001to call this special meeting to session. If you would please stand and say the I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. [Music] Okay. Okay. So, for tonight's special session, we just have one item on the agenda. Anyone would like to make a motion to approve? So, move second. First and second. All in favor? I. All opposed. All right. We'll open it up with citizens from comments. Oh, I'll say that the other way. Comments from citizens. It's been a long day. Um, tonight we're talking about the online school. Also, if anyone in the audience would like to address that or any other items, now's your chance. Nobody. All right, we'll close the disc comments.
002Moving on to the discussion, I'll let Mr. Williams lead this. All right, members of the board, uh, obviously the purpose of the meeting this evening is to discuss the implementation of an online school option for our students. As you know, we piloted the program last semester for students who were expelled, recommended for the program by an administrator, or placed on homebound services. We had about 24 students participate in the program as we partnered with Indiana online school uh for this asynchronous learning program meaning they can log in at their uh leisure to complete the coursework. Cost of the program for the corporation at totality was $15,100 but we were able to save uh obviously 24 students through their tuition support um and offset this easily. Um, as stated at the board meeting in March, we
003lost over, excuse me, in May, we lost over 137 students to other schools, homeschool or online programming. In this past school year, we realize that we do need to implement an online component to help meet the needs of our students who are better suited for an online setting. However, I believe we need to have a conversation about how we want this option to look. There are a lot of different uh ways this could go. Um, and at this time, I'd like to introduce some talking points. uh this evening um so we can focus on those and we also have administrators join us in the audience um that can share their thoughts as well um at some point. So for uh starters um there's concern from some of our staff that the online component is uh
004liked by students so much because they can earn credits so quickly and typically can get higher grades than they normally did in the brickandmortar setting. We believe this to be due to the resourcefulness uh that they can use while uh not in a classroom supervised. Um all online partners that we have researched have these characteristics. If we find a program or create one with more rigor and more supervision, then it is my opinion that they will probably find a program that fits their needs to the best and and go somewhere else anyway. Um how do we handle students who go online and then decide to return as far as credits? GPA and class rank are concerned, especially if they are finishing classes in a short period of time and looking at expuning FS that they
005have received in person with A's that they have received while going online. If we allow students to stay enrolled in the middle school and high school and we do not create a separate school, we have to consider the impact of the attendance, the test scores and graduation rates. school letter grades will be returning as criteria for schools next school year. And we need to consider, do we want to create a separate school for these students? Um, or do we want to keep them enrolled in the middle school and high school or if we choose uh to move it to the elementaryaries as well. Um, one student enrolled in the online program uh last year has expressed interest in participating in extracurricular activities and staying in the online program. My fear is that if we allow
006this to happen uh then we will deplete our inbuilding enrollment even more. However, I do know that there will be districts and there are districts who do allow ECA participation and as the years go by, uh you know, this is probably going to become more common, but do we want to dive into that at this point? And finally, for my talking point, uh what grade levels do we want to provide the online schooling for? Do we want to keep it as a middle school and high school situation? um do we want to expand it to the elementarymentaries um or do we want to keep it as a high school situation? Um those are some of the talking points um that I would like to bring up this evening. Obviously, if you have uh comments on
007these or any other points that you would like to address, uh that's what this is for. We want to be transparent. Um we want to be open about how this uh may look in the future for our school district. I have provided you um with Mrs. Skinner provided um an example of four students on the uh spreadsheet in front of you. There are no names on this spreadsheet. However, uh you can tell uh so for example a up in the lefth hand corner uh students spent 11 hours and four days total in an algebra 2 class and got a 96% and earn the credit online whereas they would be spending 45 days for nine weeks and then 45 more days for the second nine weeks. uh if they were in a a brick and mortar
008setting. Um and then you can see on down that list English number of days, four days, got an English credit and uh 98% there and so forth. Um so yeah, we know uh things are changing for us um and we're going to have to adapt, but what way do we want to do this? So I would open it up at this time for for comments from from the board. Well, how does that happen? Elge 2, you go to school 11 hours, you get a 96%. How does that even happen? So, the way that I calculated the number of days spent was when I look at the report, I counted each day that there was 20 at least 20 25 minutes spent in that course. So, I counted it as a day. So, you know, they
009may work two or three days in a row for 30 minutes and then work a day for four minutes. I didn't necessarily count the day that they were only logged in for four minutes. Um, so I just counted the number of days that was relatively substantial. You know, first I feel like a lot of times all these injuries is kind of forced on you. they develop some place somewhat think it's a great idea and so so there you go but I I think the thing that bothers me more than anything else two things monitoring instruction what kind of instruction are they receiving because I know some of it they have to receive basically by participating in an online class is that is is that in an online class do you mean like engaged virtually through
010um like a virtual meeting. Yes. Most of them are asynchronous meaning they can log in, read or watch a short video and then do a assignment. Okay. So then how is that monitored? How is that monitored? Like did they spend the time? How do you know they spent the time? So for Well, in terms of how much time they spent, I think there's ways of tracking that what they're doing during that time. I think, you know, I don't know that there's any answers there be because then the other thing that that just bothers the heck out of me is the playing field is not level. Absolutely. And I don't care what you do. If you've got a student who's bound to determine that this is an easier way to get whatever it is done they
011want to get done. Uh I mean I don't know how many times you could change online schools. I mean can you change twice a year three times? Oh you can change as many times as you want. So I mean oh sorry no go ahead. Go ahead. Mo most of the so most of the students who we've lost to online they're attending Indiana online. Is that correct? But there was also like Indiana Gateway. There's like three or four. There's so many of them now. There's so many of them. We saw a huge trend of students leaving in the first semester. We lost a lot of students to online schooling semester 1, which is why we wanted to come up with, you know, a way to pilot to see if there's a way that we can still
012service and support those students. Um, so that's kind of when we tried out this Indiana online program. Um, there's there's so many of them. Um, I know there's that we've lost them to many of them. Crawford'sville has their own online school. Um, and if you've noticed a lot of these schools will post in life and Clinton or some of these smaller uh chats online and say, "Hey, sign up for our school here, blah blah blah." Um, and so there's a lot of them throughout the state and I know that people know that this is the direction that you have to move if you want to sustain your enrollment. So, you have to weigh the pros uh with the cons and see if you want to if you're able to and willing to take a decrease
013in funding um or if you want to play the game with everybody else. But I guess I'm a little confused about the the difference in the curriculum between whatever Crawford'sville has. What you know, we talked about Cloverdale has a lot of I got huge online school, right? And Indiana. I They all kind of run together to me. I guess is the curriculum odd the same? I think they're relatively similar. I I really haven't gone through and analyzed like the different curriculums and did a compare and contrast on them. Um, but from, you know, researching what I have and and talking to reps from the different programs, it seems that they're run in a similar fashion. So, Cloverdale uh is partnered with a company out of Utah and they are the only ones that work with
014that company and the only ones in Indiana that can work with that company. Why is that? They have exclusive rights. I don't know the contract they signed. Um, and I believe they have upwards of 1,500 plus students and they're online and 300 plus in person. Um, and so, um, if you have been watching the news at all, I believe Union County who, uh, the legislation, uh, was passed because they have a ton of, I think over 9,000. It was, please don't quote me on that, but, it was upwards of 9,000 students in an online academy and a couple of lawmakers on either side of the district got together and wrote the bill to shut the school corporation down, which passed, and now they're in court and they've won phase one of the proceedings. Um, but
015in my opinion, this is obviously people are moving this direction to try to save some of the environment because um, you can enroll in any school across Indiana. You don't have to be in that district. Um, and that's kind of what we saw the majority of our 137 students that we lost. That's where they they went somehow. How how how level if if we even know this, how level is the playing field with the schools that are most likely to attract our students? So, uh around here, I know VGO did um a year or two or maybe more. I don't think they're doing the VGO virtual. I don't see a lot of our kids going to go virtual anymore. Um, but as far as in my opinion, as far as ECAs, kids that we would
016attract from other school corporations to play ECAs, but be enrolled online, I think it's pretty minimal for the most part. Um, and so, uh, but as far as other corporations around us, um, I mean, like I said, uh, we had a number go to Crawford'sville, uh, we had a number go to Indiana Gateway. It just depends. Um I know some of them uh I think it's digital gateway uh requires them to go to IVTech um to test for online and that's another task we would have to if we're going to open it up to everybody. Um they would have to be willing to drive here to test the uh English and language arts and all your state testing in person. Um so then you have to have somebody oversee that and and are you going
017to get them here? And if you don't get them here then it's an automatic fail and then that goes against your school letter grade. So those are all things that you have to consider and that's the consideration if we started a South online school as opposed to the other like the the crossroads which would be a separate entity. Correct. It would be a separate entity as far as it would have its own school identification number. Uh and so we would you know most likely it would probably be failing school once the letter grades come back because you're uh you can't monitor the you know chronic absenteeism rate if they're not logging in then that goes against your school letter grade if they are not graduating. Um the same also Mrs. Skinner provided another statistic to
018me. There was one student um who through three years at South Vermillion had a 1.5 GPA with 28 uh earned credits in the last year which uh I don't think the student was even online for the whole year maybe four months or so uh gained 24 credits had a 3.47 GPA online. Um so those are things like I said um what does success look like to us? um do we play the game or uh do we consider uh continue to make changes as far as staffing and stuff goes as we do students? I mean uh I think for the most part the students who were uh placed in there last semester because there's expulsions or uh homebound or whatnot. It it was okay. Um it worked for that matter. But I think if we open
019up to anyone and everyone who wants to participate um then I think we're going to see a very low number of students in our school. How does that tuition work if we set up a separate entity? How does that work with the money? We we get 85%. Yeah. Is it a different account? How does that work? Goes to the education fund. That's good. That's good. And then the more students you have enrolled in that their the cost to the provider, the curriculum provider goes up. Correct. So just looking at this, which I would say it would probably go down a little bit on that 15,100 based off of the number of students you get a break. Um but at 24 students, it cost $15,100. So if you multiply that by five and say we have
020100 or 120 students in it, you're paying $75,000 for that programming, but you're also getting upwards of 7500 per kid in that. So you're 750,000, you know, so I mean you're definitely bringing in money and that's kind of the uh at Union County uh they were I think their education fund was sitting upwards of 64 million. Um and so they had 300 students in person that they had uh compared to the 9,000. Okay. So, okay. So, I want I guess I want your opinion on this. So you offer some kind of a carrot like okay if if the online if the is appropriate for this student to let them maybe participate in something as part of the school but not maybe full access to all the sports and all of that. Is that something we
021would look at or do you have I'm putting you on the spot? No, that's okay. I mean we can and I think you know every student has something different that might be important to them. Some kids, you know, could care less about participating in an athletic or a club, um, but would really want to go to prom. Some kids would have the opposite. So, um, yeah, I guess I'm just trying to figure out what's the difference between like going to the one that we wanted to do when the curriculum is the same anywhere almost. Um, or am I missing a detail? So what's the question? I guess what's the difference between it just seems that the curriculum is very similar on any of these online programs, right? So they're all based off of the same
022standards, but the way it's monitored, the way it's graded and so forth. I mean, um, you know, there's students in college, for example, testing in college for the most part that's online has to be supervised with a camera on them and so forth. You can't do that at this age level. You can't require them to turn a camera on themselves. Um and so there's not a whole lot of monitoring when it comes to take test taking. Um there's a lot of Quizlet applications or Quizlet Live um that provide great resources uh for students while doing course work. Um but as far as what we were going to offer, our thing is we are trying to uh you know some of our students are in need of an alternative, you know, alternative placement. Um and we
023get that. Um but we also don't want to be taken advantage of and there's a fine line between the two. So you can establish your own criteria for enrolling a student or considering enrolling a student or oh local at the local level in terms well in terms of who who has the option to enroll is that what you're asking what was it in ter I guess are you asking could we establish our own pro protocol in terms of who is able to enroll right I speaking means also like if we would offer like right any of the sports that you're saying like well of course that would have to not only meet our criteria but kids someplace else so doesn't know a whole lot about about our program I just want to maybe you can
024express your opinions on this it doesn't seem seem like you're going to be able to stay out of the game. Correct. So, I think that's the question is how do we best manage it so as not to impact the other students as well. Um, you know, I think it's part of human nature to desire the path of least resistance sometimes. Um, especially when you have, you know, neighbors, friends, cousins, whoever who have taken what some of these courses and got it done in a few days that news travels quickly. So we you know if we see a mass exodus because it is the path of least resistance then I fear we lose programming for the students who are here. Um and I'll you know one of my first exper and and I do think it's
025it's necessary to some degree. Um, like you said, it's almost unavoidable to stay out of the game. I also think it does a lot to support the students who get expelled because there's nothing worse than sitting in an expulsion meeting and telling them we have nothing to support your educational needs for the next year and now you're going to fall even further behind. You're going to sit at home with nothing to do. So, I do think, you know, I do think it's necessary. I just want to make sure it doesn't go beyond the scope of, you know, what we foresee right now. And why why why would you want to open up an online school to an elementary student or or be awful junior high school and I would say those of us who live
026through co elementary kids at home we've had we've had elementary students so it would be well I yes I do understand that and I agree with you totally if you don't have some alternative for the kids who sincerely need an alternative to continue in education, then I think they just they can they can find one. And I will another concern of mine is that you know years ago we had an alternative school here. Um and I I think we really started to see the students really desire to be a part of that path of least resistance. Um and as I I think it served a lot of purposes and it it was well um you know it it served a good purpose. But in my first week here in November um I was visiting classrooms
027and I was sitting down at the back of the classroom and the student or the teacher had handed out papers and they were passing them back. Well, I noticed the student in front of me just grabbed the whole stack and turned around and passed it to me. And I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, "Aren't you going to take one?" He's like, "No, I don't do any work in here." And I said, "What do you mean you don't do any bell work?" And he said, "No, I don't do any work in any of my classes because I'm trying to get bad enough grades so that I can get into the alternative school." So, I don't want to create a culture of apathy either. There's, you know, the the balance of creating a culture
028of accountability and apathy. And I felt in that moment, this is not working for us. So, does anyone agree here that you all kind of need to be in the game? I thought I think we need to be in the game, but I think we need to look at the mayor. What's the quality of these online programs? Do they stack up against South Railian education? Which is better? What do you think? Are you getting a better right here at South or do you think you're getting better online? I mean, if a lot of people are biting on this, you know, if you say, "I think South America's better, I think we're doing a better job." You're getting a better quality education. You're at least getting a chance to interact with students, which is part of
029life and you're going to have to deal with your whole life. Uh, which is better right now. Uh, it's best bang for the dollar. And I think that's the way a lot of people's going to look at it. What's the best bang for the dollar? Where am I going to get my best quality of education? Is it going to be online? Is it going to be right here in this building? I think that's going to vary by student and by their circumstances. I think it's going to work better for some kids. I agree. But but I I agree with what you're saying. I think we need to protect the integrity of what it means to get a South Korean agitation and not do the kids a disservice by just chasing headcount just to get enrollment
030up but actually keep the same level of curriculum that we have in the building. I don't know how how we go about that to compete with those other programs that are already out there that they're just getting because we're four hours of work or four days of work to get an A in algebra 2. I wish I had that option. Right. And that's what we fear that once the word starts spreading, then it's going to be mass exodus. Yeah. But then on the other side, if we're going to lose kids anyhow, I'd rather lose them to us only, you know, but if it's dollar just are we talking just dollar and cents? Are we talking quality of education? I think that's the toughest question that this board has to to deal with and the administration.
031What what is the best bang for the dollar? I don't know. I I mean, I'm looking for you folks. I mean, what's your other superintendent around the Wall Bash Valley saying? Are are they just saying we need to get in the game and and save the dollars? Are that's what is that what they're thinking or are they when the doors closed going, "Wow, I don't know if this is the way we really want to go." what's going on here? I mean, that's what we need to know, right? Like I said, as far as some of the districts here in West Central Indiana between, you know, Cloverdale, Crawford'sville, that line there, North Central Park, um I think they're exploring the same option or or something similar. Um I think at the end of the day, like
032you said though, um do we want to really look at are we really worried about the money or are we really worried about what our school is? Um, and we all know I'm a finance person and we all know I like numbers, but to me, unless a student is being expelled and we're giving them the opportunity or unless a student um is, you know, facing some sort of, you know, behavioral uh situation um that we can put them we I mean we can partner with Indiana online and have 10 students in there if we want or we can have a hundred students in there like we did last semester with the you know the 20. So, I in my opinion, even though I am a money person and even though I like to see the
033finance, I don't want to see us go completely down the drain uh because I think you're going to have a ton of students just exiting uh the building um once we open it up to everybody. Um and so I would personally um my my viewpoint would be to kind of do as we have done uh the past semester um and try to uh not make students fall further behind who you know might be expelled or suspended or whatnot. Um but you know like I said I I think that's my opinion right now as far as where we stand in this. Well, let's face it, we have very limited experience. So, you don't have a lot to build on to, you know, do a little bit of your own research. So, that's one thing. And then
034the second thing, and I agree with Bruce, the next thing people will be looking at is Cloverdale's program so much better than South America's program. Why am I on top of program? So, you got to think about the quality of the program that that you have here and the needs it meets. And you know, sometime you're just going to have to figure out what's actually going on once you've done what you think is the best thing to do for the kids who need the program. So, and I don't think sometimes it's not always the quality of the program, but the path, like she said, of least resistance. So, the parents, a lot of these situations we're getting into. Yeah. You know, it's like, you know, if we do create an online program with more rigor
035and and more teeth to it and make sure they're being monitored, then those kids are just going to leave and they're going to go somewhere else where they don't have to. Yeah, that's that's what I'm talking about. What type of feedback you getting from ISBA? So, the school board association right now, uh, they send out, you know, uh, weekly letters and memos and stuff. And then on the IASBO uh thread, there's also stuff about how you're uh managing Senate Bill one that just went, you know, by and how they're starting to. And some of the people on there are saying we're looking at the online option. Um but as far as that goes, I mean, like I said, I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer uh for anybody at this point. I
036mean, it's just you're trying people are starting to dip their toes in it more and more. Um, and it's it's basically a local level what you think is going to be best for your corporation. You know, I may I may be out of line here and cross the bridge, but I don't think we can look at this in a vacuum. We've had discussion about a 4-day week. Have we thought about factoring that in? I was thinking the same thing, Bruce. I mean, I I think I mean, we were trying to, you know, walk casually about that, but I mean, we need to be honest with folks. We've been thinking about a a 4 day week. How would that play into this? Well, and that came out last week in the newsletter from the state that
037K I believe it's Kthersville that I shared that the state board of education voted down their 4 day a week proposal. I saw that. So, I don't know if that's due to something, you know, in their plans that weren't thought out. I don't know if it's just going to be the norm. I that's something I'd have to look more into of why it was shut down and and uh go from there. But yeah, I like I said, I think it all kind of intertwines and and I agree with you on that of what way, you know, what path are we going? Yeah. Is there any advantage and maybe you said this a while ago, any advantage to establishing your your own online school as opposed to joining one that's more established? So, are you saying
038as far as I mean usually putting kids in high school and middle school or putting them separate into an online academy or is that the question or Well, I think it's maintained by us. Yeah, you can establish your own program or you can and if no matter what program you establish, surely it's going to be pretty similar to right something that's already out there. So, so last year in the first semester I pulled up the report that I had kind of created, we lost 20 students to another school. Uh, of those 2012 had moved and we lost 40 students to an online program. The 12 had moved out of the school that the online school they went to. No, I'm sorry. 20 moved. They just moved. That's why they weren't they stopped coming here. Of
039those 20 I'm sorry, 20 of them went to a different school. Of those 20, 12 of them had physically moved into a different district and then 40 and then 40 students we lost to an online program. That was the first semester. And that was in first semester. That was through January. But we also see students come back and forth a lot, you know, uh, and so what's their reasoning for doing that? Do they So I think part of it is they don't log in or do the expectations and then they have to go back that they get kicked out of that. Okay. But Mrs. Skinner could and that's the other side of this. There are um you know this was only a sample of four four different students that I pulled that I knew did
040do work and earn credits. The other side of this is there's students who never log in and didn't do anything as well. Now if we offered an elementary option would there be families that just choose to do that because they're just kind they can't get their kids they're not offering that. Yeah. So Indian online would not be an option for us for elementary. We would have to find another vendor, create our own or whatever. I mean to to they just they they were going to offer but Indian online does not offer elementary now. I think does well they were going to establish in your question. That's what came to us from administration that they feel like there are families who would want to put the kids online and not brick and mortar at the elementary
041level as well. That's just a a sampling of opinion. No, no surveys were given. I mean, for most for most, but I mean like anything else, there are some situations where families would would rather would choose that to still be rooted back here. So they families may explore and travel a lot. So then, you know, they don't have to, you know, the attendance piece of it that we, you know, count every day. they have to answer to our attendance policy. So, I'm just because I feel like just some of this information that I'm hearing um I really feel like and Mr. Williams and I've not spoken about this or Mrs. Skinner, but I mean we we really need to look at the curriculum piece of this that what Indiana online if kids are able to
042do this and that's the vendor we're using. I think we need to have a conversation with that vendor regarding some of this data that we pulled. I mean, I don't think I'm surprised it's not. So, I know we don't have would have the funding to do it, but hypothetically if we do it ourselves, staff it ourselves and have the curriculum ourselves and think that be a better option. I don't it properly but but I think that they would look at that option and if it was too difficult then they would just I think I think that's no matter what we do they're going to jump from one to another but I think if we you know if we do something different whereas we make them it's more synchronous based and make them log in class
043and stuff just add to Right. So what's the process now then if student says they want to go online? So how does that work in your building and then what's So basically there's typically a meeting with a guidance counselor and parents um and we kind of look at the transcript and look at what courses are the most important prioritize courses. um also look at I mean we we gave some consideration to attendance and work ethic in terms of how many courses we were putting the student in also um if they were refusing to do any work here at all. I wasn't super eager to put them in five classes because we paid per class. Um, so we thought we'd start small and if they, you know, prioritize their work and really focus in, then we
044can always add more courses as the semester went on. So, so at this point though, like this semester, nothing really changed in like they were still listed as South Carolina High School student. So, they were still in Harmony. They would still come up, you know, in our database and things like that. How does that work from the different types of diplomas? So the this coursework satisfies a credit just as a classroom any level class. Could they do like you do say they're going to go for a technical degree? Would they be able to do online for what they would be in person? and then the other half they went to welding or an inerson vocation that's a part of the conversation too was and we did do that um we had a couple of students
045on a hybrid situation where they did their core classes in India online and then attended their WCTE because they that was their pathway and they have to have that CTE concentrator for their pathway comment was made I think earlier about everyone's getting in the game. What do we got to do? We going to get in the game or not? If everybody gets in the game, we're still back to ground zero. Everybody's got the same option. Why's a kid going to come here? Why's a kid going to sign on with us? I think that's still the key here. What is going to make our program better than cross the river or in Vgo County, what's going to make our program better? Why would a kid want to come from anywhere? I I guess just Indiana. Is
046this restricted to Indiana? Okay. Why would a kid want to come from anywhere in Indiana and be part of our online program? Why? What are we going to throw at that kid? What are we going to It varies by student. I think, you know, there's some some students would love the opportunity to be at home all day and, you know, they they they will stay in the office, I really kind of like to sleep in and do my work when I feel like doing my work. Um, and if you know, some kids have the option to do that and be in on a sports team or in athletics or in a club, um, that might be their carrot. some students. I mean, I think everybody has Well, I'm looking I'm looking for, you know, just
047brainstorming those carrots to come to the South Termaine online program verse, right? I think you have to find the balance also in terms of not making it so appealing to the other students that we don't have a mass exodus out of you know because then there's a balance because you know we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where the physical on-site enrollment has dropped so far that we can't sustain the number of staff members that we have and now we have to look at programming there's opportunities for the students out here. It's a very delicate. We got to find the sweet spot, but do we know what that sweet spot is right now? And you and you brought up, you know, what are we going to do about staff? What if we we
048lose too many students, right? Then we're talking about staff. Then we're talking about maybe building closures. I mean, this has a lot of uh things that could go wrong or not go the path we want it to take. I mean, I I'm just, you know, I think we got to walk lightly here and and just because everybody else is doing it, do we need to do it? Maybe. But how do we provide the value to those students? And and here again, I want to go back to that quality of education. Uh, are we getting a better quality education right here in this building verse here? I don't know. How do we prove that? It looks to me like we could very easily get into a position where we're competing against ourselves, you know, that's that's
049scary. That's that's a real fine line right there. You got to you've got to ride the other thing. Yeah, I mean it's hard to I know it's hard to predict what the legislature might do in the next few years, but I mean you can envision where they're like, "Okay, wait a second. We're not going to reimburse you at 87% of because your expenses are so low for that. We're going to do it at X." So, it's hard to really come up with this long term plan when everything's in because that doesn't really make sense to my thought too because experience here. Yeah, you don't have experience with a program like this, limited experience. And I think that was our when we looked at creating this pilot program for this semester, that was why we kind
050of went in the direction of, you know, students who are opting not to attend school would not then be eligible for the ECA as a way to try to preserve some motivation or carrot for students who, you know, want to be here for those reasons to keep them here in the building. I agree. And I mean for me the whole reasoning behind Indian online and like I kind of my push for that was we're here to educate kids first and we have a legal obligation to make sure our students are educated. So therefore we have those who are up for expulsion have an opportunity for an education. So an ECA having an option for ECA from my standpoint was never on the table because my viewpoint was education first. because we were about to lose
051them because of expulsion. You know, we're talking to the four smartest people we know who know about the program possibilities and options. I mean, you really are. And when I listen to you, I don't hear any of you saying, "I don't think we ought to do this." So, you've got in your mind somewhere that we need to do this, but we need to think about the thing Bruce is talking about. How is this program going to be as good or better? And we're going to have to work at it to get there. not for a semester. You're going to have to you invest in this thing for three or four years to create some data and some possibilities for your own research. And then the question the next question I want are you up for
052that? I in my mind the biggest issue is not how do we attract kids to our online school? I don't think that's going to be an issue. I agree. I think you know it's almost a necessity unless we are prepared to continue to lose students at a rate of 40 per semester who are looking for that online alternative. Um I think the bigger concern from my perspective is how do we manage it in a way where we don't have a flood of our students leaving because you know the best of both worlds or however you want to look at it. they can um kind of do things at their own pace, spend a couple hours, get a credit, and then still come and be a part of all of the extracurriculars. Well, I think that's
053what Jerry and I are are alluding to. And that's a pretty big task for you folks. And does it affect our pipeline? No, they would. Okay. They wouldn't be accessing it. Yeah. That uh we talked about giving them devices. Did you say if they were our students or anyone who if they lived in our district? Yeah, we would still give them a device and and so we talked about um concerned, do we have enough devices? Well, it just depends on how many if we had a lot of kids from the outside, we'd have to purchase more devices, but right now we're sitting at probably a surplus of about 150 devices due to declining enrollment. So, we have extras for now, but we would handle the support of those devices. Wouldn't we likely have to provide
054them with the device anyway if they were not necessarily? A lot of kids will use their own. Oh, okay. Yeah. If so, if maybe they live in South Bend but enrolled in our school, they would probably have their own device instead of taking one of ours. And you have to look at that as well is, you know, I got a text from a principal on Saturday morning uh and Jenny was involved as well where there was a student site that had searched how do I kill myself? And so that was something that we have to get into and that's something we would have to prepare for too. we don't know these students if they're enrolling with us and they're not students we have had any experience with and they're searching this stuff and then all
055of a sudden now we have to go that route and try to get the authorities involved and try to see where this person is and what the IP address and all that stuff. Do we want give them a self account or a self address and so we have to get through those things as well. That was one of the things I was going to bring up is how the guidance counselors or the entire counseling part how that would work with with these students. There are students but would still be pro be providing. So the monitoring with Indian online they have someone who is connected through Indian online who monitors who then has a connection at each of the buildings who well supposed to but I think once we hit a threshold of students then I
056think we probably need somebody in the house that oversees this along with the special education aspect of it that we have to hold the conferences and and do the IEPs. Um, so that's a whole another aspect as well. And I think once you hit the, you know, threshold of 50 to 75 kids or whatever, I think you're asking your guidance counselors and, uh, special education staff to do too much. Um, and then I think you have to look at and and you would be fine because you have the money there based off of their enrollment. Um, but those are all things that we have to continue to address as they go on. What do you need from this board? I mean, basically, obviously, there's no decision to be made tonight or anything like that. that
057I just wanted to be uh transparent and have an open conversation uh with you guys public whoever wanted to attend. Um I I think obviously um as far as uh an your own school identity or creating an own school code that has to be all applied for and submitted and that would be by August and I don't think at this point uh that would be a feasible thing to go through that whole process. Um so I think for this coming year um this like I said just my opinion and we can go from you know here um but we need to uh treat it as we did last semester but you know open it up maybe a little bit more uh to discipline or behavior problems or maybe you know as anxiety problems approach or
058or any of those issues. um you know be a little bit put the ball in our administrator's court and let them make decisions about you know what I think you're a good fit for this program. I I don't think so and I think it should be a lot of the administrative input into it as well. Um, and so they know the students the best and they know if it's worth us enrolling them in the online portion or if uh they they're best in the building or maybe if they want to go online somewhere else like that. Um, but I think just continue to, you know, ask questions of us and and be involved with it and uh we'll be open with you as we have discussions and we'll continue to have those throughout the summer.
059Um, but um that's that's my opinion right now just to kind of see where we go. Um, and see uh what our needs are come the first week of August or second week or so forth to see where we're at if that's fair and and feel free to chime in there as well. I don't want I mean I don't want to speak for anyone here but I don't hear any of us saying oh I think we need to allow them to participate in ECA that seems like they're not there that may it may come to a point where other schools are doing that but I don't think we're able to capture some of those kids who have left I mean I mean again it's an administrative hands knowing and understanding that that's that's the sole
060reason behind it is to be able to capture these students and keep these students at the same time I'm hearing tonight I think we need to really monitor maybe a little bit more or I mean I'm not criticizing anything but we need to you know collect more data see what we what how students are performing you know having that conversation and you know keep going as we're going but yet know we've had this discussion what does it look like in a year from now I think it'll be important to see how many kids we retain as well compared to last year lost 40 last year How many do we lose this year if we had the online option? Does it include I don't I don't think we want to tie their hands on the ECA.
061I think we need to leave it their best judgment as they work through the process and if it comes up if it is an issue then I think we need to get together and that yes that we that may be something we need to evaluate at some point. They're going to have to stay blessed. I just hate to start that high school. And yes, the money is still there, but you won't have kids to go classes. Like you said, it's almost compete against yourself as far as you want to online or so. What's your timeline? when you're gonna want to chat with us again. I'd say uh August 20 I believe it's around August 21st is the August board meeting and we would have an update for you then after we've been in school the
062first couple weeks to see where we kind of sit this semester and then uh come back in uh September to see if anything's changed but have a more concrete plan for for the January semester. That would be my opinion. And then that would be suggestions on like the online handbook. I mean if we went that route. Yeah. Yeah. So right now as we stand they would stay within their own respective buildings and would be you know administrator decision based and think to touch base with Rhonda and I based on past experiences as Rhonda handles student services and special education and see if we think they would be a good fit or not. But I I'm very hesitant to open it up for any student because I think we're just Are we going to open it
063up to middle school or just It's been in the middle already. I was just asking the the Cloverdale school. Is that this high school or is that middle school? That's K through 10. They only allow them through 10th grade. And I think that comes based off of uh graduation rates as you hit the junior and senior classes and so forth. Interesting. Have we been in contact with those schools? Are they willing to provide feedback? Cloverdale insight. Yes, all of them. Well, Cloverdale, I know, like I said, they work with Utah, a company out of Utah, and it's specific to their district. Um I I mean, like I said, I would reach out to these other corporations. um you know if I'm in their position I'm hesitant of how much information to provide and we've looked
064at several Indian books. Y I mean this handbook there was what six or seven that we looked at while looking at this. Um and we want to use that we not want to use that and so forth. Um but like I said there's just so many branches you can go down once you know if you do this but if you do that well you end up here or there. So there's just so many rabbit holes to go down. Time moves quickly. Time moves quickly. Getting ready for this. And there's no possibility of having your own school number, right? That stuff's gone. It's too late for that. So, and it wouldn't open up. Having our own school wouldn't be an option in January either because it would happen in June of next year when they open
065it up to August. But you'd have more experience as we move on. So, and I do think that you're the folks that have to kind of put it together and advise this board about which direction to go because you do more you do know more about it than anybody around here comments. We have a second section for public comment if the MLAs have anything you like to add. Supply on the wall. What do what do we what do you think over there? You hearing anything you like? Anything that uh making you feel uneasy, uncomfortable? That question that's uncomfortable. Yeah, I mean there's, you know, I've seen I've seen the online programs in the middle school. I've seen what they've done for some students students that were expelled. Um I think uh a decline in enrollment
066is going to happen. I think it is happening. um and how we respond is I mean I don't have the answer any more than you do but I think the enrollment will continue to decline along along that comment um the students that we have have been expel expelled and they have come back if we see any of those that have come back in this semester how have they changed has there been any improvement in their inbuilding performance versus um so are you talking about the students that were expelled and then went onto this online program. Yeah. So, we haven't seen that yet. And that's one of the problems just you don't have that. Was that you had a couple from summer school that went online for summer school? Did they come to summer school, which
067is still an online program, you know, yeah, that' be something interesting to see what happens this fall. And you know, we part of our summer school programming is also online through a separate program, but it's called Apex. Um, and I'm typically very strategic about what courses that I enroll a student in in the Apex programming. Um, for instance, a course like health doesn't have a subsequent course that builds off of everything that they learned in health. I'm very Larry about enrolling students in algebra 1 because I know they're not going to have the opportunity to practice and really establish those fundamental math skills that they're going to need to be successful in the second semester of algebra 1 or geometry or algebra 2 because it all builds. Um you know when students go completely online
068though there's no way around that. That's I would be almost more comfortable with, you know, Bruce's comment about what's going to bring them here to our online programming. You know, Cara alluded to this as well. Um, but I think building relationships with students staff wise are going to want students to stay in the building. They're going to want to stay in the building uh based off of that, the connections that they have with people. And so that's going to be a big thing that we preach. Now obviously there are going to be students who get expelled and you can't uh you know not stop that. Um but there are some students that you can uh really make that connection with. Um and even though they might struggle in six of their other classes that seventh
069class where maybe as an administrator that they connect with that's why they look forward to coming to school. And so I think that's what we have to, you know, um, and Bruce said this as well, you have to make sure, you know, you're going to go throughout life and you have to communicate with people and you have to deal with people and it's not always going to be an online thing. Um, and so I think we have to give them those skills. Um, and and we want them to come here and we want them to be in our building and I think that's what we need to preach instead of, you know, why do you want to come to our online program? You know, why do you want to be in our buildings? Um and
070second, so we'll take that approach. Um and it might take a year or two to see if there's any results from that. Um but but that would be my biggest thing is building relationships with students who and they want to be in your building. So is there an upfront investment or you just pay per student per class or is there anything? There's not there's a contract like if you're going to use them, you got to use them, but there's not a basically it's a a per student basis. So if we try it, trial and error for us, we're not anything else. A motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. But