Board Meeting October 5, 2021

001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] mmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] our fifth meeting of the school city of hammond board of trustees greetings to those that are watching online as well we are going to begin tonight with our budget hearing superintendent miller yes we have a statutory requirement to hold a hearing on the budget it has been advertised as required and i have met rhys to come up and present the highlights good evening thank you mr miller members of the board tonight is your first uh official uh hearing regarding your 2022 uh budgets as well as the 2022 to 2026 bus replacement plan your next step in the process

002will be adoption of the budgets that'll take place at your regularly scheduled board meeting the third tuesday which is i believe the 19th uh coming up here in a couple weeks the budget has been advertised appropriately on gateway and also on your school website the budgets for 21 uh you'll see the approved budgets were 138.5 million dollars in 2022 we're advertising a budget for 142.5 million dollars you'll notice the education fund is up that's due to the legislation uh the state passed more money into the funding formula uh also referendum operating is up due to the av that you're going to be receiving is higher than uh what what it was the previous year so both of those are up a little bit as well as debt service what is down a little bit is

003operations uh you also notice that the referendum capital fund is almost is the same exact same amount eight million one seventy four two hundred your pension debt service is down about a hundred thousand dollars that's according to your immigration schedule and just so we're all on the same page remember we talked about it a couple weeks ago uh that pension debt service fund the last payment will be made in 2023 so that fund is quickly coming to an end for your levies what we've advertised uh currently in 21 you're 49.3 million that's the actual levies that are being assessed to your property taxpayers this year in 2022 we've advertised 60 million and you'll see they're broken down by fund as we mentioned those are advertised high just to make sure we capture all the revenue

004we can we do anticipate those numbers coming down from the 60 million dollar number for tax rates our actual tax rate this year is 1.88 you did take a bit of a hit this year in your debt service rate that's because they didn't allow you to raise as much in cash as you'd had in the past what we've done here for 2022 is actually increase that quite a bit up to 88 cents however that's not going to be as high as it is they're going to knock that down as well even at the expected 87 cents i anticipate being quite a bit lower but we do want to build up that cash remember our discussion we want to build up that cash in 2022 therefore we use a protected tax waiver use that cat cash

005to offset uh the loss of revenue in 2023 so planning ahead for two years out from now we're advertising a rate of 219 and then two almost 215 is what we're expecting but again i do expect that to be a little bit lower the last step tonight is the 2022-2026 bus replacement plan a new new laws came in place with this a couple years ago only need to advertise five years that replacement plan you'll notice in 2022 we're anticipating replacing seven buses are what the plan calls for we have to answer any questions you might have at this time madam president trustee murphy um the bus replacement plan is not in board docs if we could get that uploaded after the meeting and in here please any other questions from the board madam president trustee

006king thank you um when you made your presentation i believe it was last thursday you gave a broader overview in terms of where we could be based on the adm could you explain that to the public please uh the funding formula is driven by the student account which is what we refer to as adm um that is a big funding factor almost 90 95 percent of your funding for the education fund comes from that that count um what specifically would you like me to talk about regarding adm well during the time sir i recall i should have brought my uh the notes i took i mean it could be we could be in a grave situation uh based on that and uh i mean for the most part when making these kinds of presentations we

007just need a clear over verbal overview of what the numbers mean based on the adm and where we could be financially whether we're going to be in a good place or a bad place and i think that's what i heard from you this past thursday you know that you know there might be have to cut staff and have them i mean i heard that i mean i mean those kinds of notes i took so i'm just saying in this scenario here we need to share you know with the public but i think we're talking about two different things and i never said we'd cut staff in half well no okay i'll apologize for that but what this is tonight is a public hearing on your budgets where you set you're going to adopt in two

008weeks the levies and the appropriations or your actual budgets that's what we're doing here tonight is talking about those two things we've simply budgeted those figures into this this is not talking about the plan that we put in place you'll notice that the numbers i'm presenting tonight are going to be slightly different than what i even talked about two weeks ago with you regarding the financial plan we've put in place this is done to make sure we maximize your revenues and to make sure we maximize your budgets as well and then we work throughout the year to make sure that we're efficiently spending those dollars as they come in two different two different things that we're talking about here tonight well come november so this this is going to be talk when we when the

009board actually votes on the budget in november did i hear that uh the next board meeting the next board meeting uh well you could just make it clear as you made it crystal clear at the public the original public hearing from based on the notes i'll just bring my notes uh to the next meeting so that i can understand clearly if you submit those questions in advance i'd be happy to answer them for you at any time and and i would also add that our public work session which was was rather lengthy uh last week that is available on youtube for anybody that would like to go back and kind of hear more about like the outlook for the next five years i think that's what trustee king is is is talking about exactly we

010got into the weed so to speak during that meeting absolutely so anybody who really wants to get in depth on the financing of the school city of hammond i urge you to go watch that youtube video yes it would be available on youtube and it does go into much more depth than what we're doing here tonight with the public hearing for our one-year budget all right there any other questions from the board okay at this time um i would be willing to entertain any comments from the public if there are any please come to the podium be sure to state your name and your address but also keep it just to what we're talking about with the budget hearing okay i'm sorry i'm really short no worries jeanette and kosak i run the app program

011at the area career center my just my question is what is our adm okay i um i'm sorry it's just for public content comment no that's my comment do we have the do we have an adm number yeah that's that's a question not a comment um i don't understand why we can't just because we don't it's it's not available yet back from the state so okay thank you madam president trustee king well i'll wait the public hearing is over thank you in any other public comment superintendent miller can you talk a little bit about when we'll know more or where that adm that official adm number comes from thank you yes um we have had some challenges with the data exchange which is for those who are not familiar is a new way that ideally

012is requesting that we report our average daily membership data that is not unique to hammond it has been an issue all across the state so we have our final number that we think is correct which is around 11-4 the reason i can't say it's it's exact is because the part that the data exchange does is it looks for conflicts amongst all the other school systems in indiana so if if another school system says oh no that actual student it goes to concord schools then we have to resolve where that student really is are they are they still enrolled with us or are they really enrolled at concord schools and so that's the only part our side is done we we have our number um but because the data exchange is not working yet we don't

013know if there's going to be any unresolved conflicts but it's all due on on the 8th so like it's it we will we will submit a final number if we even if it's not working but that's that's why there's a delay in in having a solid number but it's around 11 4. thank you all right seeing no other questions from the public i'm going to go ahead and call our public hearing to a close thank you very much matt i appreciate your help uh superintendent miller if we are ready i'm going to go ahead and uh call roll for our regular meeting yes trustee murphy president trustee blake king we're here trustee candelaria president and trustee miller is here uh please let the record reflect that we have one trustee who's absent that would be

014trustees i'll know all right uh superintendent miller yes uh for the pledge tonight i'm very pleased i'm sure you saw as you came in we have the hammond central high school color guard with us to present our colors tonight so i will turn it over to you [Music] forward [Music] boulevard [Music] of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for allah [Music] right shoulder on hi [Music] forward thanks very much [Applause] very proud of our students and to uh see our ladies representing tonight right that's awesome that's awesome um superintendent miller we're gonna go ahead and jump right into recognition and presentations yes our first presentation is our monthly status report from skillman corporation i believe we have chris or

015david on the screen hmm are you guys closed or we can go to the next thing and come back go to the next thing all right superintendent uh miller item number b all right we'll come hopefully we can come back to the skillman report next i'd like to call anna verdusco our language development program director to do a presentation on some of the grants we have on the agenda tonight oops okay are you gonna no if not okay so uh good evening um school board trustees superintendent miller and the hammond community my name is anna brudusco thank you my name is anna verdusco and i am the language development program director this is my second year as director but i have been an educator for school city of hammond for 23 years and today before

016you we have our two grants to be board approved i wanted to explain a little bit about each of them and we have our nesp grant and a mini grant dli pilot grant today and we soon will have our title 3 grant ready but we may need a couple more weeks it still has not been approved by the state uh the first slide that i wanted to talk about was just give you uh to give you a little snapshot about our data or the amount of els that we have in our district and this is just a rough count we have approximately 1500 if we include our new students that we have and we're in the process of screening kindergartners and other new students but as you can see we in the first slide we

017have it let me see maybe it's not working but in the first slide we have um we have it organized by highest to low but if not i can just go over it or oh there it goes okay so we uh we see that we have the the top three schools with the highest amount of english learners is hammond central irving and edgars and then it goes down from there but we have about approximately 73 000 of english learners in the state of indiana and that makes up about six percent of the population and here in school city we have approximately 13 percent of our students that are that qualify for our services and they are in the process of acquisitioning in their language development and we service our els come from 16 different language

018groups so we have approximately 1500 students once we add in the new ones and we have about 60 staff members servicing those students total and that includes some parent facilitators and [Music] we have an interpreter and you know they're they're not all teachers and paraprofessionals but uh as far as program models and services on the next slide we have these are the different uh models that we have we have for k-12 we have the push-in services for english as a new language enl we have services for k-12 newcomer model and that's where we have specialized lessons for students that are at the beginning stages of acquis learning english our emergent learners and then we have for grade 7 through 12 we have el teachers they have their own classroom and students are scheduled into their

019classroom so that's the content-based enl model and then at irving elementary school this is our fourth year including one year that we planned to implement the two-way dual language spanish english immersion program at irving elementary so that is also a model for english learners and it not only is teaching a second language to our monolingual students but uh we are uh we are it's a great model for our english learners to develop their native language as well and recently we have partnered with dr trish morita mullany from purdue and she wrote a five-year grant where the grant helps pay for teachers to get their el license el license and in addition they can get a dli certificate so we are going to partner with her program that was just approved they received 2.9 million dollars

020so we are for any of our teachers that do not have their el certification we are going to offer that for them to make sure that we are that all our teachers are highly qualified and it comes with additional supports and trainings so we are really happy and grateful to be part of that program in addition we offer training for general ed teachers and of course teachers in paris in our department but so we offer psyop training for teachers and we try to make sure when scheduling students that they are scheduled with the psyop trained teacher so it only it's it's to the students benefit so not only do they have teachers that are psy up trained but in addition we also give them services we're going to have before and after school support and

021we're also planning to support the students next summer and that is for their learning loss and academic impact and then the next slide we i wanted to talk a little bit about our primary funding sources of course the number one source for us is the general fund and then we have the non-english speaking grant which is um on the board agenda for today and we have title three title one also supports us in many different ways as far as professional development in other areas and our little mini grants are a great support like our dli pilot grant which is on the board agenda today that helps us it's for 17 000 and it helps us by like spanish-leveled library books manipulatives formative assessments for our dual language classroom and that helps the general fund because

022that's 17 000 that does not have to be used there and then in the next slide it's just a different levels of support for our program and you basically see there it's basically the general fund and then next comes title one title three there's a title one part c migrant funding which we don't really have any migrant students right now but we count on the title iii to for supplemental support and the title three i just wanted to kind of go over that real quick on the next slide title three the allocation is 172 and that is a small amount of money but it pays for our two el coaches it pays for our mindful mindful parenting talks that we uh offer for our parents and it's offered in spanish by dr yanina gomez the

023parents have really loved uh those uh parenting talks and then it pays this year it's going to pay for an additional 60 teachers to be trained in the saya model and then we also some of the funding goes to our non-public schools and then the els that so it goes to the non-public schools to pay for instructional supplies pd's materials technology whatever they feel would be great for their english learners and then lastly i just wanted to talk a little bit about and the nesp it is a larger uh allocation for us and um we get to do a lot of things with this this year it's 261 dollars and uh we have eight paraprofessionals last year we had six this year we're able to add two more one of the paras will be working

024at uh edgar's middle school since their need this year is much higher than ever before in the uh than ever before we they have almost 200 students and then hess also could use more support so one pair will go to edgar's and the other one will go to hess it also pays for our ldp dli parent facilitator at irving our dli coordinator for irving this year new to this grant will be an el coach and this el coach will help us at the elementary level we could use a lot of help there it helps pay for substitutes while our teachers are being trained on el specific pd's we can pay for subs to be in their classroom why they while they receive training and then also it pays for certified and classified stipends and this

025is again so when our teachers are at el-specific pd or when they're collaborating with general education teachers or when they're having ldp team meetings because they do they go to all the meetings that their schools offer but in addition they still do more so we try to always pay for their time during these meetings also we use the funding to pay for travel expenses when they go to professional development and it pays for esl boot camp classes we're also this year going to be tutoring students for credit recovery services before and after school tutoring and it'll include summer as well and this year we budgeted for el licensure and dli certification courses so because purdue is willing to pick up our tab there so i could probably use that money in other spots so that's

026good news or pay for other additional teachers to take the licensure courses so that'll be a big help and then because it is hispanic heritage month i just wanted to share a few pictures with you here we have a nice [Music] display from teacher miss marta flores at morton high school this is a beautiful bulletin board that she put up with the students and in the next picture we have edgar's middle school they actually had a lot of pictures of nice things that they've done and they're doing a lot of things to celebrate with the students and then we have some pictures from irving elementary school and the students it was really nice to see that a lot of students came in with uh you know traditional clothing from different you know his latin american

027countries and then i think there was one more yeah we have some uh a hallway display from dli miss teacher andrea castro and we have one of our applied skills classroom did the one on the right so a lot of pretty things and all the schools are doing a lot of nice activities for hispanic heritage month so that's it for our presentation today and i also wanted to thank we have several teachers team members with us if you can please stand i really appreciate your time being here with us thank you so much thank you but before you sit um i don't know if the board has any questions oh sorry yes are there any questions from the board oh god president president miller thank you trustee king yes okay um you know considering what

028was going on with the pandemic shortage of staffing and overcrowding is how is it affecting your program i mean in terms of well do you think our children are going to fare well academically based on the the uh environment that we're working in right now i think so i really do i think we're getting everything going right now we were helping wherever we could help when we have you know the shortages at the beginning of the year but right now i've been checking with everybody everybody's starting to pull their students and provide their services i really only have one opening right now but i actually have it covered for now so i think we're we're in a good we're in a good spot and we can really focus on the academic impact that we have

029in front of us but when would you actually know after the working parent or operating period or the any you know what do you anticipate to know that the program is in good shape well i met with our staff members last friday i try to meet with them at least every two weeks i my next point is to start the before and after school services i just want to hear from them that they're you know they're ready to participate in the survey and providing those services but i think it won't be long i can keep you posted but definitely maybe within two to three weeks maybe three weeks times we can i can give you an update or is that too long i couldn't give you no i can i can check in with them

030next friday okay i just i'm really concerned i i reviewed the test scores uh and mr adam provided me a narrative for uh explaining to me some of the scores and and they just didn't look very good so i'm i'm just extremely concerned about this program and that it's it's really going to help our students that's it thank you okay thank you thank you madam president trustee murphy um the dual language program at irving sorry um that was one of the things that happened under my prior tenure here and i've always been really excited about that so as we progress towards the spring i'd be really excited to see the data on how the dual language program is helping both our native speakers as well as the students learning it and see how it looks

031with their achievement for the school year because i'd love to see more than one dual immersion school in our district absolutely and we have our i ready data that we are in the process of just making going through it but we're also going to have data in english and in spanish so we can make those comparisons and we have purchased some of our own uh informal assessments like to do running records in english and spanish so we'll we'll have several um data or you know several things to look at to see how they're doing and how they're progressing thank you and thank you okay and i know we just threw a whole lot at you so don't feel overwhelmed by that and don't feel the need to report back to the board just let the

032superintendent know sure and he'll share that with us okay so no no pressure on that okay okay i know we just threw a lot at you right there so no it's okay okay i mean that was the point of presenting today i thought let me share a little bit of you know about the program and see if you guys have any questions for us and you know we're always willing to make improvements that's wonderful thank you so much and if you'll just if you'll just follow up with the superintendent he'll be sure to let us know okay thank you so much thank you madam president if i wasn't clear i was asking for data at the end of the school year because of covid i mean covered was so rough with our teachers last year

033so it would be nice to see a full year of what's being done with our students so that's what i'm asking right what it looks like at the end of the school year yeah i think i mean i'm definitely predicting it's going to look much better because i know last year when we brought a lot of our gli kids back in the classroom the parents were right away saying they noticed a huge difference being just virtual and then being in person that it was like almost instant i know you felt the same way you know but i have my i have a niece and nephew in it too and my my sister and brother-in-law said they noticed the big difference so we're we're hoping for good results well we're planning for it so thank you

034thank you that that's wonderful and again just work with the superintendent okay when time permits okay thank you thank you thank you very much all right um do we have our building report yes all right superintendent miller yes i think we have david yancey or representative from skillman to give our monthly update can everyone else hear me okay we can okay perfect good afternoon superintendent miller and school board trustees here to give your october board report as usual the table of contents with a new key plan some uh updated photographs four week activities some milestone dates the current insight diversity and first give the budget update i think i might have the my apologies i have the incorrect or report folder my apologies no this is the correct one i'm sorry here's the progress key

035plan my apologies uh here's the updated progress key plan that's what threw me off a little bit but you'll see the new football fields key plan with all the track going around you can see the shot put in discus throwing areas along with the concession area in the athletic amenities here's an updated picture of the demolition northwest of the existing building here's the existing pool being demoed here's looking north to the new athletic football field um grading for the football field and track another picture of the demolition of the existing high school a picture of a water main on the north side of the property being installed the interior utilities for the future concession stand and the outbuildings for the athletic area leagues for the high school continue commissioning adjusting mechanical systems completing punch lists

036and landscaping for the athletic complex complete demolition of existing building underground utilities for the east parking lot continue work on the new concession roof underground infrastructure on the entire site sanitary water electrical continued bleacher concrete foundations and installing checked perimeter milestone dates uh complete demolition this month complete new football bleachers in november uh the east parking lot next month as well and complete the concession building in december the month of september we've had 60 percent minorities on the job on 21st century uh 39 people per day on site um an average of um 24 minorities on the job slot per day all right now let's pass it over to mr chrisman czech ski to go over the budget update thank you david i appreciate it if you can blow that up a little bit please

037all right thank you so on the high school left column everyone uh everything's still trending good no one for scenes there again with 99 being complete we don't foresee any any uh unforeseen conditions show up it's just all owner owner uh requested items whether it's loose equipment or technology type uh items so that's it's good you do have some extra money there to spend on the athletic side thanks david if you could scroll down um keep an eye out on the pending there you go nope thank you pending in in the actual contingency so there there are some unforeseens that we have come across during the demolition and i'll have david scroll back to some of the upfront photos there are some sheet piling that we found that were an unforeseen item and believe it

038or not at some point in time there was another pool that we found um there you go yeah all right right there david if if you can go just to the left of the red excavator heading east and west yep just a little bit to the left there right by the uh a little further down there you go that whole length of wall keep coming left david that whole length of wall there was some sheet piling there that was just retaining um possibly unsuitable soils we don't know at the time and then further to the south near highland there was another pool that we just found yesterday so there's going to be some cost associated with these items with these unforeseen conditions so david scroll back to the pending just working with the contractors to

039establish a cost and that's what we're having we'll have it tracked but other than that on the north field we were about 90 complete with the water main that went in so we're trending on that time and material cost nicely and that's it for the budget all right trustees you have our latest update on the new high school in front of you and it has been presented are there any questions madam president trustee murphy i understand that there was additional air quality testing done could you tell us how that went out i believe everything came back negative that's correct trustee uh it came back i would say about a week week and a half ago with the miracle engineering and uh yes there was no contaminants that were found airborne thank you you're welcome are

040there any other questions from the board madam president trustee king my i guess my first question is the unforeseen cost for to addressing the pool do you have an estimate or an idea how much of the contingency left is going to take oh you know do you have any idea or right i mean you couldn't have come with some idea of knowing that there was an issue i'm sure you've known i don't know how long you've known about the pool but could you have come you know with a better idea of of how much would be left sir i tried to get arranged trustee king but i i just didn't want to even throw that out there we literally found it yesterday and really what the contractor doesn't even know how far down it goes

041he's still in the process of removing it so but we've got three sets of eyes on it and we're tracking it daily um heavy communication between us and the contractor so as soon as i get arranged i will forward that over to superintendent miller thank you and this question has been brought to my attention we're all aware that there was a collapse wall so we're on this diagram can you place that collapsed wall the progress key plan could you sort of outline where that wall did collapse so we can have a general idea you know if for some reason we start having issues in that area we would consider perhaps that could be a true reason trustee king just for clarity you're talking about the collapse wall like very early in the project correct that's

042the only class wall that i know okay like i said just for clarity you know well but for the sake of the public i just like the wall that collapsed very very early in the project right right so if if you go to just south of unit f main gym there's a corridor that is not represented on this diagram it's just north of the letter g yeah right there david you got it and we could have another layout sent over to superintendent miller if you wish and that's the black box is that what you're saying gene the black boxing correct correct there's a corridor that shares between g and f that runs east and west right right there if you could see david's cursor oh okay thank you so just for a little more clarity

043just our next meeting get into mr moore where we where exactly you know there's a conditional mission on that okay again it's my understanding that we we're already replacing tiles for leaking our roofs uh paint has been replaced for paint it's coming off the walls uh could you explain what's going on with that sir and and that said what building it's at hammond central so if i can clear clarify that question it's just your typical punch list items where contractors need to go back in the ceilings and they get nicked or damaged and where it was uh requesting them to replace that tile the ceiling tile my understanding was it was it was it was water stain sir okay i wasn't aware of that it's just damaged out from what i understood but um and

044and regarding the peeling paint um with heavy traffic with the loose equipment and even some other contractors in and out of areas the walls get nicked or deemed and again we're requesting the contractor to touch them up yes and then the crack concrete that i understand mr cheeks but with you all for a tour of the school and he found quite quite some additional cracks not only on the outside in the sidewalk but also in the building can you explain that sir sure we had them repaired within you know 48 hours and mr cheeks came back spoke to larry gutierrez scott cherry and myself we walked it again and everything's uh everything's getting repaired well i mean of course you know that's a concern you know a brand new building 100 million dollars and we're

045already addressing leaking roofs and and having to replace tile and so i would just hope moving forward i believe one of the po person spoke under public expression we need some kind of warranty a checklist before the school is turned over to us you know where exactly where that collapse wall was so that we can can know moving forward any potential issues we might have at the school is that doable sir absolutely all that will be in the closeout documents that's currently being prepared and then one other item uh mr miller were you you're aware when they had the fire drill at hammond central well we're required to have one every month so i'm not i'm not aware of the one you might be specifically referring to well it's just again my understanding from some

046of this personnel there uh it was a little chaotic the doors weren't operable as they should have been you know it was quite a bit of confusion uh you know the i don't know maybe it would be a good idea mr miller if if if the board members who wish to to actually go into the school when the students are there so we can observe i understand the classrooms are extremely tight you know overcrowding and uh the the fear is when the lockers ever get fixed uh we're gonna have additional you know issues in the hallways as the students transcend from one class to the other and um i would just like to see it for myself rather than and then hear say and all that stuff sure any of the board members you know

047agree or disagree i just would like to see it for myself i don't mind arranging a tour at all that's fine okay and again i'm concerned about that fire drill because i understand it was scary uh uh are the doors push button yet is that in it that seems to be an issue yes or no especially for handicapped use it is and we had an on-site technology meeting that handles this part of the operator and the contractor has reordered a device for the outside part of it so the inside part's rectified it's just the outside is not okay and then i appreciate trusting murphy bringing up the issue of the air quality and the other environmental issues but it's it still doesn't sit well with me because there was a contradiction on the part of

048your of your people and uh even though i appreciate uh councilman tyler and councilman alexander for trying to get a second test on the city and i guess obviously the mayor stepped in and i don't know where that is anymore but as a elected official a public servant it is my duty to make sure everyone is safe and i know what you said it was a total contradiction in terms of how that asbestos was removed so i'm very leery i know we saw um reports but again these agencies they set the limits and uh throughout this country we've had issues when it comes to environmentalists in urban communities and i just would hope moving forward and putting it on the record that uh what we have done is sufficient and our children and our staff

049and our community is especially safe when it comes to how that building was uh demolished and again i i'm not i'm not i'm not at all pleased and i don't accept the reports that was given to us regarding the the testing thank you madam president trustee murphy i don't normally rebut however uh we received from the city i know it was supposed to be confidential what was given out and what the environmental department did having worked with through the law firm with code enforcement on all the rest of them i have great faith in mr novak he's been here for years he's overseen the brownfields and from that detailed report they kept on our site they contacted item when they thought there was an issue with dust they contacted item on two more occasions the

050city was all over that demolition as well as the construction i have complete faith in the city of hammond did everything they should have done and i hope that we can go and share the current air quality testing results with the council so then go on with that so everybody needs to know it was done safely item was there osha has been there all kinds of organizations have been called in to view that site for the extra oversight and nothing absolutely nothing has come up and as he's talking about the punch list this is what happens when you have such a large project there will be cracks in the countries i walked with mr cheeks i saw them he pointed them out to me he pointed out some sloppy stuff where one of the drains

051had gotten concrete over the top but skillman went back to the contractors and says you need to fix this so if anybody thinks there's anything they should be contacting their number one custodians the principles and reporting this stuff if you've got a wall with scratched paint if you've got drawers that don't line up that is what skillman's job is to make sure that our 100 million dollar high school is the best it can be for the children and the staff that go there so i have complete faith in them if they are aware of something they're going to take care of it as he just told you the cracks he found they're probably more after the heavy equipment come through when they're finished up with the football fields and the rest of it we just

052need to let them know so they can follow up with the contractors this is a safe school it's a good place for children and staff to be and i'm proud of it thank you trustee murphy madam president trustee king thank you you have faith i don't it's just as simple as that and i agreed to disagree and the fact is it took an outsider to bring these these points i mean where are the eyes the ears from the folks that we paid to oversee this project and that's my whole point i appreciate mr cheeks and and his eyes but again i don't i feel if he had not pointed them out would they ever be corrected thank you superintendent miller any closing comments uh just that the the testing was part of the package that

053was scheduled all along they have done additional testing to try to make people feel better but that was part of the package for the demolition all along was to have testing and certification on the process you know if anyone in here has ever built a new house i did 20 years ago you know what a punch list is like you know what it's like to have after you have a brand new house and you spend a bunch of money that that there are issues with it that you have to contact the contractor and get them out so we have a 110 million dollar new house and and yes it's uh things like drywall can crack and we can have these things but the thing that i hear is that they're addressing them quickly and that's

054that's all we can ask for but we absolutely i think everybody on this board wants to get every cent that we paid for for that building um and so uh we will make sure that we do a final walk through when the time comes we're not close to that yet and make sure all these issues are addressed but i agree with trustee king and trustee murphy and that if you know of something or you see something please let mr verton know let somebody in the building know let the number one custodian know and we will we will get it added to the list all right thank you thank you chris and david and scott and everyone else from skillman that has been on tonight to prepare this presentation for us thank you very much you're

055welcome all right um we're going to move on to public expression first period this is limited to agenda items only you'll receive three minutes please be sure to share your name as well as your address bestie candelaria first community member is going to be anita cox good evening my name is anita cox i live in highland indiana i teach at hammond central high school my comments reference the personnel report i have two suggestions to keep teachers one is lightening the load so that they can do their job teachers are required to document truancy and tardies in attendance and empower school then we are supposed to contact parents by phone and through or through powerschool we have to do this numerous times before administration takes over i do not understand why teachers have this additional burden

056when we have spent thousands of dollars on power school and parent square to document these types of problems i spent half of my last two planned periods counting contacting parents not over grades but over tardies and truancies i know i should feel lucky to have a plan period when so many elementary teachers don't get one but i should be focusing and all other teachers should be focusing on planning analyzing data providing feedback building relationships and i should also be out there having the time to mentor other teachers i ask that you find a way to use technology to document and reduce attendance problems my next suggestion is changing the start time you already know that studies show that teens should not be starting school until 8 to 8 30. yesterday only four of my first

057hour students were on time there was no rain there was no snow there was no winding there was no late bus just another typical morning thanks for your consideration [Applause] that concludes everyone written in for public expression first period that's in person i will pass it over to superintendent miller you know i don't see any for first period do you guys have anything for first period i don't no nothing further for first period all right all right well thank you very much um moving on to the consent agenda do i have a motion for the approval of the consent agenda madam president trustee murphy i move that we accept the consent agenda items a through e as presented second i have a motion and i have a second do i have any discussion trustee king

058president miller i would like to read into record the accounts payable docket register for october 5th 2021 our claims are 1 million 767 981.92 our payroll was 3 million 66 000 314 and 52 cents additionally i had a a question on accounts payable i'm just curious is there any data or could data be provided in terms of oh wait a minute i lost it that's helpful since our district is moving towards diversity equity and inclusion in terms of our vendors and contractors and consultants just how diverse are are that is is that a reasonable question you know uh i know some of them are consistent you know the bills for insurance and all of that but i'm i'm referring to uh a lot of our vendors and consultants that we uh we are voting to

059pay on is there a way to um distract that extracted information mr miller or some other kind of um criteria like that is that what is the question before the board that is not the question the question is simply do do we have it broken down by women-owned business local businesses the same thing we did with skillman in the building of the school i mean we're we're into this you know diversity equity and inclusion and and i and from what i'm reading from other schools and how they do it there is an audit you know that's that's part of it to make sure you're meeting those needs i'm not saying i'm not saying we have to file anything the data is there i mean we spent a lot of money and payables hundreds and hundreds

060and billions hundreds of millions of dollars you know i mean is it does it goes to local businesses are we working with women minorities i mean the majority of our our pop student population um is diverse and you know we we get our money as they say butts in the seats so those children generate those dollars to pay our bills so certainly it should be reflective of our student population so i'm just saying since we're moving forward in diversity equity and inclusion is that data available if it's not available just say it can't we can't find it but we need to be uh moving forward looking at that those kinds of uh things attorney conrad yes i believe that the state law requires us to go with the lowest qualified vendor correct it is the

061yeah you do have that requirement when you put things out to bed that you're going to the lowest qualified you know bitter okay there is nothing in state law that says that you can throw other things in here such as diversity it's just not one like as qualifications or right right and so there is really nothing in the law right now that says that we're going to put other issues that we usually do blind into that criteria so generally speaking you know you're not putting out to bid we want you know we want to have these other criteria out here that's generally not how that process has worked now skillman is a private contractor skillman as a private contractor can do a whole lot of different things or you know in what they're doing in

062their data collection i'm not aware at this time of where schools as a public entity or the state as a public entity is necessarily collecting that kind of data about that so i mean that was going to take that would take some amount of research to kind of figure that out so um it's going to take some time to figure that out as well if that is the direction that the board is as a whole is looking to go toward so so just let me just jump in a little bit so we do have board policy 6450 which doesn't address diversity does address local purchasing i'll just read this sentence it says the school board recognizes its position as a major purchaser in the community and while it is the intention of the board to

063purchase materials and supplies of quality at the lowest possible cost through widespread competition if all other considerations are equal the board prefers though doesn't mandate the board prefers to purchase within the school city from established local merchants that's that's about all it says in the policy that i'm aware of to answer your actual question i i will have to check with miss pritchett if we do track if like in our vendor system if there's a flag for minority owned business or things like that i it would be the if there is it's the first i've heard of it okay i mean we have it all over our website and all of our uh job descriptions when we uh post our job descriptions we speak of it so why wouldn't we do it for our vendors

064consultants and everybody else and and skillman it was a struggle i mean what they didn't accept it immediately but we worked through it and we were able to get local women minority participation in that project so i don't see this any being any different thank you one of the biggest differences that you have is that all employers are required private and public employers are required to keep eeoc data and keep data on you know on diversity you do that as an employer okay but that but that kind of is the extent of your jurisdiction is with you and your employees so every you know different companies might collect that data and a lot of times you know it that you know your that data is for reporting purposes for the eeoc that doesn't necessarily mean

065that there's any kind of mandates for you to be giving that data out in different ways it doesn't necessarily mean that that data is readily available for vendors and contractors now you know that we do have to ensure that on all of our contracts that we make sure that we've got some other requirements such as e-verification some other things that we put in place with some of our vendors so eeoc data is collected internally to an organization but not necessarily transmitted between organizations great i'll find out for you thank you sir and then my last question i guess this was put on the last page the addendum to the personnel report i'm wondering why this job wasn't posted the transportation coordinator in the transfer department i mean it had been out for months and months

066and months this was a discussion and why wasn't it posted so perhaps we could have you know why wasn't it posted so i i will just say we did discuss this in executive session and it's kind of borderline on things i don't really enjoy talking about i agree superintendent miller we did disclose this in closed session um and i don't think it's appropriate for public discussion it was evidently it was put on the agenda 555 because i it was not in the original uh posting all right are there any other questions from that question wasn't it it won't be because we discussed it in closed session we don't discuss hr issues in public it was discussed yes we had in our last close-up yes i'm sorry trustee king but i'm i'm i'm running the meeting

067this evening and we're not going to pursue that question tonight are there any other questions from the board madam president trustee murphy as the thing to the contracts i am very uncomfortable asking a vendor what is your race your ethnicity your age your gender it's not something i really want to get involved in i know it's the pleasure of the board when it comes to personnel issues those really should be sent to the superintendent ahead of time why are we second guessing the director of transportation on the person he puts forward so i would hope that these questions get sent ahead of time so the superintendent has the opportunity to answer that this one was on the addendum i there wasn't a lot of i mean it wasn't a lot of time come on give

068me a break guys when you get information at the very last minute i mean it's a two-way street here i i will just say quickly and and this i will limit it at this that the next candidate was selected from the previous process which is a valid way to proceed all right if there are no other questions we do have a motion we do have a second i'm going to call for the vote uh trustee murphy yes trustee blinking no trustee candelaria yes trustee miller is also a yes um so that is uh three one and one is absent uh so that will take care of our consent agenda for today i we did approve uh the new uh principal for scott middle school miss angelique rodriguez who i see in the back there uh

069can we congratulate her come come greet us congratulations thank you good evening superintendent miller and board of trustees i want to thank you for the opportunity to lead scott middle school students and staff we are a school with a great amount of resources partnerships and a staff that comes together for our students my vision is to continue to create an exclusive learning environment where students and staff feel valued and where parents want to send their children i look forward to working with our feeder schools and morton high school as we become more united and consistent in our mission to address the learning gap and students social emotional needs again i want to thank you for the opportunity and i look forward to all we can accomplish by working together thank you thank you so much

070and congratulations thank you thank you ladies and gentlemen we have quite a few items on our new business for this evening and it is the pleasure of the board to take a seven minute recess right here so if anna will give us a seven minute clock we're just going to take a quick break before we jump into the new business okay thank you [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right do we need to call roll again or no we're okay all right um superintendent miller we're going to jump right into new business item a a trustees i am recommending of the non-english speaking program grant that mr dusko presented earlier all right trustees um you have item a before you i'm looking for

071a motion madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the non-english speaking program grant as presented second okay we have a motion and we have a second is there any discussion on this item any discussion if there is no discussion all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right the eyes have it item number item letter b um trustees i'm recommending the approval of the dual language pilot program grant we're we're in year three of the program so it's not really a pilot but ideally allowed for even programs in the third year to receive this money so um i am recommending the approval of the dual language pilot program grant madam president trustee king i make a motion that we approve the dual language pilot program grant as presented in the

072amount of seventeen thousand dollars if i'm reading that correctly all right yes seventeen thousand we have a motion and we have a second is there any discussion any discussion all right if there is no discussion if everyone is in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right the motion passes letter number c trustees i'm recommending the approval of the head start grant package for the cycle of february 1st 2022 through january 31st 2023 i do have director gustin here if there are any questions do i i have a motion madam president trustee murphy i move that we approved the head start grant package from february 1st 2022 through january 31st 2023 is presented second okay i have a motion in a second uh director gustin would would you come and just since you're

073here tonight just give us a real quick summary and the dollar amount of the grant we should always thank you good evening trustee superintendent miller i can give you the total for the grant which includes the continuation grant our training and technical assistance for a total of one million seven hundred sixty six dollars i'm sorry one million seven hundred and sixty six thousand six hundred fourteen dollars um in that we are in year three of our five-year continuation grant in that we're providing services to 284 students in 10 different classrooms in eight different buildings throughout school city of hammond you have included in the packet our program goals and objectives again which are in that five-year cycle we use the data from the program to update update those on an annual basis you can see

074also that some of them were directly impacted by covid last year and so they are being continued this year as we'll be getting the new grant package as well as some others that have changed because the goals from the previous year had been met all right thank you so much are there any questions from the board no questions at all all right it all in favor aye aye any opposed all right the motion passes all right let me get it right this time i'm just going to call it item d superintendent miller uh trustees i am recommending the approval of the 2021-22 food service pricing this is only for adults anyone watching this is not changing anything for our students all of our students are benefits of our grant to provide free breakfast and lunch

075but usda does have regulations on adult pricing and this will change the breakfast pricing for uh two dollars and fifty cents a meal for adults and lunch to be 475 for adults all right all right do i have a motion for the food service pricing madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the 2021-2022 food service pricing is presented second all right i have a motion in a second is there any discussion on this topic [Music] any discussion seeing that there's no discussion all in favor aye any opposed abstain okay we have uh three that were four and one abstention and one member absent all right we're going to move on to item e superintendent miller um trustees i'm recommending the approval of the contract for a to z educational consultants dr ship you

076want to give any a quick summary of what this is about this partnership will be to support our leaders especially at the district level of how we make sure we have a processes and procedures in place to make sure we have effective classrooms and we know where we're going so this is to help come align with our district administrators to make sure that we are in the right direction and to put those processes and procedures in place that we may need to have in the for the future very good thank you dr ship i also want to say with this consulting company they will be with our district leadership all day so this is not one thing where people come in for a couple of hours and leave they will be looking at our data

077they will go through our buildings they will watch what we do as district leaders to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to do to make sure we have the best schools and the best structures for hammond wonderful wonderful thank you dr show so there's a lot of leadership development for building level administrators there's there's not a ton out there for district level administrators and this is um to for our district level leadership and and to make sure that we're we're all following best practices continual improvement i believe that's what we call that right continual improvement all right do i have a motion president uh trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with a to z educational consultants inc in the amount of fifty thousand dollars as presented second we have a motion

078and we have a second do we have any discussion discussion trustee king once they come and do all this reviewing we get a written report in terms of what they actually saw in terms of any deficiencies so will we get a written report sorry yes one of those things that every time they come in town they will sit and debrief with us of what they saw what progress we made and what our next steps will be have we used this consulting firm before yes i have she has for school city in the school city of hammond no but in a previous school district yes so what makes them different than anybody else i mean we spent a lot of money on consultants and very soon that we get any measurements any outcomes we just spent

079some money oh you will get that with this district this district also works with several schools in the state of indiana and so the information that you are referring to is what i also refer to we do not do anything without data without next steps and without follow-up well how soon will we get the report um so if if this recommendation is approved the consultants said they would like to be here on the 18th to meet with the team so we can start uh our process and so anytime they're in town i will give that information to superintendent miller for him to share with the board with the board mr miller that's right okay all right we have a motion we have a second and we've had discussion uh all in favor of this um

080contract with a2 z educational consultants signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed abstain okay we have three eyes one abstention and one member absent the motion passes okay we're going to go to item number f superintendent miller trustees i'm recommending the approval contract with clever let me explain for a minute what this is i wanted for a long time to automate some of our processes if you want to fill out a field trip i know we have some teachers in the room it's a really cumbersome process to go through the field trip and it actually has double letters on it right like the number of steps you have to take has double letters to to get through it or if you want to go on professional leave that you're still using this old and

081triple kit form that has to go here there and everywhere to get approved there are ways to automate all of that where essentially you initiate the process and it when you click when you when you as a teacher click submit it will automatically go to the next people it needs to go to so for a field trip for example it'll automatically go to the health services office it'll automatically go to the food service department to verify any allergies and all automatically go to transportation it'll automatically go to your building administrator to issue approvals so all these things happen without a paper copy that they could get lost or moved here there and everywhere so this is something i actually talked about in my superintendent interview that that we spend a lot of time pushing paper

082around this district and and this would automate those processes to to not have to do that and for the people who have to do record keeping it it it makes their job so much easier and less time consuming than again tracking down a physical piece of paper so you have most of you haven't been in catherine danko's office who does our federal grants but she has a binder this thick for every single federal grant that we have and anytime a teacher goes or staff member goes on pd all that has to be documented this will make that whole process uh much smoother and it'll just make the whole district that much more efficient so i am recommending uh the contract with clevver they will work with us included in the contract as they will be

083the ones to help convert our forms into workflows for that and the amount is sorry let me add it here 39 000 350 paid for out of the esser fund all right i'm looking for a motion for the approval of the contract with clever madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with clever in the amount of 39 350 as presented second second we have a motion and we have a second do we have any discussion one question i see the the fee is based on i guess 12 out of 500 people our adm is not quite there so but there's a chance that the fee would go down or or it would remain the same so so their fee is is not you might be thinking a near pod for the

084clever contract that is not actually based on our adm that is based on the number of workflows that they will have to create for us so again professional leave process has three separate forms right now you make the request then you estimate your expenses then you have to fill out the report when you're done you've actually asked trustee king for a long time like what are the reports from professional leave and it's been a paper process right this will make it all digital like it'll make it very easy to run a report and say like hey here's here are here are the results of people going to different conferences and such so um i don't anticipate this one going down the reason we rough estimate the 12.5 is because we do include our pre-k in

085grade 13 students so if you include all our pre-k through pact and head start and the students who are grade 13 meaning they're still working with us even though they should have been graduated we are around the the 12 12 4 12 5 number all right um i have a couple of questions if no one else does any other questions for the board just one other thing uh again seemingly every time we purchase some kind of software it doesn't function you know power with the power power school yeah we wanted one we paid 325 000 for the other one we paid 80 000 for i don't even know if there's any kind of maintenance of this of these uh software's because they're they're down seemingly more than they're up so here we go we're going

086to buy another piece of software that's supposed to do these wonderful things but when it comes to maintenance or when it doesn't work we're just we're just handicapped so that's my my biggest concern when we continue to buy all this software and you know somewhere in ontario you know it just amazes me just bunch of gadgets that's my concern superintendent miller any any comment before i ask my question um i included in this is service and support in this contract so the the power school one is a difficult one and it it's affected everybody they tell us it has to do with the data exchange obviously we continue to put pressure on them we've escalated up to one of the vice presidents of of power school and we continue to continue to address it um

087but yeah it's been power school especially has been a pain it's been down at least once a week i think every week this year and especially during the shooting we were handicapped that is a true statement that it was a mess that we wanted to contact some parents and the student information system was down it was not working all right um so i had a couple of questions um one how long do we think it's going to take to implement this project so it's it's a phased-in implementation so they they will work with us to establish workflows for the most key processes that we that we have and from then we can just continue to add in additional workflows and processes and train training is included as well so if a process is largely clerical

088in nature we'll work with clerical employees to establish that process um as we go through but it'll it'll at least be a year um to get all these workflows established okay so it'll be a just like a gradual rollout if i'm understanding it yes okay and then my other question is um will you be able to look and see where things are stuck in the queue if yeah something hasn't been processed does it make it easy to figure out where it's where it's stuck absolutely and and and to be honest if if you've been frustrated before with the paper base because you don't know where it went right like you don't know whose desk is sitting on or or who's waiting to do approval so administrators will be able to look up a job and

089not building administrators but like i.t administrators could look up a job and say okay it's still sitting at this person's uh inbox but it'll basically be is similar to a docusign you'll get an email when it's your turn to sign something and and you can when you click on the link it'll take you exactly to the portion of the workflow that you need to complete cool very cool yeah all right uh if there are no other questions um all in favor signify by saying aye aye and uh any opposed oppose okay so um it's three to one and one absent all right so we've got that um item g superintendent miller trustees i am recommending the approval of contract with nearpod as as we um continue to try to make our one-to-one investment as effective

090as possible i really feel nearpod is a tool that can do that i've used it for actually many years myself and essentially we had a presentation on it once before actually uh as a board but essentially what allows you teachers to do is using a student's device integrate questions of all different question types into a presentation so if you have a slide deck it could be a powerpoint it can be a google slide it'd be any kind of slide deck and you want to check for understanding as you're going through you can drop questions right into the slide deck very easily i'm using the word slide decks i'm told if i use the word powerpoint it means i'm old but um anyway uh no no comment yeah right but that's that's what this will allow

091us to do dr ship did you want to add anything i know you made the recommendation for for it um yeah i did some uh data research on this because um before i was considering the recommendation i wanted to know how many teachers were using it and actually some administrators reached out about if this was going to be expanded and more resources so we currently have over close to 170 teachers that are just using the free model but they want to have access to the other resources that are in nearpod and we have close to 200 teachers using vocabulary and that's also a part of the whole package so i just wanted you to be aware of how many teachers are using it and we have several schools that are also using just the free

092model but they would like to use other parts of this platform all right do i have a motion madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with nearpod in the amount of one hundred and ten thousand dollars four hundred one hundred ten thousand four hundred and eighty one as presented second we have a motion in a second is there any discussion from the board my only concern is trustee king thank you it's that um considering the state that we're in currently i could see this working under normal circumstances we have a pandemic overcrowding teacher shortage i can go on and on and on and this is going to work even with all these negatives going on in school city hammond and it's going to make it better i believe so because the

093teachers want this also it has a sel component there and so teachers have an additional resource provided to them i know uh superintendent miller mentioned a one piece but it's additional pieces to this and this is a desire of the teacher so trying to support them of what they're doing currently and what they want to continue to do to support their students okay we have to consider teachers are moving just are leaving us just as fast as so i mean it's just okay all right are there any other questions from the board um i do have one question dr ship how much professional development is or training is included or is it pretty intuitive to get started well any um platform will have some professional development um with that but we have to be strategic

094and work with ms ling mislin lane that's over our professional development to make sure we have the appropriate time in the teacher's schedule to provide that professional development for them so it is a component that if this recommendation is approved then we will move forward with calling the vendor along with ms lynn lang to set up that professional development very good thank you very much all right being that there are no other questions we're going to go ahead and vote so all in favor signify by saying aye aye and any opposed oppose okay so that's three one and one absent this evening the motion is approved um we're gonna go to item number h superintendent miller trustees i'm recommending the approval of the con the head start contract with um the r are sully or

095celia ramirez in the amount of 7 500 paid for out of the head start grant and this is uh to fulfill monitoring requirements for the head start grant correctness augustine all right do i have a motion for the approval of the contract for a head start madam president um trustee king i i make a motion that we approve of the head start contract with mrs arcello austelia ramirez in the amount of seven thousand five hundred dollars thank you second i have a motion and we have a second any discussion any discussion all right all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right the motion passes uh four to zero um superintendent miller item i trustees i am recommending the approval of contract with regional mental health services to provide mental health crisis

096assessments this is paid for on a case-by-case basis through the special education medicaid fund we also utilize these services in the event that a family cannot afford to have a crisis assessment all right thank you superintendent miller do i have a motion for item i with the regional mental health madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with regional mental health services uh the amount that vary as an ad needed basis as presented second we have a motion in a second is there any discussion any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes four to zero item j miller trustees i'm recommending the approval of the contract with edgewater behavior health services edgewater is a therapeutic day treatment program which uh for a special education

097student may be their least restrictive environment so there's no upfront cost this would be on a case-by-case basis if a case conference committee determined that the best placement for a student would be in a day treatment program like this this would have the agreement in place for us to be able to do that with edgewater all right do i have a motion madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with edgewater behavioral health services contract amount will depend on the length of service as presented second i have a motion in a second uh discussion superintendent miller i actually have one question is this a a renewal do you know no we um it is possible that before my time here we've had a contract with edgewater but we didn't have a current

098contract with edgewater okay or similar services or i i'm sorry i didn't i didn't send that ahead of time so it's okay um this is definitely going to be a cool closer opera excuse me a closer option for young people with edgewater i i'm not sure what other options we had i can check with mr freeboy okay and again i apologize for not sending that in advance it just kind of as we were working through it sure all right so i apologize for that all right so we do have a motion and we have a second um all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right the motion passes four to zero um item k um trustees the next three items are mousse with post-secondary partners item k is between ivy tech

099community college and dual credit at the area career center all right do i have a motion madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the mou with ivy tech community college for the high school base dual credit at the acc as presented second all right have a motion of a second is there any discussion any discussion all right all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes 4-0 item l trustees item l is the mou with ivy tech community college for dual credit with morton do i have a motion madam president trustee murphy i moved that we approved the mou with ivy tech community college for the high school-based dual credit at morton high school as presented second we have a motion in a second any discussion any discussion all

100right all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes four zero item m superintendent miller trustees this is an mou with purdue university and a dual credit course at morton high school all right do i have a motion matter president trustee king i make a motion that we approve mou with purdue university for a high school-based dual credit courses at morton high school second they have a motion average second any discussion on this item any discussion all right all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes 4-0 item n superintendent miller trustees item n is an agreement between sky middle school and life touch who provide yearbook production all right do i have a motion for the approval of item n madam president trustee murphy i move that we

101approve the agreement between scott middle school and life touch as presented second i have a motion in a second is there any discussion discussion trustee king mr miller what's the average cost to the student do you know how could you get that information please yeah i could get the information for you all right any other questions all right seeing that there are no other questions all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right motion passes 4-0 item oh superintendent miller the trustees one of the goals of the lilly grant was to improve our counseling practice through adopting the asca model and what we're asking for an item oh is to authorize the 500 application fee per school for edgars and kenwood for the ramp status if you recall we had scott middle

102school as our first school last year to achieve a ramp status and so we have two more schools applying for that recognition so i am asking for your approval of item oh recognize ask a model program ask a ramp for kenwood and edgars all right do i have a motion for item oh madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the recognize ask a model program ask a ramp for kenwood elementary school and edgar's middle school the application fee of 500 per school as presented second i have a motion in a second is there any discussion on this item any discussion seeing none all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right the motion passes 4-0 item p superintendent miller trustees i am recommending the contract with apex learning i'm

103going to defer to doctorship to do a better explanation of what's what it offers apex was is being recommended because from the summer of meeting with some of the teachers and administrators and looking at the programs we had and knowing that we will have an alternative program coming we wanted to make sure that we had a clear distinction between students that were on plato that were taking courses because they failed it versus students that are taking courses for the first time because in high school if you have lost some credits um your freshman year or 10th grade year now you're in your junior year you have a full load and so trying to take what is required of you your sophomore year from your junior year you may not have the opportunity to recover credit

104but you need to take some classes for the first time so we also have the alternative program and we did not want to blend students with the plato with students that are in alternative program taking the courses for the first time also when you look at students that when they are trying to go to the collegiate level you have to be careful to make sure of the program that is being offered at your district and so i am recommending today to the board to approve the apex program because it will be tied to alternative program that we're starting this year and it's available for those high school students that are taking courses for the first time unlike plato they're using that to take courses they fail all right do i have an emotion for the

105approval of of item p madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the contract with apex learning in the amount of fifty thousand dollars as presented second i have a motion i have a second is there any discussion on this item mad president trustee murphy you mentioned that there could be courses that wouldn't be approved by the naacp do we have any of those only when you have to be careful with the programs and making sure that they will recognize those courses if they're taking them for the first time years ago plato had a situation where some of those courses i know with athletes they were taking them for the first time and we had to look for a program of places for them to take the courses so they can be recognized so

106that's a small small number but i have to be conscious of that when i think about programs that i'm recommending to the board okay so at this time you do not believe that we're no okay no no okay king thank you madam president it's not so much a question about this particular uh contract it's the fact that we are using s or two monies and i believe we did discuss at our last meeting if several of these contracts we use sr2 funding at some point will we be getting you know like an ending balance you know we're just spending we don't know um how much is left and i seen when you provided that information on the jobs ever created there was some kind of clerk for mrs danko i don't know if she has

107any financial law because it doesn't require financial um financial experience but at some point mr miller would if we're going to continue to spend s or 2 money every meeting there needs to be some kind of balance provided okay i would hope that superintendent miller when might we expect our next update from ms dinko um i had asked her to present to the board quarterly unless the board wants it more than that okay so that would make our next one in the in quarter four so anytime any time all right so we can expect to see that on the agenda trustee king it sounds like pretty soon excuse me i didn't understand the question i was talking you literally jumped in what was your question um i had asked when we could expect the next

108report from ms denko and he said either in october or november because she's reporting quarterly so she'll provide those detailed numbers uh for the public that would be something that would be available at that time okay thank you madam president trustee murphy i actually brought up what trustee king said at a prior meeting so i i know money's going out all the time so we approve the contract the money just doesn't actually go out at that time so to make if we do get that i understand if it's approximate but i we're in agreement here we've got a lot of stuff coming through we should sort of like have a ballpark idea of what's left because this is like some of these are two and three-year time periods and i know quarterly she gives extremely

109detailed reports but that's what i'm asking is like how much is left in the budget for this year type thing and again i understand it have to be approximately because checks are going back and forth because we've already approved contracts and how hard that would be so if it takes her hours and hours to figure that out obviously we don't want to do it but if it's simple pushes a couple of buttons trying to figure out what that amount is it would be very much appreciated additionally it's just like we keep our checking checking book when we stand we deduct and my other question today is mr miller again i thank you for providing me the uh the job but again i need to sit down with mrs danko again for her to explain to

110me how are these jobs um addressing the loss of learning i saw clerk's positions and and and i think it was it was more like 15 or 16 new jobs we created as opposed to nine that you sent me and uh and and three of them we were using title money and esther money it was it was a title title one program but we're using extra money to support it that didn't make sense to me if it's a instructional coach that we normally use title one money to support why are we using s or two money for that so i mean i just didn't understand it so let me say very publicly we're not supplanting any i said we're not supplanting any funds anywhere we have reassigned any previous costs to the the answer funding

111we have not done that um i i will say that the reason for an additional clerk if you might some might be able to appreciate this that the user funding represents almost 70 million dollars of documentation like that's a lot to document for a grant and that's why we need an additional clerk is to help out with all that like that's that's way more than what that office has the capacity to handle on their own and they've they've been burning the candle at both ends but they need some relief with the clerk to help with the documentation for cares cares was the first round then nesser was two and the american recovery plan was was three so that that's why the clerk's there is to help with making sure we we survive an audit because

112eventually we'll be audited on all of the um expenditures in these three grants okay ladies and gentlemen we need to get back on on topic we do have a motion in a second for the approval of the contract with apex learning um so i'm gonna call for the vote at this time um all those that are in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed abstain okay we have uh three four and one abstention and one member absent this evening item q superintendent miller uh a trustees of just all transparency this should have been brought to the board prior but we did provide a mentoring program for freshmen at morton high school this summer in partnership with with path and provided 25 hours of training over five days for mentors and the total amount was

113ten thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars now faster three money yes so do i have a motion for item q madam president trustee murphy i move that we approve the mou between morton high school and path inc in the amount of ten thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars as presented second so we have a motion in a second is there any discussion on this item any discussion seeing none all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed abstain okay we have three four one abstention and one absent this evening all right item r trustees the last new business item is a photography contract between interstate studio and abandoned elementary for the school to receive a ten percent commission all right do i have a motion from i for item r madam president trustee

114murphy i move that we approve the contract between albanian elementary school and interstate studio as presented second promotion and a second is there any discussion on this item just one question that that temperature i'm sorry the 10 percent um it was an offer to the other school the one that i didn't see i had asked that what was the uh average cost per student and i i don't see a 10 percent commission going to so this is this is not for yearbooks this is for the photography but mr mr hicks did text me and the average cost of the yearbook for life touch is 4 14.99 for a student thank you madam president trustee murphy i apologize for not sending this in because i just noticed the three-year portrait agreement do their contracts fall under

115the items where even if it's a multiple year contract it still has to come back before the board for like the second and third year or the exempt they're exempt there's no cost to the school district here so okay thank you all right are there any other questions any other discussion all right um i'm going to call for the vote here all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion passes 4-0 moving on to our calendar of upcoming meetings uh we do have a regular board meeting scheduled on october the 19th um i also am anticipating uh i believe a public work session i saw yes trustees i would like to have a public work session next thursday the 14th at 5 30 to review all the school improvement plans all right right

116there um and that'll be all the plans we're not splitting it up two days anything like that no we we didn't do that last year and because we've uh given the template and we we feel we can knock it out pretty and we have a time limit every week yep very good very good can we submit our questions in advance that's right yes we're gonna we do have them and i do have several questions okay so we can we can submit them in advance sure thank you all right madam president trustee murphy question for the superintendent are they gonna be uploaded to um board docs under that meeting or the other one so what what will you already have in your possession the actual long document that gets submitted to the state what we're going

117to do on the thursday is present the summary presentation of that document right i understood that so are they in board docs right now then no they're they are still working on the presentation the school improvement plan no the the big plan where are those they were under under the initial agenda until they were moved i i can send them to you as attachments if you want to start looking at them i was just wondering if you could put them in board docs okay yeah we can we can put them under the public work session for that meeting yeah okay truthfully i'm not going to look at all those i'm going to pick one elementary one middle school it's a lot so yeah that's a lot the format has changed quite a bit from the

118previous years is it is this the state requirement it is a state requirement uh it's written in the legislature that uh every school even if you're in a school have to do a school improvement plan it's a lot more uniform i appreciate that thank you all right very good very good public expression uh second period josie candelaria public expression second period regarding general matters please state your name address and you'll have three minutes when you reach the podium first community member is going to be jennifer young hi good evening i'm jennifer young two 2345 cole street chesterton indiana i'm an eighth grade teacher at edgar's middle school i've been teacher with hammond schools for 17 years the first thing i want to address is the fact that they raised the school lunches for teachers from

119two dollars and fifty cents to over four dollars i don't know why um they don't have a lot of teachers buying food now and they really want us to and encourage that um the prices increase was shocking to me i don't know if some of you heard me say oh my gosh um they you know and they don't get they don't give us anything more than they give the kids so i just was kind of shocked about that that wasn't on my original statement but just because one was kind of shocked about that so um you still are ensuring that there is cova distancing in the boardroom of only 30 people um max allowed here six feet apart but yet not in our classrooms this is mentioned by me for the third time we are

120expected to end or begin instructional class time approximately 10 minutes early or late to clean our chairs and desks between each class due to covid and the possibility of other illnesses if it's that bad then maybe we should be virtual for a while or for this foreseeable future our volleyball team at edgar's had to end their season early due to two positive cases and student exposure and yet the rest of our team is still coming to school and they are not quarantined reporting is definitely not accurate in our school i have had at least 10 known cases in my class and the numbers are still rising and yet we are still in school and there is no class quarantining or notice to the parents and proper notice to the teachers students are still not wearing

121masks properly an office is running out of temporary masks daily the students are coming back to school stating they have had covid and without this is without their parents even reporting it to the school my shirt says hogwarts wasn't hiring teachers so i teach muggles instead a muggle is a person without magical abilities hogwarts is the magical school in the harry potter book series people who know me know that i am obsessed with all things harry potter teachers are not magicians we are just asking for help and common courtesy to get us through the day thank you [Applause] next community member is going to be carla kind of pasik did i get close all right been practicing no way okay good evening everyone because uh my little speech here allows me to i'm gonna say

122uh good evening to all of you trustees superintendent miller i may not always have the time or the seconds to do that so here we go you want answers you want the truth you can't handle the truth ladies and gentlemen we live in a world with walls of diversity and challenges and those walls need to be protected by teachers who give their hearts and souls every day who's going to do that you trustee candelaria you trustee miller i have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom you said idol as teachers leave and then question the remaining teachers you have that luxury you have the luxury of not knowing what i know that veteran teachers too often seen as incapable of change have excelled and thrived and saved many a broken child and my existence

123today while irritating to you at this moment continues to reach out to every child every day you don't want to know the reality of the teacher's day because deep down in places you talk about behind closed doors you want me in that classroom you need me in that classroom we use words like professionalism collaboration and loyalty we use these words as a backbone for a lifetime of teaching and protecting children you use them as a bargaining chip i have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the very people who make decisions that affect my daily life and then question my need for support and fair compensation i would rather you just said thank you and agree to our bargaining requests and went on your way otherwise i suggest you pick up your

124papers and head to an empty classroom either way teachers here are running out of patience and some are running for the door good night next community member is going to be mary mariady please state your name and address and you have three minutes when you reach the podium good evening my name is mary moriarty um you hear that name in sherlock holmes by the way professor moriarty i am at 6833 rosewood avenue hammond indiana i am a teacher at edgar's middle school i'm also a union representative at edgar's middle school and the middle school trustee i'm addressing you today about problems that we face at edgar's there are there is so much chaos and so much confusion that's occurring when issues arise in the classroom i've tried calling the office 10 different times and without

125being able to get a hold of anyone it's apparent it's becoming dangerous what happens when a situat when a serious situation arises and i can't get a hold of anyone constantly we are having interruptions of announcements during our class time last friday we had about seven minutes worth of announcements we also had a fire drill our class times are only about 40 minutes long when you take all that into account we only had about 15 minutes of teaching because we end the day at 2 10 when buses are called down to go to leave many times we have announcements every period due to students having to go to other classes because we're unable to get substitutes in the building some teachers are doubling up in classes to cover those classes without a teacher it's dangerous

126it will cause covet cases to rise for over a week i had two students who have been out in my class um just after those student just after two students had returned from being gone many weeks also there have been times when our building has been out of masks including today i have requested to have shields in my class but i've only gotten 15. i'm still waiting for more shields i have a class of 29 in my advisory other classes have zero some have three students in their advisory i have 29 and i have a science lab where i have eight tables to fit those 29 students i'm unable to space all my students for social distancing board members i was so excited to come back this year i wanted to come back i wanted

127to be in the classroom i wanted to teach in front of students i wanted to have students working together i'm so frightened right now because we have our students at risk we have our staff at risk now more than ever because of all these situations i ask that you get all these systems um that were that need to be addressed in our buildings put in place otherwise i'm sorry your time is up i'm sorry [Applause] next community member is going to be louis gikes gigas good evening madam president trustees mr miller colleagues in this room and watching at home parents and community members and the custodial staff that has joined us this evening here at 41 williams street i'm here in part to address or respond to comments made towards the closing end of the

128meeting this previous meeting in which uh mr miller made a statement that solutions were offered about scheduling and i personally or the union didn't like them and that is partially true only because his solutions pushed the problem of scheduling down the road to the end of the semester and other or possibly even at the end of the year and that's unacceptable it's unacceptable to the teachers it's unacceptable probably to the entire staff as we do see the numerous numerous problems serious problems as that as mentioned here at this meeting tonight previous meetings that we've come before you we've outlined some of those problems and concerns and they seem to we're are not being addressed and the solutions being offered are study groups uh to address them well immediate there's a sense of urgency there's a

129truly a sense of urgency to address this problem and it just seems like we're kicking it down the road we cannot fix the problem without central office administration we don't control the scheduling that's one of our biggest concerns we will just let the board know in the public we are filing a couple grievances one at the elementary and one at the secondary to address these concerns and hopefully we'll receive resolutions soon a couple other comments uh that have come out uh actually with this one had to do with the uh after the meeting i was approached by your counsel and was and was told that we're bargaining publicly and that's a violation of labor laws we are not i want to be clear and i say this with respect we are not bargaining publicly we

130are bringing to you and the general public and all those that are concerned working conditions that impact the learning of students in fact in fact that conversation i view entirely as an attempt by central office to silence my colleagues from coming to this board and and having conversations professional conversations with you mr geekes i'm sorry so finally what i would like to say is that the open door i'm sorry i'm i'm sorry i'm sorry sir i'm sorry next community member is going to be rena horgan please state your name and address and you have three minutes good evening board of trustees and superintendent miller my name is rena horgan my address is 7146 marshall avenue hammond indiana i've been a resident of heaven for 38 years i am a parent of children that went to

131him in schools i'm a grandparent whose grandchildren go to ammon schools my union asked me today to talk to you about working conditions that teachers have to deal with so i'm going to do that this one hits home for me first let me say that my principal and assistant principal do an awesome job in my building and they look out to try and alleviate issues that teachers have and they try with all their heart but sometimes it just doesn't work teaching today is much more stressful and time consuming than it's ever been board members i noticed that tonight and in the past you've always taken a bathroom break after about an hour hour and a half of business do you know that i have to hold going to the bathroom for four hours four hours

132before i am allowed my first bathroom break there are days that i feel like i'm gonna soil my pants it's that bad but i have to wait to find somebody to cover my class our buildings are so understaffed that i can't do that some days and that's not good because you see i take medication where i have to drink a lot of water what do i do because as an elementary teacher i cannot leave my children alone they have to be watched continuously so i can't just go to the bathroom with them because who's watching them if you're lucky during the day you have the middle lunch hour and you're able to use the bathroom at a decent time period after your morning breakfast and before you have to leave for the day but if

133you have the first lunch hour or the last lunch hour good luck it's four plus hours that you have to wait and you know also on a daily basis elementary teachers lose their specials they lose their specials because there's no one to take no one to sub for a specialist teacher guess what that's the second chance i get to go to the bathroom and i can't because there's no one to take my kids i guess what i want you to know is that your teachers are tired and weary and we need a break to do the thing that you just did an hour ago i'd like that same privilege thank you all right that concludes all the people and then for public expression second period i will pass it over to superintendent miller for any

134online comments i believe there are at least two this public uh comment is from arcilla ortez hello i was directed here to send in my concerns my daughter is a first grader at frank o'bannon and there is no option for her to do e-learning since it starts at third grade during the month of september she missed about two weeks of school i had to go back and forth to pick her up from school during work time she was sick and the school said she had to be symptom free for three days and have a negative covet test she finally went back to school recently but i like to have the option of her doing e-learning next time she gets sick i'm also currently pregnant and would like for her to do e-learning during the winter

135since covic cases go up during that time and i have a newborn at home this public comment is from laura santana she's a teacher here in the school city of hammond i have spent a lot of time reflecting on the discussions we had we have had regarding concerns at the middle school level i have arrived at the conclusion that many of the issues we have talked about could be best addressed by returning to the most appropriate practice for our students the middle school model and schedule the foundation of middle school motto is an interdisciplinary group of teachers sharing common group of students and a common time to meet in this letter i will list the topics that have come up repeatedly during meetings and how using the middle school model would be a powerful tool

136in addressing these issues number one student behavior under a middle school model teachers who share the same group of students are able to see students from different teachers perspectives a student who may be struggling behaviorally in one class might have success in another class team time allows teachers to share their student experiences and strategies we support one another with management ideas we can also pinpoint if certain behaviors are due to time of class other students in the class etc we also invite students to team meetings which gives them a chance to express their feelings and engage in shared problem solving two relationships with students with the middle school model teachers are able to leverage their ideas to support the objectives of pbis we have time to plan positive behavior reinforcement activities for the students we

137share there is nothing more powerful than surprising students with an event because the team has noticed something positive about their behavior students feel seen heard and valued when their teachers are shared teams create families within school relationships with parents under the team model one day a week is dedicated to meeting with parents for schedule conferences parents truly appreciate hearing from all of their children's teachers in one place at the same time because it provides a complete picture providing this time for parents and teachers is a powerful way to problem solve and build relationships i can only imagine how much more powerful this would be now that we can accommodate parents virtually as well number four relationships with other members of the school community team provides a place for counselors therapists and other professionals to meet

138with all the stakeholders for a student at once this can be done in addition to our concurrently parent conferences five instruction interdisciplinary teams allow teachers to support and reinforce concepts and strategies across the curriculum in addition grade level teachers of the same content dedicated one day per week to align content instruction the end result is instruction is connected authentic doctorship i'm sorry madam president point of order trustee king in our previous meetings when mr miller was reading an um a comment from from the uh email he was allowed to read the entire group they were never cut off we we've been running a timer but as protocol as past practice when mr miller was reading the emails from the from the email under second expression he read every word we didn't stop them there was

139never a question so i don't know why we're going until this three o'clock deal with an administrator read it and it's over it is it's a double standard and we need to stop this it shows that we're not listening we don't care we just want to shut them down and i'm tired of it myself can we return to public comments please let's let's stay on task okay i'm sorry trusty miller i'm i'm sorry the board gets four entire comments if the idea is that the board reads them they are providing a copy of everything trust attorney conrad sir attorney conrad first off the board i can't hear you would you please come to the microphone can you attorney conrad we can't hear you it's on um you are required and i and i recall when

140mr miller has read those they stayed within time limit the time limit is the time limit and it has to be uniformly applied if it is that people are going to shout out they're going to be need to be removed and that's why the officer is here and that is up to the board to determine that when someone's out of order they get a warning after that warning then they're asked to be removed that is up to your rules to enforce all right so we're in a police state now that's where we go trustee king point of order please let's finish the public comments well we haven't finished it please miss uh dr ship was cut off dr do we have any more it's according to the board can we can we please go on

141to the next one three minutes on the clock manny please guys let's just let's just get back to the agenda please yeah support policy states all right meeting adjourned okay you