Board Meeting November 2, 2021

001[Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] this hopefully we'll get started real quick i'd like to call this meeting to order welcome to the school city of hammond regular meeting of the board of trustees for tuesday november 2nd can we all stand and recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance thank you roll call trustee murphy present trustee king we're here trustee candelaria president trustee miller president trustee zolno also present all members are present this evening that takes us to item number two presentation on hammond central high school superintendent miller good evening everyone good evening to those watching online today we have our monthly update on hammond central and the project status report

002i believe we have some representatives from skillman on the screen good evening gentlemen good afternoon how are you good evening good anyone hear me okay we can perfect awesome here to give you uh your november board report per usual we have our table of contents with the progress key plan uh some pictures four-week activities milestone dates current on-site diversity and the budget here's the current footprint of the existing school that everyone knows here are the room sizes and capacities that were requested last board meeting just touch on some of the specifics in the school the auditorium is nearly 8 500 square feet with a capacity of 1040. the main gem was about 14 000 square foot feet roughly with 1600 max capacity on the cafeteria is around 7 400 square feet with nearly 500 max

003capacity into them um there are a total of 48 restrooms within the school age per eight per floor um on the on the east side where the academic area is and the academic wings are um there are 10 total staff restrooms as well and eight athletic staff restroom restroom so um just to give you an idea of some of the capacity um and um square footages within the school is that um this is the progress key plan of the football field and track on the north side uh with the footprint of the outbuildings and some of the discus and shotfoot areas going over some pictures here um this is going to be the north parking lot area an existing school demolition is wrapping up here pretty quickly this is on the parking lot facing east

004the southeast side where the existing school was this is the area where the underground attention system for drainage will be stored underneath the parking lot this is the construction of the football field in the future track and as you can see the out buildings uh it's being erected restrooms and locker rooms you have a closer picture some of the grand stands are footings are being installed a closer look of the concession locker room and restrooms for the track of football field for game day next four weeks finish punch lists and close outs for the high school exterior wise for the athletic amenities install block filler and paint for the locker room areas continue with utilities for the north athletics all forming and pouring home side bleach appears remaining flat work installing underground attention and filtration

005system installing utilities for the parking lot um complete the existing demolition of the school and began installing conduit for the parking lot awesome dates complete demolition um complete the new football bleachers and concessions in december in the new east parking lot towards the end of november this is the progress key plan of the work that we're doing at morton high school some interior renovations of the classrooms you see on the north side on the shaded areas um where the potential work is going to be here's some pictures the uh the small auditorium at morgan high school um some of the light fixtures and ceilings were demoed and were demolished in the wood paneling on the walls um this is the new vestibule uh future vestibule secured vestibule uh on the main entrance of morton high

006school getting ready for foundations this is the fencing for demolition another footprint of scott middle school progress key plan that we're doing work in this is the library uh scott middle school library classrooms that we're going to have interior renovations in the existing pool you can see they're starting to frame up to um fill those pools in so it can be enough existing active space for the school next four weeks for more in high school um interior renovations for the classrooms and small auditorium uh continue the vegetable edition and the decorating along 169th and around grand avenue for scott middle school pouring pine creek with a slab over the full infill build temporary classrooms in the old pool area and construct two new classrooms in the library area for morgan uh roofing finalize close outs

007and punch lists house zone dates for those respective projects temporary classrooms december of this year complete the vestibule in january start window replacements at both schools in december this year complete the fencing in december and also the morton gym lighting will be completed by the end of the year here are some of the uh diversity accomplishments that we've reached thus far uh 67 minorities on the job and of the workers that are on site are from hammond i think it's uh it'll be good to mention that for a couple months now we've been around 50 or plus percent uh on our minorities uh participation on the job uh we're going to continue to try to improve that uh we're we are happy where we are now that where we came from beginning the project and

008uh i think that's a correlation with our outreach efforts and our extended uh help within the city so i'm going to continue to improve on that and wanted to touch on that a little bit some of the backing from our day-to-day manpower again we have 47 uh workers on site per day 67 percent minority um 15 60 are hammond residents for the past month and uh i'll pass over to mr mucheski to go over the budget update all right thanks david so once again folks we've got the two column we have the two columns here um for central high school that one's still trending very nicely contingency hasn't moved since the last meeting over to the very far right column the athletic complex and demolition we have completed or you know 99 completed the demolition

009so those costs are uh being finalized with regarding to the unforeseen conditions that uh the demo contractor found for the pool and the extra slabs concrete slabs and the sheet pilings so we're we're trending in the range of uh 85 to 90 000 and we're proceeding on time and material tickets so those are actual costs larry's on site along with myself and three others and we're verifying tickets on a daily basis and contractors you know do not leave the site until those tickets are signed off by us and we verify time and what material has been removed and what material has been brought in so again those are actual costs to date contingency is still healthy and we're progressing nicely thanks david thank you chris uh i'll open up the floor for questions if there

010are any thank you do you have any questions trusty king it's just us trusty king oh thank you i was uh the capacity report you had um dude i guess you didn't have an opportunity to put it in on the report today so could you please include that or send it to mr miller so that we can have it and boredom because it's not even in the uh it is on board docs i don't see it um well maybe secondly um my second question was the lockers how soon would the lockers be um in the building and the total number of lockers where we have purchased oh oh i'm sorry go ahead you go like chris already okay yeah the added lockers that have been purchased i mean obviously with it being a roll sheet

011good that's one of the main construction industry delays that we're seeing right now that can take anywhere between five to six months so there's there's a there's a possibility and we're trying to do everything we can to expedite it but it's a possibility trustee king that we can see them as as far out as april may um larry's been in touch with those folks on a daily basis i don't know larry if you have any any better updates than that but it that there is a shortage of cheap cheap rolled goods what are the number of lockers that will be installed in the school uh there was an additional 200 lockers that were purchased and larry and mark manship from schmidt associates we're looking at other locations to uh place lockers at so there there

012can be some additional lockers added do you know what the amount is though chris that's the thank you mr miller the total amount yes i would have to get the new new count scott i mean it's been we've added twice so far so i want to say it's close to 2100 okay that works yeah and here again i think when it's all said and done i believe we're trying to reach anywhere from 23 to 23.50 okay thank you on that uh how many more cl how many more classrooms will require a second coat of paint um none sir none i don't see what the reason would be for another coat of paint what she's referring to was we had some feedback about one of the special education classrooms that over fall break they came in

013and did some degree of painting i i don't know how much if it was touch-ups or certain things but that's what i believe that's what trustee is referring to yes uh that was the explanation was given as to why the special needs class didn't have any educational displays on the walls or it literally was just it just overlapped we had to relocate and move some of the whiteboards so the newly installed meteor panels the educational panels i believe you're speaking of could be installed so over break we did have to on both both of the classrooms we did have to move those and those have been installed here over break as well so are you saying that you had to paint where the old locations were where you where you moved them from yeah sarah's

014minimal um we had to move um one one of them to the corner and two of them away six inches up from where they originally were at uh the problem was the marker on the bottom of the marker boards was was impeding on the actual promethean panels from going in so yes correct uh mr miller we had to remove those and then just touch up the paint and the areas around those thank you any other questions president zulno trustee murphy um question for the superintendent i'm confused about the locker issue is there insufficient lockers at hammond central don't we have like 1900 students why do we need 2 300 or are they for morton high school so the the original amount that they had slated for the project i found out later in the project

015was not sufficient to cover the 1900 so we did buy additional i think those are the ones that might be on order um that's the first time honestly i've heard the 2300 number but some of the issue was trying to key them all like we have a bunch of lockers already obviously no one has been in the school season there's lots of lockers there but the issue has been assigning the combinations i believe to all the lockers so they're all at the same time is that curricular i know i've talked to you about this situation before i'm sorry could you say that again yeah what is what was the reason for the delay in us in assigning the actual lock sets you i remember you and i had a conversation about it before um the

016lock sets and all that with the lockers we had this was the beginning of the delays when we initially had the additional lockers uh 207 i believe um from months back and so we had we were we were waiting for those as well so those got pushed back as well um and so when we had to put the lockers we had to make sure we had the right lockers because they have a locker chart for the combinations and everything i'm working close with david borsitz on to try to again calculate the potential amount that we will need to fulfill for the students at hammond central um but yeah there was basically had to have those they each locker themselves to be sequentially in order uh they had it set up so that all of them

017have a combination and they are all in a numerical order so the students do or do not have lockers all of them and how are we accommodating the students that don't have lockers are they sharing they're not using them they're not in you they're not using they're not using them they're not you they're still our students backpacks on everybody every day excuse me so that's what i'm actually asking so they're allowed to wear a backpack then in school okay so we're accommodating the students until we get the issue fixed correct trustee zuno thank you thank you trustee king i'm glad we cleared the air on that but even so students wearing a backpack on her back every day i mean what kind of uh convenience is i'm sorry that to me is a total inconvenience

018to the students i mean they're in the classrooms if you literally said in some of those classrooms it's so tight you know there's an issue with where you're putting the backpacks and it's just it's not acceptable that we're almost past the second semester and the students do not have lockers it's unheard of and and then it's going to be they're going to have a cultural shock when we ever get the lockers you know taking the backpacks away from them you know and that's going to be an issue so i mean uh skillman larry whoever it's just totally unacceptable that uh we're at this state of the game and these students do not have lockers and even the additional lockers where are you gonna put them i i don't see i see where they're already installed

019but i don't see any any additional room where you're gonna put these additional 500 or two or three hundred uh lockers so just do this if everyone could recall the programming for students was accurate what what you're experiencing and mr miller correct me if i'm wrong is the growth of more students signing up and attending camden central so what schmidt has had designed back two three possibly four years ago was adequate however the growth is now being such that you need added lockers so trustee king as i mentioned earlier we're reviewing with the engineers and designers to find these spaces to add more lockers to accommodate your growth trustees it's not the lack of of lockers just weren't available i mean the the added lockers that were recently added and purchased are on a waiting

020list to be fabricated but it's still mind-boggling as to why the ones that are installed i've heard your explanation are not usable and when you indicated that you know two three four years ago you were looking at a different plan yes for whatever reason it was a middle high school but i re but i so very remember when the board finally voted that it would be a high school i asked the question if you have to make any additional modifications to turn it into a high school would it cost us any additional money and can you do it the email if you recall mr miller said emphatically we have no problems we will fit that school to a high school without any additional problems or money and that is not the case today thank you

021very much president zulno trustee murphy it and while trustee blake clean is correct what wasn't factored in was the consolidation so when we consolidated we were built for like 1700 students and now you have like i believe over 1900 and so it's not optimal no it's not i actually was one of those nerdy kids who loved taking my backpack all day and didn't want to go to my locker at all but and i've had children at morton high school that had to share lockers because of overcrowding over there so while it's not optimal as long as we're letting kids do what they need to do so they can have their books for classes we're all going to get through this eventually it's unfortunate but it's one of those things with new constructions like he said

022covid has caused supply chain problems you can't get enough rolled metal for the additional lockers yes it's an issue but we should just allow the administrators to do the best they can with their students while we wait for the lockers to come in thank you any additional questions okay we will move on to item number three public expression first period it's specifically limited to items on the agenda tonight if it has to do with the negotiations or the teachers that would be in the second period again you're limited to three minutes public expression first period limited to items on the agenda please state your name address and you'll have three minutes when you reach the podium first community member is going to be anita cox good evening mr miller and school board i will be

023talking on the agenda about the personnel report four more teachers have resigned from the school city of hammond it seems unprecedented that every week a teacher resigns and a new position is always created one that's not in the classroom the increased demands the frequent changes the lack of resources and respect and the inequitable pay have taken their toll but it does not have to be this way the school city of hammond received tens of millions of dollars to support all of your staff let me read directly from the faqs from the indiana department of education it says other activities that are necessary to maintain the operation and continuity of services and local educational agencies and continuing to employ existing staff of the local educational agency that can be used can esser funds be used for

024staff stipends yes period also providing principals and other school leaders with the resources necessary to address the needs of their individual schools additionally esser funds can be used for building improvements carpets this is this is not items on the on the right this has to do with keeping people off of the personnel that's not what the second session mr miller that's the trustee zuno's call yes that is that's for the second period again isn't the personnel report on the agenda you mentioned the personnel report now you're into esser and everything else at this point and it is directly related to how to keep people from leaving again i respectfully disagree with you well i apologize but you'll have to wait till the second session [Applause] next community member please state your name and address and

025you'll have three minutes auntie cobb hi my name is nancy cobb and i do live at hammond 834 highland street which i have on my thing post office box 1294. okay i have a couple of questions concerning what you had on first of all the young lady that didn't she was here she's here and she didn't know that she couldn't raise her hand and say she had a question but she wants to know i'll go with her first she wants to know if she can get a copy of the budget because she could not read what was on the screen you know it went fast it was tiny and she wants to know if she can get a copy of that budget for central uh for hammond central i mean living for it okay then

026i want to go with they were talking about the underground detention system tell us what that is maybe some of us might not know what the underground detention system is detention means a lot of things to a lot of different people so therefore that needs to be explained that's one of my questions one of my next and it's and then later on it's a detention system and filtration system but i first want to know about that detention center that is going directly across the street from um the hammond city hall okay then i want to know will scott have a pool a swimming pool or will when they cover this pool up there that means the students at scott will not be able to take swimming which is a very good curriculum that we need

027in the schools okay and then i had another question what were the unforeseen uh demolition problems you said there were demolition problems but you didn't say what they were we need as the citizens of hammond need to know what these demolition problems are uh let's see what else did i write down i had something for uh trustee murphy but i wrote her name but i didn't write the question i'll talk to you after the meeting i have to think of what it was um and i do agree with i do would like to know more about you said the uh lockers we probably won't get the additional 200 and at first we didn't even know how many it was before they said the 200. now that they said we won't be getting it into april

028or may school will be out they won't need them this whole year then they won't use them that's the first year they will not use the uh lockers because it says they probably won't get them until april or may we'll be out of school in may okay i have nine more seconds all right thank you if i have some more questions i'll be but i would like to get answers for the question to for us to just get up here and ask questions and never get an answer i don't like that thank you thank you that concludes everyone written in for uh first uh period public expression president suno trustee king may i add this bit of information and trustee murphy probably remembers it when it comes to public expression the reason we asked for

029their name and address because the secretary always or the superintendent at the time always had someone within that department to send a letter to that that person with an answer and that's why because i mean i've been going to school for years as well as yourself over 50 years and i i was going through a bunch of boxes and i saw some of those letters from barb you know responding to questions that i asked at a podium at a school board meeting so it is sort of disheartening for the public to come before us every every two weeks and they ask valid questions and we either run in the after the meeting and share the answers but they need documented they need their questions to be documented written so that they can be understand them

030and i would hope that at some point we can follow that format that's the purpose of asking them for their name and address they were always followed up with the answer to their questions thank you mr president mr president i'm sorry murphy trustee murphy um i it should be over on that table public information request forms so if sometimes the superintendent during reports from the superintendent he does address comments during the time or he meets people after the meeting which is his purview to do how he wishes however if someone wants that formal letter then they should feel free to fill out one of those public information requests over there and give it to the superintendent secretary and then those questions will then be addressed in letter form having come to me i don't know

031why i think they want to make sure they're actual him in residence or they identify them in case there's other issues is why they used to ask for a name um an address but it's something that goes back to prior to 2000 and i cannot tell you how it started on the names and address but if you have questions over there please write them down and give them to the board secretary if that's a public information request form and if not we can get one for you yep that's it yep write your questions on there and please give them to the board um superintendent secretary thank you trustee murphy that is totally different moving on unfinished business we have none that takes us into the consent agenda president zuno trustee king under unfinished business um

032i have sent several emails regarding some issues that we discussed at board meetings and otherwise and i have to date they have not i have not received any answers uh school improvement a plan i had several questions and uh you from looking at our emails you answered trustee murphy's but you never get back to me you requested several reports but let me finish mr miller all right clean go ahead i mean you forget you work for me i don't work for you okay well you were my hammond resident too well that has nothing to do with it i'm an elected official we have we hired it you work for me well anyway allow me to finish my questions and uh i had asked questions regarding uh graduation rates still still don't have the answers on

033the number of suspension and expulsions i've asked you at a public meeting i've sent you an email i still don't have any information and that's old business to me because it was on our agenda when we were hiring our hearing officers and not specifically ask you how many cases do we have mr miller i'll get back to you you have not so uh under old business i would hope that at some point you would go back into your emails and find all the emails i've sent you and questions i raised and answer my questions i so would appreciate it mr miller thank you very much just quickly i have sent requests a lot of them there are some of them you asked for reporting that takes a while to put together and i'm not going

034to send back incomplete emails um you're but they are all in process i can tell you that thank you okay as i said earlier that brings us to the consent agenda do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda mr president trustee miller i move for the approval of the consent agenda as presented items a through e do i have a second second all in favor aye aye opposed opposed you didn't ask for the discussion i did not i am sorry you are correct jesus well you know every once in a while people make mistakes not every once in a while it's been oh really just trust me moving on wow such disrespect to me would you like discussion trustee king thank you trustee zuno yes i do under the personnel report i had

035uh i have a question about the executive summary mr miller remember i asked you the question to give us the number of teachers that are actually in the classroom right and you provided that on our executive summary and the reason i raised that question is i was trying to get a a handle on if we have 60 teachers hired at a building and 35 call off called off or not present the buildings aren't aren't how are the buildings covered because that's that's when when i hear an executive summary that's what i'm really trying to focus on how many students are left you know not serviced in terms of getting their education if 35 teachers are absent and you only have 60 at a building what happens and so i would ask that this report could

036could it reflect that the executive summary some kind of way it just that's a question it's a request if it can't uh additionally regarding the um personnel report the um i just stumbled upon this i don't even know why i have never even seen this alternative education we have an alternative class um dr ship has been leading the charge with that but it's at the acc did you want to speak for a minute about what's going on with the alternative program or i don't know the alternative program is new this year it was designed to prevent us from students that are recommended for expulsion our hearing officers have options versus just putting them out of the school district the hearing officer has an option to refer them to the alternative program so they can continue

037receiving their education addressing the reasons why they are recommended for expulsion and the goal is to get them back to their home school so how many teachers do we have how many what how many administrators who is manning this this program currently we have mr chase who is housed at the acc he oversees alternative program we have four teachers we have a special education teacher and part of the program that we have and i can share more uh detail with mr miller to share with you as i said i was i had no idea i mean i guess i recall we talking about it but i didn't know it was in full action so how many students are currently in the alternative i can provide you those exact numbers because we have cases right now

038that are in transition and part of the hearing officer once she makes that decision or he makes the decision for that student to go to the alternative program it's an intake process with mr chase to make sure they understand expectations and goals so they set goals to address their behavior their academic and their career well i guess finally why haven't we had a presentation on this and i just saw it alternative education so the goal is once we complete the semester and we have all the evidence of who was recommended um to the program we evaluate the success of the program then that will be shared with the board we did present the programming i know it was that big long meeting but we did in the spring but we did talk about the need

039for an alternative program it's been something for those who've been in hammond for a long time it's been a missing piece it has we just have had the option of if a student does an expellable level offense they're on the street like that's that's been what we've had in the past and we also have the crossing as a partner but this is we would see as an intermediary and we don't actually have to expel the kid they don't have to get an expulsion on their record if they come to the the program do what they're supposed to do and get transitioned back into school by the same token i've been asking you repeatedly how many suspensions and and at some point i would have thought you could have provided well that the kids we do

040have now we have an alternative program for these students and you never said that i had to see it on this report and then i'm saying alternative education i remember the president uh i'm sorry with all due respect miller i think we're getting way off the consent agenda i'm talking about an item on this personal report we have created a new position for alternative education for a special ed teacher and i it just blew me away what is this all about so it is on the agenda i am not off of the agenda well the position is on the agenda but not the program and a presentation and no one's prepared to share that this evening but but my whole point is if you don't ask nobody tells you anything that's my whole point it's

041been discussed a number of times no it during that five hour marathon of a public work session and i remember it being mentioned but again you don't have a program like this and the board don't have all the the parameters of it the criteria that's my question and then one final question on the payables let me see where is that can't i've lost my place uh thank you mr president and i'll either email or bring it up at the next court meeting thank you very much any other discussion regarding the consent agenda president zol now trustee murphy i'd like some clarity about the request on the executive summary um i know this is a relatively new report i am hearing what was asked i'm not sure what's needed there i know in the past when

042we had the number of teaching positions there might be another column where the number of positions needed but to ask if a bunch of teachers are out of out sick how would we handle that that's an internal thing for the administration to decide so i'm not seeing a way to change it with that prior question if we want to add a column with how many teaching positions we have listed out on the um hr that might be helpful but i'm not sure what's being asked here to change it just to help out our administration who might try to do any changes trustee juno trustee king the question was the executive summary right salary analysis you said salary analysis thank you any other questions so again how do we want to change it so our administrator

043are we going to be adding another column or should we follow up with the email superintendent miller on this issue i i'm a little vague about it as well so i don't know okay i i will follow up with email on it so maybe we can get more clarity at that time thank you any other discussion if not all in favor of the consent agenda all in favor aye aye aye opposed no for ea one no motion passes takes us to new business the approval of the substitute support staff rates trustees we are recommending to increase the amount for support staff to stub from 25 a day to 40 a day with the increase in the regular substitute rates it created a inequality situation where there was more financial incentive to to sub instead of

044report to work that day so this makes that rectifies that inequity do i have a motion mr president christine miller i move for the approval of the substitute support staff raids as presented second motion in a second do i have any discussion any discus trustee king the question it says mr frill attorney will submit the mou with updated rates to us on monday that is the mou is the memorandum of understanding that's in public comment he didn't have it done on friday so that was just a note to the board that it was coming on monday so this is it is complete it is complete yes thank you very much any other discussion trustee murphy yes trustee king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee miller yes trustee zomo yes motion passes 5a zero knows next item

045is the approval of the head start staff stipend yeah say that one fast right trustees i am recommending the approval of the head start staff stipend um they were the only employee group to not receive a stipend back in june when the other employees did and that was primarily due to the way that they are funded we do have approval now from geminis who provides their funding to correct that situation so the total cost is 57 no cost to school city paid entirely by by geminis through the grant thank you do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the uh head start stipend as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion discussion how much c king thank you how much would each person get

046i don't see it here at this year yeah um barb did did you want to speak to that real quick we have uh director gustin here who is the director of the head start program evening trustees um the it would be commensurate with what the district had in the spring so the teachers would get the 3 000 and then the groups under that would have a smaller amount how much more is it how much smaller i'm sorry um one group would get three one would get two and one would get 1500 the classroom aids does that answer the question it certainly does thank you thank you any other discussion trustee miller yes trustee candelaria yes trustee king yes trustee murphy yes trustee zono yes motion passes 5-0 trustee zuno yes trustee king may i ask

047mr miller question well the question is have we have everyone that should get a stipend receive a stipend will we be getting any more additional folks i am not anticipating anymore this was purely a funding issue that their funding comes from geminis and geminis just allowed this recently so this should be it i would hope so okay thank you all right moving on the approval of memo memorandum of understanding between the school city of hammond and indiana wesleyan university health service practicum trustees this mou would allow indiana wesleyan bachelor's degree in master's degree nursing students to do their practicum in school city of hammond so no cost to the school system it's providing those additional supports for our health service offices thank you do i have a motion mr president trustee miller i moved for

048the approval of the mou between the school city of hammond and indiana wesleyan university health service practicum as presented do i have a second second motion in a second any discussion any discussion trustee murphy yes trustee king yes trustee candelario yes trustee miller yes and trustees only yes motion passes 5-0 next up we have the approval of the contract with gen geminis corporation head start programming and services trustees this is the annual contract with geminis for our head start program in the amount of one million seven hundred sixty six thousand six hundred fourteen dollars um that we have to approve each year do i have a motion mr president trustee king make a motion that for the approval of the contract with timothy's corporation headstart programming and services do i have a second second i

049have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee miller yes trustee candelaria yes trustee king yes trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion passes five zero items approval of the contract with dr yanina gomez mindful parenting talks trustees this is for a parent workshop for the amount of 500 through the ldp program paid for through the title iii state grant which is for our english language learners and their families thank you do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the contract with dr yanina gomez mindful parenting talks as presented second we have a motion in a second any discussion any discussion all in favor all right opposed motion passes five zero next up we have the approval of the agreement with life touch trustees this is

050a yearbook contract for scott middle school for life touch to produce the yearbook um no cost to the school system and a student pays directly do i have a motion presidential now trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the agreement with life touch as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye opposed motion passes item g virtual academic academy program trustees um at the last public work session this past thursday we had data presented and we had discussion about the status of the virtual academic academy program this item's listed on here as action and discussion if there was any further discussion that we need to have if if my opinion on this issue would be if the board intends to keep this no action is

051required because it's just assumed we will keep doing it only if there would be an action to um to look at putting those teachers back in classrooms that would be the only reason to take an action so that was the only reason i was bringing it up is we have some of the lowest student-to-teacher ratios in the program and we have a lot of vacancies for teachers it's not that i think the program or those teachers are doing anything except great work but that that was why i brought it up we agreed that we would have further discussion here and and that's it i don't actually have a recommendation for you it's if there's any additional discussion thank you president trustee king thank you my concern as i shared with you last thursday was that

052as the virtual academy is presented today it is a literally a private school funded by school city do happen uh at the time when we approved this virtual academy academic academy i was on the impression that it was open to all the students or the parents who wanted their child in this but now we're finding that it was limited to 77 students and the criteria was they had to have aids and b's no behavior problems no no just perfect students and as i expressed then that is no way to set up a a virtual academy for this district now do we move forward with it of course we can't disappoint those parents that have their kids in this school now but as far as the criteria i think is is obscene because literally we have

053the data we know by our own data that mr adam white presents to us every year we know the number of students that are failing are not failing so we knew in advance who was going to get in this in this academy so the parents out there who was trying to get their kids in wondering what happened why couldn't i get my kid in that in this in this academy well that's why somebody set the rules that it was only set for 77 kids and with all this criteria and it's so unfortunate that a student with a c average didn't have the opportunity to be in this kind of setting and perhaps but two and three and four and five kids in a classroom you know virtually it could have helped them so uh i

054certainly don't want to see it go but i certainly don't like the way it is established because you're only catering to the best kids and that should not be in this district every student every parent should have had the opportunity to register their child in this class so that is that is my thing if we move forward i would like to see the criteria removed and i i'll put it in a form of emotion uh mr president trustee king i i make a motion uh that the virtual academic academy remove all of the criteria that they have in place at this point to allow parents to enroll their child into the virtual academic academy we have a motion do i hear a second do i have a second for lack of a second motion dies

055mr president trustee murphy um part of the requirements was also attendance so do we really want to give those teachers attendance of students that were hardly ever showing up to class that was one of the requirements these kids had to have 95 percent better attendance in order to enroll in this college again i would like to see this to move forward i'd like to see us open it up see if we can get enough students so those teachers can have full capacity i'd also like to see us there are parents the way we sent it out i don't know why they're not checking parent square um they're not on facebook a different way to advertise this material to them perhaps we can send postcards home come spring for next year if we're going to go

056move forward with this it's a great program again i'd like to see this opened up for next semester to see if we can get those numbers in the classroom added up um soon but again let's look at different advertising so um what trustee miller had said at another time is we were trying to get those home-schooled students into our things and for them this is a great opportunity they're getting access to classes at the high school level the home school students that i as a parent would never be able to teach for them so that's my comments on this program thank you mr president trustee miller um just a point of clarification um we initially didn't have a cap on the program it was the the students that qualified got into the program there was

057no cap correct correct and um my my desire would be that of trustee murphy's that if we're going to continue with the program can we open enrollment back up and and build to the capacity that we have based on the available resources and that would be the plan i'm assuming like if we take no action tonight correct the the plan would be if the board takes no action that we would open up enrollment um i believe we're prepared to do it tomorrow actually okay and we would fill the elementary middle and high school position to their capacity assuming there was that demand if we had over demand if we had additional demand i would not recommend pulling teachers out of the building to to fill i would recommend a a lottery simple less similar to

058like hass does okay at capacity okay but just based on the resources we have we would fill it to that current capacity correct thank you any other discussion mr general trustee king my final thought on it i was looking at the report because mr miller what did we do we not have a choice problem with the uh uh with this virtual and i and and one other thing while you're looking i could be wrong and it's okay uh so i guess the teachers were asking the parents to call the board members to keep keep it and a couple of parents did call me and they they did indicate that uh they were they weren't they were happy they weren't that happy with the way it is set up because from what my understanding correct me

059if i'm wrong you got three different grades and one class and you know third grade fifth grade sixth grade and you're reading the same material to all three and and according to this parent she she just didn't understand and there was there was a communication problem as well so i would hope you look into that so uh you know if they're going to ask parents to call us to keep it well i'm just sharing with some of the things they were saying there was no communication when things went wrong and they they do need to do a better job on that thank you president um superintendent miller um mr white made a presentation for anyone who's very interested in this i would encourage you to look at the video from the public works session last

060thursday we talked in great detail about the performance of the program the challenges that we've we've faced with the program we did talk about things like the the truancies i believe the number was 90 periods of truancy for the secondary students in the program the truancy was not so much of an issue at the elementary and middle school age yes we've had to the program program's open for elementary it starts from grade three through six and so because we only had i believe ten elementary students that that only justifies having one teacher for that teacher has been differentiating and it my understanding is does a very good job at it and the elementary kids are having the highest degree of success but they also have the highest degree of hand-holding because they're elementary high schoolers

061as you might expect we have some that are rocking it and we have some that even though they did well with e-learning they are falling behind on their their e-learning assignments i will take ownership of the criteria my feeling all along was because you can also look at the data from thursday and see that over 90 percent of our kids are not on grade level so he and and more were on grade level before we went to e-learning so overall e-learning was not a great thing for our schools it was a safe thing to do but there's been costs there's been costs and i feel the best place for the overwhelming majority of our students is is with our teachers not to not to dramatically increase i do agree with filling the spots we have

062but um that's that's that's what i feel that they need um and there's a lot of reasons for that and and that's not really i suppose the point of tonight is discuss why we fell behind but that's not unique to us adam also presented the national data and we could see across the nation all the all the performance score that wasn't just a unique to hammond thing that was everywhere so the pandemic has taken its toll on us um and we continue to try to address but i felt putting a student who did not have success in virtual program when we were on it further into the virtual program did not seem like a logical a logical thing to do that they had to demonstrate that they were being successful in order to come in

063so did we set it too high we didn't we didn't include discipline attendance and grades were the two main thing criteria that we that we looked at um that's of course debatable but we wanted people who were being successful in that program thank you thank you item number seven upcoming board meetings our next board meeting is november 16th are we going to make a vote or we really only we'd only need a vote if if someone wanted to change what we're doing and and if there's no vote then we just keep moving forward there was no second but that was supposed to i thought that was a purpose that we don't have to uh we would only have to vote if a trustee wanted to stop what we're doing and so since they're i don't

064i don't hear any strong feedback that way we will we will open up the enrollment tomorrow and move forward with what we have i already say that because you know originally you seemingly that was your proposal to have it removed because you gave us three options to close it to open it up and remain the same that was your three options at the public work session so okay correct we will move forward with it we'll open enrollment this week upcoming board meetings november 16 2021 right here at 6 00 pm trustee candelaria public expression second period limited to three minutes uh first community member please state your name address and you'll have three minutes when you reach the podium john young before before you start the timer i just want to let the audience know

065that we do have the emails that didn't get a chance to be read on the first october meeting because the board had directed me to have them at the last meeting and there was a snafu with that we do have those i don't president zone do you want to read those at the beginning of public comment or would you like to have those read at the end i would say at the end okay that's fine so if you if that was you uh that doesn't disqualify you from speaking your three minutes today that's that was from that meeting so we will have those read at the end trustees you know trustee king so you're giving yourself three minutes per um yes so well just don't slow it down thank you we won't jennifer young 2345

066cole street chesterton indiana edgar's teacher poise grace strength humility understanding dignity willpower confidence and self-assurance these words describe the best principle i ever had in school city of hammond mrs barb fleming this at all is by no means a slap in the face or put down to my present school administration or any of my past school administration if you have the pleasure of knowing mrs fleming you would know this is all true and more she was first a gary police officer and then a principal of spone middle school before becoming the principal of edgar's under the leadership and guidance of dr watkins if you did not know her i feel bad that you didn't have the pleasure of being under her spectacular leadership she always had two quotes that i will never forget first i

067will always stand up for my teachers and never never let anyone push them around because i trust my teacher's words second i would put my edgar's teachers up against any other teachers in the state of indiana because they are that amazing well school city of hammond board and leadership you are losing these amazing teachers daily be like barb fleming i implore you do something reasonable and keep us here thank you next community member please state your name address you'll have three minutes viola arrington this was concerning all my children being suspended from school so just my time to speak now just a word of warning like you can't talk about any other individuals okay i'll put my daughter's name down so i also come up kind of able to okay okay so what i want

068to okay what i want to address is okay august 27th it was a shooting at hammond central the students returned to school if i'm not mistaken september 13th on september 13th there was no counseling or anything available for the students also from there my daughter jayla this is my daughter it was a student on that august 27th running through the school with the camera recorded my daughter here with another student they were running to get help from a nurse or something like that in the school it was another student that recorded that and was laughing at it my children um they're very close to the person that got shot they were very emotional about it no counseling anything was given to the students september 13th my daughter with another friend approached the student who they

069saw in their lunch sea who also was not supposed to be in lunch c because that was not her lunch period they asked the student could she take the video down from there a fight proceeded because the girl got up and her sister swung on my door to here and it was like a jump one thing some more students got involved it was a total of six students involved my daughter was suspended the only one suspended she called me to get her from school i was not contacted by no personnel from the school so on the 14th my other daughter jada september 14th she was suspended from now um september 29th i met with william vasquez and mrs reiser we had a hearing september 9th at hammond central i contacted them i came up here

070every day to the administrative building no one ever contacted me about anything except ms harrison the next day and just said come pick up my daughter that was it as far as alternative school supposedly there's an alternative school as far as i know of only black kids are attending here at hamilton through no structure it seemed like only black students are getting in trouble um there's no curriculum right now that they're um going under at the supposedly alternative school mr chase has you know talked to me and tried to give me assurance not to let my daughter out um take her out however what curriculum are they following because i'm not seeing what curriculum they're following i don't know how she's getting her credits because she still enrolled that hammerstein true still giving work falling

071behind in school she men fell behind because they were out almost close to a month and i just don't know what's going on period i contacted the 11th grade counselor she's supposed to get back with me as far as my daughter still being enrolled at hammond central and attending another school how long have this school been in existence um does it meet the indiana department of education requirements i'm not satisfied at all with what's going on like i said i've never truly been contacted especially by the principal i'm sorry your three minutes are up mr miller oh yeah mr miller thank you i'm just trying to refresh my memory dr green made a presentation no dr greene and i went to a workshop regarding suspension and expulsions last year or yeah the beginning of last

072year and in that workshop it indicated that if a student is suspended that their work that they have to continue to get their work assignments and that and and my understanding is that is not happening secondly um 10 days is normal it's the no seemingly the the max the maximum that everybody gets never four days or three days or two days there's always a 10-day suspension you know pending a hearing then we can't get a hearing because we don't have enough public uh hearing officers so again our our students are getting further and further and further behind so i i just need an update in terms of how are we addressing this suspension explosion and i've been asking you that because again the the data that you set that we sent down to indiana department

073of education indicated that we are still expelling african-american students more than any other students so we obviously and that's your data that's the data you all sent down to indiana department of education and i know in 2014 we were cited for that very thing and obviously we are not correcting it so i just need an update on terms of are these students getting their homework assignments once they are left the classroom and if they're not why and uh so forth and so on because this is what i'm hearing constantly i i've tried to bring it to your attention but again these emails you don't respond to them so what's the point of me you know addressing anything any further so could you clarify or at some point on this matter for my benefit as a

074board member yeah the legal obligation is that students who are out on suspension do receive their assignments and if that hasn't happened dr ship i'm sure can follow up about why that didn't happen but that is the expectation the goal is to have the hearing within the 10 days of of suspension it if that if it is an expellable offense now one of the things that came out of the disproportionality report that trustee is referring to in 2014 is our code of conduct and it's not a perfect document we actually doctorship is leading a committee to revise there are some teachers on the committee as well of revising some of the sections of the code of conduct that are most troubling but it does indicate in there which is which offenses are suspension or explosion

075worthy and which are not so we are following the code that was reviewed by the department of justice through that whole process it was reviewed by our attorneys and we are following the prescribed code for for these situations the alternative program the reason that they're still enrolled is it's not a school of attendance it is a program they maintain their attendance with their home school because i mentioned earlier they don't actually get expelled like students don't actually get expelled if they fulfill their requirements they stay enrolled in their school so i they're definitely again it sounds like we need to get a presentation sooner than later to the board to answer some of these questions but um but it is new this year the program is new this year so if there's some growing pains

076with it we will work through it we're going to make it work because we know our kids need it and the goal is not to keep them there the goal is to transition them back into the school where is there a handbook or something on this that we can do they get the parents get a handbook a piece of paper do they sign something i mean this is all just up in the air trustee miller i think this is public comment that's true it is public comment but it is not unusual when public come before us that a board member that a board member has the right to ask a question it has been done historically it is public comment but again very boring all right all right let's all stop right now of of

077of the of the superintendent let us all stop right now and give the time to the public to get up and speak who is next scandaleria next committee member please state your name address and you'll have three minutes renu organ rena horgan 7146 marshall avenue good evening president zulmo school board trustees and superintendent miller again i'm here tonight to speak to you about working conditions in our schools this past week has been very stressful with circumstances beyond my control yet these circumstances affected me and the students in my classroom you know we adopted this new reading series this school year we have now finished our first quarter of learning and we still don't have enough curriculum materials for each of our students or our teachers to use it's okay they tell us we just make

078paper copies of what we are missing until the order comes in but is that right is it even legal and we've been waiting for nine weeks for this order to come in i mean if every every student is paying book rental then shouldn't they have copies of books in their hands to use from day one instead of a paper packet i know i've got grandchildren in the school district i'd like them to have a book but even that set aside when everyone in the building is making paper copies of the materials that they need to use do you know how much toner we are using in our printer tons literally tons and then we are told to limit our copies because we are making we are using too much toner what we don't have enough

079supplies for our students so now what do we do and what happens when that copy machine jams or breaks down over overuse which happens almost daily well that happened to me last thursday what do i do on the fly well sometimes when that happens i resort to printing a copy or two in my classroom printer but the problem with that is that i need to make multiple copies because i can only print one copy at a time you've blocked my use of printing on my own printer in my classroom i don't know why because i'm the one who pays for that toner not you me this is just one instant where i'm wasting my time and using my own money to benefit the students in my classroom yet you don't see the need to see

080how teachers benefit this organization you fail to see all the little things that we do to keep you afloat if you don't open your eyes soon you will be steering the ship without a crew because your teaching staff is tired and our pockets are empty teachers will go elsewhere where we are appreciated apparently loyalty means nothing to you so why should it mean anything to your teachers you have proven that time and time again i beg you to open your eyes before november 15th and take the blinders off and see what your staff needs thank you for your time thank you next community member please state your name address and you'll have three minutes jamaica sawyer three minutes good evening my name is jamaica sawyers 175th and cayman avenue um last week i did or

081last time i was up here i did bring up the bridge to better and um just as i've stated we as a board in this room have not exemplified those qualities there were two out of the five board members who were in attendance if you'd please raise your hand thank you for attending i was not in attendance as it was probably quite clear when i made those statements as to why we're pioneering things that we don't believe in it makes zero sense we've agreed to several contracts thousands of dollars per person to have at that conference for less than 200 people to be in attendance that money could have been spent elsewhere as we've been negotiating the second thing i wanted to address today was there was a comment about carrying backpacks being an accommodation

082that is not an accommodation it is a safety concern and in that particular building we've already seen the ramifications of that type of behavior lastly i wanted to speak on something that sort of broke my heart this morning i'm a sixth grade teacher we are very excited to support the hapa program there is a new show coming out frozen junior and we sent a permission slip home to our students we wanted them to go we thought this would be a perfect thing to do i learned today that several students in the 6th grade their parents are not sending them and they said they did not feel safe this is not a field trip to chicago downtown this is an in-house field trip we're sending them from one school to the next within the same district

083and we have parents making comment that they do not feel safe sending their children to these and there's something that when i heard that i said how is it that we as a school district are failing these kids robbing them of that opportunity to not only get the educational experience but also the people who worked hard within our district at the hapa program to be supported because their students do not feel safe i please urge you all to reach out to the students parents or make some type of uh reach out to them because the fact that our students are not being able to go on this this field trip because the parents do not feel safe is unacceptable this is not going downtown this is literally from one building to the next and that

084is beyond belief to me but i understand why those parents have said that because of the events that have occurred in the school district this year and with my 30 seconds left of my 30 minutes as a teacher we've been getting up here every week explaining what's been going on in our classrooms and like i said i don't want it to come off as we're just up here complaining but to more so make you all aware so that the things that we're asking for you understand the reasons underneath them not just thinking that is you know coming from a place of greediness or anything like that we are bringing up these concerns so that you can address them and make sure that we get the things we need for our students thank you thank you

085next community member it's going to be please state your name address and you will have three minutes kimberly lane good evening my name is kimberly lane i reside at 1041 on eden street my question with you all is at what point do we take these children into consideration i see a lot of things being passed i see a lot of things being pushed through but the one thing i keep hearing is that these children are failing so at what point do we make them first sure these building renovations are needed the new buildings are nice but what's the point of them if the children are failing our staff doesn't have the support they need they're not getting the pay that they have earned over and over again time and time again at what point do

086we put together after school tutoring program we're partnering with purdue to get the teachers in there but how about partnering with purdue to get some students to do some tutoring to get our children at the level that they need to be at there's funding set in place for these things you have the cares funding why aren't we doing something with that we're dumping millions of dollars into these buildings but the children are failing so guess what they're just buildings they are not serving a purpose to these children none whatsoever you guys go back and forth with each other you're disrespectful to one another it's ridiculous it is about the children it is about these teachers that drag themselves out of their beds every day to come show up for these kids to give these kids

087an opportunity but their classrooms are overcrowded so that child that needs that extra help can't get it or the child that is excelling may get behind in some kind of curriculum because all the focus is on the child that is not excelling we need to find a common ground with that that is what we need to be addressing all this going back and forth and not trying to hear what's actually going on being very blatantly disrespectful to your other trustee members is unacceptable and we will not tolerate this anymore it's time to make a change these children deserve the best they are our future you want to give them the best in the building they need the best in their curriculum that is what they do not have and that is what we need as

088a community that's my time thank you thank you next community member please state your name address you'll have three minutes otis moore my name is otis moore i reside at 1429 shell street uh what the kids need now is structure instruction comes from leadership they also need morel and one of the things you did to kill the morale was you took away uniforms and uniforms are vital in a school now when kids get up in the morning they worry about what they gonna wear instead about what they gonna study they trying to pick out an outfit instead of just putting on a uniform and coming to school also you renamed the school i'm okay with hammond central but wolves you ever heard of boone grove wolf you ever heard of michigan city wool chicago wolves

089why we got to have hammond wolves i mean somebody must have stood up all night trying to figure out what the mascot gonna be and that's the best you can come up with i mean it don't make much sense and then the school you spend all these millions of dollars to build a state of our gym and it's not big enough to host a regional or for a regional everybody else that builds a school the gym is busy enough to host a 4a regional not hamlet high and then you go and you didn't leave in money for the football field all that stuff adds up now you ain't got enough locker then you change the name you didn't change martin name i mean you closed gavin you closed clark you said well the students gonna

090make gonna pick the name for the new hamlet central school where you didn't let the students at martin changed their name when the students at gather came over and picked that school so why all of these in discrepancies and it just goes to show leadership we don't have good leadership you're not gonna have a good followership and then you mistreat your teachers how can you keep teachers if you keep mistreating them why you think all the states around you saying come come to illinois come to michigan come to wisconsin we'll treat y'all right and that's why you're losing your people because you're not treating them right if you treat them right they'll stay if you give them good health care if you give them a good raise they do what they gonna do if they

091love what they doing they gonna stay but you can't keep kicking the dog and staying here ain't gonna move thank you community member please state your name address and you have three minutes galris you'll reach 3138 worth road in highland good evening superintendent miller and board members after attending so many of these meetings and hearing many of the same voices i felt a need to share not just for myself but for those caring teachers who are unable to do so because they are single parents they have small children they work more than one job to make ends meet they are exhausted or worst of all because they don't believe that speaking in this forum will even make a difference i'm hoping my presence tonight will continue to prove that all of us are interested in

092working our district and working to make our district be the best that it can be when i became a teacher my first job was at kenwood as a long-term kindergarten sub and after having an extremely rough class that year yes i had a five-year-old threat to shoot me over a cupcake i still applied for a permanent position here i wanted to be a positive influence in this lives of my students showing them that someone was there who believed in them which i am proud to say i successfully continued to do at that time hammond was a great district to work for our starting teacher pay was one of the highest in the area and our benefits were better than any other district unfortunately since that time i have watched brand new inexperienced teachers get hired

093at a greater pay grade than mine despite my years of experience these same teachers then left school city with a covid stipend equal to mine after only working for one year with us i have been told time and again by friends both in other districts and those who work for school city that i should be working in a more affluent city because my talents are being wasted here my question is why don't our students deserve the best why doesn't our board value the teachers who care to stay and put in the work to get our students where they need to be while also making them feel loved and safe i believe they do but right now i don't believe that this board wants to put in the work or the money to keep quality teachers

094like myself i watched a few weeks back as mr miller chuckled about not being able to hire subs i don't find it funny that every single week since school started my colleagues and i have had additional students in our classrooms taking away precious instructional time from our own students in addition to playing substitute i've also started having to serve breakfast while i'm trying to begin our morning routine and let's not forget the additional 30 minutes that have been added to my day without a mention of compensation in the last few weeks subpay has been raised there have been talks about raising the pay for new teachers and yet we are insulted by the offerings of this board friends in other districts are excited to share with all of us that they're seeing raises upwards of

095six thousand dollars per year with promises of more raises to come so i ask you mr miller what are you willing to do to keep talented teachers like myself here in hammond where they're desperately needed [Applause] thank you next community member please state your name address you will have three minutes daniel wolfe good evening daniel 9316 spring creek drive highland i've been attending board meetings this school year and i hope that my presence makes a difference whether or not i choose to speak as i sit in the back i'm not grading or just playing on my computer but i'm actually working a second job which is entirely online i do this to help compensate for my pay i wish that i did not need to do this and that my salary would allow me to

096live a day-to-day life in the past i've signed up for every eca possible trustee miller knows this as i've coached chess for several years and i'm a proud chess coach but it is almost sad that i had to sign up for something that at the time i had no clue how to play and or strategize in order to receive the stipend well in order to coach it and to receive the stipend but as i get older i do not have the stamina or necessarily the health to continue to have extracurricular activities that are outside of my work day which i shouldn't need to allow me to live so please continue up please continue to keep these things in mind as you continue to negotiate contracts there are many teachers in my position that feel the

097same way about their pay but as i have said in the past it is unfortunate that not everyone has the time and or energy to show up to and enjoy these long board meetings which make for an even longer work day thank you [Applause] the next community member please state your name address you will have three minutes nancy cobb yes i'm back nancy copp nancy cow yes and i live in the city of hammond and i had a few questions okay we have an alternative school and it says how many hearing officers do we have and are the parents part of this alternative school when it was organized or was it just the teachers or was it just administrators and not only for that how are they recommended i've had a bad day today at

098school and you know what you're going to alternative school is it a thing of that source or is it the child has been doing something constantly and i've just had enough of them so therefore you're going to go to alternative school but once you get to alternative school you need to have the work the whoever is the teacher oh first of all how many teachers do you have in alternative school you only have one two you got 20 kids 40 kids you have to have something to keep their mind busy and to keep their mind busy it should be some of the work that they should be doing the teacher or whoever is over those people that those students that are in alternative school and that's that's very close to my heart because i dealt

099with discipline in the school system so therefore there's a lot of things needs to be done and said and parents should have an input on this alternative school as well as the teachers and others in the community no i don't have any children in the hammond school district but i grew up in the hampton school district i i don't have any children but i have grandchildren and some great grandchildren in this school district and i do not want to see them go down in f's so far yes they're doing a work but is this a work really a work for just hammer and is it d work for another monster or c work for monster it should be a this should be good teachers across the uh across the board and yes you can keep

100looking at how many times it is and i understand that but these teachers deserve the best when i went to school here we had the best teachers and they had good relationship with the students now i don't even think there's a relationship because we don't have enough teachers and i understand that and i saw on here says something about support staff for the substitutes what kind of what what supports staff for the substitutes i don't know what it is and if i don't know i'm sorry you're three minutes okay my time is up but if i don't know some other people don't know either so that'll be one of the questions i write and i'll read it back to you the other people thank you next community member please state your name address you will

101have three minutes anita cox good evening anita cox a teacher at morton high school 8919 libel rhoden highland four more teachers have resigned from the school city of hammond it seems unprecedented that every week a teacher resigns and a new position that is not in the classroom is created the increased demands the frequent changes the lack of resources and respect the inequitable pay has taken its toll but it doesn't have to be this way school city of hammond received tens of millions of dollars to support all of your staff let me read directly from the frequently asked questions on the state of india indiana department of education it says that the money can be used for providing principals and other school leaders with resources necessary to address the needs of their individual schools can sr2

102funds be used for staff stipends yes it can be it can also be used for other activities that are necessary to maintain the operation of and continuity of services and local educational agencies and continuing to employ existing staff of the local educational agency additionally esser funds can be used for building improvements carpets hvac even buses that means that money from operations can be used to support school city of ham and health insurance instead of asking employees to pay more for it what i am trying to say is that the money is there to pay teachers to participate in a professional development instead of stealing their plan time the money is there to pay for school supplies the money is there to fully fund our health insurance plan the money is there to give all of

103your loyal employees a substantial increase in compensation that is comparable to other districts the money is there but the desire of those who write the checks is not i ask that this board acknowledge the need to use us or money to pay employees what they deserve before the no fifth november 15 negotiation deadline your immediate action is imperative we cannot have schools without teachers esther funds need to be on the table for contract negotiations we need our students to see stabilization of our school system we need to see a personnel report with no resignations and lastly please return to our monday through friday schedule at the high school this is yet another week of school where i only see my tuesday thursday class one day this week thank you next community member please state your

104name address and you have three minutes joel monroe hi i'm jill monroe i teach eighth grade math at scott middle school and i live here in hammond at 6550 arizona and i wanted to let you know that i was actually one of the people who did not have their email read a couple weeks ago an email that was sent in before you had changed that policy about having to be physically present at the school board meeting and i have come to have a voice for myself for my fellow teachers and for my students since it feels like that teachers are being silenced i have been a teacher at scott middle school for six years and never in that time have i seen what i've witnessed this year my classes our classes are overcrowded we have

105one eighth grade math teacher who has 39 students in one class we have a permanent math sub who has 37 i have special education students who are not getting the support or accommodations that they are required i have one class that is 47 special education students and i have no co-teacher i'm not licensed to teach special ed um we continue to have violence we have at least one or more fights per day we had four fights one day last week on one day we continue to have vandalism in our school we have students who are ditching classes we have students who are trying to record teachers on their phones to put us on the internet we had a math teacher who quit last week and now they're trying to move her students into our already

106overcrowded classrooms our students do not feel safe at our school our teachers do not feel safe at our school but we are still expected to show up always because that is what is expected of us to put our own safety and mental health on the line for our students teachers who do not feel safe cannot teach well and that means students cannot learn properly there has got to be a better way our students cannot learn in this chaos and you are expecting miracles from people who are too exhausted to perform them i am being told to think twice about failing students who can't or won't turn in work how can i grade absolutely nothing the expectations for our students are being too low i ask that you try to figure out a better plan than

107what we are doing now we are failing our students insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again thinking that it will change and what we are doing is insanity there is very little discipline going on except for extreme behaviors students who walk out of our classrooms just get returned we have taught our students that they can behave however they want to choose with no consequences however teachers are expected to still be strong there is no empathy for what teachers are going through right now flexibility is an important leadership skill and we are not showing it and you are not showing it teachers aren't leaving because they are getting better pay at other schools they are leaving because they are being disrespected we feel from our district on down to our students

108the licensed teachers who work for this district are an asset and a key to our future and it's time to keep them in any way you can thank you thank you next community member please state your name address and you have three minutes michael monroe hi my name is michael monroe my address is 6550 arizona hammond indiana um my wife jill jospo she's a teacher in hammond i'm a substitute teacher in the district and we have a son who goes to morton high school and i think that um just let you know first of all we had reserved this time in case her comments have been left incomplete so that i can complete those comments and that the teacher's voices could be heard um but also i think i think that i'd i'd really like

109to to applaud all of the teachers who've taken the courage to to step up tonight and say what their needs are and show these emotions in front in front of the public and showed this weakness despite they have a job where they're supposed to to look strong all the time and be leaders i would like to say that as as a substitute teacher um in in the school city i've i've been out so far this semester because of concerns for my own safety in the environment because of including assault of teachers vandalism of property improper behavior misconduct and overcrowding also as have been mentioned several times and um as much as i like being a sub and some of the other subs i work with one thing i would like to add in support of

110our licensed teachers is that some of the the work that my son is is facing in high school for example and other students in secondary i don't think is appropriate to staff with long-term subs and permanent subpositions because these are specialized subjects of study where expertise is required to teach it and if i'm i mean i'm a sub myself so i can say it if i'm a sub and i'm subbing for like uh geometry for like 11 weeks or something like that i'm not really going to have the expertise in that material to appropriately teach those students and then that's going to affect their performance in other classes as well as their behavior in my class and their behavior in other classes um one one last thing i would like to say is regarding the

111rule where where you've said people have to to show up in person to make their comments i feel that that rule is discriminatory toward individuals with disabilities and the rules should be changed because there may be people who can't make it here in person including individuals with disabilities or including working parents or including working grandparents who may have valid concerns and complaints for the city and or praise and so um when we're not even always educating in person we educate virtual these meetings happen virtual people should be able to submit virtual comments and not have to show up in person thank you very much thank you that concludes everyone written in for public expression ladies president trustee king thank you um i guess my my question is to mr miller um we did hear some

112outstanding recommendations uh the tutoring after school tutoring you know getting a one of the public one of the high schools or purdue one of our colleges to partner with us with that and we've heard so in your report could you still address some of these great ideas that's coming from our teachers and coming from our parents uh because they're not just here to just watch us they're looking for action they're looking for us to do something and as they've indicated week after week after week we have sat here and listened and we i don't see any action behind anything that they have requested and this can't this is insane it's like a broken record we got to do something our children are failing from the public work session last thursday when i saw those test

113scores one in two grades below one and two grades below so please mr miller when you give your report accommodate the folks that are here and give them something say something with some meat thank you superintendent miller do you have additional to read yes the ladies are going to read them for me i'll start first this is for laura santana again anyone who's watching these are the comments that we didn't get to finish on the first october meeting i was if you could still put a three-minute stop thank you i've spent a lot of time reflecting on the discussions we've had regarding concerns at the middle school level i arrived at the conclusion that many of the issues we have talked about could be best addressed by returning to the most appropriate practice for our

114students the middle school model and schedule the foundation of the middle school model is an interdisciplinary group of teachers sharing a common group of students and a common time to meet in this letter i will list the topics that have come up repeatedly during meetings and how using the middle school model would be be a powerful tool in addressing these issues number one student behavior under the middle school model teachers who share the same group of students are able to see students from different teachers perspectives a student who may be struggling behaviorally in one class might have success in another class team time allows teachers to share their student experiences and strategies we support one another with management ideas we can also pinpoint if certain behaviors are due to the cl time of class other

115students in class etc we also invite students to team meetings which gives them a chance to express their feelings and engage in shared problem solving number two relationships with students with the middle school model teachers are able to leverage their ideas to support the objectives of pbis we have time to plan positive behavior and reinforcement activities for the students we share there is nothing more powerful than surprising students with an event because a team has noticed something positive about their behavior students feel seen heard and valued when their teachers are shared teams create families within the school three relationships with parents under the team model one day a week is dedicated to meeting with parents for scheduled conferences parents truly appreciate hearing from all their children's teachers in one place at the same time because

116it provides a complete picture providing this time for parents and teachers is a powerful way to problem solve and build relationships i can only imagine how much more powerful this could be would be now that we can accommodate parents virtually as well number four relationships with other members of the school community teams provide a place for counselors therapists and other professionals to meet with all the stakeholders for a student at once this can be done in addition to or concurrently with parent conferences number five instruction interdisciplinary teams allow teachers to support and reinforce concepts and strategies across the curriculum in addition grade level teachers of the same content dedicate one day per week to align content instruction the end result is instruction that's connected authentic and aligned number six relationships among teachers team time allows

117new teachers to get support from their team members instead of feeling like they are on an island over time membership on a team makes teachers feel like they are a family too this goes far in retaining teachers and improving the school's climate number seven communication school-wide communication among all stakeholders is greatly approved by having a team structure administrators can meet with teams to share information teachers have a form to share ideas with the administration also teams provide a vehicle for school-wide professional development in closing i would like to thank you i'm sorry your three minutes are up [Applause] i have two more brook sanders hello board members and superintendent scott miller my name is brooke sanders and i am a fifth grade teacher at jefferson elementary i'm writing because i'm unable to attend today due

118to my graduate course being today as well which will be my second master i tell you that to say we are doing an injustice to teachers having one master's in curriculum instruction and soon having a second in educational leadership i will see no increase in pay even though people are hired to make more than me with less experience and expertise anyhow dot dot dot if the board is not aware elementary teachers are asked to teach from a new reading series with zero training i attended the training at the acc building this summer for the wanders reading program it was over zoom and provided no useful information it was overzoomed due to the presenter's plane being delayed it was a two-hour training and the only thing we heard learned was how to log in using a

119practice username and password the presenter went over a few of the components but not how to implement teach or use the resources the audio messed up the presenter was going too quickly and everyone in the room was lost and confused this is no fault to hammond or wonders it's just what it is and how can i teach from a program that i don't even know how to properly use nor do we all have all the components yet how can we expect our students to be successful with a program i'm not even trained on our day is split between reading ela and math over half my day is not trained on yet we are expecting teachers to use a program that has over 10 components with zero training and not even a teacher's manual we are

120failing our students and teachers we are asked to build a plane while flying it killing everyone along the way and yet we wonder why people are jumping off the plane and leaving hammond this reading series should be suspended abuse until training is adequate which is more than an hour here and there but if real full training or teachers can use it at their own discretion additionally hammond didn't buy all the components but bought the online resources kindergarten through third don't even know how don't even how come chromebook and our students don't have devices to take home how can we use the online resources when we don't even have the technology sorry additionally i would like for there to be a discussion on the three thousand five hundred chromebooks that were not returned that is seven

121hundred thousand dollars hamlet has lost why has this not been discussed or expressed as a concern our district could not only use the devices but also the money our kindergarten through third grade have no devices to use at school yes you can bill parents but if they don't pay then what we already extreme debt in the millions due to unpaid book fees this is just another unpaid debt thank you [Applause] veronica prito and i'm sorry if i pronounced that last name wrong as a mom of a one-year-old i cannot attend the meeting in person but i hope my comments and concerns do not go unignored on september 21st the morton boys soccer team had their last game of the season and they didn't even know it a player tested positive for covet on their day

122off and on thursday september 23rd the school city of hammonds health department issued a 14-day quarantine for the boys starting two days after their last exposure to the positive player the protocol given to the team is not in line with either cdc or lake county health department guideline for when to begin or in quarantine after exposure further guidelines quarantine countdown for the team should begin the last day of exposure september 21st quarantine should end either 10 days after exposure with no negative tests or seven days after exposure with a negative test after day five which would have released them september 28th every one of our players has tested negative after day five hdi emailed and gave the resources and guidelines and each day i was ignored aside from for one response from mr miller which

123said we have a meeting over this today i have never received a follow-up from mr miller nor miss ligand whom i also contacted multiple times our boys should have had a senior night they didn't instead their banners are hanging outside my classroom for when they return from quarantine they should be competing in sectionals tonight and they're not instead hammond central moves on in the bracket having never played us this season despite being in our conference if fch would have followed frederon county guidelines the seniors would have gotten one more game and a possible sectional title to go along with the one they won their freshman year instead they are forced to forfeit despite testing negative for covid i ask for you to please amend the guidelines so no other team will suffer this way they

124missed out on things most have dreamed of since they were in elementary school because of inefficiency and a couple of lost the opportunity to be seen up by college scouts they are depressed and they are angry the question i ask how can we fix this please don't ignore this issue like that like has been done with so many other concerns expressed at these meetings i will continue with the public expression ella markowski 7510 white oak avenue hammond indiana good afternoon i am a coach and unable to attend but i have a major concern we are working underneath constant roofing work as if the disruption alone wasn't a huge concern it is well documented that there are there is a bestest in the roof ceiling towels and pipes above our heads there is literally rumbling falling

125from our ceiling at certain times of the day and this is just the debris that is visible to our eyes i don't see how this is even legal and i am worried for my students and my health is there anything that can be done about this can the roofing work take place before and after school moving classrooms is not feasible because we don't have enough as it is and this concern is shared by many teachers can we put online can we be put online until they have completed the roofing work and removed the bestest i do not have the answers but i am very concerned mr miller and the school city of hammond school board i started teaching for hammond the same week i graduated from college can you say who this is from this

126is from christina carrion and i believe she's a teacher or was a teacher i started teaching for hammond the same week i graduated from college before i started my first day i tried to prepare myself for what would come what i could not fathom at the time was how deeply i would fall in love with my students and my job i woke up each morning with a smile on my face and drove my hour drive to work excited to get there and begin my day in a place i love i truly thought that i would spend the majority of my life teaching in hammond and envision myself celebrating my long happy career at hammond teachers retirement banquet like my mother did after 35 years in hammond then came this year and all of my hopes

127dreams and plans went completely out the window i started teaching at edgar's after the consolidation and quickly realized that not all hammond schools are the same and that i was not at gavit anymore i was floored by the disorganization of the beginning of the school year and watch watch as we lost more and more teachers every single day i watch kids get put in the gym lunch room and any other teacher's classroom that could possibly fit them i watch covet cases rise much further than reported numbers and tried to adhere to the enforce the mass mandate even when other teachers and members of the administration did not wear their mask i watched multiple violent fights burst out every single day and kids brag about putting videos on social media kids destroy the restroom so we

128have to stop uh teaching and go with the entire class i've had personal belongings stolen and defaced while out for a sick day at one point we had a fire that was too big to put out all of this and more happens in our day in our day today without proper support from administration at this moment and after already going through so much in the short time since our doors have opened i realized that the only job i've really been able to do all year is putting out fires i am managing the classroom i am maintaining some sense of order but i am not teaching and all we hear from administration is this is what teaching is this is what it's always been to be frank the sis the systemic abuse and neglect of educators

129need to end we are expected to carry the world on our shoulders and do it all in less time with less resources we have no teams of teachers who lean on each other and our teachers are so overworked and we are so unstable i'm sorry your three minutes are up okay this is from katherine province she lives at 7550 oakdale avenue in hammond indiana 46324 good evening trustees trustees zuno miller candelaria blake clean and miller and superintendent miller parents students and other school city hammond stakeholders i am a transplant art teacher from clark middle school to scott middle school a hammond resident and an aunt of hammond of a hammond student i am sincerely enjoying my new position it's supportive leadership and having in-person students again but i write out of concern about overcrowding in

130our classrooms it has been has put heavy strain on the ability to monitor behavior and masking as well as the ability to do proper contact tracing with covet alone the majority of the demographics of hammond students black and latino ex and also those of working class parents have historically greater access access to onset diseases as in scene and covet death rates vaccines do exist we have had more proactive masking policy than several neighboring neighboring districts and we asked parents to report covet and follow symptoms protocol but those variables are laurel we cannot afford to rest on our overcrowded classrooms our kids absolutely need to be in our schools but not the way we are doing it i have been covering classes out of concern for student safety more so than money coming out my wallet

131but that's not an issue in desperate situations some of my colleagues and i have split classes of absent teachers into our own already packed rooms for the first week students of unstaffed classes were rotated into the auditorium in these situations contact tracing is impossible thankfully to scott swinsky and the hapa staff collaboration applied academics classes have had our class size elevated with the addition of dramatic arts teacher this week in scott however core classes are still experiencing inhumanely overcrowded environments for our students and themselves in this climate behaviors and extremely difficult to address such as inappropriate technology use and even inappropriate touching which are issues i have heard from parents and students respectfully i feel that a pers i feel that perspective that consolidating schools would cause violent places unfair blame on students families and

132community rather than on policy but i also feel it would be problematic to assume that overcrowding would itself not lead to violence at more than six weeks into the school year i feel that i'm sorry your three minutes are up is that all of them okay but thank you that completes public expression second period that take us to reports from the superintendent trustee zuno i was asking what what was the date of that meeting october 5th i took on my birthday okay very good superintendent miller all right um there was a lot there uh one thing that i would like to address um rich are you able to switch me over to my my laptop i plug in fancy hmm so all right oh can can you pull up your screen then i'll just uh

133we can try this again at a different time but can you pull up the regular feed please go to the school city of hammond home page you might yeah if you could honestly thank you okay so one of the things uh some of the questions from the public comment were about access to materials that we do actually provide to the public already so i've done this a few times over the years but i would just like to show people how they can find this information their self like the budget you you mentioned so if you could go to the school board in the middle anna and then click board docs then click enter public site and this will take you to the meeting agenda go ahead and click view the agenda so for example hammond

134central if it was too small to see the project report you can click on that item there click on the board report and then there you have the resources so again that that is for nearly every contract that we do unless it's a personnel matter it's going to be up there and available for the the public to see it doesn't go away you can go back and look at contracts from previous years even they're they're all up they're all up there so again just for anybody watching that's how you can one way to to follow along and if you have questions like oh i want to really see what this really says like that's where it's all at it is all up there um it is something that we've been doing uh for quite some

135time in hammond um so i i acknowledge there's a lot of pain in the classroom in the school district and everything else i to to come up and and to try to address things as they're presented i will just say that a lot of these things are not are not new to us and they are known to us obviously the emails that were read from october are known to us um the board received even though we didn't read them aloud the board received them uh the very next day um and and we are attempting to work together on some of these things i hear your trusty king and saying that we need we need action on some of these things but we do try to address things as they come up we addressed the sub

136shortage with with additional compensation to try to get more subs in but some of the root issues here are having to do with the pandemic and they are not unique to hammond i know it feels personal it does it feels very personal and i can hear that in the pain of the comments that it's very personal but they are not unique to hammond and and i don't think it's appropriate for me to try to make an argument about teacher salary and benefits quite honestly from sitting up here like that's that to me would not be fair to the negotiation process i could talk about the differences between the south lake county schools and why they have more money but i'm not going to do that because it would be inappropriate but if you do your

137homework on those things you can understand why they have additional resources that a declining enrollment district like hammond does not you can't that stuff that stuff is real that said we do value our teachers and we do hope to reach a positive outcome with this negotiation session i see mr geek is right here that is our intent we want to we want to get to a place where everyone feels valued and respected that's not just our teachers that's all of our employee groups i see some of our custodians in our building grounds team in the back saying uh yeah we we care about you guys we want this to be a place that you care about working and that you feel valued and respected um but there was a lot here i will say that

138we don't ignore these things we do we do debrief on every one of them many of them like i said are known to us and we do do our due diligence and following up to try to ascertain what the truth is with with these situations many of them we report back to the board on on them in many of them we are working on on changing for the second semester changing all the schedules in the middle of the semester i think that would create immense chaos i tried it some of you remember not too long ago when i asked to reschedule everybody at the end of the last semester so we wouldn't have to have teachers having people in person and people remote and it blew up in my face and i was criticized for

139for what are you doing in the middle of the year rescheduling everybody and go look at the at the one of the the second january meeting where i tried to do that so i i heard it back then and so i listened and and and so i hear the the the complaints the loss of the team time and some of these things i want to address them i'm not going to be even more disruptive in the middle of the year the just a couple other things i would say again we don't ignore these things we really don't i acknowledge the pain and we are actively trying to work to address as many of these things as possible there are a couple things i want to mention um i did attend the first bridge to better

140conference i want to give a credit to dr johnny goodlow for um and his team around him for putting that together sometimes i wish there was more people attended too i acknowledged that that critique i wish there was more people who attended but it doesn't require all of us attending a conference to do better in that area and it has been an area that we need to grow in we absolutely do and sometimes it takes those key leaders acquiring that information and bringing it back to their buildings and making it part of their culture dr caffeli said he's probably not the first to say this but he was the keynote on saturday he said that if if there was an issue in a classroom with your own child and you would raise the hand about

141that and say hey we need to address this then we have to do that for each other's children as well and that's not a critique of any one person i i own that as well as as the superintendent um that we have to make sure that things are improving but i appreciate his words and his challenge for us there one of his big talking points which i'll just mention to the audience was that we need to have a culturally responsive curriculum that's one of the things he talked about if you were involved in the ela selection this year as all teachers had an opportunity to at least give their feedback to the building person who was involved we added in a cultural diversity score for our literature his first time we've ever done that we

142actually had a score it was provided to the board of trustees on how each of the three curriculums we evaluated addressed this need and we ended up selecting the series that had the highest score in diversity equity and inclusion meaning that the texts our kids are reading are telling stories and are telling truths that are reflective of their life experience like dr cafeli said we should be doing so those are positive things that we have i it sucks that we've we have these delays in in getting materials i hate that like i really hate that i hate not having the lockers ready i hate all those things we will continue to keep on it we do we we call the book coming when can we get these like we have those conversations we don't just

143like okay there's somebody brought up a complaint about it we're going to sit on it we don't do those things we follow up all right on the more positive side we have our very first production large scale production at the black box theater of frozen junior coming i want to get the dates correct here let me pull it up it is at the walter j watkins black box theater at hammond central high school on november 11th through the 13th at 7 p.m and november 13th and 14th at 2 p.m um it's a multi-grade production so we have elementary kids my daughter's in it all the way through um through high school so it's a great representation if you haven't been out to see the black box yet and and been out to hammond central it's

144a great way to come see this amazing space it's a theater in the round concept so the kids will be out in the middle they won't be up on a stage they will be out in the middle with the audience around them so again we haven't had that before in hammond so really really cool opportunity tickets are very reasonable you can just get them at the door you don't have to buy them in advance but again november 11th through 13th at 7 and november 13th and 14th at 2 o'clock all right i want to thank you um again for coming tonight and that concludes my reports thank you superintendent so i have a motion mr miller mr mill we have a motion to adjourn you