001It is 5:00 and this is the work session of the school board of trustees. Um the first thing we are discussing tonight and um this should be fairly informal is on the subject of minutes. Do we want to um record every single vote, even the interim procedural type things in the minutes, or would we prefer to um limit ourselves to the um what did you call them? You had an adjective for those votes. Non-disitive. Nondispositive votes versus dispositive votes, right? Essentially. Yeah. And so um I think the best way to structure our conversation um is just to talk the way we have in the past. Um so would anyone like to begin that conversation? Okay, I will. Um, so it is my preference I suppose to um make the minutes as streamlined and clear as
002possible for our readers. Um, I think that the minutia of what we do isn't necessarily um interesting to anyone uh but us. and um that having all of the all of the nondispositive votes would um complicate the minutes unnecessarily. Um however, that does open up room for disagreement as to what counts as dispositive and what doesn't. So, I honestly could go either way. I think George's template is sensible. Would you like to maybe talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So, if you've all seen the proposed template, I structured it in that way because I noticed in the last several minutes we had, it was a little bit confusing to know what was a final motion and what wasn't uh and what changed a final motion. So, a lot of the motions that lead up
003to an actual final vote, which leads to a decision, may or may not change the wording of what we vote on. It may change the order of business in which we did things. And so, I thought it would be better to clearly indicate what the final this is the action of the school board vote was and then the votes leading up to that. And as a compromise, in order to save space, I put a note on the template to say that um all motions presented on the page are soon to be successfully forwarded unless not forwarded, seconded unless otherwise noted. Does anyone else? I think that um in the course of a meeting and and I think it's been improving um definitely um and thanks to Amy and George for your leadership on that. I
004think the new minute template or the new minutes template is is excellent um better than it's ever been. Um my concern with listing every single vote is a it's just um it's just confusing honestly to the reader and it's more it's information that's not necessary to be included in it particularly because all of our meetings are live streamed and everything is timestamped. So if somebody really wanted to see how the conversation went they could do that. Um I we have spent way too much time talking about minutes in my opinion in our meetings and we need to stop doing that. Um and so that's why I'm I'm not inclined to add more. Uh and my other comment that's not necessary and and I get we have two differing legal opinions, right? The law does allow
005for interpretation and we have two attorneys who are both knowledgeable and and excellent uh who have given differing opinions on it and ultimately it's up to us to make a decision about that. Um but it particularly given the uh history of kind of some division um I'm not sure that listing all of the the minutia is helpful to what really should be the end result of a board of trustees which is whatever is the majority vote on any topic is the is the decision that the entire board gets behind. So for me, that's really where the focus is is how do we best serve our community and that means a unified voice on decisions whether we voted for it or against it. That was something I really struggled with when I um first got on
006the board. And one of the very first questions I asked um Alan Carpick was about that in particular. And um the analogy I was given either by him or by you Rachel, I can't remember which was that it was similar to um parenting and that you don't want to have one parent who says yes, you can go to the party and the other who says no and that makes the children feel less secure. And similarly with a board, if if certain board members are expressing one opinion and other board members are expressing another, that may differ from the majority, then it creates confusion and um a lack of security for the people who work for us and for the public and everyone else, which I thought was an interesting um way of looking at it
007and not something I had considered. So um does anyone else have anything? you. Um, so I um, first of all, I I think that the the I like the current template. I think it's clear, helpful and it has a very nice structure to follow and it will record everything basically we will cover right and at the same time highlight the final vote. I think it's a A good one. And uh uh so if we the thing is if we remove the actually last at last meeting I raised this question. I I asked whether we will only record the final or we will also record the intermediate ones. And uh at that time actually I was worried about uh too much work for Roberta and George and to add those intermediate ones and but later you
008know people have more discussion and uh well email and you know consulted the legal counsel all those things and after the second thought okay I thought okay if we have a streamlined way to record that that might be helpful because first we don't need to decide whether a certain vote is worth recording and so basically whatever there's a vote we record it right and sometimes some of those um informations can be critical for example I remember at one of the meetings and George mentioned that we needed to clarify the lighting on the contract or yes add something amen amendment, right? The original amendment so that if it were um warranted, right? Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, for for that tennis court, I I feel that's quite a critical and uh so if we record everything
009then you know the we won't miss anything important. I feel kind of make it easier otherwise we have to make a decision. know whether this is worth recording or not and um but still you know I I hope this additional work won't add too much burden to Roberta and George in that case I will propose maybe whenever we make that and Amy when you preset the meeting you say something specific to make it to note clear yeah so then when they do the room minutes and they can search the transcripts like download from the uh Google uh I mean the YouTube or whatever just uh make it easier to follow and plus right now we decided to record the time uh timestamp so I think with those the queue the warbo Q and the time
010stamp we we are kind of pretty much all set at the same time hopefully we don't add too much work to them. Okay. Yeah, I feel Yeah, I really like this template. I think it can solve the problem. I hope so. Yeah, Dea. Um, so I agree with George that this can get confusing with all the different amendments and I appreciate his effort in trying to in setting up a template so that it can make it simpler and I appreciate U.A.'s comments about how we, you know, how to make things simpler for Roberta and George. I think for me that I'm still not understanding is the discussion even that we record these votes. I mean, the Indiana code says that we're required to keep a record of all votes taken by individual members if there's
011a roll call. So, it's like how is this a debate or a discussion? Um, and there were, um, I think Rachel's the one that referenced that we did ask two different legal counsels on the topic. And to me, legal, both legal counsels supported the all votes. The first, um, response was that it presented low risk. And it's like, why are we saying that we want to take any risk? All we have to do is put all votes in and we now have zero risk. So to me that comment was, yeah, the risk isn't high, but if anyone comes back, it's going to cost our school district extra money. It's going to be very embarrassing that a board is not willing to follow Indiana code and has to get called out. So that was the, you
012know, one recommendation was it is low risk but carries risk. And then the other recommendation was that the statute clearly says all votes have to be recorded. And I like the comment that um this legal council said. They said the board speaks only through its minutes. So it's important to record all minutes it takes and to summarize all discussion it has. The minutes are the only way to know what the board decided and discussed for current and future time. So I love that we have YouTube. I love that we're doing timestamps. All those things is a great resource for our community that wants to dive in. If they want to hear a whole thing, we're making it easier for them. But there's very clear requirements of what's required um in the minutes and I feel
013like that we've slowly discussed each of those points and now hopefully tonight we will come to terms with the last point on um the votes. But um I think this is very important that we're number one in compliant and number two that we're sharing with our community what decisions are being made. It's one thing to say we're having a discussion about it. It's another to take an official vote and the community should be well informed of who votes for what. Um we don't need to pretend that we all believe the same and only record votes that we're unified in or try to share something that's inaccurate. We are all elected by the community and they can know who is voting for what. um and so that their votes can be informed in the future as
014well as they can be well informed about why we got to the final vote that we got to. Okay. Thanks. Um since David hasn't spoken yet, let's go with him. I am somewhere in the middle. I don't I I don't agree that um both of the sets of lawyers um came to the same conclusion. And I do think that there that our lawyers said that it you don't have to record every vote. And I think that it's important to recognize that. No, sorry. Um, so I don't agree that both lawyers said the needs to be turned off. Yeah. Sorry. Um, I don't believe both lawyers said the same thing. Um, I think our ours said that it's it's fine not to record them. Um, whereas the ISBA um has a different perspective on it. And
015I had a conversation with her about that where I don't necessarily think think that we see eye to eye on those. Um, and I know that Robert's rules of order is not um Indiana law, but it is what what um the process of a meeting is based off of. um in Robert's rules of order. Uh I have the brief version. This is one that I actually I bought it before Mr. Collier um gave some to the board, but um it talk one of the things that it talks about is that only main motions are recorded. Um, in fact, if you have a motion that um, somebody puts on the floor and it's seconded and let's say you make five or six amendments to that motion, page 150. Um, if you make like five or six
016amendments to that motion and then the person withdraws their motion, you actually don't even record that as as into the minutes according to Robert Schul's order. um in part because it it's not an action of the board. The action of the board is only that final step. Um all of those intermediate steps are really just us come. It's a formal process to maintain order for us to come to that final decision of what we are actually going to take an action on. And um to me recording or formally writing down every single um uh amendment and vote within that process I I think makes the minutes much much less clear um because what we are trying to communicate to the community is what what decisions and actions have been made and we could have a
017much more informal process of us going through and revising some wording of um the minutes I don't believe that Indiana law actually says that we have to go through amendments and uh things like that before we get to our final motion. We've chosen to adopt and use that process because it creates much more of an order for us. Um but it's like what did I make for lunch? um I wasn't a peanut butter sandwich, but we'll use that as an example of you don't we each may have different perspectives on how to do each of those steps, but in the end it's peanut butter sandwich. And so that that to me is the easiest and most streamline approach to uh dealing with the men. One additional thing, given that two lawyers have differing opinions, I
018think it's best practice for us to um primarily go with the ones who we are paying to be our lawyers because if we um ask them for opinions and then we go different directions uh on different things sometimes, um I think that that opens us up to more liability of why we're why aren't we listening to the lawyers who would be the ones who would defend us and work or work with us in any uh type of case that were to come up. Thank you. So that's my thought. Rachel, um I want to I'd like to address the issue of the legal opinion. I think for me the primary difference is that uh the request for um response from our corporation attorney, the one that the board has voted to retain. Um that came to
019all of us in their own words. Um, DEIS provided a paraphrase version presumably of whatever she spoke with the ISBA attorney about. I I also had a like like David at the um regional meeting had the opportunity to speak with that attorney um to try and understand their um interpretation a little bit more fully and I did not bring that up when I commented because it didn't feel appropriate because I spoke to her alone and that wouldn't be communication from the board. Um, however, the one thing that I want to make everyone aware of is that when I spoke with her, um, she was not because she's not as familiar with our school corporation specifically, she was not aware that we provide a fully timestamped minute set of minutes. And so when she was making
020her response presumably I haven't seen her response to Dea because that's not been shared but um based on what Dea summarized it to be um that was uh not something that she was aware of and um she did think and agree when we had our conversations that those two things recording of every vote and a time stamp of the minutes was redundant information. Um but again that's my paraphrasing what she said to me. So take that for what it's worth. Um but the other thing um that I do think it is important to clarify here is um I am not in any way proposing that we all vote the same. I am uh completely fine with everybody and in fact expect that everybody on this board will have different opinions. Um really uh that's not
021the intent. The intent is once the decision is made, that decision is the work of the whole board, even if we're not in the majority. And that's the distinction. We can argue all day long up until we get to the point that that vote is made. And then we must respect the vote, the majority vote of the other members on the board, respect their opinions, and understand that we were not in the majority in that time. And finally, I David, thank you for the note on consistency. I that came that came up to me and from both attorneys that you must be consistent in how you do it and and I agree it would seem to be a good idea to go to the the attorney that knows us a little better. Okay, George, on
022the note about attorneys, one thing to keep in mind is who each of them represents. So, our attorney represents us and is legally bound under the state ethics code for attorneys to represent us. The ISBA's lawyer represents the ISBA. Now, they do give off legal advice that is pertinent to all of the ISBA members, uh, but she does not represent any one school corporation in any capacity. So, the ISBA's lawyers have an interest in serving us, but they also have an interest in serving themselves and maintaining good relationships with the state legislature because they are the school board's um, collective lobbying arm, so to speak. So it's two very different considerations there. Okay. Thanks DEA. Go ahead. Um so just to clarify because David um if I understood when you said shared that our lawyer
023had said that it's fine not to record it but my question is did she also say at that same time it prov there's a low risk if we don't? Yes, we all received the same email that effectively said that we don't need to provide individual votes and because and my interpretation added on to that is that those individual votes in the amendments are not actions by the board and that's what has to be recorded. So, just to follow up, I think that's why I'm viewing that our lawyer is saying that votes are needed because if they were not needed, there'd be no risk. Um the other thing is as um David also brought up is Robert's rules which our lawyer did reference. Um Robert's rules are a guideline. I appreciate that we use them for
024the procedures but once again they're a guideline where Indiana code does trump it. So Robert's rules says very clearly that we don't need to share any information about what happens in the minimum minutes. It says it's actually improper to summarize matters. And so I know this has caused a lot of issues with our minutes because a lot of board members want to follow Robert's rules and limit the information that we share with the public. But to me the arguments that I keep going back to is what Indiana code says. And so that's why I still um am surprised at the push back when all we do is include all votes. We now follow Indiana code. We have zero risk. Um, the other point is the recommendation from Julie Slavage just to clarify that I did
025take that email and as I shared with the whole board when I forwarded it just so you'd be well prepared ahead of this meeting. It I said I was not summarizing her words. It was a direct quote. So, um, it wasn't my guess of what she said, but what exactly she said. Okay. Who's next? Lawrence. Yeah. Regarding the meeting minutes, we have worked for a long time. So I really appreciate uh um Robera and also George and the previous secretary. So they work together. We make a lot of progress regarding the uh meeting minutes. Uh also we have timestamps, we have summary of issues and also I really appreciate George have a kind of template. So every time we use just to fill in the necessary information. So template makes things uh uh much easier
026and also standardized the whole process. So I really appreciate that. And regarding uh whether or not we should recommend all the votes, I think the first things uh I would say the Indiana open door law uh it uh does require uh we record all the uh votes. So basically I think it's uh Indiana code 514 1.54 item B and item four reading a record of all votes taken by individual members if there's a roll call. So I think uh for us it's very um I totally agree with George and also uh David some some of my colleagues concerns regarding this may confuse uh readers and um but uh I in my opinion the simplest and the easiest way just to follow the Indian open door law so that's make uh life much easier for everybody.
027So we don't need every time we don't need uh to talk or discuss whether or not this is a non uh disposable vote what kind of vote it is is just a document whatever uh we we vote and uh vote uh in terms of um uh board actions is is a kind of official uh board actions no matter is procedure always regarding uh the business our business. So that should be uh document and another thing is uh a reliable uh meeting minutes is also uh a a way for us valuable uh opportunities for us board as a collective also leadership team. So that's perfect uh opportunities for us to demonstrate they are accountable, we are transparent and we follow the open door laws. uh if we uh we you know just document uh some of
028the vote basically we didn't uh follow the open door laws and it's very reasonable for people ask if you guys I mean this meeting man is a small issues if you don't follow the Indiana open door laws in these small issues I totally agree we should concentrate spend more time on some big issues but the question if you don't follow the laws in these small issues and when you handle some big issues. Uh can you follow the Indiana laws? So that will be a very valid legitimate uh question for our whole school board. So not each individual members also leadership team. So in my opinion giving those considerations I just think uh follow the laws document all vote that may be the the best and the easiest way for us to conduct our business in
029accountable professional also uh transparent ways. Thank you. Thanks. Let's be careful not to accidentally vote in a work session um by saying specifically how we're going to vote. Um I also think that we should acknowledge that the code and the open door law and so on that we're referencing was probably not written with live streaming and YouTube timestamps in mind. you know, in the in the late 18th century when a lot of these rules were um derived, it was, you know, maybe a little different. Yes. Oh, and 2016. Was it 2016? You're still right. Well, okay. 2016 was good to know. All right. Go ahead, David. I want to get back to this idea. First off, um I don't think any of us are trying to hide. Everything is live streamed. None of us are
030trying to hide anything. I think what we're trying to do is come up with a version of the minutes that are easily understandable by the community. When you put in every single amendment in there, it can in some ways hide what is actually the final motion. Yes, it's it's down there after three, four, five amendments sometimes, but it creates a document that makes it more difficult for people to actually see what are the decisions, the actual votes of the board. And I don't think that not recording the individual amendments um is violating Indiana open door policy because functionally those votes on amendments are not decisions by the board. They're the means of which we're going through the process of getting to what we're going to vote on as our action. If we never end up
031voting on the on that final motion, whether it's yay or nay on it, the board functionally has not taken an action. We may need to summarize to some degree that there was discussion about this topic, but nothing ever happened. But I think the the purpose of the minutes is to convey those final decisions uh accurately to everybody. And the more that's in there that doesn't um or that that distracts from those final motions, I think makes it more convoluted and challenging for people to clearly see and understand. You know, something just occurred to me um after I mentioned the technology and that is that the open door law, if I'm not mistaken, says roll call votes have to be recorded. Is that correct? Yeah. And so it's functionally the buttons and the screens that create
032a situation where our votes are roll call votes. So perhaps if we used verbal a's and nas or eyes's and nas to do the um the votes in between and only used the buttons for the final action that might satisfy both requirements. That's just a thought. Um, does anyone else have anything they'd like to add? Actually, I think using the machine to record the voting is very convenient and clear is better than the wble and uh so actually I have a question for Brandon. Do you uh does the system record have a log for all the votes? this probably. Okay. I can't answer like how long it goes back. I mean for like for example today we after the meeting at the recording the system I wonder because this is like a machines designed for
033voting. So I wonder whether there's a log in the system somehow and it does show on the screen on the YouTube video correct the the Yeah. Yeah. On the video for sure. But I I wonder you know back in the computer lock whether is recorded. So for me I always feel the sorrow the better and people can have the choice especially with the form that George created I feel it differentiate the intermediate ones and the final ones and for those who only care about the final ones they can just go there probably you can even bold that final ones to make it more outstanding so to solve the problem of like a confusing problem that they mentioned that people feel oh I don't want to know those intermediate ones. I want to go to the
034final one. They can just look at the bolded ones. Use the format, you know, to make it easier. Earlier I I sort of prefer the final ones only to reduce the burden for Robata and George. But but if if we can make that part easier by either doing some warbo kill to make the votes stand out or using the lock if there's a way to do it. I think have any kind of reference to what voted on is the problem. That's true. You would have you would have reference as to what was being voted on. Let's say today we had a 20 volts and it's recorded but we don't know which is corresponding to what okay we're just creating okay okay so that can not be used but then we can rely on the wubble
035queue you get okay here we are voting for blah blah blah it make it very clear and so on the recording it's there then we can search for that uh warp if we want to play and uh so but anyway thank you. Uh uh just one more clarification on the template when it says for the intermediate ones it says past six versus one and in that case do we list who are the six who is a one or we only give a summary George you plan listing the names of who voted for what if there's a split vote on your template or were you only going to list the number? Oh yeah, don't forget to hear microphone. Sorry, the example I have has the names in there because I thought that that was something that
036we had decided on before. Yeah, it's just to um I I feel if we record those intermediate ones, I will prefer we list the people who voted one way or the other. And just for clarity again, for those who don't want to read it, they can just skip it and so they have the choice. I get your desire for that, but I feel like recording the names for those intermediate votes would defeat the point of trying to make things concise. So that I think what I have here is a kind of a compromise where we will record the inter intermediate or non-dispositive votes, but we won't put all of the names there because then that section itself, particularly on a complicated piece of business, will be a page long just by itself, which would defeat
037the point of shortening everything. and particularly the I'm remembering last year when I was um when we were trying to get through the um policies and you know people had different let's add this word or take out that word or add this sentence and take out that sentence and have that sentence but change this word to that word it would I agree with George that that could get we could get bogged down in the details to the point where it's not useful to um to people. So, um I don't know that we have solved anything, but it kind of feels like everybody has had a moment to say uh what's on their mind with regard to the meeting minutes. And this appears between item 10 and item 11 because there's no um uh exhibit on
038this issue. So, it's my intention to introduce it and if people would like to say a brief word about their opinion, that would be great. But I don't think we need to recapitulate this whole discussion. Um, does anybody object to moving on? Okay. The other thing I would add um before we do is that I attended um the ISBA dinner with many of you and the um dinner in honor of Michelle and her colleagues and several people came up to me and um indicated that we were a subject of ridicule because this ongoing conversation is continuing. Um, and that does not feel good to me as a leader. Um, we're being uh called out by our peer organizations for having spent an inordinate amount of time on the structure of the minutes. So I really
039hope that this can be if not the last one of the very last conversations we have on the topic and that we can move on to more important things such as the policies. Um there was a request to have a policy discussion as part of this meeting. Um, I'm not sure how to structure that in light of the fact that we're going to be talking about them in 45 minutes or so, but um, does anyone have anything in general to say? Rachel, go ahead. So the policy um the ad hoc policy committee um that is Lawrence and David and I met and we did have an initial conversation about the order of operations before we got into the content of the policies and so everyone on the board already has those notes um but I
040would be happy to recap them that might be a fit for right now and discussion. Okay. Sorry if you share I've looked for those notes. I've sent multiple emails. There's links in multiple emails. Staca, you just said they were in box and No, they're in they're a Google shared Google document. Okay. So, um just so people who cannot see our screens um understand the process that's happened here to have a shared document is a little bit simpler in our Google. Uh and so, um this document was started and shared with all board members um on October 30th of 2024. Uh it was amended with purple text on November 19th of 2024. Um it was shared with our new members uh George and David following their election and we met most recently on April 27th and
041that text appears in the document as orange. So it's colorcoded to make it um a little bit easier for everybody to navigate. uh because some of these uh policies have been released or all of these policies have been released to us one after the other. Um this seemed the simplest way to track it so that all board members could understand the the process that we'd gone through. Of course, I always close my emails. If you have any questions or difficulties, please reach out. I'm happy to help. Um and I I want to commend uh Lawrence for reaching out when he was struggling to find something in there. So, um, if we received a if we receive, I would say from any board member a comment or a question about something, um, and we don't understand
042where it is or what it is that we could always ask that question. Um, but if you we go through the process that we started out discussing and I will say there was some there was a lot of discussion about this and there was some differing opinion on it and so that's why I think it's a good idea to um recap it so everybody kind of knows where where we are and um but you can see that in orange um the first thing that we discussed was though we had several policies that already had been submitted for first reading and were technically available for second reading. We felt because of the elapsed time and because um that we had two new members that it made sense to draw all policies back to a first reading
043status. And so um we have done that this time and we've eliminated prior first readings um so we can all start over in the same place. Um and then in our order of operations, um we had conversation along the lines of one that the board president would refer draft policies to the policy committee. And so, uh that's something that we've picked up fairly recently that the board president will in fact direct what content we consider because we're doing a full overhaul. Um and that helps us with tracking and also priority setting from uh our chair and our superintendent. Um following that referral to the policy committee, the legal and central office will review those selected policies uh and give us feedback. Often that is very um subject sensitive. So if it were for example a
044health and wellness related policy, we would expect Dr. Griner typically will go to our nursing or our um corporation physicians for feedback on it. Um we've also seen that play out with the athletic department on athletic related policies and so forth. Um but that's to get the best people who are closest to the to the work of this the of the schools involved in the engagement of the policies. Um the third step is after that feedback is given the policy committee will review the policy language. Um so we're adding red line and green line text for additions. Uh there's no text that's eliminated. In other words, every member of the board is able to see what language was presented as well as our recommendations for any red line uh or green additional text. Um primarily
045in those meetings we are comparing um the proposed pol policy to existing policy and we are the three of us observing that um the policy is presented and trying to understand or identify any information that the board members may need for a vote. So we found a couple of areas just as an example. There was some kind of confusion um about um what policies linked together and so we were able to go back to legal and say hey we think these are connected. Could we also have that? So it's more that type of questioning or we know this has been a situation in our school corporation particularly that's unique to us. Could we get some more information about that? Um so that's the nature of that. Um then the fourth step of that would be
046that the policy committee chair um presents the work of the policy committee as it appears in these notes to the full board at a work session or regular meeting as scheduled. That is what is happening right now. Um and then finally the board discusses um in that once that's been presented and the public has the opportunity for review at that point in time. So the draft policies as we know are in our board packet and publicly available. Um and any additional modifications between the first reading and the second reading uh they are to be considered over the time period between meetings. So as we have seen many times our community will give us feedback if they have a particular issue or question with a policy. Board members obviously also give that feedback. So um that
047gives us a time to kind of accumulate those. I want to be clear in describing that that does not mean that if a member of the community or a board member comes forward and says I don't like that or I would rather see this that that means that we would just change the draft policy. What that will do is guide our second vote conversation. And so what we discussed is really item number six is that we would at our next subsequent meeting present a clean and that is specifically air quotes policy presented for a vote but it will be structured such that any parts of the policy that have differing opinions on the board. Those uh will be set up as single items for vote before we get to a final vote on the policy.
048So that seemed like a good way to expedite the handling of differing opinions uh is to allow different board members to um uh give their opinion not as a decision but as an input for discussion and vote. Um and then finally after all of those uh kind of minor votes the single item votes are taken uh and final we would go to a final vote being on the overall policy. Um and then in addition um there was conversation about making a completely separate vote for which policies will be eliminated or replaced of our current policy provided the new policy is passed. So um as we talked through that process, we felt that was a very clean uh way to get through these in some organized fashion that provided members are following along in the in
049the shared document uh and and reading the policies in advance of the meeting that we would be able to get through through that um a little bit more efficiently. So I would just open this process up uh for conversation and input if anybody feels differently about what the policy committee found would work. That sounds great. Um, now that everyone's had an explanation, does anyone have David? Yeah, please. I just want to add one um thing that I was just thinking about um to make the revision process or the the discussion process in the second reading a lot easier is if we're able to put um up in a document what it is that we're talking about so that we can make the individual if there are edits that are made or we we can have
050the the wording up on the screen so that we can then go through one piece at a time. Um that way we all are looking at the same exact thing um and can smooth that process. It's a great minds think alike uh moment because it was just about a half an hour ago or about I guess we're in the meeting about an hour ago that Amy and I had that same conversation that it would make sense to put the policy up on the screen uh when we go to that reading. So yeah, exactly. It's a great idea. I like it. Thank you all for your work on um putting this together. Lawrence, did you have something? We have do we have time? Yeah. Yeah. I just have something to share. I really appreciate the meetings
051uh we have uh Rachel David work together. Uh it's really uh very uh u fruitful u uh meetings and really appreciate the uh Rachel document everything. I think he's really good at the documentations. So I appreciate that. And regarding this um procedure, I think uh uh the only things uh uh I think maybe we need uh another but this current procedure is pretty good. I I I like it. But this the only thing if there is make that better maybe we have another um uh another readings basically we have a third reading after second reading is for any change we just here kind of uh item uh item six the step six item item a I think this will be kind of whatever um amendment proposals uh we have different opinions we can bring the
052board to vote and whatever were approved or reject and then we will have final kind of final overall policies clean policies and we post that uh online for for whatever public comments whatever and then the next months we will have clear uh policy we just go ahead vote so that's my suggestion but I'm not strong uh strong waiting on that if you guys think this kind of procedure two reading is good I'm okay Another things uh regarding the the step four um saying uh the final uh the work of policy committee as is appear in those notes to the full board at working session or regular meeting. So personally I think uh it will be better off we just work on the work sessions and then um for the uh the regular work uh the
053regular uh meetings we just vote for the amendment or vote for the for the policies and what our whatever our working on the policies that will be kind of uh working sessions. So that's uh uh and another thing the third things I I I'm just wondering maybe we need to decide we want to adopt some policy some policies several policies one policy several policies and then we will repeal the existing policies batch by bash or we just uh mean what's the best way we don't want to have two uh different policies in the same time so maybe we need a working on that the details how to I mean adopt the policy and also repeal the the the the Nola things. So that that's other than that but I really appreciate David and uh Rachel
054I think we work very well. So I really appreciate that. So great. Um David did you want to address Sam? No Rachel you did. I So the last piece that Lawrence mentioned that is um item C. That is it might have rolled down on your page, but that's item 6 C where it says there will be a separate book for which policies will be eliminated or replaced provided the new policy is passed. That was a great idea that Lawrence had that there had been some confusion over that in the past. And so um that is um indeed what we added on there. Great. Dea, you had something real quick so we can take a break before the meeting. Um yes. So David just shared the document with me so I skimmed it really fast so
055if I missed it, let me know. Um I did have a couple quick questions. The first one is we have passed new policies um that we didn't eliminate or replace and vote on that. So when will that take place? Right now we do have some conflicting policies in place. So I appreciate that going forward it seems like we have a clear plan. What's the plan for the past ones that we have passed but have not rescended those is my first question. David, so we had had a discussion about that there. Um, it sounded like there was confusion as to whether or not the prior process um did eliminate those because I think my interpretation was that the passing of those new um uh policies came with the elimination of the other ones. However, um everything
056is mapped out in the documents that we that we've received of what what ones overlap. Um and so I think that can um cleanly cleanly be done of just one additional motion uh to eliminate these policies as per the prior passage of these others just to make it as clean as possible. Okay. So what about the past ones? Because in the past there was one time that we voted to approve a the school wellness policy. We actually passed it and then we rescended the old one, but there was no other policies that we followed those steps. So my curiosity for those on Yeah. and how those are going to be handled. Yeah. For for those ones, we can just identify which ones didn't have that formal motion and we can just go through that. Yeah.
057Perfect. And then my next question is the crossover document that CCHA provided to us does not include all of Nola's policies. We have quite a few policies that are kind of in limbo and some actually do connect to policies they're wanting us to redo. Others do not. And so my question is um does CCHA we paid them a significant amount of money. Are they prepping that or how are we getting this crossover document? Because actually in their first document they gave us and their second one they didn't even match with what they themselves had provided. They actually on the first one said this matches with this and their second one they changed their mind and so how do we get an accurate document so we know what we're looking at. Go ahead. So just to
058kind of um loop our new members in um we had Amy Matthews visit with us when Jesse was on uh maternity leave and as Amy described uh the crosswalk document was actually out of their scope of proposal. uh they did that to try and help uh satisfy additional information requests by the board. Um they were very clear that it was not going to be a 100% tight document that they were creating that as a bit of an assist but definitely not an answer. Um and as they described at that time once all of the new policies were in place there would be a cleanup wave that went through at the end that would make sure that uh nothing had been missed. But the the point of going with the CCHA um policy model is that
059it's not going to look the same as NEOLA, but it is going to comprehensively address the policy needs of the school corporation in alignment with school law. So, um that uh there is it is going to be a little bit sloppy, which is part of why until we can get through it, which is part of why we've been trying to get through it in a way that would satisfy all members and and why we're very focused on on doing that right now. But the bottom line is not going to be perfectly clean until we can get through the policy. Dea, if you'd like to go through the old policies, I I'd be I'd love to have a list. That would be terrific. Thank you. that'd be really helpful. So, I do have a question. What
060did we pay $16,000 for? Cuz they handed us kind of their blank slate that they handle every school district, but at least when um it came up, it was they're going to tailor it. They're going to work with us. They're going to help with all of ours. So, help me understand what did the $16,000 what services are they providing besides giving us just a generic policy and then asking answering questions with they do as part of their services. Anyway, Rachel, so uh they provided us a comprehensive set of policies that are intended as a starting point for us to work through. They've provided there's an intellectual capital to that knowledge and that recommendation from them. And then uh yes, they serve as our resource. In addition to that, as laws change, they continue to give
061us updated feedback on those law changes and what we need to do, which is something we're going to come across tonight when we get into to a couple of these policies where law has been changed. Uh and so, uh you know, this isn't like um you know, we're not buying shoes at the shoe store. This is a comprehensive purchase of legal counsel for a tight policy set and that is what we have paid for. Okay, David. Um one from my limited experience of this is now month five. Um, one of the other things that I that um, it seems like they're also doing is when we recommend modifications or any changes or work with the policies in any way, we send it back to them and they provide their feedback on any of those changes.
062So, it's a I it's a it's a continual process that we're going through. So I I think some of that is also I guess it's not just the giving of the the standard template but it's also working with us as we make our changes. Okay. Um Deja please when you send your list could you make sure you copy everybody? Of course. Thank you. And Lawrence just a quick so back to the uh this policy basically uh the policy the service uh we have is right now pretty much just the email support. So my understanding this uh $16,000 for 100 policies uh I think it's a little bit over uh really overpriced. I mean this policy price compared to what the standard service $50 uh per policy readily available on the market. So I think uh
063this a little bit uh overpriced and back to the continu they will charge our hourly rate for the continuous uh uh service. Um, I have a question, Rachel. When you and I were on the policy committee, when I first was on the board, please come in. Um, did you you interfaced with Niola because I never did. Did they answer direct questions and tailor their product to us or was that I don't remember. No. Well, I mean, yes and no. We never saw them. They were never present in the room with us. They did not attend any of our meetings that I'm aware of. But yes, we would definitely send them a policy and say, "We've got a question about this or that." It was very similar to the setup with CCHA in terms of of
064feedback. Um it it really that part of it, that back and forth part of it is extremely similar to what we had with our previous provider. Okay, David, real quick because we need to take a quick break before our next meeting. I think it's also important for us to be remembering that we need to focus on where we are now with things. Um we have policies that we need to revise. We are in this process. We can't go back and be questioning whether or not this is worth the price right now because this we're we're here. We're doing this and we need to get through this. Um and we're not it's not like we're going to stop working with them and find somebody else um and pay them a different amount of money and we
065we're here and we need to work through this. Okay. I'd really like to take a quick break. We have four minutes before the next meeting starts. So, let's go ahead and do that. Thanks everyone. Sorry, now everybody's got a lot to say. Um, okay. Welcome to the regular meeting of the uh school board of trustees. Our first item is Mrs. Fitz Simmons who's going to talk to us about the food service highlights. Good stuff. Thank you. So, I am Courtney Fitz Simmons, the food service director and dietician for West Lafayette schools. Um, I'm excited to share some updates. Uh, there'll be time at the end for some questions. So, hold your questions till the end if you have any. All right. So, the pictures you're seeing, that is our fresh station. It is a customizable
066bar where you can build your own sub or salad. We have the Smartmouth pizza. That is uh freshbaked whole grain personalized pizza. And then those bottom two pictures are from the Fiesta Bar, which is a student favorite every Tuesday where we offer a choice of soft tacos, nachos, or baked taco bowls. Uh we also encourage students to take advantage of the multiple fruits and vegetables we offer with every meal. Okay. We have been part of K12's leading Indiana co-op since 2018. Click continues to grow and now serves over 173,000 students over 70 districts across Indiana. Co-ops help increase our purchasing power to ensure that we get the best possible prices. These are the list of vendors that won clicks bids for the 2526 school year. They're all vendors we've used in the past and have
067been very happy with them. On Friday, May 2nd, we celebrated National School Lunch Hero Day. The staff and students loved the superhero banners that we hung in each kitchen. This is our wonderful elementary school team. And then this is the picture of our amazing intermediate superheroes. Then finally, we have our fantastic crew at the junior senior high school. I cannot say enough good things about our food service team. It's not a glamorous job, but they take pride in working hard and ensuring every student has access to nutritious meals in a welcoming environment. One common measure of productivity that's frequently used in school food service is meals per labor hour. You find that by dividing the number of total meal equivalents per day by the total number of paid labor hours. As you can see, we've
068been working on increasing our meals per labor hour from 12 to 13 meals per labor hour to 14.5 meals per labor hour across the board. And our final goal is about 15 meals per labor hour. So, we're almost there. Okay, as we have transitioned away from COVID relief, we have run into some financial challenges within the department. In 2023 to 2024, we had a loss of about $80,000 for the year and this was due to a significant decrease in the additional 37 cents of the USDA paid reimbursement. And then this year we lost about $70,000 of supply chain assistance funds uh which were discontinued uh making about a loss for 150,000 for this school year. We don't know what the reimbursement rates will be for next year. However, we have lost about 12% in our
069entitlement dollars. Uh which means we'll no longer be able to participate in DoD fresh or in brownbox commodities. You can see our current prices up here. Uh we get most of our federal or our funding from two sources. Federal reimbursement which is in green and student prices in blue. The amount we get for free and reduced is significantly more than what we receive for paid students, bringing in almost a dollar less per student at the elementary and intermediate and 75 cents less at the junior senior high school. This is a notable amount since about 77% of our students are on are paid. Uh $3 and 325 have been our student paid lunch prices since 2022. Okay. Next, I want to discuss the local partnerships we've had this school year. This is our second year working
070with Sushi Boss on Purdue's campus. And this year we added EverBull acai bowls as an allocart option. One of my favorite things to offer is the iced coffee and the iced chai. Um, we get the coffee from Java House and we sell the chai from a small local Indiana business. Piaza Produce is our fresh fruits and vegetable vendor. Uh, they're committed to using local produce as often as possible. Milk is another major uh, fresh local product in the schools and largely coming from family-owned Indiana dairy farms. Uh, finally, a couple weeks ago, we partnered with two local Domino's stores to provide school compliant pizza at the elementary and the intermediate school, and they really seemed to enjoy that. A few accomplishments I'd like to celebrate are that we passed our USDA administrative review this year
071of the school nutrition programs. Um, we've done some taste testing with the students. They always seem to enjoy that when we do that. And we received a grant from the National Dairy Association to purchase a breakfast cart that we have located in the Commons every morning to help increase breakfast partition breakfast participation at the junior senior high school. All right, any questions? Yeah. Thank you for what you do. I really appreciate it. And I I um always feel good on a day when my child does not pack lunch. Uh that he's going to get something good. Also, the animation of Mary Alice is amazing, and I think you should keep it up permanently. I might have to fight her on that, but thank you. Anybody else? George. Yeah, I know this is a little off
072topic, but what tool did you all use to generate those pictures? No, I got I actually did a whole presentation on this. It's called Playground. Um, it's AI, but you have to use um an iPhone 15 or higher to get the playground. They're very cute. It's very fun though. All righty. Well, thank you very much. Oh, yeah. Uh, thank you so much for the presentation. I agree those cartoon was so cute and and I I have a question. So, the high school right now have a lot of choices and but the younger kids have much fewer. The reason is they have the time limit or time limit is one of those biggest factors. They have longer at the junior senior high school and it's easier for them to make more cho like make more choices
073when they're getting through the line at the elementary and intermediate. They need to go through a little bit quicker. Okay. Thank you. My eighth grader is choosing pizza every single day. So I'm glad it's healthy. May May I ask her one more? Sure. Okay. Another thing is I noticed that you sent the feedback survey to the community and I really appreciate that. I wonder in general how is the response rate and uh how do people feel about the food service in general? Overall pretty positive. We're still accepting feedback. So I don't have everything for you yet, but I hope to have that soon. Great. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. It's nice to see you. All righty. Our next item of business is communication from the audience and there were no takers.
074So, we will move on to the consent agenda. Does anyone have anything to move about the consent agenda? Agenda. Thank you. Lawrence moves to approve. David seconds. And there is no discussion. And I wrote that down today so I wouldn't do it again. So I will do the buttons. Oh shoot. It's always hard the first time. There we go. Oh no. Do you need to warm up your finger? Oh dear. Uh I hope yes. Okay. Thank you. We'll call that seven to zero. All right. The next item is um the procedure for meeting minutes. And this is a conversation we had during the um work session and would anyone like to recap any of their comments on that? Dea. So um if I understood correctly, the discussion we had entailed what votes are included in
075the minutes and my view is that we should be including all votes. It's transparent and fully fully align with both public accountability and Indiana law. There's no risk if we include all votes. There's only risk if we do not. I believe we should commit to the most compliant and transparent path and not try to take any shortcuts. Okay. Would anyone else like to summarize, Lawrence? Not summarize. Oh, go ahead. My opinion. Yeah. So, I I I think this will be motion uh will vote whether or not uh to include our votes, but I think uh Indiana open door law is pretty plainly English. They require all vote to be documented in the meeting minutes. So, no matter what we vote result either accepted the positive or negative. So, it doesn't uh uh matter. we still
076need to follow uh the Indiana open door law. So I'm not sure if we have this as motion or not. So that's my uh question. Thank you. Okay, David, just to repeat a little bit of what I said earlier um I I believe that only the final motion that we're vote that that's voted on needs to be reported because the others aren't actions of the board. their process by which we get to the final action and including them especially as we're moving towards um uh working through the policies that may have five, six, seven, eight potential votes on revisions on each one. uh may actually reduce transparency as it becomes more convoluted and everything is already shared fully um uh on on the live stream as well as um the final vote is really what
077makes what what is the action of the board. Okay, Rachel, uh my comments were very aligned with what David just recapped. Uh I would just say that uh while we did have differing feedback or interpretations of the law from two different attorneys, um one thing that stuck out to me in the conversation was uh George's reminder to all of us that the um attorney who we retain as our attorney represents us and would be um perhaps the the loudest voice in that or not the loudest but the one to rely upon the most. Um and um I do believe that it is important after a decision is made that our community clearly understand that decision that we as a board stand united behind the decision regardless of whether or not we were in the majority
078or minority of the vote. Um and convoluting our minutes with things that were not fruitful to the end decision are not really um important um to include productive to include. George Um, you're next. Hold on, George. Next. I just want to remind everybody that the template you have um can accommodate both sets of desires, but the way I have it designed right now, it includes everything everyone asked for, but it may not include it in the specific way that you want it. So, keep that in mind. Okay. Yui um I'm not very sure about the what George just said about the specific ways but based on my understanding of the template I think this a great template to list both the intermediate votes and the final votes and the only thing I would add is
079to for the intermediate votes we also record who voted yes who voted no I think that's helps to have the transparency, accountability and uh because we represent the community and uh so sometimes maybe we disagree and we again represent different uh opinions and uh so I'm not sure whether okay I'm okay and so that's why I I feel it's helpful to record all the votes and and who votes what and just to make it easier like what I said at the work session. I think by adding those verbal cues when you announce the votes what we are voting on and you can make it very clear. So Robert George can either uh to make it easy for them to to to write to record what was being voted and who voted what. And so so
080that way that way we we have everything informative, sorrow and transparent and we can be hold accountable and at the same time because George separated the intermediate ones and the final ones I think that gave people the con the option to read either both or only the final ones. So I I I feel that's a good uh compromise. And another thing just a follow up and what you commented at the last at the at the end of the work meeting you said somebody outside talk to you about our meeting minutes discussion actually I I think you're okay whenever that happens I feel yes is it cutting in and out no it's fine okay okay so I feel probably some conversation happened in in our within our community as well. But I would like to say
081frankly I appreciate that we have this conversation. It's very like today we have a work meeting to discuss this issue. I think that's very important because we we value the diverse ideas. We value transparency. We value accountability. That's why we have this conversation which I think is very important. And there's nothing to be embarrassed about and we should be proud that we make this all clear and in the future we have the very clear and informative minutes for the community and uh because most very few people will have time to come to the meeting or watch the whole long u video having a very clear minutes is helpful for people and uh so really again I don't think We should be embarrassed about it. I appreciate that you organized this work meeting for us to
082discuss it and have a conclusion. Thanks David. So, because I agree the the minutes should be as clear as possible, I'd like to make a motion that we make it the practice of our board that we only record in the minutes the final motion that was voted on. And we include a timestamp with the discussion of any amend of of amendment um highlight or time stamp highlighting if there were amendments to the discussion leading up to that final motion. Okay. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Rachel seconds. Uh, any further discussion prior to the vote? Yeah, go ahead. I'm just trying to make clarify. So, are we going to vote on whether or not to include the final uh all the vote or we vote for the the template draw proposal because that
083one pretty much include everything and that's good. Pretty much everybody uh requirement have been fulfilled by that template. I really appreciate that template. Mhm. So, uh, so what's the motion? David, would you like to repeat your The motion is that we make it the practice of our board to only report in the minutes the final voted on motion and to timestamp uh the period where there was discussion based off of uh any any amendments. You understand? Yes. Okay, great. Anything else? All right, I will start the vote. Go ahead. Mine's still not letting me vote, but I vote yes. Okay, so that's three yeses and four nos. All right, so that motion does not pass. Now we can either leave this behind or we need another motion and it's sure motion. Yep. Yeah, I would
084like to make a I would like I would like to make a motion we adopt um the template proposed by uh uh George uh regarding how to document the WS like that template. Thank you. And I'll second that. Okay. And can I clarify that your motion includes every single vote including the intermediary nondispositive votes? Yeah, that's my understanding for George's uh template, right? You can That was the idea. Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's my understanding that I will check and make sure. David, you second. Okay. Uh any other discussion? Super. Let me Oh, sorry. Go ahead. You're off now. Sorry. As I said multiple times, I I like that template. The only thing I would add is to add the names for the intermediate no uh votes as well. So I feel yeah just to
085make it clear again hold people accountable and uh yeah that's the only amendment I would like to add. Okay. So you're moving to amend the motion to include the names of the individuals who have voted and how they voted on all the motions. Correct. Yeah, for any votes that recorded added the name to it. Okay. Is there a second? Thank you. DEA seconds. Excellent. Any other further discussion? Rachel, I just would really like us to stop talking about the minutes in our meeting. We've exhausted. We've just spent an extraordinary amount of time on this and so I think we just need a vote and move. Okay. Anything else, Dave? No. Okay. I have to do We're voting on the amendment first. We're voting on the amendment to include the names. Yes. Did that work for
086Rachel? It did. It did. Oh, lovely. Okay. So, yes to include the names now. All right. So, I'm going to stop that vote. Now, we are voting on the previous motion, which was to adopt George's template and to include all the votes and all the names on all the votes. If I got that correct? Great. All right. And now I have to hit buttons there. All right. There's one more. Okay. Who's missing? There we go. Okay, wonderful. That motion passes. So, we will continue to use Georgia's template, which is excellent. Thank you for doing that. We will record all of the votes and we will include all of the names. Um, wonderful. we can move on and hopefully that will be the last discussion about the minutes um until we get to the April minutes
087which are the next item on the agenda. Dea I make I make a motion to postpone the approval of the minutes so that we can include all the votes and in the format that we just approved. Okay. Is sorry I had to say approve the minutes postpone it until the June meeting approved the so they can be revised. Okay. Is there a second to postpone the minutes? Lawrence. Okay. Any discussion? No. Hearing none, we will begin the vote. Okay. Correct. Till June. Okay. Six. And one more. Seven. Great. All right. Then we have postponed that item. The next item on the agenda is to hit buttons. The next item on the agenda is the uh memo between the West Lafayette Police Department SRO program and the school corporation. Dr. Grryer. Thank you, Mrs. Austin. You
088have an updated with West Lafayette Community School Corporation and the WLPD. We've worked collaboratively with the updates with the WLPD. legal counsel's reviewed uh the updatedou and they are in agreement. Uh there was a question from the board regarding will there still be an SRO officer in every building. The answer is yes. There will be an SRO officer in every building and we're also working with and the WLPD desires to have a consistent person in each building. So it's my recommendation that the board vote to approve theou as uh provided for you. Great. Rachel, make a motion that we that we approve the um SROU as presented. Thank you. Do I have a second? I would like second. Lawrence, thank you. Is there any discussion on this item? you. Yeah, I just like to appreciate
089their great work and especially the rapport they built between with the students and uh I usually sometimes drop my uh daughter to Willis and I always see the officer there kind of dancing on the high-fi with kids and playing music and it's really lovely and uh I think that's a very healthy relationship our SRO's uh building with hates and uh yeah that I really really appreciate them. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else have anything to share? Lawrence, did you Yeah, just quick clarify question. Maybe I was wrong. Just my understanding is last year we trying to get a buy a grant so we can have a dedicate uh SR SRO in each building. So uh correct me if I'm wrong. So but now we still kind of um it's not dedicated SRO but we
090have we're trying to make a consistent uh people to ser for each building. That is correct. We have we have a matching school safety grant which is used to ensure we have SRO officer SRO SRO's in every building and uh the WLPD is now working on another grant to submit which could provide a dedicated individual consistently in every building. So right now we have coverage in every building most of the time if as assuming that there's Yep. Yes. But it's not necessarily consistent in every building that same person. So uh the difference would be what if this grant is is awarded uh to the WOPD that uh there'd be a consistent person uh similar to what is at Willis as Dr. Yen was uh alluding to. Follow up. What's do you have any timelines estimate
091of this grant? Maybe we'll get when we'll get that. I'm not aware of a timeline specific summer, but I don't know when it would be finalized. They said they hope to have it finalized by the end of this summer for the next school year. Yes, but I'm not certain of when the award would be. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? Great. Hearing none, we will hit the There we go. Okay, everybody's buttons are working. Super. Um, and that motion carries. I hit the wrong one. Okay. A lot going on here. Next item is the food service bid recommendation. And Mrs. Krunk. Yeah. As Miss Fitz Simmons detailed earlier, the West Lafayette Food Service Department is a member of the K to2 Leading Indiana Cooperative or CLI, which performs the RFPs for food purchases for its
092members on an annual basis. Click is recommending the initial contract and renewals that are outlined in your board memo for the 2526 school year. Please approve that recommendation as submitted. Okay, I need a motion, please. George, move to accept it. Okay, thank you. I would like to second. Moved by George, seconded by Lawrence. Is there any discussion? Nope. All righty. Hearing none, we shall go ahead and vote. Look how fast that was. Wow. All right. Thank you. That motion passes. Next item is the meal price recommendation. And back to you, Michelle. And once again, Miss Fitz Simmons shared with you some reasons why we need to look at increasing the lunch meal price for 2526, including the federal reimbursement rate decreasing for lunch this past year, the loss of COVID supply chain assistance funds, a
093loss in commodity entitlement dollars, and an increase in labor and food costs. I know that doesn't sound super positive right now. I apologize for that. Um, please approve the recommendation to increase lunch prices by 50 cents for the 2526 school year. We are not recommending any change in breakfast prices at this time. Okay. I need a motion, please. Moved by Rachel. Would you like to move? Uh, I make a motion to approve the um meal price recommendation. Okay. And Lawrence Enthusiast Seconds. All right. Any discussion on that? Yes, Rachel. Um, Mrs. Grunk, I understand that reimbursements from the federal government right now are somewhat fluid. uh if that um support were to change, is there any situation in which you would bring this to us mid year? If if you know, how would you handle
094that if there's another significant drop, I guess, is my question. Miss Fitz Simmons, would you like to maybe chime in on that one? Um there's just so many unknowns at this point that I I can't say one way or another. So, I that's what I I guess I'm not asking my question very well. I recognize there are a lot of unknowns and so I just want to know at what point you would come back to us and say, "Hey, we're in more trouble." Like what would that look like? I would say we we are always in good communication about what's happening. If it got to that point, we really need to come back. We we could we would bring information back to the board if if we saw there were an issue um mid year.
095I think I I would like to think that they wouldn't change things midy year on us. Um but I've been proven wrong before. So that's Yeah, thank you. I think I just was wanting to make sure that um this wouldn't be a suffer and silence scenario or you would come to us really upside down at the end of the year. If there if there was a change that large, we would definitely keep you informed. So thank you. That's all. Okay. We'll certainly keep you keep the communication going through Friday like we do too. So there'll be constant dialogue if there were any kind of risks. May I just ask a clarification question? So I remember before and I learned that kids have to have milk is by law even if they don't want to drink
096it. The some many kids prefer to drink water instead of milk, but they still have to have the milk, pay for it, throw it away. Okay. But they they will be charged for the as a whole package without with milk, right? Okay. So I I wonder by any chance for those who don't want to have milk constantly don't have to pay for the milk or something like that. Yeah. Because Yeah. With the the increase of the cost and then we have to increase the the milk price and but some pe some kids don't really consume the milk constantly but they have to pay for it. I wonder whether there's a way to save money for some of the kids. I'm guessing that you will suggest that that's the requirement that it has to be a
097part of the plan. They don't have to take it, but it has to be a part of the meal from that. Yes. Okay. So, that's a cost of ours. So, everybody need to It has to be part of the reimbursement meal via USDA guidelines. Okay. So, it's one price for that meal that fits the USDA guidelines for that that meal. And the last time I was at the elementary school, there was a bin for kids to put food in that they didn't want that was still packaged and whole um that they could share with their peers. So if there's an extra thirsty kid who wants lots of milk that day, they're able to put it in the bin if they don't want it and then the one who wants extra milk can go grab that
098and that still exists according to the nods. So um it's not just being poured out is what I'm saying. There's an option for it to be shared. Okay, that's great. We don't waste those, right? Okay, thank you. Because we buy them, right? So, y thanks. Okay, super. Any other comment on the meal price? Okay, let's go ahead and start the buttons. Wonderful. All right, and that motion passes. Okay, the next item is the copier lease and buyout. And that's back to you. Yep. Uh the district currently has a number of different types of copers under varying lease agreements and service contracts that amount to approximately $7,000 per month. Buildings have started to indicate issues with current equipment and service responsiveness. Our goal is to move to one lease and maintenance contract for the whole district
099to establish consistency and less confusion. We are recommending the lease of copiers through Toshiba through the state quantity purchase agreement or the QPA. The state QPA awards various contracts for government goods through competitive bidding as outlined in state code. All government entities are able to take advantage of this pricing. Toshiba was awarded the QPA through contract 5883. Toshiba will also be buying out any current leases the district has remaining. The monthly lease after all of this amounts to $3,819.17 per month. The service agreement through Toshiba will also be build at a per page amount of 0.0028. 0028 for a monochrome copy copy and 0029 for color copies without any minimum monthly service charges. The agreement includes all maintenance, repair, toner, and other supplies as well as the addition of paper cut with card readers, which
100offers the ability for followup printing throughout the district with employee badges. The new lease and service agreement through Toshiba is expected to save the corporation approximately $2,400 per month compared to current expenditures. determined the lease is 60 months with a D dollar buyout option. So, we will own them at the end of the 60 months. Um, the agreement has been uh legally reviewed by Miss Billingsley. Please approve the recommendation as submitted. Okay, that was longwinded. Sorry. That's all right. Recommendation. David. Um, yeah, I appreciate uh Sean's response regarding the copy paper saving suggestion and so I wonder how Yeah, I kind of relate to this but not closely. I I wonder how we process that in the future because I feel that if we are kind of cautious uh consciously save paper we probably can
101save a lot given you know for many of those uh documents we may make many copies but if we digitalize them and we can save a lot that way. So I wonder like moving forward how we process that saving initiative, paper saving initiative in our end endeavor to save funds across the district. This is one step that u Mr. Hamilton and I have been talking about for the past couple of years. Um and so as you can see we're going to be saving about $25,000 a year with this. um they actually estimated high on the estimation for the number uh or what we will be paying for the service contract on a perclick basis. We will get data on a monthly basis to look at our usage rates over time. Um and this is just
102something that uh you know we need to make sure that this is still an important resource for our teachers. So that's something we need to keep in mind. Um but those are conversations that we we can have going forward and Mr. Hamilton and I have already been talking about ways that we can also um continue to save money going forward. So the key is that data can engage dialogue which is something that I think you were the point you were getting to uh in our interaction. But the second point is that our teachers work daily to ensure that they have the necessary materials to educate our students to the highest level. So engagement in that dialogue if we look at the data to guide conversations would be very important that all stakeholders have input so
103that our teachers have the necessary resources. But it's certainly a great piece of or a great topic to to discuss w with data that can guide that dialogue. Thank you. Super. Anything else? All right. I'll go ahead and start the vote to approve the copier, lease, and buyout. Alrighty, that passes as well. Close. Okay. Um, super. The next item is the ad hoc policy committee report, which we did briefly discuss during our work session, but um, Rachel, please go ahead and so the policy committee met I have no idea. My my device is not liking me tonight. Okay. Uh so we met on April 27th and our new configuration. Uh so the ad hoc policy committee members are uh Lawrence and David and myself. Um we met also with um the central office team. uh
104we picked up and I recapped that in our work session what we believe the process will be but uh just for the benefit of those here um we are on step four of that order of operation where the policy committee chair is presenting the work of the policy committee as it appears in our notes to the full board at the work session or regular meeting is scheduled. Um and so tonight we bring you uh four policies for a first reading. One of the um requests of the policy committee is that we consider all policies prior to this meeting regardless of where they are in the process uh back to the first reading status so that um we can kind of start new um with those policies. So, um, with that being said, um, we are,
105um, requesting, we'll get I I'm trying to get skip through the content here, but, um, we are requesting that, um, the board chair release to us, um, all uh, unreed B and C policies. Uh, so that is everything that CCHA has provided us for um, the the B and C framework. Um, we are most of the way through A, not completely. We have quite a lot of B and I don't believe that we've touched much on C at all. Um, additionally, I'll add on, and I I'm I'm speaking a little bit out of turn because I haven't consulted David and Lawrence on this, but um, we do know that, as we heard in the ISBA regional meeting, that there's going to be there has been some new laws passed that are going to directly impact
106um, policies. And so, as soon as we receive information on those new laws from Dr. Riner and from CCHA, we would propose to prioritize those over others that are in the queue based on nods. That feels okay to everybody. So, yes, that makes sense. Um, do we need to vote about me? We really um No, it's just at your discretion. You can just decide. Yeah, there you go. That's what we're asking for. uh we will continue to provide it organized in this format and I would encourage all members to continue to review this working document. It's shared with everyone for everyone to see. Um and please it is incumbent upon all members to ask if they have questions uh for clarification uh or if they need additional information or or see an error that we've
107made. Um it would be very helpful if that feedback could be given. Great. How would you like to receive that feedback? Well, it should be emailed out to the full board as all of our communication is supposed to be great. As I understand it, all of our communication is supposed to be Yeah. Again, as I outlined premeating, though, that doesn't mean we're going to be changing the policy. It means that that will guide the structure of the subsidiary votes that we make through the course of the policy discussion. Okay. Excellent. Um, and I would like to clarify for the community that if you go to wl.k12.in. us/board umward slashmeings-info and scroll to the bottom. All the board documents are down here and you can find the policies that I'm about to um first reading. Um,
108Dea, can I ask a quick question about the committee? Um, so there were two policies that aren't listed on the agenda and I just wondered if you'd share publicly um the status of those C200 anti-bullying and G450 about naming rights. Yes, I'm happy to do so. Um, so of the policies that we currently have released to us, um, we took a pause on just a minute. G450, is that right? Yes. Yeah. G450. Um, we had uh kind of some questions on and are waiting for legal counsel and input on that one and that's not right. Yeah, it is. Um, second guessing this is quite a long document at this point you wrote in your Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm reading my own words. Um, and the second one that we paused on was C200. Um
109and so there was a new law passed specifically on this effective 7125. So we recognize we're going to get updated um legal counsel and so we paused on that one um for the sake of some efficiency. Very sensible. Anything else? Okay. As u as Rachel said, so if the whole board member, other board member if you have any uh any suggestions, any comments regarding these four policies, you can you know send to the whole board. So maybe next time we committee policy committees can discuss and the next meeting will be the second reading my understanding. So if you have any um amendment uh you can send writen in email sent to Amy because uh she need to read that I don't want her feel to everyone. Yeah to everybody and also CC to Amy so
110when she run the meetings so she have something pronounced before her so she can less anxious. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. So just make her life easier. So I'm just going to wing it like I always do. Yeah. That's all. Thank you. Great. And if any member of the community goes to the website and reads these policies and has um suggestions they would like to be considered, they can also email the entire board at uh board school board at G how is that? I'm sorry I didn't prepare school board members at wl.k12.in. us. Um so with that the first policy for first reading is A125 and that concerns nepotism, conflict of interest, gift gifts and use of corporation resources. The second one is policy C475, school sponsored publications and productions number H200, relations with special interest
111groups and H250, school library material removal request procedure. Rachel, um if I could please on item uh or on proposed policy A125 regarding nepotism conflict of interest gifts. Sure. um in discussion and you can see there are some uh questions um but I want to clarify for our members there is as part of this policy disclosure form that board members are asked to sign. Typically that would happen at the annual organizational meeting but we as a as a policy committee um would like to recommend that that disclosure form be signed at the time of the passing of this policy initially. So it' be a midyear and then going forward it would be signed at the um annual organizational meeting. Also it's been uh a conversation among uh the board at previous meetings that we recognize
112that some of our families do have a preference for cash or gift card gifts to teachers and this policy would change that uh structure potentially. Um, and so we have asked legal to help us understand what options could be to make that as least restrictive. We know that our teachers do not and we don't want to put any teacher in a a difficult position. Um, it is standard throughout the state that cash and and gift cards would not be given. Uh, and so we we've kind of been an exception to that. And that part, this part of that um uh policy is something that I believe that we as a board and as our community would have interest in and would want to kind of look at closely. Okay. And specifically not microwave ovens according
113to Yes. Right. So the p the previous nola policy did include an exclusion from us receiving any microwave ovens from anyone in the community at any point in time. So, we have removed that particular item as well with this. I say that's wise. Um, that's really why we all ran was for the sweet microwave ovens. Um, okay. Is there anything you'd like to share about uh 475? Um, yes, please. Sorry. Take your time in a lot. They my order in this document does not match the order on the agenda. So, I'm just wiggling around a little bit. While while we're waiting on that, can I also ask um who do we submit revisions to? The whole board. Yep. The whole board. So, the whole board knows, but the policy committee will receive those and discuss
114those specifically. And then it's all in this shared document what we what we observe. So, okay. Um and also maybe put in the subject line which one just for sanity's sake. That would be very helpful. Yes. So we don't miss any. That would be very helpful. Um so um C475 is um school sponsored publications and productions. Um we went back and forth on language that was in our previous policy um and tried to align that. And I think um I know that we asked legal counsel for that and that feedback has been provided. And so um I would just ask for people to kind of consider um what unacceptable content would mean to them as they review this um and and be prepared to kind of have that conversation about the definition of unacceptable. Okay.
115And how we might process that. I promise not to make any dumb jokes about cats. Moving on. Thank you. appreciate that. Um, and then finally, we're going to move on to age 200. And I would invite any Lawrence or David, if if I'm not presenting any of this, please let me know. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to correct. Um, H200, uh, we felt this one was pretty much, um, actually ready to go, um, for for review and consideration. Um it's a little bit unclear of the um connection to 9140 um that's listed in the crosswalk document and we did get clarification from legal on that. Okay. And then finally on policy um H250 school library material um removal request um this is a legal requirement um and it is obviously of great this
116one has been of great concern to our community. So there are a list of four questions uh and answers and we specifically requested that these questions and answers from legal be included with the policy document because we feel members of the community will also have those same um questions. Um and I think that is all that I have. Okay. Lawrence or David, anything to add? Lawrence? Yeah, I don't have too much but just only for this uh uh library since uh when I come back after meeting I just think about that probably we need to maybe add one steps uh say basically right now we have a policy require uh before you file this uh uh remove request forms you talk to the media library or media uh staff members I think probably we need
117another another person basically the building principles. So you talk to the uh librarian and also you talk to the uh principles before you know we want this issue settled uh within the building before they escalate. You know if you have the form we have to uh create a committees which are people's reading the whole books or whatever the materials and then um that's uh that's take a lot of time and a lot of effort. So I think if we can handle that within the building that's maybe better. So that's just something some thought I think maybe we can add uh that into this uh policy. I think it's on the okay it's on the uh in the middle of uh the page they saying uh say the requesttor the requester should first discuss the item
118concern with the school librarian. So maybe we can add this liberian and the principal something like that. So it's a that makes sense. The principal's in there. Yes. Principal in there currently the principal's in there. Yes. A building level administrator. It's on the next page. Oh, you see it's on the next page. Oh, okay. If that's already that's fine. Yeah. Don't never mind. So I just I think probably they are they are the the building. Yeah. Okay. And if you look at it at home and have any other suggestions, just email everybody and we'll That's right. Yeah, that's what I take those. Okay. David, did you have anything? No. Okay. Super. All right. And again, if anyone in the community has any feedback regarding those policies, please email the entire board and you can find
119them on the website. And if anyone has any trouble with that, feel free to email me and I will help. Um, okay. It appears as though we are to item number six, which is superintendent report. No, we are not. Just so that we're all clear on process from here. Okay. Um, every we're asking everybody to send any feedback or revisions. Um, but I think that from the board it might be good to be a little bit more specific on feedback on on the timeline. Um so because is we have about a month till the next meeting and it would be ideal not to get the responses like June 3rd. Um so can we request um that anybody on the board that has any recommended edits to any of these? Um get it in within two
120weeks? Is that too much to ask anybody? No, I think that's very reasonable. We when are we I don't remember when we're before the meeting. When are we scheduled to meet again? It's on my calendar by Mayst. Pardon me. May 21st. Meeting 21st. 21st. Yes. Responsible for board members to give us by the 21st. David or by the 20th. By the 20th. Okay. When we can all read four pages, I think. I'm going to send out a reminder. That's very And then then we'll we'll discuss at at our policy board meeting and our committee meeting and then get that back out to everybody else as quickly as possible so they can see our recommendations and then we'll vote on the final uh second reading at the next meeting. Correct. Right. Okay. Wonderful. Um anything else
121for the good of the order? All right. You're up. All right. Last last week, several of the central office staff members attended the Indiana Association of School Business Officials annual meeting. There were many opportunities for professional development. Uh similar to the board's recent Indiana School Board Association meeting or ISBA. We also received updates related to the legislative changes. We're working with legal counsel as well as the Indiana Department of Education to fully understand the implementation of the new laws and how that will look. We know that funding some here are some things that we know. Funding is going to be tight over the next two years given the limited increases uh to school funding and but also the impact of property tax relief and that goes multiple years. And interestingly, it was described to me
122as each district being like a snowflake. no district, no one district is alike. So truly as this implementation occurs and we see actual dollars um listed, that's how we'll begin to understand this. So it will be important for boards uh and school administrators to tell their story quote unquote u so that it's understood what this is looking like per school corporation as it as it unfolds. It'll take several months or years for us to fully understand the impact of property tax relief on us because of what I just described. Also, SEA 366 has language related to transfers which may impact our ability to accept transfers from TSC through the better accommodated standard. we along with TSC are reviewing with our legal councils and there's a possibility that we may need to open transfers uh be
123an open school um and continue to consider limits based on class size like we do now but possibly become an open district. And if we do that, that's going to require um that the board update policy pertaining to uh um uh transfers. And so we're going to certainly keep you updated on that so that we can make quick and informed decisions as we learn more. Uh there is also a bill HA102 that eliminates the requirement for teachers to be designated as highly effective effective improvement necessary ineffective with regard to evaluation. So we're going to be studying that and understanding what that can mean for us. Uh and then there's language in HA 101 uh that has led to changes to uh the teacher appreciation grant. Um current it's resulting in only 20% of teachers able
124to get this award through different qualifying categories as we better understand those qualifying categories. Um we will certainly be bringing that information to the board as we understand how we're going to need to implement that. Uh there will be guidance from the IND Indiana Department of Education. But what we do know is it's not issued across the board. Um it's literally issued to 20 no more than 20% of teachers per year. And then there's language in SEA 255 related to bully reporting changes uh and communication from uh what was up to 5-day requirement uh to the end of the next school day. uh it doesn't impact us so much in that you as a board had already stated that we would report within two days and so if there's a bully incident this day then
125by the end of the next day and so there's not a big change there but we are going to be working with uh legal counsel uh to understand what that um overall policy would look like so that the board will have something to discuss and approve based on what the board determines to be the policy uh related to West Lafayette Community School Corporation and staying within uh legal requirements. Again, we are going to continue to update the board as we better understand these required changes and that'll take time, but there's already work being done to understand those and of course uh the Indiana Department of Education is working um now on developing guidance as well. I want to thank Mrs. Austin for representing the board during the awards ceremony uh where Mrs. Kron officially received
126her IASBO award uh for state school business official of the year. I might have seen a teardrop of joy based on the board's representation. Um so thank you all for having a representative there and thank you Mrs. Austin for the drive. A reminder that the last student day is May 21st and we wish our students, staff, and families a safe summer break. I state that at this board meeting because at the next board meeting they'll be on recess. So, we're also preparing for and looking forward to celebrating our seniors uh during graduation, which is May 23rd at 7 p.m. Board members, you'll recall that we meet in the band room. Uh and you can plan to meet in the band room at 6:30 and we'll do our thing together to celebrate our amazing seniors that
127have been with us um for some time. Mrs. Croc, would you please report on accounts payable uh and funds reports? Of course. Thank you. Claims for the period of April 10th through May 2nd total $2,569,633.80 including regular corporation expenses in the Waw Bash Valley Education Center expenses. Of this amount, 1,623,732 were paid towards wages, salaries, and benefits. I provided you the final fund report for March 2025 in your board packets. Total cash on hand in all funds was $30,61,725. the education fund at a cash balance of $7,921,754. A preliminary fund report for April has also been included, but we have not yet finished entering receipts and reconciling for that month. Um, and the cash flow including the month of March showing the flow of revenue and expenses during that month for the education referendum operations
128fund is also included. I heard Mr. La say before you do that. So that that will conclude the report. if you would like to say something. I I did not intend to cut off Mr. Kron. Um but no, I just had a specific question about the changes to bullying law. Does the state actually keep track of bullying incidents? They do. Okay. There's a database. Okay. Oh, you mean tracking at the state level as Yes. At the end of each year, we're reporting that. The school districts are reporting that. Okay. Yeah. One of the things that I know had been talked about before is um you typically define bullying as something that happens consistently and if we're shortening the reporting period does it you think that's going to result in an increase in reported bullying because
129reporting things after only just a day or two? So it the state collects the actual so when you're reporting it, you're reporting that there's been um a bully um accusation. And so and then you've got so many days to report out on what you found in the investigation. And what you find in the investigation, you find that there was bullying, that bullying is reported to the state. Okay, that makes more sense. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, go ahead, Rachel. Related to legislation, Dr. Riner, um there was a decrease just under 1% of funding for special education next year. There was um an addition of um staffing requirement, I believe, for for a behavioral intervention. I believe we already have that on staff. I just wanted to confirm that with you. You you are correct that we
130do. Okay. Um and so is um how I'm just kind of curious how you're planning to manage the shortfall in special education funding. So it'll be a funding challenge across the board and we'll be looking at how we adequately fund our students um as we understand what we're facing. Thank you. Okay. Um let's start with you for uh board reports please. Um I attended the glass meeting on April 15th and I learned that um so typically for K2 students and we the school provide a special education service right and but for from that meeting I learned for the kids who actually are in the preschool and they they can if they need a special education service they can also contact GlassS to receive free special education service to know more about it. They can just
131call their office to learn about it. And I hope those preschools notify families about this information as well. And I'm not sure what other ways the family can know that they they can get a free special educated services. Well, glass and another thing is given that many uh special education educators uh feel a lot of uncertainty regarding their future job because of this change glass change and I think one option people are talking about is the joint appointment. For example, the glass can collaborate with different school districts um for those new employment because many people will be worried that they say they are hired by glass but later glass will be be dissolved then they they don't know where they will go later. So I don't think there's a final decision on that. But that
132certainly one possible solution is to have joint employment. So later they know after glass is dissolved they can go let's say west side to continue their job something. So yeah, I I I from multiple meetings I I learned many special education educators are worried about their job security after the change. So okay, thank you Rachel. Don't forget your mic. Just as a reminder um from the ISBA that there are um committee positions of open for region 4. Um those include the awards committee uh the nomination committee and perhaps most notably the legislative committee. um if we have an interest in um participating uh with the intentions of the ISB and their ISBA and their lobbying. Um this is your opportunity to have a voice in that and it's important uh to do that. I am
133on the board and not able to serve in that role so that leaves it down to the six of you. Um but I would encourage you if you're at all willing to consider applying for that position. Um and then from the West Lafayette Schools Education Foundation, um very focused on scholarships, seniors, and milestones. Um scholarship awards letters have been mailed to student recipients. There were 66 seniors who applied. 38 students were selected for 42 awards totaling $51,000. Um they will be recognized at the reception on Thursday, May 22nd. That is the night before graduation. um and many of the donors will be present at that time as well. So, it's a good opportunity to meet them um and thank them for their gift to our students and our schools. There was one new scholarship added
134this year uh bringing the total number of scholarships to 27. The newest scholarship is the West Lafayette Youth Baseball and Softball Scholarship. Um the foundation is honored to partner with the elementary and high school students. They launched the new pass the pride event. If you have not yet seen the video, I recommend that you watch it. Um, but this year's graduating seniors um, passed on their Red Devil pride, as I understand it, in the form of friendship bracelets um, to this year's current kindergarteners. Um, and so that's on the West Lafayette Schools Ed Foundation YouTube channel. Um, I think that that is it for the foundation. Okay, David, thank you for the reminder about um so it was a really light meeting at parks and wreck, but this will be the last time that I'm
135going to be uh reminding everybody about the grand opening of Kin Family Park because it opens a week from Thursday. The uh grand opening event is at 10:00 a.m. I pulled up the website uh just so that I could make sure to share all the cool details with everybody. Just a reminder, there's a recreational pond that has it's 4.2 acres for fishing, kaying, all kinds of fun stuff like that. There are nature themed play there are five different playgrounds. The cornflour or the cone flower corner, the bird's nest, um the treetop tower, and a couple more that they don't list here. There's also the historic Moore schoolhouse that um was restored and um can be uh outdoor classroom and interactive learning space. The schedule um everything starts around 10:00 there'll be food trucks and refreshments.
136Um uh more schoolhouse tours. Uh 10:30 there'll be the ribbon cutting event. Then in the afternoon there'll be at 2 to 4 we'll be kayaking on the pond. Uh 2:30 to 4:30 some story time and crafts. 4 to 6 there'll be a fishing derby and then 5:30 to 6:30 there will be outdoor yoga. So, lots of fun. It's the day after school gets out, so hopefully we'll have lots of kids, um, lots of families, lots of community members. It should be a really wonderful event. So, I hope to see everybody there. Great. Thank you, Dea. Um for the public schools foundation, it's exciting to announce that we had another one of our intermediate school teachers um awarded the spring grant recipient. So Aaron Pearson from the intermediate school with her grant project titled stop motion
137animation storytelling. So the reception is actually tomorrow at 5:00 May 13th at Kappa Wine Bar and everyone is invited to attend. Thank you Lawrence. Yeah, there's no uh committee uh community council's meeting. So I think uh they were scheduled for next new uh school years. So I don't have anything to report. The one thing I want to say I really appreciate everybody. So we finished this meeting 7:08. So um it's really uh appreciate I'm proud of everybody. So we work together especially Amy. Uh thank you for your leadership. Our meeting called these working sessions. we can work together for this things before the official meeting and the whole meeting run well organized. So I really appreciate that. So I also proud of our whole board. We just move on the right direction. Thank you. I
138may still talk for two hours. You don't know. But thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah. And you went and said that but I still got to give my report and it's going to take a minute. Yeah. How legislative. See um thankfully the Indiana legislative session is over. Um there is a lot to cover. Um if I got any of this wrong, please feel free to correct me, but there's a lot to consider. Uh so the state is creating a panel to explore ways of lowering ABA therapy costs. Uh state-run audits claim to have found improper payments over the years and apparently Indiana is one of the states that has the highest average charge for ABA therapy via Medicaid payments. Uh so that will develop later on in the fall and then the committee will make
139recommendations after that. Um and instead of funding universal prek or making a centralized childare program, there are several different bills that all make peace meal changes to early childhood education. Um some people say that Indiana is an early childhood education desert, which makes our local prek program all the more important. Um the budget and the property tax relief kind of go hand in hand. Uh so there's going to be a $2 billion revenue shortfall projection over the next two years which means cuts and some of the cuts are public colleges are being cut by 5%. Public health funding is being cut by 60%. And state funding for trail maintenance, public broadcasting, and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library was cut entirely. Although the governor's wife is trying to raise private funds to restart the Imagination Library. So,
140hooray for that. Um, the property tax relief will amount to up to $300 per year for personal property tax holders. However, that may be offset by new taxing authority that was given to local municipalities and they will likely take that power and increase taxes or create new ones to cover the property tax shortfall. So, the state giveth and then taketh away more. State K through 12 education did receive a 2% increase but again in the same vein the state giveth and then taketh away more. Uh income limits on school voucher programs have been completely eliminated. So there is no maximum income level for school vouchers at this point. Teacher minimum salary is now or will be $45,000 and at least 65% of tuition support funds from the state have to be spent on teacher pay.
141That's an increase of 62%. And that would normally be a good thing and I would say, you know, on the face of it, it is. But combine that with the changes to the teacher excellent grants that Dr. Grer was just talking about, and it actually takes away a little bit of local control for um teacher compensation. Indiana now has partisan schoolboard elections, but thankfully that bill was watered down a tiny bit. So you don't have to declare a party. You don't even have to declare that you're independent. You could declare nothing at all according to the legislation that actually passed. And if you do declare, you're not going to be subject to a primary process. There will be some new cyber security provisions provided by the state that public bodies and school corporations will have
142to adopt. I assume that they're going to be minimum standards so that school corporations and other public bodies will be able to make um positive changes to them. But that's uh going to need some extra um how do I put this? Some extra administrative work uh particularly on the part of um this body and the IT staff. Schools are now automatically required to enroll qualified middle school students into advanced math courses unless a parent objects. Uh I don't know if we have a process for that yet, but we will have to come up with one soon. And then uh in my personal/professional opinion, Senate Bill 289 is a complete mess. Uh it attempts to eliminate DEI, but it also retains several programs that are in fact DEI. But what makes it worse is that people
143can bring civil suits under the law, but only for actual damages, court costs, and injunctive relief. Now, if you read the rest of the law where they attempt to define new standards for what discrimination means, um, basically anyone that feels bad about something can attempt to bring a civil suit. And even if they don't win, you still have court time, court costs, attorney fees. So, we'll have to be mindful of that going forward. Okay. You don't get to go last anymore. Well, how about how about this? The thing I did forget to say u is I want to offer my congratulations and my apologies to all the graduating students. I'm not going to be in the country during graduation but otherwise I would be there cheering you on from wherever the students want to place
144us. Okay. Thanks. Um I have a quick question regarding that. You talk about the 300 up to 300 property uh deductions and you say the mun municipal maybe have some other uh ways to to to charge tax levy the the the property owner something like that. If my reading of the reporting and the law are correct in it it was a combination. So you have the budget and the property tax law that both passed. The property tax relief, as they call it, will give individual land owners, property owners up to $300 in relief per tax year. But at the same time, local bodies that don't normally charge taxes or able to charge limited amounts of taxes like municipalities have been given the authority to create new taxes. So, for example, when you file your taxes
145at the end of the year, you normally have federal income tax, state income tax, and then some municipalities have already been granted the authority to charge certain taxes like a county. I think you're talking about the local income tax. Yeah. So there there may be increases in local income taxes and some places that don't have local income taxes may start to right and schools would not apply to that and so for that reason uh you know we would not benefit from that. Correct. We don't have authority to charge income tax. Correct. We still have our normal referendum levy powers but we don't have the power to add you know a school funding income tax. Yeah. Rachel, my understanding was I was going to add on to that because George said the magical words of we
146have uh still a referendum ability, but state did make pursuing a referendum more complex this year. Um they have changed it so that a they've changed the wording because they like to do that every session I believe uh to make it a little bit more um difficult. Um, but the other thing that they've done is changed it so that you can only uh have a referendum vote uh in the fall cycle. So in a November election every two years, general election only. So there's no more uh May votes. Um they are just doing that in November now. So that is something we'll need to consider. I should say that's something this board will need to consider when uh we come up to the next referendum. You'll hear, speaking of the next referendum, you you'll hear
147um Mrs. Krunk and uh Mr. Reutder talking about this too, but we'll have to change our thinking even in referendum and what that looks like with regard to thinking a wider range um because uh tax rates change, but the dollar amount of a referendum doesn't. And so when you think about property income or property taxes uh to the school school funds, we'll have to think differently with regard to the referendum too and thinking up to a certain rate but really keeping our amount the same because and this is something that we'll watch and understand if AV doesn't go up the way that we would hope it would with these new um uh tax relief initi initiatives. The referendum fund is the one fund that could go down and that will be very serious for us.
148So, we'll have to watch that. We're okay for next year, but we'll have to hope that the AV balances that out. And as we think about our next rep referendum at in well into the future, we're going to have to think about how these new um changes to to property taxes impact our referendum fund and how we'll run that in the future. Okay. Go ahead, Lawrence. Yeah, just one more. You talk about the the mass automatically enrollment. Do you have the uh bill numbers or something? I can double check. Uh uh the uh go ahead. Yeah, you got you can house bill 1634. There you go. Um 16 uh 16. So speaking of the ISBA um committees. I was on the legislative one and it's um a really rewarding experience and I learned a lot
149from it. You're not choosing your own adventure and just walking in and saying, "I would like to talk about this this year." You know, they have the previous year um platform and they guide you through the process and it's a table full of people. It's very interesting. So, I would encourage um people who aren't me to do that because I wrote up my whole application and I thought I don't have time. Um okay. So, the RDC uh purchased a bunch of equipment for the park. Um, and it was approved and there are lighting projects that are open for bids and the fire department's getting some new safety equipment. And unfortunately, I had to miss board teacher discussion, but I understand that everybody is looking forward to summer and things are proceeding with board teacher discussion.
150There was not a lot to report from that. Correct. Correct. Correct. So, um, with that, I will adjourn at a record setting 7:19. Our next meeting is June 9th at 5:00 pm and Oh yeah, I got to do that. Well, I'm almost there. We got um the work session will be at 5 if needed. The regular board meeting will be June 9th at 6. The upcoming dates of interest are May 21st for school year concluding May 22nd for snow up day number three which we won't need and 23rd and then graduation is also the 23rd. Now I need a motion. Rachel and D. I got second. Okay. All those in favor, we got to push buttons. Here we go. There. All right. Thank you very much everyone. And this was a great meeting.