001it's 5 o'clock we're let's get this show on the road huh um this is our work session to discuss the policies that we intend to uh pass hopefully this evening at our regular meeting and there is no voting during a work session and um the way this is going to work is the first thing we're going to do is look at the list of um second reading items that we have this evening I'm going to call them out by name and if you feel like you can you have something you need to say about that policy raise your hand if there is no one who has anything they need to say about that particular policy I'm going to put it in a folder that we'll be able to go ahead and move through quickly once
002we get to the ual meeting and if anyone has things they need to discuss then we'll return to it um everybody will get two opportunities to speak we're going to go down the table in a row now that I can see everybody and um the first question I will be asking once we get to a suggestion for a change of policy is of uh Amy Matthews our Council from ccha tonight I will be ask asking the very simple question is that aligned with the law if it is then we'll discuss it further at the meeting if it is not then we will not be discussing it further because we don't want to open the corporation up to any liability the second question I will be asking is of Dr Griner and his team is that
003aligned with our current practice whatever the suggestion is if it is wonderful we'll talk about it further when we vote later on if it is not not then we will move on without bringing that suggestion forward uh in my email I asked for written uh amendments or changes to any policies did anyone bring anything in writing for Roberta and Tom and myself to make our lives less difficult in terms of amend yes email okay super um if you could forward those um at the appropriate time if they're both legal and in accordance with the practice that would be great yes I have something but it's mixed with my own comments and some T maybe I will use later I will forward to emails great thank you than um okay so the first one we are
004going to be talking about is non-discrimination and anti-harassment oh sorry one more thing we're going to stop at six o'clock because we have a meeting and whatever we don't get through we're going to push through to a third reading in April so if we get through one we will be looking at one policy if we get through all 10 yatsi um okay so the first one we're going to be talking about then is the non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy number a100 does anyone have anything they need to say okay I'm going to put it in the to discuss pile thank you Mrs wit number two A1 125 the we already did 100 it's already in the talking pile I just need one hand it's fine we're gonna talk about it okay in minut okay 8 125
005nepotism conflict of interest gifts and use of Corporation resources does anyone have anything on that policy that they need to discuss with the rest of the class okay that's going in the pile number three a175 whistleblower protection does anyone have anything they need to discuss about that one Mrs is mford okay number A2 200 Firearms weapons and destructive devices does anyone have anything Mrs wit thank you very much a 225 reporting of suspected child abuse or neglect Mr W okay number a250 no tobacco Dr Yin okay number a275 School Wellness does anyone have anything they need to say about school Wellness terrific hey wonderful good deal we got one all right and number a300 responsible use of technology and internet use policy anyone have anything on that one Mrs Mumford and finally nope not finally
006a two I'm sorry a 325 communicable disease anyone have anything on okay and a 350 Civility and decorum policy anyone have anything on that sweet okay we've got two so again once we get to that moment in the meeting I will bring those two forward for the final vote we will put those into practice and um move on with the discussion so again everybody is going to get two chances to talk about each policy I'm going to go right down the table because I don't want to mess up anybody's names so I need to get back to where I was sorry my computer got weird Okay so the first one we are going to discuss everybody is going to have two chances each chance will be three minutes long is a 100 non-discrimination and anti-harassment
007oh you brought it up so maybe I should let you talk first right and then the rest of the club okay go ahead that might help the conversation no that makes sense uh so in the previous or the existing policy on all of these um in a in our current uh setup we added in parentheses including gender status sexual orientation and gender identity as a further clarification that is not legally required but that is something that we made a decision to add uh to the policy in the last go round uh to create a more welcoming and specific environment for our families and students and teachers so I would propose adding that parenthetical um description as well to this policy okay would that be consistent with the law yes okay thank you would that be
008consistent with our practice actually consistent with current policy I agree with Mrs Whit wonderful does anyone else have anything to say starting with DEA just yes or no on that topic that she brought up no okay Mr Wong that topic I don't have any but I have something else yeah I know Dr yen so I wonder uh so we have a bully policy separated from this harassment I want to I wonder how they are related and U of the bullying policy the bullying policy is that under a separate set of laws for one thing bullying is completely a state law concept and it's only student to student and it doesn't have anything to do with a protected class any student could be bullied for any reason versus is this a100 policy covers really all of
009the federal discrimination and harassment laws okay so boou is not a sub category of these harassment no it's a totally separate law and separate policy and the bully is only applied to students students correct and that may have been in your previous policy I don't know but that's legally wrong legally bullying is only student to student under Indiana Law okay great thank you um Mr shot do you have anything nothing okay does Mrs do you have anything left okay I think we're ready to move this one forward and discuss it what we will do is um draft the language for the change so this one is going to go in the two change folder and we're going to add gender identity so the specific language is including gender status sexual orientation and gender identity and
010I will forward the email beautiful that's perfect I do have a question about gender status okay that doesn't really have a legal definition so that I do have a concern about that from a perspective of how that is enforced and implemented because I think youve covered it in the other items could you read the other items sure uh it's including gender status sexual orientation and gender identity yeah gender identity should cover anything in the gender real so I think the logic initially when adding that language is that students may not always have a clear understanding of their identity and so that language was separate from their gender identity gender status means if they're unclear on that identity I I get that um and I appreciate that but one thing to share with you all part
011of my role as your attorney is to help you make decisions that are going to put the um School in the least amount of legal risk and the more you add a category that's undefined legally the more you're at risk for violating your own policy so simple is almost always better simpler so in this case I would definitely recommend you just go with gender identity because that would cover that's a large that would cover that a large phrase okay yeah that the um concern you talk about or the scenario you talked about would be covered okay great that works for me and the next step is we'll take your suggestion and we'll forward it to Amy and we'll have a version of the policy with your change and a version of the policy without your
012change in April and so we'll be able to choose yes or no on both of those or also we'll vote on your change first yeah because I was going to say for efficiency make a motion on one and then that goes through you don't even have to spend the time on the second one exactly and then we'll have the um the both versions on the web like we used to with the yellow and the red and the green yeah okay super next one nepotism conflict of interests they have more issues on that dep on this one I I thought you were saying did we have anything to say in regards to first I'm sorry go ahead we'll get there I've never done this before yeah okay what is your issue on that so I actually
013have a couple I don't know let's do them one at a time otherwise I'm going to get lost so the first one is on page stage one um in regards to the title 9 and title 6 coordinators um I would like to see them be the assistant superintendent instead of the athletic director assistant athletic director and principal and as I reviewed really any school district I've looked at in all of the state of Indiana I haven't found anywhere that someone uses their athletic director um they're all at a higher District level athletic directors are working directly with coaches and and students right in the trenches and I don't think they're the best option for being that coordinator um so I would like to see that change to the assistant superintendent and one of them in
014the future could be switched to the de eii or E position we've talked about once that gets filled okay would that be consistent with the law yes great would that be consistent with practice we could absolutely work work with that title okay is there a reason why we have chosen for it to be the athletic director I would need to defer to thank you I was going to say that was there in policy Rachel was there go ahead Rachel the reason it's placed in the current location on the last policy review was to a move the supports and the investigation process a little bit closer to the student okay help the students feel more comfortable it was also placed there after we had understanding of a male and a female athletic director uh athletic director
015and assistant athletic director to help there be some comfort and flexibility there in terms of whether a same sex or opposite sex gender would be conversation would be helpful okay so it was really to allow for some balance between those two things um I don't specifically have an objection to moving it to those but I do believe whenever we can um bring a resolution uh closer to the student the better off we are so that was where that originated okay um Mrs mper do you have anything else to say about that one just um it's a valid point but in experiences I think it's frequently there's things happening at the athletic level so actually taking it to a higher level as a coordinator I feel is more appropriate than um in the trenches um Dr
016grer can you clarify for me is there anything that requires a student to talk to any particular person in this or do they have the option to talk to no when the question came up we actually Mrs Roth and I talked about that and agreed that no in any situation if there's conflict you would assign a different person and that's why we're really indifferent to the okay what we're we're good with the board's desire on that okay um Mr Wong do you have anything else to say yeah I think I understand uh uh rual a point close to the situation but also I think uh theya make a even for me I think that's better leave somebody far away from the situation so they can make kind of uh imp partisan uh mediators kind of
017roles in the C is so that's my opinion thank you okay if you wouldn't mind getting a little closer to your microphone I'm having a hard time hearing you close no I heard you but just yeah in case yeah oh that's better thank you Mak sense Rachel do you have anything else you need to know as I said I mean that's the history on it I think um like Dr grer I feel like it could be acceptable either way um it might be helpful to play through what a scenario would look like I think we're making an assumption here that most of these will come through the high school I don't know if that's an accurate assumption or not but um that also could play into it as well okay Dr Yan um I think
018I um when we passed to the last revision I remember we had this passed the policy before and that time I I wonder whether and we had a assistant superintendent at that time maybe we didn't at that and so sounds to me it makes sense to have somebody who are more distanced from the school to play that role because yeah okay um Mr shot Mr Marley I don't have a Anna has the time and the wherewithal to do it okay um anyone else have anything show hands okay do you have the language written for that change would you please forward it to me okay and then I will add this uhx okay and then Mr Wong was that also your adjust some separate issues you have a separate issue with a00 yeah yeah yeah so
019if you finish that I can yep we're we're ready I have others but you can go ahead okay let's I have I have two issues sure one is U you know there's uh there's formal compation uh compliance form is found here so I didn't see the link over there so maybe we need add the yeah that would be something you can add later okay so that's will be a separate uh form we it would be when you post it on your website there' be an ability to click and there' be a link there but I didn't see that form yet so yeah yeah cuz it's not posted up is it a legal form that the state of Indiana requires what I'm not sure the exact form we're talking about no that's they say the formal
020complaint the formal complaint form yeah Complaint Form is found here and that's you need to have one for certain um but there is not a state form if that is the question but there needs to be one okay I'm sure that there is one yeah form approval is something that really is is typically an administrative function that your administrator shenard has one and we have one that we recommend as well they will work closely with you guys on that okay so there will be a form so is there a reason that as school board members we can't see this form before this is all being ped on the policy you can see it she's just saying you wouldn't formally approve it so yeah we'll show it to you absolutely I've never seen it so I'd
021like to see you to take a look because I didn't see that we'll work with legal counsil to use their since they've got one I'll makee yeah and then we will absolutely share that with the board okay so this will be separate form nothing with this a 100 policy you can we can do that separately you won't have to do anything with it you're just going to see it because you're requesting to see it what what Miss Matthews is suggesting is that the board doesn't vote to approve a form the board approves the policy but we will share that with you so you can approve the policy independently yes okay got you and can I have another issues give me just a second I was looking to see if that one is on our website
022and I'm not seeing any hot links in our current we can do that later policy but that's where I would expect to find it okay um so that's satisfied okay go ahead so theya go first all I can say second issu what's the procedures I can finish first and go ahead okay another things regarding the NIS NIS nondiscrimination based on genetic information of the employee and I think we have this one uh in our uh existing policy which is 3122 do 02 and I think probably we need to add on that uh uh the definition of U genetic information and also we need some sentence about protect genetic information of employees I think that's under uh title to that's my understanding thank you okay so are you saying that what's in our current policy is
023not reflected in this policy that we're okay um I know you didn't draft these but do you have any information about genetic discrimination your um re your uh references legal references at the end of this document cite all the various laws that are covered in this and the genetic information non Discrimination Act which is the source of that particular protected class for employees is listed here so that a member of the public or anyone else could look that up and see the entire law it's not anything that would be discretionary of that you can choose what the definition is because it's based on a law um so you could certainly put something in but it's not necessary in my opinion and also um another aspect is knock on wood in my many years of working
024with schools since this past I've had zero I'm really jinxing but so it's one of the least applied or least High action legal areas in schools and it's Incorporated by reference here yeah and it's really it really only applies with your insurance anyway okay in so it's not even directly things that we do it's through the insurance aspect of things mainly excellent okay go ahead I was just going to suggest Mr Wong if you're interested you could go read that law it is um uh it is quite long and I don't I don't know that it would be helpful to to put in here it's it would unduly bulk up this policy so I think that the reference makes a lot of sense and that is in there be right after the question all the
025legal rights looking at it right there yeah I know he's a long things but I just uh because the the key things is protect uh employee employees uh genetic informations so basically that's called ginaa G that's uh prohibit employ year to collect the genetic information from I think that will be help us uh to protect U our faculties uh you know St you're bound by and it's it's built in here with the genetic information but from you legal respond view this very very rare is this won't be I mean if we don't have this I mean from Corporation point of view the liability legal liability prot yeah and adding the definition does not give you any extra protection because you're bound by the law and you've stated genetic information as a protected class and you've
026stated the reference to the law okay got you thank you you're very welcome and then I think that's okay you're good okay daa did you have another um I did so on three one um under each of the coordinators I wondered if we could include an email address um I think we find that this day and age individuals appreciate emailing um concerns and like I said as as I was reviewing other school districts this was free quently done M to include an email address actually I think in all of them that I found included an email address so I was wondering if we could do that would that be consistent with yes I would recommend though um that you make a generic email that forwards to the person because if you put a name and
027then it changes and that person is gone you're now out of compliance in your policy so I would recommend you make generic title 6 coordinator at blah blah blah Title 9 coordinator and make those emails and of course your Tech folks can make it to where those flow to whoever is in that role at the time okay would that be consistent with our practice good yes great that's fine okay I don't we were concerned I think um name changes can change and so that's why even assistant superintendent as as opposed to assistant at Roth if she yeah so I like that that's a great solution just make make generic email addresses put the forwarding on and you're good to go great thank you is there anyone who disagrees with adding email for any reason okay
028great so what we'll do when is that everything on this policy no okay um so okay so far we've got two iterations we're going to look at we're going to have a different person as the title 9 coordinator and we're going to add orientation and gender identity so on both of those changes we'll also add the email um down at the bottom since it's uncontested um go ahead so at the bottom of page one it says in addition each School building shall have a designated building level coordinator can we reference who that will be and it doesn't even need to be by name but so that we know so that individuals know who that coordinator is could we just do WLS Title 9 Wes Title 9 W JS Title 9 at BL blah and call
029those out too for the individual building level people I think that would be the easiest solution would that be so so help me understand each School District I mean each building has a Title Nine yeah and I'm saying rather than calling them out by name just like with the others we could have an email for each school and then Mr Hamilton could route it to the correct person and that's a good route because the reason why it's not listed in the same way is because you're building level coordinators may change by titles over time right um a lot of times in schools you get where maybe you have Deans for a while maybe you have assistant principles for a while but then those titles change more frequently so that's why the titles aren't there but
030it having the email again for that forwarding would be a fine way to deal with that and how would we know who that person is I don't think we would that's more of an administrative issue I think we'd just leave it to our building Administration to assign yeah they can keep a keep a log of it or um have that as an administrative guideline even or you could email them and say do you have red hair do you have brown hair narrow it down Rachel did you have something I know I'm sorry I just wanted to point out to everybody that we just added seven email addresses to generic entities and at some point we might want to ask our superintendent how many generic email addresses we would want to have and what would be
031purposeful um uh I'm just and I don't have strong appealing strong opinions that seven is too many but if this is a device that we're going to employ um we might we might want to just consider that does principal at wl. y yada work is that an email that we currently use no about yeah we're talking about two-step authentication on seven different emails operates this way and we're just on one policy there will be there are other policies as we go along that have contact points so I mean we are we are a relatively small School Corporation rather large bureaucratic bubble or that we we're planting the seed of one right now so I just want to point that out for for presedential kind of thought know that this this policy and there's maybe two
032others that are really legally heavy child abuse reporting is another one but that doesn't have a particular person attached to it so you probably aren't going to have a large number of policies that would have the urgency to have an email address and if the person changed you know it's simple to call them it's not matter of it being immediate so in that regard of future policies I don't have too many concerns thinking through all the future that you're going to do because this one is relatively unique because it has all the very serious uh reporting obligations behind it and very immediate bullying is another point and I kind of feel like if we had our Dei individual and Mrs Roth monitoring all of those emails or many of those emails that would then route
033to the correct person that might be a way around it we'll have to figure that out yeah again I don't have a a problem with these seven I just want to say we've just we don't want seven seven and we're going to put through more policies I would not recommend it except for the ones where you really have have an immediacy to that that contact maybe we'll get a tick tock okay um did you have anything else on that one Mrs mumper yes I had one more on page three um it talks about that first or the second paragraph sexual conduct relationships with students and I wasn't clear why it was in this section and not um at the end because at the top it says um for reports complaints other than student sexual harassment
034because that would not be by a student in that case it would be perpetrator um would be the alleged harasser would be an adult not a student that's why it's in that section but you can move it to wherever as long as it appears in the policy so student sexual harassment you're saying it goes here because even though a student is being sexually harassed it's being they're being harassed by an adult is why it was put here that's why it was put there but I see your point and if it's the desire of the board to move it that's just fine I just wondered if there'd be some confusion but I didn't know um so that I wondered and then I actually wondered about two spots of wording um so that let's see the first
035sentence it says any adult who engages engages in certain sexual conduct I wondered if we could remove that word certain um yeah I I think that's fine I can't think of any sexual conduct that would not be covered if that's the question that wouldn't be certain yeah and then the other word would be um in the next sentence we probably pulled that from a regulation somewhere where they were in precise language but that's okay because you're going to be more inclusive rather than less and then at the end of that sentence it says may also be in violation of crimes and I actually think it would sound better to say in violation of law I looked that up and that's actually a legal phrase that's used violation of Crim very I had not heard that
036before we did not make that up y that's a weird one but and it sounded weird to me yeah it is it but you certainly could say or violation of criminal law if you wanted to yeah I say we've got enough change can we just leave it since it's well I would say why did we have two of us that bother why not fix it while we're fixing words I mean I suppose except I don't want to get too bogged down in the changes to the point where we don't have any changes made um does anyone object to changing it to violation of the law I think it needs to say criminal law it's specifically is a crime that we're dealing with in this violation of criminal law is that acceptable all right I'll put
037that in both iterations instead of crimes okay are we good yes Dr so I'm not sure whether we got conclusion on the contact person I wonder can we just replace the building level uh uh what's a what's a kind of leader or something and into principal so and of make at more specific the principle is the one under title six for Willis so in the several places it's called we that people need to report to the building level leader and so then we talk about different emails and can we just use principle in general then everybody knows who the principal is the reason why building leader is in there is for times when the principal may not be available these are all immediate report kind of policies so um I mean you could say to
038an admin a building administrator if you wanted to but I wouldn't want you to limit it just to the principal because then the question becomes what happens if the principal is not in the building that day yes some of what we've used in the past and our current policy is the principal or their design okay is another way to phrase that so the principal can designate people on their team to coordinate as long as that communicated the only concern I'd have about that is not who's the design yeah it's for to know who's the design so if you open it up to on this policy on a lot of policies that works great yeah but on this one where we're talking about immediate reporting I would make it as obvious as possible who the folks
039are so that you don't have anyone coming back later saying the policy was not clear about to whom we could go okay okay so we got a little work to do you're going to see three versions of this this month it'll be the one that includes someone else as the title 9 coordinator and the one that includes the orientation and gender identity language and also this original one with the changes we discussed like the emails and the crimes and so on okay so um it's going to be a little bit confusing and you're going to be voting on shoot there's going to have to be a fourth one we'll figure it out I haven't gotten that far yet let's just get this if people like your edit but they don't like mine then we're going
040to have to have a version that's got your edits a version that's got my edits and a version that's got no edits for everybody to vote on and we'll we'll maybe we need to keep iterating until we get to either or was there any disagreement could it just be the one the revised version we have to vote to amend meeting we would have when we did it as a policy committee we just had the conversation you're doing that right here one yeah go ahead I was just going to say this is probably one of the most complex ones that we're going to approach and so if you had multiple versions of this one it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have multiple versions of The Whistleblower or whatever so this one might just be
041more versions but what I just guess I didn't understand where was their disagree I thought I heard everybody agreeing that they could live with the suggestions that everybody's made can everybody live with all of those because I can just write it up as all of the changes and we'll talk about it again is we also could use the format that in previous review we'd have option A or option b and then vote and so you can vote on option A or option b uh and then then you just do a strike through and you're finished okay that and that could be another way that you could do it okay so we'll be voting this or that rather than yes or no okay we'll we'll get there I'll we'll figure that out yeah and that that's
042a very good point Mrs lit about the this is one of the most complex heaviest policies you will deal with that's why we put a a100 because it's really really important okay thank you very much that's a lot of things um okay who had the issue with a125 sorry what's the name of it uh nepotism DEA what was your so I actually had several questions on page one it says Schoolboard member or employee knowingly sorry let me find the where are you that's I to say let me oh at the bottom under conf the very bottom on page one um says conflict of interest occurs when a Schoolboard member or employee knowingly or intentionally May benefit financially from a contract with the corporation or a purchase made by the corporation I did not know if
043this um and it if this prohibits board members from accepting political contributions um from school contractors or if it has anything to do with that whichever way it goes it seems like it's some gray area and so I would like to clarify either yes they can accept political or no they cannot and it may be that they can as long as they don't know it's a school contractor because I certainly don't know everybody we do business well I think an important clarification needs to be made here m legally if there's a conflict of interest that doesn't necessarily mean that what's going on is prohibited it means it needs to be disclosed okay so anything that falls under that category that there's an an potential benefit needs to be disclosed and disclosed to the school or
044dis disclosed publicly in a form there's a state there's a state form and it's our recommendation as best practice that sometime through the year um typically most schools do it at um board reorganization time that at that January board reorganization meeting you redo annually your conflict of interest disclosure forms where everyone on the board would disclose if they have received anything and that doesn't prohibit you from having those contributions or having owning a business or whatever the case may be but it's part of the open door law kind of Concepts right and transparency that it be out there and political candidates also disclose their contributions on the very similar to that it's a disclosure aspect okay so can we add an additional sentence regarding that and also add that in January during the reorganizational meeting
045we'll do that form I would not recommend you add that because then you're limiting yourself if you I would just have you put it on your January stuff as your practice but if for some reason that has changed like it used to to be reorganization meetings could be in July if the legislature changed that Law changes that law now you're out of compliance so I would not want you to put that in your policy I would just have you do that as your practice um and then as to the explaining what that is that is one of many many conflicts so I'd be a little concerned about bringing that potential conflict out without having you've opened the door to needing to have a long list of things so in conflict of interest is a legal
046concept it's not um a discretionary so all of those statutes that are at the end go through the various aspects and also um the state uh organization that oversees that I can't remember which state agency it is it's on the form that you fill out but that agency's website also has all kinds of information about what constitutes a conflict of interests so I would say this is also information that's not not necessary because it's covered in other ways so how is it I mean I've never seen this done in our school district a conflict of interest form completed I don't think we in the several years I've followed it or you know any of these things so how do we follow through and make sure that we are abiding by what we need to do
047I was just going to suggest uh since M Miss Matthews suggested that we not put it in the policy that um we make no now to Roberta Roberta can work with our attorney to get it as part of the process because she gets all that together for us and that that can address it and usually every school that I work with has kind of a template for their reorganization every year and so the key piece is that it gets on the template it's very very likely to stay there once it's on there because you just do the same thing every year unless yeah once she's got it in in there as a procedure unless you as a board decides not to do that then she's automatically going to bring that before the president okay yes
048Rich and that's why we asked that it be done in the rork because it's so structured I would actually appreciate that being added as somebody who's seen a lot of kind of mudslinging about conflict of interests and been falsely accused of things um that I've had no part in doing I love the opportunity to state facts and have those be clearly visible uh because I think our community would be made better by that I agree do do you have a sample form we we did that in our previous District but if you've got a sample form form yes yeah it's a state form excellent okay uniform yes great all right thank you yeah we didn't make the form the state made it and they recommend it and it really should be filled out by anybody
049with elected office in Indiana okay is that is that a 2 236 from 236 I don't know she has it pulled up what's the number on it the form number form disclosure statement State form 54266 parentheses R 26-15 form 236 sboa so there was 236 at the end of it yeah I think you could probably find it easily if you get State Board of C website correct okay so yeah it's then it's state board of accounts that administers it I couldn't remember if it was state of accounts or if it was through one of the others I think that the form State form of accounting accounting I can't hear you Lawrence sorry I think that's the form is from the state worth Council yes so yeah yeah this thank you ladies yeah that okay go
050ahead yeah um I wanted to let our audience know that Mrs Julian's going to be putting out the signup sheet for speaking at 5:45 which is coming up quick and wherever we get to with these is where we're going to stop at 5:55 and we're going to take a five minute break and then we'll come back at 6 for the real meeting yes I feel like you're going to shoot me for this but we were supposed to allow public comment at our work session start to it didn't say what when do we need to do that does anyone have anything they want to comment at the work session okay we did sorry meeting held in public we have to do we have to do that y we did we just did it way out of
051order sorry no you're good thank you for keeping me on the straight and narrow okay what else have we got on a125 page two um the top paragraph says any employee who has reason to believe that he or she may have a conflict of interest is required to disclose the potential conflict can we add to the employers employee supervisor I mean right now it's just open who they disclose it to I think it would be on the form wouldn't it yeah or or you can you can choose that's a good idea um you can have it be to the supervisor or you might want to really have it be to central office because a lot of Supervisors particularly if you think about somebody who's in Child Nutrition or something the Child Nutrition director isn't necessarily
052going to know all these and know what that even is sometimes so in my experience you jump in Sean we would send it out um about two months in advance of when we took them to be accepted at the board meeting we would send them out to all employees and board members um and basically anybody who would have a conflict of interest would fill that out um and then send that in and then we would accept the conflict of interest statements at 4 so that probably is already going through your office it sounds like central office and my previous district oh okay gotcha yeah okay so is two central office a good way word that we'll figure that out don't worry about we'll we'll make sure concept can get in there yeah we we'll get
053that in there and represent it this one is going to come back in April because we'll also need to put the the um form number on there as well so that people can locate it for themselves anything else okay yeah and so on page one then relative is defined as the 14 categories yep and so they're spouse repeatedly mentioned and but I wonder how about boyfriend and girlfriend significant others um this list is based on what is in the various statutes you can go beyond that the challenge becomes defining those they're much less easily defined than the 14 that are here but is it legally permissible yes some some schools have language that says um something like member of their household you can do that but these are just based on the ones that are
054in theall is that satisfactory boyfriend something involved in those conflict of interest I don't remember the news but okay would would anyone object to adding member of their household to this list so it would include a parent of the employee or a parent of a member of the employees household for example would that be acceptable rather than spouse doesn't look like anyone's having a strong feeling DEA do you you have eyebrows process it it feels a little extra to me but I I don't oh there's our put out the list alarm um okay do you have an opinion either way at ccha about that um well house we definitely would prefer household to the boyfriend or girlfriend only because of again that defining and figuring out what that actually means you can look at residency
055and have a clear line of whether there's a household or not okay whether or not you do household is really um up to you discretionary do these conflicts of Interest come up a lot in your practice as far as like the food service coordinators boyfriends aunts grandmother worked for Cisco occasionally um I'll tell you it it depends on community to community so this really is something that you all know your community better than I do to know how often it's likely to come up here um because some places it hardly ever comes up and especially the larger the town the less likely it is issue and this is a very small town yeah so so that's something to consider you know your community and and if you think it's necessary you all certainly have the
056authority to add okay well we'll um consult with uh and get a draft of that for April with it both ways and then we'll talk about it in the meeting um anything else on that one yep I have questions in regards to teacher gifts um on page two it says employees officers and agents of the board is that referring to staff and teachers or because later in the policy it brings up if a staff member well um the if a staff member I believe I'll find it is more about receiving of gifts here it's about not soliciting so not reaching out and trying to get gifts or asking for gifts and then the next one is expecting or accepting gifts for carrying out the duties of his or her position that's a little different than
057the where there's um if a staff member has provided an amount of extra help and would like to express appreciation it's really more of a matter of degrees and Di Minas to P something that's a small token of appreciation is different than something that's almost given as an incentive of um do more than or do outside of what's perly expected so this part that says should not accept or expect or accept gifts for carrying out the duties that's more about kind of briberies yes and incentives it has nothing to do with them receiving gifts well I mean a larger gift could be considered a bribe but here where it talks about extra help for student you know if a family brings in and gives them a little figurine or something that says thank you with
058an apple on it that's probably not akin to a bribe so is there's some gray area in this yes but you're not going to ever get to the point with language unless you absolutely say nobody can ever get a gift and that's going to be impossible to enforce well I am concerned with a paragraph that says if a staff member has provided an usual amount of extra help um the family would like to express appreciation small non-monetary guess may be accepted there's a tradition in our school district of giving gift cards and other things to staff where this is saying that's not accepted those go through parent counsel and I think that's different yeah the next paragraph covers that usually especially if it's holiday the board acknowledges that gift giving to staff members are part
059of holiday celebration is in keeping with the spirit of such celebration and gift giving at the close of an academic year is traditional so if they're giving it as a end of year thank you or teacher appreciation teacher appreciation those are covered in that paragraph but what about parents I actually I mean there's quite a few gifts that are given directly from students or parents to teachers that don't go through parent c yeah that's that second that would still be covered of that second like like my daughter you know especially in elementary you give something to the teacher at the Holiday you often give something to teacher at the end of the year that's the second to last paragraph okay but it says no money I mean I'm not clear why we're adding gift cards
060and money are seen as different under the law we're allowed to give gift cards to our employees for example but we're not allowed to give cash bonuses unless they run through the payroll system and are taxed so I'm talking about gifts like if a parent were to give a teacher some cash or doing something as a gift in instead of a gift card why are we put why are we not wanting to allow that is my question because that is considered different than a gift and it is more akin to a bribe regardless of the amount I I don't think it would be a good idea for parents to hand our teachers cash as a means of saying thank you to them I don't think it'd be a good idea for our staff to accept
061it yeah I think it becomes questionable at that point I think cash should be handed from parents to teachers look as a teacher I was I was off offered cash and I was like I I can't accept that thank you some little kiddo gives you all their lunch money and than I did get left half bottle of Al on so when my mom was teaching she got an industrial siiz roll of tin foil from one of her adult students that they from their work we used it for years anyway um there might be some culture difference in Chinese culture for example people give red pocket as gift red money red pocket cash in red pocket as good good lck sign so I I personally don't do that here but if some parents do I won't
062feel that a barbery for teachers so right just cultural difference for sure and I'm sure our teachers are used to that and sensitive to it and uh if it were an amount that raised any red flags they would um probably come forward with that and talk to their building supervisor is that I don't I don't think we have rampant cash moving around between our students and our teachers is what I'm saying I guess I'm just trying to understand why we're adding this to our policy that parents can't give any money to teachers I just I've never been aware of that in the past um but so I didn't know why we're trying to restrict it but I guess in this case maybe other than money can be deleted for this circumstance the gift season I
063mean holiday season in the teachers to receive that gift we only need to specify what gift what do you to answer your question from legal perspective as Mrs Austin said cash is looked at differently and there's an aspect that no Public Employee is supposed to accept any compensation beyond their salary so I highly recommend for protection of your employees that that language not be changed okay thank you so it is 552 is that it on a125 there's two others that came up on previous policy that I wanted to clarify so I'm our previous policy prohibited teachers from charging a fee for private lessons but now it's not in it so I didn't know what is our school district policy I actually don't have go ahead Rachel there was an adjustment to that um an exception
064for teachers who do tutoring or specifically with music lessons that came up okay there is a shortage of available people to to provide private music construction mhm and so um those were exceptions made to that policy historically okay and and I can tell you why the language was proposed it's because it's darn near andoss to enforce and it's not a legal requirement is number two and then number three where and this is not a legal issue but a practical issue I'll give you a lot of the Practical because I work with schools all over the state there's a huge shortage in all positions and if we can do anything that helps morale by allowing them to still do that but I go back to the biggest point is point one that's incredibly hard to enforce
065and even your rural followers are probably doing that because that's really broad it can be not just the tutoring but if they're in Youth Sports and they do um you know batting coaching or that would be considered that too or if they are in giving um they do science stuff and they're doing some sort of an event on the side so it's kind of a rabbit hole to go down I'll tell you that no I love I mean I I think this is great I just want to make sure I wonder why we have changed it this is great and then the last one that comes up in policy 11:30 is it says it prohibits Corporation employees from the sell of information about students and other Corporation records I'm not sure why that was put
066in a previous policy and if it needs to be in a current one so you're talking about language that was in a previous policy that's prohibited by many many laws and you don't need to say it in policy that was what I was going to say that language exists in policies throughout that you may not sell information student names any of that type of thing it's in policies every it's as we continue to read through policies it's all over the place okay thank you for clarifying sure to so it's 555 I put all the ones we didn't get to in the not discussed folder those will come back to you in April um it is is my intention to uh limit us to 20 policies at a time because otherwise it's going to be 1
067million policies so until we get a certain number pass we're not going to have you guys first reading anymore we'll just suspend and just let us know when you're ready for perfect um so we're going to take a five minute break before our actual meeting and I'll see you back here turn all right folks I'm going to call to order the March March 4th meeting of the School Board of Trustees for the West Lafayette Community School Corporation you'll notice I have um asked for some new decoration I felt like this room could use a little life and there's symbolism next month we'll have doves um so with that I'd like to turn it over to Mr Shriner for our special recognitions okay when you're ready yeah well I'm almost ready but I'll get reader as
068we go um I just wanted to uh this is our month to uh to do some shining for the Junior Senior High School which we do several times a year and um I always try to look for kind of groups you don't hear about or kids that you don't see as much or are not uh um as obvious as some of the other uh organizations and clubs we have and uh we have literally dozens of clubs at the Junior Senior High School um everybody's in a club not quite but almost and a lot of these kids who meet tonight are in multiple clubs so really this is a this is a sampling uh I sent some an email out to some of our great sponsors to ask for kids that jump to the m to
069their front of their mind who deserve some recognition for for what they do for their work and their service to others and uh while being part of a club now has been part of um graduation requirements in Indiana for several years you know these kids aren't doing it for that I don't think they are maybe they are um and they're not doing it for resumés I think they do it because they really enjoy it and uh it's a big part of our Junior Senior High Life is the clubs that that we're so we're really proud to kind of showcase some of these guys tonight and um I didn't realize we'd have so many of our we have four different clubs we're going to recognize uh just from each and we're going to start with I
070think we're starting with um Mrs Boyd and um did I give you those or not okay you should have three okay and I'll let let you take it from there and then um as everybody comes up we're going to take pictures so stay here until we do we I think we have 10 people perfect start good evening I have the pleasure of speaking tonight on behalf of GSA or gay straight Alliance uh the young people that we're going to introduce tonight have dedicated thems eles to doing some really hard work some some work that really shouldn't be expected of them until they're much older but yet these guys have really stepped out of their comfort zone to reach out and be an inclusive leader in all ways throughout our building um I let's see we'll
071start with I think Cameron you're up first Cameron so Cameron I have had the pleasure of knowing for a couple of years now and even when he wasn't involved with GSA he was certainly a leader among his peers this young person works almost full-time is that right more than full-time part-time okay he works part-time but in a very significant role in training adults he also at school uh is a student teacher Cadet so he's working over at Willis every day he's also a leader in our GSA he's an executive board member and really reaches out to kids um and and just brings a a sense of warm welcoming and and really does a great job uh with even our little bitty our our little seventh and eighth graders he does a really nice job with
072so this is Cameron you wel next we have Emerson I had Emerson as a student in the seventh grade and I couldn't be more proud of the growth and all of the maturity that Emerson shows every day she is currently our president of our club as a freshman and that's really quite something to be proud of she has served as a page at the state house and she's also uh creates an environment that provides fun and significant activities for our kids to get involved not just within the classroom but also outside of the classroom she's busy um allowing students to have voices that maybe wouldn't have had the motherwise so I'm very very proud of Emerson as [Applause] well lastly I have Ren yur I don't believe Ren's here today oh Ren is here oh
073I love it that was a great surprise for me so Ren is our third executive and um she serves in many roles including media Specialists as far as she she's really charge of our media um and publicity she also does a really great job of welcoming in some of those other younger students as well and I should note also a freshman right also a freshman so very very proud of these three young [Applause] folks thanks Mrs Floyd and next we'll have Miss hipshire to talk about environmental Consciousness organization um yeah I was gonna do one group do you want to get suck well they're just standing there off for that reason we usually have [Laughter] Mar um I'm Andy hipshire I'm our Eco Club sponsor EC Club is exactly what it sounds like we're in
074charge of making things green in the best way um I would like to recognize my two co-presidents this evening only one of them could make it the other is homesick so Jessica if you'll come on up here um Jessica is our co-president this year she's a senior she's going to be graduating and leaving some very big shoes to fill she's worn lots of hats with EC Club over the years I wrote some things down so I wouldn't forget to say them I would say some of her biggest biggest accomplishments would be organizing and maintaining the recycling I fls at our school uh planting a pollinator Garden even though it was somewhat ill- fated and partnering with Tera cycle this year to collect used pens pencils mechanical pencils markers highers um not just from our building
075but from all three buildings so everybody's helping out in this big project to make sure that those things don't end up in landfills which is great um and like I said she's going to be leaving some big shoes to fill so thank you Jessica for being our fearless [Applause] co-president and Ashley is the other co-president who couldn't make it tonight so I'll hang on to this for her I know Mrs Forbes I'm putting you on the spot you want me to do the talk jump on up here then you know what it'll sound better even though you gave me the words and these are three I three or four sir Le three uhuh okay Natalie and you gave me four I did uhuh I'm an English teacher but this is for we'll figure it out
076L okay good evening I'm Mary D Forbes and I am the sponsor of the students Demand Action Club if you haven't heard of that club before it's because it is relatively a new it was just approved by you uh last year the president of the club you might uh recognize her name it's Mary Grace Austin and uh she is the first person that we would like to recognize uh the club actually advocates for common sense gun legislation and firearm safety uh these are the students who want to create awareness and would like to you know keep it in everybody's mind that uh you know safety drills and uh lockdowns and all of that should not be the new normal that school shootings should not be pay in the news and they Advocate every single day
077for awareness on that so just in one year uh Mary Grace we've had a voter registration drive at school we have had letters written to our legislators and uh just recently a school resource officer uh spoke during the high school lunches uh to talk about gun safety and uh safe storage and so on and so forth so this is just at one short year and I'm just so impressed with all of your [Applause] efforts um the second person I'd like to recognize is Rahul Dy am I pronouncing your name correctly by the way good he is also a senior like Mary Grace and uh I call him the Mover and Shaker of the school he is the guy who knows all about the legislation going through the state house and he sat in uh with
078us one time and filled Us in on legislation specific to Firearms um I swear that all three of these students have clones uh walking around school you're doing a multitude of many wonderful things and I just thank you for your advocacy and [Applause] Leadership and then our third person is Natalie David Natalie is one of those that uh you know is constantly on the Move uh speaking of visionary Natalie's a person who not only can identify a problem but actually works to do something about it in addition to being a part of students Demand Action Natalie uh came up to me once and she said we have too much food waste in this school we need to do something and then she does something about it um many other things was running track set Saturday
079heck of a poet by the way so I could go on all night but instead I'll give you your certificate so thank you very much okay and Anna that's the okay yeah my that was my um and I ALS I want to speak our our final Club Representatives we want to mention tonight um are from National Honor Society and uh we're going to start uh um with uh Grace Reynolds actually I'm going to read some remarks from Mrs hton so Grace E cabat and Lise if you'd all like to come up and we'll just talk about everybody at the same time um so Mrs Helton is a longtime sponsor of National Honor Society and um we that's a program we're very proud of at our school for the over many many years and the faculty
080at our school have wish us to honor Grace Reynolds B cabat and Elise star stars with National Honor Society membership for their outstanding scholarship leadership service and character those are the the qualities of National Honor Society that these uh young women have been honored with and their fellow members this fall elected them or last spring I think yeah last spring elected them as this year's executive board and through these officers uh contributions of time and labor the school tutoring program benefits many students um as president Grace conducts uh meetings makes the tutor Tutt matches maintains spreadsheets of tutoring assignments and and collects tutor hours and facilitates communication between tutor tutes parents teachers counselors and Mrs Helton as secretary Analise has the responsibilities of supplying tutor request forms and of advertising the program through flyers and
081various digital communic school announcements to get kids to come in and and enjoy that service all three officers cooperate to complete all of the tasks necessary and all three conducted a special end of semester review session in December which I didn't know guys did which is great before final exams they did a a review session for anybody who wanted to come I believe um in addition to assisting with these duties as vice president he has the distinction of being the member with the most hours tutoring so far this year recently she has been tutoring a freshman in honors bio before school and a junior in Algebra 2 during 8th period study hall and where were you you know where were you when I needed you actually I needed you well before Al to Mrs Helton
082just wants to say that the she's very proud of the National Honor Society executive board and this particular uh group has been extraordinary extraordinarily reliable these three young women truly deserve recognition for their service to their school and community so congratulations [Applause] here St since uh Mrs pasos isn't here can I talk you into to take in the picture would that be all right yeah would you Randy or oh oh okay Mrs delany's hiding over there yeah you might need to make two rows there's just so much great stuff going on at this high school we can't fit it all in one picture thank you everybody for coming one more comment I I didn't uh ask all of the the various sponsors to be here tonight because they're busy people and I'm I was really
083thrilled that they're here but I do want to say for those dozens of clubs that we have at our school they need dozens of sponsors well but just like the kids we do have sponsors who do multiple clubs so most of these are done grus and on their own time and they do it for satisfaction like the kids do as well so I want to just uh thank all of the teacher sponsors for uh everything they do to help our kids enjoy these clubs and organizations so thank [Applause] you thank you very much and you all are free to stay if you would like to but we very much understand if you have other things to do this evening so thanks for coming see you at home all right um so our next item is
084communication from the audience and the first person signed up this evening is Becky Cree I'll remind everybody you have three minutes and uh Mr shot will keep the time for us thank you my name is Becky cree and I'm a science teacher at the high school I'm also a West Lafayette Community member who since the last school board meeting has been stopped by many people in the area asking me questions about the West Lafayette schools I'm here tonight to help educate the community about the role of the school board in preparation I listen to the schools in podcast hosted by the dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education Dan Schwarz in the episode titled the job of a school superintendent Dean Schwarz spoke spoke with Eric Burmeister a Stanford Alum who is a superintendent
085in California Mr Burmeister outlined the hierarchy within a school district the only employee of the school board is the superintendent all others are employed by the school district therefore the most important job of the superintendent is to hire the best Educators available bringing this back to Wes Lafayette the school board hired Dr Griner to be our superintendent it was then Dr griner's job not the school boards to hire the best administrators for our school he had an opportunity to make his first West Lafayette principal when the wellis principal resigned Dr Griner developed a process that ultimately led to the hiring of Mrs Delaney when Mr triner announced his retirement we were fortunate to have Dr griner's experience in developing effective processes to hire quality principles since no board members question the process used to hire
086Mrs Delaney Dr Griner could model the high school principal hiring process after that one as Mr Marley stated at the February board meeting this is Dr griner's hire it's his hire because it's his job to hire our school administrators that is not the job of the school board what is the job of the school board Dean Schwarz States the job of the school board is to set policies that will help guide the district once those policies are set is the job of the educational professionals to work within those guidelines that work is best achieved when the professionals are allowed to do their jobs without constantly being micromanaged therefore in Wes Lafayette the board should not micromanage the superintendent the superintendent should not micromanage the principles the principal should not micromanage the teachers and the teachers
087should not micromanage the students in fact our students work and learn best when they are allowed to space to think on their own make mistakes learn from those mistakes and grow as people all of the Professionals in our school should be afforded the same growth-minded environment finally Dean Schwarz and Mr berme discussed what makes an effective Schoolboard member the best Schoolboard members understand the line of governance and they do not overstep the line they are community-minded individuals who understand the public benefit of public schools they are interested in establishing school policy that will help all students on the other hand Schoolboard members who are only only focused on their one to two pet issues or things that angered them in the past do not have the best interest of all students in mind these types
088of board members create political drama that can undermine the positive things that are happening in our classrooms and schools I urge our West Lafayette school board members to consider what kind of board member you are and then strive to be better for our students teachers administrators in schools thank you thank you Mrs Cree next up we have Jonathan eier hello my name is johathan eier I've taught in the greater L area for 22 years the last seven years at our high school Beyond teaching in my time at westl yet I've been part of some exceptional educational experiences opportunities where the utmost professionalism was their found Foundation I attended the last school board meeting and looking forward to finding out who my next principal would be an acquaintance of mine who was potentially applying for a
089teaching position at the high school um watched online after explanations of the no votes which were veiled in opposition to the process they texted me and asked why would anyone want that job this is the impact we are having on our Corporation we are in a time when new education professionals are hard to find new candidates apply for a position they will be interviewing us as much as we are interviewing them if they do do not feel that this is the place that is best fit for them nor that their professionalism will be represented they will say no when I applied at our high school I said yes because our science department our administrative team our superintendent and our school board at the time showed me that West Lafayette was a respected place to be
090a professional now I'm compelled to remind those on this school board of the importance and understanding that there are standards for your actions words collaboration and most of all professionalism I hope that everyone on this board is holding themselves accountable to the set of Standards presented and discussed by the Indiana School Board Association you do not get a choice in the dispositions you demonstrate and the methods you use those are set forth for you by the ISB ba just like the standards and dispositions for teachers and principles are set forth by the Department of Education Dr Robert Schall president of the isba in 2021 authored an article that discussed the differences between effective and in ineffective Schoolboard members he writes that ineffective members who want to shake things up don't have the patience or persistence
091to learn the job pay the dues and become effective in their roles in his article he lays out a very clear and concise expectation for the role of a school board within its Corporation we hire a superintendent to handle the things and that professional hires other highly qualified people to delegate specific tasks if we try to tell those folks what to do it's demoralizing and detrimental to the overall mission of the school system educating our children I know you've heard this all before I'm asking that each of you reflect on your efforts on this board not only think about the things that you have said or done or written in a newsletter in which you tell yourself I'm doing the right thing because I decided it was right for those in my echo chamber actually
092do the right thing for all kids not just your children or the students who have parents with important jobs or degrees or just the children of Stu of parents who have a lot of money or um even those of the students of parents that you listen to you you support and represent everyone we are a public school after all acting as a professional you create the reputation of our Corporation I had another Community member without students in our in our schools tell us let me know when we should sell our house before property values go down in response to your demonstration at the last meeting without professionalism you encourage the vitel we have witnessed lately I should never again be readed by a student in the classroom with the question who is this Luke Whit
093person thank you next we have Gretchen whitcom sorry oh I'm sorry Graham geez Louise it's been a long day no problem good evening my name is Graham Wickam I'm the AP Physics teacher at the high school whoops let's get my clock time we gotta no I have to see this we've been through this before all of my business okay this is my ninth year teaching physics and math at uh Westside I'm here tonight to appreciate and support Dr Griner the administrative staff lovely ladies and the administration administrators from all three schools thank you as co-president of the teachers unit I'm called upon regularly to help solve issues between teachers and school corpor officers we are averaging about one serious issue issue per two weeks are we not you hear from me fairly often yeah um
094often the issues have to do with things like rules and benefits but sometimes they are of a much more personal nature whenever we bring a concern to Dr Grinder Mrs Roth or Mrs cron we get a prompt and professional response that has so far always led to a very welcome solution thank you really thank you every time I have a meeting with administrators too even Mr Shriner um every time uh you [Laughter] get you're always bothering me for pictures anyway uh at any of our buildings or I help a teacher prepare for such a meeting the administrators demonstrate themselves to be knowledgeable and compassionate professionals we engage in two-way communication with per with a focus on problem solving and respectful treatment of everyone involved we rely on each other as professionals to work together to
095find a solution that works for everyone involved but I bet you have not heard of any of these problems have you and that's how it needs to stay in education we deal with families with students the other side of that problem is there's usually a child involved who's having an issue and that needs to not come out in the community that needs to be settled by the professionals who can help the child directly and the family as a whole has a right to privacy so we cannot function as a school and as a service to the community unless we as professional Educators can be relied on to solve these problems that's what we're trained to do we've had years of training and experience to do so you wouldn't want any of these issues to come
096out uh and I'm sure you would agree your family has a right to privacy I know we'll have some people but not all in the community sorry I know we'll find a few people who disagree with that but I can tell looking around most people do so here as all of us leaders ourselves let's please encourage our community to have a constructive dialogue going forward and and treat Educators as the professionals that we are thank you thank you very much and I appreciate your passion for your career and your vocation is the word I'm looking for Mrs good evening I'm Lori Wendler I'm the library media specialist at the high school and I am here tonight first of all to um to thank you to share our appreciation at from the library Department for one
097have we have a school district that has full-time certified library media specialist in every building that used to be the norm far from it in Indiana today we are funded our our school libraries are funded we are well funded we can provide databases we can provide new books um we never have an issue with funding and that is really important also so that we also thank you for that our facilities are phenomenal With The Changes we've made in all three buildings such wonderful libraries where kids are comfortable they chill they read they study whatever they need to do the adults at least in our building also find it a very welcoming um and enjoyable space the fourth thing I want to thank you for is the freedom to do our jobs I really can only
098speak from from my perspective but um when I was at Happy Hollow when I have since I've been up at the high school I have the freedom to do my job I was hired as a professional to know what to do as a professional to know how to select materials for our libraries materials for our students for our teachers and I really appreciate that my administrators support that that doesn't mean they never come in question they don't they may say well how do you do this I mean that's part of our evaluation but there are districts in Indiana where superintendents will come in and say Here's a list of books I don't want them on our shelves that doesn't happen here and it's really important here that we have a diverse collection of books and
099materials because those are our students we have a diverse um you know amount of a collection of students also out there so that's really important I'm not sure when or if um policy 2520 will come up in your readings that was something we worked on last fall with Dr Griner Mrs Roth admin Connie Workman Brianne Carol and myself and um we now have a remove a formal you know removal request procedure we have a form to use we have a um you know a selection policy you know in there and so I certainly hope that that remains um I hope it remains that it continues that the Librarians are allowed to do their job and consult those Professional Resources that's really important and on a closing note if anyone happened to watch 60 Minutes last
100night there was a segment um Buford South Carolina there were 97 books challenged by the moms of Liberty Group and the superintendent there who was he was very adamant that every parent should be able to determine what their child may or may not read but he was just as adamant that no parent should determine that for anyone else's child and so what he did they he um formed a whole community group they had like book clubs they read through these 97 books and after that process 92 of those 97 books were returned to those Library shelves as it should be so I hope um in this day and age we probably will face some book challenges and if we do I hope we remember to look at the books as an entirety to look at
101the whole situation to look at our student population and then make an educated and reasonable decision if need be all right thank you have a good evening thank you very much St good evening my name is Randy student I teach German at the high school excuse me I want to draw your attention to the non-discrimination policy you proposed to replace our current policies during the February 2024 meeting at the time the board attorney mentioned that the category of sex as being interpreted by the courts is to include both sexual orientation and gender identity and expression this is not a complete picture as to our local situation or the intentional inclusion of that language in our current policies in 1993 West Lafayette and lafette were the first cities in Indiana to specifically include sexual orientation in
102local employment non-discrimination policies and the state of Indiana has yet to do so it is clear if our current state or federal courts would interpret the term sex as to cover this category gender identity and expression was covered in West Lafayette employment C employment codes in 2010 and also in Lafayette and tiin new County in the following years when the West layette School Board last revised board policy starting in 2016 a committee chaired by Dr Karen Springer invited wlea co-presidents Lisa Mills and I to comment and suggest additions to the faculty staff portion course the policies of the time were set up a little differently than what you're working on now at that time the board was very intentional in including the phrases sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in all non-discrimination policies for
103staff as well as students the population we serve here in West Lafayette is a great mixture of cultures nationalities race religious beliefs and gender expression I believe there are three Community standards to be met by any board policy first board policy meets the needs of our students and staff everyone needs to be free to learn and work without fear of discrimination excuse me second board policy matches West lafette City standards we should at least adhere to those locally agreed upon norms and number three policy cannot depend on state or federal courts to interpret something that you are unwilling to specifically state so I urge you and I believe I heard correctly in the work session that will happen I urge you to include both of these phrases sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in
104the updated policy statements on non-discrimination your faculty your students and your community are counting on you to do the right thing I'm going to add one thing to my prepared remarks I heard the phrase gender status slash the phrase that is and your lawyer can tell you probably more specifically is being used across the country and across the state is gender identity and expression expression will cover a lot of things that have nothing to do with what someone uses as or pronouns thank you thank you very much Mrs ol greetings Dr Griner Schoolboard members administrators and all present at this meeting my name is Emily Oland and my family and I have been in West Lafayette since 2006 my husband Matt and I have proudly raised our family of three children in this community and
105we graduated our oldest Everett in 2012 our middle son Carson in 2017 and this year our final chapter Aly is graduating in May when we moved here from Clemson South Carolina it was to advance Matt's career as a professor at Purdue but we chose here specifically because of the Excellence of the public schools I was a certified music teacher and we both felt strongly that a solid public school education with plenty of opportunities to participate in extracurriculars would set our children up for Success I've spent the last 18 years that's a big number being a music and band booster parent serving in parent councel room parenting and working on the referendum committee I spent multiple years substitute teaching in many areas including a year long-term summing in the band Department I taught private lessons in
106the band department for three years after that and I have absolutely loved every minute of spending time in our schools we had no idea when we started this journey West laia that academics and extracurriculars would only be a part of our story it turns out our family is one of the many who have children in the lgbtqia plus community and specifically the trans and non-binary Community one of the most amazing things about our community is that I can stand here in the public monthly school board meeting and say that out loud without fear sorry it's emotional um in today's climate of legislative persecution especially of our trans and nonbinary students and staff and faculty that privilege in our community means a whole lot in the February board meeting the board began the process of reviewing
107District policies with the intent of streamlining and revamping board member Mumford identified the non-discrimination policy as one she would like to bring forth for discussion first and that did happen this evening I was here I'm here specifically to ask you to keep the language supporting transgender non-binary and gender quer individuals and District's non-discrimination policy that and I would agree with Randy this is an aside from my written that yes gendered identity and expression is the going term currently this request goes above and beyond the strictly legally necessary in my experience there are areas where we in the West Lafayette Community do extra because it is who we are this is one of those areas send our transgender gender queer and non-binary community members and their families and the support and welcome that they deserve they
108need to hear it from you and it needs to be written in the policies in ink it is a small number of words in a large document that have more impact than you can possibly imagine thank thank you very much uh Mr Williams good evening uh Colin William Community member one graduate of the schools one kid currently in the schools I would like to ask the board to imagine for a moment what you would do if you had one free meeting one whole night to just work on whatever would matter to you maybe you could collectively explore grants that could help the school system maybe you could work on on understanding demographic Trends related to home prices that might help forecast where things are going with the school system maybe you could just have students
109come in and talk about what is not working for them IEP issues AP exam options grading pressure what could you do with one free meeting I'm guessing that none of you is sitting here thinking you know I'd like to spend the whole night discussing meeting minutes but that's what's happened over the last year from February of 2023 to February of 2024 this board spent 150 minutes discussing meeting minutes that's 5 minutes here 10 minutes there 20 minutes on some other night it all added up to the equivalent of one full meeting respectfully I'd like to ask you to reconsider this as a priority real kids and real teachers have real issues that are really important and you should feel privileged to be in the position to be able to address those issues you should feel
110enthusiastic to address those issues please please please take that time and devote that time to them thank you and finally we have Mr kusk that's okay Dave kusk and I'm a resident of West L school system my two points will remain the same um unanimous board votes are important for United Community and I urge you to find a way to find compromise on the issues at hand so that we can have unanimous board decisions that will represent our entire community second Point Transit housing is a problem uh it's taking single family homes away from uh our school district uh that cannot be replaced uh the number of school kids that can be available for our school district because of the transit housing is decreasing so any effort that you guys can make to attend the
111zoning board meetings um I've got t-shirts that say save our West LA at school district I'm happy to provide them to anyone uh but showing up at those meetings and having a voice is very important the other thing that is important is to make sure that the mayor uh is fully aware of how important this issue is for our school district so we actually have a school district in the future thank you thank you very much everybody for taking the time to be here tonight I really appreciate all of you um okay we're going to move on to section three which is something new we're going to try here in uh our meeting it's called a consent agenda and before we begin I'd like to read a letter written by um our Public Access counselor
112it was dated July 19th 2023 and I'm exerting from the middle says as a practical matter it is not necessary for a governing body to discuss every issue at length school boards usually do not micro manage the Daily Business of a school corporation instead boards set policy Drive Innovation set parameters on spending and put people in place to execute their Vision controlling routine duties on a granular level would amount to poor management and governance as well as Marathon meetings therefore governing body's use of a consent agenda for approving routine business is not prohibited by the open door law additionally this office does not believe that consent agendas are an antithetical to transparency so given that I have asked our central office to prepare the agenda with several routine items in a consent agenda and the
113way that works is we will take a motion we will have discussion and we will vote on all of those items as a package and if there is anyone who feels that an item needs to be pulled out of the consent agenda and discussed separately all you need is two board members to agree to that it doesn't need to be voted on it is simply I think we should take this out and I agree so I'll give you a moment to look over everything and Mrs Whit to abstain from the personel report okay uh this evening one of my children is on it uh so uh yay life GS uh so I don't know if we need to pull that out or if we just I just I'm comfortable abstaining um from all of these
114if that's that's the preference I think we can pull that out and and do that um as its own item okay so we will pull the Personnel report out is there anything else that needs to be removed from the consent agenda Mrs mford minutes February 12th regular meeting okay the minutes of the is that item three or four the four correct yes okay does anyone else agree that number four should be removed from the consent agenda okay Mr Wong great um I'm just making a note so that we can be clear I did I agreed okay is that okay does does a third person agree that we should remove the Personnel report at Mrs Whit's request okay thank you Dr Yan okay so where is that page so number four was removed and number six
115um and okay great thank you so we are going to take items 1 two 3 five and seven as a unit those things include the approval of the agenda for this evening the minutes from the January 8th Finance meeting the minutes from the February 12th executive session the field trip which the swimming and Diving uh team is taking to Indianapolis and the accounts payable and I'm going to briefly read the accounts payable description if I can get to the right place in box real quick um sorry there are a lot of papers tonight y'all okay um is it that one or that one that's not it sorry do you have it Mrs cron could you please for me thank you Val education center for the period of February 5th through March 4th total 3, 8749
116188 a payroll claims stock at that posted in between the publishing of the claims stocket and the board meeting in January is also included totaling $866 182 88 C thank you very much sorry I couldn't find that all right so I need a motion on items 1 2 3 5 and seven please moved by Mr shot seconded by Mr Marley Is there any discussion great all those in favor of approving those consent agenda items please show your hands that is 7even to zero Mrs Julian all right and that was one two three five and seven super next item will then be number four the approval of the minutes of the February 12th regular meeting Mrs Mumford since you wanted that pulled would you like to share why yes um in it it talks about the
117discussion continued as to why the Secretary of board of Finance board did not review the minutes and I would like that change was not allowed to review the minutes um as we discussed this afternoon I'm uncomfortable with the word allowed in that context is there another word that would satisfy you other than not allowed yeah do you have any suggestion um Mrs Whit I just want to point out that the minutes were posted in our board packet the Wednesday prior and Mrs Mumford certainly had access to review those and propose any changes between Wednesday and the following Monday of our meeting so to me not allowed seems not appropriate to the actual events of the situ situation thank you um so to clarify this is about the minutes for the um Finance meeting which was
118last month um and I did share the changes that needed to be made to that and those weren't allowed until push back was given and then they were changed and so the timing of saying about these minutes has nothing to do with what this is documenting can you tell me which line we're looking at I can't find it yes it was on page three under routine business e um what if we simply struck the whole line where is it under new business item three okay what if we simply struck the pullout remark about whether or not you um rather than saying the word aloud can we just strike that whole part and just move on from it since we've approved the minutes as requested um I would like to understand who made the changes to
119the minutes so Financial minutes who made those changes the way that works is um Mrs Julian used Mrs kon's remarks that she read aloud at that meeting and I think guesses were taken based on previous minutes and also previous discussions that we have had regarding minutes and um it was then left until the board meeting because we are not in the habit of asking um your opinion about the minutes and so when they were uploaded that would have been your opportunity to have reviewed and you did and um but like I said those have been adjusted to meet what you asked for in your revisions and so I think we can move on from that is that acceptable so what I'm trying to understand is once I made the suggestions the the financial minutes were
120changed yes but did not match what I asked it took more push back to get them to change who made those changes that didn't even line up to anything that I had asked to do I had asked Mrs Julian to make the changes and then I asked her a second time to make the changes so I I don't think assigning any blame is necessary I just wanted to understand how this process works because it's not clear I think next year next year let's talk before the finance meeting and we'll make sure that we have that process tight because in the past I think it's been the same person who does the other minutes so it just was outside of our normal scope of doing things and got overlooked okay so we're going to um make
121a motion then to strike that paragraph is that could you please yes okay um and is there second seconded by Mr Wong any other discussion great all in favor of striking the part that says um Mrs Mumford did not review the minutes please raise your hand okay that's 7 to zero Mrs Julie and if you could help me remember to fix that after the meeting I'll write it down to you but you know how I am okay um sorry we have to have we moved in seconded we have we moved and seconded on accepting the minutes and we're discussing now right so we can yes thank you so now we can return to the original motion which is to approve the minutes as amended um does anyone have any further discussion great all those in
122favor of approving those um minutes as amended I'm sorry go ahead so kind of follow up uh with Mr manford's um question about the procedure I have a suggestion or maybe I can make a motion I'm not sure which a better way okay and so my suggestion is maybe in the future and because you know based on the community feedback the meanes really took a lot of time but the thing is sometimes is inaccurate and we took a long time to discuss and uh some in create a phrase some people think it's a split the hair but from other perspective it when something is incorrect and so we should fix it so I feel the solution can be maybe um in the future and Mrs julan um drafted the minutes and then the board can
123discuss I mean you make revision suggestions and the board of secretary can work on the the minutes further and to fix it so so on the meeting day hopefully we have a revised minutes and to wown and so we can save time that way I also feel it's kind of time consuming to discuss this but sometimes yes there are some inaccurate information even the current one actually I see another one but I I don't want to waste people's time to discuss it further but it's inaccurate like one um Mr Wong okay on we already approved that so let's not go back and discuss right so yeah but anyway I I understand I appreciate you look I'm just trying to figure out a way for all of us to save time on this I I appreciate
124you trying to solve the problem um I think anytime there's a leadership change from one group to another there's they going to be speed bumps since we figure out you know how I'm going to do things differently from Miss wit and how Tom is going to do things differently from me and we're working through that now and I think as we go forward we'll get a better process and just like I started um new processes for like adding to the agenda and so on this is another area where we need a process so if you would like to take the lead on writing a process i' I'd be happy to start with something the same way Mrs mford started with the um communication plan yeah I can make a motion in terms of you know
125when we need is a document says here's how we're going to do the thing and it's going to start with Mrs Julian and Mr shot yeah and then after that there would be steps to take so if you could brainstorm how that would work for you we can look at that together I mean for so to save time because I also feel we put a lot of burden on Mr Julian for this minutes revision I I hope that we can share those so she doesn't need to revise it again again so and there are there are tools in box that we could use that might be more efficient so the problem we get into is where we're voting on things in box rather than here so we need to be very careful of that it's
126not like a voting is more feedback a polling even can be legally dicey so we can discuss this later if you'd like to call me we can discuss how to how to do that communication document but I think that that would really help going forward yes so I appreciate that so now we need may I just make one more comment and uh so in in terms people are kind of curious I I will say after all this discussion on all this work and if you compare the current minutes with the one three years ago I I say it's it's so much more informative and has so much more information and increase the transparency and make it easier for the community know what's going on and yes we do have the we video recording and audio
127recording but you know if we have the minutes have a brief summary is it's helpful and even like recently and the community uh input and before call the question please thank you I uh I agree it's time to move on yeah I I think that's a good thing I thank you I'm glad you're pleased with the minutes so let's go ahead and vote I'm sorry we have a motion I think we have a motion in a second on approving the minutes for February 12th right I've called the question so that just means we vote we vote yep Rachel called the question okay all in favor of approving the minutes um hold it did we we amended them as amended right as amended um and we will put those through box please raise your hand great
128that's seven to zero okay now we'll move on to the Personnel report um um um where is my list the Personnel report is there anything we need to read about that I don't think there is okay um can I have a motion on the Personnel moved by Mr shot seconded by Mr Marley um Miss Whit is going to abstain um congratulations to your almost employed child all those in favor of approving the Personnel report please raise your hand that is six z uh 601 um Mrs Julian um okay we're going to move on there's no unfinished business so the next item is the policies and what we're going to do since we had several that we did not need to discuss sorry I have so many folders they're over here H thank you um 275
129and 350 which are School Wellness and Civility and decorum do not need to be discussed as we decided during our work session so if I could have a motion SK I skipped oh you're right I did sorry I got all excited that we had two to pass would you please go ahead and share with us about the resolution of the board policy thank you the resolution policy system change is to put in place um and memorialize that you're embarking on a change in your system and what that will look like uh it has at the beginning of the resolution information about your goals including streamlining maintaining legal compliance Clarity Etc and then it lays out the system with the a throughh um organization system that you will end up with great anybody have any comments
130or questions on that okay Miss mord how will this work as we so for example tonight we may approve two of them how will this overlap with the board docs and the number system work for the next few months as we have old mbers and new mbers I love your optimism that it's only going to be a few months um would you like to share how that's going to work yeah I mean it it's really more of a decision of how you what you determine to put on your website Etc but I can tell you so this is not a legal matter but more of a practical matter right just to clarify that you can have both of them and there are districts that during the months that they were in transition had some policies
131with the letters and some still with the numbers that's also why you have um your deletion list so that you can always have you don't have to conflicting policies so you may have a policy on one topic that's in your ab alphabet and a policy on a totally different topic that's from your old but you don't want to have an old and a new on the same policy on the same topic and so to do you do that with your deletions but you can have both partial letter system and the old number system in the exact same spot okay so are we paying are we still paying Neola for Bo docs or have we decided I don't remember we've ever approved board docs outside of niola where are we at on that our agreement with
132niola is over in um April okay and so we will then have to get our own subscription to board docks because that's part of our Neola agreement is that correct that is part of the Neola agreement the question will be do we want to use the system that Mr Hamilton has begun creating uh or do we want to um begin continue services with board Ducks okay so the when we approve some tonight it won't go on the board docks because that is expiring in April and in April will'll discuss we actually have access uh to board dos I believe until June 30 didn't we talk about that Miss Julian yes we have access to board dos through June 30 we can continue paying for access to board doc so that you can see the old
133board policies as we continue on and put the new policies on our website that Mr Hamilton has created um so that's an option um that's kind of at the will of the board for that okay so in a future meeting we'll be discussing if if talked about possibly using board dos in different prices but I've never seen this come before the board or a discussion that's correct that's a future decision and until June we have access to boards I think everybody wanted to see how this was going to go before we got too far into the weeds of the changes to the um Electronics do you have a preference about whether we should continue with board docs or c copy everything over that's up to you that is purely an internal organizational decision we always
134say these are not we're not like me all of these are not our policies they're your policies once you adopt them so you do with them what you wish in terms of where you house them okay Dr Yen would the board like to see a presentation from M Mr Hamilton um how that will look uh and the board make a decision at some point in the near future okay and and with that um we we can also have the the cost of using board docs on our own that way the board can make an informed decision um and if um you could make a recommendation Mr Hamilton as to which would be easier for your team um whether that was using board docs or switching everything over and then deleting them as we get through
135them that'd be cool too okay okay great um so we will be looking at that as um our subscription to Bo docs expires okay where are we at I don't yeah I think probably right now once we get approv say tonight with W approved we can put on miss hamerson the new system so we have kind of parallel things after we use for a while and then we will see maybe you can Soundside the whole duck B duck or something like we we will decide that later after we we use a few minutes that makes sense I think the problem would be paying for something we're not truly using for a long period of time so if we can start moving through these and getting them done more quickly I think that that would be
136reasonable yeah we can move yeah yeah just to be clear though uh we have to pick one version of the policy we can't right so we would as we adopt new policies we'd use the a document that's the crossover to delete the ones from board docs that we're no longer using and So eventually it would just kind of fade away so when we are voting to approve a policy are we also then approving in the same passage to deleting the corresponding policies we have to do both sides of the action correct recommended that is recommended that's what you had by making this crossover document I think you made the decision that you wanted to go that route so that's a matter of what the motion is so I need to find the crossover document so
137we can have motions to get rid of yeah other have to get rid of and create at the same time they can't right isn't it fun doing new things this is such a good time do great um let me find it first first you have the resolution to approve though in terms of the where you let's do the resolution first so do we have any more comments about the resolution have we first it in second okay I need a motion on the board resolution please so mooved by Mr Wong second by Mr Marley any more discussion on the board resolution great all those in favor of passing the board resolution please raise your hand that would be everybody Mrs Julian okay now I'm going to find the policy replacement document here we go well or
138if you want to uh do the policy I can read you what's on it okay yeah I found it just then okay so the first one we're going to take is a275 school Wellness I need a motion please so move uh what you mooving move to adopt adopt the policy thank you thank you um seconded by Mr Marley okay any discussion that's my question basically we voting adopt this new policy we also yeah do that next I'm going to do that next don't worry I got you I got you okay cuz it's right on on here um okay so all those in favor of adopting School wellness policy a275 please raise your hand that passes 7 to Zer that policy replaces 8510 753 0.01 753 0.02 754 what a275 has all of these that's with
139the technology it it's only8 l probably oh is that a whole pile with the responsible use of technology I don't lines I think we only have one policy it's just 85 can you verify that Miss Matthews um I can't off the top of my head because I don't know your old policies well enough but I can if you have them on your board docs I can do that momentarily they are on board docs um W second i. us this is going to be so much smoother next month when we've looked into this already it is 8510 thank you you've got lines I have no lines yes great okay so let's we need a motion to repeal 8510 yeah I do believe it's just 8510 as the 7530 series is very technologically yes I can confirm
140that now thanks um moved by Mr Wong seconded by Miss Whit and um let's have a vote all those in favor of repealing 8510 great that's everybody again super okay so I'm going to write down okay that was fun let's go to a350 Civility and deorum and this one does not have one next to it that it replaces no because it it's brand new because it's a first reading okay so we're going to move that to a second reading a br new policy we don't new policy I think we already have there's nothing to delete because there was nothing before okay so this is still on second reading corre I got you it's just a matter of you don't need to vote on any deletions got it okay I need a motion for a 350
141move to adopt a350 Mr Wong seconded by Miss wit any discussion no all those in favor of adopting policy a350 that passes 7 to Z look at that we got two okay all right um m Matthews would you please take us through the um board policies that are up for first reading this evening okay it's my understanding from your sheet that you have a100 anti-harassment and non-discrimination a125 nepotism and conflict of interest I think we're on the b list those our second reading we did those already so do you have the B's I'm sorry the a is showing here on the sheet oh second BGE from the c200 start from C2 anti bullying on the back yeah on that spreadsheet oh and in C2 200 I not able to tell where I can start with
142this if you're doing the CD and H you had c200 anti-bullying yeah that's the C350 student discipline yes d175 board staff Communications and h250 the um removal request procedure right thank you and those will be on the website for the community to review for the next month and they are going to the end of our list of policies so we're going to keep going with the A's in our work sessions prior to our meetings as long as it takes until we get down through those so so we'll be refining this process as we go through it but I think that um will will work out eventually okay do you have anything else to share about okay cool let's move on to the district priorities Transportation Center Dr Brant sorry you didn't expect that so our
143office requested to have this item put on the agenda for discussion among the board uh and the reason was it was clear to us there were some other ideas out there uh and so I want to First review the process we went through to get where we are today and then I'm going to allow the board or we're going to request that the board have time to discuss among yourselves to help guide us thank you very much in the direction that uh you would like to go moving forward with the most recently um um I lost my word they've left the words have disappeared they've left our building they have abandoned abandonment abandonment of the wec building V thank you vacated good want to make it softer all right thank you so as you're aware
144we've been providing information as it develops to regarding the W bash Valley Education Center building which they have leased for many years uh call it the weac moving forward and they've requested that uh had requested that the lease be terminated which has sensed occurred uh We've expressed interest in loc relocating our central office to that space given an additional space opportunity that we believe is necessary as well as it allows the board to have board meetings in that space because it's got a board room uh available the following points are what led to the recommendation uh it was related to the prior priority uh the board's priority go uh priorities for this year number three facilities uh develop a plan for a possible Transportation facility so when uh this building was vacated uh the wec
145we saw that as an opportunity uh at a cost fairly cost neutral um approach to getting the transportation office uh near their uh buses closer to the majority of their buses and so I wanted to quickly review in the spirit of transparency with the board the communication that our offices has with the board either through board meetings or through Friday notes on October 27th our office notified the board uh that wec intended to terminate its lease and then on November 3rd uh the board the wec board approved that action to terminate uh the lease and our office expressed interest at that time on November 3rd uh that the we weex site might be an a good place to house the central office we notified the board that any interested board members could tour the facility
146Mrs Austin as you're aware you took us up up up on that offer and we took you through the facility and we thank you for your interest in doing that on December 8th we notified the board that the district needs to terminate the lease agreement and that needed to be a board action item and so this uh January 12th the office provided the board with a resolution to terminate that lease on January 17th our office staff visited the wec building to assess storage and meeting space needs and then in January again January 19th our office communicated to the board that uh wec had confirmed they would vacate in March uh we also reiterated that we're still interested in moving the central office to that space uh and that uh for more space and that we
147also felt that it addressed um a portion of board priority priority related to the transportation office on February 12th um at the board meeting the resolution to terminate weac lease was presented to the board Mr Wong and Dr Yin expressed interest in exploring the weac facility as a preschool that's where we realized the board needed to continue dialogue and so we are encouraging the the board to have that dialogue um now given that interest I'm am going to tell you U that we still believe that having a preschool uh pilot program is much more suitable in one of our schools as we have said previously to the board I and we believe that because um that would allow uh proper oversight by a principal it would allow us to easily meet safety obligations it would
148allow access to current playground equipment it would allow prompt qualification to paths to Quality level three or four level three or four is required uh to uh allow us to qualify for preschool vouchers preschool vouchers are important to our office because we recognize that in the future if we would determine that the um pilot was a success it would allow us to get to our students that need uh that opportunity for preschool to close gaps um but maybe can't afford it and so those vouchers allow for that funding to occur through through through those voucher opportunities Mrs K do you have anything to add um well I would just like to share that from the business office point of view we've really outgrown our space with respect to files we have our files in probably
149three different locations in the district so if we need to pull anything historically we have to go to three different places to find it right now um if you've ever tried to walk on the business office side of the office we have in cabinets everywhere you can't walk anywhere without running into the corner of one so um the weac building is kind of set up the same as our building but it's much larger uh everybody would have individual kind of private workspaces to um effectively and efficiently complete their work for instance payroll would have their own space they could keep their payroll files with them in their office and also have a place to meet um privately with new employees or employees that are resigning benefits same thing or um benefit Specialists meeting with employees
150that are going to go on leave it's always nice to have a private space um to meet we really don't have that right now um right now even our our meeting space it's in the foyer that's not really private either um so this would afford US the opportunity to meet all of those um desires that we have plus the building has a lot of different storage spaces um it has a multi-car uh garage but one of the garages is already closed off and is temperature controlled for files so that's something we don't have access to right now there's also a separate space in that building just for files in addition to several closets as well so um also the transportation department doesn't currently have an office space they have a desk in the maintenance building
151um this would allow the transportation department to have a centralized location where they could meet with their bus drivers have a meeting space for the bus drivers to come and meet with each other have professional development um the transportation director can hold everything in that one space close to where the majority of the buses are actually parked for the district so okay so this is an info only does anyone have any questions or opinions Rachel is that you going like that no it was do Mr W go ahead okay yeah I just thank you for Dr grer and also uh Miss grank uh get the information with with more informations I think you guys the plan is uh I think that's better plan so so especially we have a pre pilot program in our school
152buildings that really makes sense to me so I I think what I will you decide I think um I okay with that thank you thank you Mr W appreciate dran also appreciate the additional information I think it's very helpful and so just uh some for yeah I can see the rational for that that's yeah I I agree with your decision and so and so I just wonder so you mentioned that there might be possibility to have pilot preschool in WHAS and the whe and is it uh on the plan or what's what's the status of that yes that is our our plan to work with our administrators um Mrs barus and uh Mrs Delaney and Mrs Roth and I plan to work together and of course include Mrs crun in that uh planning phase uh
153to work through the financials and so forth and we've begun to develop that plan we're in the process of discussing that and we will get information to the board as that continues to develop Miss wh Dr grer is that the same are you in the same general line of thinking uh that you were this time last year when this was being discussed it's a pilot preschool correct so it's basic you're you're kind of in the same ballpark this isn't a revamp from what we talked about last year okay thank thank you you're welcome so it seems like this is fairly uncontroversial at this time we could have a motion to approve the procedure of our central office is moving if anyone was interested in motioning that Mr Wong is that you'd like to move to
154proceed with is there a second second okay Miss Whit uh any other discussion I have a question not necessarily in regards to the movement but about the board meetings being moved um is the I guess the little bit that I've been in there there wasn't any room that was as large as this one that would handle um board meetings I was just trying to understand what the capacity is for board meetings and and you correct me if you're wrong if I'm wrong and you guys too we believe the capacity would would be there um but you are welcome also we'll take you anybody board member that still wants to go through we can do that and show show you that uh room um I think so it would have as many seats as we're able
155to provide here they would be a little closer I think yeah we'd be closer but I do believe it would have I think would be as much open space as what we have not as high so it wouldn't feel as spacious and I would guess the room rough estimate it's roughly half of this so as Dr Griner said we would be closer but it would still accommodate I know we I've been to professional development sessions there where they easily host probably 50 to 75 people people and you can again Mr we'd be happy to take you through though because yeah okay yes Dr Yen either uh are we going to use this room for other function or that's a good question um this room would then be available to the robotics groups if they had
156um run throughs they wanted to do it would be available possibly to the community if they had things there are a lot of things we could use this room for um and the thing that struck me when we went through was that um that need for privacy there when we're in the the central office having a conference and people are walking into the building and it's everyone from the the UPS guy to you know everybody can walk right in it's not very private and the nice thing about this space is there are several areas that would be of various sizes that would be private so that there could be a small conference going on at the same time as a professional velopment meeting and everyone would have a door that shuts so I think that
157would be um really super Miss W I would just like to say that this this space uh it probably gets used a little bit more than we might be aware by different groups and organizations and I would be interested in um or would just throw out there the comment that it might be worthwhile to find out who uses it before any permanent changes were made to the space yep yep we're not going to displace anybody so and uh also I think Mr Hamilton would enjoy it more because the uh audio equipment would need to be moved back and forth um when the room is used so uh okay so we have a motion and a second is there um anything else great all those in favor of allowing our central office to proceed with using
158the wec building as their offices please raise your hand and that passes 7 to zero thank you very much look at us getting things done that we didn't even have on the schedule good job where are we we are at Safe Harbor Mrs Roth the elementary and intermediate schools to offer before and after school care they also use spaces in our district to conduct summer programs included in the board packet is the contract with Safe Harbor the price and services offered remain the same from last Year's contract Safe Harbor maintains its licensed status and maintains ratios to meet ccdf requirements which allow the program to accept vouchers from qualifying families Safe Harbor also maintains their liability and takes responsibility for staff qualifications and training there are minor changes not negatively affecting the student or family
159experience Safe Harbor has been able to increase their capacity from 30 to 55 for the morning program this is the existing capacity for the afternoon program please recall that capacity will vary depending on the age of the student you can you can have more uh first through fifth grade students than you can kindergarten with the ratios the contract now reflects that Stave Harbor may stay in the building for up to an additional 15 minutes for clean up as needed and the contract now specifies that summer programs will conclude in the two weeks before school to have afford time for the preparation of the building and classrooms prior to the start of the school year this is new language but it was the existing practice they just decided to put it in the contract itself other
160factors in play related to this CommunityWide concern of child care there is no wait list for the morning or intermediate sessions the elementary school has a wait list for the afternoon session the WL parks and wreck program just incidentally also has a weight list it is a community concern both providers have indicated that they consistently work to move Children and Families into spots and reduce the weight list as quickly as they can again we do realize it's a CommunityWide concern and we're grateful too that Purdue has created a task force dedicated to looking at increasing Child Care availability as well for students faculty and staff their children uh with that again the recommendation is to approve the contract with Safe Harbor thank you all right I need a motion to moved by Mr Marley seconded
161by Mr shot is there any discussion Miss wh yeah on here I noticed that it gives the option uh for them to clean or for uh them to pay us to clean I'm just curious which they're doing do we know currently please yes hi director with me other working director Amanda Justice um we do clean up ourselves lock the floors stand the table before the children ever enter the room Sani tables before they leave s toys if there's something on the floor we definitely areep our floors and our floors we don't wax them that's all right I don't wax my floors all of our own cleaning for the children's activities so that's the additional 15 minutes if I understood correctly yes okay okay thank you very much previously I think said 8:45 and that's about
162the time that the children are dismissed and our staff may need to still go back in a little bit more clean up a little bit thank you for clarifying is there anything else you'd like to share with us about your program as long as you're here I don't want to put you on the spot but um well first of all we really appreciate the ability to use the school um for the before and after school program it's obviously in high demand with with 50 children in the afternoon um and we are Staffing that with five to six employees we go over the ratio to make sure someone said licensed program we are not a licensed program because we are in a school we are not able to be licensed we are an unlicensed exempt program
163unlicensed exempt thank you that takes um the ccdf and we maintain those standards voluntarily so that we can take the ccdf children um and and be able to offer vouchers for the lowincome children we could still operate legally without following all those guidelines we choose to follow those guidelines okay super thank you any other questions thank you so much Mr Wong please here I just wondering because a lot of people's on the waiting Le so basically uh from your point of view what's the limitations for you guys increase the capacities for after school program we are we are um Guided by the state of Indiana and any one group no matter how much space you have cannot be more than 55 children oh okay if we had a separate room then you can increase but
164any one group in one space can only be 55 children having observed groups of 55 children I think there's a good reason thank you anything else any other questions Dr maybe oh sorry Mr Wong we'll come back yeah follow up do you guys offer the summer camp uh any that kind of things for yes we do and we offer it here at West Lafayette um we one year it's at the intermediate and one year it's at the elementary we trade each year as to which school it's going to be at and we have been operating that Margaret can you tell me how many years it's been a long time at least five years at least five or six years yeah so you Safe Harbor has been in operation since 2008 okay and we started at
165bernet Creek um we operate in six different schools so we're all over the county um the summer program we offer we offer to West Lafayette students two weeks prior to opening it to the public so I just trying to understand the clarify I understand correctly so you offer the summer camp is on our school uh School location facility yes so the limitation is kind of 55 pretty much the limitation the capacity of your summer camp is 55 so you already got the register registration full well we had to make sure we still had a contract before Oh we are ready to hit the ground running we have everything pre prepared we expected um to move forward we usually don't do enrollment for summer camp okay until March okay but we expect it to be full
166so right now you have only one one group either in intermediate school or Elementary School correct so is there possible to have both of the have two groups well it's certainly not possible in the schools um the agreement was so that they have the opportunity to clean and things like that now if you would like to vacate this room and let us have it we for the summer um um you know any other spaces that we could ever possibly have there is the need there is very much the need that's um we have I I don't remember what my numbers are exactly over a hundred children enrolled in West Lafayette schools and well over a hundred or so children enrolled in the typico county schools too we appreciate the service you provide to the community
167UI did you have a question also uh thanks and first of all thank you so much for providing the opportunities for the students and I many families really appreciate this uh after school and before school care and espe for those who work the day and uh so I also appreciate that you include the uh the program change for 2024 and based on probably people's feedback and so to continue improve the the after school care for defitely our goal um I'm a substitute teacher for West Lafayette and tipu County also this is my 50th year wow in early childhood education um I was this Center Director of just us kids prior to that for 40 years I love what I do I love walking into those programs it's it's who I am and it's what I
168do and I will continue to strive to improve the program and just a one question and I wonder whether you do like annual uh feedback solicit and Par U family feedback from just asked of us um we changed directors in December I am not aware of uh one that they have done in the last year or two but it certainly will be moving forward great okay thank you so much for being here I really appreciate any other questions thank you thanks I would like to move to the vote if we could um we've had a motion in a second if I remember right so all those in favor of approving this contract please raise your hands wonderful that's everybody Mrs Julian thank you very much and thank you thank you all right next thing we're
169going to do is the uh public library and that's Mrs cations have been completed at the Grand View cottage which is located at the cemetery between central office and the Intermediate School West Lafayette Public Library attends to hold some evening and weekend events at the cottage and is requested that patrons be allowed to park in the West Lafayette intermediate school parking lot as they only have space for about three cars at the cottage they will notify the school corporation at least 2 weeks in advance of events before they advertise where parking will be available School Administration has been consulted and does not see an issue since we will be notified in advance uh the agreement is included in your board packets pleas please approve as submitted okay I need a motion I'm moved by Miss
170Whit and seconded by Mr Wong any discussion okay all those in oops please I was just going to say I obviously live about two doors down from that caretaker's Cottage and um I really I really want to applaud the work that they've done to manage that um and develop that site from the mosquito trap that it was for a great many years um I I am hopeful that we can move forward and support that little gem in our community thank you I agree it looks great miss mord yes on theou it gives the address of 1200 North Salsbury Street which I thought was this parking lot where the intermediate school is like 1,854 put wrong so I just didn't I mean I don't have any issues with this agreement it just theou with the address
171it was pointed out to me she has she had mentioned to me both the intermedia and our parking lot um obviously we have patrons park at our parking lot all the time for a bunch of different things so so um but I have been working with Miss Saros to make sure that she's available or her parking lot's available as well so okay um should we do we need to fix that address do we need to amend it or I me this is the contract that she sent me so it be what this contract is okay yes we need to just go ahead and approve it and understand that it covers all the parking lots it's written for this parking lot it's written for this parking lot okay go ahead you just uh kind of connected
172with the the earlier one we just approved the Transportation uh uh office will be moved here will there be any implication on where the school bus will be parked and school there there is um set school bus parking there right now and we have I did have the conversation with her that our buses do Park in this space and so that we have to make sure the school buses can get in and out and so if there are any issues um I'm sure I can bring that up with her so okay okay all those yeah so just to uh confirm that they want to use this parking lot right not weedies they want to use both parking lots or in this contract it's just the 12200 that she is asking that's here this one yeah
173yeah okay all right all those in favor of approving theou with the library please raise your hand that's everybody Mrs Julian super okay next up is still Mrs cron and it is the Skyward contract okay I apologize for that that was my fault I just saw our address I was like oh it's obviously the intermediate that that was on me I sincerely apologize for that if we need to revise it and bring it back next month we can do it again I'll ask her if she wants us to do one for the intermediate as well so or yeah we could have a second agreement sure um okay the technology department is requesting permission to renew our software agreement with Skyward for our student data information system for the next 3 years locking in the cost
174for 3 years affords us a large discount compared to annual pricing the annual cost per student for all necessary modules amounts to $10.2 the total annual cost would be approximately $25,000 the software is necessary to house our student data State reporting fee tracking Food Service payments student support online enrollment and textbook tracking and inventory please approve the software renewal as submitted to allow for the continuity in our student information system all righty thank you I need a motion moved by Mr Marley seconded by Mr Wong any discussion Miss Whit um it would just help me to understand what the increase has been off of current I I have absolutely no issue with Skyward I'm just curious if there's a percentage of increase I know they they all increase their rates every year minimal increase I
175assumed if you did not tell us it was minimal but thank you for the clarification any other questions or comments great all those in favor of a approving the Skyward contract please raise your hands that's everybody Mrs Julian thank you um next back to Mrs CR for the eate 2 category project approval during budget planning for 20124 the technology department indicated that upgrades to our network network infrastructure were needed as equipment is nearing its end of life the purchase was included on our capital projects plan during the budget process Mr Hamilton has been working with our eate consultant at adtech through the proper channels of obtaining federal e- rate Category 2 funding to help supplement the cost of these upgrades our district is eligible for a 50% discount on approved projects through that funding mechanism
176we've gone through the necessary processes required for a category 2 project including the publication of notices of request for proposals a question and answer period and a final assessment of those proposals winch submitted the winning proposal for the network infrstructure replacement at a total cost of $231,500 with our eate discount the final cost of the district will be approximately 115,000 so that category 2 funding is very helpful to school districts the wi Tech contract is included in your board packets please approve as submitted so that we can get a PO started and they can start planning um for the replacement of those pieces of equipment okay I need a motion please moved by Mr shot second by Mr Wong uh any discussion on that one super all those in favor please raise your hand wonderful
177that's everybody again Mrs Julian all right um the next item is the finance update see again yep uh the object breakdown of this month's claims has been included in your board packets like normal a preliminary fund report dated February 29th shows a total cash balance on hand for the District of 8,884 N9 the education fund has a cash balance of $3,431 46 please remember that this is preliminary as we you're still in the process of posting revenue for the month of February we have some great news our payroll specialist Nathan Snyder was recently voted in as the Indiana Association of school business officials School support professional of the year for Region 4 We're certainly proud of Nathan his work ethic and his continued progress towards iasbo certification he will be presented with his award in
178May at the iasbo annual meeting we recently concluded our banial state board of accounts audit the information is currently embargoed by the state board until they release their final report which will be available publicly at that time on their website we will share more information at the April board meeting we're also currently planning our annual teacher retirement information session on March 26th for any teacher wanting to learn more about how retirement works at West lafette schools and then Brian Hoffman our Valic representative will also be presenting a retirement planning presentation on April 16th at 4:30 p.m. super and that one's info only so does anyone have any questions okay super thank you the next item is the Junior Senior High School ground floor update um which is me and I will read the uh memo
179the West Lafayette Education Foundation has fundraised money in the past for renovations to the West Lafayette Junior Senior High School they currently have approximately $1.6 million that they would like to transfer to the school corporation for the purposes of commencing ground floor Renovations including locker rooms and restrooms that will be U utilized by all students we will be asking in April that the board accept the funds from wlf into the school corporation accounts to be tracked separately in a construction fund specifically for the ground floor Renovations the Fanning hoe study of the ground floor is included in your board packets for consideration the study outlines different projects that could be completed on the ground floor to meet the needs of both academics and Athletics at the high school as can be seen the cost of
180the renovations is more than the funding that is currently available the wlf executive board believes that they have the ability to continue fundraising efforts to fully fund the phase one project of the ground floor as well as to work toward funding The Phase 2 through four projects um in April that will come before the board uh to approve the foundation moving forward with continued fundraising efforts this item is for um discussion and information only and we will bring back an official recommendation in April so with that Mrs Whit if you have questions I do have questions and I appreciate Mr stro being here because I suspect he's the person to answer them probably um when we initially toured this I uh and I want to be clear that I'm talking about uh the difference between
181PE and athletic teams I think athletic team locker room environments are different uh one of the things that I admire about RP programs at Westside is they really seem to work hard to promote lifelong Fitness with our students um students are required in the state of Indiana to take PE I think looking out into the future I I personally find it to be shocking that uh children in our schools are still required to disrobe twice a day in front of one another in order to graduate from high school and so I I would like to see locker room facilities specifically for PE that allow students for some privacy for any of the Myriad of reasons that they might desire High privacy um and that's a a big um a big number of reasons why and
182so I'm really very interested in understanding I could not tell from the drawings if that was included in there all I could see were three kind of locker changing but I know our PE classes are are larger than that and if anything the space looked more compressed for me in the PE locker room so I'm hoping maybe you could explain to me how that issue of modesty and privacy is being addressed in those spaces sure I think first off uh thanks to Dr Griner and the board for having this on the agenda you know any discussion about this is progress in the correct direction I think um I think it's important for everybody to remember that this was just an initial drawing um really kind of gifted to us from kjg back in 2021 or
1832022 and then of course Fanning howy has kind of taken that initial drawing and and added to it um and I would say that I would lend or lead towards them as being the experts in in what we need for the facility um rather than myself um I think the advice that we've provided them have been through the lens of PE teachers uh coaches athletic administrators School administrators uh to provide safer locker rooms for supervision and the challenges that we face now obviously there there are going to be ongoing challenges with locker room facilities and and what various groups of students need um I guess part of what you see there there are some Open Spaces of course but there's also additional separate spaces that can still be supervised by teachers you know we have
184various grade levels that we have to accommodate um not just athletic teams but obviously with the the school day the PE we have various genders that we have to accommodate and by having separate um clean well-lit spaces with um attached coach's office or teacher offices that that allow us to supervise more effectively but but again I think it's important to know that these are initial drawings and I I don't think we're necessarily close to breaking ground uh I hope we are but you know I don't I don't think that's the reality so I think there's a lot of conversation a lot of feedback still to gather before we get to the actual construction phase just clarify to that the purpose of this was to see what the cost would be and to um give us
185an idea of different projects that we could do to meet the needs and so this by all means is not anywhere close to an actual architectural plan um it's kind of a a breakdown yeah I I really appreciate the clarification I just I think it's something that we have an opportunity in westoff yet to be a little bit Forward Thinking in terms of what students are going to need in the future and again I I I'm not trying to say that I know better than our PE teachers and our coaches and I understand there's a lot of different Dynamics at Play but I also know that a great many of our students consider P something to be endured not something to take a lifelong lesson out of and I would hope that we would be
186trying to impart the wisdom of Fitness on our students not of Shame and so that's really at the heart of what what I'm speaking to you about today I I hope that as those plans develop those conversations can be had as part of it thanks I I share your uh concern I've had I remember PE in the 90s and the 80s and it was an interesting experience and I'm looking forward to the ability to give our students uh facilities that will help them have a better experience than some of us uh gen xers had believe me I concur as well so we had that discussion a long time ago I can I have one other I'm sorry un no please sorry I have opinions on locker rooms who knew um I just really want to
187say thank you to the the West lafette schools Education Foundation they have partnered with us on a great many things um and they really work hard on the day-to-day um to enrich our schools with funding that's very necessary and so I for one and and just would like to Express gratitude for them and their work thank you I I concur Mrs mford I agree muchly needed and actually has been needed for many years um but my big question is how we plan to pay for it you know looking at a $10 million project and we have the Education Foundation you know committing to a small portion with the hopes of raising it is not enough funds to actually cover it so my concern is what is the plan besides just hopeful thinking that it will
188be covered by the foundation so the relationship between the school district and the foundation is such that we need to accept the money from the foundation as a first step toward moving toward this construction plan and then we also would ask them to fundraise on our behalf and please jump in because I know you're very active with the foundation um so the nice thing about breaking it down into phases is that we can complete those phases as the fundraising allows and would you like to add just it it'll be prioritized and we'll spend the money that we have and if we run out of money we'll we'll stop stop spending it yeah yeah phas one this is a a big reason Mrs mford why uh we asked to break it into phases so that it
189actually could be done uh through steps and so phase one we would have the 1.6 million approximately and then we would go uh to the Education Foundation and ask them to be the fundraising process and then when we had the funds to move forward proceed with this first phase that first phase would hopefully then people would see the fruit of it and it would give the foundation opportunity to further um promote the fundraising activities with that also comes time to complete that one and so there's would be a point where so the 1.6 million once it is on our books becomes what we are putting forward for for the phase one project and over time um as we look at uh Financial challenges and so forth rainy day funds and so forth what funds do
190we have available in in our operations fund we would see what kind of money we could put forth toward the next phase and give them the opportunity then to understand what type of fundraising for that next phase uh would would be necessary and that's why breaking it into these phases allows us to do that in a way that is doable now they raised money to to help us with our previous construction did we have we ever received that money I think it was like 3.5 million that's what this is they're not helping with previous construction debt they're now taking that money and putting it towards a new construction it was raised for the purpose of construction at the high school so that is something that we could use for this this particular project now why
191wasn't it used for the previous project you know I mean this is my question is we have a foundation that came forward and said we're going to raise money to help with this previous project actually never gave that money to the school now they're coming to the school saying we'll give part of that money we promised before to start a new project I'd like to understand kind of these decisions a little bit better so it's actually not a new project it's part of the unfinished work at the high school that Mr Shriner and Mr stro have been um communicating to us with request to consider looking at completing that ground floor and that is for educational purposes okay thank you very much for all that information I just put an M Mr sorry go ahead
192was there just glad to hear you talk okay Mr W question regarding these foundation so my understanding the foundation we get collect money from donations when Don donors uh pay money they have some purpose say I want this money spent for such such things so in this case is uh do you think our donors for this Foundation when we accept this money we want to make sure we use the money according for there the donors will we don't want you know you see what I mean yeah the differences between directed and undirected Don restrict so restricted uh right restricted restrict something yeah so Mr shot you may want to speak to that but that that the board had very serious conversation about that the the ation Foundation they wanted to make sure that it ABS
193when I attended some of those meetings they wanted to make sure that it absolutely did go that direction they had a lot of dialogue and they feel very comfortable with that that is why they are now saying let's get that part on the books and then let's start the process of fundraising if the school corporation wishes to make that request is that accurate Tom that's accurate you made a great point that we need to do something to show off that we are making progress to try to sell additional fundraising capabilities and they're very careful with spending money that people donate for the reasons they want to donate their m s we initially find and I I have in my notes that we toured the school and really started to seriously talk about this on November
19417th of 21 but I believe there were informal conversations long prior to this as the construction was being developed this is not a new conversation is that no you no the conversation about that ground floor was always in the overall remodel additions to the Junior Senior High School just think it ran out of Ste about the time of Performing Art corre and there were leadership changes with the foundation and there were there was a pandemic and a lot of things kind of happened so um we're just moving forward now in a the same direction that we've always wanted to move forward if I understand correctly okay more question sure so I just shared the DAT as concerned so we break that in four phases so basically if we don't have fun we just finish the
195phase one it won't hurt anything we don't have any kind of hook up for finish all other things it's kind of separate right the four right and that's not uncommon in large construction projects you can break that clearly different faces when typically break it up into Standalone which is what they did you break it up in a standalone project so that we can do this part and then we we don't have to do the other parts there Standalone projects and that was the request that we made when we made the phasing was to make it so that it was doable so that we could work on one phase without with minimal Interruption and then move in later or when we were able to fund it into the next phase yes um that was part of
196what happened with the weit room if that's a prime example of the room that needed to be done really I I my in my mind that happened due to safety there were some safety concerns with the previous weight room and that was done as a standalone kind of early project is that my is my recall correct on that one yeah the waight room wasir minimal cosmetic changes right space didn't change the orientation equipment didn't change there was new equipment and replac broken mirrors better lighting andoor flooring is I yeah okay flooring relatively relative we can bring or W yeah the April meeting or any I think we used to do that they used to come once a year and give a bit of an update that's not just done with this project right and as
197we a lot of great things they do and as we proceed I'm sure there will be architectural presentations and fundraising updates and things of that nature so we just wanted to let you know that this is beginning so okay yeah help me understand it it says phase one will cost 2.6 million but the foundation isn't giving us 2.6 million they're giving us 1.6 million because that's what they have and we're going to hold that in an account and then we have it available to invest and grow while they are also going to their donors and saying here's what we have planned and solic so we're not going to start phase one till have 2.6 from them correct now have we heard and I maybe I remember incorrectly I thought they raised 3.5 million previously why
198are they not giving us all that they had committed to give um she told me so the 1.6 is what they have invested in a CD right now at this time that will come due in the fall that they would then pass to us there are some other um donations that are kind what I could say endowed in the future that will be that is part of that larger amount that you're but we don't know when that is going to happen because people can you know put in their Estates that money is to go to the school corporate or the foundation but that hasn't transpired yet for lack of better words sure go ahead so Dr gr I heard you talk about clearing uh R fund so basically we don't have any school we don't
199have any obligations to put in some money for this project right we're still kind of waiting for the the foundation correct at this time for this project it would be the 1.6 million and that's why it would be moved over into our accounts and then they would start raising as Mrs mford asked the difference in the in the funds to get to the 2.6 when we were at the 2.6 million projects uh would we would be prepared to begin that project right now the the foundation needs us to accept this money and then request that they start fundraising for us Upon Our request okay so right now my understanding they have invest their 1.6 million R now in CD so when we get this money do we have any ways to put them in good
200ways have some place to make this money I mean maybe generate some interest or something like that you invest it oh yeah we'll definitely invest it into CDs like we have been and hopefully get some great returns from that and we would invest that in a separate investment account uh because it would be its own construction fund um but yes I would definitely invest that money so more than other than this kind of we take care of this 1.6 million other than that what other obligations or something we got to do in order to accept this 1.6 milion we'll just vote on it in April that's all I just wanted you to be aware that that was coming and have time to ask questions or you know think about locker rooms so okay okay okay
201thank you all right information to the board is next and uh really the only thing I have is that the legisl legislative session is winding down and our legislators are trying to finish up by March 8th this year has been fairly quiet for K through2 education bills and I am happy to report there isn't really anything too terrible on the horizon and that's one in a row um so let's go to our do you have anything for information or do you want to go later my report yes I I would be happy to go I don't know why it says Austin yeah I would be happy to report so this is kind of lengthy but it's a fun lengthy I decided after watching that amazing musical wow that I was going to report out on
202some positive things happening and um Mrs cron and I spent some time in the schools this past week so we added those because it was so amazing and so I just wanted to report out on a few things and our schools our teachers our students our families are absolutely amazing that's what you're going to hear from this um so I'm I'm going to head on some curricular and some extracurricular activities that I was able to personally experience this past week and as you know we have so many great things going on in our district that I cannot personally hit them all but these are just a few and so if I leave something out know that it's because you you could go on forever and that's what I discovered as I was writing some of
203these down I was inspired by my fair lady though what a great performance our high school students did with the My Fair Lady performance this musical this past weekend Mrs gr and I had the opportunity to attend on Saturday congratulations to our students and to our directors directors Carrie Francis Carol lecher and Michael Bennett truly commendable work thank you to our students thank you to our staff and our parents for a job well done then I was able to go out with Mrs Croc to Willis uh on Friday and then we were invited to head on over to the literature fair at the high school and we heard some amazing presentations we saw some just amazing um develop uh presentations of of data of information uh and then we heard them speak so well here's
204what Mrs Croc and I can tell you and as we just celebrated from one building to the next and back to the office our students produce quality work our students research and develop impressive present presentations our students are impressively well spoken when preparing and then presenting their findings and they present it with passion and they pre present it very confidently simply amazing exhibitions by our students with the facilitative support of our amazing staff and then we know that the support of our families has our students coming to school ready to learn congratulations to Willis's sh shiran Carr she's heading to the Nations to the Nationals again for her SP be competition uh she this is the second year in the row for Shir to head to the Nationals you may recall that she attended Nationals
205last year and was 74th so here we are with take two and we are very proud of her so congratulations to capital s h a r a n y a shirana also congratulations to our boys basketball team for this becoming sectional Champs we are so proud of them we're proud of our boys for their commitment and their hard work we're also proud of coach Van arzell and his entire coaching staff for the dedication and expertise that he brings to the team we wish the team good luck at regionals this coming Saturday our robotics team isn't far behind with excitement they travel to Mishawaka this weekend and they experienced success this week into this is the third straight District event that they have taken home the gold they received the sustainability award their next competition is
206in planfield on March 23rd and 24th and they will be co-hosting the state championship on April 6th and 7th at Lafayette Jeff we've already marked our calendar and are excited for that day she Devil's dance team they're right there with us they place in the top four top teams at state in every category this weekend the team also took home the highest Palm scores in sheev Devil's history we're proud of their growth we're proud of their hard work and we are certainly proud of the coaches and all adults that bring this team to the real reality of success that they experience I had the great pleasure along with Mrs crun she actually sat beside me to attend the Golden Apple award several of us were able to attend I believe we know that um Mr
207Wong was there too he sat beside me too we were able to go there to this Ceremony this and celebrate our own John Levy for receiving this award we're grateful for Mr Levy's passion and expertise his acceptance speech was heartfelt heartwarming uh Michelle for real yeah uh he you could just feel his passion that he brings to our district in his speech it was among the best if not the best sorry everybody else that did a speech his passion was genuine and his care and affection for his own children was felt I felt that really really well went home and hugged all my kids because of it and I left reflecting for real on our entire staff thinking about just how fortunate we are in this district for the expertise commitment dedication excitement that we
208have in our elementary building our intermediate building and our Junior High building and we saw that when we were out visiting as well as when we hear teachers like Mr Levy accepting that great award so many more great things that I could celebrate in our district but I cannot attend everything and so I know I missed something but these are just a few points of Pride that I wanted to share with us to illustrate why we're here and why we do what we do and why you feel that uh excitement in our heart as we even speak about this finally something exciting for our students and our teachers too remember that next week is spring break and so we will be on break the week of March 10th we wish safe travels to all of
209our families who will be traveling over the break and I would just like to say that I learned so much more about 1400s English than Dr Griner did um and I did much better at the quiz that the young lady okay they quizzed us after we had to pet a shape okay if you don't know what a shape is you need to study this and I I petted the she I tried to take it she I said pet it don't take it so I was like I'm so sorry but then she went to quizzes so I said Mrs cron will do that but as I thought I can do some of these I started to answer said you said you didn't want to do this so they shushed me yep you guys are fun all
210right thank you for that update our pleasure um we'll just start with uh Mrs buer and work our way toward me if you want to give your update for the public schools Foundation found spr for the teachers are open until March 6 the cupcake bake off was February 15th um and then I just have a general question last month it ended before you could address committee assignments um you've removed lots of Schoolboard members from a variety of committees so I would like you to share more about that please about the Committees um yeah go ahead and finish the reports and I'll pull up that list from last month thank you um Mr Wong go ahead there's some update from the park and uh Recreation uh so right now they are kind of U uh they
211doing the in recre recreating Impact fee study so they find wers do that study uh basically collect uh fees from the apartment the business so the whole process will take maybe eight to nine months So eventually we will have some city ordinance uh to to S to to collect the feast to support our uh Park and the recreation and uh another things there Carson family park the construction is running very well and the field trip is available so if somebody interested can contact them they can rrange the field F to see what's going on with there and U the major things I want to share with other people is the after program uh their after program and their summer camps especially the summer camp they have 125 in Wellness Center and 50 spot in natural
212Center all gone in 1 minute so so they uh they are Dr David per uh he's the the bo chairman presid so he has some interest to work with our schools and see if he can increase uh the capacities for the summer camp and also after school programs so I I think Dr Grant already worked with them so I really appreciate their quick uh actions on that I really appreciate that and um so that's that that s and also they sorry and also they uh the wellness center they also ask to see if our high school can provide some um parttime or summer summer jobs for them such as lifeguard or something so I just I told them I just forward you a request to Dr graner and our school ad means and they can
213they can work with them thank you and uh another things was to mention is after the meetings and when community community members talk to me uh regarding the concerns about our school policy and when their change and the rewriting effort and um she uh suggest that we scho uh don't do this police policy rewriting uh effort at at this time so I just forwarded her concerns to our uh School Board and uh that that's all for the park and the recreation and uh one thing I'm thinking about this policy uh our we're not rewriting things I think maybe we can have a kind of policy committees uh I I know we have different different opinions but just my my thought you know we have seven members each of us have different schedules somebody maybe kind
214more flexible and work for uh spend more time working on the polic policies and then we can I mean during these things we can save some time with the meetings and also working sessions and then this also help us to build a kind of unified collaborative uh board members board teams so that's just some some of myself thank you okay we did have a policy committee and there was a lot of Suspicion about it so we decided to do it this way uh it was and I guess that kind of leads to um the question Mrs Mumford asked which was why the Committees were the way they were and you're correct I didn't get to talk about that last month um but as board chair one of my responsibilities is assigning committees and I felt
215that um when I first came on the board there were a lot of different committee assignments and I felt like that gave the mistaken impression that the board needed to have its fingers in a lot of different things and so I Whitted it down to the most important ones the ones that um like the foundations and the um Parks really directly affect our students and our staff and um left the others to our Administration to bring to us when there's something we need to discuss and so um that's why I didn't assign a policy committee and it's something we could certainly talk talk about um but I think the way things went tonight was not bad I think we got more done than I thought we would I think it went fairly smoothly and with
216a little more practice and a little more um anticipation of the flow of the documents um it'll be smoother every month um I think that um so I left myself as legislatively aison on uh when I did the committee assignments because uh that's a particular passion of mine it has been since I was on the debate team in high school um and it's a lot of work once a year which is a lot more manageable than a lot of work all year long so um and Mrs wit has been on board teacher discussion for quite a few years now she and I served on that committee together last year and um I barely spoke because you had everything covered so I felt like that was a really appropriate position for you and similarly Mr Marley
217has been on the RDC for a very long time and that was a very appropriate um position for him and one that we didn't want to let go of um and uh you know uh sorry names Mr shot with the foundation same thing and um Dr Yin had served on glass the previous year I believe is that correct you would yeah and you still so you this is your second or third year okay so and um with letting go of some other committee assignments I felt like the Parks Board was one that we wanted to continue that relationship and so you uh were given that one and um Mrs Mumford the foundation in typan new county is another one that's important and it affects our students and teachers directly so Mrs Wht I was just
218gonna give a little bit of backstory on this one when Dr Grinder joined the school corporation and I became board chair at the same time one of the early meetings we had was uh when he looked at the committee listening he said I've never seen anything like this this is not normal and I said well this is how we have done it in westoff yet for a lot of years I think there was on my part a desire to better engage board members and and help them feel their opinions were really valued and so I doubled down and we really even increased the number of committees and and that strategy was not uh successful and so I am I I understand completely the conversation about removing the quantity of committees has been on the table
219for two years now and uh I appreciate that you've done it so that we can um uh kind of benefit and allow our staff to do their jobs from that so and lists like that I think tend to grow over time you know it's oh well this is important too we'll put someone on that and and sometimes you just need to take it down to the bones and start over and there may be more committee assignments that come but I don't know that right now policy is one that we should I mean certainly I'll talk about that with Dr Griner and see where he um thinks we should go but I'd like to give what we did tonight a chance to kind of settle and see if we can make some good progress with that
220approach um thank thank you so miss what would you like oh go ahead sorry yeah regarding back to the policy Community I'm okay either way and I appreciate uh Miss wait and also you you have more committees and and Miss Anders have fewer and each one have his own approach Styles I okay either way and I appreciate and but I just say no matter what if we decide to have political Mees I'm available to uh Ser in there so thank you I appreciate your interest I will make a note I had a question on committees that I thought were required school board members are required to be on so we don't have anyone assigned is negotiations Schoolboard members that's just optional or they required the wellness committee the neg I thought were all required negotiations
221is required and Mrs Austin communicated back to the board that when the negotiation season open she would appoint somebody to that I would say most School corporations do the board chair um however Mr Marley has years of experience and um that would be up to Mrs Austin to determine and the wellness committee is written in policy that there needs to be a board member present in that committee and they meet I think the current policy is once or twice a year so it's not a a really extensive one and in that situation it could be in policy and the board chair would assign somebody to attend on behalf of the board and report back but it doesn't necessarily have to be an ongoing assignment to to me the policy so sorry I question I appreciate
222it and you know if if I assign myself to negotiations and then all the negotiations are a night when I've got my ballet class then I'm not going to be able to be there and so it would be important to have that flexibility so codifying something that happens once a year and that I don't have control over the schedule of didn't seem like a really efficient way but when um Mrs Fitz Simmons decides it's time to have the wellness policy committee if I'm available I'll go because the legislative thing only happens from January through March or April and if I'm not available then I'll make that available to the rest of you and we'll see what happens that is my plan anyway we'll see how it goes maybe next year we'll do something new did
223you have a committee report for us I do have a committee report we like to hear super okay for Teacher discussion they met on Thursday February the 15th um and it as always uh the teachers kind of started off um and are are grateful for the communitive communicative um and collaborative environment between um our school and board and the teachers um Dr Riner recapped the U principal search and offered to answer any questions related to that um the April professional development day you may have heard in the news that other school corporations are closed for the eclipse but we by some miracle had arranged for a professional development day that day already so there was some conversation about how that would work out uh already started conversations for planning for uh school year 2425 and
224what that looks like and they start this is normal this time of year that they start really planning and anticipating need for next year um and also just a kind of an update Mrs K helped us all understand a little bit better the legislation and T assessment question that's been uh up in front of us for a while so that was very helpful information I know the teachers really appreciated that as always it was a lovely meeting great thank you I have a question with the upcoming um discussion of class sizes was there any discussion right now we have fifth grade with TW you know 25 kids in a class do the teachers have any opinion or cares yeah actually that was specifically discussed uh currently there are three classrooms at 25 there's one at
22523 the remainder are at 24 the teachers there happen to be two fifth grade teachers who are on that committee uh on board teacher discussion and um they were very grateful for some furniture rearrangement that was done very promptly to kind of free up a little bit more space in their classroom um there was an undue concern expressed about the certain class sizes and in fact some classes were smaller after the January break so I think the what I heard from teachers is that they were um confident in the process moving forward and evaluation of what was right on class sizes by principes central office a lot of confidence expressed about the project thank you thanks Dr Yan how about glass would you like to share with us um sure um school psychologist and a
226speech and language um pathologist uh in great needs so glass and harir some online once currently and recently they surveyed the school psychologist about their working envirment and the needs and they proposed some general strategies and the recruitment U uh strategies such as develop relationship and partner with higher education institution to increase the supply and offer paid internship offer signing bonus and that could be paid over the course of the school year and so on there are many sounds like very promising and I really appreciate their hard work and the next meeting will be on April 6 16 so from 2:00 to 3:00 they welcome a public comments for that and another another thing relat to actually one committee members U comments regarding the zoning committee uh zoning discussion about Transit housing actually as a
227resident I went to the meetings twice and then spoke there to Advocate to keep houses in our district for families rather than Airbnb and unfortunately at the last meeting one house got a permission even though that request was sounds weak according to the audience there so I wonder whether we can however you know I cannot represent our school district I can only uh speak as a red so I wonder whether we can send any representative and as for the for our district to speak there to Advocate to keep more houses and before city council members and the mayor have representative there to speak and so I wonder whether we can in the future can when petitions were submitted we can send somebody there to speak for us I also looked at the um the um
228agenda for that meeting but unfortunately I had a sick child so I wasn't able to go I um had intended to try um but if uh board members are interested um send me an email and we'll talk about it about having a standing committee member for that thanks thank you uh Mr shot uh the West offat school's Education Foundation perhaps you've heard of them received a record number of applicants for scholarships this year 67 students this is a wonderful response and also shows the growing need for support to pursue higher education 2024 wall of Pride class will be announced later this week with the induction ceremonies scheduled for April 11 and 12 and uh registration is open for scarlet and gry dinner and auction on April 19th visit the WLS cf. website for a link
229to the event site and the purchase tickets great and Mr Marley all right the uh Redevelopment commission for West Lafia at met uh back in January 17th and again well February 21st we have two new members uh Arnold chin and Kristen Edmonson have now joined us uh updates on uh construction projects uh case and family park the boat house is construction as is the restroom uh facility uh we we continue to work on public safety design uh we're going to build a new public safety center it's going to be really nice and uh just stay tuned on that uh we had a declaratory resolution in the levy Village Redevelopment plan there's a new project going up down there uh seven stories tall um probably 1,200 bedrooms plus retail on the bottom floor and there's going
230to be some realignment in the levy we're going to lay out a grid pattern and so there's an accommodation being made for this project and so you can all picture everybody's been to Brunos Brunos is part of this site as is pinis and couple restaurants down the street from pinis so it's going to cover that but that Street's going to straighten out and uh they're going to get a $5.5 million Bond that'll be repaid from the property taxes on that project that project's probably going to be $250 million give or take big numbers U and it's going to take a couple years to build uh we T agreed to pay for a new platform fire truck uh with the ladder you want to guess how much that cost I'm going to guess three million you're
231close $2.39 three million that was in the ballpark and we got to order it now won't be here for a couple of years so that great so we paid for that or we're going to pay for that uh Cherry Lane uh Trail project uh was approved uh that's a cost of almost $2.7 million and so trer Lane's being improved you know it's going through the the golf course it's going of go around the clubhouse and so we're going to put in a new uh pedestrian way so people can Jog and ride their bikes safely instead of taking their lives in their own hands uh request for bids uh Salisbury Street improvements Cumberland and lrange improvements uh Grant lesie Salisbury and again Cherry Lane also going to take bids to resurface McCormack uh Road uh and
232improve that that road is actually an Old County Road and there's no shoulder to it so we're going to improve that um other than that uh there's a little Quick Claim Deed going on in the same Levy project uh we're going to have some public park space down there which is going to be really cool last but not least there was an update from APA Consulting and they are the ones that are doing our Early Child uh education feasibility work there really wasn't anything of substance I would say it's a more early stages a lot of surveying a lot of reaching out into the community and collecting uh input so there'll be more of that coming up I'll try to keep you up to date as that goes forward it's all I got for you
233tonight terrific thanks I know we love a survey okay yeah good Stu I have no intention of meeting at 7:00 a.m. ever you don't want to see me at that time of day but uh the work session is scheduled if something catastrophic happens otherwise I intend to do it just like we did tonight uh next month have our work session at 5: get through what we can uh and then convene the regular board meeting at 6 on April 8th right here upcoming dates of Interest include the end of the nine weeks grading period on March 88th uh which will begin spring break from the 11th to the 15th and school resumes on the 18th I know the Austin are very much looking forward to the break and um there will be no school on April
2348th do not look at the eclipse with your bare eyes call me I have eclipse glasses I have a dealer anyway um if there's nothing else for the good of the order I will take a motion to adjourn because I remember to get a motion to adjourn moved by Mrs wit seconded by Mr Wong all in favor please raise your hand that's everybody Mrs Julian we are adjourned thank you