001[Music] Okay. Okay. Good evening everyone. I think we're ready to start our program highlight which is item 4A, the EMS interact club. Okay. We are very excited to have our Emporia Middle School. Mr. John Martin, principal of Emporia Middle School will introduce our guest tonight. Well, the first guest that we have over here, and I'll have Mr. Holly come up and introduce his his students. Um, Mr. Holly is a longtime employee. Um, one of the bright shining stars on our staff. Whenever I'm kind of having a rough day, which is very rare, but I can go down in Mr. Holly's room and just his interaction with our students, he he approaches them with humor and love and caring, and that really uh breathes through in everything that he does. Um when we talked about highlights
002in the last three years for me, we talked a little bit uh when I first heard about StuCo and what they have done. I think last year we talked a lot about AVID and what our AVID program has done and it's I mean it's almost tripled uh the number of kids and students that we have wanted to to do that program. But this year it just seemed like a logical thing to have Mr. Andy Holly come up and talk about his Interact Club and how he does uh activities to engage our kids in our community. So um at this time Mr. Andy Holly [Applause] Hi. Uh so we're actually uh going to talk to you guys about two things tonight. So the first is uh Interact Club. Um so which is a after school uh
003program that uh started about 15 years ago. It's pretty crazy on that tiny TV set. That was actually my very first year. We were doing a fundraiser for children's cancer. And uh so one of the students was like, "Hey, I can get us some free advertising." And I was like, "Okay." And so he got on the phone and then he was like, "All right, we're booked for like next Tuesday at 5:30 and 6 on the news." I was like, "Oh, okay." Um, so we found out a way to get there, but she's actually a eighth grade teacher right now. So that's like how long the club has been around. So pretty crazy to think. Um, so but we are after school club, a service organization. We're sponsored by the Emporia Rotary Club. So we're Interact
004Club, which is like the student version of Rotary Club. Um, and then obviously the Junior Spartan Extra, our afterchool program, uh, also helps to support that with snacks and transportation and stuff. So, um, I will let, uh, the interactors talk to you about that and then a couple people that have been in my world studies class talk about that. So, first up, we got Lincoln. Um, hello, my name is Lincoln Holly and, um, each year we do at least three projects. Um the students get to pick the issue that they want to address and they design a project and come up with the marketing to address those concerns. So yeah, awesome. Yeah, that's great. I'm Gus Auststerhout and uh I'm here to explain our first school project which focuses on how to make Emporia Middle
005School a better place and a few co causes at EMS that interact and supported are the following anti-bullying positive self-image campus beautifification positive culture and kindness I I am Harry Hendrickson and some community projects we do are non a few of the nonprofits and employer the interact club has supported Kansas children's service lead abundant harvest the Salvation Army TFI and SOS. Hi. Great. Um, I'm Jaylen Ortiz. Um, some of the global projects we've worked on are Popsicles Against Poverty, Missions of Popsicle, and a few others. The proceeds for that from those fundraisers went to Heer International, the water project, UNICEF, vaccines, refugees, and deforestation. There we go. All right. Yes. And then now we're transitioning to world studies. So there we go. Um hello. Um I am Sandy Solgerero. Um so I was in world
006studies with Mr. Holly. I'm currently a ninth grader in high school. But um world studies was a blended social studies class. We met up twice a twice each day. So obviously in the morning then afternoon and basically it was a project based um class where we were trying to focus on learning by doing. So we always had these different kind of things that we had to do during class which was more obviously more projects than actual basic assignments every day. Um hello my name is Lucia Hernandez. Um how is world studies beneficial? Um we had time to extend themes from social studies. So along with normal lectures about different events. We were also able to read books about people our age so we could connect with them. Um we focused on writing so we were
007able to write a lot of stories and we uploaded them to our website called the MS sound which was really fun. Um we work on soft skills. So basically we were told what the projects were and they were left to us to decide like how we wanted to do them. Like it was our own timeline. And we also had a strong sense of belonging. And when I was in world studies um I had fun every day. I really enjoyed you know with Mr. Holly and my classmates and I never dreaded it. big ones. Um just that uh man, thank you guys uh so much for uh having a district where these opportunities are available. Um it's really been um overwhelming. Uh but I think Mr. Martin was asking me how long did the presentation take
008and I was like about seven and a half hours. Um it's the actual presentation itself like went together like nothing. Um but looking over 15 years of pictures um all of the different things that we've done um and just um when you see it all together this the tens of thousands of dollars that we've raised and um just the amount of kind things that I've seen um from students every year we always give a presentation to the Rotary Club and um it seems like I always start the same which is no matter what you've heard on the news like our future really is bright. um because we have an amazing group of people that we're going to be adding to our community and um I'm really excited to I don't know see the future of
009things. So um thank you guys again for giving me the opportunity to teach world studies and also have the interact club. So and and Mr. Holly is just way downplaying this. Um our kids have great opportunities to go speak to a Rotary club that that wouldn't be there before. But a lot of times what I'll do and I think his world uh studies class does a very good job is writing. They write, they rewrite, they if you want to know what kids are thinking. When you go to talk to them, sometimes they're not very articulate in what they want to tell you, but they are good writers and they spend some time and you can get a lot of good opinions or ideas of what needs to be done, not necessarily by just talking to
010directly to them because they they like time to reflect like we do. And you get a lot of good information from students in our student writing and that's that's updated often. And so as soon as the kids do things and it's it's great and they talk about all sorts of topics, but having them think and then write it out has been tremendous. And then Mr. Holly just downplays himself. He's a a a great uh teacher, great innovator, and and just a great spokesperson for Emporia Schools. Thank you. Um Yep. Any questions? No, no questions. It was just awesome. No, I love seeing kids involved in service projects. Um, you know, serving your community. Mr. Holly, you're a rock star. Everybody knows it. Thank you for all you do. Yeah. And thanks for being here tonight,
011kids. We really, really appreciate it. And I just wanted to say my son, who's a freshman in college, was one of the first students to take part in world studies. And he's he loved it then and he still talks about it. It gave him some really great foundation for later in life. So, thank you, Mr. Holly. Of course, that's the goal. So, awesome. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate. Okay. Item 4B, recognition of National Teacher Appreciation Week. The board would like to recognize National Teacher Appreciation Week, which is May 5th through May 9th, 2025. This is a week when teachers get the extra credit they deserve. National Teachers Day will be celebrated on May 6th. The board would also like to thank Casey and all the other administrative professionals in our district for
012all the hard work you do every day. It is administrative professionals day. Thank you guys. Item 4 C is public comment. Casey, is there a public comment this evening? We do have Heather McKay signed up. Heather, if you'd like to come forward to the podium. Okay. Okay. Public comment will be allowed the duration of three minutes per speaker to be timed by the board clerk. And speakers must sign up for in-person public comment by 1 p.m. the day of the board meeting. Public comment by email or remote is not accepted. Those giving public comment not should not approach the board or move past the podium. No handouts will be allowed, but such materials may be emailed in advance to the board clerk for distribution to the board and public comment may not include reference to
013names of specific students or personnel matters which would potentially violate an individual's privacy. The board will not engage in discussion at that time except to gain clarification. My name is Heather McCay. I'm sure many of you have heard my name as I have been calling everyone trying to get help for a long time. I have gotten the same answer. I know these people and they wouldn't do that. But that but I'll investigate and I'll call you back. Then I never get a call back. I'm just ignored. You say bullying is not happening in your school, but every day, every time it is reported by a parent or a student, your principles and teachers refuse to take it any further than that. No writing it down even though it is in your policies and that a
014violation of the policy may be subjected to disciplinary disciplinary action up to and including suspension or expulsion. I am a mother who at firsthand have witnessed my child, my husband and I report to teachers and principles multiple times about the same students and nothing is done. They are still allowed to go to the class with my son and keep on and keep on until they see my child as a problem because he no longer knows what to do. He has been made fun of for a suicide attempt, for his call, for his clothes, been called a a cracker or white trash, which according to one of your middle school principles is not racism. But let's get to statistics real quick. Kids who are targeted for bullying on an ongoing basis often develop an overactive stress
015response. The BA brain chemistry causing the stress response can cause them to be more impulsive, aggressive, and permanently anxious. Victims will use anger and aggression as a self-defense tactic to protect themselves from fuller bullying. 75% of shootings have been linked to bullying and harassment. 22% of students have considered suicide. 10% have had suicide attempts. 90 into 100,000 youth suicides. 13.0% of kids that are being be being bullied become a bully. Bullying is a direct link to affecting a student's ability to learn. 58% of middle school stu students feel the school do not do enough to stop or prevent bullying. So why not do something about these bullies before the bullied kid be becomes a bad kid in the school's eyes? I was told by one of your principles that they kn know certain kids get
016picked on. But it's easier to pull the bullied kid than to pull a bunch of kids. I'm sorry, but it's your job to protect them. It's your job to protect all kids while in your school, not just certain ones because it's easier. These bullies bullied kids put up walls and go quiet after reporting and getting ignored. And then when they finally snap, it's all their fault. I am a mom of a teen who has reported and who has said something and then went quiet and violent because he could get no help. Thank you. The next item is the consent agenda. The items listed on the consent agenda are considered by the board of education to be routine business items. Approval of the items may be made by a single motion. Second, a majority vote with
017no separate discussion of any items listed. Should a member of the board desire to discuss any item at his or her request, it will be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. What are the wishes of the board? Second. Okay, there has been a motion and a second. While you all are voting, I would like to thank everyone for their donations. We have quite a few donations on the consent agenda this evening. So, thank you to our generous community. Jamie didn't get it. Raise your hand. Motion passes. 6. Okay, that brings us to item 7A, science textbook adoption proposal. Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning, and Student Services, Mrs. Judy Stanley is here to provide the information on the science adoption. Well, I'm really Is it off? Can you hear me? Okay. Um, I'm really
018excited to be bringing this proposal to you. I can only tell you about elementary, but the last time we adopted something for science was when I was teaching at Walnut, maybe my second year here in Emporia, and that would be almost 30 years ago. So, really excited about um bringing this to you. Um, as you know, we have two goals. one is improving um we have multiple goals but two of our goals are improving achievement for all students and providing instructional resources. So that is what this proposal is to address. Um this is just a little review of the process that we developed a couple of years ago when we adopted math. Um as we our our intention was to make sure every teacher of that content area had a voice. And so the first
019step is reviewing the current resource and determining if a new one is needed. And if needed, then a curriculum council is developed. Representatives from every grade level in every building. And that council selects samples to send out and every teacher gets their hands on them and they get to review it. They develop a rubric and then the resource with the highest scores is the one that we bring to you. Our process looked a little bit different for science. You can go to the next slide, Casey. Um, our elementary schools had discovered through discovery textbook, which we had before. that was kind of what we were using to supplement science. They discovered something called mystery science and several of our buildings were using it. Building principles used their building funds and they used the mystery science.
020And we kind of found out about this through lead teachers. And so what um we did last year at the beginning of the year because we were getting a lot of information from elementary teachers saying we want to do mystery science. So we um put out to them, do you want to move forward with mystery science or do you want to do a full-blown adoption? and go through the whole process like we did with ELA and math. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to do mystery science. They also asked that we hold because we had just adopted ELA. We had just adopted math and they needed a minute to really get good at those resources. So, that is why we didn't bring you something last year. It also gave us some time to build the textbook line back
021up some. So, um so that changed a little a bit for our secondary. We didn't need to bring all of everyone together. We got a little delayed start start due to my delayed start at the beginning of the year. And so what I did is reached out to the secondary buildings um the science teachers, instructional coaches and and we as a team they they identified samples. We got the samples. They did the review just like before. We just didn't meet after school. They did all their meetings during PLC time. And so throughout that entire process basically the same once they got started. We have come up with these resources to recommend to you. Sorry. Thanks. Thank you. Oh, I forgot about this. All of these resources, here's the cool things about all of them. Um,
022they are phenomena driven, so they connect to real life. Um, they are engaging investigations. I've had the pleasure of seeing some mystery science during my my walkthroughs and it was pretty fun to see from first grade to fifth grade these kids first graders all over the ground working in teams not by themselves but working in teams and hands-on um hands-on lessons they're aligned to the next generation science standards um there are digital resources the digital resource at elementary level are for the teachers everything else is hands-on for the kids secondary it'll be digital for students and teachers and then there are also the print resources And now all the programs. So at elementary, we are looking at mystery science. Um you're going to notice that the cost is significantly less than math and ELA. Kind
023of blew my mind. Um for a seven-year digital license, it's just under $63,000. So that is for all K5 teachers. Um there will that that we would pay for this year. It'll take care of the next seven years. There will be an annual cost for the kits. This is a this is different than what they've been doing. So, they're using the digital online resource but without the materials. So, they're either buying them, they're making them, or they're skipping some of the pieces in the lessons. We would like to purchase the whole kit for for each teacher so they have what what is needed. Um the the thing is Discovery Ed tends to tweak those lessons to keep them up to date and whatnot. So, we cannot pay for the kits seven years in advance also
024because the cost of materials change. So it would be it'll be an annual cost of approximately $50,000. I've already um visited with Dr. Paul about that too, so he could plan ahead. That's something that they would we would need to budget for. Um Employee Middle School is looking at experience science. This is through SAVIS. Um total this is about uh two just under $285,000. That is for all the digital, all of the print and the professional development for the SE seven years. So once we pay for it this year, it's taken care of. Um it is brand new. The full uh program, they had a really good dig deep dive into what was available to them, but it will be available. They'll have their hands on everything in July. So they'll actually do some of
025their curriculum work in July if you are to if you'd approve this tonight. And at the high school level, they are looking at inspire science. Now at the high school level, each course looked at at what they would be using. So, um, chemistry teachers looked to chemistry, biology looked to biology, physical science, you you get where I'm going. But they all landed on Inspire Science from McGraill, which actually makes the funding a little bit easier. And their resources would be just under $125,000. So, that is my proposal to you um to consider approving our science resources for implementation for next year. What questions do you have, Judy? Do you feel like it looks like you're going to different providers at different levels. Do you feel like there's good easy transitions from elementary to secondary and
026so forth? Yeah, you know, those are what we those vertical conversations in the summer that we do. Um so that really those fifth grade teachers meeting with those sixth grade teachers, they can have that conversation together. That's not going to happen this summer because the resources are new and middle school's not going to get theirs till July. Um, and that's okay because next summer we could we'll actually have a better idea of where the gaps are. And then eighth grade would um would have opportunity to visit with nth grade. The high school is just so different different because each course you know when you're looking at K through A they're teaching kind of everything but that doesn't happen at the high school level. Um there will be gaps but that is why we've set up
027our vertical conversations in the summer so that they have time together to make sure we're covering those pieces. Yeah. I had a question about the professional development piece that's included in the high school and the middle school programs. Um so what like what does that typically look like? Does someone come on site? Is it Yes, they will come on site um in August right before school starts? Um about 2 to three hours. And then each of them also will have a follow-up date later in the the year because, you know, you learn everything right at the beginning and you forget it the next day because you're busy getting the school year started. So, what they do is they allow the teachers to get in it and that's when you're really going to have questions about
028things once you're actually working with it. So, then they'll come back on site and um meet with the teachers again during a PLT day. The mystery science um they have videos that go with it. Teachers have been using it already. We do have the option to reach out to Discovery Ed and set it up separately if we would like someone to come in. Um, but the teachers are already digging into that resource. I feel pretty good about that, but we always can reach out to see if um, they would like to have someone come in. Thanks for explaining that. Um, Judy, you might not be able to answer this yet. We might come back to this after um, everyone has had a chance to get started with the resources. I know we've talked with math
029and ELA that maybe there's some unexpected gaps that we've had to to fill that we weren't anticipating too. Um, is there any like forethought into that, especially since you pointed out that the high school kind of has a different need since each science class is more siloed than younger grades? Is there anything supplemental that you would expect we would need to consider? Um I I just like you said, I think we aren't going to know what those pieces are until we actually get into it. That's part of um bringing them together this summer is that they they can look at we always start with the standards. You start with the end in mind and then they'll get into the resource to see where is every standard addressed that's going to tell us whether we need
030to find something because they've they've either missed a standard. I don't know if you remember when Megan Powers was here, we were talking about the curriculum guides and she shared that there was a standard in math that there was definitely a gap between one grade level and another and we have to supplement. We're going to find that out when they actually start digging into it. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you for that thorough presentation. I motion I do not have it. That was Oh, it's cuz I'm on the wrong one. Here we go. I move to approve the science resources for core instruction as submitted. Second. Motion passes. 6. Thank you and thank you to all of the teachers that worked on reviewing the resources. The next item is 8A 2025 2026 student handbooks. This
031is a first reading. We have Mr. Jared Gifin, director of human resources to lead the conversation. We also have principles here to answer questions. Good evening. Uh as Dr. Harter mentioned, this is our first read of the student handbooks. Uh I'm going to start with just a few things. Um, and in case you feel open, just Yeah, just that first document. Uh, the the items in green text on this page are actually the same in any of the other uh handbooks that uh that we've got, the middle school and the high school. And all of these changes are reflective of uh what took place when we approved some different board policies throughout this year. We just wanted to make sure that those were updated in the student handbooks as we move forward into next year.
032You can see the the specific items there on promotion and retention um on attendance. Uh there were just some language on who we were designating in buildings to make some certain decisions, dress code, some things on medications um and self-administration of medications and then just some computer and device use. Those were the the primary ones that were similar in each of the handbooks that addressed those. Uh I'm going to have Mr. Kirk visit a little bit more about there were just a couple of other elementary changes. Uh and then Mr. Burns and Mr. Martin can address the things in the middle school and high school handbooks as well. Mr. Kirk, I think Mr. Gib was being pretty gracious. Um, our title page changed the date and the year and uh we made some changes slight
033change in order to address Furpa on page 30 and that was really we're pretty comfortable with all things I I want to give him credit. He does all of the heavy lifting working with KSB and making sure all of all of the things our policies match with board policies as well as what they suggest and so makes our job as principles a lot easier to go through and and just make any suggestions and this year we did well. Also, I told second grade lead teacher or district PLC's were today and I wanted to say because they asked me to um thank you for the purchase of the mystery science kits. That's a huge additional piece that um in all honesty they were kind of surprised and excited about and hoping that that would go through.
034So on behalf of all second grade teachers in the district, thank you very much. They very appreciative. Good evening. So uh we actually got two that I'm going to do for you. I'm going to read for EMS. Miss Morgan Pearson asked me to cover for her. She's getting ready for her wedding. So she asked if I could kind of read some of hers. So, I'm going to go through uh the uh employee middle school first. Uh first one is change principal name. Lucky me. That would be me. So, that's kind of exciting to see that. Uh page 11 looks like they added failure to comply and disruptive behavior to the list of minors. Uh and they took out the requirements of ISS or OSS for disrespect to students or adults. So, I think they were
035just moving some of that behavior language around. Uh on page 12, they end up adding something different, which was extensive or excessive failure to comply. It's my understanding that's going to be for that student that uh you know when you say hey I need you to come with me maybe they're throwing things and they continue to not comply. That's what that excessive piece is. That's kind of my understanding as to why they end up adding that on page 12. Uh page 31 they we piloted a program at Emporium Middle School this year called school within a school. Um we finally put some language in there on what that is and how it's assigned where administrators can assign it. That could be for students that are still learning maybe some behaviors that they kind of need
036to be successful at the middle school because there is that transition piece. It can also be used, I believe this year they used it for kind of an alternative program for students who may have been long-term suspended as well. That way they can kind of continue their education instead of just sitting at home. Um and then uh page 32 was talking about adding uh an update to safe school notice. That was just a clerical piece that they had to add to that. Do you have any questions about Emporia Middle School? All right, I'm going to switch on over to the high school then. Couple on here. Uh, one page 13 through 16. We actually end up adding on the uh uh the handbook itself almost kind of like a like a table or chart that
037kind of outlines the different behaviors and outlines kind of what the possible consequences could be. Before it was just kind of a list like A1, A2, and it would kind of say what they were. there'd be an asterk there that said possible suspension, but it this way it kind of really spells out and has some some transparency as to what behaviors could possibly lead to what consequences. Um that'll help students and parents whenever they're kind of in question what that looks like. So there's currently a chart they'll say like level one, level two, level three, level four. Level one you're looking at a a teacher detention possible like Friday night school which is like an afterchool detention. Level two you're looking at infractions that may be ISS. Um, level three could be ISSOS accommodation. And
038then the level four are those more severe ones. You know, maybe possession of drugs, things of that nature. The ones that are really serious that we're looking at out of school suspensions with possible long-term hearings to go along with that. Um, it really just, like I said, adds that transparency piece. Makes it a lot easier. That way, students can look at this and be like, "Oh, you're out. It says it right there. I did that." Instead of just kind of taking a guess and not really understanding how we as administrators are making those decisions. Uh, page 24, we actually uh tweaked how we were doing dances. Um, currently the way we've done it this past year, we had a back to school dance, we had homecoming, we had a uh a winter sports dance, and
039then we have prom. Um, what we're doing is uh we're taking two of the dances, the winter dance, and the back to school dance, which had the least amount of attendees, and we're making a kind of like a sweetheart dance. It's a third formal. Um, the freshman and sophomores are really excited. They really wanted to have another formal. It'll the date will be around kind of that Valentine's Day, but depending on athletics, we may have to kind of tweak that. Um, and that one will actually allow out of town guests also because currently the only time you can have out of town guests is for prom and for homecoming. So, we're just kind of expanding opportunities. The students really like getting dressed up. That was a big push. They wanted to do it this year.
040I was like, it's kind of hard to do at the last second, but uh, we decided to kind of put that language in there as well. So, that's been added there. We didn't change what the rules were for out of town, uh, dates. It's all the same. Still can't have middle school students, but we did kind of mention that there's a new dance that we took in and took out the old ones. Uh on page 25, we just added a little uh blurb about parking guidelines. Right now, I'm sure you're aware seniors uh are some seniors are allowed to purchase senior parking lots. If for any reason maybe their parking privileges were revoked, maybe they were doing donuts in the parking lot, just driving really recklessly, and we do have to revoke privileges, we just
041put a little piece in there that said we would not refund um that parking. So, really small clerical piece. Uh page 33 talks about um eligibility. Um it's going to show that you have to pass seven of nine classes. Now, um, we're not adding a class, but we are actually making CAP a graded class. So, with CAP being a graded class, we didn't want to say you still had to pass two, you know, and then students were failing maybe three, you know, or six of eight or six of nine and then they could fail three of their core classes. So, we wanted to kind of up that to kind of match what we currently have already. So, it's seven out of nine. CAP will be worth a quarter credit. Um, so that they do get
042credit for that class. Hopefully, it put some more buy in. Some of the students right now with CAP are like, uh, I don't know if I have to do it because it's currently not for a grade, but this will start, you know, being added to their GPA and they do get a grade for that class. Uh, page 38 talks about language adding, clarifying students enrolling in college classes. Right now, if you take five college uh, five credits worth of college classes, uh, you can get a high school credit. Four goes down to a half what, three4s of a credit. If it's three credit hours, you get a half credit. Two, you can get a quarter. We had some students that were taking one college credit class and it's kind of hard to do 1/8. So
043we just put some language in there that says if you take a one college credit class usually at a university that's something like you know bowling or frisbee golf. Not knocking any of those. I took one of those when I was in KU but uh we're just basically saying those will no longer be worth high school credits just because it's kind of hard to calculate that. And then uh page 41 uh we added a section that actually I believe was already in there talking about students that were graduating early. We just put a line in there talking about that that refers to students who are graduating prior to their senior year. Uh we didn't want any confusion about students who graduate that semester have to go get approval from uh Mr. Fischer and then get
044approval from you to have to graduate earlier. So we just wanted to spell that out in case there was questions. We're talking about students who earn enough credits who want to graduate prior to that that 12th grade. Does anyone have any questions for me about EHS? I just love that you use the student feedback to get to the dance thing. I I I I appreciate that they were involved with the handbook as they should be. So, absolutely awesome. I agree. Thank you. Appreciate it. The very last thing just deals with the Flynn Hills Learning Center. Uh they use the high school handbook for most of their uh procedures and things. There are just a few little things that they were adding to their addendum. Uh one was just clarification on some arrival times and then
045uh changing a heading to make it a little bit more clear. Any questions we can answer for you about any of the proposed handbooks? All right. Thank you. Okay. Item 8B is the capital projects review. Mr. Corey Nichollet is here, director of maintenance and grounds to give an update on all the projects they've been working on. Good evening. So, about 14 months ago, we started talking about the big book I made of the immediate project needs. And I feel like we've done pretty well so far. Um, the document we've got there shows kind of what's done and what we're actively working on. And there's a lot in the done column and there's not very much left in the to-do column. So, uh, good progress, I think, on that front. Uh, the big one that's coming
046up is the boilers, which we talked about. Um, you guys approved those, I think, a couple sessions ago. And then I'm working on the secondary and tertiary costs there. We have to remove that storefront. While we're doing that, we're going to put the new door in, update it since it's already going to be out. Um, that's all stuff that I'm working on right now. And then as far as uh RTUs, the high school I think we're doing pretty good there. We're working through just getting everything up to 100%. The uh parking lots I think are all a vast improvement over what we had before. Um we've had a little time with them now. It looks like overall they're really good and I think they're servicing a lot better than the previous versions we had. Um
047doors, we had a lot of doors that we did last year. High School and Village were the two biggest places, some at the middle school. Um, we do have some ventilation issues. The new doors seal up a lot better than the old ones, which means that the HVAC's no longer dialed in for the appropriate amount of suction and pushing that the air does. So, we're working on that right now to get that B to balanced out. Um, that's a work in progress, but hopefully we can do that at kind of a low cost. we've got some ideas to see if we can just get it fixed with what we can do. Uh if not, we'll call in, you know, attack it as we need to. The roofs have across the board have been ongoing. They're
048always going to be ongoing. The roofs, they never get to end, unfortunately. Um we do have statistically a lot less leaks. Uh this last rain I think I had three or four roof leaks out of the whole district which I used to have 20 to 30 to 40 every time. So pretty significant improvement there. Uh makes it a lot easier on everybody. I think the gymnasiums I've got nothing but positive feedback on the floors and the paint we did at the high school. I think everybody likes the update we did there. um not this summer, but a year from now I'll be approaching again to talk about the JV gym, painting that and then doing some other um kind of secondary stuff that we couldn't do while we were doing the big part. But, you
049know, we're not we're not quite there yet, but we're getting close. So, uh carpet, we're going to talk a little bit more about that here in a little bit, but we did get the hallways all done last year. Uh again, I've got universally good things back on that. Uh, it's holding up really well and it looks a lot nicer. Um, integrates well with the bond stuff because we use the same thing as the bond. So, you really can't tell what was old and new, which is, I think, the goal we had there. Um, the sewage lines and everything, all that went really well. It's all holding up really well. Looks really good. So, I think we can move on past all those that we talked about. And then, uh, the windows at the middle school,
050we did a bunch of windows. Uh, actually an update on that is there was a little bit of a draft going through. They had two different brands that they put in and one brand has the way that they overlap. The install doesn't call for cocking in the middle, but there was a draft. So, they're actually going to come back right after school gets out and those windows that were of that manufacturer so that we don't have that draft anymore. Um, so I think they're staying behind their product on that, which is, you know, what we would ask them to do. The window dressings I'm still working on. Finding a company that does that volume that can squeeze in over summer. I haven't got that worked out yet. Still working on it. But um we did
051get several curtain rods and curtains for some of the classrooms so they wouldn't have just the beaming sun and all that stuff. Um we are working on an HVAC for the rooftop units. Uh a report to see what we need to do. Uh the preliminary report is that one unit's not in very good shape and one unit's in really bad shape. So I'm still waiting on the report from that. Hopefully I'll have it this week, maybe next week. Uh so I can bring you guys something on that. And then let's see. I think that's most of the big stuff we've had. Without getting into, you know, getting ahead of myself, is there any questions anybody has on any of the updates or how things are holding up or what we're doing next? Corey, it seems
052like a lot of things like these type of things, inflation's hit, are you seeing more than expected increases in prices, are they pretty moderate or So far, they're moderate, but there's a lot of talk that it's going to be going up. Um, the other thing I found is everybody's rushing to get as many projects in as they can. Uh, last year, you know, we started this discussion in February and March, and I was able to get pretty much everything we planned on turned around in that 6 to 8 week period. This year I started in December and January getting people lined up and I've I've struggled to keep consistent getting people called back and that kind of stuff. Um still getting stuff done but it's just been a lot more work than it was last
053year because everybody seems to be rushing to get as much done as they can right now. So people are just booked up a little more. Okay. Okay. Uh, the next item is 8 C. Replace carpet at Emporia Middle School and Emporia High School. Corey, is this you again? Yes, it is. Has Pam on there? So, thank you. She can if she wants. I think I think I think she wants you to talk about it. Okay. Thank you. So, uh, like I said, the carpet doing all of it last year was just too much. You know, doing the hallways was really taking off a lot. Uh, we did pull it off. I think it turned out great. This year we're looking at doing the classrooms and offices at the middle school and high school exclusive of
054the auditorium at the high school and excluding both libraries. Uh the libraries are just a huge amount of labor. You got to move everything to one side, do the carpet, move everything to the other side, do carpet and just that's too much for the timeline we have for this summer. The auditorium, if you have been to the high school auditorium, you recall they all go down at an angle. So it's a lot of cutting to make it look right. And just when we looked at the labor time, we just put that with the library. So next summer I'll be bringing that to you to do those and then we'll look at some of the grade schools. Um the grade schools were built different times, carpet different times, and have a lot less carpet. So those
055should be easier, but we'll be bringing a little bit of the grade schools and then the auditorium and libraries next summer. So for this summer, we're looking at the middle school, $345,37.3. And again, that's all offices and all classrooms that weren't already done in the bond and that have carpet currently. So, we're not adding carpet anywhere that doesn't have it. We're not, you know, if it has carpet, it gets replaced with new carpet. All that carpet's going to match the hallways that we did and be integrated seamlessly into it. You shouldn't even be able to tell the new from the old once they're done. Then, do you want me to do the high school next or stop and do them separately? al together. Okay. Uh so the high school again doing the classes uh classrooms
056and offices which if you recall the office complex we did not do last year. We just did the hallways in the office complex. So there's a lot of offices there. And then uh throughout the high school there's a lot more offices to do there. $434,27844 all of that. And that will be the same carpet again. Um different carpet at both schools but matching what we've already done. Um, so it'll have the red specks in the high school one and then be the darker gray in the middle school one. And that would be by the same company that we did last year. So they're familiar with our buildings. It would even be the same crew I talked to them. Um, so the integration into it should be pretty seamless because they've all already been here. Do
057you have any excuse me, do you have any idea how long some of the carpet that's being replaced, how long it's been there? Yeah, actually the middle school is original. So, it's built in, I think, 93. So, you know, 32 years, give or take, depending on when they laid it. And then the high school's roughly the same. Some is 20 and some is up to 30 years old, depending on where we're looking at. There's a couple spot rooms that were add on later or done just here and there that may be newer, but overall we're looking at 20 to 30 year old carpet everywhere. Good. Do you expect that the new carpet how will last the how long will this last? This is pretty good commercial grade carpet. It's higherend and it's the squares so
058we can change it out in those hight traffic areas if we have to or if one gets messed up. We're not having to take a whole roll. So, you know, 15, 20, 25 years even. Some of it depends on how good we take care of it, you know, obviously, which we're going to try to do the best we can there. And then the other part is just the the traffic volume. You know, do we maintain the same amount of students we've had? How much does it fluctuate? Because those variables are going to change things. But it should be a long time before we're talking about this again. Hopefully none of us are talking about this again. And then kind of a followup to that, um, and I know that we've talked about this before, so
059I'm hoping you say yes. the extra squares. Are they going to still have them? Like say in five years we need more squares. Are they going to still make this carpet? What do you expect or should we buy? What are what's the plan to buy the replacement squares? I'm going to hop on before you answer because I also was wondering the same thing, but then like what kind of price increase should we be anticipating and wouldn't be would it be prudent even that even though we can't do the labor, do we even have the space to store the squares for next summer? Okay, so I can speak to hopefully all that. Um the manufacturer has no cancellation date on this product. So, I mean, obviously they can announce it tomorrow, but the manufacturer I've been
060talking to, which is who does it, this is part of their catalog, they intend to keep going. Um, everything is built to order, so it's not impossible if we did need some later down the road that it couldn't be remanufactured to these specs because they would have these specs already in on hand. Um, but it's a catalog item now, so there's no predictability that they would stop offering it in the near future. um they know of our plans to do this over years and it's continued to be an option that they've presented. So, I think we're good on that front. Uh buying it now, we don't have a lot of storage for it. And then we would also risk that if it did get wet or whatever, we would have mold issues. The risk of
061losing it is probably and the cost of storing it would probably be more than the risk of losing it to cost. Uh the other thing is we are using the Omnia bid which is very uh competitive and um through that cooperative the prices are really good through it. So I mean it'd be a gamble either way but I would I would think we'd be ahead just buying it as we needed it and then we're also not you know having to store it. We're also not short because that'd be about the worst thing is if we did buy a bunch and we needed more. Now we're talking different lot numbers again and age. Thanks. I appreciate it. Okay, I will say the carpet. I was at the art show last week and I know some of
062you guys were there too. I the carpet in the hallway at the high school looks so good. So anyway, anyway, it's really raining. This is an action item. I'll make a motion to approve the replacement of the remaining carpet at Emporia Middle School and Emporia High School as submitted. Second. There's been a motion and a second. I know. Yeah. Do me Rain. Motion passes 6. Thank you. Okay. The next item is 8D, renovation of the middle school track and field. This is also a first reading. Okay. We have a team of people and Mrs. Pam Stranathan, assistant superintendent of business operations, will begin the presentation and then call people up as needed. Okay. And we have not rehearsed this, so it may be a little clunky, just so you know. No, I just want to
063I know this is a very big project and um I know it's one that's very well needed um in the district and so there's several people here tonight. We have a representative from ATG and the Kansas rep also that will talk about the project that um they've worked with us on to propose. Uh um Adrian is here from the middle school and John and also Bo which would like to share um their thoughts on this and also on the current space um as their um thoughts have been a part of what has developed into this project and into the need for the district. Um, what I have broke the rule on the slideshow, but I did that so that Casey would not have to open 15 different slides and pictures and stuff and tried to
064put it all together on there. I'm going to go through the pictures pretty quick. I'll start with the second slide, though. So, we're going to do kind of a review because I know there's been some transition in administration. I think what's important to know who approved what, who was a part of what conversations, and how we got to where we were. Um then we'll have photos of the current track and the throwing area and then um the principles and ads will speak and then I'll talk a little bit about the funding and then some options. Then Joe with ATG will come up and talk about that and then we'll do questions at the end if there's any questions at that time. Um so let's start with um going back in time a little bit. So,
065I didn't put on here the 1993 when the building was built and the track was put into play. Um, what and I did not put on here either where because I had to go into the vault since um board docks and everything was on there up to 2008, but in 2004 was the first time the resurfacing occurred on the middle school track. So, usually that's about a 10-year max on resurfacing. So, the last time since that's been resurfaced is 2004. and we're at 2024. So, it goes along with our carpet. It's held up very well, except within the last um several years, it's now started to deteriorate, which it should. The product should not last 20 to 30 years at the weathering stage that it has. So, um in 2022, um discussion with previous administrators
066and the roles had started with the projects with um the track resurfacing for the high school and for the middle school. And at that time what happened was the priority became the high school and the middle school was put off to be done at a later time. So in 2023 is when it was approved and um David was here at that time and was a part of that very quick moment in time of that approval of that process and then moving in. Um so from 2024 was when the high the budget we started looking at the budget and going okay the need of the high school or the middle school is is great. Um listening to the principles listening to um parents that have been talking to the principles and listening to coaches of what
067can we do and how can we plan this out because this is a big project and we need to look at it budget-wise of of when and what's a good point to put that into our budget. So those discussions started and then in 2025 is when um we decided, you know, we've got to do something. The cracks are at the point they are. The field is at the point it has to something has to change with it um or we're going to start running into some safety issues that um we do not want to run into. So that is where we met. We talked about the needs then um ga and then asked looked on by board. ATG was the one that redid um your football field for you, the turf. Um I have worked
068on other projects with Joe and have confidence in their work and also their pricing and so called him up since he's on by board and said, "Will you come out? Will you look at the um space out there? Will you give us some ideas?" Um at the time we started having the discussions with that um the throwing area came up which um I'm sure Bo got excited about to move that small space and look at it differently also. Um, and then we did a little bit of future talk of, you know, the whatifs and if that space and Joe gave us some recommendations for that, that's not part of this project, the whatifs down the road, but it does give us um some starting points for further discussions of other things that we could do
069in that area to make it more like a complex. So going to some of the track pictures that you saw there. I'm I'm not going to talk about all of them, but you can see where things have crumbled, have deteriorated. A lot of this has to do with a couple of things. It has to do first with the maintenance on a field in a track. There are things that are need to be done. Um and over time, which we have seen with some of the things in our district, the deferred maintenance or the the upkeep of things have not been to the quality that um we would like them to be. And so Corey has made significant changes in that. One of them you can see, especially on the field part of this. I know
070we didn't have exact pictures of the field, but you can see the field off of the track. You can see where we've lost the dome in a football field in which you should have. That helps with drainage. And so now a lot of that drainage drains onto the track which increases your um water running underneath and through the cracks. You can see on some of these pictures too where the edge is separated away from the curb which once again allows for more moisture and things to get underneath that. One of the things that um is to me is most concerning and having kids that have done sports and have done contact sports on the field is the hardness of the field and where we have not gone in and have not tilted and done the
071thing and returfed it like we should be doing. And I mean turf as in sod to make that surface so that it is not this compacted dirt with um a lot of weeds on it. And so that is very concerning and something has to be done with that. That cannot continue to go on. The field looks very similar to the sides. If you look at the side there, you go across the field and it's the same. Um a irrigation system needs to be put into that field to get that so that we are not having it in the condition that it is moving forward if we stay with a um with a grass field. So um any questions on any of those pictures? Corey has gone out and looked at that. Joe, if you have
072any questions on those, um, we can answer those before moving on. It's It's deteriorated. There's lots and lots and lots of cracks. So, um, moving on to the throwing area. Um, I think this was a great at the time, this was a great, um, idea to use that space over there. Um there's just there's just so many things with that space over there. Um the ground, the surface, and to look at an improved area, the the space where people have to walk over to to get to it, the students going back and forth, and and just not adequate throwing areas for the sports that we have that you would need a throwing space for. So, but so that was an area that we looked at too that what can we do to bring that back
073over to the site where the other um fields are at. Any questions on those pictures? There's more. Corey um kudos to Corey. Corey went out and I asked for more pictures and he sent hundreds. I felt like it was a document but he did a great job and so um we just tried to pull a few for everybody to look at. So, all right, moving past our pictures. I'm going to let Adrien come up and speak or John or who how they decided and then um Bose's going to also come up and speak. So, I will step off the podium. Sorry. Good evening. Um first, I want to start off by saying thank you. I don't know if I'll have a chance to address you guys again and Mr. Martin takes all the time on
074Wednesdays to talk to you guys. So, thank you for the last three years of being able to serve as athletic director and administrative principal at the school that I went to. It's been it's been a dream. Um, I was thinking about how to convey this message and being transparent and positive and also realistic. I wanted to start because two years ago, I was at the middle school when they opened up the new gym space and the concession area. And I want to share some of those impacts that had on our indoor sports like volleyball, basketball, boys and girls basketball, wrestling. Um the addition to those facilities, I don't know if this is high enough or not. The addition to those facilities have really let us incorporate more summer activities. They've let us um work with
075the rec center, with the high school on doing events. We've been able to host league events. So instead of our parents driving an hour to Topeka or Manhattan or Junction City, we've gotten so much positive feedback that during those seasons they can go here. Not only the e economic advantage of bringing in eight league schools, but also I don't have to drive an hour to watch my eighth grader play basketball. So those additions, our concession stands, everything has been so so positive for those sports. But I do know that if you are not a a parent or community member that's out to support outdoor sports, some of this other stuff might not be known to you. So, I wanted to share it today. I also wrote it down. If you know me, I'm not someone
076who likes to read from a paper, but I don't want to miss anything because it's very important to me. Okay, starting with soccer. Our soccer program does not have a soccer field to practice on. We practice on a field behind the football field up there. We have goals. We have no lines marked, nothing, no flags. And then the rec center lets us host all our home games at Trica, which is amazing. They don't charge us for that. We're out there. And but it's off campus, so our kids can't go straight from I'm a math teacher, so straight from math class to go support our soccer team. They have to go to TRISA. Next, the our football program. our football program. Um, since I've been there, every year we've been able to have more and more
077games at the high school. Um, Mr. Welch and I have coordinated that. Their coaches and their programs have been very um, helpful with that. Every year, I think we've had more. This year, we were to play a little more than half of our games there, which is awesome because once we use those facilities, it also showed us the need for our facilities to improve. and our track and field program. We do not host a track meet at our campus. We're not able to um concerns with students getting hurt because of the track surface and then we just don't have the space. We and I'll speak about that later, but we do host a small meet at the high school. They let us use their facilities and then we host our big meet, we weren't able
078to this year, but we'll do it every other year at ESU Welch Stadium. And that is a fantastic event. Our kids love it. We love putting it on. So, one of the main reasons that I think it is important to really revamp those outdoor facilities, I'm going to start just with safety. Um, we do not have a secure access to our field. If we're hosting a football game or a track meet or anything, there is no gate keeping cars out. I can't control as athletic director who's coming in. Um, if you ever been out there and walked the track, you can literally walk in from a thousand different directions, which is concerning. Um, because we can't control who who is at our events. We already mentioned the track surface, so I won't go too much
079into that, but I do know that it's a concern of our coaches with our kids getting We had a lot of kids last year of shin splints and just running on that, which was a concern. The other big safety concern um is lights. We have no lights at our middle school field. So during football season when it's really hot in the summer, if we want to practice in the morning to avoid the heat, we cannot because it's still dark out. And if we want to practice after school, we cannot because we can't practice late into the day. And we're obviously not going to have our students out there in the heat with that adverse condition. So, we're sometimes going days without practice or our athletes are kind of funny seeing a bunch of eighth grade
080and seventh grade boys running around the halls, but that's their conditioning. Sometimes they'll be running inside the school because we don't have lights to be out there. I'm sorry, I've had a call for like 3 weeks and I can't get rid of it. Um, one of the biggest things that's that I face every time we host a football game at our on our campus is we don't have any seating. We have one set of bleachers on the west side. If you've come to watch our games, our community is still out there. They're still coming to support their kids, parents, friends, grandparents. But it quickly fills up with our wild middle school bunch who I love to death. And then you just see parents and visitors on the outside bringing lawn chairs and sitting around where
081then it becomes an on the- field problem because they're so close to the field and it's not a very professional look at a middle school event where you're having to circle up the field and sit with your lawn chairs. So we don't really have any seating. We also on average I was doing the numbers and I'm going to give a low estimate. On average, we have about 200 people at our games. We don't, that's not counting kids or teachers or anyone that gets in free. Um, and we don't have restrooms up there. We during football season, we pay to have a portable restroom brought in. And I can tell you that almost after every event, I hear from our parents and the other teams and their coaches, hey, where's the restroom? And I can only
082direct them to that place, which I think we can do better than that. Um, the last part is the middle school is in a weird position where to get to that field, I know Mr. Mart almost didn't make it the other week when he was wet out. Um, it's very hard to climb up the hill. So, if you are someone with a disability or limited mobility or even if like it's not really wheelchair accessible, you cannot park in that gravel field and wheel over the grass. You also can't go up the hill. So, we've had sometimes scenarios where I've had to answer calls where I have to tell them like, "We can't really have an we can't we don't have a way to help you get to the game." And I hate that cuz I
083don't want to turn anyone away, especially our our elderly and our population that needs the most help. Um, and we just don't have a way for them to get there. And on parking and accessibility, we don't have a parking area for the game. Um, fortunately, this hasn't been an issue since I've been there, but I'm always thinking emergency plan, how to keep our kids safe. If we were to have the parking dominoes that happens on a regular Thursday night, and we would have to get an emergency safety vehicle to respond to get through there, to get to the field. I don't know how we do it. Um, we had one scenario drain track last year. Luckily, they just drove across the field, but that's because there was no one parking in that gravel lot that
084fills up really fast. So, I would like to take, if we were to go with this proposal, I would like to take a look at that on how those emergency reaction vehicles could get there. Do you have questions for me? I know I give you guys a lot, but I'm I'm hoping to answer any questions you guys have. Okay. Before Adrian sits down, one of the things that came up today that was something that I don't think Bo and Adrian and I had really discussed, but what you want to share a little bit um I think you had shared about the teams where you've got a seventh grade A and B and an eighth grade um A and B team, but because of those the lighting we talked about, you're not able to Yeah. Yeah.
085Um, so back to the lighting issue, we we are been very successful in the last couple of years of getting kids to go out and participate. We have a big eighth grade class going to the high school that are going to do great things. A lot of football players there. Um, and I'm speaking football, um, just because they're the ones that use that field the most with the light. Um, if our games, if we have a seventh grade A game and B team game go and they go late, we'll have we have to cancel the games or we be put in that position because we don't have any light out there. Um, and working with the high school, it's been nice when we're able to share and use their field because they can just flip
086the lights on. And there's been many times this year where I'm like, if this was scheduled at Emporia Middle School, I'd have to disappoint a lot of parents who travel from other communities or tell other coaches, we have to cancel the game. Cuz at that point, I'm going to cancel the game. I'm going to let I'm not going to let kids play in an area that's not safe because they can't see. Um, but I also know that high school's been very gracious at us letting us use their facilities, but at the same time, it does put a lot of stress because they have a lot they have soccer, they have football, they have multiple teams. Um, and not all of our games are there. We have more games there. But I do know several times
087this year where we would have had to not finish our events. And that's not something you want to do because then people don't want to come play if you can't even finish the events you were contracted to schedule for. And you don't want to rob those kids of that experience anyway. That's what they look forward to. Okay. Next up, we have Bo. Bo's going to share a little bit and he'll kind of overlap too um about the football and the importance of that especially into their feeder program. So, hello everybody. Good job by Adrian. I'm going to piggy back on to Adrian a little bit and kind of talk about uh kind of our coordination with our high school and our middle school. Uh, I think we've done a good job with that, but I
088think, you know, we've been fortunate to have a couple coaches who have thought like us and want the best for the middle school. Uh, you know, our our football and our soccer team, they share the turf, you know, and then they practice other places. And so to ask them to give up their time on the turf to the middle, that's a big ask. You know, uh our football team, they they have this week. Soccer's got this next week, you know, and you think about a football schedule on a Monday night, you got games. Friday night, you have games. So you only have two or three practices on that turf, you're giving up one of those nights. Um and sometimes two of those nights depending on, you know, if we've given up a soccer or a
089football game. And like I said, that is a big ask. And we've been fortunate uh the last year or two for from our coaches, they've understood that and have found ways to make that happen, you know, because nobody wants to tell parents and kids, well, we have to end this game in the second quarter because there's no light out, you know. Um there's a lot that goes into that. So, I think that's really important and I want to give some credit to our coaches who have done that and kind of seen big picture uh and trying to build some things. But I I I think that's really important and I think we're all in this together. Uh we want the best for all programs whether it's high school, middle school. We've worked to get it
090that way. But I think this is a big step uh forward. You know, if we could if we could make this happen as far as the uh the track uh the throwers areas, you know, I I think that happened, you know, that that's been a lot longer than what I really give it. I mean, I think that's been at least 10 years maybe that we've moved that across the street, you know, and in talking to coach Wells, just kind of talking through things of, you know, some kind of detriments to our throwing areas being over there. Obviously, the biggest one is safety, you know, our our students having to cross the street every day to get over there. And we're not, you know, we're not talking five kids. We're talking 20 to 30, you know,
091sometimes that's a lot of kids with, you know, a few two or three coaches that may go over there with them. Um, kind of building on that, Coach Wells was kind of embarrassed to share this, but he said there's been times we've had some novice discus throwers who have let one get away from him and it's gone towards the road as a car's going by, you know, and it has almost hit a vehicle as it's passing. So, he wanted to add add that into safety as well. Uh, I think another one, you know, like on a day where we have a, you know, maybe a varsity track meet or a JV track meet and our team is divided and the majority of our coaches go to the meet and we have a few that stay
092for the other team's practice. That makes it really hard. You know, when our our throwers areas are on the other side of the school across the street and we've got to divide kids, that makes it really hard for supervision. you know, if we only have two or three coaches who stayed back and we've got, you know, 40 kids, but we've got to divide those coaches because we've got our jumpers up here and we've got the we're using the track and then we've got that over there. You know, that that if we could have them all in one central location, it just makes it so much better to to be able to manage practice and uh you know, coordinate things and and just keep it all kind of together. Um, coach Wells really talked about, you
093know, just the the fact of building team, you know, with track. You know, I think we look at at track as, you know, it's individual events and things like that. You know, coach Wells is such a good coach, been doing it for so long. It's a great point. You know, you start, you want to build team, you want to build chemistry with your group. You want to have them all together. You want you want them to see what each other are doing. And you know when a you know if a if a somebody comes along and throws a PR in the disc uh or the shot and everybody gets excited well that that want that one needs to be a team thing you know not that those 20 kids on the other side of school
094saw but nobody else did. Um he also talked about I'm just kind of rambling through my head of of kind of thoughts that we've had. Uh he talked about the javelin. You know it's more safety things being too close together uh over there. It's a lot of the same, but uh moving that back over there there's so many good things that come from that that uh definitely worth our time. Uh that would be a part of our middle school as well. You know, throwers working working together, which in my mind is a good thing. Younger kids working with our older kids, coaches working together. Uh I I can't think enough of, you know, in building programs how beneficial that would be. uh move a little bit to the field football kind of adding things up.
095Adrian talked a little bit about it about how that's been really beneficial with the new gym. I mean that is that's opened up. We have so many more teams practicing now and it's taken such a burden off of the high school being able to use the gyms over there, more tournaments, just so many more things. I I look at the field, you know, I think about the rec center using our our high school fields on Saturday morning for WCK football. How nice that would be to have another field, you know, and and maybe a nicer field. I know that they get really excited uh the younger teams doing they can come play on the turf at the high school and to have another nice field uh that's secure and they could go do that just
096enhances everything that we're trying to do. You know, it's building good partnerships, building good uh good programs. We talk about youth a lot and and really wanting to build things and I I I can't think of a better reason to do it, you know, than what we've kind of presented and and kind of what's been talked about. I think that there would be a lot of positive in our schools. I know there would in our community and uh doing things for our kids. I mean, that's that's what we're here for. So, it's all I've got. You guys have any questions for me? I did wonder how much um the marching band has had to also accommodate for I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad you brought that up and what opportunities like if we
097had a better field at the middle school would that open for kids to transition to the high school. So just to give you an example in the summer football team, soccer team, band all working on our turf. Um, we sit down every year in in the spring and we try to work that out and that gets really hard, you know. Uh, we try to get Glenn on with the band. Football team needs on, soccer team needs on. They go at different times. Sometimes there conflicts. Again, our coaches have been good working with each other. You know, we're going to go early so you can go at this time. With the other field, it eliminates that. It really does. Well, in summer you also have uh both boys and girls soccer commit like competing for time,
098right? Correct. Yeah. Soccer uses the Jones a little bit. U obviously not as big, but band it it really is it's the big one, you know, because it uh they use their time. they get after it and they're they're a team, you know, and to have that other field to for somebody to use that we could rotate, it just eliminates all of that and and honestly probably gives them more time to with less restrictions. So, um, how what's the relationship like with Emporia State in terms of using their soccer field or their football field? As far as I've been here, it's been good. You know, we use it for our high school football games. I mean for practices like during the summer and um we haven't done that as much. We there there have been
099some cases where we've needed to and every time we have needed something they have been there for us. They have they have uh taken care of us. They've realized it you know I'll give you an example. Friday we're supposed to have rain and uh I've already checked in on possibility of maybe using softball field if we get rained out. Um they're great. You got to just follow some steps, you know, make sure we check with the right people. Uh they've been really good at working with us. So there was some discussion about the things that we have across the street on the south side there. Is there room do we have plentiful room to move those back? I believe we do. Yeah. I think in the plans I think that that they will they will
100show that we have all of that area. It's laid out, isn't it? On the Yeah. Okay. I will add one personal note. Um my mom had a lot of mobility issues due to hip problems and uh Sophia threw javelin junior year and then would have loved to senior year but co uh and she was not able to ever go watch her throw unless she sat in her car in the tech college parking lot. Um, and so we talk about community accessibility and you know, we're not that small of a community, but we are small enough that families, whole families come to events like this. So, it would be nice to have that in a better place that's more accessible. It just be more comfortable. Yeah. And that's that's really big. Anything else? Thank you guys.
101Thank you. Adrian forgot something. He's back. Honestly, now that I've been up here, you're going to have a hard time keeping me off here. Um, so I did want to share real fast. I know that there's about I can't think of, you know, being an important kid, I'm thinking of any other place that has a track in town besides the high school, the college, and the middle school. Um, I forgot to mention this, but with our track, we're not the only people that also use our track. Currently, the Flint Hills Club track has reached out to us and is using our track. Um the rec center uses for their program for their club. They use it for about eight weeks twice a week. Um we've had some other private organizations asked to use it and
102they're out there also. Um so it's not just being used for our middle school track practice. There's not a lot of options for track programs in Emporia for those facilities because it's so unique to have a facility for track. Um, but those all those other programs also use it during the summer. And I guess that's just one more thing I wanted to share with you guys. Would you remind me do the does the middle school use the high school track for their walk-athon in the fall or do they use the Is it just depending on availability? Uh, no. Every year, um, we use the high school. Um, it's just has the seating. We have the concessions and the bathrooms there. Um, if we had a whole sixth grade up on our track and they had
103to go to the bathroom, that'd be an in and-out traffic. So, it's just high school always lets us up there. So, we use their facilities for our walk-athon. And what I know we've talked a lot about the sports and um everything, but the other thing that my experience with this is when you have another field that's available is that your PE classes um have that flexibility too to go out there and other classes that and especially you know one of the big things at the middle school is when it rains pretty much when it rains if the football field or the field's not over at the high school available then they have to cancel their events and stuff because of that field. be the nice thing about turf, we all know it drains quickly so
104that you're able to use it even on those days where there's rain and stuff, but you it's really interesting when you watch you put in these turf fields and you watch how much usage they start getting by academically too, which is kind of neat, you know, that people realize, hey, I can take a group of kids out there. I have a space where I can take them or where it's a secured space where they can take them. um uh in my prior positions I've been in, I've even seen where special needs students um are able to go out there and use those facilities because they're the ground is stable. The ground is where they can go in there and they can do things whereas before the open space was not conducive for their needs. So
105it's it's an exciting time to look at that. So now the next thing you're wondering how are we going to fund this, right? So, what I've shared up here on um the screen and everything is that this comes out of our capital outlay. And just a reminder, capital outlay, we are limited to what we can do. It's really bricks and mortar if you're thinking about that. And it's not we can't pay salaries out of that. We can't do things on the the teacher side, you know, where we would like to. It's kind of like our at risk money. There's limitations on what we can do with that. So that when you look at your capital outlay and our budget, our capital outlay is always going to be healthy. I mean, because it's always going to
106have money going in. It's not going into the 80% of our budget that covers salaries and stuff. It's going into the bricks and mortar. So the good thing about this is Corey and I have had long conversations and have looked at this budget and put some plans together moving forward so that we, you know, we definitely don't want to deplete it all in one year and we get stuck with something major happen. So, a lot of times you've heard me share where we're going to try to do part in one year and part in the next year. So, it's not just stripping out a budget or limiting it down to just a limited amount. One of the things I put the balances up there. We have 3,281 left in this year. We still have a
107payment of 850,000 that's still coming in. Um, and then next year we're projecting that to be at 5.5. And that's keeping our mills at eight, which is pretty typical. We would not lower that. There wouldn't be a reason to lower that because otherwise any money to make up that difference would have to come out of our general. And so that's why we want to keep our mills where they are. That still keeps everything balanced like we want. We want to keep that at the 54. And so it keeps it balanced. Um, and Corey and I have been talking and also putting into play because one of the the one of the important things that he's working on right now is looking at the playgrounds and all of our elementaryaries. I would say our track and
108our playgrounds are things that have to we have to do something. They're at the point now to where they have to have some sort of improvement to those. The the track is in a more limited space and easier to plan and do in a quicker time period. the playgrounds. We've got people looking at them right now. We've got people giving us some information on what's deteriorated, what's not. We thought the Kansas Avenue, we were going to be able to repopulate the um set that was over there that was in and where we found out once we took that down and and looked at it, it's not where we can use it again. So there's a lot that one also um would involve the elementary staff um and teachers or and I'm sorry teachers and um
109the uh principles to have bigger discussions and that one to me would be a committee driven. It really does need to have a lot of people looking at that especially when you're doing elementary playgrounds. So, and we just needed a big evaluation. That's what Corey's working on on our space of where we can because a lot of stuff on our elementary playgrounds have been positioned here, then moved here, then some cement here, and we really need a bird bird view of that of what that's going to look like. So, so any questions on the funding? I do have a question on the current and projected balances for 2526. you have uh 5.5. Is that what you anticipate the opening balance is going to be or do you anticipate that's what we're going to budget? So
110that's that is what we would see as the revenue coming in from the mills that we would withdraw off the levy and so you know those payments come in throughout the year. So yeah that's that's pretty set. Now the you know valuation can go down but that's putting us even if it went down slightly we would still be in good shape. That's what we I feel really solid about that number. I don't think that number is going anywhere for next year. And keep in mind any of that too can roll it can roll into so we can carry over. Also is there a limit where we can roll or if it's not used I know we're using it. Yes you can. So that can keep building. That's one of those that can build. Earlier today,
111we heard about uh needs assessment and there was a lot of curriculum resources that are needed, I think. And so looking at this, would we be able to, you know, instead of eight mills, could we do five mills and put three mills into operating or can we do that? Um, so and that's a good question art because other people you know have asked that same thing. So this is what happens if we lower the mill in the capital. So if we take that eight down to five. So right now eight is calculated at about five mills, right? So if let's say you reduce that in half, you're only going to have two mills. And so if we took four off of the eight, put it and balanced up, it would change our LOB because that's
112what would have to change. So we'd have to start changing those numbers. Our LO would have to go up. Well, the LOB's right at 30. So for that to go up, you'd have to go up three on the lob to take that up, which you it's voted on, but it's also going to impact your taxes. So, it's a really funny juggle with all of that because we have our general, we have the 20 which we have to take the 20 mills. Then we've got the lob which is the 15 and then we have our capital which is eight and then um we have the 0.5 which goes to the um tech center for the adult learning and then we have the bond and interest which is at 11. the bond in interest. We can't lower
113that anymore. And um I this KSD wouldn't let us because you've got the whole idea is you got to have that levied to pay your bond in interest. And if it's not levied to pay it, then we're not meeting our bond in interest and stuff. So right now those numbers are pretty tight. If we take away from capital, we would have to use general for any big things that would occur out of the capital. But then it's not going to give us a lot of money back into our general. Um because when you're you're levying eight and it's only coming out to 5.5. So now we remember last year when we did the teacher raises we were able to put you can put a small percentage which we did of our salaries for our maintenance
114over to that um to be able to free up some money in our general. The rule of thumb on good finances, you shouldn't put more than 30%. And that's what we kept it at because remember that money stays and if you want to ever take it back over there, that's an added on into that general to take that percentage back over there. So you don't want to pile up a lot of that of the salaries that you can take over there. So it's kind of a juggle, but ours is pretty tight. if um you know that's a bigger discussion I think down the road that you know at some point we just need to talk about you know do we want to raise the LB but it's going to move the 54 up above the
11555 which I know that was a promise to the community but it's still a discussion at some point because that's that's also revenue that's on the table that may not impact um the taxpayer and there's ways to do that and that's what I'm getting back from our U bond and interest what I'm working with them on to see you know where that bond and interest where we've sold some of those if we can buy down the mill to be able to raise the mill. So sorry that was a lot on finance just then. So so when I'm looking at some of our past budgets probably I mean definitely before you came and so we would put like2 to3 million into capital outlay and then we increased it significantly. So tell me how that worked like
116how did we go like I know why we did it. I was on the board, but like how how does how do the numbers square when you put two to three million in previous years and how does that what were we doing with the money? You know, that's what like where did the 2.5 million come from that we added to to capital outlay in the last couple of years? So the prior to that since I since I've been in the position, we've been going straight off of what's been levied into that. Um the the prior years I can't speak to on that Jamie. I just you know looking at it it it's confusing of why um because it doesn't make some of it didn't make sense in reference to what logically or if you had
117conversations with KSD. Um I I couldn't tell you because we we've really planned you know like when Paul was up here because Paul's stuff comes out of that too, right? and his is coming out of that and we're still going to be where we're at. So, the one of the biggest things is what Corey has been doing. We've got to get that maintenance and we're we we are moving that up very quickly and getting everything so that we're not, you know, waiting for it to break down and then having to pay a significant amount to get that done. So, you know, I couldn't tell you I, you know, nor do I I want to dig that far into that because we've got it really balanced nicely now. So the the other thing I would think
118of as well is a priority list of the projects we need to do and and I don't doubt that the middle school project needs to happen at some point, but what are the other priorities like the the playgrounds at the the elementary schools or maybe doing something at the high school where our concessions are there or maybe redoing bathrooms there as well. So, I think it'd be nice to have a list of all of those projects with costs and then we can prioritize them. I feel like right now we just have this one project in front of us and I know there's other projects that are just as relevant but we don't know what they are. So, it's kind of hard for me to say let's go and do this one but I I know
119there's other needs but I don't know what they are and they're not shared right here. Sure. And we can provide that to you. I think the biggest thing where what moved this one up is the that word safety. um is the safety of many many things of the track being safe with all these cracks, the field being safe with with athletes on that and then the people that are trying to get down, especially when John was having problems going down the hill um was the safety. You know, a large part of that a year ago we started looking at when we looked at that and said, you know, we got to start thinking about this because this is now a safety. Playgrounds start to fall into that, too. And so those are kind of in
120that and like I had shared Corey, we're starting that ball rolling. That one's just not as quick of a a fix because of the track and field can go in in a matter of four months because it's an isolated, you know, area where we've got several buildings to work on. So, but yes, I I hear what you're saying there. I think I always anticipated that we would see the track come up in our discussions this year because it was in the notebook that that you all put together last year. So that's I mean I saw the cracks then I've seen them for years, you know, when I would go out there. So I always anticipated that and this is just bigger and so I think knowing sort of where it plays with, you know, the
121rest of the projects for the next two years, I think would make it an easier decision for sure. So I'm going to let Oh, whoop. Sorry. Did you have a question? No. So, I'm gonna have um I So, on the next slide, I put in two options. Just one I put in kind of getting a ballpark figure like if we just did nothing and we just renovated the track in the field and left it grass, what that would look like potentially. I put some pros and cons there which was shared by the administrators on what that would look like. You're looking at about a 1.4 to 1.5. Once you get a track up to par, you're talking about if you're just going to resurface a track, that can be anywhere around the the two 200,000.
122So, you know, it's kind of like our our HVAC, you know, once we get that up where it needs it's supposed to be, then the maintenance on that is dollars a day instead of hundreds of dollars when we do those repairs. So, the same thing and the resurfacing. Joe can speak further on this because he deals with the material more, but you know there when you can wait 10 years to resurface a track instead of waiting 20ome years and now everything's just at the point to where it has to be replaced completely. So, that that's one of the the options that could be an option to move forward, but it doesn't add in any of the other um bathrooms or any of the lights or the fencing or anything like that um to that area
123or the throwing area. And then option two gives more about the renovation of the track and all the additions. Um I'm going to have Joe share that with you because the pictures are coming up, the projects. I think you'll be really excited about it um when you see u the potential for that. We've talked um like I shared with you um Joe and I have worked on some other projects together and so kind of you know things which he's going to share which is on the next slide just a simple thing um is in the little parking area of putting a loop you know just a handle there where people can drop people off and not feel like they have to park over there leaving that for people that may need that and stuff. So
124it's just simple things like that. Um Joe's company does a great job of that of listening. One of the things I saw on this um that I hadn't shared with Joe, but we can do is in the throwers areas if it comes about is you always want to put a couple of sets of bleachers over there. Um so that um most of the time athletes will set on those bleachers, but it's still a space for people to sit and give a place for people that you know may not bring chairs and stuff. But so I'm going to turn it over to Joe. And Joe, I didn't know if you wanted to introduce because we have a Kansas rep. Joe's in St. Louis, right? Yes. Joe Geneito, ATG sports president of sales. I also have TJ
125Halis, uh, Kansas sales representative for ATG. Um, we we've been working on this for quite a while. Thank you for having me tonight. Um, shout out to Adrian and Bo and Miss Janathan. It's nice seeing so much passion for something that we do. Uh, we build these facilities all over the Midwest and have been doing it for a very, very long time. Uh before I jump into exactly what you have there, just a little bit more background about about ATG. We did uh resurface your your turf field in 2021. Uh looks looks fantastic. You guys are doing a great job keeping keeping up with it. Um we uh we go back 40 plus years, nearly 45 years now doing sports facilities. Uh it's grown each and every year. Now we're to the point where we're
126doing 70 80 projects per year. Um and it's it's exciting. I know we're getting close to summer. We do have an option currently for you this summer uh to have this ready for your kiddos this fall. So, um looking looking at the the boards up there, um I can kind of walk you through some of those items that we're looking at. Uh we looked at a lot of options. Um we looked at tilting it, turning it, sliding it, moving it left or right. Uh but keeping it in a similar template was by far the best economical value. And that's our job and our goal is to give you the most durable surface we can, least maintenance we can at the best cost we can. And um so as you could tell, we have a new
127turf field up there. It's got everything you need for for for all the markings for your sports. Uh we have a new track. Um within that track, as I mentioned, building it bulletproof, we want to we we've got curbs on the inside and outside. We've got a stable subgrade. Um, we've got we've got the rock and the asphalt all the way through the track surface that when you build a track correctly, that track is set up to be a 25 30-year track uh with maintenance cycle sprays every 8 to 10 years. Um, and that's how we've proposed it so far to have a good economical system for you. Um, we've we've included some um you can see we've got the pole vault, excuse me, in the north side. Uh we've got uh um high jump
128on the south side and then we've got long and triple on the southwest side. Um as we kept moving on this, we kept kind of dreaming and adding to it and how to make it a fully functional usable usable facility, which is sometimes scary because now you're elevating cost. Uh but I think we really did come up with a really good plan that keeps those costs to a minimum. Um, you know, starting starting at the the left side of the page here with with the um the the 50 plus space parking lot, a nice little circle drive was added for drop offs, which will be a common use. Uh, we do have a little bit over I want to say around 11,000 square foot of flat work that takes you to the field, a little
129bit of a plaza around that concession uh in between the parking lot and the track and then takes you u to the seating areas on both the visitor side and the home side. Um, we've planned so far 750 seats, uh, 500 on the home, 250 on the visitor. Uh, on the home side, we've also planned a small press box. Not not something you necessarily see at a high school uh, for a football stadium, but certainly something that keeps it's a lockable facility. Gives you a small space for doing everything you need with with the PA system. Um, if you could, let's see, no, real quick on this one as well. Um, another very important component that we we all came up with together was creating, you kind of see that shadowed area that shows the
130uh the potential 6ft perimeter fence that goes around the entire facility. Um, I think that's an important space. Sometimes we put that up to the track. I think for your particular facility, I think we all kind of agreed that would be best to have a little bit off and enclose the entire facility itself. Um yeah, if you could flip to the next the next slide. Bathroom too in that little concession area. Yes. Yes. That that concession up there. Um we we build that very similar building several times a year. Um not massive, but it it gets the job done. Um it is a small concession, a little bit of storage, and then both men and women's bathrooms. Uh this slide we can we can go through fast. I just want to show you some of
131our drainage points with the blue piping. Um, we're gonna we're gonna one of the neatest part about uh not only building the track correct, but the turf is we're going to have a facility that drains uh the turf will be dry to the touch after our hard rain nearly moments after. So, um your use potential goes through the roof and that's exciting. And then when you talk about the lights, u now you've got the ability to go before school through the night. Uh that's going to be really great. Uh, but the the blue pipes up there do show the the drainage for the parking and also for the track and field. Flip to the next. U, I think this is a really neat idea and uh, we we've done it a couple places. Um, we
132we've done parts of it. I think the your space and your setup in comparison to where the high school track is, I think it's just going to be a great centralized throw facility. Um, I think when I talk to coaches, you really have what they want. Not not necessarily more than they want. Uh, could you get by less? Potentially. You currently are, but this is a really neat facility that'll last you several several uh decades. Uh, doing it the right way. Uh, we've built in uh the three shotput areas, two of them that could be used for competition. Uh, at the same time, u, we've built in two discus areas. We've built in a javelin runway. And then we've got some centralized flat work. Really with that flat work, we've got a square footage in
133mind. We can kind of place it, slide it to accommodate future seating or whatever might fit fit the facility the best. I'm really bad at spatial recognition. Is this So this is the north side. Yeah, the north side of the high school track. Yes. So there would be actual like it looks like an accessible pathway then. That is correct. To that. Okay. Okay. And then we we kept some of the backgrounds on there just for that spatial so you kind of see where it lines up. Uh but yes, there would be there would be complete access to the area. You're welcome. Uh and then before I guess we move on to cost and uh scheduling, maybe open up for some questions you might have. Okay. Um, if you could flip ahead, uh, it's it's towards
134the back of the next few pages. That one right there, second to last. Um, so, um, as I mentioned with schedule, uh, the the vast majority of our work for the summer is is is booked. We've had this one earmarked for a while. We're hopeful that it's something that you'll consider. Uh we are um you know we we've had conversations internally this week even today uh deciding that okay if we can get a go in a reasonable amount of time we could start late May early June um and then turn around the field for use towards the end of summer uh button up the field and other components uh early August and then have the track and all components of the project uh complete uh at the end of September October one. So that that
135is a still a reasonable goal to this day. Um and uh really excited about you guys potentially considering that. Uh did provide some breakouts within within that lump sum that you can see. Maybe you'll have questions there. Okay. Well, I'm not leaving. So if you have more questions, call me. called me back up. I think that's another testament to how good everybody did speaking about the value of what we're trying to do. So, thank you so much for having us here tonight. All right. Any questions or um what would you like me to bring back to you for the next meeting? The list. It sounded like the list of what our big big projects are. You know, I when I joined school board, I remember like there was a document that we had that sort
136of gave us sort of like the capital outlay plans for several years coming up, including not just the maintenance and but also buses and textbooks. So, I think like getting something like that for the next couple of years, the rotation plan. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Allison. Yeah, but the rotation plan and just so we know where all you know what all the expenses are. Sure. Hopefully you're not going to have to like recreate like create that from scratch. I'm sure you already have something. we just they all they um all the directors had to put together a one a three and a fiveyear plan and so you know now we're hidden into the three and so we have those projects and um I think Paul had shared you know he's right on score with
137the what he's been spending and so knowing that we're able to plug that in on our expenditures and Corey's doing a great job with his you know even though sometimes there's the popups um but you know those popups are not as severe as what they where we all saw within the last 18 months. So, so we have those. Yeah, there won't they're they're going to be separate because that's what I've asked them to do by department. So, to to have those discussions. So, well, I would echo what Jay says. I think it would just help us to visualize, you know, not just what we're spending now, but what we still have to spend on other things. Um, but, you know, this is now maybe with the conversation we had earlier three times this week. Now,
138I've had discussions about building materials and cost increases. So, I'm looking at two options. One is for about 1.4 to 1.5 million. The other one is kind of the whole package, right? 3.6 million. Um, you know, is there a possibility that we could split some of this up? Perhaps start with option one and then slowly add in the things for option two to break the cost up over time, but I'm also curious about, you know, changing tariffs and economic trade wars. And I don't know how these building materials are going to hold up in that in terms of cost. And so I don't know if our general Joe's going to guarantee those prices, right, all the way through. So the way it's set up right now is Oh, you have to come to the microphone.
139Sorry. That's that way people at home can hear you. For the three people that are watching. Um, no, we we do have these we do have these prices locked in. Um, you know, one of the ways we're able to make it so economical is by packaging it together. Um, I think if you even if there wasn't major um economic inflation or other things that affect the economy over the next two, three, four years, I think you would see a rising cost just by breaking it up. So, um, that's that's number one. And number two, yes, our our pricing is locked in. Um, the moment that that we're under contract, those items are secured and we're ready to go. I'm just going to stand over here. Yeah. Now, thank you for that information. Um, it's just
140a lot of money, right? Like you look at the track and it's kind of an easy sell. Oh, yeah. We need to fix that, but then you get the sticker shock. You just have to sleep on it a couple of days, right? Yeah. This is this has been a really thorough Yeah. presentation. I do appreciate all of the input we've received tonight. It's been really thoughtful and well presented. And I know it feels kind of like it's like brought just quickly and so behind the scenes, which is good. We have the staff and everybody that's been working on it, you know, to make sure when we bring it, it has every it's covered. Everything's covered for you all. I think Jamie, you had mentioned, didn't you mention if if there were any grants out there?
141Um, if we were able to secure those down the road, how does that work? Like, do you just get to put that back in your capital outlay? Um, so what would happen with that is we can put that you can put it in your general and then you can reimburse your capital. So you can put back into that, but you can't reimburse the other direction. So yes, we can do that. We can shift the cost out of there and put that in. So and we do that sometimes with the bond like sometimes things will get build to capital that should be bond. So we have to reimburse and pull out. All right. Thank you all. Thank you. Oh, okay. The next item is 9A district highlights. Okay. Well, I'm always excited to share district highlights,
142but I'm especially excited about tonight. So, first of all, Mr. Martin, uh, he's wearing his purple and I presented to the Kansas State Board of Education about what it means to be designated a purple star district. So, um, that was a couple weeks ago. Mr. Martin um entertained the state board with um some stories as um being a Navy veteran. So he was very appreciative of that u of being there and be able to present. So we joined Spring Hill, Rose Hill and Piper school districts for the presentation. Dell Bernard who is the Kansas State Department of Education director of school finance and also veteran was really the one that facilitated it. So it was a it was a nice experience and uh Mr. Martin was the only one that they laughed at. So it
143was a good it was a success. left with. I mean, uh, yesterday, our second graders in each of our elementary schools attended the first ESU career day that was designed specifically for them. That was very exciting. Um, ESU hopes make an an annual event. ESU leaders TKley, Kelly Hine, Kayla Maxfield, Hannah Hurold, Dorothy Stevenson, and Mary Shiveley were all part of that to make it uh the event very special for students and staff. So, it was very nice. This morning I was out at the Emporia High School um student leader breakfast and it was well attended by students. Also noticed that we had some retired um coaches that are back um working as rule 10 and they had a special um speaker and so Bo was able to introduce Dion Marorrow Marorrow. He did a
144fabulous job. He talked about what it was like to be um a student at the high school as well as an athlete and then going into college and being successful. Uh repeatedly gave credit to the coaches in his life and encouraging him and keeping him grounded and also his parents for really always looking forward to not just focusing on athletics but what is he going to do professionally. So he talked about his professional life, the important part of coming back to Emporia and giving back to Emporia. He was he was amazing. Um he did a he uh one of the students asked about how did he stay how did he stay balanced and he had talked about being scheduled and making sure that you do all of the hard work in the morning all the
145hard things that are in your schedule do it in the morning and then the others will come easily. So he just did um fabulous fabulous job. Also uh Mr. Pavick talked about him as an art student and how great it is to see him giving back to the community as an artist as well. So, that was really, really cool. Okay, the thing that I'm most excited about is that I got a very special communication yesterday that I took to Judy and then we were very excited and we've kept it very quiet. We are officially a Capturing Kids Hearts School District National [Music] Showcase. So excited. So Judy and I called Janet Kingsley yesterday to share an excitement and Janet said that she was incredibly impressed that our district was able to accomplish this feat in
146only two years of committing to CKH districtwide. And so this accomplishment is a direct result of our district and school administrators commit commitment, leadership, role modeling our staff members, students, parents. So excited. So we could not be a district showcase without having the majority of our schools being sorry. No, the majority of our schools being national showcase schools, but that is quiet and we are going to start sharing that next week. So you'll find out which schools got the national showcase schools, but the majority of our schools got it. So just great great work with our administrators, teachers, students, parents. They we talk about it. Um we were at JDK and we were hearing about um it was brought up that well maybe we should do CKH because the kids talk about it at home
147and talk about the social contract. Maybe we need to use the social contract as our norm. So it's it's growing and um thank you all for approving you know that commitment. episode CK. So, we're so excited. So, we will continue to um celebrate and please stay tuned. We're very proud and excited. And can I just add that this is amazing and congratulations, but it also comes from leadership. So, thank you, Dr. Harter. Did you have any other highlights? Okay. No, that's it. Okay. I want to end on that one. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, that brings us to item 10A, executive session. I move that we enter our executive session for 10 minutes to discuss personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the privacy interest of the individuals to be discussed and return
148to this room at 8:05 p.m. Superintendent Dr. Allison Harter and Director of Human Resources Jared Griffin are invited to join the session. No action is anticipated. Would you be willing to amend that to 12 minutes? So, amended. Thank you. 807. Second. Get motion passes. 6 I motion to return to regular session. Second. Thank you. We have to vote. Casey, motion passes. 6. Item 10 C. I move we go into executive session for 10 minutes to discuss personnel matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the privacy interest of the individual to be discussed and return to this room at 8:18 p.m. Action is anticipated. Motion passes. 6 0 I motion to return to regular session. Second. Let's do a hand vote on this one. Motion passes. 6. I move to go into executive session for
14910 minutes to discuss personal matters of non-elected personnel in order to protect the p privacy interest of the individuals to be discussed. return to this room at 8:29 p.m. Action is anticipated. Motion passes 6 0 I motion to return to regular session. Second Motion passes 6. Uh item 10G is our action. I will make a motion to approve the transition contract of employment for Dr. David McGee um as submitted. Second. Motion passes 6. Okay. Thank you. Um item 11A is future board calendar dates. We have a busy spring coming up. Um next week, Wednesday, April 30th at 11:00 a.m. the board will be having a tour at Emporia High School. Um, and then also that evening, April 30th at 5:00 pm, we will be having staff recognition evening at White Auditorium. Monday, May 5th at
1503 p.m. is the retirement reception at the Boyer Building. Wednesday, May 14th at 6 p.m. is our regular board meeting for the month of May here at Mary Herbert Education Center. Sunday, May 18th at 3 p.m. is the high school graduation at White Auditorium. And then our June meeting, June 11th at 6:00 p.m. here at Mary Herbert Education Center. I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. Motion passes. 6