Board Meeting October 19, 2021

001[Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] good evening and welcome to the school city of hammond regular meeting of the board of trustees for october 19 2021. uh would you please stand and recite the pledge of i allegiance allegiance to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you roll call trustee miller president trustee candelaria president trustee king we're here trustee murphy president and trustee zono also here all trustees are present that moves us into the financial presentation trustees our first presentation is indeed the finance monthly financial presentation for september i'd like to call matt reese for the presentation good evening mr miller members of the board tonight i have for you the september financial report now you'll notice in the report in september first

002things i guess i've hid the first six months try to make this a little more legible to everybody so you can see it a little bit better so you'll notice that january through june are hidden but i am showing last three months to still give you some comparison month to month what the expenditures and revenues look like september expenditures were a bit higher in the education fund and that's due to the non-certified staff or hourly staff returning as the school year starts so that's why you see those expenditures up a little bit in the month of september no real glaring things in the referendum fund for the month of september transactions as as normal there no activity on page three which is your referendum debt service fund on page four is your debt service fund

003the regular activity there the common school loan we did have one 500 bond fee for the trustee uh no activity in the pension debt service fund and the last page is your operations fund uh you'll notice in the three funds this month as i always i talk about uh our positive expenditure variance so we're still performing quite well in all three of those funds with about 5.6 million under budget in those those three funds no real concerns with any of those at this point but as i mentioned earlier we'll see some some movement of expenditures next couple months october november and december as we look to balance those funds out on your board summary page again uh you'll notice the transfer is all taking place there we do have some temporary loans i'm happy to

004announce that there were no more loans made into the self-insurance fund for the month of september a nice positive change of pace there we are positive but barely positive and still only oh the operations funds about 1.5 million dollars that we've temporarily borrowed to pop prop those up all three of the funds as i mentioned your education referendum and operations are operating under budget at this point be happy to any questions you might have on the financial report this evening any questions i have none thank you sir thank you next on the agenda is the covid 19 management guidelines trustees i'd like to call our director of health services sarah liggin and see angie garcia coming as well we're here tonight to just kind of explain the role of health services uh regarding covet management

005we are a team of 14 nurses 10 health aides my coveted assistant and myself and what we do is we manage all the covet for the school city of hammond and this is the positive cases the close contacts the employees the students and any educational information that we need to give out so what we want to just briefly go over and i know everybody's heard this what is covet 19 it's a respiratory virus it's not a virus you can get from touching things like we thought a year ago so what are the major symptoms of covet cough fever and one of the most common symptoms is loss of taste or smell and the culvert symptoms are too like a lot of other respiratory symptoms like the flu and sinusitis and things like that so we

006want to talk a little bit about quarantine isolation and then what do we do for these things in the school district so quarantine is for people who are not sick but have been directly exposed to someone that has tested positive for covet 19. isolation is for people who have tested positive for covet 19. so why do we when do we isolate and why we isolate people that are positive so if you are a student and you test positive for covet we start from the date of your test not the date of your symptoms because we found that that varied and people couldn't always tell us the exact date the symptoms started so if you come to me or you call and say my daughter tested positive for colby you she is going to have to

007stay home for 10 days and on day 11 she could return to school if she is symptom-free and we also ask for with students that we get a release from the doctor and that way we can kind of manage students a little bit better for staff we ask that you take another test and sometimes those tests come back positive because you can test positive for covet up to about 60 days after you've actually had the virus doesn't mean you're contagious it just means that there are still particles of virus in your body we recommend a negative covin-19 test or a release from your health care provider the athletic department you must have a note from your health care provider that clears you to start sports back because covet can affect the heart so the indiana

008athletic association states that they want you to be cleared by a physician to return we don't want you out on the field and then you have a heart attack or you end up with myocarditis and very ill when do we quarantine and why we quarantine when you have had close contact and i know there's a lot of questions about what is quarantined so we say if there are two people in a room one is unmasked one is mass then you both would need to quarantine if you both have your mask on and you maintain a safe distance then we consider that you may be safe to stay and not necessarily a close contact if you are fully vaccinated and you have no symptoms quarantine is not necessary but we do recommend that mass be worn

009at all times our guidelines we spend a lot of time on webinars from the state on thursday the cdc guidelines indiana department of health indiana department of education is also involved and what has made kovitz so difficult for everybody is that nobody in this room has ever been through a pandemic before we can't phone a friend we can't ask for a lifeline we can't call another school district what did you do for this or do you have this can you send me your policy how did this work because no one has ever been through it and it is very difficult to manage because of the politics the anti-mass anti-vaccine pro-vaccine pro-mass and it has become very complicated when i went back and looked at 1918 they had some of the same issues of the pandemic

010of 1918 with the mass the political unrest and you would have thought we would have learned from that but we didn't so how do we collect our data and i'll let my associate help with that but i do want to say something that we have no reason to falsify or not give accurate information we can only report what we get you know i cannot go on facebook and say mary smith is positive for colby and then call her in you know facebook is facebook but it's also you know there is something called privacy if you come to me and you have credible information i will try to investigate because we don't want anybody students or staff at school when they shouldn't be at school and under no circumstances do we allow people to be at

011school when they when they're not supposed to be at school you know we're kind of all in this together and if we just try to work together nobody has been through this before so nobody has the perfect answer the perfect solution if you look at the news if you follow dr falchi we follow the cdc guidelines every day they change three weeks ago they said if you're vaccinated enjoy your thanksgiving and christmas last week they put out no you shouldn't do that you should still maintain you know your social distance and wear your mask so it is very complex and for a staff of 25 i think we've done an incredible job we have spent many many hours screening calling you know we talk after we get home did we make the right decision should

012we have done something different and you know i wish i could please everybody but you know we travel we go to family reunions we go outside the country we're at the bars restaurants and then when we get in school everybody wants to go in the panic mode you know and you know it's it's we're going to be in covet for a long time to come and we need to really try to stick together work together i recommend wear your mask it doesn't matter if you're vaccinated or unvaccinated there are breakthrough cases you know so far i think we only have one student currently that's hospitalized that we're aware of you know and it's very cumbersome you know the anxiety levels are high for everybody but i just want to clarify that we under no circumstances

013would have people staff or students at school only 44 of our staff are fully vaccinated 790 people out of about 1800 people and only about 25 of our students so you know whether you believe in it or not i'm not here to say you know yes you should um get fascinated or no you shouldn't but i am here to tell you you should always wear a mask and wash your hands and if you're in really close contact you know there are different qualities of masks you can add a face shield to it there are things you can do to protect yourself but we're doing everything pre-coping we are traveling you know no doubt i've traveled i look like i was in a hazmat suit but i've traveled and so has everybody else if you can

014go to mexico to celebrate your 50th birthday don't come back to school and then you know we can only do so much and it's up to all of us to stick together work together try to get the students to wear masks nobody come to school sick if you're sick you can call the nurse we'll screen you out over the phone employees or students so you know just remember that we're kind of all in this together and i'm going to turn this over to miss garcia she primarily takes care of student contacts and stays very busy every day good evening everyone i'm just going to run through a scenario per se when i get information from a school nurse or a parent that a student has tested positive i will collect as much data as i

015can i'll look at the student's attendance i'll call the parent i'll i'll verify the last day that they were in attendance um i'll go over when their symptoms started like miss logan said we go from the date of the cova test not the symptoms because sometimes the parents will be like well he had a headache last week but then he had a stuffy nose yesterday but i didn't get him tested till sunday so we just go from the date of the actual cova test was performed from that date i will calculate 10 days on the 11th day the student can return as long as the parent has provided either a negative cova test to me or a doctor's note clearing them to return again they can test positive which is totally understandable that's when the

016doctor's note comes in i'm willing to accept it as long as the student does not have any more covet symptoms i mean fever-free and all of that um they can return um but you i always look at the big picture because you have to see when the symptoms started that's when the teachers get notified because the teachers will get notified if the student was in your class within 24 hours of being positive i know a lot of people are saying teachers are saying that they're not getting notified that's because sometimes nine times out of ten your student was already in quarantined because they were considered a close contact during that 14 days somewhere in that 14 day they have to get tested to come back so if they test positive now they're under my radar

017the teachers are not going to get notified because they were never in the classroom so therefore the student finishes off their 14 plus 10 so they're out a total of 24 before they can return also they will still need either the negative cova test or the doctor's note to clear them to return to school if in that 24 now just rewinding a little bit if your student was in class within that 24 hour period you the parents will get an exposure letter to take home a paper one also they will get a parent square notice with the same letter because we want to make sure either you got it electronically or you got it physically so the note goes home both ways and then whenever you're considered close contact the building not available [Music] okay

018and then we ask you know if you have symptoms don't come to school or work um like ms liggins said you could call us we could screen you out over the phone wear a mask when you're in the public setting whether you're vaccinated or not wear a mask when you're teaching all students and staff and visitors must be wearing a mask the numbers are on the website for the positive cases that is a live feed whenever i get a case i update that on my end it automatically updates on the web page when i get a k a positive case my positive cases are open that same day so if i get 20 cases those 20 cases are active the same day i don't put them off for the next day or the next day

019or the next day i i get on the phone and i call those parents and i work those cases the same day i work the weekends i work nights because the kiddos that are due back to school on a monday i have to clear them i have to release them i have to make sure all that information is up to date sunday night so monday morning when they go into the building there's no questions asked the teachers are emailed the principles are emailed the attendance clerks are emailed so that way when the kiddo goes to the classroom they're clear to return so that's the way we handle the positive cases okay and so when you have a student that is out positive or even a close contact the attendants and the principal and the guidance

020counselors are all emailed they get an email please excuse johnny from in-person learning their tentative return to school date is and that date is calculated based on their cova test when i get the proper document the negative cova test or the doctor's note to release them to return to school i will then send another email johnny is clear to return to school please excuse all absences between point a and point b so that way every when everybody looks that kiddo up they know he's excused he's due back and that's i try to keep everybody on the same page am i perfect no have i missed a few probably on the attendance side but i always double check myself i try to keep my numbers as accurate as i can i'm one person trying to do

021the district any questions any questions president trustee king thank you i think my biggest concern is the contact tracing when when a student has notified you or when you finally find out and um i guess it's dependent on the day of the week that you determine whether or not there's any contact tracing are we doing any of that so according to the cdc are you talking about like if there's a positive case yes okay so if in according to the cdc if there's a positive case in the classroom if everybody is masked up and following protocol nobody is considered a close contact oh when did that change a couple weeks ago a couple weeks ago governor holcomb put that out as well for indiana that is an encouragement for school districts that were struggling with

022getting people to mask up that you wouldn't have to quarantine students if you complied with a fully mass policy so you saw a whole bunch of school districts with a matter of 48 hours all adopt mass policies that previously hadn't so they wouldn't have to quarantine kids okay the practice that we're currently doing with uh hardly any uh we don't have any barriers in the classrooms anymore well some do some don't and then um the issue of um what am i trying to say um sitting together what's the word i'm looking for the teachers have a questionnaire to fill out when would they have a positive case if that positive case was in their class within 24 hours they have a questionnaire that they fill out and then one of some of the questions are

023was everybody masked up so that's the first question so if everybody was masked up that narrows out probably 90 percent of your class so who made the decision that we would no longer use barriers i guess that's my question oh that's not health services well according to the cdc what did the cdc uh say about barriers in the classroom [Music] this year they really raised lowered the standards as far as close contact and they said if you are facing the same way and masked up that's their definition of close contact so they did remove the barriers and you know it's not required it can be recommended it depends on the setting but they found that the barriers were being contaminated you know some of them were made from cardboard so you couldn't really wipe them

024down like you know they could they should have been but i have a decision the by the administration to buy those inexpensive cardboard plastic type of barriers you know i i had uh stated from the bat they they were not sanitary you know cross-contamination anybody could have seen that but we spent thousands hundreds of thousand dollars on that so on that particular barrier i can see there is no purpose of it well last year it was so hard to get any type of ppe and barriers you know it was like i mean i spent an entire summer and it was like a lottery system you could contact the company do you have mass we used a hundred thousand masks the first five weeks of school because that this school year at the end of last

025school year in june when the school year ended we went over and did a full inventory myself and i and one other uh health aide we counted everything here and everything that was in the warehouse and we were right at a hundred thousand mass and we used a hundred thousand mass within the first 25 days of school so but we have money for that i mean we should never run out of masks i mean i'm constantly hearing that there's no mass there are no this there's no that there's no there there are plenty of man well they're not getting distributed to the teachers there's something going on there's a disconnect somewhere where uh we're not getting that ppe into the classrooms and my understanding is teachers are still spending their own money to uh if

026it provides that if a teacher needs mass they can email me and i will talk to um mr morass and we will make sure they get what they need last year i delivered ppe to schools myself and my car and you know handed them to people we have masks well mr miller what i don't understand my understanding was we have a warehouse for this stuff we even hired an employee to uh manage the ppe why is no this was last year because at one point in time i did the ppe well the bottom line is is not getting to the teachers it's not getting into the classrooms and we i have been hearing this for months and months and months and now all they got to do is email you and now i'm just saying

027if there is a problem well because i i will go back to mr morris you know and make sure that that school gets whatever they need because you know we do kind of manage and we work very closely together with the warehouse you know and you know we want everybody to feel comfortable we want everybody to make sure they have what they need if they need a face shield or an n95 or you know we want people to feel comfortable so if there is a particular incident we did find that things were being delivered but they were still on the dock so we've since then taken care of that by uh adding the person's name that made the request for the ppe that it be delivered to the office manager or who's ever designated to

028order for that school i have two final questions what does the cdc say about social distancing because that's something we just they do they've gone away with the six feet you know they they've just about when when did that happen that happened earlier in the summer yeah they went to three feet and then they went well mr miller why have we been doing uh board meetings uh with this social disaster i mean i'm hearing a contradiction here board meetings have been six feet for the last months and now all of a sudden there's no social distancing and because there's no social distance in our schools i mean i have seen it for myself now is nothing nobody has told me but now all of a sudden the cdc has eradicated i find that very interesting

029there are different guidelines for public and there are different guidelines for k through 12. yeah i did send an email to the board over the summer some of you might recall where i said that the over where they said about the social distancing that the overwhelming thing is the kids need to be in school the number one thing was more than the school should not shut down because they can't offer social distancing that the best thing for kids was for them to be in school and i did for i could dig it out but i did forward that to the board over the summer but some of the other things uh the if anyone you'd have one of the questions okay sorry and then as far as how you report it on the website it

030needs we need to do a better job of that the format is not readable i mean um we had talked about this a couple of board meetings ago that we were going to actually put it in the front of the website so it'd be more accessible to uh the community and it's still where it is and the report to me it is not a friendly use it just isn't i mean it's you said your point of order mr president trustee miller the comments i believe should be addressed to the superintendent and not to those that are presenting well those questions have been presented to mr miller uh time and time again and i'm still we're still asking the same question but if i have to do that i'll do it under old business thank you

031very much thank you superintendent um if you go to our home page there's a big scrolling banner and one of the things the very second item that comes up there says keep our school safe there's a big link on it says information and then it's it follows it up in spanish you click that link and it says sch tracking data right there you can see the the um you actually you want to make a new tab and we can just mr tucker or whoever's man again go to the school city hammond homepage but you agreed mr miller that it wasn't user friendly and that you would put it in a better place we had that conversation so it is the very first tab there but if we even wait right there where it says keep

032our schools safe you can click the sch covid19 information right there or in spanish either one or you can click sh tracking data that's fine and then then we have right here the number of students positive in each school by week you can scroll over and find your school and see that and there's another tab there for staff this is done dynamically meaning as soon as someone from the district health service department inserts that data it appears live the expectation it's updated every friday but like as they go and and they're typed in there it will appear automatically live so that that is we are not going to break it down any farther than that like by grade level or classroom on the public that would not be appropriate but this this is the information

033it lists the number by week for both students and staff of covent positives in in the district so it is there and available for everyone to see um a couple of the other points if you're watching your teacher um i prefer you not message miss ligand right away the the coordinated people in each building are the office manager and the number one custodian those are the two points of contact if you are out of ppe in your classroom and you need some more either the office manager or the number one custodian um are the people to contact in your building to have additional ppe i am on a i have followed up several times with our our pp inventory to make sure that we have those juvenile masks which i know we did struggle with

034finding vendors for juvenile mass for for a time but we've absolutely had the adult sized masks and i also want to encourage anyone watching please send your child with the mask to school that's great it's very helpful to us if your child is coming with a mask to school i was out at a drop-off point and i saw in the same family that one of the child who came out of the car had a mask and the principal asked the other child where's your mask and he said he didn't have one so so just having that consistent support from the families as well is is great but we will provide you with one we also have them on our buses if your child qualifies for sch transportation all of our drivers have masks on the

035buses as well to provide for for the children um i think that concludes my comments thank you superintendent any other questions mr president trustee murphy um first off i would love to thank nurse legan and her whole staff you guys have done a yeoman's job out there i know that things have gotten really tense but under grace you guys have just done a fantastic job i think the website data up there looks great i disagree with the prior comments i think what you've done there it's very easy to get into and to scroll during the different weeks i only had um two questions the 25 vaccinated for students how is that normed like to other school districts is that what everybody else has are we higher or are we lower i mean indiana so when

036you say it's 25 it's only 25 of eligible students correct not 25 of all students correct okay and my second question on have we thought about doing any clinics where we could actually do vaccinations because in the past we've had the visiting nurse association because as you know the health department got close some years ago and we use them to help get the regular vaccinations in but also maybe perhaps either doing the covid shots or the booster because some of us in the next couple of months are going to be eligible to be getting the [Music] and booster the indiana department of health they are supposed to provide some more you know when the factions become more available they're looking at now that in the next three or four weeks that they should be approved

037for you know children we did take when we had the clinic at roosevelt i sent out flyers we called people and i only had 17 people to go to get the back seat that was this past summer but we did take them out when they had you know i think it's so much political and infinity and it's very hard to get you know people to get kids even for the routine you know we still have a high number of kids that don't have a routine vaccine but we are looking a couple of things on that trustee murphy um we we tried real hard in the in the late spring to promote the the clinic out at it was a roosevelt yeah and we even promoted through the coaches because we didn't want to have happen

038again the type of thing that like where the clark boys soccer had to lose their regional game and said hey get your players vaccinated so if you have to quarantine somebody the players can still play but the message fell flat and we have done some other things if you remember in the summer of director clara hand held an event at edison for food service and it was to kick off the summer meals program i got dunked a whole bunch of times but we had um we had a vaccine clinic covid vaccine clinic there and most recently at the latino resource fair we had a covid vaccine clinic and uh tony we have about 30 people get vaccinated correct we had about 30 more people get vaccinated at the latino resource fair so we are trying

039to do that we are working with community health net as well to try to to have more opportunities for that but but we have been providing opportunities for people thank you very much and again thank you to your whole department for all the hard work you've been doing thank you very much president zillnow trustee miller i would just like to echo uh the thanks from trustee murphy and just applaud everyone in health services thank you so much i know it's been a rough rough almost two years now right but we really do appreciate all that that you guys are doing to to help keep sch strong thank you so much i mean talk about a thankless job in a lot of ways you got to be the one to say like hey sorry your kid

040was you know exposed and all this like who likes to make those phone calls right like who wants to line up and do that job so so we do thank you and we appreciate all your all your hard work keeping us safe healthy again thank you if there are no other questions we'll move on to item c hispanic heritage all-stars for this item i like to call director salinas our elementary director good evening superintendent miller uh president board trustees and community members i'd like to thank you uh first of all those of you who attended the wallace hispanic heritage cultural exhibit i know some of you were there it did mean a lot to mrs thursby ms hawkins the wallace staff to have your support i was just staring very proud of these efforts to

041raise cultural awareness so this uh evening we're going to talk a little bit about hispanic heritage month and recognize some of our leaders here within the district national hispanic heritage month began on september 15th and ran through october 15th giving the united states an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the members of our communities and their ancestors who hail from mexico parts of the caribbean central and south america and spain rather than starting at the beginning of september hispanic carriage month takes place over 30 days starting on the 15th a nod to the anniversaries of national independence for a number of latin american countries such as costa rica el salvador guatemala honduras nicaragua all recognized on september 15th as the date of their independence while mexico's independence is celebrated september 16th and chiles celebrates their independence

042on the 18th so that's why it's an entire month there's several countries that are celebrating their independence from spain during the month hispanic heritage month traces its history back to 1968 when the observance was just a week long under president lyndon b johnson who signed the bill designated the week of september 15th as national hispanic heritage week it wasn't until nearly 20 years later that hispanic heritage week was lengthened to an entire month under president ronald reagan the 2020 u.s census showed that hispanics and latinos make up a fast-growing multi-racial group in 2020 62.1 million people identified a hispanic or latino 18 percent of the us population that number has grown 20 to 23 since 2010. in our school city of hammond 47 of our students identify as latino or hispanic that's over 5 000

043students representation matters and there's a quote that says if you see one you can be one and it is imperative that our students and community members see individuals in all positions of influence but particularly in positions of leadership so i ask that you please join me in recognizing the following individuals who contribute to the success of our district on a daily basis as we say thank you in munches gracias to the following individuals the first one would be our school board trustee manny candelaria for all of your contributions have you in the audience and when we see your name please stand to be recognized executive director of the hammer education foundation juanita boland [Applause] our principal of morton high school jeremy hicks are you scott principal angelique rodriguez-jones our assistant principal at morton high school

044james pintor our principal at lincoln elementary ann ruiz our wallace assistant principal melinda hawkins our director of maintenance and crafts david reyes you just heard from this phenomenal woman evangelina garcia health services a very important gentleman in our district john flores director of safety security and energy gregory who works with our language development program our director of head start bar fernandez gustin our marketing specialist leanne munoz our director of language development anna verdusco and i am also very proud to be part of this team i am the executive director for elementary education so with that we thank you board members for your continued support of celebrating our hispanics and leadership as well of all of our hispanic educators paraprofessionals and parents and community members thank you very much thank you very much trustee king i

045see your sombrero from last year thank you thank you oh boy next on the agenda is the indian indiana university northwest teacher licensing program presentation yes trustees uh i'd like to bring up dr mark sperling who's the dean of the education department before i do that though i would like to recognize in the audience we're honored to have the recently installed but not new to the community chancellor of iu northwest ken owama [Applause] thank you superintendent miller board members it's a pleasure to be here i recognize a lot of my students in the audience so it's even a bigger pleasure to be here uh this evening i'd like to present to you a memorandum of understanding that we'd like for the board to approve that we've been working on with the assistant superintendents and superintendent

046uh the attorney for uh for the school city and the attorneys from iu and uh we have developed a partnership with uh others of the uh corporations in the area that would allow for the see if i can get this to work point this way no what am i uh i was told it worked is that yeah brian can you advance it please thank you um what we've put together is a partnership agreement basically that will allow for the school city of hammond to send their emergency permit teachers regular education first to the school of education at indiana university northwest to receive licensure in a program that takes about 18 to 24 months either elementary or secondary and i'll speak to special ed towards the end of the presentation we will review transcripts to make

047sure of your prereqs and get you into you get close to the mic i'm sorry sure well kind of used to just we will evaluate your transcript for the university classes that the emergency permit teachers have already taken and identified those needed for registration and the licensure in elementary is for regular education grades k-6 in secondary in english math social studies history plus in science biology and chemistry nurse or space science visual arts spanish and french and all these areas we work on to license our our teacher candidates and we have developed this uh quicker program for 18 to 24 months for those with bachelor's degrees that have been working in schools that will help them to even learn more about teaching as everyone know teaching is a tough thing and uh having uh having

048spent several years in detroit public schools as an economics teacher and an administrator i know very well firsthand how difficult teaching is oops maybe that's why there you go i was pressing the wrong button so candidates um i've worked with both of the assistant superintendents and both uh michelle rise and cassandra ship will accept applications or to gain permission for teachers to emergency permit teachers for enrollment we will then receive your email addresses and send you an application and the application is pretty simple along with a a couple of letters of recommendation we'll receive unofficial transcripts and evaluate those and our uh enrollment advisor will stay in contact with those emergency permit teachers to uh for any anything that they need or any information that uh will be helpful to them and and i will

049then meet with them once that process gets through to do the evaluation and actually schedule for classes many of the classes are in the evening summer classes are online so we're able to accommodate a number of different teachers regardless of of your schedules of of employment what we have worked out with the school city of hammond is that all teachers that are accepted by the school city for this program will be reimbursed for all their tuition and books so that no candidate will pay out of pocket for this education in return the candidate must agree to remain with the school city of hammond for a minimum of three years once you're in the program in terms of special ed special ed is a very controversial time right now because as many of you know the

050state department of education has founded has been found in violation of federal law with regard to providing emergency permits for special ed teachers so they have asked various universities across the state to develop programs that will quickly help these emergency permits special ed teachers who can't obviously get another permit to be licensed so iun the school of ed worked worked very diligently with our faculty to develop a transition to teaching program we already have a licensure in mild interventions which covers a great deal of the disability that students have in schools and we are awaiting a final approval from the state department of education for this program once approved it's very intense but candidates can receive full licensure in one year which is a a really amazing amount of time but it is it is

051going to be very intense it may take some some candidates a little bit longer and that's okay but uh we we want to have this program we have this program in place and most of the classes are already there uh our faculty is working on development of additional courses so towards the end of the program you'll have a full complement of classes for licensure so we we are most appreciative to the board to the superintendent and all of the staff here for all the hard work that you do having sat in the superintendent's chair i understand how difficult it is in these times and uh and we are most appreciative uh iun also has a we have a vaccine clinic coming up with this indiana department of health november i don't remember the date but

052sometime very soon and that will be open to the whole community if you want to share with me i can i can pass it right so i'll check with our department chair at uh with health and human services and get that to you so that that concludes my presentation we really appreciate the time and and uh certainly would be open to any questions thank you are there any questions any questions thank you very much gentlemen we appreciate it for anybody watching uh you may have lost it there but indiana department of education has said that you can no longer issue an emergency permit for special education after this year so we're seeing pretty much many of the schools of education across the state scramble to be able to have a transition program it looks like

053they will accept something like that if it's an officially approved transition program as long as the candidate is in that program we're going to be okay but it certainly was short notice and has caused a lot of scrambling for schools and schools of education thank you that brings us to item number three public expression first period superintendent miller um there's i just want to be uh forthright about a few of the changes that we've made obviously we're back at full capacity so um we would ask that if you have a comment for the board that you come and present yourself um to the board we still have the sign up sheets for uh three minutes um you have three minutes so if you want to read the comments that someone else has written that's that's

054fine like if you want to read about that someone else has prepared something but you will not get an additional three minutes to read your own comments like it's your three minutes spend it the best way that you see fit and of course the first public expression period is limited to items on the agenda the second period you can speak on any school city matters trustee candelaria mr president trustee king i have a question to mr miller yes i understand now that there will be no emailing or public expression wouldn't it who made that decision i wasn't aware of this change at all so explain that please so um the only re actually there were emails about it between the board but the agenda and how we run the meeting is a decision joint decision

055between the board president and the superintendent it was expressed by many that it's not you actually even kind of brought it up yourself earlier that it's not fair that if uh why do we have all this spread out here and in the classrooms it's not the same type of situation and there was let's let's face it anyone who watched the ending of the last meeting that's not how we want to end our meetings we don't want things to go down like that um and so we just feel and and you mention yourself to me you feel strongly trustee king that people should present themselves in front of the board if they want to have you know their comment heard by the board but again that that we didn't so you're saying the emails as a

056result of emailing back and forth different ideas to make our meetings better a decision was made without the entire board because i even see that board comments aren't on the agenda any longer who made that decision so the the board policy gives the agenda responsibility to the superintendent and the board president so but could you read that board policy because when in 2019 when board reports was put on the agenda which was my recommendation there was no mention of a board policy we decided at that meeting that was something we would do hands down now all of a sudden uh [Music] in in terms of uh public comment suppression you're suppressing my comments because i'm basically the only board member that makes reports so it only affects basically me i'm following the bylaws that are

057written uh but again a decision like that is not in the bible a board meeting it was not decided among a president and the superintendent behind closed doors it says it was decided at a board meeting point of order mr president trustee murphy if we could have the parliamentarian um going this night putting you on the sport i believe it's board policy 166 correct so that has what the agenda is i believe at the time they did a local rule which added on this extra thing in fact reports from the superintendent aren't under board policy 166 but again the superintendent and the board president can say i think it's a great thing i don't want to lose it but those two can do that so the question is they did a local rule at that

058time added it in but board policy does not support that if you go back to board policy and then we'll give you a minute or two because i know you've got to bring that up mr put you on the spot thank you mr president trustee king it amazes me how we conveniently can find a board policy to basically suppress comment and as you indicated trustee miller our parliamentarian is attorney conrad but she sat there and allowed trustee miller to adjourn a meeting illegally there was no motion to return nor there was a second hit i have the floor i have the floor i have the floor i have the floor and i will not be interrupted please i will not be interrupted as i was saying as we are parliamentarian was sitting there before the

059board president which we've asked the parliamentarian to rule on that that did not happen at the last board meeting as mr miller say is unfortunate the way it ended she gaveled the meeting was adjourned without a motion to adjourn or a second you and i both sat here stunned because we didn't know what had happened until i looked at the video then i realized what had happened so we in terms of policy and point of order and all of this we just make the rules uh as well well again as as you recall trustee uh cindy you told me when you was running for office that i can have up to 10 minutes to debate well i want to take my 10 minutes to debate according to robert's rules of order again we have a

060point of order i have a point of order i want a parliamentarian to rule on on whether or not our parliamentarian rules when she wants to rule she didn't rule at the last board meeting when the meeting was adjourned abruptly no one asked her to so right now well illegal it should have never happened she rules on everything else we're not going to debate this can we have the parliamentarian rule you don't want to debate it please let the parliamentarian yeah president sullino i think that in terms of point of order the concept is stick with the first issue that you've got and not to continue to load on additional issues as i understand where you're at right now in terms of the concern it is with regard to board policy 166 and you have

061under board policy 166 is whenever the president or other members of the board wish to bring a matter to the attention of the board such requests should be committed to paper or transmitted electronically to the superintendent or the board president so that it can be an item placed on the agenda the customary organization of the agenda shall be in the following order and manner it goes on to list several things nothing in that listing includes expression or board reports that is not one of the items that you have in your board policy so it would be for anything other than what you have here would have to be developed by the board president in conjunction with the superintendent in terms of the agenda the agenda is determined by you as the president and superintendent miller

062thank you okay moving back to public expression public expression first period limited to items on the agenda only you're limited to three minutes first community member is going to be mark webster mark webster teacher at morton high school i wanted to speak on the personnel report that maslow's hierarchy of needs abraham maslow identified that needs are met with a certain amount of priority one usually cannot meet the higher level needs without the lower level needs already being met the first level of psychological needs housing shelter food and water i've had numerous school city employees tell me that they can't afford to work here cost of living keeps going up but our pay doesn't compensate we can't even drink the water running through the pipes in the building the second level is safety needs medical care

063security predictability and control think about every single incident we've had this year or every kid out pre-marked as nurse do you really think we feel safe in our tiny little classrooms packed to the gills with students during this ongoing pandemic the third level is belonging trust and acceptance there is no trust our students come to us frustrated our counselors are overworked and our special ed department is being moved around and not being provided with the space to operate under the legal restrictions innate to their position the fourth level is esteem dignity achievement and status we feel disrespected all day long not by our students but by the people making decisions about our classrooms without us not treating us or paying us like the certified licensed professionals that we are highly qualified teachers require more licensing

064than engineers and yet we make half as much money the last level is self-actualization fulfillment and personal growth do you really think that any of us are highly motivated to be our best we are asked to sacrifice our minds bodies and hearts on a daily basis for this school system i haven't been home since 5 45 this morning i will likely go home and immediately fall asleep what leisure time do your employees have when they are forced to work extra to supplement their income with other side work the saying goes teachers earn it for the outcome not the income but unfortunately the bank doesn't let me pay an outcome and even though i'm proud of the hard work that my students put in every single day i can't pay my bills with my student achievement

065numbers you are failing us on every level do better thank you [Applause] next community member is going to be deborah lackey good evening good evening mr miller i'm also speaking from the personnel report my name is deborah lakey and i'm the president of the support staff i represent hundreds of years of experience of our support staff we have members who have worked for school city of hammond for upwards of 30 years we have personnel like ots and pts and sign language interpreters who are required to keep state licensing we also have a variety of other personnel who have specialized training for their positions we have rti professionals who cannot do their programs because they're required to do other jobs we have experienced recess aides who can respond to emergencies such as a student falling off

066playground equipment like everyone else we're being pulled in many directions many have to sub along with doing their regular assignments and not even earning the hundred dollars per day that a sub off the street earns we have plato professionals who have upwards of 35 students in their classes and as new programs start more are being added we cannot afford to lose any personnel because ultimately the kids are the losers let's please do what we can to keep our support staff personnel we are pitching in and going above and beyond like everyone else we're an extremely valuable asset to the school city of hammond thank you [Applause] next community member is going to be tonya collins is tonya collins present okay next community member is going to be anita cox good evening mr miller school board

067hello my name is anita cox i am a teacher at hammond central i would like to comment on the school improvement plan that is on the agenda i hope that part of the school improvement plan will be to improve the secondary schedule the current block schedule is not conducive to building a consistent routine a trusting relationship between staff and students and essential academic progress for example every other week i only see students twice a week if you throw in students absence and tardies it's much less for example i only saw my gray day students one day last week because i had a family emergency on tuesday this week i only see my great kids once because of fall break this problem is exasperated because of poor attendance for example since september 13th my first hour

068class has racked up 38 absences and 49 tardies in my fifth hour class there have been 81 absences and 27 tardies as you can infer there's it's difficult for me to truly get to know my students and appropriately meet their needs i also must add the number of days that testing has interrupted instruction asvab psat and sat have taken away valuable instructional time in fact since the start of this school year we have only had a total of three full five day weeks this has been detriment had a detrimental effect on both teacher and student morale we are struggling and we are frustrated schools will not improve learning will not improve if the school city of hammond creates until the school city of hammond creates a schedule that allows teachers and students to meet daily

069without frequent and needless interruption thank you [Applause] next community member is going to be karen carlson good evening school board members and mr scott miller my name is karen carlson i teach fifth grade at kenwood i've been there for i've been with school city of hammond for 32 years and i've come to talk to you about our school improvement plan as well i have two big areas of concern first i want to make you aware that at kenwood and i'm pretty sure probably every elementary school in hammond we're seeing many fourth fifth and sixth graders that are three four and even five years behind as a teacher i can work with my students who are behind individually for short periods of time you know once in a while but i can't provide the intense level

070of remediation that they really need to bring them up to their current level in my classroom and i'm sure this is happening in probably every other classroom i'm teaching both my grade level standards and i'm teaching lower level standards because i need to provide that remediation for the students you know we're all working very hard to help them but where's the additional help we really need quality rti instructors that would really benefit our students i have nobody coming in and nobody in our classroom the other fifth grade the other fourth grades i don't know that there's anybody in sixth grade i have kids working at a first grade level and they need help they just need help we talk about school improvement but we really need this at probably every school so what's hammond's plan

071to help remediate these students who are struggling because they're so far behind will hammond start hiring not only reading rti aids or specialists but how about math math is easy to bring up math is taught in the school not really at home at home reading and language are taught by parents a lot of language but math is primarily taught at school and we have a huge impact if we don't start working with this we're going to have kids that are graduating high school at an eighth grade level they're going to be four years behind so isn't the time for remediation now also my secondary concern refers to teachers it's my understanding that lake central just increased their starting teacher salary 52 000 a year and my friend who teaches there for 14 years she's now

072seeing 11 000 pay increase this year 14 years she's been there she make as much as i with 32 years experience i'm sorry your time is up thank you very much thank you that concludes everyone written in for first session public expression mr president trustee murphy um i doesn't look like we're prepared for this but we did as you know the meeting got cut off last time before all the comments from the people who emailed them in if we're not prepared could we could discuss this some more um allow those comments to be read at maybe at the next meeting just because we're transitioning from one format to another allow them to be heard i don't i don't see why not we can discuss that thank you president trustee king clarification so if what i'm

073hearing there there were six email expressions that were not read last week because i asked anna to send them to me and there was two that was not completed so are we considering reading those tonight or or well we'll discuss it and read at the next meeting if that's a decision so if we're going to discuss it if anyone wants to email now they should be able to email them is that correct no why not i mean you you're going to discuss this but we didn't discuss among ourselves to eliminate public expression via email there was no discussion among ourselves regarding that this is to read the old ones strictly that's all that's coming up right now again that's public comment suppression thank you we did put it on all the advertisements that you would

074have to be in person to make public well how did i miss that i mean why was why wasn't the board emailed that but this is so frustrating teachers you think you're frustrated okay moving on to the minutes we have the approval of minutes for 9 7 our executive session 9-7 school board meeting 9 21 school board meeting and 9 30 executive session do i have a motion mr president trustee miller i'd like to make a motion for the approval of the minutes the executive session minutes from 9 7 20 21 and 9 30 20 21 items a and d second okay we have a motion and a second all in favor aye aye opposed nay for yes one no okay that leaves i'll take that one too mr president thank you i'll make a

075motion for the approval of the regular school board meeting minutes from 9 7 20 21 and 9 21 20 21. second we have a motion in a second any discussion all in favor opposed nay for yes one no that brings us out to the consent agenda mr president trustee miller i make a motion for the approval of the consent agenda items a through e as presented do i have a second second give a motion a second any discussion discussion mr president trustee king uh regarding the personnel report i had sent two email questions on that i have not responded um do i get a response tonight which i as far as i know i responded to your email questions if you was it about the postings because i did respond to that well when did

076you respond to two minutes before the meeting because i certainly didn't see it no i read it at home this afternoon later this afternoon well what was the response that they both were posted for the five days and we realized that the ones that they made it to the personnel report that a person in hr had taken them off the website we made the correction that that should not happen until after the board approves the personnel report but they were up there the five days and they were especially the the um the one for social workers that had been up since the middle of september um but they were taken down when the personnel report was completed but we've we've advised that that won't happen anymore we'll leave the positions posted until after the board

077approves the report i appreciate that i mean it's just is respect okay i have a motion in a second any further discussion all in favor aye aye opposed nay four yes one no brings us in number seven new business our first item is the approval of the mou between the school city of hammond and indiana university northwest teacher education program trustees this is the program that dr sperling just presented on it has been reviewed extensively by attorney conrad a lot of back and forth but i would like to be able to ask your approval on this as it'll address a long-standing issue of how how are we helping to encourage teachers to get their full licensure in their content area okay do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve

078the mou between the school city of hammond and indiana university northwest teacher education programs as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion discussion trustee king my understanding is the administration decides uh the eligibility of the teachers to participate what could prevent any teacher from not being able to participate in this program i i don't know of any reason why a teacher would not dr ship or mrs reese do you guys have any reasons why someone would not be approved for the program well it said upon your recommendation i just want to make sure there weren't any barriers out there that would prevent a teacher from participating in this program no trustee king is no reason it's just a way that they have a direct person to communicate to make sure they

079get the application so they can get into the program on the record thank you very much thank you any other questions mr president trustee murphy are we going to request um a certain grade yeah it's a c you're better yep thank you any additional questions okay we have a motion and a second we've had discussion um let's do a roll call on this one trustee murphy yes trustee king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee miller yes and trustees only yes motion passes five zero item b adoption of resolution appropriations and tax rates i i believe because the things got pushed around a little bit trustees all know on my agenda i item b is the school improvement plan according to the school okay thank you can you get one more copy for lisa i'm good yeah

080thank you okay next on the agenda is the approval of the school employ improvement plans for the 21 2022 school year trustees we had our public works session last week where we heard from the principals these are not approving the presentations these are approving the actual documents that are submitted to the state as required by statute do i have a motion mr president trustee miller i move for the approval of the school improvement plans for the 2021-2022 school year do i have a second second i have a motion in a second any discussion discussion uh the issue that was brought up during public expression in terms of whether it would improve the secondary scheduling is will that happen um what as as it was as miss cox just presented tonight that is not part of

081the school improvement plan will it be considered well the the plan's already done for this year it will not be considered for part of this okay i i sent several questions via email as we were authorized to do i haven't had an answer from any of them right some of the many of them and so did trustee murphy require responses from the principles i am i am gathering all of those responses okay we have a motion and a second any further discussion call trustee miller yes trustee candelaria yes trustee king no trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion passes four one i just wanted to i just wanted to catch in my notes who made the motion in a second on the consent agenda uh i made the motion okay and and then it was

082approved who was the second on that cindy uh cindy okay thank you very much appreciate it thank you item whatever item number is at this point the adoption of the resolution for appropriation and tax rates trustees i'm going to have mayor reece come up and explain what we're doing here good evening again everybody we held a public work session on the budgets on september 22nd if you remember back about an hour and a half as we went through all the budgets that night uh we also held the required public hearing on october 5th at your last scheduled board meeting there have been no changes from the public hearing that was presented that night or from the work session that was presented so tonight we had the last step your last official step in approving the

083budgets for 2022. you're approving the budgets the levy and the tax rates for the district all these will be adjusted by the department of local government finance as we firm up what the assessed valuation is and they also review your expenditure plans be happy to answer any questions you might have this evening thank you any questions if not do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we adopt the resolution for appropriations and tax rates as presented second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee miller yes trustee candelaria yes trustee king no trustee murphy yes and trustees all know yes motion passes 4-1 item d adoption of the resolution to adapt bust replacement plan budget year 2022. mr reese thank you we also had the the bus

084replacement plan as part of the public hearing and that was held and tonight is the adoption of that bus replacement plan we have to answer any questions you might have regarding that plan any questions do i have a motion mr president trustee miller um i moved for the adoption of the resolution to adopt the bus replacement plan for budget year 2022 i have a motion do i have a second second i have a motion and a second all in favor all right opposed opposed motion passes 4-1 thank you very much thank you thanks man approval of the bid award for the columbia elementary school interior renovations phase one trustees i'm recommending we approve this in the amount of six hundred seventy nine thousand five hundred fifty five dollars we had eleven companies submit bids for

085the three big categories in general trades plumbing hvac and electrical okay do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the bid award for the columbia elementary school interior renovations phase one as presented do i have a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion discussion mr president trustee king can someone tell me how much money we've spent on this facility so far i i don't have that handy tonight we're spending we're thousand allocating 679 fifty five dollars of sr2 funding uh we're spending well i know it's over a million dollars at this point the money we're spending in this building we're taking so much interest in this building as opposed to the needs of a teachers we're talking about uh additional help in the classroom to

086help our children that are failing according to the test scores that we've all reviewed we see all the majority of our kids are achieving below average underachievers and we just heard this teacher literally begging us they need help but we can so easily cavalierly give away 600 spent 679 550 additional s or 2 money on a welcoming center that could have waited this is not a sense of urgency the urgency is our children getting an education and how and it has been impacted by us not giving the teachers what they want but we can spend this kind of money on this building and i i've asked the question uh i sent an email regarding the mold you said it wasn't anymore i asked was it uh inspected by a certified indiana inspector i get no

087answer there is no such thing there is such thing i'm a broker realtor and i know there's such thing as a certified uh mode inspector the state of indiana does not have a mold technician certification okay we looked into it but the bottom line is we're spending too much money when and and when we hear all of these concerns from our teachers over and over and over again thank you mr president thank you trustee king mr president president zona trustee kindle area is it to my understanding that the school is not housing any students or are we housing students at columbia we do have uh we currently have four classes of students at columbia right now so there is four classes of students attending columbia correct yes as a result of the consolidation so it's

088now the pre-welcome center it is also yes teaching students okay thank you president zuno trustee king it was presented to us documents as a welcoming center not once have they changed the verbiage in the contract you have come before us verbally and told us what you're going to do now after i questioned whether or not the community can use this facility and you told me mr miller if they pay for it then all of a sudden we got these programs going in this building but it's not written there is no written document that says what you're going to put in this building other than a welcoming center so if you want to change the contract for us to vote on all of these other things you need to do that that that is widely inaccurate

089oh please mr miller thank you trustee king mr president trustee murphy um two things one as you know i've only been on the board since january but it did come before the board about that he wanted to move these children in there because of the consolidation he also wanted a welcoming center because this is the only one really parents can come to so that would be another one in another part of the city so we did know that and so this is to update a building that i we haven't got the facility report and that's going to be next week but columbia was under the top 10 worst buildings in the city it needed money to be put into it money that's going to take care of our staff and our students to make sure

090that and could the superintendent please explain um i don't believe sr2 or 3 can be used for teacher salaries i mean it has to be there's certain things that can be used for so so i i don't really want to get into any topics that might be considered negotiation but i um if the if the idea was that we need to hire more interventionists and things like that i don't disagree the issue is hiring them like look on our school city website how many positions that we want to desperately hire and we have made some progress trustee king you requested the data i sent it from the first pay until now we've added i believe was 29 positions on the pa a net of 29 positions um to start the year so we are addressing

091the gaps that we have in teaching positions but like that's the same issue we had said all along we wanted to put a social worker in every building and we're getting there but they're not available we tried to contract it with crown and with regional they don't have the staff to contract with us they flat out said we would love to do this but we don't have the people either so there's a lot of these things i agree with the teachers on and i want to support but it's a personnel issue and being able to identify um and and and get those people in here so that's that's where we're at so i'm sorry i can't really i'm not sure i can answer your question about what's appropriate or not as far as spending out

092on teacher salary thank you thank you all right we have a motion in a second uh roll call trustee murphy yes trustee king no trustee candelaria yes trustee miller yes trustees only yes motion passes 4-1 next up the approval of title one paraprofessional hours the trustees we are recommending an increase from six paid hours to 6.5 paid hours daily uh this is the note says will better match the needs of the schools and students that they serve in their roles it was discussed with their leadership thank you do i have a motion mr president trustee miller i move for the approval of the title 1 paraprofessional hours change do i have a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed abstain all right four

093yes one abstention item g the approval of that girl that excuse me dr watkins dedication purchase uh trustees um we've been working with miss simmons and i saw her in the back earlier i'm not sure if she's still in the room um but to provide a oh there she is how are you um provide a a very nice dedication to dr watkins at the black box theater at hammond central so it includes some permanent fixtures that will be installed to commemorate his life and service in addition there'll be a dedication ceremony once the fixtures have been installed to to celebrate it it is in the amount of thirteen thousand three hundred sixty four dollars and fifty cents okay do i have a motion presidency now trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the dr

094watkins dedication purchase as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion passes 5-0 approval of the high ability program grant trustees we are recommending uh this is an annual grant that goes to address the needs of our high ability students it has already been approved by the indiana department of education and we are asking for the school board to approve it as well if we have any questions on it we can probably defer to director salinas who i see in the audience or dr ship do i have a motion president trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the high ability program grant as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye opposed

095motion passes 5-0 approval of the strategic consortium grant award trustees the next two items i and j go hand in hand essentially the state provided dollars for school systems who were willing to cooperatively plan together on how to best use their esser funding school city of ham and i felt it would be wise for us to participate in that process and many of my leadership team including myself have been doing that like in partnership with gary community schools michigan city community schools on how to best expend our uh sr and arp dollars so essentially this approves the grant award but a hundred percent of it goes to the next item so that's how the state did it was they provided the funding but then they also provided the service provider so that's the next two

096items all right let's vote on this as separate line items someone like to make a motion for the approval of the strategic consortium grant award mr president trustee miller um i move for the approval of the strategic consortium grant award promotion in a second any discussion discussion mr president trustee king it reads uh to assist in aligning essa funding into their overall improvement plans for student success what are the plans so the district has had three goals that we've identified for a while that we are trying to address we've worked through how those integrate into the program for example again this is in news but goal one is improving the cultural competency of the district so we've hired a dei champion to help address that goal two was to implement mtss across the district you

097heard people talk about rti in the audience but mtss incorporates a response system both academic and behavior issues in one cohesive model we hired mtss coordinator to support that goal and district 3 improving core instruction we're seeing that in a variety of different ways expressed but that's what this money is for is helping us to make sure that our purchases are on best practice that they're aligned that they're sustainable the one thing that they they hit home is that which of these things do you want to continue after the money runs out and which things are fine to do for a the next couple years so that's what we're doing in this i again i felt it was important for us to be a part of that and and for anybody watching we've done a

098lot of work and time on how to best spend these monies like in the state released this past spring they they released a worksheet to go through and say hey these are all the different things you should consider spending your extra money we did that we took days where we went through and we looked at all the things the state has said to do and then the summer they came out with this planning money and said hey we really want to support districts in implementing best practices on how to use this money so again we we expressed our interest in that and the result of it is this this grant for 125 thousand dollars but again 125 of it goes directly to the company that's providing the services and uh that was the condition we

099don't have any say in the planning grant you have to you have to use the provider that the state provides but that's the point of it the point of it is to make sure that we are spending the money in a way that that is aligned with best practices so so in other words we are we are doing is aligned with what's good for best practices but does this has his money really address the loss of learning that's because it was in parenthesis the loss of learning and we've looked at our i read scores they're they're nothing to rave about but up to this point i guess you're assuming you in terms of best practice the money has been used wisely but yet our scoring our risk all of that is not where it should

100be loss of learning loss of learning they need help in the classroom assistance people working with them one-on-one with these children 70 million dollars i would think we could almost have a mentor for each child i mean it's just amazing to me but yet improvement plans for student success our students are not succeeding in no way in no way thank you trustee okay we have a motion in a second mr president trustee miller murphy murphy i apologize superintendent miller doesn't this go back to item b the school improvement plans aren't they to support that and then i i have to we have a lot of students doing well in our district and i hate to all this negativity about how they're not doing well with our teachers in the classroom in our schools we have

101a lot of students that are doing well and we should be celebrating those as well as the hard work the teachers are doing trying to bring the students back up to level i just would like to see some less negativity as we address this uh mr president i'll say this on anything thank you i'm sorry the superintendent hasn't answered my question yet is it aligned with the district uh plans that's part of what this work is we have not completed it it's it's a significant process so um that is part of it is to make sure there's alignment with what our goals are and so that's what they've talked about they have access to our data as well so they've been working through that with us um and and we will continue to go through

102the process uh i would confer that um yes we have a lot of very positive things in our school system we have a lot of kids who are very happy to see us and come see us every day i was at wallace today too and and and got to interact with quite a few children who were very positive now are they on grade level um the data would suggest the vast majority of them are not on grade level yeah so um i i agree um that that is a high priority certainly not ignoring it um you have a whole team of people who agree that that's a high priority and and we are absolutely trying to address it given the resources we have trustee king did you have something else then no sir thank you

103very much okay you're welcome okay we have a motion in a second we've had discussion all in favor aye aye opposed abstain all right for es1 abstention then that brings us into the approval of the contract with education resource strategies so trustees this is the company the state has appointed you can see there's a one-to-one relationship between the amount we received in the grant you just approved and the cost of of working with them do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with education resource strategies as presented do i have a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye opposed abstain for yes one abstention item k approval of the agreement with sender dalton municipal advisors um trustees

104this is for the bond refinancing that we just that we discussed two meetings ago i do have a representative here if we have any questions but otherwise i'd ask for your approval all right do we have a motion mr president trustee miller i move for the approval of the agreement with sender dalton um municipal advisors second we have a motion in a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye opposed abstain motion passes 5-0 approval agreements with interstate studio for morton harding and jefferson elementary schools trustees or school picture agreements president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the agreements with interstate studio for morton harding and jefferson elementary schools as presented do i have a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor

105aye aye opposed motion passes 5-0 approval of hearing officer contract with casel white uh castle kessel white was uh the former principal at hammond high school and he's been serving um in this role for first quite some time we did have another resignation from one of our expulsion officers so i am recommending we approve the contract with castle white for seven thousand dollars to be an expulsion hearing officer do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the hearing officer contract with castle light as presented second we have a motion in a second any discussion discussion how many uh hearing officers do we have now with this edition so we're back to two with uh plus uh attorney friel handles cases that involve other attorneys or special education issues

106and then so there's a total of three yes how many cases are are there are pending i i don't have that in front of me i'm sorry well i sent that email several weeks and you still don't have it thank you any other discussion i have a motion and a second all in favor aye aye opposed motion passes five zero approval of a contract with richard van ecker trustees uh richard van acker has had a long-standing relationship with school city of hammond assisting with the special education department they'll also be presenting at the bridge to better diversity equity and inclusion conference so the contract amount is 1200 per day not to exceed a total of 6 000 for the year paid for out of the special education transfer tuition fund do we have a motion

107mr president trustee miller i moved for the approval of the contract with richard van ecker do i have a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion passes five zero approval of contract with marie grenchick trustees the contract for murray would be in the amount of eleven thousand one hundred seventy four dollars out of the special education transfer tuition to provide 12 hours per week as a certified occupational therapist she's retired from hammond but will come back to help assist primarily at edison so students receive their services okay do we have a motion mr president trustee miller murphy i move that we approve the contract with marie grentchick we have a motion do i have a second second motion in a second

108any discussion mr president trustee king isn't this need in just about every school yet there are needs for students to receive services um this particular issue is taking care of one of the needs we have at edison so where we where we can do those things like used contractors or outside companies we have been in them if you look at the past couple board meetings with this is not the only one we've approved to have for example a retired special education person to come back and help us along since we can't find staff so so we have been creative in trying to address some of our staffing issues that wasn't my question my question is isn't this need throughout the district i don't have the data in front of me of what the exact need

109is for every school in the district i hesitate to say that the degree of the need without having actual data in front of me could you get that data for us please mr miller yep thank you okay we have a motion we have a second any further discussion if not all in favor aye opposed motion passes 5-0 and then we have the approval of the agreement with ghost solutions trustees we've been using go solutions again in the past and they provide medicaid billing services for special education students thank you do i have a motion to approve mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the agreement with go solutions as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion one discussion what was the call trustee king i'm sorry thank you yeah

110so it depends on what they are actually billing for but basically it's 80 cents per submitted claim for encounters injured by the client or 95 cents per submitted claim for encounters entered by themselves plus 20 cents per iep student per month this it ends up not really costing us anything because of the amount of the medicaid billing that comes back okay we have a motion in a second any other discussion if none all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion passes five zero now i had the upcoming board meetings right in front of me until i went to search for that contract there it is sorry about that everyone uh the next executive session will be tuesday november 2nd in the administration building at 5 30 pm school board meeting november 2nd which is also

111a tuesday at 6 00 pm and finally on november 16th tuesday school board meeting at 6 p.m at the administration center okay mr president trustee murphy um superintendent miller did we get confirmation on the public works session for next week we do have enough trustees to have a quorum for next thursday to have a meeting where we will be discussing the updated facility study many of you know a few years back we had a facility study done that evaluated all of our buildings and ranked the highest priority issues across all our buildings we actually did complete a lot of that work with the referendum money so this is an updated study based upon our current take on our buildings that we'll be going over the other item it's slipping my mind right now do you

112remember what it was um it was the atom oh yes so we wanted to have thank you trustee mur miller the other item was we wanted to have it tonight but the presentation was really getting long but we will be presenting the results of the first ireti window to the board of trustees thank you mr miller we're supposed to have a presentation on the virtual academy yes that's the other thing that we that i do want to discuss thank you trustee king is the status of the virtual academic academy and the future of that program so we will present data to the board of trustees on how students are doing in that program and what the challenges are and and um where where we are going forward thank you i have another question trustee king

113go right ahead could you please give the public an update on the hef brick giveaway i mean brick sale and then the eventual brick giveaway to the community okay we're going off off topic this is superintendent this is superintendent's report is it not we're still on the calendar i'm sorry so we're holding up the public expression second period oh i'm so sorry no problem public expression second period regarding general matters first community member please state your name and address when you reach the podium you will have three minutes it's going to be daniel wolfe hi daniel wolf 9316 spring creek drive island indiana at the board meeting on october 5th the president got frustrated and adjourned the meeting because those in attendance were talking in you lost control for a moment and ended it but

114if we can lose control in our classroom no matter how great our management is we cannot end it it is unfortunate that only a few people of us share our hardships from our respective schools and no matter how challenging they may be we have to continue to endure them throughout our school day it is not fair that we were dismissed by the way that we were especially after sitting and enduring a school beating that lasted more than two hours so you know i'm not sharing my story because i'm trying to make this an us versus you kind of environment but that's just kind of how it feels these days so if we are playing by the same rules when i get frustrated in my classroom am i allowed to just adjourn the class and go

115home thank you [Applause] next community member is going to be reno of oregon you'll have three minutes at the podium please state your name and address rena horgan 7146 marshall avenue good evening president zullo school board trustees and superintendent miller tonight i'd like to talk to you about elementary grades and problems that are rising because of the policies you have back in march of 2020 you asked teachers to pass all students and move them to the next grade level regardless of their final grade you said this was because we did not want students and families to be overwhelmed the pandemic had taken its toll and teachers were to give grace and allow students to move to the next grade level prepared or not teachers spent countless hours preparing lessons for students who did not do

116them and it didn't matter school city told the teachers to move the students on regardless of the work or non-work put in for the entire 2021 school year you tried tied teachers hands once again you told us that since we were teaching virtually we again were to give grace and pass students on to the next grade level once again teachers spent countless hours preparing lessons online teaching and grading online work for those that actually did it but for those students who did nothing it was okay because school city of hammond again gave another reprieve to move to the next grade level prepared or not on monday your elementary teachers will be inputting grades for this school year your teachers have spent numerous hours lesson planning teaching grading and inputting grades will you once again tie

117our hands i'm here to tell you in many of your schools today we have students saying to teachers it doesn't matter if i do the work or not it doesn't matter if i get enough it doesn't matter if i get a needs improvement you're just going to move me on to the next grade anyway we have students who cannot read but we are told we can't hold them back that we must just move them on this is only making the problems worse as you heard from karen as students get older your grading policies during the pandemic have set up hammond students for failure when i taught at lafayette i helped my school go from an f grade to an a and maintained it for many years the teachers at lafayette worked hard just like many

118of your teachers here however there was one thing that lafayette never did we never lowered our bar ever we were told to keep our standards high by our principal we were the highest poverty school in hammond don't tell me that poverty kids can't reach the high bar i'm living proof that they can and they have and they've done it again and again and again we didn't lower our standards at lafayette our students reach the stars and they sparkle because of it in fact if you look at other schools in neighboring towns not one has lowered their academic expectation of their students pandemic or not and in each case students are held accountable for their actions why not in hammond is it because you don't think the students can reach the bar well i'm here to

119tell you they can the sign above you says excellence in learning success in life we must be held accountable teachers and students there is no excellence unless everyone is held accountable please bring features to the table before deciding thank you [Applause] next community member please state your name and address when you reach the podium you'll have three minutes it's going to be jamaica sawyer good evening uh there was a comment saying that we are desperately trying to hire and the statement should have been we are desperately trying to retain secondly i wanted to address the bridge to better conference that hammond is hosting i've received emails every day promoting this and my understanding is this bridge to better is about relationships about diversity i am confused as to how we are promoting this and pioneering

120this in the um northwest indiana when we in this building cannot have those same standards we are not building those relationships we have censorship we have uh disagreements and that's fine in my classroom i know that i do one specific thing in order to build those relationships and that's listen they fill out teacher evals for me every few weeks explaining what it is that i'm doing in the classroom to help them and the most important question on there is my teacher treats me fairly and i look at that question with the most heart because i can do things that they disagree with but do i do it fairly and that's because of consistency and i bring that up tonight because we are not being consistent we are changing the rules whenever we want to willy

121nilly and we are also doing censorship in my classroom everyone has a voice in my classroom everyone can speak as the teacher i am not the arbiter of truth and some of my students are uncomfortable with that notion she's the teacher you can't say that and i instantly correct them you can say whatever you feel is the truth it is not my job as the teacher to be the arbiter but to be the facilitator of that discussion and that is what needs to be done here i don't understand why we're sitting here having all this censorship and we're not allowing all the voices to be heard including the emails including the um deletion of the reports and i wanted to speak onto that because we are not having any building of relationships any true authentic

122pursuit of that when we have censorship it has no place into this building and it should not be the leadership that you are giving to us as was stated earlier if i conducted my classroom in that way my students would not feel that they could trust me they would not feel that they are valued and we would be marginalizing the very community that we are serving thank you [Applause] next community member please state your name address and you have three minutes it's logicas good evening mr president trustees mr miller uh i'm here on behalf of my colleagues this evening to clear the air and to [Music] just kind of stay where we really are and what we're asking here first of all the people who come before you are people who are deeply concerned about

123the condition of the school city of hammond whether they are my colleagues the custodial staff the support staff we're not going to go away we will continue to try to provide information to each and every one of you so you can make the educated decisions and the problems that we have we want to remind you that we are not your enemy but we are your friend we are your friend and somewhere along the line that has been missed we are not the problem but we are the solution to many of the problems school city faces the three minutes that you give us to address really difficult concerns is insufficient so when we don't have we don't feel like we have a voice with your administration we come to you and try to address those concerns

124three minutes is not enough but i know time is of importance to at least one member here so i will stop here yield the balance my time back to you next community member please state your name address and you'll have three minutes it's going to be catherine garza catherine province garza 7550 oakdale avenue hammond indiana good evening trustees and superintendent miller i am a transplant art teacher from clark middle school to scott middle school a hammond resident and an aunt of a hammond student i'm sincerely enjoying my new position it's supportive leadership and having in-person students again but i write out of the concern about overcrowding it has put a heavy strain on my on the ability to monitor behavior and masking as well as the ability to do proper contact tracing i was prevented

125from being able to read this letter two weeks ago so i apologize if it's a little bit out of date attempts have been mentioned to higher covid protections have been mentioned tonight but i feel that every word of this letter is still relevant the cdc statement of students needing to be in schools does not take into account overcrowding and short stuffing superintendent miller and the school board trustees have received an email that i wrote that details a temporary secondary level band-aid to overcrowding until we rebuild staff it involves a fourth of the students doing synchronous learning monday through thursday among other specific things many would not agree with this what else can we do um i'm sure others have better ideas um but unless there is incentive for staff recruitment and fair pay for existing

126staff um you know other suggestions would be fantastic uh with covet alone the majority demographics of hammond students black and latinx and also those of working class parents have historically greater access to onset disease as is seen in covid mortality rates vaccines do exist we've had a more proactive masking policy than several neighboring neighboring districts and we ask parents to report cobit and follow symptom protocols but those variables are laurels we cannot afford to rest on abs when we are as overcrowded as we are our kids absolutely need to be in schools but not the way they have been our custodians are also overwhelmed they are doing the best they can to help ch students and staff keep us healthy and safe but they are being stretched to do more than twice the amount of

127the work that is fair to ask of them they are not able to do the kind of cleaning that would make in-person school remotely practical i have been covering classes out of concern for student safety more so than my wallet but that's an issue too in desperate situations some of my colleagues and i've had to split classes of absent teachers into our own already packed rooms for the first week students of unstaffed classes were rooted into the i'm sorry your three minutes are up that concludes everyone written in for second session public expression okay that takes us to reports from the superintendent we've sent out a large parent square about having one to one for elementary chromebooks elementary students will soon receive their school city of famine issue chromebook to ensure one-to-one learning opportunities in

128the classroom and in any potential e-learning there is a paper for parents and guardians to fill out it was sent home this monday yesterday and we'd like it returned by next tuesday thursday october 28th is s-a-t school day for 12th grade and psat nine school day for ninth grade um on this date students in ninth and twelfth should report to their home school at the regular time all other students in 10th and 11th grade will have an asynchronous e-learning day and log into their google classrooms by 9am again that is thursday october the 28th we would like to mention uh someone from the audience mentioned it but the bridge to better conference that is coming up on october 30th for adults on the afternoon of the 29th we will also have an activity for students

129that is open also to the community you can find more information on our website or you can register now at bitly slash bridge to better i believe that's a couple more i do have an update on the bricks the hammond education foundation is excited to launch its souvenir brick sale from now through december 1. all proceeds from the sale support the mission of hammond education foundation and school city of hammond you can find out more if you're interested in a hammond high school brick at hammondeducationfoundation.org last announcement i'm going to have some students on the radio with me tomorrow morning promoting frozen junior it's our first production in the dr walter j watkins black box theater the production brings together students from elementary and high school creating a one-of-a-kind experience we'll have shows beginning in

130november but i'm going to have some of the the student stars on tomorrow so it'll be exciting to hear from those cast members so that concludes the reports thank you superintendent okay do i have a motion to adjourn mr uh question to mr miller we we're on the adjournment at this point i have a question to mr miller then send him an email uh for the record i cannot have my comments i am having i will have my hand um you