001Pledge allegiance 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. We will call this meeting to order at 5:32 p.m. >> Any would someone like to make a motion to approve the agenda? >> I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. >> I will second that. >> Trader. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. Same sign. Motion carries. We can skip over letter A. Looks like um B, routine matters minutes of regular sessions of January 15, 2026, claims 5381 through 54092 and payrolls for January 30th and February 13th. >> I'll make an order or a motion to approve the minutes, claims, and payrolls as presented. >> I would like to second that second
002by Shider. All those in favor signify by saying I post same sign. Motion carried. Okay, communications, Mr. Mafy. >> All right, for our highlight of the month, uh what we'd like to uh focus on tonight is athletics. A lot of times we do academic things and fine arts, but tonight is our athletic world that we want to talk about. First of all, I want to gra congratulate our girls wrestling team for their outstanding season and specifically three of our athletes, Corey Hunterfeld, Jocelyn Dubon, and Maya Minky, who all advanced to the state finals. And an extra congratulations to Maya with her seventh place finish at the individual girls wrestling state finals. So a great job by those ladies. >> And I want to add to that, not only congratulations, but how cool. First fatherdaughter state
003placers in in school history. >> Congratulations. >> Didn't think of it that way. >> Awesome. Mom is the coach. That's pretty neat. >> So congratulations. That that is that's really cool. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Also, uh, boys wrestling. Uh, we have a couple of athletes who are semi-statebound, Noah Ring and Owen Blesinger. And Owen is actually the first three-time regional champion in our school history. So, congratulations to those guys. >> And Owen is actually statebound tomorrow. He has he has his round tomorrow. >> Great. And uh in tennis uh coach Larry Keifner uh was inducted into the Indiana High School Tennis Association Hall of Fame uh recently. So we want to congratulate uh him. And a couple of upcoming things, boys swimming sectional starts tonight and continues on Saturday. And the boys basketball sectional
004draw will be this week on Sunday. So good luck to those teams uh in their upcoming uh tournaments. Next, uh we want to go to our highlight presentation for the evening. And tonight, it's all about our middle school. So, we're going to bring up our wonderful, outstanding, uh principal of our middle school who has just done a terrific job out there. Um eventually, we'll let the board in on some of the growth that's going on in our scores with our data. Our kids are just growing immensely out there and it's some of the best growth I've seen um in such a short period of time. and and I'm going to give our teachers a lot a lot of credit, but they also have to have a leader that that motivates them to get that done.
005And Betsy is just doing a bangup job out there. So, we're going to turn it over to her do a little presentation on our middle school at this time. >> Sure. Thank you. >> Oh, I'm happy to be there. It's great staff, so I can't take credit for for all of that. They work really hard. So, I was asked to share a little bit of something. You'll get a sneak peek of some data here. Um, so our motto is every student every day. So we started talking about how at the middle school we could take that one step further and meet the needs of each student and a reoccurring theme kept coming up and that was our use of flex time. So we had flex time fifth, sixth or seventh period depending on if you
006were in sixth, seventh or eighth grade. Flex time is where we had band and choir. If students were not in band and choir, they kind of had like a study hall, if you will, and math and language arts teachers were trying to pull those same kids. I want them for math. I want them for language arts. And then if kids didn't have anything they needed to work on, they kind of were just hanging out. So, it seemed like a period of time that was not as purposeful as it could be. So, we identified all these hurdles. Teachers didn't have access to the banded choir kids that they needed to. That was especially true in eighth grade. The teachers were trying to pull the same kids and then every day was different. So it wasn't targeted
007and purposeful. Um so we decided we could make a little bit better use of that time. So we worked with um with Melissa. We met with some schools that utilized foundations classes and we decided we would put a foundations class or an enrichment class in the place of flex. So we moved band and choir to the related arts period and that gave us an additional class period to work with. So students who need extra help in language arts, we put in a language arts foundations class. If they need extra help in math, they have a math foundations class. Um so those students then have two language arts classes or two math classes a day. So that gave us purposeful time to work with those students. We used uh iLearn scores to determine who needed to
008be in those classes. Um, if a student needed both, and we do have some students who need a remediation or an extra time for math and language arts, we prioritized language arts and put them in a language arts foundation, but then put that student in a math teacher home room so they would have access to them um for assistance. that gave us a really neat opportunity of adding enrichment courses for students who are proficient or higher on both ilearns get to learn something new. Um, and that's been pretty cool for them. So, foundations is all focused on databased instruction of math and language arts that sometimes is reteing. Um, but with the experienced staff we have, we can make use of that time to what do what we call frontload, which if we know something
009difficult is coming up in a grade level class, we can frontload it to those kids so they have confidence when it does come up. And then these are all the enrichment courses that we offer uh during those class periods for students who are proficient or higher um on both iLearn which is pretty cool. The first three there creative writing, public speaking and engineering and technology are in sixth grade. The first two are semester long. The engineering and tech is a year-long with Kyle Baston. Then in seventh grade we have instrument explorers, digital publications and graphic design. Um those we have Craig Pope working there, Mr. Butler and Kyle Basden. And then we have um oh we also have civics and personal finance in seventh grade and uh Mr. Schneider in high school teaches that for
010us which is very cool. And then in eighth grade we have engineering essentials community service and music exploration. Um community service has been wildly popular with the kids and a great life skill for them. >> What types of community service do they do? >> They do some things in the community. They go to nursing homes. Um Sheay Pierce teaches that class and she can drive a mini bus and so which is very helpful. So they will go to nursing homes. They will go to parks and do some things like that. They go to memorial gym and clean it up and then they do projects around um the school. They did one for I want to say the humane society raised some money there. They work in the courtyard. You have a son in that class.
011Um do you remember some things that he did? >> I just need him to go back to personal finance because he's not very good with mine. >> Oh, you >> but I was going to say didn't. >> Yeah, we shuffle that around a little bit. and Cooper then would be the father-son duo that did community service. >> I know there was a there were a lot of uh >> programs, a lot of classroom uh materials that arrived that were in a lot of boxes and uh we didn't have any idea how to get I mean it was a massive amount. We don't how to get all those food and so we had those kids come over and help us. Um we've had them help help them pick up our campus right before we had guests
012coming on. I know that's a couple other things. So >> they work with our cafeteria. They're doing our recycling program. So, they're pretty busy. They also study about different things and do some presentations on those. Um, I had some service dogs of that I personally know, well, I know their owners do, not just the dogs, but come in and talk to them about, you know, what service dogs do and um, so that's it's kind of cool. That's a great class. The kids now they all want to take that, which is even more motivation for them to get proficient or higher on their iLearn. So we started looking at is this working? So we didn't know are these foundations classes working. So this is checkpoint one data. So iLearn now has three small checkpoints leading up
013to the big E in the spring. We did um all students took opportunity one of checkpoint one this year and that's the scores of the percent proficient on opportunity one. uh this year. Then we gave opportunity two to the students in those foundations classes after they got some reteing to see if their scores improved and that was about two weeks apart and you can see we saw some growth from that. >> Um so we saw some a pretty significant growth. The average of that growth is 14%. Um so we were pleased with that to see you know just how we're doing this year. So then we also want to track trends. So I put some graphs up here. I like numbers and graphs. Um but if we just look at the trends. So these are
014cohorts. So this is comparing the same kid. So the same kid in fifth grade compared to what they do in sixth grade. The same kid in sixth grade compared to seventh. So we just want the red column to be higher than the blue column. And that shows growth with those kids from the previous year. So that's comparing last year's checkpoints to this year's checkpoints. We've only had two so far. Um and in most cases, the red column is higher. So we're pretty pleased with that trend. Um we are seeing some huge growth in 8th grade. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is eighth grade choir and band. That was a huge group of kids. We had access to none of them before foundations classes. Now we have access to them to get to
015the kids that that we didn't have before. And that group is doing a really really good job working together and building language arts skills. So we're doing a lot of crosscurricular things in 8th grade as well. So we're really happy. We're just going to keep an eye on this. So we think it's working. Uh won't know for sure till we get a couple of sumitives in there, but we think it's working. Um, and just kind of a sidebar, uh, things we're doing at South Ridge Middle School for kids at the traditional school setting is not the best for. Last year, we had one student in the middle school in the alternative learning center. That was a student that had we tried to force that student to be in class, he would have shut down and
016not done well in any of his classes. He ended up doing extremely well in uh four out of five of his classes in the alt center. We were thrilled with that for him. This year we have six students in the alternative center. They are there for a combination of behavior or health issues. So we have a few students that are adjusting to a health improvement program, adjusting medication, uh maybe don't work well under fluorescent lights. The alt center has given them an opportunity to learn. So, it's just a few of the things that we're doing at the middle school to try to meet each student's need. >> Is that old school? Is that um a choice or a referral or >> uh it can be both. Um there's a checklist and it's the same we
017use the same one that the high school uses. Um what we want to make sure that we don't do is lose a kid to an online program that is not Southwest Dubo. So, if they're seeking a homeschool option or an online program like Indiana K through 12, we want to make sure that we offer that here in the district so we don't lose that kid. Um, and so of the kids that are there, five of those have chosen to do that for health reasons and it made sense. One of those we chose that for him. Um, and he actually just returned. So, that really should be five. So, he just returned to the building and is doing extremely well. So, we're happy with that. Middle school kids in the alt center have to take five
018classes. So, it's a little bit different than the high school. They have been 100% online so far. We haven't had any middle school kid that wants to come into the regret recovery room yet. Um, where they would be there half day with mostly high school kids. They've all chosen to be 100% online and then they have to come in and take check the checkpoints, but they've all done that as well. And that is it. >> That's the show. or you might remember just getting back to that data that we're just so excited about and we're seeing that growth as well in our two elementary schools and that was one of the things I talked to you about when you were hiring me and Melissa and I at early on in the process and we established
019a program to start here in this building for the first year and a half. And what we had was we had principles and teachers from all three buildings coming here. And what they did was they focused on aligning their curriculum to make sure that what we were teaching was what we're supposed to be teaching. Because sometimes a teacher can get lost in a textbook and just say this is the lesson, this is a lesson, this is the lesson. And sometimes stuff in the textbook isn't really what we're supposed to be teaching in the state of Indiana. So, we really had our teachers dig into that curriculum and make sure that what we're teaching is what we need to be teaching to make sure our kids are ready for the these these required tests that the
020state and the federal government gives to us. Um, so then the second thing we started doing and this is this year we've really gotten deep into it is we have our teachers and our principles and the central office. We are studying the data on a regular basis as you saw with all Betsy's charts and all that. how are our kids doing? And and once we see where the kids's weaknesses are, then we're identifying those weaknesses and we're using that data to strate and and what we're just trying to be real intentional and strategic with our planning at that point. So, you heard Betsy talk about how they've redone their schedule to make sure those kids are getting the time they need to remediate. Same thing has happened that we flipped the schedules in the two
021elementary schools. The principles, teachers doing a great job. We're seeing some nice growth. I think I told you guys about a year ago that our goal is within about three years for Southwest to be showing showing off, you know, how much growth our kids have had and we will and we'll be speaking at conferences and the state showing other schools how it should be done. Um we're really excited. You guys have invested in this for quite a few years with Ronda Roose coming here and uh we're just trying to continue it and make sure we get where we want to be and having great leaders like this is what helps us get there. So, and and teachers who are just really getting after it and of course it all comes down to our kids giving
022forth the effort as well. So, really proud of everyone. >> Great job, Bessie. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um other things listed um for recognition. We have high school, middle, each school has things listed that we always like to put for the media. So, I know some of our media uh come in through the uh you know online portion and if you need a copy of the agenda, we can get that to you. for some other things we want to draw recogn recognition to. So at this time I think we're ready to move on Mr. Mickey to new business. >> Okay. Letter D, new business field trip request as listed below for the FFA going to Louisville. >> I'll make a motion to approve the field trip request for the FFA going to Louisville.
023>> Made by Shadrader. >> Second by a bunch. All those in favor signify saying I. >> I same sign. Motion carries. Number two, personnel as listed and continuing on for majority of the next page. There's a bunch and I will uh make a motion to approve the um we looking at personnel as listed by Shader. >> second by bunch. All those in favor signify by saying I >> oppose same sign. Before we move on, a couple of things we want to draw attention to here. Um, first of all, we want to uh certainly acknowledge one of our retirements. Um, Annette Altmire will be finishing out the year as our seventh grade math teacher. We saw some of the nice data in her class up there a few minutes ago. Annette will be wrapping up a
02435-year career in education, 13 of those here at Southwest Dubo. So, we certainly appreciate uh all of her time and effort over the years working with our kiddos and uh wish her nothing but the best as she uh goes into retirement after the school year. Also want to draw attention to one of our new hires and one of our new hires is our new band director. Uh his name is Noah Me. Um he'll be replacing our longtime band director that we acknowledged in her retirement recently, Lanny Butler. Noah comes to us from Bar Reef and uh in the interview process, some of the things Noah talked about was a goal of being a part of a of a larger school. He called a town like South like Huntingburg and South Ridge uh a dream job
025that he's had his eye on for quite a while and he's just thrilled to be a part of part of us and we look forward to supporting him uh just as we uh do Eric and uh Kim and and Emily and and the teachers that we have uh you know with our arts program fine arts uh throughout our district K through 12. We look forward to having Noah come in here and continue to work with our band director and just continue to do some great things in our fine arts program. So, we're excited to have him as well. And so, that's it for personnel. Great. Um, number three, approve the 2026 2027 Southridge High School course offering. Again, this stuff is in our packets, so there aren't any questions. >> I'd like to make a
026motion to approve the 2026 27 27 past high school course offerings. Motion made by Shrader. >> I'll second >> by bunch. All those in favor signify by saying I. I oppose. Same sign. Carries. Number four. Approve the purchase of 470 Chromebooks for student device use. >> I'll make a motion to approve the purchase of the Chromebooks. Motion >> made by Bunch. >> Second by Trader. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppos. Same sign. Motion carries. Assuming there aren't any other comments, we will take a motion to adjourn. >> I'd like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. >> Made by Shrader. I'll >> second. Second by Bunch. All those in favor signify. Signify by saying I. I. >> Oppos same fine. Good evening.