001I think I saw you there. You were one of the people on the left side that I knew I was comfortable like looking All right. I'll call our to begin with the pledge of allegiance. >> I aliance 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. Did you roll please? >> Christina Asha >> here. >> Fliper >> here. >> I'm here. David Coffman >> here. >> Don Layman >> here. >> John Payne >> here. Brian Tapping >> here. >> Jessica McFarland >> here. >> Gretchen Thomas >> here. >> And Scott Croner >> here. >> Thank you. Now is the time for recognition of visitors and public input. Seeing none, we will go on to amendments to
002the agenda. I will take a motion for the amendments that are at your place. Move to approve. >> Second. >> Motion from Kurt and a second from John. Any discussion or questions on those amendments? Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Is that done? All oppose. Same sign. >> Is he unmuted? Is that why he is he is muted? >> Hey, Don, can you vote on that one? >> Uh, yes. >> Thank you. >> I >> That motion carries 70. I'll take a motion for the consent items to include the amendments we just approved. Make a motion to approve the consent items as presented. >> Second. >> Motion from John and a second from David. >> Any comments or discussion on those consent items? Hearing none. All in favor say I.
003>> I. >> All oppose say sign. And that motion carries 70. There are no um items of unfinished business. We'll move on to action item A. consider the approval of the permission to advertise the 2026 budget. >> Okay. Um in your packet in your presentation regarding our budget, I'm not going to go through every slide. Um so um I may just touch on a few important um parts of our budget. So um just the first um slide just remember that debt service operations and referendum are are tax um levy funds. Um the other two the education or any day are not but we still have to budget for them. Um continue here no changes there. Um if we take a look at our AV um our AV has grown consistently um through the course of
004the last several years. If you remember we talked about last month Senate Bill one um there were several changes to AB and what it could potentially do. Unfortunately we don't have um 2026 AB yet. Um that was supposed to be um from the counties to the state by August 1st but we that yet. So really um this really um matters with debt service. Um as you know if AB goes down um our rate will increase. We talked about that last month and moving to more of a levy based approach if that happens. Um and so hopefully we will know our value soon. Um the next slide is ADM and that has been trending down. since 2019 since basically. Um the next portion is state tuition and support and again that funds our education fund. Um
005this first section is what we will be receiving this school year. So July 2025 through June of 2026. Um this is just an estimate. Um, in the spring I give the DOE an estimate and I always estimate low and so we estimated 2775. We ended last school year at 2835. And so once our October one numbers are submitted to the DOE, they will true up our payments and give us any back pay that we have coming to us. Um, also the you can't really see it very well, but it's in your presentation. some basic tuition support per ADM um is 7,276. Um last year that was 6,959. So a pretty um decent increase of $317 per student. But the one thing to remember here is that textbook reimbursement is included in that. So that's about
006$158 per student. So the net increase is going to be $159ish dollars per student. um for this school year. Um this is our education. The black line education b the black line is our revenue. The red line is expenses. If you you see you'll notice 22 through 24 pretty big differential between revenue and expenses. Um like we talked about last year, a lot of that is to do with esser. um in 24 it um is so large because we had to deposit our TBR fund which was right at a million dollars into the education fund at the end of um the calendar year 2024. Going forward this these lines will be equal um going forward. So 2025 the bars will be exactly equal. Um the next the next slide is the tax balance for the
007is doing exactly what the previous slide was doing. And so you can see that that tax balance has increased. Um next year we will see that plateau off. Again, really not a lot of change here. Our breakdown of expenses for the education fund for 2024, 97% of that is for salaries and benefits, which is really no surprise. I may come back to this slide in just a second. This one is just an overview of our 2025 approved budget. Um our AV in 2025, 1.7 million. Um our tax rate when we completely um finished up was just under 92 cents which was a decrease a slight decrease from 2024. Our total levy was 15.1 million. And if you remember um that's just going to be debt and operations um and referendum fund. And the referendum fund
008is just right at a million dollar. This slide is just our debt service payments. And so um this column is our approved 2025 payments. Um and the middle column is our approved 20 or what we're um asking for for 2026. In your slides, this this number was um wrong and so I fixed it on this. Our total um budget estimate for 2026 is 9.365 million. The anticipated um geo bond payment which I received that number from Baker Tilly is 2.75 million. Capital project and bus replacement. Capital project there's really no change. Bus replacement I I'll circle back to that in just a second. Okay. So for the final slide, this is just a summary of the form number, form three that goes that we advertised on Gateway. Um and so the budget estimate is basically
009our approved um appropriations or what we're approved to spend for 2026. Um education fund is 27 million. It is inflated. One thing about the budget, and you'll probably hear me say this a couple times, is that we can always reduce, but we can never after we advertise it. So, um the education fund, we won't spend more than we bring in. We'll have permission to spend 27 million. We won't spend 27 million. Um the debt service, again, this number is from the previous slide. That is what we will spend or our payments will be. And the requested levy is 11 million. Now, as you remember last month, we talked about that levy that's inflated. Um we talked about that levy being right around like 7.6 six to 8 million. Um I just inflated it and just
010increased the operating balance which the DF will reduce that. Um I'll come back to operations fund in just a second. School referendum. Um we're requesting appropriations about 1.5 million. The requested levy is 1 million 12,708. As you know our referendum is limited to a levy of 1 million. So we will reduce um the levy by 12,78. will do that by either reducing current year appropriations or reduce this number. Um the good thing is the DGF normally doesn't finalize our budget until November December and so by that time we'll know what we need to spend out of the referendum and know if we have an extra 12,700 to cut out of the current year which would be the goal to do that. Um going to operations fund, the budget estimate um for 2026 is 13.1. That's
011actually I cut that down from last year. That's last year we advertised at 13 and a half million. Um, if we go back up to the slide, um, you'll see that I've said this several times, the operations fund is, um, a levy based fund and, um, the state just tells us what our levy will be. And every year we can only increase that by 4% based on current law. Um, and so our levy last year was 7.4 million. If we increase that by 4% that gets us to about 7.7 million. So if we come back to this last slide, as you can see, the requested levy is 10.9. So we're going to need to cut that, which we did that last year, too. And I found those cuts by just reducing our current year appropriations.
012However, this year, um, with Senate Bill One with the, if you remember, I talked about that $300 credit that everyone will be receiving. Um, there'll be credits to, um, homeowners that are 65 and older and disabled and additional tax cap. We will need to reduce by another 1.1 million, which is quite a bit more. And so to do that we will have to reduce um this number potentially have to reduce the 2026 budget estimate. The other thing that um in doing so that we looked at is potentially reducing our buses um the number of buses that we may purchase. And so I asked Amy to take that into consideration. And if you can see here in 2028 you can see this grayed out. Normally when we purchase a handicap bus we purchase um five or
013I'm sorry, four additional regular buses. You can see in um that there's only three buses planned and so then that will be the cut. However, that doesn't really help us out for 26 and 27 when we will be cut in 26 and 27. So just because we have four buses on there doesn't mean we'll purchase four buses. Um we can always reduce that. We can't increase that. So >> and the other piece that we're looking at is leveraging some of our debt service as well. So that would help um save some of the operations funds. >> The other um part that I didn't really discuss is um potential transfers between education and operations fund in this budget. Um I put in just like we have in the past one and a half million. We've not
014done that. It may be something that we have no choice to do. Um we can do up to just over three million based on um the rules of um how much we can send over from education fund. Um but right now I'm just having more than a half. Any questions? Uh yes motion to approve the permission budget. >> Second >> motion from a second from Trevor. Questions and discussion >> on the ADM trend here other schools similar. Do we know for sure like Elar County other schools seeing the same kind of decline in ADM? >> Uh fluctuation. Um some schools have picked up from other area schools. um we're kind of an outlier because our decrease um it's not because students are leaving our district or other districts. Our decrease is just primarily an aging
015population um and co certainly hurts badly. We have several students that um were Amish families and um you know some of the things we were required to do um they decided to build schools and um we've not been able to get them to return. So, um, that's primarily our our our losses. I am optimistic this year, um, with some of the changes in the law that we may see a little bit of fluctuation, an increase of students from other districts transferring in. Um, and we also, and again, this is all anecdotal, have heard several homeschool families um that are continuing to return this year as well. So, um, we'll continue to monitor that. That's that's primarily why our enrollment has seen a steady increase. Our kindergarten classes are not as big as our iPhone classes.
016>> What year did we go to devices >> the year? Uh no, >> it was 20 2021 is when we had when we started sending devices home. Uh we did contact tracing, 10day quarantines, you know, knowing that kids are going to have to do some hybrid type learning. >> Was it before that that we had them in classrooms? Yes. >> Yes. >> So those those are my notice and wonders as well. You know, devices going home and some of the other um requirements under CO in order to reopen the schools. That was a a deterrent as well. And if you look at the ADM, it aligns directly with that. >> But part of your drop on the projections, you're just going fairly conservative too, right? Why? So it's obviously there's not like any sort of
017sense of We're going to be at you drop it more than what you think it's going to, right? >> Two reasons. One, we put that out in is it March? >> Yeah. March, we put out what our enrollment is going to be. So that come June, that's when the new numbers take effect. And so the revenue we received from the state is based upon what we have projected. And again, that's uh cautiously low. Hopefully we see hopefully see a slight increase this year, which means the state then will come back and reimburse us for um money we should have been been receiving in June. We always find that better from budgeting purposes than to um maybe not anticipate as conservatively and then undershoot our enrollment and now we got to give money back to the
018state. So that's been our approach and Jessica a great job of that question I had is the education fund cash balance curve. You said that's going to >> it'll flat. So right now we've shot up >> correct. Yep. That was due to a fun money and then in 2024 we um had to close the TV rental that receive that into education fund. So now >> we still have a high cash balance balance. we choose to transfer to operations. >> That's the tricky part. Uh because we do we have a we do have a healthy cash balance in there right now. So many Go ahead. >> But I will say in years and you can speak on this in years because TBR is now in education fund. We may see that fluctuate quite a bit down
019in years of larger adoption. >> We'll have to eat into that balance a little bit. Next year is going to be a reading. But >> yeah, this year it's going to be reading adoption. That's our most expensive one. I think last time we did it were like 225,000 for elementary reading. So I anticipate that's being much higher now just because of adoptions that we've done recently. They're they're mostly consumables and they're just the cost of continued go. I fully anticipate 250,000 or more for elementary. >> I have a question on the capital projects plan. I noticed like things are obviously repeated. It's like it's a three-year plan that some things are on there four times. And then the other question is they're all the same dollar amount. So like how do we come up with
020that? >> Pretty broad plan. Um the doesn't require anything super specific. So um we don't we don't get super specific. So we have to be held that and those are just um if you notice I believe the projects over um $10,000 um and um items over $10,000 and in reality with the cuts that we're making there probably will not be any capital project out of operations that'll come out of the geo bond. And just for example, um obviously with operations, we're going to see some decreases in in the coming years um due the Senate world act one, but Jessica ran an analysis on just cleaning chemicals. Um what the as of six months, we were almost at the same exact expenses. spent 144,000 with one vendor and last year last calendar year and as of
021through July we were at 122,000. So whether that's increased purchasing or the price or both. So we're going to take a look at that. >> So like everyone inflation is hitting us and we're going to get hit with inflation at the same time that we're going to see a reduction in revenue. And so that's why again I commend Jessica. She's budgeted very conservatively. We're going to continue to earmark those funds in the event that we had to make a transfer from education to operation to help um you know balance those those expenses. This fuel is not getting any cheaper. Electricity is certainly not getting any cheaper. Natural gas heating was brutal for us this past year and so management. So how much more expense we have due to building expansion be something look at too
022inflation >> more buildings we're maintaining or we have we have more custodian staff >> we we have we have we had add some staff we had added >> additional uh custodian she does other work in addition to there and so um her hours have expanded um obviously the transportation offices did grow however we're seeing cost reduction because we're doing a lot of repairs and services in house. So, there have been some savings there. I know when Jessica did just analyze though the cost of like heating and electricity, it was just building to building from previous year to this year. Um, she was pretty uh um asked a lot of very direct questions of our natural gas provider of why these expenses were we're going to analyze everything we can to make sure that we're getting
023the best value for the taxpayer. I have a question on the bus plan. Like if you cut a bus out, like I'm sure that's considered in there as far as the safety of the quality of our buses. Like what's the point where you know I guess we're still looking at it looks like every year moving forward you're looking at possibly four buses instead of like some years of five. So we're not compromising enough to be concerned about the quality of our buses by doing that. I'm sure that >> exactly that's the goal. And the goal also is to weigh any increased um repair expenses with an older bus to see I mean obviously we don't want to be spending a lot of repairs. Um and so yeah I think that that would be something that
024we would take into consideration as well but I don't see just extending another one year would really instead of 12 years we would do 13 years. >> We'll work very closely with and you know make sure if if we you're able to capture savings on the bus. Obviously, it's a non-negotiable that the safety students can be compromised. You want to make sure that buses are reliable at the expenses of keeping them operational, but most buses are 12 years old. Um, so I mean to go 13th year is not not terribly unreasonable. And again, it comes down to which bus has a few miles on it and we need to select that strategically. And again, part of what we're doing moving forward is even building in some of those bus replacement costs into our debt service
025rather than the geo bond rather than taking that out of operation so that operations can be utilized to maintain staff salary and utilities. These are great questions. >> Any additional questions or discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose. See sign. That motion carries. 70. Action item B. Consider the approval to authorize publication of notice of public project hearing and preliminary determination hearing. >> Okay. Um in your packet you have the notice um that we're asking permission to um advertise to this Friday in the Goian News in the Warsaw Chinese Times Union. Um, this notice will advertise our next two hearings, which will be on August 25th is our first preliminary determination hearing and on September 8th is our second um and then um an additional hearing um will also
026be held on September 8th. So, um I'm just seeking permission to advertise. So, we're looking um also in there I should note that there is a proposed timeline for our um bond issuance and as you'll notice um we're looking at a bond sale mid October with a closing around November 12 time frame. Motion to approve the authorizing public publication of notice of project hearing and preliminary determination hearings. Second motion from Cher and a second from Brian. Any comments or discussion questions? Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All I. All oppose same sign. That motion carries 70. Action item C. Consider the approval of the 202526 Alcart career center budget copy of the agreement status quo agreement from previous years and we recommend approval as present. >> Approve. Second. Any questions or
027discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose. Sign. That motion carries. 70. Action D consider the approval of the out of state overnight field trips as listed. >> And AJ is expecting a very successful post. Appreciate AJ's work in this in advance and all the work that Matt's team does. We recommend present. I'll make a motion that we approve that estate overnight trip request for the teams that are listed on there. >> Second. >> Motion and second from Trevor. Any questions or discussion? >> Hearing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose say sign. That motion carries 70. Yes. >> Thank you. Um wanted to present the updated plan on a page. We are almost there. There are still two data points we're uh just looking to
028hone in on. Um but um had a really really successful year. Very very proud of the team. Um can you scroll back over again the three overriding goals? Um we have our mission statement, our core values, our operating norms, and then our three overriding goals that um we define as meeting our our mission statement. So safe and engaging school experiences, high speed outcomes, and doing responsible fiscal management. And so if you scroll to the top um under the safe and engaging schools, um you know, that first one is that um what percentage of our staff are would be highly re highly likely or likely to recommend working for our district. We landed at 86.84. pay for a slight decrease, but again the comments were much improved over what we've seen in years past. Uh still
029not at that target at 95% so we'll still continue to work on that. We got a few new things that we think we'll work on uh to help improve that area this year, but um again overall pretty pleased with survey results and feedback from our staff. Um expulsions, we saw a slight increase this year. Um there was nothing on there that I would say uh our team could have managed. differently. Sometimes kids just make really poor decisions and we have high expectations here and unfortunately we're not going to compromise the safety of our students and staff and so every one of those 17 expulsions were um unfortunately very very very necessary. So that was an increase um more than double what we had the previous year. Um, I do believe a lot of that is
030because of the detectors that we've installed in our bathrooms. And so, we're getting better at identifying kids when they're um, making those poor choices. So, hopefully we'll start to see a reduction in that now that students are well aware that those detectors work very very well and they're linked with our cameras on the outside so we know exactly what time you're going in and and when the detector will go off. Digital truency, we saw uh an improvement in that area. uh we hope to see a 10% decrease from the previous year. We met that mark. Um and in addition to that, we had to by law redefine what the visual trency was. So no longer just 20 or more absences is defined as individual truency. It's now down to 18. And so even though the
031threshold went um was more stricter um we actually saw fewer students that were in that individual truency. So uh just really really pleased with the work that our MTSS teams do. um you know the school counselors, the deans of students, uh the assistant principles, the SRO, we all work very very hard and collaboratively to um reiterate to parents why um attendance is so important and you're always going to have students again those 18 absences. I mean if a kid gets really really sick one year, has to have a prolonged stay in the hospital, there are some things we just cannot control for. So obviously we try to control what we can. Um the state national award qualifiers um saw a decrease in that one but still over our goal and I'm still working on this.
032We also need to track down a few more principles just to make sure that we're we're at where we should be at. But we had 14 this past year. We typically uh try to get 12 teams that make it down at the highest level of their competition. So kudos to the kid and his coaches um the clubs for making that happen. Uh jumping down to high academic achievement. I know Gretch is going to get into presentation so I won't labor this issue too long but uh our team crushed it. I'm so proud of them. Um, I learned up to that we're now within the top 5% and we had a 59 4.1% passage rate overall. State if you're in the top 5% is 58.8. Um, so very very pleased we saw growth there. I learned
033math. Um, we're now within the top 2% in the state of Indiana. Um, and many of those schools that are slightly above us are private schools that can kind of pick and choose who they wish to attend. So, uh, very very proud of the work Gretchen and her team have done. um in the area of mathematics I passage rate unfortunately I can't share that with you because it's still embargoed it's embargoed until Wednesday u but I can't wait to share it with you because uh I think you're going to be very pleased with the work the team accomplished and you're going to see a growth from the 88.9% you saw last year so um federal graduation rate um that will not be calculated until October the 1st um right now we're at that same 97%
034passage rate we have a chance of getting up to 98% which would be the third and second year of the school record of graduation rate. So very very pleased with that. Um our SAT scores are continuing to grow as well. We're in the top 11% in the state in math and we are in the top uh 25th% in English. Is that correct? >> 30 you're going to present that. But again we saw great growth in English this past year. So we're pleased with that. We our challenge there um the SAT is a relatively new assessment and uh it's not a new assessment but it's a new state required assessment. We're now in year three and so what we've found is that we've had to really work on alignment of our curriculum. We've got great teachers
035at the high school. We know that. Um but sometimes our alignment of curriculum, what we're teaching didn't necessarily align exactly with what the state of Indiana was. And so going into year four, we feel that we're getting that much more dialed in. And if you see what we're doing in the, you know, the lower grade levels, we feel very confident we'll see those scores jump up top 5% as well and at a high school level. So very proud of the work they're making there. Uh financially, um again, Jessica and our team um continues to make sure that the purchases we're making are what's needed for kids and that we're managing our cash balances so that when rainy days occur, we are well prepared for it. And it's going to be a little bit cloudy these
036next three or four years. So, we're in a healthy spot right now to manage and make our way through these next four years. Um so, we're very very proud, very pleased with that. So questions, comments, thoughts, any metrics you guys, you know, absent from here, anything that's absent from here. Uh, basically, I just want to have a discussion with you on, you know, outcomes from this past school year, uh, where we're continuing to trend and just make sure that we're meeting the mark you as a board want us to continue to to shoot and strive towards. And I know we're going to have that retreat um, in October. And so again, we'll have time to kind of dive in and just make sure, you know, we're all calibrated and we're on the same page. But
037any thoughts or feedback that you guys may have on this past year and where, you know, we're we need to go moving forward. >> I have a quick question on the SAT scores. You were saying that like we're matching more now with the state. Um, obviously SAT is more of a national test. So like is the state kind of trending toward lining that up for SAT or I was just kind of curious what the correlation is there with what if that makes sense. >> Um >> I would say the intentionality of our standards. So you have the state has given more resources more now than ever before on your essential standards, your gold standards and so we're just really intentional with our planning around those and getting better at that. That's been the focus with
038math. that's where you've seen the increase there and what we're working on. >> Okay. So, that in in that itself will help with that your feeling on the SAT score. >> Another huge challenge that we do have um with the SAT um and not advocating for a change, but our schedule does not lend itself well to taking the SAT. It's a trimester schedule. We know there's going to be some kids who are not enrolled in a math or English class during that trimester. So things that they're going to be required to perform may not be as fresh as kids who are on a traditional seventh period or a block four where they are currently in an MAP or English course. And so um again overall we think the trimester schedule looks best for kids and
039we're going to continue doing that. um we just want to control the things we can't control right now. And right now what we're finding is that just making sure our alignment with standards because of the resources that we're getting and again the work that Gretchen and Dena and the department chairs at the uh the high school are doing to ensure our our curriculum is well aligned with what the kids are expected to to be able to do assessment. Other questions? Thank you. Uh, next item for discussion um is our board policies. Uh, we need to make a couple of tweaks due to recent laws. Um, the first one is on organization. Um, no longer need to have the reorganization meeting within the first 15 days of the calendar year. Um, this has never been an
040issue, but I just thought it'd be wise and get our policy in alignment with what law is. I don't know why was want to have a restrictor policy than what the the law would require, especially if like there's bad weather or something like that in the month of January. So, um I'm recommending that we follow law and get to the 30th day of January. Um and then membership, um state laws change. You no longer need to be 21 years of age to run for school board. And so, if there's an 18-year-old out there, uh one wants to run for school board and get engaged, uh they're they're not permitted to do so. And we need to get our policy in alignment with that. So, um, these are the two changes that by law I'm recommending
041we we tweak. So, any questions, comments, suggestions on that. >> This has to come back for approval or >> Yeah, we'll bring it back next month then for approval. This is just first reading right now. >> All right, the last two. Oh, the last one. The next one. I'll let Gretchen um take care of. >> Save the best for next to last. Thanks. All right. Curriculum and instruction update for you. Since Dr. Steal a little bit of my thunder, um the core values and operating norms, I think you'll find throughout. I just want to give an overall update of just kind of what we've been up to over the summer. And I think you'll see a lot of student focus, a lot of commitment to the pursuit of excellence, and a lot of just um
042grounding statements and evidence and that inquiry stance throughout some of the work that we've been doing. And so very happy to share that with you. First, welcome our new teachers. We have 16 new teachers that we welcome to the district. We had our new teacher orientation breakfast on August 6th. out of the 16 new teachers, um 12 are new to the district and four are new teachers altogether. So that's been kind of a shift that we've been turning towards over the last several years um just by chance. And so very excited about that. It was a great day. David, thank you. You were able to join and and be there and speak to the teachers and mayor was there and of course the two chambers. So just really great to have everyone there. um all
043the administrators and I think there were 65 people altogether that were there. So it was a great morning there and a great way to welcome everybody. Um some summer learning that took place. Summer learning for students. We had summer school this year with a focus on second and third grade for the state requirements. Second grade we had 33 students attend who um were at risk of not passing I read in third grade. So they attended and third grade we had nine students attend who were not passing I read three yet and we had everyone attend at Daphne Elementary. So we had teachers from all three buildings attend there together and work with the students and they mix the students up based on different needs and worked together to um meet the needs of those students
044along with an ELLL or EL program too. And so it was just really cool to see all of those teachers come together and help each other out and share ideas and the sharing of ideas kind of continued after summer school. So that was really cool to to see. Now you can see the IE results were released next Wednesday. So we'll know more about that there. We had 25 high school students attend credit recovery and 33 credits earned in that uh short summer school. We had summer ab that we were able to offer again this year and we weren't able to offer high school band for a credit this year. The state has taken that away but we were able to offer a high school band camp again this year. So that was um a continuation
045and we had some summer professional learning for our staff too. So we had SCAP which is a support for English language instruction and this year we had 10 teachers participate in that. So currently we have 50 current employees that are trained in SCAP. We've had some additional who have been trained and are no longer employed here. Um but we've got 50 current employees. We also had some participate in the yearly virtual conference and so that's all instruction that helps English learners and it's just good instruction for all learners on vocabulary instruction and comprehension and things like that. So that was really fun. High ability boot camp. We had some high school teachers attend that virtually and so they learned how to meet the needs of those high achieving um some of those teachers who are
046teaching some of the AP courses attended that and how to differentiate that instruction and meet the higher level. We've had some teachers attend an educator summer summit which is an ongoing virtual uh session where they have different breakout sessions and it's for elementary focused through grade six I believe. And so several different teachers uh were able to participate in that. Obviously, ongoing science and reading training. There's still lots of opportunities for free training for that. So, we've continued to push that out and we've had many teachers participate and continue to get certified for science of reading. And probably one of the most talked about was the Indiana Resource Center for Autism. We wrote a behavior grant. We were awarded the behavior grant through the state. And so Amy Gaffy is through the Indiana resource center
047for autism and IU and she's the only teach certified trainer in the entire state and she came and spent four days with us here in Wii. One day was just for assistants who are working with students with autism and three days she spent with um teachers and principles and uh some administrators Lindsay, Jake, myself all attended and just gave us lots and lots of good instruction on how to meet needs of students with autism from different ways to instruct them, different ways to organize, different visual um schedules and all the way from kindergarten through 12th grade. So the high school was there, middle school elementary school. And again, good instruction, good ideas for all students. This just happened to be focused on autism, but it's really works well for everyone. I think I saw most
048of the adults saying, "I'm going to take that idea for myself." And they were walking away with different things that could help themselves, too. So, that was a really great experience and we're excited to continue to work together on that. And Amy's going to actually come back a couple more times during the school year and kind of coach us as we're continuing to implement those ideas into our classroom. So, we're continuing to work with Amy on that as well. And on August 5th, we had our administrative retreat. And this year, I reached out to uh teachers and I said, you know, our principles are always motivating you guys and encouraging you guys. Let's reverse those roles. If there's anything that you want to say to them for the administrative retreat to get them excited about
049the year, send something to me and I'd be happy to share it with them. And I had 40 teachers email me different long passages about how thankful they are for their principal, how supported they feel, how thankful they are for their leadership, how much they care about kids. I had one person record a video recording to share with the administrators. I had one person write a handwritten letter. I had three people that came and spoke at the retreat and wanted to share. One person wrote something about every single person in the room. It was such a great experience and it was just a really great way to kick off the year to have all of those people share like that. So, that was a really neat thing that took place this year, too. Data update.
050Dr. Croner shared some of this already cuz he wanted to steal my thunder like that, but that's okay. It's what we do. I work hard and he takes the credit. It's our rules. Uh so third grade through eighth grade train, this is our English language arts and our scores um for the most part look very good. We're in the upper 50s, lower 60s across the board. And you know when we look at iLearn, one of the reasons why we look at iLearn is really just to kind of monitor like are students learning what they are supposed to be learning for that next level. So it's not that we're like hey we need to master this test and test test test. We're really saying like it's our job to prepare them for that next level. And
051so this is just one measurement. We know that there's other measurements within the classroom and there's other tools and things like that, but this is one piece that we look at. If we had a student that completely bombed it, then we'd be like, "Wait a minute, something's not right. What's going on here?" And I need to make sure that, you know, I'm looking at other pieces of information, too. So, this is one data point that we look at. for example, you know, I'm looking here and I'm seeing this outlier of the fifth grade. And so I'm digging into fifth grade a little bit and saying, "Okay, what's happening in fifth grade? What is it that we can, you know, adjust if need be? What is it that we need to look at? Is it this
052cohort? And and if so, where are the gaps so that they can have success as they move on?" Because if they're going into sixth grade this year in middle school, we don't want them to have gaps when they go into high school and not earn credits because that leads to other challenges along the way. So we need to make sure that we're filling in those gaps if there are if that's what the issue is. For math, our scores again look very high. And again, the notice and wonder I noticed that fifth grade is that low mark. So I want to dig in that to that a little bit and find out why that might be and if there are some gaps in there, what I can do to adjust that. Um highlight third grade math
053looks incredible. One of our um schools, third grade was over 80%. Which is insane. So those scores for math look really really great. Again, when we look at the state rankings, we don't look at state rankings. We are competitive, but that's not the main purpose for that. Also, as you know, the state changes the assessment quite often, but they change it for everybody. So when we compare ourselves against other people in the state, it's kind of one of those checks, too. So if it's if the game changes for all of us, then we should still be somewhere, you know, in that same ranking. And so we want to see like, okay, where are we at still comparatively to other people? And so that's one of the metrics that we use. Also, we always say like
054top 5% because we want to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our students and that they are being successful on this. So again, ELA, we're at the top 4.8% and then for math, top 1.8%. This means that out of 382 schools, I believe it is in Indiana that we looked at 382 sound right, there were six schools that did better than us on iarn. So that was really, really incredible. Our students did a really great job. Our teachers did a really great job. Special education, you know, a couple years ago, we were at the 50% mark in ELA and the 20% mark in math. And so looking at that again, the state test isn't everything, but when we're at the 50% mark, but yet our general education population is performing so highly, then
055you look at that and you say, "Okay, the state test isn't everything, but there shouldn't be that much of a difference." And so what can we do? What's going on with our special education? Just two years later, we're in the top 13%. our special education department has really come together and put some different things in place and they've been really working hard on their Jinx leadership and working together as a team and uh working together with their principles and they've done an amazing job and then stay paper math they went from top 20% top 10% now for math so really working hard there English learners English learners are again a little bit trickier because you have you're not really comparing the cohort to the cohort you have some that are Spanish speaking, some that are
056Russian speaking, Ukrainian for refugees, things like that. So, it's very difficult to do yearover-year comparisons. But again, two years ago, we were, you know, in that bottom part of the state. We were below the 50% mark. Now, we're at the top 35% and again, we cut this in half of the 30% to the 17%. So, we still have some work to do, but we know we're going in that right direction. Again, just one one piece to look at, one pulse check. touch. >> Yeah. >> Again, um and we were concerned. Um but we also anticipate we're going to see a little bit of a drop in 2023. Um previously, our EL population was primarily our Amish students who didn't speak English at home and our Spanish speaking students. Today, our EL population looks far far
057different. We have a lot of Ukrainian, a lot of Russian. Um I mean the number of countries that are now within our district is far far different than just 3 years ago. And so again to even though we're not where we want to be in that top 5% um the challenges and the the number of languages that our staff is working with has gotten far more complex and so we are we're pleased with with the trajectory right now. >> Yep. as well as we're meeting the needs of the students of Canian Grove. Our high school, as Dr. Carter mentioned, our English language arts, we were at 60% proficient and that's an increase from 53, which is the top 26.8% the state and math, we were at 37% proficient, which is an increase from 35%, which
058is the top 11% of the state. Again, that test is um supposed to be a correlation to the SAT. So, again, If we're not preparing them on island, then we're also not preparing them on SAT. So, just trying to get them prepared for that next level and then whatever level it is for them after that, whether it be collegebound, career bound, um you know, wherever the path might take them. Looking at just comparison of local schools, looking at again, how do we compare? Are we preparing our our students um as well as other schools are preparing their students? Can we can we tap into other schools and at what they're doing, things like that. When we're looking at the comparison of students, meaning both the math and the English together, um, Northwood comes out on
059top comparing the the 25 versus the 24. So, we have a lot of success to be proud of. Dr. runner kind of went over the plan on the page already, but again, meeting that top 5%, but really just looking at that meeting that top 5% means that we met the goal for those students, that we got them to read, that we were proficient with them, meeting the standards, so that we were preparing them for what they needed. When we talk about support, here's one way that we support teachers in preparing them. So, this looks very messy, but it's actually pretty um simple. the this is one grade level. This is fifth grade. It has the standards at the top for the whole year that they teach. And then it color codes from 2018 all the
060way down. And it's colorcoded based on how that group of students performed on iLearn. And so you can look at the historical data and you can say, okay, if we were borderline on a standard and then we've been above, then we've gotten something right. We've gotten better. we've improved on teaching that standard. If we were doing well on a standard and we've gone down, then that's something that we want to take a look at also and saying, "Okay, what do we need to do differently to really address that standard?" The teachers are given which checkpoint the standards are assessed in, so they know exactly when they're going to be assessed, so they know that ahead of time, so they know when it's going to come up, so they can monitor that. they know if it's
061going to be on the island test or if it's taken off the IEL test. They have all of this information at their fingertips just so that they can see what's going to be assessed, how we've historically done on it, how the students have done on it, things like that. So, that's one area of support that we give them so they have all of this information. We provide them with an assessment calendar at the end of the school year for the upcoming school year. So, they've had this school year since last May. They know when every assessment's going to be and it's in their hands. We have our mentor program. This is going to be our third year for our mentor mentor program. So, if you are a new teacher or new one, either way, you're
062part of the mentor program. You're assigned a mentor and we have nine leaving dates, I think it is, um throughout the year. And u just looking at things that are like how is it done at Wani? So, you can be things like meeting with the SRO's, meeting with AJ, what does athletics look like? Um having the special student populations, so special education, high ability, e looking at TBRI, things like that. So having those meetings, having the mentor set up, having all of that so you have that support person set up um and with you along the way. Um, we're going to continue with weekly curriculum updates so they can stay on top of things like how to get training in science and reading, how to get that lure added. Um, we have weekly special education
063updates. Dr. Ker has weekly administrative bulletin to keep administrators up to date on things. We have an ondemand professional development website that we have continued to add to the pacing guides and assessment calendars online and the focus calendar online for teachers. We will continue with our ongoing list of meetings. We have monthly meetings before school and after school for the teachers at every building. So that's 10 meetings a month that they can meet with Dr. Croner and I. And that has been so helpful. They aren't highly attended. We might have five teachers at each session maybe, but those five take it out, take the information out and definitely share with the other teachers because other teachers will then have conversations with either one of us about what was shared. And so that has been very
064helpful. We have weekly meetings with the principles at each building with special education. I meet monthly with the EL team. I meet monthly with instructional coaches and interventionists. We meet weekly with AJ and athletics, weekly with cabinet, weekly with transportation, school safety. Between Dr. Croner and I, we meet we have daily contact with the principles between the two of us. We have informal walkthroughs and classroom visits just to be out and about in the classrooms. And then periodic staff surveys about like how can we support do better at supporting you? Um, how did you feel about a certain topic, whatever the case may be? And to put it all together, we have a focus calendar for them that's colorcoded to keep track of everything as far as when the mentor meetings are, when the weekly
065check-ins are, things like that, so that they have access to all that. And again, this is put together at the end of the year before the next year so that they have all of this information in their next year. And this wraps it all up. This should look familiar for those of you that have been here. This is the same, this is my curriculum focus calendar, I guess you could say. So it is just putting it all together. It has not changed because we feel like just that consistency is what's needed. That's one thing that we have held true to the things that we do. We do them and we do them consistently. Um very few things have been added on. Some things have been taken off, but the only thing that has really been
066added on is the professional development list is starting to come off the page a little bit. So that's a highlight. But for the most part, we have just stayed consistent and stayed true to the things that we know have worked and we've just tried to get better and better at doing those. So that's all that I have. Any questions? >> Okay. >> A lot of work. >> Yeah. I was going to say thank you for putting that together and it's just I I know >> you live it, John. >> I know. I know what it takes to put all all of that information, gather it all together. Um, but it is super helpful to just see everything there and it reinforces what I believe we all know that things are going well. Proud of our
067school and kids and administrators, teachers, you guys. It's a good place to be. We don't have to question, you know, you guys are meeting the needs of your staff, especially with the weekly meetings. That's a never had a question ever since I've been on board. So, last three, four years, it's been super encouraging. Thank you. >> Thank you. I was going to add to that one question, but yeah, the work is awesome and it's it's showing the results for sure. I was curious like on the summer school this summer like how did that go at Nap Elementary? Is that like because I feel like and again I know I'm new on the board but I feel like we were kind of spread out and now we're doing it together. Is that was that a success?
068>> So this is the first year that we went back to having elementary summer school. In the past few years we have not had we've had extended day held after school. Um but the state required summer school this year for iid and would not allow extended day to be an option. Um, so we originally planned on all three buildings to have their own summer school, but as we had success with students passing IE, the numbers of staff needed became fewer and fewer. And then we had trouble finding staff who were able to do summer school, too. And so then it just made sense to combine. And so then it just made sense to have them in one building for transportation purposes, for collaborating, for, you know, combining resources together. And so the staff were appreciating
069having that together. The numbers were small and they were able to work together. So that worked out well. And I I think that moving forward that will be the plan from now on. I I don't foresee having it at different buildings. I don't think that there would be an ask to have it at different buildings. >> Kind of help with custodial staff too. Like if they're trying to get those buildings >> Yeah. prepped for over the summer. There's so much work that they can have two buildings that are >> fully accessible and to them. >> Yes. This year was the replacement of the chillers that we have to work around, but it all work. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Um, and this is not the best to last. It's the second best to last. Definitely best.
070But, uh, the last item is just opening the schools. Uh I'm going to regret saying this, but we are fully staffed right now. So we got to hang on for for two more days. Uh high school the high school principal team has done a fantastic job. Um you know getting our staff in place, getting bringing 16 brand new teachers that are we think are going to be excellent excellent additions and live up to expectations that you would have of staff members for human schools. Um one thing you may hear about uh um the high school's hot right now. We did have a chiller that blew. Um we're not real sure why. Uh John was working on it last Friday. Um he's had folks from York out train out this past week. Uh he called me
071this afternoon. Um I didn't know these things. Thousand watt uh fuses got to be replaced on it. Um and the repair man that came out did not anticipate that that was what the repair was needed. So they're trying to track down where they're going to get that part. Long story short, it's going to be hot uh the next couple of days in the high school as the staff comes back on Wednesday. Um as the students return on Thursday and Friday, we probably just won't have that repaired. Uh but John is doing everything he can to try to make that as as manageable as possible. Uh by Monday, Tuesday, it should be fully repaired. We do get a little bit of a reprieve. It's mid lower 80s these next few days, so hope the humidity is
072not that bad. But you probably heard some folks already who maybe attended some parent meetings and it's warm, it's muggy. I was at a few as well and it's not not pleasant but uh you know we'll we'll make do best we can but other than that custodial staff has done an amazing job. Matt Amy transportation uh routes are ready to go. Um we are we are so excited for another another great school year. questions, things you've heard. Any comments on the opening school? >> Registration was smooth. I was there at the high school only one building. So, it was good from my perspective. Lots of excitement and people there. >> I was sorry. >> No, I was through Friday most of the buildings and they look amazing. if you guys get a chance. I mean,
073the floors shine. Uh the the out um the landscaping looks, >> you know, just fantastic. They the our custodial team just does so much work and so many things that they work around. Uh but they they get the job done. I mean, they you can tell they love their buildings and uh I think you guys be proud if you get a chance, walk in, set low, and tell them thank you for their hard work. It's it's deserved. That is all we have this evening. >> There being no further business from the attention of the board. A motion to adjourn as order. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. Thank you. Nose request.