001Down. Heat. Heat. this regular school board meeting on February 9th, 2026 to order. Roll call. Please note that all of our schoolboard members are present. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag >> of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Our mission statement dedicated to excellence every student every day. Our mission is to cultivate excellence, empowering every student to realize their full potential and achieve high levels of learning. Our vision statement is a school community where all students have a sense of joy and find joy, passion, and purpose and continue to grow. Apparently, I was emphasizing the joy. Yeah, never enough joy. Uh, item 1.5, public comment. We currently offer two
002ways in which the community can participate in regular schoolboard meetings. The first public comment section on the agenda is for addressing current action items that are on tonight's agenda. These comments must be submitted by noon on the day of the meeting. The procedure for submissions are posted on our website under board of school trustees. The second public comment section is for general comments and does not have to be specific to an agenda topic. If you wish to address the board during the general public comment section of the meeting, please put your name and topic on a card and give to Deb Gays. Now, all public comments are limited to three minutes with a total of 30 minutes allotted for each public comment section on the agenda. Item 2.1, comments regarding current action items. Are there
003any? Thank you. Item 2.2, general public comments. Thank you. Item 3.1, Eids Elementary, Mrs. Beville. Good evening. I am very happy to introduce to you Amy Metric. She is our media assistant at Eid. She's in charge of our library and all technology. She's also a parent at Eids, so she's very active in our PTO and does a lot of fundraising for us. Um, I thought she could share with you a little bit about how the library works, how the circulation works at Eids, and talk about the amazing donors that have contributed so much to our library. So, I'm going to turn it over to Amy. >> Hi, everybody. Thank you for um invite or letting me come and talk about my favorite place in the whole wide world, the Eids Library. See if I can
004get this fancy clicker. Oh, yes. All right. So, I wanted to talk about today um where we're headed um our class, what class looks like in our library, what grants we've gotten to improve our library, and then uh the library and its role in schoolwide programs, the state of our uh library, and uh what the future looks like. Okay. Um I can talk about library books, list, book lists forever. So I can see if there's going to be glassy eyes and we will just keep going. Um but when you come to uh library at eids it looks a little different. Um there are four parts to our library time. Book checkin a read aloud a book checkout and then choice stations. So um our readalouds every kid prek through five listens to a picture book.
005Um fifth graders are not too big prek isn't too little. Um, we have books that fold into our amazing race theme. We have books that are on young hooer lists. And then of course we have the season seasonal books. Um, you know, like spring and Valentine's Day and fun stuff like that. So then we have um the last part of the day and the part that sets us apart from maybe other libraries or other specials is the choice station. So, the kids have a choice of doing one of four things. And um this goes from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade. PreK does a little bit of a modified version because we're not there yet. But with the choice stations, the kids can choose to read in the library lounge. They can choose to
006do a puzzle table or do an art activity or some STEM bin tinkering. Now, how did we get here? Right? Like I just didn't come to Eids and we had tons of supplies. We had we had a lot of books. Um, but that is where the Muner Education Foundation, yay. And their grants have really stepped up. Um, since I've been at Eids, I've written four grants and gotten four grants. Um, our first one looks something like this. Um, we wanted to make our library future ready. I wanted to have uh my readalouds be centered on STEM. And then I wanted kids to have supplies to tinker with STEM. So that's kind of where we got some of our STEM tinkering materials. Then um our second year I figured out that um some of those materials
007and books were a little too old for first grade kindergarten and we knew prek was coming. That's where um I decided okay we have to bring it down. We'll think fairy tales. We can uh dovetail STEM in with our fairy tales. So um these are kindergarteners up there. These I have aspire kids and pure pals in there. They were building chairs for Goldilocks. They were building bridges for uh the three billy goats scruff. It was a really neat program and we will be using our supplies again me this year um and doing fairy tales again. Um then this past last year beginning of this year uh we had a grant for around the world in 180 days. this um was kind of spearheaded by the fact that we found books on our shelves about East
008and West Germany and like oh I don't know if like maybe our country books need to have a solid look at and an evaluation. So reached out again for an MEF grant. Um included the other libraries and we have all new country books, state books, national park books, anything about geography, globes, maps um for our libraries. And then we took those STEM supplies and dovetailed it in. So our kiddo in the middle there, he was uh we read a book about France, a story that took place in France. We talked about the Eiffel Tower. He used our STEM supplies from that first grant and made the Eiffel Tower. The girls in the bottom, we read a book about Italy, they made the Duomo in Florence. So, um, again, using some of our, um, STEM supplies
009that we had from that first year and just ramping it into what we're doing today. Here's our new fabulous um, geography section. All new stuff. Glossy, looks great. Um, now it just didn't stop with MEF, right? We did donors choose. We had our families in our community really step up and provide some stuff for us. Um, here are some new book displays. The kids know if they want to go to the get a new book, they go to the new book wall because that's where all of our donor choose stuff is. It's so fun to watch them get excited. Um, at the end of this year, I wrote a Dollar General grant and we got $4,000 this year to revamp our biography biography section. And so we got rid of all those old guys that
010like we don't need another old guy book. Like we need books that are about people today and we need to revamp those old guy books, right? Like get some of those books that are the I am or the who was books and and that really speak to our kids today. So they are so we just introduced those just got our supplies and they're so excited. Um I have a parent who likes to write grants. She's a writer. She wrote $5,000 worth of grants for us. And it's amazing to dream with her and say like, "Hey, yeah, our Indiana history section isn't really great. Our Indiana geography section isn't really great." She's like, "I found one. Give me a list. I'll get it for you." So, yeah, parents are great. Lake County Public Readathon's been great.
011Um, got some new bookshelves so that the books are forward- facing so the kids know what they're getting. You know how how hard it is to tell a first grader to go get a book and all the books are smashed together? Stuff like this makes it so much user friendly. Okay, our generous PTO. I cannot say enough about our PTO. What do you want? They provide. We updated our library lounge. More STEM books. They provide all of our young hooer books. Um got us a Lego wall. The two machines at the end, the cover one machine and the Cibbre machine, those fix our books, you guys. So, like this just extends the shelf life of our materials. They've donated over $15,000 to our library since I've been there. Um, here's our library lounge. Like, who
012doesn't want to read in there, right? Um, here's the Lego wall. Kids playing with me supplies. Okay. Yep. Still using all of our things. Um, I like to run I like to see things big picture and I like to work with our administration and see if we can't do things in our library and run our programs through the library. So, I wrote a reading as fundamental grant with that. Uh, RIFF matches local money and they will let us buy Scholastic books at a steep discount as long as we give them away to kids and as long as the kids have choice. like there is no adult interference. And um so last year we had a little free book fair. Each kid get two free brand new Scholastic books. This year we got a second grant
013and each kid will get one book. Um along with the grant there's a family involvement piece. So for two years now we've had a literacy night um where we kick off our one school one book. Last year we did mouse on the motorcycle. It went pretty good. Um, this year we're with The Amazing Race, we are going with a uh really fun geography driven silly book. Everybody's loving it. And we're wrapping it up with a virtual visit from the author. Again, PTO funded, grantf funded. It's amazing. And then our amazing race schoolwide theme is wrapped up into the library. Okay, here's our pictures of our little free book fair. The little guy on the bottom left is my kiddo. He is adorable. Um, so the numbers, so the earliest data I could find, I came
014into Eids the winter of 2023. So the earliest date I have is from the spring of 2024. Our item in our collection were two thou 23,000. Um, the average age of our collection was 1995, which doesn't sound awful, but there's a lot of books there. So 35 books per kid is a lot. Research says we should have about 20. Okay, so today after a lot of work, our average age is 2001. Like we're moving, we're grooving. Our numbers are down. So items per student are at 30. And this is really interesting because the fiction and the non-fiction um we did some recategorizing of our books. So I think it's a better representation of what we have. But then that other is like computers and headphones. So I think if we clean up that data, it'll
015look even better. Okay. So weeding why um I go through I start looking at books. I want to see if they're musty, misleading, ugly, superseded, trivial. It's my collection, right? Or our collection. Um people get very nervous when they see piles of books going somewhere. Those are good stories. Those are still books. People need books. I'm not saying we don't need books, but space is finite. Pe we will get more people looking at our books if there's more room. um if they're old books, no one's going to want to read them, right? Like representation matter, relevance matters. So that's why we weed what we have. Um from this is really fun. From the winter of 2023 to today, we've weeded 8,000 books. They've been recycled. They've been given away. They've been donated. They've been forwarded
016onward. If they were books that were too old for us, they were given to the middle school. If they were in good shape, they were given to our kids. We had the seniors walk the hallways and we had books of bins of books there for them to take and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I remember this." So the senior of 2025 wants that book. The fifth grader in 2026 doesn't want that book. So that was kind of fun. So the good news, we've added 3,451 books. We've added a lot. Okay, we're at the end, you guys. Thank you for your patience and not glossing over too bad. I appreciate that. Um, but here's the future. So, I continue to want to weed, especially the fiction books. Like, we haven't gone into the picture books yet.
017We haven't gone into the chapter books. Um, looking for areas of need and areas of growth. I'd like to change our our books uh shelving to go from like crammed in there to being forward facing. Think about when you used to go into now the kids back there aren't going to know this but these places called like CD stores like Circuit City Best Buy and you would go and look for your CD or if you would go and look for a record and you would page through them, right? They have things like that for books now so the kids can look through and see the cover of the books rather than the spines of the books. Um I want to keep listening to students requests because they know what they want. I really I mean
018I'm a 45-year-old woman. They don't I don't know. They know. So, I listen to my kids and keep writing grants. So, since we've come I've come around and we've in the I've been in the library. We've gotten $39,000 worth of materials, supplies, books added to our library. That is from the community. That's from MEF. Thank you. That's from our PTO. That is from grant writing. So, I think the future looks bright at Eids. Thank you for letting me speak about our library. And I encourage anyone if you ever want to come take a walk through the library. It's a mess right now, but I would let you in. I feel like we're friends and I think I could go don't look at that pile but come see all of this. So I invite anyone to
019come check out the library. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Anybody have any questions? I want to thank Mrs. Metric. She is a teacher. She taught before. So her work is in books and libraries and getting books and children's hands. And I want to give a shout out to Mr. Metric. He's here too. He is part of our PTO and he's the last guy at every PTO event cleaning up the tables, picking up the chairs. He's always with us. So, thanks to the Metridge family for everything they've done. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um your energy, we can feel it, see it. Um and thanks for all you do for our kids. That's what it comes down to. Really appreciate that. All right. Um recognition 4.1 Monster Education Foundation grant presentation. Looks like we
020have Jenny and Wendy. You guys want a microphone? >> Hi, my name is Jenny Williams. I'm the vice president for the Monster Education Foundation. And this is Wendy Bachelman. She's the grants chair for the Monster Education Foundation. To date, we've awarded more than $75,000 in grants across all five schools in Munster. And those grants have uh had an impact of 6,299 students. What that means is um each grant impacts a certain number of students and some students have benefited from more than one grant that we've awarded. This cycle we've awarded more than $19,000 in grants and those are the grants that we'll be recognizing tonight. >> Thank you. Okay, so tonight we have Mr. Hotinger from Monster High School um awarded a grant in the amount of $2,000 to support the project bio students kayaking
021the mangroves during their Florida Keys trip. Um, next we have Miss Foot from Frank Hammond. Awarded a grant in the amount of about $4,300 to support the ed puzzle pro ed puzzle platform at Frank Hammer to support reading, science, ELA, social studies, and math. Next we have the Wilbur Wright Mild Interventions Exceptional Achievers Team. We have Valerie Savage, Ann D Carlo, Amelia Lard Lucardi, Amanda So and Montana Silves. They awarded a grant in the amount of $1,200 to bring the Teach Share IIA tool to their team to develop lessons and activities. Thank you. >> Next up, we have Miss Wallington from Eids in the amount of about $2,100 and that was for the EXL program for the fourth graders at Eids. Uh, also we had Mrs. Muselac from Wilbur Wright in the amount of about
022$1,700 and that was to bring the Hedgehog Hannah educational animal show to the sixth graders to make real world connections to the science standards. We had Miss Weir from Eids uh with a grant in the amount of $2,900 and that was to purchase of various sensory items for the Aspire program at Eids. And then Mrs. Metric from Eids um written on behalf of all three elementary schools in the amount of about $3,500 for the choose your own adventure grant to bring self-directed activities to all the elementary libraries. And thank you for your kind words earlier, too. Um, and last and c certainly not least, we have Carolina Schaefer from Frank Hammond. Um, a grant in the amount of about $1,500 for materials to support the robotics program at Frank Hammond. >> Thank you all for
023your grants. >> Get up front. I'll take a picture for us. >> I'm also I want to take this time to thank Monster Education Foundation as well for supporting our classrooms. Every dollar goes to the classrooms and so all the people that work with Monster Education Foundation or volunteer um couldn't do it without you. So, thank you. Also, if anybody wants to leave at this point, you are here for a presentation except for the students. Uh, you can. We appreciate you guys coming. Uh, item five, consent agenda. Mr. Trip and Feldus, >> Dr. Schwarzwolf, the uh, consent agenda item uh, items are contained in items 5.1 through 5.7, which I will discuss at this point in time. And the first one is approval of the minutes item 5.1 which includes minutes of the regular schoolboard
024meeting on January 12th which are available online and displayed on the screen. Also the minutes of the board of uh finance meeting held on the same night January 12th again available online. Uh the interest earned statement that was part of that uh finance meeting. And then also minutes from the work session uh the joint public work session of the board of school trustees and the town of Munster uh town council which occurred on January 26th. That is item 5.1. Item 5.2 is the approval of the accounts payable voucher register as presented. 5.3 is approval of the payroll rout voucher register as presented. Item 5.4 Four is approval of the personnel report which includes the following recommendations for employment as displayed on the screen. The following resignations as displayed on the screen and the uh four
025professional learning requests as displayed again available uh on our website. Item 5.5 is approval of the overnight field trips for Monster High School and you'll see for the DECA team, boys and girls track, uh, girls tennis, the Monster Theater Company, and Monster High School robotics. Item four, 5.6 is approval of donations, and there are donations for Monster High School um, as presented for the environmental club and the dance team. And then we also have donations in the in the term of an athletic sponsorship from Cryro Free Sports Recovery Center. Item 5.7 is approval of fi uh fundraisers. The first are for Monster High School. Make sure I got the right one here. Uh and there are um fundraisers as displayed on the screen for the baseball team, athletic training room, boys soccer, uh more baseball,
026theater, softball, boy soccer, uh basketball, dance, volleyball, the athletic council, girls tennis, and speech and debate. We also have uh fundraiser activities from Wilbright Middle School, as you'll see, for the student council, cheer, and orchestra. And then we also have fundraisers for Frankie uh for Elliot uh Elevate Elliott Club as you'll see uh for supplies for future indu induction t-shirts and stuff. So you'll see the fundraisers there. With that, the administration recommends the board approve with one vote, one motion and one vote consent agenda items 5.1 through and including 5.7 as presented. >> Would the board like any of these items broken down individually? Uh, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.7 as presented? >> Dempsey. So moved. Castro second. >> Any further discussion? I do have a
027question. Um, the chairo uh cyro freeze. Is that what it's called? Um, cryro. Yeah, sorry. Um, did Miss Jones look through all that and talk about that? coach. Is there a signed document that says we have that they have permission to travel? This is offsite and I brought this up at the agenda meeting. So, I'm wondering and I had asked that Miss Jones was going to review that information >> with Mr. and the um the team the way it was working is that there was not a letter detailing all of the inind donations and please correct me Morgan at any time. Um there was there's not a letter detailing the inind donations the way it the coaches will have access for um it's not for recovery as far as like a trainer would do recovery
028but as a we had a hard game or hard practice and it's an opportunity for them then they would take the white bus as part extracurricular team as a group to go but the parents first have to have give their consent for the student to participate. in that there's not a signed document. >> I'm I'm gonna have to ask that this be tabled. I need Miss Jones to look at that. Um >> that's okay. I um So, can I get a motion to make an amendment to approve the consent agenda taking off the Ky Cairo freeze uh in kind services? >> Senator. Okay. I move to approve the consent agenda in its entirety with the exception of the donation of cryofreeze services. >> Can I get a second? >> Cast for a second. >> All
029those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? >> Motion carries. Thank you. Uh action item 6.1 Monster High School course guide draft 2026 2027. Um Mr. Nolan, are you going to present anything tonight? >> Okay. Uh, can I get a motion to approve the Monster High School course guide draft 2026 2027 as presented? >> MC. So moved. >> Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Is there discussion or questions for Mr. Nolan? Was there something that got added between the last presentation and now? Okay. Okay. So, there will be amendments down the road. >> Okay. Anything else? >> It is it is available for people to review online. So, it's it's there to look at. >> Okay. Uh all those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Purchase of the
030two bluebird school buses. Can uh Mr. Begley present something? Uh, school town of Monster Administration recommends approval of the purchase of two Bluebird uh, school buses through the Central Indiana Educational School Cooperative purchasing agreement. Uh, these would be two 84 passenger rear engine buses. They're priced at $238,416 a piece for a total cost of $476,832. And this purchase aligns with uh the 2025 through 2029 school tunnel bus replacement plan. Is there a motion to approve the purchase of two Bluebird school buses through CIE CC as presented? >> Pastor, I move we approve the purchase of two Bluebird school buses through CEC as presented. >> Is there a second? >> Smith second. >> Any discussion? >> Um I just want to comment, Mr. Begley, you always bring up how we our mechanics are topnotch and get
031every last mile out of the buses that we have safely of course with our students. Um, and as you mentioned, this is part of our our bus replacement plan. Mr. Mel, we've talked about this. You presented it. We've seen this. So, we're comfortable with that. But again, thank you to your and your team for for doing every because because these bus costs are continuously >> if I could add we currently have um 14 out of our 41 buses and those do include our white buses that are over 12 years old. uh with the approval of last month or excuse me December we approved two and with these two that'll reduce it below 25% actually we will be 10 out of 41 buses will be less than 12 years old so we're getting there or we're
032updating the fleet >> any other discussion all those in favor say I any opposed motion carries uh number seven any items that may properly come before the Nope. General information discussions. Uh 8.1 special education audit report. Mr. Mark Booth is here. >> Hi and good evening again. I am Mark Booth. I am the owner of a company called Global Special Education Associates and we are a special education consulting company and I should say wider than that because we're doing a lot more than special education these days and we are working with school districts across the nation and some in other countries. We um our smallest school district is a charter school with about 40 kids in it. Our largest is in North Carolina with 58,000 students in it. And so our range of school districts
033that we work with is pretty wide. Um and we have a team, our team has um 200 plus years of experience on our team that is working on this and from doctorate level staff members to um to um other administrators have been principles and all those other areas. Well, we came in to do a um program audit of your special education program um as requested. And so in doing that program audit, we looked at your obviously your program as a whole and then I'll get to what the program audit was like. I start here just kind of sort of laying out what is in the special education department. And you can see 549 students which is about 13.3%. The state average is about 12% so a little bit higher than the state average but not
034far off. Um, I put the eligibility categories here because I thought it was important because of the fact that there's a couple of your categories that are a little bit high um um when you think about state averages seeing at the top there autism being at 15.8 which is almost 16% and the state average being about 10%. And so that's one that I would identify here. The other that I would identify is that other health impairment category, which basically I always say it's kind of a catch-all category. You know, there's a there's a thing of education eligibility and there's a thing of a medical diagnosis, right? And so you could have a medical diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, but for us in the in our education world, it falls under other health impairment, right? And
035so it catches a lot of medical um um areas of disability inside of that category. that that is a little bit of a high number even though I would say it's been growing in the state. I'm going to keep moving. So, just to talk a little bit about the process, we um came to town and we actually did walkthroughs of all of your buildings, all of your classrooms um with um we carry something with us where we're actually putting data into a database and there's very specific things that we're looking for when we do those walkthroughs. But I will say that um Miss Bergen was wonderful in our walkthroughs and really probably 50% of our walkthroughs was our conversations with Miss Bergen about what's going on in the district. And I think it was really
036really really helpful and cool that she um as we were walking around whenever you're doing uh a walkthrough or an audit or that sort of thing, people of course always want to put their best foot forward and Miss Bergman was very very adamant. No, tell them how it is. tell them exactly what it's like so that staff members would not like be withholding anything. And so I felt like we got a real good picture of the district during our walkthroughs. The second phase of this process was that we do interviews with staff. And so all of our interviews is with my whole team. I have people from Arkansas to North Carolina that were interviewing your staff members here. and they um we recorded 70 plus interviews and even with some of the larger districts we've
037worked with this is one of the highest percentage or highest amount of feedback um of people who signed up for interviews and so we're really really proud of that. I mean I think you guys should be proud of that because people are really interested in what's happening in the department. Um a little bit of the breakdown of that I think also I was pretty surprised to see that it was um 35% of that were general education staff members which is a really high percent. I mean, usually we're somewhere around 10% maybe general education staff members and we had um library staff. We actually had a nurse. We had a lot of people who were very interested in this process. So, I think that was something that was pretty unique about um 19% of that was
038also some of your administrators and meeting with um Dr. Hicks and Colleen also. And so after we did our interviews, we do a data disagregation. I think one of the things that I see as I go across the country, usually when you're the one of the things that most people don't know that we're looking for is I'm asking for compliance data. I'm asking for assessment data. I'm asking for a lot of different data. And a lot of times you go to district and they don't have the data and that tells me obviously you're not reviewing data if you don't have the data. Correct. And so one thing I can say pretty clearly I think within a day or two uh Miss Bergen had sent the data to me. So it's very clear that you guys
039have the data and that you're paying attention to the data here in the district. And so that was really really refreshing. Um and then finally we take the first three parts phases of this process and then we're looking for trends that go all the way across all of the areas. Right? And so I could be in a interview and staff say to me, "Well, we need more teachers, right?" But then when I'm walking the buildings and going in every single classroom, we're looking at teacher student ratio and we're actually putting that into a computer. And so what we hear may sound a little bit different than what we're seeing with our eyes and that wouldn't be consistency across all areas. So you may see some areas here that we identified as areas of recommendation that
040for us it's always what was confirmed whether it was through a walkthrough through an interview or based on your data segregation. Okay. So, to talk about some of the results, I'm going to start with um some of the great things starting with some of the strength. Number one was your instructional spaces. We you graded out at 96% of your instructional spaces had ample room for effective teaching and instruction teacher student ratios. What we saw, we our smallest was um a classroom with one staff member with four students up to two staff members with 30 students and that was inside of a co-eing classroom. And so those numbers at least as in our walkthroughs seem to be okay. Um we did see some situations where there was onetoone support for a student and also that like
041I said that co-eing support technology integration students clearly had technology um in the district. was very a strength um that we saw 98% of the places we went the kids had what they needed as far as technology goes. Um instructional framework um what this means is um we're looking at the instructional strategies that we're seeing understanding that lecture is not really one of the best instructional strategies especially for kids with disabilities. And so what we saw was 70% of the rooms demonstrating teacher facilitation and that's where you're facilitating discussion versus you just talking to the class. And so that was really really strong and something that we liked. And then we also saw 60% of the classroom were using small group whether it was like I said whether it was one to one or two
042to four small groups of children. One of our reviewers, not me, wrote that physical space setup was very intentional and visuals to identify the schedule and the same images posted within the space. And that was um from one of our people who actually did the walkthrough and was very a compliment again to you all. some of the things that we thought were exemplary the and we're talking spaces now because we're not really talking about the whole program but as far as walkth through and spaces the life skills classroom that we saw that is over in the other building that is um Colleen you have to help me with the name of that building which you guys okay there um what is it >> step the step program over there that classroom obviously is set up
043perfectly I mean you could not have a better and I would say that would something that I would be exemply for um other places across the country even and I've seen a lot of them and so with the stoves and everything they need to do home living is they're there and readily available. So when kids leave here they could actually possibly to the point where they would be able to and we're talking kids where we call low incidence disabilities could actually possibly live alone. And so it makes a huge difference because we've seen places where kids would are going to be totally dependent on their um families for the rest of their lives. And so you guys have the structure to make that happen. I think what we went on another life skills classroom that
044was in one of the elementary rooms. It was a very interesting incident because being one who works in special ed, we realized kids are going to have episodes. And so we had a room and a kid was literally having an episode of crisis that day. And I think the teacher was just really really freaking out because she was like, "Oh no, they're here to observe and one of my kids having an episode." And I really tried to assure her that we weren't we weren't here to say you can't have episodes. And so really, but what was so impressive was to watch one of the pair professionals work with the student who was having an episode and really talk through him. And you could tell that she had done this many times because we watched her
045tell the student, "Okay, breathe." and he repeated after her breathe. Like the things that she was saying to him, he actually followed right along and calmed himself down, which we thought was really, really good. And so it wasn't about the crisis, it was about how they handled the crisis, which was absolutely wonderful. Um, we also went and visited the entrepreneurship class. It's not a special education classroom, but it is a space that um is very helpful to um students with disabilities because of because of the nature and the way this classroom is set up. it's really conducive to students with disabilities. The other one was the co-eing classrooms. We saw some pretty great co-eing classrooms. There's a wide range of what would be considered to be great when you think of co-eing. And so we
046saw some spaces where the teachers, you wouldn't have been able to notice which one was the general education teacher and which one was the special education teacher. So we thought that was pretty exemplary. Moving on to our interviews, some of the strengths we saw from there was um there were people were pretty complimentary about the move away from the comp the cooperative that you guys had in 2019. That was one of the things that came through pretty strong. Um lots and lots of people had great things to say about um Miss Bergin and just understanding that she's been doing two jobs and that she's really really worked hard to to maintain and keep things going in the special education department and so there were lots of compliments in our interviews about that and it's great
047because we had six or seven people doing interviews and that came across from everyone and so pretty pretty exciting. Um there also was a in probably mainly from administrators about leadership moves and that is in the last year or so. I'm not sure exactly when, but we put the coordinators in the middle school and the high school and them being in the building and be acceptable and actually helping to handle things in special education is something that was really um wellliked by the leaders in the school district. Um also just in general the reading sources available people felt really well that they have the resources that they need and so that that was another area and then f finally just the relationship that your staff has with the students was something else that was very
048very much highlighted in feeling like that and they've built great relationships with the students. So those would be areas that would be of strength. I'm g stop for a second because if you have any question I know I've covered a lot already and we're going to get into recommendations here in a second. Anyone have any questions? Okay. I wanted to do that so I can grab my water things that came through in the interviews that were exemplary and it was the over and over and over just the caring and dedicated staff. You could hear it and see it in the interviews. they are really really bought into um what's going on in the special education department and it's very very obvious in the interviews and so when I have my team say that to me
049that that's a pretty strong statement like I said when we got people all over the country that are doing interviews on Zoom and they're coming back and saying hey these they really care about what they're doing um strong compliance and support systems feeling like um even as we looked at your data you guys are compliant as far as being compliant and meeting compliance measures That seems to be a pretty strong area. And then again, part of that caring and dedicated staff is building positive relationships with students, which again was another area that was pretty exemplary. As we move forward, we're going to start talking about some of the areas of that the recommendations that we've made. And as we do that, I think that it's important to know that while we have not had a
050director in place, one of the things that I saw in just a overarching statement is that it's even though you have really really highly qualified people, there's still a sense of confidence that is a little bit there. I mean, a lack of confidence is there just in their everyday decision making because they have not felt like they've had that person necessarily. they go who knows all I say who knows all the answers because no one knows all the answers but that they felt like they could go to and not that Colleen's not that person but I think that just feeling like they needed that director and so when you're very talented but you're not quite confident in everything you're doing it can impact things and so that leads to a little bit of um probably
051a little bit of just lack of trust in even what you're doing even though you're really really talented which I felt was important so one of the things that came across very very clearly was that the communication we did a we asked questions on communication from two levels. What is communication like coming from the administrative office for the special education department and what is communication like within special education in your school building inside of the um from the district the level of satisfaction was at 23%. It was really really that's pretty low. and then inside of their school buildings which was a contrast was about 62%. So there was some confidence in feeling like they have good communication there. Some of the things that um that I put here on the screen here that are
052connected to that that this is what they want is that systemic leadership and shared decision making being part of the decisions and they'd like to see some goal setting and action planning. So they kind of just know how is the department moving, where are we going and what's happening. And so I think that was really pretty clear and that comes through enhanced communication. And I gave you guys a whole booklet here. It has a lot more information and I'm giving you kind of the overview here as we go. And so that was one of the years for us that is a recommendation and we recommend that you put together a special education leadership team that has representatives on it from all areas of special education from your low incident life skills program to your resource
053programs from the high school to elementary school and every different level together having this leadership team that represents the entire district. And so then being able to set goals, set plans, and then be transparent in sharing that information out with the staff. So that's the recommendation there. The next one is um consistent implementation of student support programs. This is important. I'm have to do a little bit of explanation here. When we say this, this is not directly special education. This is programs like MTSS which is multi-tered systems of support and PBS things that wrap around special education but they actually have an impact on your special education program. So earlier when we were looking at those percentages of how many kids are there these programs could have a direct impact on those things and what
054we've talked about is that in talking to Miss Bergen is that these are programs honestly that I would say part of it is she hasn't had the time to really fully implement because of the double work that she's doing. But what I'm hearing is there's actually a playbook for this already and we just need to get those things fully implemented. And so, um, I have the description of what those are and how they impact the school. But it's really important that it allows us to pay attention to those diverse needs, but also make sure every kid who is in special education truly has a disability and that we're not just going through, it's kind of your identification process. And keep that in mind because I'll come back to that conversation about identification here in a
055second. Next, um, was professional learning opportunities. um 87% of your staff said they feel like they need more professional learning opportunities. And so again, that's and that's in areas of special education, which is pretty high. What I did is put the trends there. Instruction, behavior, onboarding for staff, pair of professionals, inclusion, and sensitivity training were some of the trends that were in. There's a lot there, but these were some of the trends that were um in those conversations. Next is comprehensive study of the special education process. I just talked about that whole eligibility. There are some areas that need a little a deeper look and that's what this is. So when we start talking about teacher case loads, it's one thing for me to look at it across the district, but really digging in and
056saying each teacher, what are you being asked to do? Because I could have a case load of 15 students, but if those 15 students are from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade, now I got five, six different curriculums that I got to do. You see what I'm saying? So that becomes a real challenging situation. When we did our review, we were only able to look at the numbers, right? So it would be a recommendation to dig a little further in there to kind of find out each teacher, what is it that we're asking teachers to do so that we can make sure we have an impact there. And when those things are problems, you can see the things there. You get inadequate services, erosion of trust from parents because they thought their kid was
057getting this and they're not. Um increase advocacy, high workload for staff and then even dropout rates. The next one was like I talked about those percentage evaluation eligibility process. This again goes back to those percentages I talked about at the beginning. What are our processes for understanding and identifying kids for autism? what are our processes for identifying kids for that other health impairment category, right? And so again, we do that our review, but we're not able, especially without having a director on staff right now, we weren't able to dig deeper into that and say, "Okay, now let's look at specifically." And so, one of the great things is your new director, Miss Oliver, actually is a has been a school psychologist, so she absolutely this would be right up her alley, I'm sure. and and
058we had a little conversation earlier and she's already um seeing some of these things and so it all this will affect timely and appropriate services and a couple other things here. Um one of the things that I we my team saw was really the enhancement of classroom environments. What should a general education classroom look like for everyone for every student who walks in your doors? Right? And so if I may, I always say special education students are general education students first. So it's the inconsistency of what may be in this room and what may be in that room and what are the things that we're going to say across the district. These things need to be in place. And so this is where this come in universal design for learning is a framework that kind
059of makes that happen for you to be able to say every elementary classroom should have this at least at as a minimum these things in place. Right? So, and what it'll do is it'll make sure that we are actually working with kids from different modes, right? Whether it be from a verbal, auditory, you know, um, or, you know, even written, the fact that we're allowing kids to actually give responses and that's been from different modes of communication and that's just one of the benefits of that. And so, I think what we saw when we went around the building was big differences, especially from school to school, as to what was expected. And so I don't think we could pick out this was the expectation across the district. And I think that's what we would be
060um saying there. And then um again like that clear expectations for that would be not just for your general education classroom but also inside of a special education classroom. What would we expect to see in every special education classroom? So developing that with that leadership team and then putting that in place would be a really important part of where we want to go. And then finally, um, developing a unified culture. This is pretty interesting because I've been to School Town of Monster before. I actually used to be the person who was over unified um, programs for Special Olympics. And I actually implemented that here years ago. And so, as I come back in, it's really that push. And I I put up here really, if you go back to the 70s, we did what's called
061mainstreaming. You've heard a lot about inclusion. is probably the term you hear now. But where we're headed is toward unified programs where we understand that there's a benefit for general education students as much as there's a benefit for special education students for them to be educated together. And so I think that's the move that we want to get to. And I think that would be one of those goals of how we can intentionally get there through programs and things that we do in the district. And so I've implemented that before and seen it go really really well. And so those would be the recommendations that we have. I will say that um Miss Oliver has got some pretty tough decisions coming forward. Um we have um sent a um a quote to um Dr. Hicks
062for to help out with consultation, leadership, and a partnership with you all. Um like I said, we have 200 plus years experience, national, international, and we bring that all to your district. And so we think it's an important part of getting where you need to go. Um and so one an example of some of those decisions that need to be made I put here like option A, option B, option C. What is the special education department's administrative or leadership? How what are going to be everyone's assignments? That's one of the big decisions that pretty much has to be made pretty quickly, right? And so that's when we think about and what, why, and how. And so inside of my report, we gave three options that we think would be the best three options, but it's
063going to take a lot of discussion and you know, with several people to get to the point where we make a decision on that. And then the bottom part here, you can see once you even have that, the red, the gray, and the black, who's in charge of what areas, therapy services, um, moderate and severe programs, social, all those different areas. So all those decisions need to be made, and I'm not saying they need to be made yesterday, but they're going to have to be made pretty soon. And so to really get the program moving forward, we need a really strong plan for how we're going to move forward. And so getting that in place will be really important. And then finally, just thank you. I want to thank you you all. Thank you Dr.
064Hicks. Thank you Mr. Bergen. Thank you for the school board for just the opportunity to come and to really spend time in the district. It was great to be back and so I really really enjoyed that and I just I'm really really impressed at the district you have here. So pretty excited. Any questions that I can answer? I know I went over a lot and I gave you a whole booklet there, but anything that's on top of your mind that I can answer for you? >> Sounds like we have some homework here to do. So, um, but thank you very much. Appreciate the deep dive. It's exactly what I think the administration was looking for. So, I'm looking forward to hearing more from our team. >> Thank you guys. >> Thank you. All right. administrative
065reports. Uh Dr. Hicks, superintendent. >> Well, I think outside of the hiring process these last few weeks, I've spent more time with you uh at all of these other endeavors than I had uh for the months prior. So, it's been kind of exciting. So, I can't say long time no see this time. It's been great. Uh this month, I want to update you on our teacher appreciation grant process. Um the team worked very hard on this process. We shared it with our uh classroom teachers association and we worked really diligently to make it as data-driven a process as possible and we were able to with with the really strong work of Mr. Trippenfeldis Mrs. Bergrren able to put together some mathematical measures that we used to properly sort our teachers so that we could decide
066which teachers would move forward in the teacher appreciation grant per the state's guidance. And it was a lot of hours of looking at data and talking about fairness and equity and how do we how do we work through what is fair to all levels? Because one of the questions that is impossible to answer is what is more important a second grades literacy in second grade teachers literacy instruction or an AP calculus teachers instruction? It's an impossible question. It can't be answered. And so one of the things that we worked through pretty quickly was okay, we're not going to be able to do an apples to apples uh comparison of high school teachers and elementary and middle school teachers. We're going to need to figure out how many how many slots are we going to have
067open for elementary? How many slots are we going to have open for middle school? How many slots are we going to have open for high school? We have to start there. Those are the that's the number we have to aspire to get to. And so Mr. Shermanfeldus worked through a formula of our EDM at each level and our total count of what we anticipated would be the number of slots tiered uh slots that we could award the grants. And then in the end we came up with that number and we worked to that number based on the data that we had in front of us. And so it it is high highly scientific. I think we could stand up to the scrutiny of a psychometrician if we had to. Uh which means it wasn't subjective.
068We didn't draw it out of a hat which is what some of our neighbors literally are doing. We use scientific method and worked to find a really straightforward and fair process to do that. And that was incredibly timeintensive and I want to thank them for the amount of time they had to put into that process. I cannot believe as we sit here in February how much work is going into the 26 27 school year already. We are starting to talk about summer school and schedules and staffing for next year. There's drafts of the 2728 school year being put together. And so, uh, it feels like I just got here and we're already talking about next school year, but that work is already underway. We, our goal is to bring a school calendar to the March
069meeting and we have we have some whittling to do on that still. There's some internal debate. There's some pieces we want to uh, put together before we bring a draft to the board. And then as I explained to them, I have been part of a calendar committee in a large school district wherein the board looked at the calendar we worked months and months and months on and said, "This isn't good enough. Please give it another go." And so we are mentally prepared should the board give us feedback to continue to iterate that that bad boy until uh we get it where we want it. >> I also want to really commend the work that Mr. Begley and Mr. Melby have put into the projects that are upcoming. We are very fortunate to be in a
070good, strong, healthy financial position right now based on the bonding that the board has already done in order to put together the construction projects upcoming. But inflationary forces have worked on that uh dollar amount since the day that you approved it. And so the amount of money it costs to build the proposed multi-purpose building, which we'll talk about here in a minute, uh don't go as far as they did when you passed the bond in 23 because construction costs have done nothing but continue to rise and erode the amount of money available to to do that project. And so the work that Mr. Begley has done to help us get to a realistic draft of what this building will look like, the DA will present in the next meeting and the work that Mr. Melby
071does behind the scenes saying, "Boss, there is a top end to this thing. There has to be. We only have borrowed x number of dollars and we got to keep it within our budget because you know what's happening to us in all of our uh revenue uh bearing accounts as we move forward. And so the work the pushpull process has been fantastic. It has been intentional and we are going to work to live within our budget, but we also are going to work to have a lovely facility that we'll be proud of to look at for the rest of our days. So, I just want to say out loud the amount of hours and time that goes into that is substantial and I wanted to thank them publicly for the work that they do and
072for all of the members of the administrative team and all the folks that that will work in this upcoming building, coaches, uh the athletic department, the high school, all the folks in this building. The amount of uh design input has been substantial. And you guys have taken a look at the first draft. You're going to look at the most recent draft. I I dare not call it a final draft, guys. I'm not going to do that because we're getting close. What is What do you call it? A 95% solution. Is that what we want to call it? We like to call it a 95% solution. We may find ourselves a little lower than that. We'll see how it goes when we talk to you about it. But the amount of time that has gone into
073this has been substantial and a lot of intentional uh uh healthy debate back and forth what's best for the school town of Monster and its kids as we move forward. And I want to thank the team for that. I want to update the board. I've had the had the chance last week to meet with legislators twice to discuss a variety of topics that impact the school town of Monster. The most pressing of which is future funding. As you know, Senate enrolled Act One begins to impact our ability to levy tax as of January of 2026. our income will be less in the coming years and had a wonderful opportunity to go to Indianapolis and have one-on-one meetings with folks at a reception. And then we uh Mr. Melby and I were part of a presentation
074at Lake Central with all of the Lake County and Porter County school districts that were available to come and meet with local legislators. And what was uh stunning was we know that we will bring in less income, but there are neighbors near us who will literally bring in zero dollars in their operation fund starting in 2028. That fund for them is probably between$2 and $3 million today and they will be able after their new assessed valuation to bring in zero dollars into their operations fund. You know, the fund that keeps the lights on and lets the buses run. So, uh, was a stark reminder of how, uh, deeply these cuts can be for smaller places and how lucky we are to have a little meat on the bone to withstand these uh, inflationary and legislative
075forces. So, we're working to tell that story. Uh, we will continue to tell that story. As you know, the short session is usually procedural and the long session is when the money gets decided. We will continue to to beat that drum from now until the end of long session in at the in the spring of 27. So just know we're already working on that and we will continue to work on that from now until the end of that session. Finally, I want to thank you guys for the amount of time you've taken away from your homes and your families and your f and your and your own endeavors to spend time working on behalf of the school town of Monster. We attended the chamber dinner together in hopes of cultivating relationships for work-based learning. We
076attended MEF to say thank you for all the things that they do for us. You guys didn't have to do that, but y'all showed up. Y'all showed out. And I really really want to tell you uh it's a commitment and I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Hicks, assistant superintendent, Mrs. Bergrren. >> Just a few um updates. Just want to say congratulations to Wilbur Wright's Lego robotics. Um they recently went to state and the cookie bots received the core value finalist award and the lost spots of Atlantis received the innovation award. Um also uh Wilbur Wright they participated in the great kindness week challenge which resulted in students documenting 3500 acts of kindness for that week. Based on their goal, seven staff members received pies to the face. Unfortunately, right, kids may have
077been excited, but staff members once being a recipient of those were not excited. Um, and then finally, um, Monster High School would like to share that they are sponsoring a sub substance abuse presentation, um, focused on prevention, education, and community support on Wednesday, March 4th from 6:30 to 8 at the Monster High School Media Center. If you have any questions, Miss Burian or Miss Kalchek can support. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Trippenfeld. >> I have a few items. Actually, a few of them were what Dr. Hicks said. So, it's wonderful we're on the same page. Just to add a little bit to the teacher appreciation grant. Um, we had 67 applicants and we could only award based upon the amount of funds. We had 38. And I do want to reiterate that almost
078every application submitted demonstrated an an impact on performance and growth. So it was an extremely difficult process to try to determine who demonstrated more performance or growth of students. So uh Dr. Hicks had added some great leadership with that. So, I wanted to let you know that. Also, we notified all the applicants that we had made the selection, but we haven't notified each person if they received it or not because this is the first time we've ever done this. And we have to make sure that the IDE confirms our selections because we had to upload the information that we used to justify the selection. And we want to make sure I don't want to tell someone they were awarded a grant and then the DOE say this doesn't demonstrate by whatever reason. So we have
079let them know that we've made our selections but we're not going to make those known to the teachers yet until we have that confirmation from the IDOE. So just wanted to make sure about that. >> And the rosecolored glass side really is hopeful the state will say no you guys did a great job. We'll give you some more money. >> That's what we're hoping for. >> I don't know if it's gonna happen. Um, I also wanted to mention the draft calendars. We're probably going to have it in April because the March meeting is a little early and we want to make sure we give enough feedback, but our goal is still to get you something to hopefully be able to vote on by May. So, before we're done with the school year and again, that's
080for the 2728 year. We've already got the 2627. Uh, also in January, I spoke to the community ambassadors regarding school safety. Um, they had to endure three hours with me, so hopefully they were I I have to give them credit. They were very engaged through the process, asked some tremendous questions, probably more questions this year than any other group I had in the past. So, um, maybe I didn't put them asleep as much as I did in the past, but it was a a very good time. Um, and then just so you are aware as we talk about the preparations for next year that Dr. Hicks uh mentioned, March is that what I call teacher recruitment time. So, I may not be here at the March board meeting because I'll probably be in uh Bloomington
081getting ready for the IU teacher recruitment fair that begins at 8 a.m. the next morning. Uh, and I don't think I want to drive to Bloomington after the schoolboard meeting. So, we'll be doing that uh the week of March. We have several weeks where we uh actually go out to a few universities. Uh, we will have building level administrators attending those as well as uh me at all of those sessions. Uh, and I will tell you that the last several years of recruitment affairs, although we may not have a position posted or available when we're there, we found candidates that we did offer positions to when the jobs came open in April or May, we've had several phenomenal candidates. Mr. Melbby or Mr. Nolan and I were talking about just a few of those that
082we've hired from a couple of the fairs in the last couple years. So, it's a worthwhile endeavor. And just like all my items are almost the same as Dr. Hicks, I want to personally thank uh Mr. Begley and the DLA architects for allowing an interact interactive process uh used to discuss the plans for the new multi-use facility. I've really appreciated the ability to provide input to both Mr. Begley and to the DA architects, although Mr. Begley sometimes calls me the good idea fairy. Um but uh it's wonderful that we actually have input before decisions are made and we look at things and they take time and they've spent a few long days with us probably when we gave more ideas than we probably should have. So thank you guys for that. >> Thank you Mr.
083Shrienfeldis. Uh chief financial officer Mr. Melby. >> Yes. If we look at our education fund uh the first thing you're going to notice we did u lose some cash balance in our education fund but that was projected. We knew that was going to happen. It's a three-pay month in January. I want to point out our supplies. Uh starting with our principles. Fantastic. You know, we need to close the books out in 2025. So, they hold off in ordering some things and a large a line share of the supplies are copy papers that we bought in mass. And then the equipment, hardware, software, that's a relatively large number that's from power school. So, um that's the education fund. If we go to the operations fund, this is a little bit more exciting. So, I I know
084you guys know, but I'll say it out loud. You have your levy from the operations front uh fund from your tax rate. As Dr. Hicks was talking about, you also have the circuit breaker loss or tax caps or tax credits depending on which side of the fence you're on. So, a school that may end up with zero, they had a levy of maybe three million, but their circuit breaker was three million, so they got nothing. Um, I put in a tax cap of 1.6 million. We do not know completely the impact of SEA1 yet. Last year we lost approximately 600,000. This year I I put in 1.6. I've seen estimates as high as 2.7. So this is going to be moving. I I think it's going to be right around here. I have some experts
085going both ways. And Mr. Castro, you know, I always like to go very conservative. I'm trying to do what I think is right where the landing spot's going to be. Speaking of uh Mr. Mr. Castro and our board the uh the work that we do together. Uh the first thing I'm going to point out is the utility cost. Uh Mr. Castro, I think in one of our meetings about six months ago said, "Hey, Bill, I hope you're preparing for these utility cost increases." And we did. We put some money aside for that. We knew it was coming probably two months later than I thought it was going to be to be quite honest, but we had a 75% increase in the month of January in our utilities cost. 75. To put that in perspective, my
086first year when you're looking at increases, you're looking at between three and a high end of 7%. It was a 75% increase. It went from 98,000 last year in January to over 171,000 this year in January. So, we went for it because of the great help of the board. So, I appreciate that. If you look at maintenance and repair, there's a couple larger items. We did uh buy a new snowplow. We have to update those things every once in a while. We added some door accesses and we did our fire sprinklers updates and make sure everything's fixed and working perfectly. As always in our debt fairing funds, the operations fund, the referendum fund, we will lose uh cash balance until June. We do ask for an early tax draw, so we actually don't lose in
087May usually, but uh that's normal. So you'll see a loss the next three months. The only thing I want to point out in the uh referendum fund is we have a one-time cost for insurance, property liability, and buses insurance. Uh and actually, I was very pleased with that. I think it was only a 2% increase, Mr. Begley. A little more. Well, it's close to around a 2% increase this year. So, that's a fantastic number for us. That's our one of our largest. If we look at our four largest in uh costs for the district, people are number one. Uh insurance, property liability, casu casualty insurance is usually number two. That or utilities. I got a feeling utilities are going to beat it out this year. But uh penning any questions? That's my report. >> Uh
088I have a question. Uh you Dr. Hicks and I all got an email today about the extracurricular state board of accounts uh audit. Yep. Uh, do we know I didn't see a date in there when that starts? They don't tell you. >> They tell you is when they tell you. >> Okay. And then they show up. >> And do we do an entrance meeting like we've done in the past? >> So, this audit is we have two audits going on actually. We have one of our exceptional achievers going on right now. And then we have one of our buildings. I do believe every building except the high school is being audited as well. So, they start online now. So they ask for things. Most of the work is done by our treasurer. She's fantastic. We
089send uh the documents to them ahead of time. So it speeds up the process a little bit. Uh but they haven't told us when they're going to start if they're coming on campus or if they're not coming on campus. And >> I would think to I really don't think they will this time come on campus >> because all of the paperwork that they're asking for ahead of time. But I am not the state board of accounts and all I know is if they tell me they're coming, we'll be ready. >> We might we may not even know if it is state board of accounts proper or an accounting firm with which they contract. So once they decide that then those people reach out and there often is an entrance exam even for an ECA and
090then there's an exit exam that you and I will attend and I'll get I'll get asked a few more questions than you will but at the end we we sit through that together >> and and they're pretty flexible dates. They'll work with us >> but the cost comes out of our budget. >> Correct. We we pay for that. kind of wanted to mention that too. And we don't get to decide who audits us when. So, all right. Um, any other questions? Uh, director of operations, Mr. Begley. >> Thank you. I'll give you a quick update on our construction projects. The tennis facilities and materials continue to come in. Tree removal has been completed. I'm meeting with the contractor tomorrow. Uh, I'll be working with uh Mrs. Pyre provide uh information to student, staff, parents, and
091public with project details as this is going to take place during the school year. will give them an idea of what the uh footprint will look like in traffic flow. We're looking to start this project at end of the month, beginning of March and with the end of the project looking at August 2026. Parking lot lights at Eids and Elliot. I have to return tomorrow to the town of Monster Boarding Board of Zoning Appeals. Last meeting they did not have a quorum, so they couldn't make a dec uh they were not able to vote on a decision. So was not able to get the variance approved. This will be meeting number five. uh new multi-purpose building central office and campus circulation uh will be conducting that work session tonight at 7 following this meeting. Uh
092the team from DOA architects is here and I would also like to thank them for this for their patience and uh they've been great partners in in this process as we finalize all parts of the design. Uh we'd like to get this out the the bid by the end of the month. And for the record, I also call the planning phase uh the hurting cat phase. And I love the good idea of ferry during the planning stage, not during the construction phase. Uh Eid's outdoor classroom has been paused due to weather. We're looking to get that back up and running in third week of March. We'll get that done pretty quick after that. And we just have to put the turf down. That's going to make a nice uh area for our Aspire students. And
093then we're work I'm working on scope uh to get several projects out the bid. These are minor ones that I just do myself to include some improvements to Wolverites, some athletic areas in Elliot. And um again, I hope to get these out the bid end of the month. Transportation. We conducted our records audit with the Indiana State Police with no audits and food service. Uh March 4th to March 8th is National School Breakfast Week and we'll celebrate this at all our school town of Monster Cafeterias. Pendant, any questions? That completes my brief. Uh, I would I know we have the work session and we're going to get a lot of pictures, but some of that sounds pretty neat and I think we would love to see pictures in the future to share with the public,
094but I know tonight we have a work session and we'll have plenty. Director of technology, I believe he's >> Mr. Ple is unable to attend this evening. Uh but he they their department is still working through some filtering pieces that we've put in place and they are preparing for summer school and getting ready for next year and planning for those. So >> great. Thank you. Director of elementary education, Miss Hughes. >> I will keep it short, but just a few quick announcements. I had the opportunity last week to visit Miss Thomas and Miss Wear's classes on Friday at Eids Elementary. I just want to congratulate the students in both classes on their hard work in preparing such engaging and informative presentations. I truly learned a lot from each of the students and both teachers work
095incredibly hard to create an inclusive environment for their students. One that challenges, supports, and inspires. Their commitment shows in everything their students shared with me and the others last week. So, thank you um to the Eids team for that invitation. Our mini Mustang program and registration open on February 5th for the 2627 school year. If you have a child who will be four by August 1, please consider enrolling them in our program. We aim to give kids a warm, engaging start to school where they grow socially, academically, and emotionally. We are excited to meet this new group of future Mustangs. And then finally, our two textbook options for K5 ELA curriculum adoption have been shared on our website. A notification will be shared with families so they have an opportunity to review the curricular material
096options and provide feedback on these two options. This feedback will be shared when we meet as a committee on February 26. Thank you. >> Very good. Thank you. I assume our director of communications is >> she is also on I I mean >> personal information but >> she was telling everybody when she left. Um, all right. Individual board reports. Uh, Mr. Dempsey. >> Thank you, Dr. Schwarz Wolf. I'll be real quick. I want to uh congratulate the month for Education Foundation for another GE fantastic jeans and jerseys event. That's that performing that is easier said than done. And it was great to see so many teachers and staff that uh that attended. Um, next, the booster club reverse raffle dinner is Friday, April 24th. That is the booster club's uh biggest fundraiser of the year.
097Uh, and that will be Friday, February 24th at the, uh, Center for Visual and Performing Arts. And last, um, Dr. Hicks, you had mentioned that, you know, you thanked us for attending all these fun events. It's easy for us to come, but it what a lot of people don't see is when you guys all the work that you guys do in the background. For example, the teacher appreciation grant. That that's a very tough job to do. Um, and it takes a lot of work to do it to do it fair. And so, thank you for all of your hard work and thank you for everything you guys are doing day in and day out. >> Thank you, Mr. Dempsey. Mr. Castro. >> Hello there. Nothing to report from the uh redevelopment commission meetings. Um those
098were just kind of business as usual quick meetings. Um I do want to also mention the chamber of commerce dinner and the Jeans and jerseys event. Um the support from the community um that we were all there um that we you know it's it's a great bonding experience for all of us. we continue to to have that social time together and experience things that um you know we'll we'll kind of things we can talk about for and and grow from and and exciting times. Um that was a great presentation uh regarding exceptional achievers. There's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of success already in the program. We're excited about our new director and about the work that Miss Bergen has put into this and all the staff. Um And I just
099think that we're never standing still. We're always looking to do better um with all of our programming and we're it's just exciting to see that this is the amount of effort that was put into it. Um same as the teacher appreciation grant. Um Mr. Trip and Feldus, I think uh the school calendar is going to get 100% satisfaction this year across the board. Every parent, every student, everybody in the district all in everyone's gonna love it. Um, and then last thing I want to mention is, uh, I had a chance to also attend the I want to get this right, the Indiana State School Music Association, uh, solo and ensemble contest. Uh, very well represented by Monster Schools. Our kids did great. Um, so just a shout out to our, um, arts programming, our music
100teachers in particular. U, and I was speaking with our music director. You know, there's a lot of fear, not with just our district, but arts is one of the first things that to go and and you know, knowing that we've planned, we've discussed. I want people to to hear that. I know this is a long meeting and it's like, oh gez, but these guys got everybody up here puts in a lot of time to make sure that we can continue to have quality programming when, as you mentioned, some of these schools, those are the first things to go. So, it scares me to see what the state will look like um in terms of that type of program in the coming years. But I also want to mention that my daughter did get a gold
101in her uh solo uh contest. So, thank you very much. That's all. >> Congratulations and thank you, Mr. Castro. Mrs. Smith, >> uh thank you. Um, I sit on our park board on behalf of the school town of Monster and Mark Heint noted as part of his presentation last month for um, updates that we will be making to cobblestones. Um, in particular, they'll be getting an upgrade to their tennis courts as well as some additional pickleball courts. And as part of that presentation, he noted due to the relationship with School Town of Monster and the park board that they will be experiencing upwards of a $20,000 savings um because we will obviously be doing our tennis courts almost simultaneously to their courts. So um that is a huge benefit of our two entities communicating, trying
102to work together as effectively as we possibly can. So, um, I did want to make note of that this evening because I thought that was a very big positive from last month's meeting. Um, in addition to that, I've attended many of the same things. We've all seen each other a lot over this time period. Um, but I did want to make note of the fact that I think a lot of people think we sit up here and we don't say a lot at times or we don't comment a lot because we ask a lot of questions behind the scenes or over time when things are coming up. Um, we all have a lot of questions about what happens in our district and we don't think our district's perfect, but we do recognize that we are
103always, as John said, moving forward, trying to address challenging areas in light of what's best for our kids. And I think Dr. Hicks always says it best and it's something I've admired about him since we've hired him is he always talks what's best for our kids. that is first and foremost on in what he has said to us as board members and what he speaks out in our community and um it's definitely admirable and something I keep top of mind when we're sitting up here. So, uh thank you for that and that's all I have to say. >> Thank you, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Cinder. >> Good evening. Um I think a lot of what I plan to say has already been said more eloquently by the rest of the board, so I'll keep it short.
104I wanted to thank Mr. Dempsey for serving as our president. um really appreciate the extra time and effort and and also thank Dr. Schwarz Wolf for serving in this role now. Um I'm excited to continue the work that's been done and and have her lead the way here. Um and then I'll just mention that I'm disappointed I will be missing next month's school board meeting. Uh over International Women's Day every year I lead a surgical mission trip to Honduras. So, I will be in Honduras enjoying much better better weather than you all have here. Um, but I am disappointed to miss the meeting and I know my fellow board members will represent our um needs and wants for the school district well. >> Thank you, Mrs. Cinder. I have no report 11.1 announcements. Uh, we'll
105be having a public work session immediately following this meeting tonight. Also, on March 9th, we have our regular board meeting at 6 p.m. Not for Mrs. Cinder. Uh, can I get a motion for adjournment? >> MC. So moved. Castro second. >> All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you.