001Brian's awesome. Thank you. I wait at 6:00 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. Christina here. I'm here. David Kaufman here. Don Layman here. John Payne here. Brian Topping here. Jess McFarland here. Gretchen Thomas here. And Scott Croner here. Thank you. Uh we'll have a time for recognition of visitors and public input. Seeing none, we'll move ahead to I will take a motion for the amendments to the agenda. So move second. Motion from Trevor and a second from Kurt. Any uh questions or discussion on those amendments? Hearing none, all in favor say I. I. All oppose, same sign. Uh that motion carries 70. Moving on, I'll take a motion for the consent items to
002include the amendments we just added. So move second. Motion from David and a second to move Don. Any questions or discussion on those? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I. All oppose same sign. That motion carries 70. There is no unfinished business. So we'll move on to action items. Action. Action item A, consider the approval of the pre-approval for overnight and or out of state travel requests. And your board pack have a copy of a memo. Um, it's the same memo that we ask asked for approval for the last I think three years now. Um, so we would recommend continued utilization of that option. Appreciate the board's uh understanding when those things arise. So we certainly recommend approval and appreciate if you guys will. Make a motion for the preapproval for overnight and out
003of state or and or out of state travel. Motion from Kurt and a second from Ryan. Any questions or discussion? Is the band going anywhere next summer? This is just blanket. Uh this could be blanket for any athletic or activity team that would advance um in the tournament. We certainly expect the band to continue um moving forward. But they they they traditionally go ahead and go through the normal process. This would just be a situation in which we didn't anticipate it and um get the approval if it doesn't fall in order. Okay. Any additional questions, discussions hearing? None. All in favor say I. I. All same sign. That motion carries 70. Action item B. consider the approval of the new meal prices for the 202526 school year. And you've worked back copy of the memo,
004met with Jessica on this. Um actually reviewed it with Kurt. Um we've seen um the last three years a decline in our cash balance in our cafeteria fund. Um this past year we've lost approximately $300,000. We were at 620,000 in the June of 2024. We're at $320,000 uh currently right now. And just what we're finding is just that as food prices are going up un we're going to need to to increase the price for for the families. Um I haven't checked, but I believe it's been three years since the last price increase 23. So this is just reflective of just trying to get back to a a place where we can just break even. We're not trying to obviously uh carry huge cash balances on this, but this does pay for our employees uh to
005to take the food and obviously reimburse the cost for um all preparation and purchases. But anything that I've missed on that, Jessica? So we would recommend approval as presented. So that that answers I think my question. So this would this addition or this increase would mainly cover that gap that we have currently. I guess the assumption then is the next couple years. Is that what happens then? If prices keep going up then we keep falling behind for a few years. Is that how it's I mean we don't really price thinking that prices are Can we take a motion second? That's okay. I make a motion to approve the proposed new meal prices. Second motion from John and a second from Trevor. So to answer your question, our hope would be that we basically just run
006a even cash balance. Uh maybe see a little bit of a gain just so that we can maintain prices for the following year as well. Um, previously when we we had a a very very very healthy cash balance um about three years ago, by law we're not allowed to have that and so we actually had to spend that balance down. Uh, which is why we anticipated seeing a little bit of decrease three years ago. That's why you'll see some improvements in a lot of the cafeteria areas per per million. The high schools had a nice improvement that was that was added there. Uh, this last year though, the $300,000 was purely just due to food cost um rising. We saw no major changes in staffing, no major changes in utilities. It was just increase of
007of food cost. And so this to hopefully to answer your question get back to the point in time where we're probably a little bit ahead. So that maybe we can go two or maybe three years of it. But if we continue to see it like we break even this year, we'll probably have to increase if food prices go up. Um if we maint if we go down this year, um maybe it's less drastically, we'll definitely need to see an increase the following year. Yeah, this is the first time I can remember we've actually had a low cash balance. Usually it's excessive and federal wants us to raise it. We don't we have such a balance, right? So different than we have it has to be due to higher food cost. Yeah. As a parent of
008three kids, I I don't want to be proposing this, especially with the son who tends to give breakfast and lunch and several other items. But unfortunately, it's it is necessary. We're relatively in line with other school corporations. Um, as far as I did not cost that out. I know we were spreadsheet. Thank you. And yeah, you can see that. Um this is us the first box. Um breakfast and lunch. Um so we looks like this was for 2425 school year. Their high school lunch was um more than ours $310. Um their elementary and middle school um lunches or less. So I mean it's just kind of across the board. Um has free breakfast. Um, but then their high school lunch is in line with ours. So, I don't think we're terribly online with anybody. It
009doesn't look like it. Elart, I believe, is free implement this is what I looked at today. And then I also prepared just with the fun balance. This is all June 30, so we're right around where we were in 2019. before coming in. Call vote. Okay. No other discussion question. All right. All in favor say I. I. All oppose say sign. That motion carries 70. at Tennessee C consider the approval of the adoption of schoolboard policy 3220.01 or one future appreciation grant and I follow that there um and I look at these agendas I don't know how many times but the language should say instead of the um removal of board policy 32201 it's not really adoption of the new policy it's striking the old policy um and in your work pack you have a copy
010of the memo essentially uh the old teacher appreciation grant no longer exists and so what we don't want to have um is have policy that would contradict what state law allows and I did outline find the new TAG program down below. And so if we were to apply for that new TAG grant because it's going to be a highly competitive grant and if we were to have teachers that would qualify for the last thing we would want is to have a board policy that would contradict what state law allows us to do. So I did have the conversation with her today. You know whether or not we go for this grant um we need to learn more about it. Uh we've met with uh during our monthly check-ins all of our staff members as many
011that would attend. I've had many conversations afterwards with those that did not even attend asking about this. Um there's a lot of hesitation to it right now because of the great differences in the amount of re the statements. Previously, everyone received between a $500 and $700 um bonus came right around Christmas time. That's all going to go away and it would be replaced with something like this. And so for most of the teachers, I mean, best case scenario, only 80% of your teachers getting nothing and then 20% of your teachers receiving maybe a 750 $7,500 increase. Um, that was not well received by by our staff. And so, um, my goal would be to learn more about this grant. Um, I do not want to leave money on the table when it's things that we
012that we can go and give to our teachers. Um, and so what we're going to try to do is thread that needle of um bring in this additional revenue uh while at the same time not creating animosity on staff members. And so long story short, that's where we're at with, you know, the this new um teacher appreciation grant program. Uh that said, if we were to go for it, we need to make sure our policy um would not contradict what state law would allow. So I would recommend approval as presented. Make a motion to uh remove policy 3220.01 a second motion from John and a second from David. Thank you John for clarifying that any discussion or questions question. So if we apply for the grant, we can't have anything else that we've done previously.
013Correct. Well, um the way the law is written, which that is word for word verbatim from the law. Um no, not more than 20% of our teachers can receive that funding. We don't apply for it. If we don't apply for it, then we won't be receiving the funding. Therefore, we won't be applying the the policy. Would teacher appreciation have a valuable stay? No, because we won't receive additional funding. That's what we're planning on. Correct. Correct. So it sounds like correct me if I'm wrong like we don't know if that funding will come directly for those particular teachers that might be able to get this grant. The come to just the corporation and the corporation could y decide what to do. It's going to come to the corporation. Um what we don't have yet is the
014guidance on what the grant is going to look like. Um it could be a scenario in which you again these are just superintendents talking because we we don't know yet. You know I could see us putting together a grant saying here are the criteria that we will award teachers to and then after we're approved we'll go through and determine which teachers will qualify for particular status. Um, I could see a scenario in which we list the teachers that we would like to award what they have done to receive those rewards. We submit that to the state. The state says, "Here's what you're going to receive." Here's the challenge. You know, I'm just doing some simple math. There's about 300 th000 school corporations in the state of Indiana. Let's say we're an average district. Let's say
015there's 200 certified teachers in each each uh district. That's what 60,000 teachers. that right? My math right? 600,000 about 60,000 60,000 teachers and so 20% is what 12 12,000 um they have not budgeted enough money in the um state budget for 20% of all teachers to receive this. And so that's the maximum a school district will get and that's at the lowest level. 20 20% of all teachers just received the 3500. They have not budgeted enough money. And so the fact that thinking that we're going to at least get 20% of our teachers would really put us at an elite level. I think we got a great school district. So I hopefully we'd be around that area. But the math would indicate we're probably not even going to have 20% of our teachers qualify for
016this even at the lowest possible level. But again, I just I I I can't answer your question on what it's going to look like yet because we've not received any guidance from the state. All I do know is our current policy does not align with what the state law has. And should we decide to go after this grant, what I wouldn't want to have happen is policy that would contradict what state law would allow us to do. So, it's this or nothing. Basically, correct. Yep. What's the deadline on us to be able We don't have a deadline yet. these you guys are really well articulating our our frustration with this new um tag. We just don't I don't have guidance. I can't answer that. I don't know. My assumption is we're going to get something
017here in the next month. Um but there's been times where state of Indiana gives you something and you've got a week to turn it around. So um and I know there's a lot of turnover at the Department of Education right now which is which is doing this. Do you know what was the overall amount in the budget that they they allotted for this? I'd have to go back and look at that. I can I can shoot you that number, but um Well, I just worked out your answer. So, yeah, they need $42 million. It was not that. I'm sure it was not. And that's just at the $3,500 level using those numbers. They need $42 million. Yeah, there's I'm sure they didn't set aside 42 million. So, what you're saying is we could have 20%
018of our teachers qualified and if we would get the grant, some of those teachers wouldn't get the money because there's not enough. I can I can definitely say that. So, then determine who gets it. Yeah. Then you have to determine who gets it. Who does it? Correct. Let us know how you do that, Scott. But and as I was sharing with Kurt today, this is um and I'm glad this is live stream. This is part of my concern. I don't want and I don't know Tim what you're hearing from other districts. I I've not heard any districts that are really excited about this and none of them are really anxious to apply for this. My fear is this. Public education leaves money on the table and then state legislators say, "Oh, we tried giving you
019money. You guys didn't want it. We'll now reallocate it somewhere else." And so again, when I talk about threading that needle, we do not want to do anything that creates tension amongst our staff. That is paramount to what we do. At the same time though, we need to think outside the box as best as possible so that we don't leave money on the table, especially these next few years are going to be lean, really lean. And so if there's money that we can receive and distribute directly to our teachers, we we owe it to them to make sure that we're exhausting every possible option. Sort of a catch 22 option. You don't want to leave money on the table, but yet you don't want to pick and choose who gets it. Correct. That's what'll be
020really curious when they actually finalize anything if we can come back to this is how we'll distribute this. That where would that come to? Would that come back to us for a policy of sorts or not necessarily? What we would certainly do is make sure you guys are well aware of the grant that we're applying for. But again, as soon as we receive the guidance from the state, then we'll have a clearer idea of what what options we would have. Scott, according to the latest, it says September 1st, the ID will produce detailed guidance on the TAG model, including the scoring rubric, eligibility rules, and the deadlines. In the fall, schools will be able to submit the applications and early 2026, the funds will be distributed in the schools, and schools have to distribute funds
021uh early in 2026. Dates change, but So they would go back and base it on last year's data. If you're distributing in 2026, it would have to be on the previous year's data. Then generally the tag grant was based on the previous like if you were highly effective. It's just interesting that we're changing the system and we're going to reward people based on when the system was not in place really essentially. Any other discussion or questions? All right, hearing none. All in favor say I. I. All oppose, same sign. That motion carries 70. Action item D. consider the approval of the overnight out of state field trip request for Northwood High School girls golf and we would recommend approval as presented. So second John any discussion or question. Hearing none all in favor say I.
022I. All oppose same sign. That motion carries. All right. Last two items we have are uh finance related. this all being adopted to just um so the first one is the bond issuance timeline. We don't have a formal um timeline in place yet. We met with um our bond council this morning. Um and so they will be preparing a formal timeline after today. Um as you know we've talked about issuing a geo bond yet this year about $3.5 million geo bond. Um and so we will do that um as a control project which means to have public hearings and a 30-day waiting notice and then another um court meeting and hearing. So, those will be coming up before now and December 1st. Um we did I don't know if you want to talk about issuing
023the unified project. um bond council suggested that we do um we have the board approve um a larger amount so we can simplify the process if our goal is to continue to issue geo bonds in the next handful of years. This will simplify the process. If you'll scroll over. Sure. Um so uh Barco has completed their facility study. I've not sent it to you guys yet. I still want to go through our spreadsheet and make sure our spreadsheet is representative of that. We've had at least three different meetings with Bart Coilma, but I've not compared the final final one to what our spreadsheet is. And so our spreadsheet should be representative of it, but I just want to make sure it's finalized before I send you guys all that information. Um, what we have right
024now in the green above, sorry, just quick review. Gray work that's already been completed, already been paid for. Green work that's currently in place right now um and underway. yellow is what we've identified as our next round of of projects. And so, as you see, I don't know how if you guys can read all that on that, but we're talking primarily um a lot of infrastructure, a lot of operational type expenses. Um I think probably the fanciest thing that you would see on there, if you scroll down to the bottom, would be uh gym 4 replacement at the old gym at the middle school. It's it's seen its lifetime. It's in pretty rough shape, and it's time to get it replaced. actually have some some leaks on that floor that are causing some some structural
025damage. So, um you'll see things like the school bus replacement at 800,000. Uh typically that's paid for out of our operations fund with Senator RO one coming on on board and us wanting to preserve as much of that budget as possible so we don't need to transfer from education so that money can go to teachers and we're going to start pushing a lot more operational type expenses into our debt service. And so, um, if you'll scroll over, um, what I still need to work with Jessica on right now is just kind of setting up our bond issuance. Right now, we have budgeted about 3.2 million, which is what we'll probably close with roughly about 3.5 million our bond. Obviously, there's a lot of, um, attorney fees, uh, preparation type work, things of that nature, like
026closing costs. And so, 3.5 will probably be trimmed down around 3.3. And so, we're within budget for that one. Just scroll down then. Um, I'm looking at 2027, 2028, 2029. And again, these all just follow what John and Barner are saying are within a 5year to a 10 year, you need to look at replacing. Um, we try to take a lot of things so that like a multiple buildings like bulkheads and vinyl was starting to peel a little bit. We tried to load those in at the same year so we have a little better buying power. We're not kind of spacing those out. So, I took all the buildings and tried to lump similar type projects in together. And that's where I just need to get down to just make sure we haven't missed anything.
027But, um, what we're trying to do is just set up a structure with about a $3.5 million bond each year out, which again, if we start talking about going away from maintaining your debt levy, sorry, your debt rate to maintaining your debt levy, your total amount that you can borrow. We want to kind of maintain the 3.5. and stay at our current levy amount would be. And so, um, I'll play with some of these numbers so we get back to that 3.5. Um, but you can kind of see where we're going. And so, what Jessica is saying to issue a go bond, you have to do what's called um a control project. And what we just learned today with our our bond council would be that um you can actually issue um a control project
028for what we're planning to do over the next several years. And what that'll allow us to do is to streamline the the bond process. Rather than going through the 30-day wait period for every single control project, you can just do that control project for all and say it's, you know, maybe um $15 million. you just publish, go through that process for that $15 million, but we would still maintain about $3.5 million project each year thereafter. It just doesn't require you to do that controlled project hearing um every single year thereafter. Allows for more efficiency and allows us to maintain that that operation or that time that service le said a lot. Don't know how clear I was on it, but um that's kind of the strategy we're looking at moving forward. And again, I'll send
029this this to you guys and this align with what you guys are seeing and making sure that we're um accomplishing projects that align with what you would hope to see. What did I leave out? But again, we'd be looking on um beginning of this process with a hopeful close date in October. There are a few items if you scroll up that we're looking at toward the tail end of this uh um um this year, security camera, um other security upgrades that SRO have identified. We budgeted out $150,000 there. Um that's what we're looking at. How many years out did you say that would go into what you're proposing? The unified control project. Yeah. Don't know. Again, we're going to figure out what that amount would be. Um and what these projects would be. I would
030estimate probably 3.5 by about five or six years and it would just streamline it. Again, we would still come before the board recently here and you know recommend approval of the bond and so there's still a process of that but we we can't issue bonds without your approval. It just allows us to get rid of that 30 minute 30-day waiting period prior to coming to you to go through the bond process and really gives us the most flexibility to make sure we're locking in on the best possible rate. Other questions? And again, I'll shoot this to you. I know you guys will take a look at it and then you guys have questions after that. Again, we're still two or three months away from closing on that next bond. But just want to give you
031guys an update on where we're at with that. How often does this touch resurface? So, it was supposed to be 10 years. Um, which we did not make that. And what we found uh if you go out there right now and just see little pitting holes all over right now it's not causing a problem for play but it will especially as those pits gain water. What happened was we had too many metals in the asphalt that was in it and those metals rust and when those metals rust it corrods the uh the plane that on top of the the playing surface. So it's it's starting right now it's not affecting play. What we don't want to have happen is it start to impact play. So, our hope is to get through this next uh winter,
032play it on the spring, and then the following summer we'll get it reserviced. There's some work that was with that orig. But we are no longer utilizing that vendor. And we will make sure the next asphalt that gets laid on there is of any metals as it should be. Other questions. All right. Thank you. I'll kick it back over to Jessica for the financial update. Okay. Um since we are halfway through the year, I figured we would just do a quick update on our cash balances as of June 30 compared January 1st. Um so what we're looking at first is the education fund. Um we ended June 30 at about um 7.1 million. Um we started the year at 7.3. Um so we're um roughly $195,000 um down from where we started the year. Just
033a couple things to note on that. Um, in June we paid out seven retirees their contract and so June's expenses in the education fund will be higher for salaries. We also offered the $5,000 um early notification um and so that came out to $35,000. Um and then also the contribution we make to the VBET accounts um need to be done by June 30. And so you'll see that is um the big expense under the benefits line which is the 99,000. So the operating referendum um as of June 30 we ended at 896,000 we started the year at 942,000. Um, so the loss there is the I think we've all talked about it. I've talked about it several times, the increase in SRO cost um, which we're working on. I work pretty diligently every time we
034receive an invoice um, on how to get the cost down. Um, also the um, a teacher at the academy retired and so we'll be replacing that teacher with a lower paid teacher. So um, we'll see some savings there. in the coming school years. um debt service increased um as you can see 1.7 we started the year at 1.1 that will balance itself out um at the end of the year we cannot really increase our cash balance in debt service operations fund um our June 30 cash balance was 6.3 and our January 1st was 62 So we actually increased um or we actually increased operation fund by 175,000. Um so we will continue to do um retain about the same and hope or not hope but at the end of the year break even our um
035lunch we just we've talked about that quite a bit today. Um as of January 1st it was 430,000 um June 30, 320,000. What we are missing is an additional reimbursement that um would be for May lunches served. Um and so that came in in July. Um and that's about 93,000. So um this is understated technically by about 93,000. It was just a timing issue. So um down about 109,000, but 93 of that will be made up by that reimbursement. And then Just the final is health insurance fund June 30 is 3.7 million and January 1 was 3.2. So um 500 about $513,000 increase there. That is it unless anybody has any questions for me. What is the construction project 2022? There's balance there 124,000. Is that something that's completed and Are we still waiting to
036pay? Um when we sell bonds, um a portion of that comes back to the school and so we're just using that as Yep. That's what that is. Still going towards construction. Absolutely. Construction. So that's all we have this evening. All right. Will there be no further business to come to the attention of the board? A motion to adjourn is in order. Second. Motion. A second come down. All in favor say I. I.