetings to two in the morning so right i'm up for it okay that's mr president trustee murphy not that i'm asking to add anything to the public work session but i ready results that was something we were going to do three times a year so i don't know it was correct yeah we didn't get the second we we did the first window i don't believe we had an update on the second window at this point can i say pretty please and do just do the third yes we'll include the second and third window sounds good okay all right you're gonna have to buy us dinner and breakfast it won't be

106it won't be for this coming meeting but we'll we'll get the presentation thank you to that one now send this to the board so you know um send it email us i believe she did miss lopez that's what i was trying to look for first and i couldn't find it thank you all right that brings us number eight public expression second period please state your name address and you have three minutes first community member is going to be miss blackman are you doing good evening i actually contacted uh the president two times like an email on the issue that i have today um it's basically regarding a school explosion and i'm trying to find out exactly what the process is i have a child that is enrolled in hammond schools um she's currently up for

107explosion for an issue that she did not do um but i there's lack of communication within the school um which school is it it's eggers middle school but there's been a huge lack of communication as far as um between me and the schools being student services uh paperwork's into student services i haven't heard anything back for them and as of may 11th next week it'll be 30 days that my child has been out of school with no type of contact at all from the school 30 days 30 days she was first suspended on april the 11th may 11th for make 30 days so she hasn't been back in school since he has not i received a letter and a mail that stated that she was suspended originally until april the 27th to bring her back

108to school i attempted to bring her back last wednesday and was told at that time that i was supposed to be contacted about a hearing letter which actually did not come in a mail to me until like the day before the seven day calendar deadline um the next day after that i received a certified letter same exact letter that i turned into student services um that was actually sent to the united states post office um that we had to sign for but they pretty much it was post dated on the envelope april 21st but i basically didn't receive it until like the last day a day before it was supposed to be done and since i turned that letter in last week i haven't heard anything regarding her hearing or anything i don't want to

109put her name into the record could you give the doctor a ship right here can you please give your daughter's name to her okay thank you thank you next community member michael good question when were you going to tell the special needs adults the parents that you were planning to remove to move the life skills class from the acc to the boys and girls club when were you so i did do a presentation publicly on it you know what we were not been voted on by the by the board no i i i'm four i'm a thousand percent for it it's well overdue but the thing was you never told you never put it out because i found out a few sources outside sources and it should have been mailed from you guys that you

110guys were doing it because that's totally freaking awesome but once again like that lady said communication this is where you guys are severely lacking you crunch numbers as your data they may be invalid who knows but we need as the parents need the communication from the board it's unacceptable to be four or five months behind you know it's all about communication you know oh i put it on parent square guess what i'm on my phone working and you guess what we ought to listen to the least thing i want to do go on internet united states mail a memo sent home from the instructor of the special ed class this is what's going on you know you guys just don't understand communication is the main goal as the board you should be communicating to your

111administrators the administrators should be communicating to the teachers the teachers should be communicating to the parents but this goes back to what i said earlier we're all tired i understand that but communication is the key you are the superintendent your fee are right now being held to the fire in my eyes it's your responsibility to make sure that task is communicated down to me communicate it down to her whatever the situation is and obviously it wasn't with her obviously it wasn't with me where other are you guys lacking in communication because communication is the name of the game and if to go on something miss king touches on every time transparency sorry you're sir you're three minutes early i was finishing up thank you sir you're not interrupting me mr miller we haven't voted on

112that yet no that's why we haven't sent anything out because the board has not voted on it yet thank you just trying to keep my mind anyone else that concludes everyone written in for public expression second period thank you that brings us to reports from the superintendent yeah just just on that point uh there was a public works session in april where the boys and girls leadership came up here and talked about it there's a lot more information in that video on our youtube site but the board hasn't voted on it i don't i don't send things out until the board has actually approved it so we will absolutely i where i'm at with that process just update the board is um there's several different things if you recall from that presentation they talked about

113opening a child care center they talked about our skills for life students being able to operate out the boys and girls club they talked about our early childhood students interview or being able to intern in the early childhood center we've realized that the process of opening an early childhood center is going to take longer than the start of school so we're separating out those concepts and they are currently working on an mou for you to consider on just the part of our skills for life students being at the boys and girls club i anticipate having it for you at the next board meeting for consideration on that there's still no cost to the district um but there it'll be a separate mou from one that in the future we're still looking at what what it

114would cost to open a child care center for employees but once that happens then i agree with you sir that we will absolutely need to communicate that out to the parents if it goes through a couple other announcements i'm pleased to hear so many acknowledge our teachers this this past year and the year before that i mean if you just think back what's been the life of a teacher the past couple years they had to adjust their entire curriculum to an e-learning environment in about a week's time i mean like it's been amazing what our teachers have done and a couple people mentioned some of the challenges of this year of consolidation of staffing our teachers have risen to the task they absolutely have and i'm so proud of them when i see them in

115action i see the kids learning we saw some evidence of it tonight with the kids doing the poem in both english and spanish we see the work strong work our teachers are doing in our classrooms so i am very grateful uh for the team that we have we'll have a few openings for the year to come um hopefully we can fill them all and have a full crew for for the year to come of course we had a huge celebration this past thursday um as we honored annie burns hicks with the dedication in the morning first of maywood school now in her honor as annie burns hicks elementary and then in the evening we were able to show this wall must come down her documentary i have a a letter from maxine simmons that i'd

116like to read to the public in the trustees it says on behalf of the annie burns six committee we would like to thank you and the board for the outpouring support from mrs burns burns hicks on thursday april 28 with such an amazing day with the participation of principal smith and her staff in the student body of annie burns hicks elementary school we would also like to thank mr nate george for the undivided attention he gave us during this new branding of the school mr david reyes in the grounds crew also did a wonderful job making the grounds and building look amazing the technology department who made it available for those who could not attend the assisted living community where mrs6 lives was able to watch because of you and we greatly appreciated it our

117work is not done and we are taking a short break so we can begin working on the annie burns hicks curriculum we look forward to working with mr salinas and cannot wait to get the lafayette columbia maywood and burns hicks halls ready for the new school year thank you again for your support in this endeavor and we look forward to working with the board in the future sincerely maxine simmons chairperson of the annie burns hicks committee very nice there so there is more work to be done you can see it at night when you go by now we have an illuminated sign in the front of the building that says any burn six elementary thank you um a lot of people pitched in from every department in the school system you we didn't get to

118mention uh previously mr halusca that's our printing and graphic arts class they printed the print materials for for that day um jasmine levine fatima padilla who designed the bulldog logo our food service department hammond police department was there to do the flag ceremony city of hammond anyone affordable signs were the ones who put up the sign i heard trustee king just mention our teachers at burns hicks our students there everybody it was just it just was such a nice event that everybody from school city pitched in and and the whole thing was just so positive so thank you again for everyone uh who who either came or celebrated um renaming the the school after miss burns hicks this friday we hope will join us i understand there are still a few tickets for sale at

119the dynasty for our school city of hammond hero and education dinner i'd like to also congratulate franklin elementary they were named the indiana fresh fruit and vegetable program school of the year second school in sch to win this distinction with the last five within the last five years o'bannon last won it in 1718. like to thank indiana state senator eddie melton who had the pleasure of giving a tour to hammond central um he extremely positive remarks about our new school he mentioned it was the most diverse school that he had ever been in and uh but had a lot of kind things to say about what we have done with our with our school i also like to thank congressman frank van junior who came to morton about a week and a half ago spoke

120to our seniors about their next steps after graduation and making sound financial decisions i'd like to invite everyone to come see matilda that's our current hapa programming that open tonight but we have showings tomorrow night saturday and sunday if you're looking to do something with your mom on mother's day come out to hapa and i'm sure they will enjoy a performance of matilda it is also school lunch hero day tomorrow so we want to thank all our food service employees there's sometimes our unsung people in our buildings but they make sure our kids are well fed and taken care of and i love our food service group they know so many of our kids names they know the kids they know what they need so they are school lunch heroes in between now and our

121next board meeting we will also have school nurses day that's next wednesday so i'd like to thank health services my what a time to be a nurse right what a time in the past past year or two to be in the health profession so thank you to our our health services department everything you have done for our students and then just three final quick announcements we have some student athletes who got scholarships with the following schools jocelyn rodriguez from south suburban college for softball nate king and lady on barnes indiana university northwest for basketball and roman hernandez kentucky state university for football so that concludes my announcements and thank you that's the end of our agenda do i have a motion to adjourn so moved you