001as close to that as possible, is what's on the ballot in November. Here are the facts on that. It might sound like a major cost saver, but the data tells a different story. The Loyal building is short by at least 15 classrooms. The data actually shows that number is closer to 20. It lacks the gymnasium and the cafeteria capacity for that many students, especially with our current physical education and athletic offerings. Now, it was also pointed out that Loyal does have enough lockers for every student. Yes, there is even data on that. But as a parent, I have to say, I don't want my children learning in a locker. Although some great life lessons might be learned in that space, that's a whole 'nother conversation. I want them learning in a classroom. And effective classrooms
002in 2026 do not look like what they did 15 years ago, 20 years ago even. Moving to a single building model would require a massive taxpayer investment to expand an older facility. At that point, we have to ask ourselves, does it make sense to pour millions into an aging building that will only continue to demand higher maintenance costs, especially when there is a good building that can be used for the same purpose not that far away? I have to ask, why is it viewed as a negative to consider [clears throat] the needs of both communities? If we truly believe that consolidation is what's best for our kids, then we must plan to be a partnership, and we must take into account the best course of action in order to have this vote be passed in
003November. These two things go hand in hand. We cannot say consolidation is best for our students, but not work toward making that happen. There has been talk about and some fear about losing programming. The music program was one that was brought up. From the beginning, this board has said that consolidation is about continuing to give our students more opportunities, not less. By bringing our schools together, we are not cutting the arts. We are saving them. We are ensuring that our students have the staff, the instruments, and the classmates they need for a high-quality music program. And can you imagine the sound of our band and choir if they stood here together as one? I miss one good thing. This is the reason why I'm here tonight. When we frame student successes like our collaborative drama
004department or our joint athletics as negatives, we are ignoring the people who matter the most, the students. I read the senior bios in the three-act play program last weekend. I heard the drama students speak to this very board. They did not speak of loss. They spoke of gratitude. They spoke of new friendships, and they spoke of broadened experiences. And when we misrepresent their experiences to fit a narrative of loss, we are failing to listen to the very students we claim to serve and care about. And that cannot be tolerated. Words matter. How we frame this discussion matters, because our words have influence on how people think, how they feel, and how they respond. And our students are watching. They are watching to see if we handle disagreement with integrity, or if we are allowing fear
005to guide us into misleading information and half-truths. They are watching if we are choosing personal agendas or service to the public. I believe in these communities. I believe both value hard work and doing what is right, even when that might be uncomfortable. And I am standing here tonight very uncomfortably, because staying silent out of fear does not serve our students. So, my request tonight is simple. To our leaders, please commit to clear, honest communication that is grounded in facts. And to my neighbors, please do not let the loudest voices be the only ones that are defining our future. Please come join me in this space of public comment, because your voices may be just what the next person needs to hear in order to find some clarity in this situation. When we close our minds
006before truly listening and giving others a chance, we are blinding ourselves to the possible good that can come from it. Please stop using language that treats neighbors like they are a threat to be avoided. Greenwood, our residents, our community, our school is not an infection or a cancer to the Loyal building. The community the uh Greenwood could be great partners. If we give this partnership a chance, we may just find that together we are so much stronger than we will ever be apart. Thank you. Any questions for either board? Thank you for your comments. Anyone else during the public forum time? Otherwise, we did have some public forum stuff submitted to us. I'm going to have Crystal read the first half of it, and then I will read the second. Okay, so this is the
007first time that I'm really looking through it, so forgive me if I like stumble through it, but um it says to Greenwood and Loyal joint boards from Loyal representatives of the task joint task force. Formal request for pathway 10. Members of the joint task force have repeatedly requested that the consulting firm formally model a specific cost-effective consolidation pathway. To date, this pathway has not been officially presented. We request this be entered into the record as pathway 10, and be fully modeled for taxpayers. Keeping Greenwood elementary open as is. Establishing pre-K through 12th grade in the Loyal facility for a transitional period until a long-term single campus build-out can be completed. Number two, the financial math that empty space tax. The primary goal of consolidation is financial sustainability. Leaving large portions of the Greenwood campus open
008and actively works against saving taxpayer money. The Loyal capacity. The Loyal building is 133,000 square feet. By the 2028 school year, the combined enrollment will drop to approximately 660 students. This provides roughly 201 square feet per student, which is exceptionally spacious and easily exceeds the architectural recommendation of 120 to 150 square feet per student. The Greenwood liability. The Greenwood campus totals 158,000 square feet. The high school portion alone is 112,000 square feet. Because it is currently operating at roughly 20% capacity, taxpayers are paying to heat, cool, and maintain a building that is 80% empty. Duplication of services. Operating two separate campuses forces the districts to pay double for overhead. This includes duplicate administrative administrative staff, duplicate cafeteria crews, duplicate custodial teams, and millions of dollars in future deferred maintenance for multiple roofs and boiler systems.
009Three, logistical math. Commutes versus shuttles. Keeping multiple buildings open for middle school or specific electives creates a massive hidden financial cost in transportation. Midday shuttling cost. The 7.8-mile drive between the two schools takes roughly 11 to 13 minutes. While this is a very manageable morning and afternoon commute, using it for midday class shuttling is a financial trap. Lost time and wages. A simple 11-minute drive becomes a 25-minute transition when loading and unloading is factored in. This destroys instructional time. Furthermore, it requires the district to pay bus drivers for full-day shifts to run constant shuttles, erasing the operational savings that consolidation was supposed to create. Conclusion. Pathway 10 maximizes the use of our most appropriately sized asset, the Loyal building, while immediately stopping the financial bleeding of heating and maintaining 112,000 square feet in mostly up
010mostly empty space in Greenwood. We formally request that the joint boards direct Miron Construction and the architectural team to provide a full financial and capacity model for pathway 10 prior to any vote. Submitted for the record by loyal representatives of the loyal joint task forces. And this document is also done by that task force. On the top it says loyal with school district consolidation transportation logistics and efficiency analysis. Below that there is a map of what I'm going to call a density map overview and methodology. To ensure the long-term sustainability and fiscal responsibility of our school, we are evaluating the potential for consolidating the Greenwood and Loyal school districts into a one roof model. A primary factor in this decision is the logistical impact of families and the operational efficiency of our transportation department. By
011utilizing independent spatial analysis to map every student bussing waypoint and current service radius, we can objectively determine which campus serves as the most efficient geographic hub. Asking AI unbiased inquiry, I believe this is the question put into the AI model. By analyzing the student population density and transportation waypoints shown in these spatial models, which district location serves as the most efficient geographic hub for consolidated campus minimizing total travel time for the combined student body. The analysis why Loyal is the logical geographic hub. Number one, density and centric efficiency. Loyal, the waypoint markers show a significant higher concentration within a tighter geographic radius. The bulk of the Loyal bussing waypoints are clustered around the town of Loyal itself. Consolidating here minimizes the empty mile travel for the highest number of students. Greenwood, in contrast, these waypoints
012are more widely dispersed across the western and northern sections of the district. Number two, route overlap and the one roof logic. Many of the Greenwood waypoints actually fall within or very near the outer radius circles of the Loyal map. If you consolidate at the Loyal site, the buses coming from the west, Greenwood, are moving toward a more densely populated hub. It is generally more cost effective to pull a smaller, dispersed population toward a dense center than to send a large number of buses out from a dense center to a more remote, dispersed site. Number three, geo- geographical positioning. The Loyal school site acts as more of a central anchor for the combined eastern half of the total service area. A significant portion of the Greenwood student population is already located in the corridor between two
013towns, meaning that the commute changes to Loyal would be less drastic than moving the high density Loyal population further to the west. Summary comparison. That's a side-by-side comparison showing the feature with Greenwood and Loyal. Waypoint density for Greenwood is moderate and dispersed. For Loyal it's high and concentrated. For centrality, Greenwood is better for western rural routes, Loyal better for overall population center. For radius coverage, Greenwood is large empty gaps in the north and the west. Loyal has better alignment with surrounding districts. Projected benefit of centralization at Loyal reduces fleet costs. By shortening the average route for the highest density student clusters, the district can reduce fuel consumption and vehicle wear. Minimize travel times. The majority of students will experience a shorter or neutral change in the commute time compared to a west bound consolidation. Future
014proofing. A centralized hub in the highest density area provides better flexibility for future population shifts within the region. Conclusion. Based on visual evidence of the combined waypoint clusters, the Loyal campus is the most logical sound one roof location for reducing empty mile travel and optimizing fleet efficiency. Its routes are more compact and it serves as a more logical geographic sink for the combined student population density. Per request, these have been put into the record and Loyal clerk has received them. Is there any other comment during the forum? Can we ask questions before she stops? Uh you can certainly ask questions. I don't know that Crystal and I are the ones to answer them. We just read the papers. Do you have 10 signatures from 10 people? That was the task force. Or how many signatures
015do you have on that paper? Is it one opinion, three opinions? To answer your specific question, there are no signatures on it. It says from not It doesn't say all, it says loyal representatives of the joint task forces. Can we ask questions? They're just reading. Hello. My question on that is there's a lot of There's a lot of facts being thrown around there, but where are those facts coming from? The other part of this that I mean it is thoroughly done in the fact that it talks about transportation, but when we started this, I believe the main thing was opportunities for our kids. Um not seeing the gas money, not even getting any of that. So, again, we we don't know who's on that list obviously because there was no signatures, but I would ask
016uh going forward with with with both boards that we remember that the main goal is to think about our kids and opportunities that we're going forward together. There are various things that go into all of this. Yes, transportation is part of that. The other part of this is we as a dual board hired folks to do a study. Professionally do a study. They do this for a living. That's what their business does. They've done a job of that. We're going to go through that here in a little bit. So, let them do their job because we both decided to let them do that job. We went through an extensive interview process. Matt, you were on there. Luke, you were on there. We were on there together. We made a decision uh together on that. So,
017I'm I'm interested to hear from the board. Let's Let's remember the main goal we're doing this is to cut and better opportunities for kids while remembering that we we want to look at the finances of both school districts as well. There's more than one thing we're looking at. So. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. You can hear me, right? Okay. Okay. Kim Brunner, um Loyal resident now. I remember I remember this from 20 years ago when I lived in Greenwood. It feels like Groundhog Day. We're having the same a lot of the same discussions that we were then and probably even a generation before me. Uh so, what I wanted to say was just that um I'm on the committee and I actually learned some things tonight. I was not aware of a lot of the things
018that you brought up that you're hearing. So, my guess is there's a lot of people hearing different things. Uh what I would say is that I think uh it's important that we continue to move forward and remember to your points why we started this um and that we were tasked with looking at a lot of different options. Uh I understand the frustration that maybe some members of the committee wanted to see another option and that may be something that Myron looks at moving forward to lose their school. So, I was quite optimistic when we saw the option that showed two campuses that get to stay. So, then thinking outside of the box, you know, is this something that we can look at more moving forward? There's a lot of logistical questions, yes, and maybe that's
019more on the board and administration to come up with those. It's not necessarily Myron's job. And there's a lot of questions. I think we have a lot of work to do in building trust. Maybe it would be worth the boards to consider bringing in a facilitator of some kind. Um but because it does get difficult to um remove blinders and keep an open mind if you're really set on things and if you don't trust others. And I think that maybe that's where we get stuck in the mud a little bit, but we do have this really great opportunity where we could continue to move forward and get something done that really does benefit our kids. When I think about specialization, I can think about many of your businesses those of you who farm, you have
020custom operators that do things for a reason because they're good at it. So, can we kind of take that sort of business mindset into our school where we have custom areas that can specialize and you know, right now we have two pretty good schools, but together I think and I think we would all agree that we could have a much better district and we could make better opportunities for our kids if we can figure out the logistical side of it. So, and I know and I'm sure that you all have talked about it. I don't know if you've taken trips. When I think about successful districts that do things together, when we look at like Independence, Arcadia, Blair, Whitehall working together. What are the things that they're doing? What are they doing better than us?
021And there there are things out there that I think we can take a look at. But I hope that we continue to move forward together. Thank you. Any other public forum comments at this time? Thank you. I'm Chris Smith. Majority of you know who I am. I would first off I'd like to commend both boards be sitting at one table doing this. Last time I was on a task force when this was going on, they had two separate tables. And I really appreciate all you guys have worked together. The only reason I'm saying here is the same thing as has been said. That there's two primary issues we're looking at. And like everybody said, this is for the best of the kids and everybody. You're not going to be able to close one school and
022put everybody under one roof. It might be in the future, but you're not going to be able to do it right away. I just commend everybody for working together to get this to happen. It's as close as it's ever been in the 6 years that I've been on the board here. I've been through this twice already. Thank you. Any other comments? We will have a forum section at the end of the meeting as well. All right, we're going to move forward to discussion on consolidation plan. First thing is the core team update. I will just make a plug here as Myron is giving this presentation. If anybody in the public does have a question, raise your hand and and we'll address it right then and there. So, this is actually an update from the core
023team and task force. I think I'll mush them all together. So, my name is Myron Partridge of the consolidation team for your task force. Trying to use my associate here and he'll talk in a minute. We haven't been here since February, so maybe you've heard a lot about what we've been doing, but I'll kind of back up and bring you up to speed of where we had our last joint task force. This was just Monday. So, we just finished up meeting number five on Monday and there were seven different pathways discussed back in meeting four and then again in meeting five. And those are in front of you right now with first one through seven. Pathways include a nothing approach, keep all three buildings open all the way through a brand new building on a
024neutral site. So, we really wanted to go unbiased, start with what you have now and what like a future perfect scenario might be. So, everything in the middle is what we were trying to hit that had a minimal tax impact right away. We did just add two pathways based off the feedback in meeting five. So, you'll see those in your packet as eight and nine, which we haven't discussed yet with the core with the task force team, but we will in 2 weeks. The pathways have all been discussed, pros and cons, all the things you decided that we just talked about. Also on Monday night, the joint task force voted 19 to four to proceed with only a two building scenario for the recommendation. And really that would be that was um for the next
0254 years we're saying, not forever that's the plan, but within that short term let's explore two building options. Okay, so all seven original pathways are posted on both websites now also anyone can see and that doesn't mean that all of those pathways can work right now, but I just want to be very clear to your public, to the people in your district, this is the pathways that the joint task force are looking at. The pathways are classified by how much investment is involved in each pathway. There are some which have no investment, which as far as I understand at consolidation time, the joint district will have no additional capital funds. So, that's really drove our our motivation between those pathways is we needed a minimal investment scenario. There were initial there was more pulling from
026the groups that indicated pathway two and three and four were interesting to the group, but none were taken off the table. It was just kind of a straw poll, how are you feeling? Does this seem kind of practical? Keep moving. So, here's the qualifier that we have is the districts will not be able to ask for any kind of capital referendum until they are totally consolidated and that would be in April of 2029. And that's also if the community says yes to a capital referendum. So, there's a lot of ifs in there. So, we did take a lot of pathway discovery on the lowest investment opportunities. So, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into the pathways. We're not going to go super deep in them, but we want to give a explanation of
027what each of them are that have been presented to the joint task force. So, you'll see starting with pathway one, I'll just run through all of these that have been given to everyone. So, as Becca mentioned, we separated them based on the amount of investment that it would take to get to that pathway. And so, starting with pathway one, we started with what takes no investment. What could you do now that gives you as you're consolidating if that takes place, what could it look like? So, pathway one is you keep all three buildings open and we're sharing all pathways even even though Becca mentioned that we we voted at the last one or the joint task force voted to go for a two building scenario, but all of them so we can see all of
028them. All three buildings would remain open, you would consolidate and you would become one district. In doing so, you would save an estimated one to two million dollars annually. That study was conducted by Baer and you've seen some of that information on a three building scenario. We have a little bit of additional information on what two looks like that I'll get to after we run through the pathways. So, again pathway one is essentially consolidating and maintaining only keeping the buildings all operating as they are today. Pathway two, what this does is decommission the Greenwood Elementary School. By decommissioning it is still owned by the district. It is taken out of use, so you lower the heat, you keep you know, you don't have to maintain it and what I mean by that is snow plowing,
029janitorial staff, you know, cleaning the floors every single day, those things are reduced because you're not using the building any longer. In doing so, what we would do is we would have the elementary school over at Loyal with the middle school over at Greenwood and then you would split the high school into what we're calling base campuses, like an east and a west let's say. In this scenario, you could have specialties. It does not have to start out that way, but you could have specialties as been mentioned by a few people this evening. Maybe there's some ag specialties or some biomed or some higher math and you would go to the appropriate campus based on where that specialty takes place. There would still be core curriculums taking place at both buildings and what transportation looks
030like between those two could vary a lot from day-to-day scheduling to a bus transporting them along with other options as well. Virtual learning would be another one. Those are ways that you could cross campus learn between the two of them. But it splits high school between the two campuses of east and west. Again, no investment for pathway two to take place. Pathway three, what that does is it puts the elementary school in Loyal with a middle school option between the two, and it puts the high school in Greenwood. This is something that can take place without any investment taking being in infused into the project as you guys go through your consolidation. So, those are the three options that have no investment. For the next one, next we have limited help. Can I ask a
031question? Sure. Um, I just And again, I was not part of the task force, so some of this stuff is new to me and I'm seeing it for the first time. But, I noticed here obviously, so pathway three shows elementary in Loyal, uh, middle school in potentially both, and high school in Greenwood, right? >> Correct. Is there a reason why, just asking because it's been asked of me, is there a reason why there wasn't the opposite? Loyal has the elementary, or sorry, Greenwood has the elementary, shared middle school, and Loyal has the high school. Mhm. Pathway four. I'll be patient. >> No, you're okay. You're okay. It's a good question. This is the first time I'm looking at it. Exactly. That's why we're going through them at a high level kind of get get a
032feeling on each one of them. So, pathway three and four are essentially the same pathway with the high school flipped. The high school was then in Loyal. The reason for the added investment, the reason this one goes under limited investment is because bringing the, uh, Greenwood elementary into that building would take a little bit of investment limited to make that take place. >> [clears throat] >> One thing I want to make known that I didn't mention is on pathway two and three, it's a little bit fine print, we'll have a better slide in a minute, but those would decommission the Greenwood school has an estimated savings of $650,000. And we'll break that out later, but that's on all the pathways going forward. So, you have your one to two million of savings with the additional
033650 on all the following years. Excuse me, and that 650 is a one-time savings? Correct. Yep. So, pathway four, as mentioned, is just a flip of what we had before. Elementary school and middle school option over at Greenwood with the high school being in Loyal. That's not just one-time, that's 650. That's true. It's a one-time change, but it would be 650. It would be yearly. It would be yearly. Yeah, I'm sorry. You are right. Yeah. And that's why it shows up in all of them in the table. Yeah. Pathway five, what we have in for pathway five, consolidated district, and you run an elementary K through 12 in each building. One in Greenwood, one in Loyal. Again, limited investment to make that take place. Next, we have long-range pathways. These we have listed as major
034investment. Pathway six, we would actually decommission parts of each building, taking them out of use, and building a new middle school high school in a neutral Olympic location to be able to serve that that, uh, student population. Currently, in today's dollars, we have that listed out about 55 to 65 million dollars to be able to build that facility. Again, why it's under major investment. Pathway seven, this is one brand new building for everybody. We build a brand new K through 12 facility, and we put it in a neutral location, and you decommission and get rid of all other buildings in the district. What this costs in today's dollars again is about 110 million dollars. We wanted to be able to show any option from no change just to maintain all the way to what would
035it take to build a brand new building to put everybody in. So, that's what pathways one through seven During our last meeting, Um, Kathy, you were going to be talking about the that suggestion thing, right? You'll see here that we have, uh, some writing options. So, during our last joint task force, uh, we had some voting on which pathway were considered the, uh, the favorites at the time, a temperature check of the group. So, through that, we came up with two additional path pathways, eight and nine. So, we've added those in here. So, what we have here is we have a, for pathway eight is the elementary and high school in Loyal, and the middle school only in Greenwood. And then for pathway nine, we have the elementary in Loyal, as long, uh, I'm sorry,
036also with an elementary in Greenwood, middle school in Greenwood, high school in Loyal. So, these we haven't evaluated yet to see exactly where they fall on the investment. This is something that we're going to bring and talk about in the sixth meeting. But, they did just come in from our last one, and so we wanted to include them as new pathways. Hey, Trent. Mhm. Tonight, what we read the the letter that was pathway 10 now, would that be something you could include with eight, nine, and 10? Yes. And have that ready for that. Yeah, we can add in pathway 10. Okay, thank you. So, all of these are pathways. So, how do we get there? What does that look like? So, the next thing is potential timelines. There's three up here. There's a lot that
037we could pick from. So, we just tried to give some examples of what something could look like. They're They are color-coded to go along with the investment level. So, you can see the first one that we have on there is maybe you pick one of the no investment options, and that's just the plan going forward. You save the one to two million plus the 150 if you choose to go with pathways two or three, and that's what your plan is going forward indefinitely. That is an option in the timeline. The second one is maybe you start in the no investment location, but then after some years, we show two here, two years after consolidation. Maybe that's three, maybe that's six. Doesn't have to be a specific number there. Then you move into one of the
038limited investment options that gets you into one of those different configurations down road. Or maybe the third option would be you pick a no investment option for 10 plus years, and you hold steady until you can do a major investment, possibly building a new building or something like that. So, any combination of these or adjustments of these are possible, but we don't want anybody to think that just one, when it's picked, that's what you're doing forever. There's always going to be adjustments with your school buildings and how you function within them. So, on the next slide you guys will see in your packet is we saw a three-building scenario. And so, we asked Baird, the financial consultant, to look into what would it What would the savings be if the Greenwood elementary was decommissioned. So,
039they went through that, and they looked at what this would take. So, we have areas like staffing, utilities, supplies, capital, non-capital, maintenance, software, all of those different things. We see things that are, uh, assumed for like the utilities, we lowered the utility bill by 25%. We know we can't just turn the heat off and the building walk away, but we can lower it. 25 is probably a little on the conservative side, but we always like to be on the conservative side when we're talking forecasting. So, you can see the savings are broke out here. Cleaning, building needs, uh, parking lots, those are all things that would go down as well on an annual basis, leaving us to $653,000 for our annual savings for closing or for decommissioning, excuse me, that school building. Okay, so what
040does that mean from the larger portion? So, when we look at the three building to the two building, and we go to the next, uh, piece of your packet, we can see that as we look through '26, '27, '27-'28, '28-'29, '29-'30. That gets us up to consolidation. What that does from the three building that was presented at the last joint or at the Yeah, at the last joint, uh, board was it lowers those numbers on that annual basis by the by 650,000 each year. So, by consolidating, and this also assumes no operating referendums with those numbers, just to be clear of what those numbers are telling me. All right, now we'll come back to this. Oh, Trent. Yes. This is the question I was asking. Sure. The bottom, I think I was asking the other
041night. Okay. So, you have a surplus deficit '29-'30. So, at the time of consolidation, we're $2,190,785 is what we would have to ask for for an operational referendum. Correct. The number below it is in the two billion. So, I was asking you said it was in three million, so clarify that. In the two million at the time, there's a three million or yeah, three million eight hundred fourteen thousand dollars in there. Three hundred Three million eight hundred fourteen thousand ninety. That's what I'm saying. So, we're in a total debt of five million eight ninety almost almost six million dollars. Now, that's that's the fund balance there. The fund in the red on the three million? The six million you said? Well, if you add them together, all of them together, if you add them together,
042we're at six million dollars in debt the first year of consolidation. Is that correct? But we have an operational referendum in place until that. So, we won't This is assuming no referendum dollars right now. But this is looking at next year. I'm just asking that's what I wanted to clarify. Yes. Yes. That's showing that falling off on the balance at the bottom. Where we go from two million to two hundred ninety-two million two hundred ninety-two thousand and they go down there. Is that all clarified for you? Okay. That guy is going to jump in now and talk a little bit more about it. How we took these seven We So, the task force hasn't seen pathway eight nine just yet. That's going to be part of our discussion uh the next time we meet with
043that. But how we took one through seven and started narrowing those down. Thanks. All right. So, like John said, this is we've spent two joint task force meetings talking about the presented pathways of seven. We're going to get into more next time, eight, nine, ten. But So, this is just a picture I just want to show you some of the work that the volunteers of the joint task force has been doing. This is the pathways that was up on the board after many hours of discussion. Then they got Then the folks got to rank their top choices. So, this is just a picture of that exercise. The next one. So, then this is the results of pathway two, three, four and then write in eight, nine. It was a very similar exercise in the next
044one including ten, but then giving eight and nine much more time to discuss. So, what you can see like it's not There's not a definitive answer. There's a lot of first choices. That's the green bar. But it I don't know that that paints the perfect picture yet. I'm just showing you the progress that we're doing every meeting, kind of whittling down, asking more questions, asking hard questions on each pathway. So, this is just kind of a snapshot of what we've been up to and what the the volunteers have been doing. Yeah, next one. Okay. So, like we said, in the next time we meet, which is in two weeks, which is scheduled for your last one, but we'll see if it really is. We're going to introduce pathway eight and nine, continue discussion and prioritize
045pathways. We're also going to explore what happens if the consolidation doesn't pass and what's at stake if there's no change. Also, we'll discuss recommendation process. The next one. Okay. So, after there's a recommendation, there's all sorts of ways that you can engage your community and make sure that this is the right answer for your voters, not just the task force, not just the board members, not for me. It's for the people who are going to vote in that little this life. So, at this point, I mean, there's lots of ways to engage and that would be a board decision. So, there's more community listening sessions you can do, engage with staff again, students, you know, we can talk about user groups. Those are the ones that are going to use these buildings and need the
046taxes. That's super important. Um you could do a community-wide survey, which would be a temperature check to your voters just what they would vote for before the real survey in November. So, those are, you know, things we can look forward to because really there's an elephant in the room that Loyal people will never vote for the vets. Greenwell folks would never vote for the vets. Like that's been thrown out by everyone. And what's real and what's not real is what, you know, the heart of the question, right? Okay. So, then my last slide is So, we're we're meeting again April 13th in Lowell. Maybe the joint task force is ready to make a recommendation at that point. Maybe. They need to know the committee. We're being flexible with that. Um we're using a 60% majority
047of the task force members to vote for one pathway, which would be their recommendation to bring to you all to do what you will with. Um if there are two recommendations and the group is split with, it's possible that the joint task force brings you two recommendations and let you guys as elected officials and professionals do what you will with. Um there could be another meeting on April 27th if the joint task force thinks they need more information. We're open to that. Um and then it would be the responsibility of you guys to decide how to proceed and potentially draft a resolution by August 25th to be on the November ballot. Okay. That's my update. Do you guys have any more questions? I was just going to ask I like the ideas of, you know,
048more community listening sessions, staff listening sessions and those other options that we have, especially the no-cost ones. So, I waited to ask the question because it does say it will be the responsibility of the joint board to take the recommendation and decide how to proceed. But I guess in your recommendation or experience, would you would you say that we would do those types of community listening sessions and things before the board before the board adopts this resolution? I would do it after the recommendation before you draft your ballot language. So, you're taking the You're taking the input from the task force and you're taking the input from the community. You're taking input from the staff and the user groups. And then you as elected officials draft that resolution by August 25th. So, we do have
049some time. We're not We're not like we're up against the clock Right. Right. Over the summer months, but like maybe wanted to do staff right away in May so we have something in the summer. Like keep those kind of things in mind. But yes, that's my recommendation. Thank you. Anybody else? Yeah. Does the final wordage have to be out of our lawyer by August 25th or do we just we need to get to our lawyer by the 25th? It's got to be the It probably has to be totally done. They get paid a lot for five days. I don't know that turnaround time. Do you know, Tom? No, it's usually not too long depending on I mean, it's the same It's the same people or the same person actually that does the referendum language in
050the whole state. Um and I believe that Megan had sent her an email to try and get some draft examples of what a ballot question would look like. >> Sure. How specific To make sure that we know Yes, make sure you know like how much print can a ballot question utilize. But that's the final date it needs to be submitted to your clerk's office. That's if you want it in this November. If you're not in a rush, you want to do it your own correctly and get it on the next ballot. The next ballot. Good. I I was just told I don't know if that's true or not. I just heard that you could wait if you're not looking to rush and want to make sure the decision is a good decision for the five
051communities. I think it could go on the April ballot instead of the November ballot. I don't know how true that is. I just heard that a couple times. Yeah, I'm sure it's true for the ballot cuz they don't necessarily care when you ask the question. It's going to like delay the consolidation needs. But would it because we went with the most with the longest timeline. So, we went with the 18-month timeline. So, would it really change Right. So, We'd have to either go 14 or 12. We'd have to then transition to either 14 or 12. Or we could still potentially consolidate on June June or whatever July 2028. Yeah, that's a fair question. I don't know that specific answer. Yeah, I I'd have to check on it. I think you can. But I think I
052mean, the The reason that the board is the joint board has had conversations with one of the 18 is because we know the beast that it's going to be to plan and prepare and four less months depending on what plan is put forward, 14 may or may not be enough time. >> [snorts] >> Agreed. Anything else? All right. Thank you, Sam. Thank you. We'll move into ad hoc committee reports. Uh it was feedback I have from about the trademark is from WASB and to their knowledge thus far there have been no lawsuits that they could find involving gender of a mascot um or gender or gender equality of a mascot. Although he did say it doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Um and as far as the trademarking of the of the mascot the advice was
053that the graphic designer should be aware of those laws and with a quick search he pulled up I believe this from 1700 trademark bucks logos in the world. I also want to mention since we're talking about that that once the name and mascot reach social media there were some AI mascots. Anything else on branding? We're good to go. Uh let's move on to the business community. >> Okay. Um my um I would like the branding committee to look at the logo and have them decide on that and then come back to the latest suggestion. So just to clarify you're saying that once we have a graphic designer maybe draw a couple of them you want the branding committee to come back after that to get a final say? Correct. I think we could I think
054there's I mean there might be other ways to do it too. I don't know if that we want to lock in that quite yet but we could certainly ask them. Suggestion at this point but not a law. Okay. So the business community partnership committee which consists of Mr. Green, myself uh O'Day and Dean Lindner we met with representative of NTC recently and I had a very good conversation with them. They are very interested in working with us. We did not have CVTC there at that time but we are working with getting them on board with the assistance of NTC and helping us through tech college programming different things that we can offer together so Um I thought it was a very positive meeting and I think they're willing to move forward with us in any
055aspect. Anyone else have anything else? So just in addition to what Mr. Lindner said um one of the things they stressed we had two representatives from NTC um is that they want to expand their presence by going to where the students are now requiring them to go to the their main campus. They also specifically said that they have a number of mobile labs. One of them is a mobile CNA lab. My understanding is it would be a mobile classroom. They would have a trailer type classroom that they could park in the parking lot where both high school and community members could be taking classes from a certified trainer. Um they mentioned they have other mobile labs. They are they would encourage us to continue to look at dual credits and and and they could assist
056if there was a need need for certain areas I believe and um as far as additional funding I asked the question if there was some grants available. They did say there are some pathway focus grants. It's a one time grant used in the first and second year. Um it's more or less seed money to get something started and especially if there's facility um expenses that take place and there's also technical incentive funds that are more geared toward industry certification along with the technical degrees and that's in the tune of 700 to 1000 dollars. I believe I'm not sure if that was per student or or what that was but the that was um additional grants or award incentive funds. They plan to meet with their deans over the next week or so and then they
057would like to make a road trip to Greenwood and Loyal to look at facilities and discuss it further so I thought it [clears throat] was very positive. We talked about offering more opportunities for students um and you know and especially if we're looking to expand anything in the technical area but we talked about things whether whether it was um you know auto diesel mechanics we mentioned about robotics and drones that uh Greenwood is going to be starting up this coming year you know whether it was ag science or culinary or whether it was in nursing or some of those other programs so I think there's a lot of opportunities that we could we could uh ask the technical colleges to assist and they realize that we're kind of in a unique position because we have
058two two technical colleges you know that are serving us and so they're willing forward to expanding their offerings and helping us. Anything else on that? All right we'll move on to uh high school scheduling update. Okay just a couple of quick things um one kind of hurts us with where we're at right now we're sharing some kids back and forth. I want to commend all the Loyal students and Mr. Elmer and the Loyal staff that transport those kids back and forth. A little bit different than we did in the past we're doing that three days a week to fit within their schedule as virtual options. We're going to kind of work out the bugs there but so far it's a good start it's a good opportunity for those kids to have that class here and
059during the Greenwood kids currently in scheduling for next year Miss Nikola and I and Mr. Elmer um Kolmesberger and Mr. Mixdorf they are also doing their scheduling for their kids. We're probably at the point now we'll start meeting with kids and locking in schedules. Once we kind of get through that process and we'll come back together look at what we can continue to share back and forth and fill in any gaps that are left over from there. I know we've like in Greenwood and I know Loyal's done the same thing we strategically placed classes that we know we're going to share next year either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day. Construction for instance we put that at the end of our day so that it fits with Loyal's
060schedule. We have some upper level math classes that we're going to be planning on sharing back and forth based on interest those are at the beginning of the day at the end of the day. So when you talk about transportation we're talking about a one time thing versus multiple blocks of the day. Um the last thing I will add to that too is through this partnership through us working together um Greenwood in in particular has been knocking on the door of trying to increase dual credit opportunities for our core classes science English math social studies. CVTC has some different requirements not saying they're better or worse than what NTC has but when we are tied to a technical college we have to we have to go through that first. Um through this collaboration through the
061things that the board has done we've been able to be able to talk to NTC to get classes so in the last month or so we've had conversations with both CVTC and NTC and that allowed us to offer NTC dual credit math courses not only to our students but also to Greenwood students. CVTC knows that this is happening and they know that if they want to be a part of that puzzle when we when and if we do consolidate that they have to play with us back and forth and they have to work with us so they have already opened up their doors to allow us to kind of cross the border and use those classes because they know not only are they going to benefit the Greenwood kids but also Loyal kids and then
062knowing in the future we will continue to work with CVTC. So from a scheduling standpoint we're continuing to work on it and try to make sense of and make smart decisions to share those classes. That's about all I have. Any questions on that? All right we've reached the second public forum in tonight's meeting. Anybody in the audience have anything they want to clarify say? Now's your time. Yes. Okay I'm just going to go ahead and say this so it's on record. I think that I would appreciate as a parent for you to work on the schedule and continue to work to make it better. Uh this is my last kid graduating, so I'm not going to be as crazy as if it was my first, but I think we have to do a better job,
063uh especially with the dual credit classes. I mean, I have a kid who doesn't work with the trimester, um to be taking a lot of college class classes. Now, my kid thought it was cool to have five study halls for several weeks, but as a mom, I think that we can do better. You know, I would hope that we were even with the districts together, we should be able to do better than that. But, I really want to challenge you to look at um whether we're together or not, continuing to make things better. Thank you. Anyone else? Any more comments? Questions or concerns? All right. I want to thank you all for coming tonight. Um Thank you task force, both task forces for the work they are doing. Uh we are now going to go
064into closed session. Uh so, we're going to set the next meeting date. I'm all sorry. Next meeting date? Thank you. Next meeting Anybody have any agenda topics for the meeting on the 15th? Obviously, we'll have Myron will be there with the another round of updates. Take uh the knees off. Branding probably nothing to put on. Okay. Take them both off the next time. Next time. Got it. Okay. All right. Okay. Yes, the next meeting will be at Rainwater. Okay, thanks again for coming tonight. And uh we will now we're going to go down to the district room to go into closed session. Uh motion to adjourn the closed session.