Edgewood City Schools - Board of Education Meeting 4/28/25

001All right, we're going to get started. This is a regular scheduled board meeting for Edgewood City Schools. Uh, Mrs. Bower, would you call roll, please? Mr. Gary Gabbard here. Mr. Michael Presler, here. Mrs. Amy Ashkra, here. Mr. Mark Measure Schmidt here. Mr. Andrew Presler, would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Right now, our father in heaven, we bow our heads, our hearts before you and want to offer praise to you. Thank you for your goodness, your kindness. We're reminded of it through the years. We're reminded of it this present day. Life sometimes is difficult. Sometimes is especially challenging. But

002we thank you for the lessons that we've learned to lean upon you, to look to heaven for help, for guidance. And Lord, always you have come through. You do come through and you will come through. Uh we just want to praise you for that. Ask your blessing here on board upon the Edgewood City School District. We're grateful for so many people who labor so much. Much of it done simply because of the love in their hearts for the young people of this community. Lord, we ask that you'll give guidance and direction as we all seek to work together. uh and Lord that we might be a part of your hand in leveling up our community and helping this community uh just to be a community that reflects that neighborliness that the scripture talks about. Now

003we pray your blessing here upon the meeting. We pray it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thank you Pastor Roger. Before we get started this evening, I'd like to welcome Mr. Philpot up here on stage. He's uh been a pillar in this community for a long time. U I can't really say that he wanted to be up here with us at his time, but uh we do appreciate it and uh appreciate all the work you've already put in. Thank you. This time I'm going to look for a motion for the approval of the agenda. So move. Mr. Michael Presler, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Mrs. Bower, would you call roll, please? Mr. Michael Presler, yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft, yes. Mr. Barry Gabbert, yes. Mr. Mark Meers, yes. Motion

004carries for zero. Next up, we have Mr. Tom York with Butler Tech presentation. Thank you. Now I'm going to have to ask which button do I push? The up and down or the right to left to get to my next picture? Either. Either. All right. So, you know, normally I just talk about uh you guys will be able to see everything from there. Um we talk about uh the building projects. That's a a drawing of the uh current bioscience center with the new addition that's being built. is to the right. Um, and it's what it will look like. There's also a complete basement that's being uh put uh it's part of that and it's being finished as well for a future program. Uh we're hoping that it's going to be a radiology program, but we

005don't know that. I I keep stumping for that, but we'll see what happens. But that is the building that you see on I75 as you're going south towards Cincinnati from uh Cincinnati Dayton Tylerville and that area there. But uh we have kids coming out of there uh uh phabotamus nursing students and so forth. It's a it's a great uh building for Butler Tech. That's some of the construction pictures when they were Some of these pictures are reversed, but that is uh the foundation work that was being done. Uh foundations high and steel. Anybody ever do that? That was one of my summer jobs when I was going to college. It's a great thing to do. Makes you want to finish school for sure. Uh you can see a little bit better the scope of this.

006Actually that will be connected to that building to the left. It just doesn't look like it, but it will be connected. Okay, this one, if you've driven by the airport in Middletown, this is the building that started there. This is our aviation building. Uh uh the program has been meeting in an old hanger that uh Butler Techch renovated and we've had students uh graduating from that program, but this will be the brand new uh program. You're looking at it from Route 4. Uh and uh the the Warbirdge Museum is across that white strip that you see there. Uh but yeah, that's that's the aviation. Now, Michael, you asked me a question about the programing. I did get the answer for that. There are three certificates that the kids can graduate from in that program. One

007of them is that AP&P uh certificate which stands for uh airframe and power. Um the other one is um part 107 FAA drone operator's license which as I understand it is part of the process uh one of the steps in getting your pilot's license. I I think I that's what I've been told. And then you can also get a private pilot's license in this program. Um all the kids most all the kids graduate with at least two of those three things uh on their resume when they they leave that program. So it's it's a pretty awesome uh opportunity for our young people. Thank thank you for giving me that. Yeah, buddy. That's that silence. You know, one of the things that they had to do that's uh increase the cost is uh they had to

008put some of that soil stabilization material in there. You all know what that is. Uh if you don't, the parking lot that y'all parking for the board office and the high school lot across the BM there, we had to do that years ago because there's a there's a spring under there and we had to do the same thing. put that parking lot in pavement and make it uh usable. We don't want to look at that for too long, but there footers u and I think that's it. So, thanks for giving me the opportunity to do that. Um those projects I know maybe some people might say why how does public have the money to do that? uh they have the money to do that because of uh grants that they have written and they've been

009uh given. I think uh that project the air the uh aeronautics program building uh 28 million and uh half of that was uh given to Butler Techch through the county commissioners. Um and then half of the remainder was uh given to them by uh the Middletown um governmental agency probably their city ministries I don't know and uh then the other part smaller part is chipping in for that. So um and John let us know that that money would be covered by a grant as well. So, uh, all their projects, uh, have been, uh, grantf funded, uh, and, uh, they've been real, really fortunate with that. Right now, there's a very big interest in supporting career tech education and, uh, and they're reaping the benefits from that. So, um, graduation for Butler Tech is May 20

010at Centa Center, uh, uh, at Xavier and, um, May the 1st. This week, it's going to be another, this could be the official county, uh, board meeting, uh, program. Again, there will be senior projects that you guys will be able to uh, observe, judge maybe uh, and have dinner. So, You're all welcome to to go there to attend that. Uh and um that's it. You have any questions? Is there is there any dates as far as like when these projects can possibly be completed? Uh Mr. Gavin, I think the the airport project is going to be 2 years down the road. Um and the uh bioscience center is going to be uh I think 18 months. I understand. So, thank you so much, Mr. Philot. You probably get this in your super meetings, but that

011is a legislative report. It gives a summary of all the current stuff that's being talked about in Columbus. So, if you want to get involved with that and go talk to those guys and ladies, uh you're welcome to do that for sure. So, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be on the board. I really enjoy it's been uh it's always a great experience. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Chartwell. I'm not sure who is presenting this evening. Mrs. Bowers might know a little more about this. So I can start with a brief introduction. All right, there we go. All right. Well, first, thank you for having us here this evening. Uh, my name is Troy Ruger with Chartwell. I'm the regional sales director. Uh, this

012is Will King. He's our area director. So, he covers the entire state of Michigan. So, he manages all of our accounts that we in Ohio. He manages all the accounts we currently have in Ohio. So, um, I'll just give you a brief overview about us, a little bit about Chartwells. So, um, has anybody heard or have y'all heard of a company called Compass Group? So, it's what I say it's the largest company that nobody's heard of. So, Compass Group is the ninth largest employer in the world and we're the largest purchaser of food in the world. So, everything that you see up there, those are all under the umbrella of Compass Group. So, you can see business, industry, education, um, healthcare, sports and leisure. So all those companies are under our umbrella with Compass Group

013and what makes us all those companies make us that largest purchaser of food because all these are food management companies. So our partnerships here in Ohio, this is kind of a breakdown of what we have here in Ohio through all those companies. You can see off to uh the left there, University of Toledo, we do Cleveland Brown State, we do Ohio State. Um the the school right I think just south of you is is Hamilton. Uh so we work with them. So we have a lot of partnerships here within the state to support you. And this is just Chartwells here by the numbers. So we currently are the largest provider of K12 food in the nation with 700 plus districts. Uh serve over 2 million meals a day. And uh our retention rate with all

014those is is a little over 97%. So, I'm gonna hand this over to Tim or to Will and he's going to talk a little bit about our food and our programs. All right. Again, thank you for having us here tonight. Um, I'm the area director for Ohio, so I'm the oper operations guy. Troy's in the sales, so we got to work together, but I would be the person that would be your local support. Uh, and you know, good for you. I only live about 40 minutes away here. I live in Centerville, Ohio. So, and I'm familiar with this area. I was just talking. actually got some family that used to go here to Edgewood City. So, that's kind of neat. But, um, but let's talk more about Chartwells and what Chartwells can bring to you.

015Um, first off and foremost, it is our food and our menus. We have a huge, uh, support network of chefs and dieticians, and we have our recipe database is over 10,000 strong. Of course, we're not going to bring 10,000 recipes here, but what with that, we can really make those menus uh, specific for your school and what the students want. So we get that feedback. Um improving our collaboration, consistency, and communication. I would meet with you monthly. You would meet with your director as well as often as needed. And we talk about what your district needs. We talk about the finances, the food. We're going to have a really good partnership there and we're going to give you a lot of feedback and we're going to take the feedback you have for us. uh kind

016of talked about that local support um which I'm close by, but also our uh directors, they have that peer network all here in Ohio. So, I bring them together all the time. We meet every other month in person. We talk about what's working at other schools, what's not, and we're always looking at ways to get better to serve your district. Um and listen first approach. We love surveys, getting that feedback from the staff, from the students, from the community. So, we really want to make sure that we're we're meeting your needs and all that is going to really increase your participation. Whenever you see whenever we go into a district, first thing that happens is participation goes up because really kids eat with their eyes and we know kids have a pallet uh with with

017the restaurants that are out there today and food network and all that. They know what good food is. So, uh so scratch cooking the seamless implementation. What is scratch cooking? Scratch cooking is is making recipes by scratch. Uh, a lot of school districts now do a lot of heat and serve where they just get the food, they heat it, and off it goes to the students. Well, we're going to incorporate, we won't overwhelm your staff, but what we'll do is we'll start to incorporate scratch cooking and teach them the skills they need. Knife skills, food safety, how to implement batch cooking. Batch cooking is kind of cooking food throughout the day so that the kids are getting the most fresh product at the time. They're not, you know, cooking or eating something that was cooked

018that morning and served in the afternoon. Uh the culinary training will bring in our chefs. I went to culinary school as well. We'll also bring in our regional chefs and we'll work with your team to make sure that they have the skills necessary to be able to do that. Uh and then free meals, that's just something, you know, there's different programs out there, C things that we can work with your district if that's if that's something you're interested in or not. But we also work with the free and reduced and making sure that all those applications are good and keeping your district complying. Uh when I talk about concepts, you know, we will bring a lot of different concepts to your district. And a concept is well, it's like a station that your students going

019to eat at. So, for example, we're not going to run all these. It's just too many. But we'll take the the most popular ones. So, you see one up there called Sono. That's going to be kind of like a Chipotle concept or tomato is going to be our pizza concept. There's grilled. It's going to be sandwiches. So, there's lots of stuff up there. I think the most exciting one I like is the first one in the uh top lefthand corner called extra extra. And we put a bar out where kids can get all the extra fruits and vegetables that vegetables they want every day. We don't put a limit to it. So, um, also we do a lot of programs that keep students engaged with us. Discovery Kitchen, that's where we're actually out cooking food

020in front of the kids and and letting them ask questions and get out of their comfort zone and try new things. Uh, that's really all these programs are kind of geared around that. Mood Boost is more geared toward elementary students. Global Eats is geared toward around recipes from around the world and then student choices where we bring in different recipes and we let the students actually vote. So we'll get to try a couple of different things. They say this is their favorite. It's on the menu. And then our industry experience with Troy was talking about Compass being such a large company. I still want you to know that we still have that small hometown feel to us. It's not like you're going to be, you know, this big company's going to be in here. really

021it's I work directly with the director and and that's who you're going to see. You'll may see our regional dietitian or our regional chef come in and we're here to really support you. So, audit readiness, I went through 14 audits last year for uh procurement audits, um administrative reviews, whatever. We are the experts in those. We if you're having issues or not, but we we'll get you through those audits 100%. You won't have any worries. Uh food allergies, we take that extra step to make sure your staff is trained. We do an extra one called fair check to make sure that they understand the importance of allergies and keeping students healthy. Uh nutrition information, we share all that. Uh it was a platform called Neutras Slice menus would be on there. Any type of allergen

022or nutrition information is shared. It's really simple for parents. They can get it uh on a mobile app or on the computer house, whatever they'd like. We'll help you out with any grants that may uh be eligible for your district as well. Um, and then nutrition education. If you have any additional education you want with say a culinary program or with the athletic program, we're happy to really do those extra programs uh for you. And then food safety is most important. And we're always making sure that everything is uh you know, product temperature every day. Uh temperatures, cooking temperatures, make sure it's hot hold uh holding times. We're really focused on making sure food safety is a priority. And so that's really all we have. We'd like to answer any questions you have. We kind

023of went quick because we know you're at a board meeting and we really just want to give you kind of high level overview of what Chartwells could bring toward your district. And if you have any questions or Troy, if you have anything you'd like to add. I just have two comments uh to make real quick. So being that we are such a large company, we are the largest purchaser of food. Uh the benefit to an Edgewood City Schools is the rebate. So everything that we buy, so when we buy, let's just say chicken nuggets, we're buying hundreds of millions of chicken nuggets. Um you're probably in a buying consortium today, that consortium is probably giving you rebates somewhere around 2 to 3%. Uh what you're going to find with Chartwells is a huge cost savings

024can probably be somewhere around that 15 to 18%. So if you think about how much food you're purchasing, think about let's just say 15% of that coming right back to the district. So that's just a huge cost savings um that's coming back to you. So that's one huge benefit to going with Charwells. The second um we will work and train your staff in levels of efficiency. Uh Will was talking about his team and all the support. Uh that's another main thing is all this training and we have unsurpassed training that will help your staff become more efficient in ways that they probably don't realize today. So we have all that support that's going to help them as well. So all really boiling down to you know that costsaving piece for the district. Yeah. And if

025you'd like references we can actually give you some of our partners we can talk to them. So I I have a couple questions. So what you're proposing is basically you're going to manage our cafeteria is what you're proposing. Correct. Yeah. So my understanding is again we have so many um we're flexible with whatever platform. So if you want to keep your employees on on the Edgewood U payroll that's fine. We would just come in. We would the the director would work for Chartwells and then we would help manage your staff for you. Um but we would work with you. It would be a partnership there as far as managing the team. what we're going to bring as far as training and resources to them. Um, you know, it's really hard to beat what we can

026bring. So, what does this cost us? I know you said that we potentially are saving up to 15% on food cost. What What do we cost and or what do we save and what do we get out of this? So, the first steps, uh, you would go out for RFP, a request for proposal to the state, and then there is a fee to use Charwells, but as Troy was saying that we're going to give you so much back in rebates that kind of really offsets any cost to you. Um, so, you know, that's those are details that we would provide to you in a proposal, in a written proposal, and you could go through that and then look at the details from there. But cost savings in general, the rebates are huge. It's kind of

027hard to beat the rebates that we can provide. So, if we were interested in this, what's the length of a contract? How how long are we committing to do this? In the state of Ohio, every contract is one year, but you would uh be forced to go out to RFP every 5 years. So, let's say we start a contract um once a year, it just be a one-page renewal, really simple, but every 5 years, you would have to go through the RFP process. And during that process, you would have to invite other vendors in. They would have to give you their proposals as well. Would there be somebody on site every day? Oh, yeah. The the director would be the uh the Chartwells employee and they would be on site every day. So, you understand

028we have five buildings and they're not all of them are closed there. There's spread out across the district. Um so, they would they would be physically present in each cafeteria at least a couple times a week, I'm assuming. Correct. Yeah, they probably wouldn't be in every building every day, but they would work with your leads that you have to give them the tools they need and then they would visit every uh every school building throughout the week. And of course, on top of that, you know, they're going to be doing they're going to be assisting you with all of your claims, the state, keeping you compliant, doing menus, working with production records, you know, production records or not, but production records, every school has to keep production records for audits and things like that. So

029they're also taking care of all the administrative responsibilities as well. Thank you for I'm interested. I mean I'd like to I'd like to definitely have Patty reach out to get some type of proposal together. Yeah. And we can help you with that. I mean you really have to go to the state. The state offers you a template. you have to fill out the template. We can't really help you in that process, but um if you have questions, you can feel free to reach out to us um through that process. When you guys go into school, you give the employees the opportunity to stay Edwin employees, but do you also have the opportunity to become Tartwell employees? We do. Yes. So, as as Will was saying, um there's a lot of ways that we can do

030this. They can stay on your books. We can offer for people to come over or we can do kind of a hybrid maybe some come some stay and we do it through attrition. So as people retire move on then they would just be hired through chartwells. So we have several that do it like that. What's the benefit versus staying on the books and versus coming to Charles? Is there a benefit one way or the other discomfort for some people? Is there a benefit financially? I would say when we look at the numbers there could be a benefit financially just because we typically would pay a little bit more than you would. So that could be one. Two just because we are under the umbrella of such a large company there are a lot of benefits

031for working for a company like Chartwells. Um and you saw that slide with all of the places that we currently service. There's opportunity to not just stay as a food service person but maybe move up and move around. uh the training is fantastic and a lot of our um directors or management they move from within and just kind of move up. Um so there's a lot of those great opportunities too when they join with a charter. One of one of the issues I think we face here and it's probably been since co maybe even before co is we have a pretty big negative balance in our food service due to just unpaid charges and you know year that gets, you know, kind of carried over, starting to drag down the the bottom line of of

032operating expenses. Do you guys tackle those try to tackle those debts somehow? We will work with you to do that. So, the biggest thing with the Chart Wells is we both kind of alluded to um how you build a program or how financially build it. One, you can cut, right? So, you cut staff and that's not what we want to do. we would rather build through building the participation. So putting food out there that kids want to eat, the more they eat, the the the higher that fund balance is going to go and that's our driver. And then obviously with all the savings you get with us, that's the other piece. So those are the two pieces that we focus on is really getting that participation up, getting kids the food they want. And then

033through our cost savings, building that fund balance, we will take care of all this other stuff. Yeah. Let me add that. I mean, we're going to I understand exactly what you're going through. we have other districts that are struggling with that issue. I think just a lot of communication through the community uh and and how you know how do we address that, right? Um and setting policies with the community on how to get students to pay. Um but also looking at your free and reduced percentages and see if C is an option for that or not, you know. So we'll talk through all those options. First thing we have to do is really do a deep dive into your finances, right? See what options there are there are. I have one more question. Uh, as

034far as retirement, do you pay into the same retirement that we pay into? Yeah, we do. Yeah. So, sorry. They're they're if they were Chartwell's employees, the only thing that looks different is their paycheck. That's it. They still get like we still pay them service on their behalf, so we still pay that 14%. Um, everything is the same, so they don't lose any of that. Um, we offer a lot of benefits and you know just the stuff that comes with being like I said with a big company. So do the benefits change? Yeah, different benefit package because they would if if they were to join Chartwells they would get a a Chartwell's benefit package. So that is a cost savings to the district typically because we're so large our benefits would be cheaper and they're

035they're really good benefits. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have one more presentation this evening will be facilities and maintenance. Thank you. Um, okay. I am I just wanted to provide a little bit of an update on some of the permanent improvement and maintenance facility projects that that we've talked about throughout the year. Um primarily roof maintenance and projects and parking lot paving. Those were two that we were tasked with um getting quotes and bids and just wanted to show you where we're at and give you some um the opportunity to to discuss and and um let us know how we want to move forward with this this summer. So, uh, first and foremost, the permanent improvement fund. I spoke with Patty the other

036day, um, just to get some numbers and and where the permanent improvement fund is, uh, financially. And just a recap on what permanent improvement funds can be spent on. So if you go to that bottom bullet, uh permanent improvement funds can only be used for permanent improvements to the buildings or facilities with the exception of permanent improvement funds can also be used to purchase buses and bulk technology. So when we talk about permanent improvements, we essentially the the definition of it is a little bit gray, but we we typically look at it from the standpoint of does it prolong the life of the building by 5 years or more and is it a permanent fixture to the building? So like Patty said, if you flipped the building upside down, would it stay put? Is it

037something that's going to be permanently there? So again, that's that's um a little bit gray, but roofs, parking lots, um building projects, those types of things would fall into that category of permanent improvements. So, um to start the year, fiscal year 2025, the permanent improvement fund held $2.2 million. This year, we received an additional $1.3 million to that fund due to some of those increased revenues from property taxes. Again, this permanent improvement fund cannot be used for salaries, for benefits, for um daily operational costs, things like that. It's it's strictly some of these permanent improvement projects. So, very specific to what we can use it for. The PI fund currently holds $2.9 million after expenses and encumbrances. So, we've done some projects, some smaller things throughout the year. That's where the PI fund sits today

038at this time. So, as we talk about some of these projects, just keep that number in mind and and you don't want to totally exhaust the PI fund in the event that something major comes up. We've got huge, you know, chillers and and boilers and HVAC systems and things like that. So, just like your house, you wouldn't want to um totally diminish your your savings and things for for some of those emergency issues that may arise. So, um, permanent improvement projects that have already been approved, these have been approved at previous board meetings. So, again, just to kind of keep those numbers in mind, we've approved for um Johnson Controls to come in and upgrade our controls at the primary school. This allows um it it updates and upgrades the the programming and allows some

039of that to be done remotely. We have it in all of the other buildings. The primary school is the only building that that didn't have that upgrade. So, we have approved um and a plan to to do that this summer. Two rooftop unit replacements at the middle school. Um we bid that out and we had six different companies bid that for us. And we typically use Johnson Controls for our HVAC, but the bra came in um slightly under. So, for mechanical stuff, we we can use the bra for for that project. That's also scheduled to be done this summer as well. Um, we are also currently in the process of refinishing the new gym floor at the middle school. That's being done right now. Um, so that was approved. All of the other gym floors

040got a recote, which we typically do annually for maintenance. This one is getting um a fresh finish. So if you went in and looked at it right now, don't do that. You can't walk on it. But it's totally sanded down to nothing. They're in the process of repainting and refinishing that. So it's going to be beautiful when it's done. So, those are three things that we've already approved. Um, and we'll take a look at the roof and the paving projects here. So, we worked with a company called Garland DBS and they came out and did some free roof assessments for us and determined that we had three sort of priority areas for the roofs. The building on the left is EPS, on the right is EECC. Um the middle school was the third building, but

041that part of the roof that um they identified is still under warranty. So we can do some some work on that to fix the issues under warranty at no cost to the district from previous work that's been done. So when we had them come out and bid, we had them only bid the projects at the primary school and EECC. Um and they bid them in like bid item one. you can kind of see the the cost up there with those additional alternate um sections on there. So, you know, we can go back to that, but I don't want to take up too much time. So, those are the sections that they identified as priorities. In order to do a complete rebuild of those roof sections, it would be about $1.1 million. Um, that's significant. Those

042are significant projects. My recommendation would probably be to go more of a roof maintenance and repair route at this time. So on the table that you're looking at, the column in the middle where it says infrared scans. We've talked to Garland. they will come out and they'll do infrared scans of all of our buildings um to identify issues, wet areas, things that you wouldn't be able to see um just with your eyes, not active leaks, things that are sort of occurring underneath that we could that we would need to deal with. So, the idea would be to have the scans done on all of the buildings and then have them identify specifically where the issues are that we could then turn around and do some repairs and maintenance on them that way. That way it

043saves us money to do it that way because they're identifying where the issues are first. Um, and they only charge on time and material. So instead of them climbing up on the roof and just sort of wandering around trying to find the issues based on the scans from the information from the scans, we already know where the issues are. So um, that's an option. So there's essentially two options with the roofs. there's the total replacement of those roofs or there's the option to do the infrared scans and then um manage and maintain the the roofs as they are as we move forward. Any questions on roof information? So, if we do the repairs, what's the life of that? Yeah. So, you know, ultimately, um, like I I spoke with Frank, he's the, um, sort of

044the account guy that we've been working with. I spoke with him today, and he said, you know, ideally what you would do is you would do a maintenance plan for a building like the high school because it's a newer building. And so, if you do a heavy consistent maintenance plan on a newer building, you can extend the life expectancy of the roof by about 20 years. Um, you know, The intermediate school has a metal roof, so the maintenance on that looks a little bit different. It's far less than it is on some of the other buildings. EETC has a big section of the building that's also metal roof. So, um, you know, we could buy some time on those other sections that we need to deal with. Ultimately, what he said is, and I've got

045all these fix pictures and inspections and all of that kind of stuff, but there's already two layers of roof on those sections that they quoted. they can't come over and they can't come and put another section on top of it. So that all has to come off and a new system has to be put on. So that's why the cost is so high for those sections that they bid for us. Do you have a when we get into the pavement piece, do you have a breakdown like this so we can kind of get an idea on the total amount of money you're proposing to spend because I do have some questions but I want to wait to see what total price tag is going to look like. I'll move into the paving and then we

046can kind of go back to that. So again, we had the same um process. We had about six or seven different paving companies come out and look at our parking lots, assess them. Um anybody who's driven around, certainly the middle school has noticed that there are major there are significant issues in in the parking lots um around. So we actually had them bid two separate options for us. You'll notice on the right um the minimum repairs that is like strictly that's going to be more chasing cracks, crack filling, and then just sealing um areas of the parking lots. Their recommendation and and quite frankly, my recommendation is to look at the recommended repairs. That's going to be a lot more significant. We're talking about doing some milling, 2inch milling, 4 inch milling. um looking at

047the catch basins, which if you drive around the middle school where all those catch basin drainings are, that's where some of our significant areas are. That's going to address those issues as well. So, we had them come out and look at and I've got pictures of all of this stuff, too. So, um that's what you're looking at costwise um per building um off the top of my head. And I can go back to this, but I want to show you just kind of what they what they presented us with. So again, their priority um urgent need priority one is the middle school, both sides of the middle school and the bus lot. So if you look at the picture on the left, um the blue that is from the area behind the Premier Health building

048all the way up that left side of the building all the way to um that open parking lot that's to the left of Cougar Lobby in the auditorium. So that's that side. The picture in the middle is going to be the other side, the right side of the building. um coming around the back of the tennis courts and the football field in front of the fieldhouse and up to kind of the bus lot. And then the picture on the right is your bus lot. So everything that you see in blue, they're recommending a 2-in mill. So they're going to take 2 in off the top um fill cracks, address major issues, and then um like essentially repave it and seal it that way. Everything in teal is crack filling and seal coating. And then your

049purple is going to be 4 in milling. So they're taking 4 in off the top. And and part of the reason that we identified that area in the middle picture is there's so much bus traffic, heavy bus traffic and turning that happens right there that it's deteriorating that area of the parking lot significantly. Any questions on any of that? Well, okay. So, help me. I don't know. What is teal? Come on here. So, if you look at the left picture, it kind of tells you the the teal area. Anything in teal is just going to be crack filling and then seal coating putting. No, like where is the teal on this? That looks safe to me. Yeah. Okay. Like on here there's really not a difference. Like I'm not seeing teal. I'm not crazy. It's

050just on here. Okay. I got it now. And like so to put this into perspective, the the um the minimum repair option that you saw on the right, if you look back at these pictures, all of those little neon green boxes in that left picture, those are our catch basins that we have all around the middle school. Those weren't addressed at all in in the minimum repairs. They would they would do some minimal work to that, but this is talking about lifting them like ating them, milling them, and making it so that that we don't have standing water, we don't have the potholes, all of that kind of stuff. Did they by chance do any kind of camera stuff and look down inside there to see if we have any damage to piping or anything

051underground? Yeah, so that's part of the process. We do have some water that stands if you're coming out of um Cougar Lobby on that left side where you see um there's a catch basin right there. We do have some water that that does stand right there. Prior to doing any of this, we would do some camera work in those drains to see what's going on under there. They did not do it. We would do that first and then address that issue before they came in. And did you say we would do who would actually do that? Well, we would probably hire like um like four aces can come out and do it for us. They've got the ability to do the cameras. Our our maintenance team has worked with four aces to do some of

052that. We did a project that was very similar atCC two summers ago. I I just would hate to spend this kind of money on the parking lot and we find out we've got a busted pipe underneath cut it all up. That's the only area that we that we see that standing water that we would that we would look at um to be concerned about that. So the other priority that they mentioned was an urgent need is also its EIS. So again, if you're looking at those those pictures, you've got um this essentially the front staff parking lot of EIS, um the the driveway that goes from the fieldhouse up to the building. So that's the front with all the red squiggly lines. That's crack chasing. That's crack filling that they would do in that parking

053lot before they sealed it. And then you've got the back area on the right side which is where um student pickup and drop off is um where they would recommend doing a little bit of a heavier mill on that back because of the traffic and there's sitting cars on there. I mean for an hour and a half every day there's cars sitting there that just deteriorates the the parking lot. What's the flow of traffic coming in for drop off in the morning? Do they drop off in the front of the building? No buses go in the front of the building. And again, that's why if you look at that left picture where it's purple, that little turnaround in front of the building, we would have them do a heavier mill and a a more significant

054repair there because that's where the buses go through every single day. Um in the in the morning and an afternoon they come in off booze and bark where the blue is on the right picture and they go down like the little right square section rectangular section and then come swing back around and go out the same way they came in. So in the picture on the left when they go through that little loop right there where the purple is which way do they which way do they go? They come in from Boozen and then sometimes they'll turn and go back out Boozenbark or they'll go back to the bus garage past the field house. depends on what their route is typically. So that they identified essentially the middle school and and the intermediate school is

055like urgent urgent needs. Um the most significant damage to the parking lot, the most significant need for repairs. Um and then I do have the pictures of the other building. So on the left you have the primary school and on the right you have um Easy. And so, same kind of thing. The the blue color is your 2-in mill and overlay. Your teal is just going to be seal coating. And in a lot of this, the conversation had to do with like if you notice the pictures on the right, that front lot at the primary Right. Oh, no. That's ECC. That's I mean that's essentially a parking lot. It it gets traffic, but it's not you don't have as much traffic flow kind of going through there. Um so they felt like it was sufficient

056to just kind of single code that for now. Is there a high school slide, too? There's not cuz it's concrete. Um so we didn't have them quote that. It's it's that would be a totally different project. Okay. We don't have any black top here at high school. So, essentially that's all I have. You'll notice down in the agenda there are some um there's there's quotes and things. Um, but wanted to present you guys with the numbers and the information for you to be able to talk about what makes the most sense moving forward. Like I said, you know, we have $2.9 million in the PI fund, but can you go back to that slide that broke it down by building the recommended in the for the for the Yeah. So the difference between recommended at

057EPS and minimum, it's pretty significant. That's because they're basically saying we need to regrade that. We need to take up the 2 in and put it back down. Yeah. Essentially, when you're looking at the minimum repairs, you're you're really just talking about crack filling and then sealing it. So, is it going to look nice? Yes. Does it some time. Yes. But is it a true repair? No. And we're still going to we're going to end up with potholes. We're going to end up with those catch basins are going to continue to be an issue. Um you know, so it just again like the roofs, it's just a matter of what direction do we want to go and and how do we want to navigate it. I I have a black top driveway. The cracking really

058seem to hold up one winter it doesn't. So, and I'll say I don't know really how much the seal coating does. So, we did we did some crack filling early in the year. Um and again, some of those larger cracks in the parking lots that you could, you know, stick your fingers in and things like that. Again, it's a band-aid. Um we have our maintenance team has done some cold patch and stuff in some of the larger potholes. There's a pothole in front of EIS that I think it's like it's like 18 inches deep. I mean, it's the biggest pothole I've ever seen. And I had them put some coal patch in there and and fill it. And he said they had to I mean, they were putting everything they could in there. It was

059almost like it was just never ending. I mean, we really need to do some work to to manage these parking lots. So, we're looking at So, the the roofing repairs that you were suggesting was how much Again, my recommendation is to to do the scans and then to go on, you know, kind of a a building by building repair at this time. But again, we have the bids. We have um you know, companies that are willing to come in and do the the the total replacement of the roofs. But and those are estimates. I mean, again, that's that's going to vary depending on what the scans show us. and and I would I would have them do the scans. I spoke with him today. He could do them in probably the next couple of weeks

060depend weather dependent and then have him really give us a breakdown of each building. What are we looking at repair-wise and what's the cost to do those kind of heavy repairs? Those parking lot estimates that that includes restripting the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm sorry. So, so you're basically proposing about $850,000 to do the whole thing, which is going to leave us with right around 2 million and permanent improvement in your opinion. Is there anything that we need to be necessarily concerned if we spend this money now? Is there anything that you're necessarily concerned about that we're going to have problems with in the next two years? Yeah, I mean, you know, there's when I speak with Donnie Coons, who's our HVAC technician, um, you know, we talk about HVAC, um, the chillers here

061at the high school are, you know, we we've lost some units. I mean, it runs and it's certainly compliant and it's fine. It's operational, all of those things. But as it gets older, you know, this building's 13 years oldish at this point, looking at life expecties on some of those things, 15 to 20 years. So, um, you know, that's it's one of those if you get it before it all goes completely out, you're looking at maybe a million dollars. If it all goes completely out, you have to redo the entire system. And we have a geothermal, so we would have to look at what that looks like. So, to answer your question, I don't know. I mean if I I don't I can't predict those things but we have talked about some of those things.

062I think my conversations with Patty are you know leaving a million to a million and a half in the PI fund would would cover anything you know significant and we do get money that goes into that fund every year. So um that gives us a little bit of a cushion and and sort of a contingency plan if we needed it. We planned to vote on this tonight. Is that what the There there is um you know it's an agenda item down there. You can amend if you want to do partial this information is all in that orange folder. Um I know Mr. I think Michael already had one to look at. Well, so when you say that we have 3.9 including the incumbrances, is that the stuff that's going to be that's already counted? the

063things that are going to be done this summer. Is that already pulled out of that 229 or is that still being counted? Are those things has these are those encumbered? They're encumbered. We haven't paid them, but we haven't purchased orders for them. Okay. So, 2.9. So, is there a way that we could do the roofing scans tonight and then see what they say? Because I'm afraid if we approve something like you need to do this. That's I think that's the way that we that it's in there is for the scans only at this time and then unless there was discussion to do something with the full replacement but that would that would it be beneficial to have 4 acres come out before we approve the parking lot thing just like I don't know I mean

064I I think that the sooner that we can approve the parking not work. You know, we can ensure that it gets done in a in a timely manner and make it sure it's done before the school year and we can get it done over the summer and things like that. Um, I can certainly work on that and have them come out um and we can look into it. Anybody got any idea how old those pipes are in the ground up there? It's hard to say. I'm not sure. We, like I said, we did a similar, we had a similar issue at ECC when I very first started in this position. Um, and our maintenance team, they essentially did the work themselves. Um, I think we we had some equipment that we use. I think the

065Turners donated some equipment to us. We were able to my very first day on the job, I think I walked up and the maintenance guys were in an 8ft hole and they were fixing a pipe. So, this is work that potentially we could do on our own. We just had Boris just come out. They helped us with the camera work to see what was going on in there, but we we did the the fix on it. So, um I think that's kind of what we're looking at is we think that that's something that we could probably manage on our own. If you guys you guys want to table this as far as a vote on any of this black top I'm looking at. Okay. I think we don't we're just have a gravel pit. I

066mean very substantial. We got to do something especially at the middle school that yeah parking lot is it is danger it's really it's not safe in my opinion especially in the winter time. So so uh so I mean my proposal would be to do EIS EMS and the bus lot them probably the worst areas we've got. I think she labeled those as priority one and two which comes up to about $616,000. I think go all the way we haven't spent any money and we haven't we haven't done any maintain this district and since the last levy failed. I I do think we probably we probably need to spend some money or we're going to have bigger problems later. No, I agree. I definitely think the scans should be done for the roofs. I'm a little

067confused of how you can get the scans and then they can throw you a price off to the side without doing the scans. Like they've got a repair estimate of $10,000, but they haven't done the scan yet. Well, the that was when they came out and did their initial assessments and they took some core cuts and they were just kind of looking at the the silo roots that we had and things like that. That was um just kind of their ballpark. Now, they gave us a range and for the purpose of this presentation, I took the higher end of the range just so that you know to give us a little bit of leeway on there. So, you know, for EIS, it may have been 15,000 to 20,000 something in there. I threw 20,000 on

068there just um you know I felt like better to estimate high than low and they think they can do all this over the summer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got to do something where kids are going to have to wear rain coats classes getting pretty bad. Uh I I think we need to do the scans and I think we need to go ahead and approve. So, we want to do all three priorities. So, we're doing all the parking lots. That would be my recommendation. What is it again? I mean, they had three different priorities. I mean, how dire iss What what that's showing right there is basically the whole parking lot at Bay that needs to be milled and overlaid. We wait till for phase two maybe a next year project. I mean as far as

069I'm just thinking if we do priority one and two and then move to this one priority three. So, we're not saying doing anything over there. We're not even going to crack repair. No, we can do minimum repairs. You're talking about Well, but then again, $35,000 compared to 140. Yeah. If you remember, we can't use this money for anything other than I mean, it's not we can put it into the general fund. We pay bills with it. This the only we can do is projects that are and we're going to put more money in there next year than we do it every year. We we haven't done anything in this district to maintain our facilities in a couple of years. Talking about a difference of about $100,000, but if we do this now, we won't have

070to do it again for a long time. I personally would like to see the scans come back on the roofs before Well, you're talking about parking. I'm talking about parking. Yeah. Well, before I would kind of go before I would agree with the the last the last EPC and ECC. And I do know black tops got a whole lot more expensive over the last couple years and I don't anticipate that's going to slow down anytime soon. Gas oil's coming down. So paying goes out, but All right. Thank you. Um, false assumption. I'm sorry. What' you say? Said it was false assumption or what would it appear to be like? So, you're saying you want to know how much the roof repairs are going to be before we in case? Yeah. In case there's a couple

071hundred,000 worth of roof repairs that we might need prior to page. We want to get the scan done first. Make sure we any surprises and then move forward with everything else. I think so. I would I would be comfortable with that. How much time do we have to let Naira know? Um I mean, you know, so they can do it this summer. I had told him that I would have an answer for them after this board meeting, but I mean they're at I mean they're at our mercy. So I mean if we have to wait, we wait. You know that it's what three three weeks. The next board meeting is May 19th. Um, I think we should get on their schedule, but the only thing that's in question is seven mile. I guess that's the

072only thing that we're questioning right now. We approve priority one and two for the middle school and EIS, have the scans done, and then we can re-evaluate the other buildings, which those are fairly small parking lots. Yeah. Yeah. In comparison. Yeah. Already be on their schedule. So, because they just like add Yeah. And then and when you talk to these these companies, you know, everything's about mobilization. if they're going to have all of this stuff out here, just moving it to a different buildings really a non-issue. They're already they already have everything they need. You know what I mean? As opposed to just coming out here for one building and then leaving. So, um get on the schedule for the the two main buildings and the the bus lot, adding the other buildings is is

073not going to be a big deal. Yeah, I'm most concerned about the drain of the middle school. I'm just concerned we're going to pipe plus that that takes us a whole different direction. We'll make sure those are checked. Any black top? So, do we need to amend that? I'm going to look for a motion to approve. We got to get to that. Okay. I'm comfortable with where we're at. I think we can talk through this and get a vote. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. We don't have anybody signed up for public participation. So, uh, Mrs. Bower, would you like to get started? Yes, Mr. Gabbert. I would like to ask for a motion to block items A through E and approve all of the past board meeting minutes. Look for a motion

074to approve board minutes A through E as presented. So, move. Mr. Master Schmidt, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Ashcraft. Mrs. Bower, would you call the RO, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Barry Gabard. Yes. And Mr. Michael Presser. Yes. Motion carries zero. Next, I'd like to ask for a motion to approve item F, which is the March financial reports as presented. Looking for a motion to approve the March 25 financial reports as presented. So move. Mr. Mesa, I have a second. Second, Mr. Michael Press. Mrs. Bower, would you call a roll, please? Mr. Mark Measure Schmidt. Yes. Mr. Michael Pressler? Yes. Mr. Gary Gabard? Yes. Mrs. Amy Ash? Yes. Motion carries. 4 Z. Uh, next. Mr. Gabard, I would like to block item G and H. These are new

075fun special cases. Looking for a motion to approve G and H as presented. Mr. Master Schmid, I have a second. Second. Mr. Michael Pressler. Mrs. Ber, would you call roll, please? Mr. Mark Measurement. Yes. Mr. Michael Pressler. Mr. Barry Gabbert. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Motion carries 40. Uh, next I would like to block items A through M. These are all special service contracts. I through. We're looking for a motion to approve items I through M for special service contracts. Are you saying M or N? M. M. So, Mr. Michael Presler, do I have a second? Second. Second. Mr. Mark, Mr. Smith, are these continuations? Are they new contracts? So, item H is It's added on for this year. We needed coverage for someone who was outs. But are these like are these new issues?

076Are these things before? It's just now these are contracts for next year. One thing is new. It's a small amount is um PE for the preschool curriculum that you're required to get. So six hours a small small amount. The rest of them uh the rest of those are student continuation student contracts that are already placed out. Um aology and hearing services for students and then preschool um works with some of the quality licensing requirements and that's pretty small. We're working with Ber County Educational Service and we're doing a new um curriculum for our preschool program and we're teaming up with them. We're getting it through the College of Mount St. Joe. So, they will be coming to the ESC and we're splitting the cost with the educational service center um so that they will pay

077the majority and they're only charging us per person. They're not by the district and they obviously have a lot more staff members there. Um so they will be going there typically about once a month all next year when we're going to our 4 day a week program. This will pick up that so it'll be our step up to quality. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any more discussion? Mrs. Bower, would you call the role please? Mr. Michael Presley. Yes. Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mr. Barry Gabbert. Yes. Mrs. Motion carries 4. Next agenda item is McGarill English language arts curriculum for FY26. And I note that this is a six-year program. Looking for a motion to approve the FY26 curriculum quote for six years. Mrs. Ashcraft, do I have a second? Second, Mr. Michael Presley. Discussion.

078Yeah. Is there anything you want to tell us? I mean, well, I will say it to us. They are in they are in dire need of a curriculum. In fact, I saw Miss Yek, I believe she was involved in our pilot. One of the teachers here today, we might have a few more. They they are in dire need of a curriculum. Historically, most 6 to 12 or 7 to 12 ELA departments have read novels. And when they read the novels, there's a lot of heavy lifting to do to correlate the novels with the state uh standards and try to build your own uh curriculum maps and your pacing guides and figure out how you're going to connect this book, whatever it might be. You know, Huffle Berry Fin, you can't get out of school without

079reading that for goodness sake. So like there what this provides is a science of reading aligned curriculum for our teachers to be able to follow with a scope and sequence that has been researchbased. There's a library I think of about m Miss Jek if I if I speak out of line make sure you interrupt and say slow it down for a second. So there's a library of about 2,000 novels that are digitally accessible on here. So, one of the things that I was hoping we might be able to do if this carries into the high school level eventually because science and reading is coming up to that grade level is leverage into this uh online portal of novels to be able to not have the students have to purchase all the novels that they do

080every year at the high school level. um they really are working out of novels and kudos to them for even being able to achieve at whatever level they've been able to achieve at or grow at in the last couple of years. I I underestimated the need for this until we went over with our ESC specialist, Robin Zary, who we hired as one of our ESC contracts. She's been over there many many days doing a lot of different uh they have really owned this. I I didn't choose this. I told them to follow board policy. They looked through uh six or seven different curriculums and um they boiled down to want to actually pilot this. I think your pilot is still going on this or are you still going in or did it end? It ended.

081So we had to purchase a little bit of time for them to access the online materials. But, um, I I can't believe they've done even what they've been able to get done over there with trying to align novels to state standards and create their own pacing guides and curriculum guides. And, you know, it occurred to me, no wonder they want Scholastic Magazine every single year because, man, I'd want Scholastic Magazine, too, if I didn't have anything to work from. For me, the 152 divided by six years, you get an awful lot of bang for your buck for our teachers. You can imagine showing up 175, 6, 8, whatever days they work in in a year, trying to have to create these lesson plans every night. It's a lot to ask when you don't have a

082curriculum you can hand in. It's like showing up as a football coach, but you don't have the football. So to me, um, we probably should have done this a couple of years ago, but we had such a need at our elementary levels when we bought the amplified stuff. Um, I I don't think I've ever been thanked enough to even say we were looking at trying to do something when we had our initial meeting back in September. So to to me, it's um I don't know, somewhat inexcusable not to have something better than we have right now. This is a real big need for our students and our teachers. If we want to expect them to grow and achieve, we got to put something in their hand that we believe and they believe. There's high fidelity

083uh or high buy in right now because our teachers have bought into this curriculum on their own. So, I think that'll also mean that there'll be a really high level of fidelity trying to implement and that's a really big deal when you it's not something I hand to them and say you have to do it and then try to sell them. They've already bought into this on their own. So I think that means there's going to be a really high level of implementation as well and that matters. Well, my next question is we have curriculum funds built into our budget. Correct. We do. Okay. Does this take us over it or it's not going to take us over? No, this will be for next year and um it is our it'll be our largest. We

084won't buy any large scale curriculums next year. Besides this, our math will be due after next year for K to8. So that'll be the large purchase for the following year. But everything else that we buy next year is going to be via, you know, our softwares and different resources we use to supplement some of this for students who don't get it first time around. Okay. Which we call tier one instruction. How much did you have budgeted for curriculum this year? We had 500,000 budgeted. How much will we spend already? Next year. So that this is for next year. So yes, this is next year's. We We may have gone over just a little bit this year. Next year we're just now starting to get purchase orders in place. Um we're still looking at identifying. So

085you're saying we're over right now? Just in the FY25. So is this a 25 or a 26? This is 26. It's a six years. So 26 27 28 29 30. So for 26 we haven't spent anything yet. We have not spent any curriculum money and we have 500 budgeted 500,000 budgeted. And and you're saying that you don't think that there'll be any other large purchases. Nothing near this cost here? No. Now the following year there's probably going to be about a $300,000 math or two to four maybe 250 because we're doing way more grades. But, you know, again, I want to run a pilot that is a legit pilot for teachers to be able to do the same process. We did this with science the year before. I think I've seen some science teachers here

086from the middle school. They really love the process. They worked with a Butler County consultant and uh you know, it it's been it's been really really great to see the teachers have something that they were involved with in in the choosing of of what they're using. And it's it's been the same way for ELA. So, we'll try to duplicate that download. We have a lot of um software. Scott and Josh have been working on this little smaller things 10,000 here, 15,000 a year that they're evaluating to see who's using it, how many teachers are using it. Yeah. What classrooms are using it so that we can dial it in and our hope is that if we get some of these more beneicial packages in here that we can use that maybe we don't need some

087of these little smaller things that we're buying. So, correct. And I'm not talking at this because I'm your question. I mean, I I appreciate the work you put into it and the the teachers and staff that look at it. You know, I mean, just to be transparent. I got a daughter who's going to be in eighth grade next year that we'll get to get to use this. So, you know, I think it's something we need. I think education very serious, but I just it just, you know, I'm asking these questions because obviously money is extremely tight right now. I want to make sure we're making the right decisions and that we have the money to spend. So, it's not that not that I'm questioning the curriculum. I'm just questioning do we have the money for

088this? Well, not that I don't believe you, but Miss, was this curriculum you guys picked out? Yes. Like, so we researched all the different ones which we wanted to look at and then we send them to us and then we only one pilot. If we didn't like it, then we were going to look at the other one and none of the teachers would look at the other one. Okay. Thank you. Any more discussion? Yes, sir. Mrs. Ver, you call the role, please. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft, yes. Mr. Michael Presler, yes. Mr. Mark Meers, yes. Mr. Gary Gab, yes. Motion carries 40. The next agenda item is the FY26 student fee schedule. Looking for a motion to approve the 26 student fee schedule as presented. So moved. Mr. Moro, I have a second. Second, Mr. Michael Presley.

089It's pretty much the same as last year. Yes. Do do we want to table this as until at least after the 11th? Can we can we afford to push this into May? Yes, we could. I mean, May would be, you know, you want you want to inform the parents. I mean, this is on time, but May wouldn't be a problem. I I just like to do it before they get out of school so they can make plans for the next school year. But there's been some discussion about this and we we changed school fees the last time that we failed. I mean, do we want to do this now or do we want to wait? Do you want me to give you a little bit of insight on the things that could probably change if

090we were going to raise them? Sure. Might help you. Most of it is standard. You can see in the math workbook, it's $35. We're paying for it. ELA workbook, $36. They're paying for that. Um, the only one that has a little bit of wiggle room is the electronic learning fee. I tried to standardize that for all grades to just eliminate confusion. Um, so it's $42. That's the only one that I usually ever get questions about from parents that'll say, "Hey, where's it all go to?" Um, as Miss Bowers just alluded to, there are there are a couple of things that we'll buy that might be like 7,600 bucks for a district license and 21 classes are using it. It can be a third grade class, could be a fifth grade class, and then a couple

091seventh and eighth grade class. Usually, we eat that cost. Josh Stapleton and I over the last well today, as a matter of fact, and over the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at where exactly we we've tried to cut the pizza by square, by triangles, fit it square peg in a round hole. And what we came to the conclusion is, and I have a little uh a spreadsheet that we helped develop here and we asked ourselves what do all students use? Not what do seven teachers need? Those are the things we might consider saying we're not going to buy that anymore. That's 7,600 bucks. We're not going to buy this whatever anymore. That's 12,000 bucks. You might be able to eliminate $40,000 that's actually coming out of the curriculum budget that parents are not

092paying for. So the teachers are getting or the parents are getting more for the $42 than they're actually paying for. So I said all that to say if we were to raise electronic fee for uh kindergarten, it would raise it from 120 to 128. Um let me find one that would go up a little bit and I'll tell you where the money is attributed to. Uh middle school could go from 148 to 178. They pay for uh MAP, which is a ELA and math uh benchmark assessment. They pay for um Success Maker, which is a math progress monitoring tool that we use. These are all like 12 to $20 a piece. Uh there are softwares that we have to use that are gradewide that we say yes, every kid that walks through Edgewood Middle School

093is going to use that software. Every kid who walks through EECC is going to use that software. So if we do that, I feel much more comfortable about telling a parent, you give me your money, you give us your money, you will definitely get this. When you try to allocart it with all the other and we literally have 53 other softwares besides our main like grade softwares. If you try to all aart that and figure out who's supposed to get what, you're going to get a fee from a parent and they're not going to get what you said they pay for. And that's where I get uneasy about making sure the funds go where we said they're going to go and you don't want to go down that road. So, the only ones that really

094have wiggle room are the electronic fee and they could go up by anywhere from 10 to 30 bucks per grade level. The other stuff is like self-explanatory. The workbook costs 34 bucks, they're buying it. Or a workbook cost $35, they're buying it. So these are actual costs for all materials. Yes. Except for the electronic fees and we could um you know, we could increase those. It's not substantially. Like I'm looking at the middle school would go from 148 to 178. What about the high school? high school would go from 34 or the electronic fee would go from 30 to 44. So, a grade is $14. Okay, these fees are hard to get. I thought it was more significant than that. I'm okay with that. And then the high school gets the easiest, right? Because you

095can see the students where they take the course the fees listed there. little different grade, but the electronic fees are where there's a little bit of root. There's there's not a lot though. Where Josh and I are going to try to cut is since we are getting better grade level curriculum now, can we cut some of the stuff that the teachers have said they needed to help supplement a curriculum, for example, ELA at the middle school that they don't have? So, they find all these cool resources and we dump $15,000 into it and then we have no way of measuring whether or not it's detected or not. So, I appreciate your explanation because honestly, I don't know what these books cost. I don't know what these materials cost. Those are the cost. Yep. I actual

096cost. Yeah. And I'm glad you approved the curriculum because that ELA workbook. Um, so you recoup a little bit of the cost, the 152, we're collecting $30 a student to get the workbook that comes with that curriculum just approved. And that's what Miss Bower and I have also discussed. How can we get a true measure? So, Is that factored into these numbers? The 152. Well, the new curriculum. No, that's what I'm saying. We will recoup some of that, but it goes into a student fee account. It doesn't go into the curriculum account. So, we've talked how do we, you know, we're really not paying 152. The parents are paying us back for some of that. They're paying $30 a workbook for probably 900 kids that go to our middle school. times six, you're probably recouping

09730 or $40,000 of that, which means you're heading to curriculum for 110. If that makes sense. It does. Thank you. And the those workbooks are ordered all ahead of time. So that 152 I always hear about we have too many workbooks. We're wasting money. If there's a stack of workbooks, like for example, our math workbooks that were overloaded at the middle school, those were paid for all the way back when Mr. Cyber was here. You can't save money on the workbooks. They've already been bought. Same way with our ELA that you just approved. We get workbooks applied to us every year for the next six years. And when the kids get it, they'll pay a $30 fee and that goes into a fee from if that makes sense, too. So, it offsets the cost. I

098get it. Thank you. Any more discussion? No, sir. Mrs. Bower, would you call a role, please? Mr. Mark. Yes. Mr. Michael Presley. Yes. This is Amy Ashra. This Mr. Barry G. Yes. Question 4 Z. Uh the next agenda item is a school care service agreement. For a motion to approve the school care service agreement as presented. So moved. Mr. Mes Presley. discussion. Well, can you tell us what the price is? Adams, can Yeah, this is a free service. Um, why don't you So, I I So, essentially what this is, this was brought to my attention by our um health specialist and district nurse. They It's a an electronic charting program for them. So, if you talk to them, they do a lot of their charting and documentation by hand. Um, this is a free service.

099And when I heard that it was free, I questioned that because I don't know, that just it seemed weird. So, I met with them a couple of times and I kept asking them, "How is it free? Why is it free? This doesn't make any sense to me." So, essentially what it is is they work with the district and they families can opt into what they call a continuum of care. So, if you have a student that has um chronic health needs or things that need to be done beyond the school, they can work with the family to provide some of that care on the back end. That has nothing to do with us. All of this goes through insurance companies and things like that, but it has there's no cost to the district. So, what

100they do with us is they provide us with the electronic charting. They what the easiest way would be probably through final forms. It would just be like a simple kind of a check box with an explanation and a letter from them that says, "Hey, would you like to opt into this?" Um, you know, and then they work with the company. So, Fairfield uses it that it came highly recommended from other district nurses and it's HIPPA compliant, it's furpa compliant. Those were some of the main questions that I asked. I wanted to make sure it would talk to our um like progress book and our systems. It's I sat in with Mary Lynville who works in our tech department. She sat in with us to talk about the integration piece. It's very simple. They were might

101as well been speaking a different language, but she knew what they were talking about. It was very simple on her end. It was um kind of a quick and so when Beth Burchwell, our district nurse, approached me with it. She said, "I'm getting ready to retire. This is something I desperately want for my team moving forward to make their lives so much easier in the nurse's office when they have students come in. Um, it allows them to track immunization records and things like that that they have to kind of chase down on their own. They would have access to like state databases and things like that to be able to get those records without having to chase them down. So, um, just a nice program at no cost to the district to alleviate some of

102the the headaches and the the day-to-day documentation for our school nurses. Thank you, Mrs. Bow. You call RO, please. Mr. Mark Meers. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Thank you. Yes. Question carries 4. The next agenda item is a Johnson Control Service renewal. I'm looking for a motion to approve the Johnson Control Service renewal as presented. So moved. Mr. Mr. Smith, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Mr. Michael Presler. Um, Mrs. Bowers, would you call the role, please? Mr. Mark Smith, yes. Mr. Michael Presser, yes. Mrs. Amy Ashkra, yes. Mr. Gary Gard, yes. Motion carries 4 Z. Uh the next agenda item is the Garland proposal. I'm looking for a motion to approve the Garland proposal as presented. So move. Mr. Master Smith, do I have a second? Second. Mrs.

103Ashcrussion. We want to just get the scans done right now before we approve any. That's what this is for. That's what this is for. Okay. This is roofing. Mrs. Bar, would you call the role, please? Just for scans. Yes. So, do we have to come back and do this to approve the cost of the actual work after the scan is done or are we giving her the ability to move forward on that? Now, we can get the scan first. Um, if we do all of the scans in one agreement, it's $9,300 um to do every facility. So, we can do that. We have another board meeting in three weeks. and get us on the agenda and get in that with hopefully we can come back to you. Does that work? Does that work for you?

104Yeah. Okay. Weather permitting it be done in a couple weeks, right? Yeah. My hope is to be able to come back to say here's the information from the scans. Here's what they're estimating the work the the maintenance cost to be for each building. All right. Thank you. And then just table this and bring it bring it back. We want the scan. We want the scans. The whole scan. Yeah. I think that's all it is, right? Yeah, that's what I was asking cuz I thought we were talking about is this going to hold up getting the work started, but it doesn't sound like it's going to be a problem. Miss Bowers, would you call the role, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Harry Gab. Yes. Mr. Michael Press. Yes. Motion carries 4.

105The next agenda item is the Naira paving quotes. Looking for a motion to approve the Naira paving quotes as presented. So, Mr. Me second. I thought they were amending this. We got to do that. No, we have to file it as amended because she's asking for all of this, don't we? Right. So, we need to amend the motion. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Do we know what we're amending? I'm going to look for a motion to approve the Nyber paving quotes as amended. Second. Mrs. Ashcraft, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Measure Schmidt. Now, we need to figure out what we're going to amend. We doing EMS, EIS, and the bus lot, which comes to 616. And we're doing we're not doing anything. Do we seal it? Do we seal it? Wait, no. Crack seal

106it seal cooked out over two. He got the money. We haven't spent any money on this district and want to do them all. I just would like to see the roofing scans come back before just in case something hits us there. Why don't we go ahead? Yeah, let's go ahead and do Let's go. We know we got to do middle school. We know we got to do Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that and then we'll we'll add the building at 7 mile and bay after we get this scan. Make sure there's no surprises. That's what we decided. All right. So, we're going to do EMS, EIS, and the bus lot schedule and if we add that's okay. See how we want to proceed with the other two. Recommended or recommended. recommended. You guys seen how much

107he's quing over us spending this money? I'm kidding. I'm not. I drop on that parking lot. I see what he Mrs. Bowers, you call the roll, please. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Mark Meers. Yes. Mr. Barry Gabbert. Yes. Mr. Michael Preston. Yes. 40. have a light to block items U, V, W, and X. These are all donations. Yeah, I want to I'm looking for a motion to block T through W as presented. Our exit. We've been warned. pretty much all but we got it. So block T through W as presented. Mrs. Ashcraft, do I have a second? Second. Okay. Yeah. Can I can I acknowledge these folks? So um there was a memorial donation u for Robert Simpson from Deborah Buckner, John and Jenny Thomas and Cynth Cynthia and John Male. Um there was a

108memorial donation uh for Carolyn Soniker. Um then we have the PeeWee football donation to athletics for $3,000. And then we have a donation of $250 toward lunch fees from Mr. Mark and Katie Measure. We're very grateful for those donations. Thank you. Good job. Mrs. Bowers, would you call the role, please? Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Michael Preser. Yes. Mr. Barry Gabbert. Yes. Mr. Mark. That is all we have for this evening. Thank you, Mrs. Bowers. Next up, we have superintendent items, Mr. Philpot. So, we just have a few field trips. Item A are two overnight field trips, the boys and girls basketball camps. They're going in June to Transennsylvania University. Both been there a few times. Asking you to approve those overnight field trips, boys and girls basketball. I'm looking for a motion to approve

109the two overnight field trips to Transennsylvania as presented. Second. Mr. Michael Presler. Second. Mr. Smith. Mrs. B. You call the role, please. Mr. Michael Pressler. Yes. Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mr. Barry Gab. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashkra. Yes. Motion carries 4. Item B is a day field trip for the second grade to go down to the home park here in Woodsdale. Just their annual second grade trip. It's a social studies trip. They do it every year to meet their social studies some of their social studies standards. Looking for a motion to approve the dayfield second grade. So moved. Mrs. Ashcraft, I have a second. Second. Mr. Mark. Mrs. D, would you call a roll, please? Mrs. Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Markers. Yes. Mr. Gary Gabbert. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler. Yes. Christian. Item C. There was a uh

110book that was um in the book fair back in February at the middle school that parent had concerns about and um it turned out that we also had uh it was a series. It wasn't just a book but a series. We actually had a book in our collection from that series. So when the parent had concerns about the book was at the book fair, we pulled it from the book fair and we pulled it from the collection of the library to get the curriculum review committee to take a look at it was through the process of war policy. So u Mr. Benecker the librarian I think Mr. Alers was part of that a couple teachers they reviewed the book and after reviewing the book they determined the book approval form there is included determining that

111the book uh inappropriate for middle school age children. So um the recommendation would be to return the book to our collection and if if that collection is in the book fair it obviously wasn't able to be purchased this year because we've pulled it but it could be in the collection next year would be something that would be pulled. So it's not part of the curriculum but it's just a book that is available to the district. Oh, I thought you would use it in the CR. No. Okay. Just a book in the library and then a book that was uh part of a book fair that kids could purchase. It's very popular. It's a series and it's kind of like like a Harry Potter where there's all kinds. It's almost like a comic book, but I

112guess there's some movies associated with that series too that maybe are a little more graphic and gory. So, I think maybe that was the concern. The book that was reviewed was the one that was in our collection in the library. So, you would like to uh the if you if you approve it, we're going to return it to the shelf. Okay. That was the recommendation of the um committee uh that reviewed the book and discussed it. Right. I'm going to look for a motion to uh for reconsideration of the book at EMS. So, Mr. Me, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Michael Presley. Mrs. W, would you call roll, please? Mr. Mark Measurement. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler. Yes. Mr. Barry Gabbert. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraftoft. Yes. Motion carries 4. Item D is the list

113of uh the class of 2025, the graduating class um candidates for graduation. Thought we'd go ahead and get that approved tonight. So, you would have to have a special meeting the day of graduation or between now and graduation day. So, there's your list of potential graduates or for a motion to approve the list of the 2025 graduates. I'll make a motion. Last Ashcraft. This is Ash. And the last priming, right? Yeah. And do I have a second? Second. Smart me. Are we sure that the Ashcraft kids are on track? Yes. They don't walk across a riot. This is Bowers. You call the role, please. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft, yes. Mr. Smith, yes. Mr. Gab, yes. Mr. Michael Preston, yes. Motion 4. So, the last item, well, not the last item, item E um is the list

114of the policies. Uh I I wasn't I wasn't serving in this role when Yola comes, they come quarterly and Yola does the four policies. You're aware. Uh a lot of times these are first reads and they just reflect legislative changes. There's changes in language that reflect changes in legislation. This is a group of policies that were reviewed. Um I you're part of that Kelly was at the last meeting and this is the first read for you guys to review. You'll vote on those at the next board meeting. All right. Thank you, Mr. And then the last one, um I believe that the uh the jazz band was um we thought maybe they were going to perform today and had a conflict and they were not able to perform here at this meeting. Maybe that was

115scheduled at some point. Mr. Arnold reached out to me and told me they had a conflict they couldn't perform. He wanted to send his condolences for not being able to perform, but let you know that the jazz band's been doing real well. On March 22nd they participated in the Ohio State Jazz Festival. Students received very high praise from Jud judges concerning the performance and the student Olivia Sapola. Am I saying that right? Zapola Sapola was presented with an outstanding solus award. And then also three seniors um were selected to perform at the University of Dayton Honor Jazz Ensemble. Isaac Bagsley, Lydia Sapola, and Lucas Simpson participated in the first ever University of Dayton Honor Jazz Ensemble. After just a few rehearsals, they performed a concert. The Roger Glass Center for Arts at UD on Saturday,

116April 12th. The band had a spectacular performance in Edgewood was represented with style class. They and Mr. Arnold would like to invite you to the final jazz performance of the year on Thursday, May 15th at 7 p.m. here in Heritage Hall. And good opportunity to come out and hear the awesome jazz band perform. It's free and open to the public, by the way. That's all. Great. Thank you, Mr. Bob. Next up, we have items for board members, Mr. Mr. Schmidt. So, if you haven't had an opportunity to see the jazz band, I got to see them a few months back. It is definitely worth adding to your calendar and coming and seeing that. So, I want to I want to just say thank you to to Patty for some information that she she put together

117and gave to me a few weeks ago. And and I know there's been a lot of misinformation out there about finances. There's been a lot of misinformation out there about the levy. Um, what I wanted to say is is that Patty actually put together a district profile report that compares Edgewood City Schools against the other nine districts in Butler County. It's a lot of data. Tells you the tax data from the district. Tells you the cost to educate a student. Tells you the revenue that comes in. Has average salary for people inside the district. has the average income of people living inside the district. Um, has the pupil to administrative ratio. It has the demographics of our students. It has everything. And these aren't Edgewood numbers. These come from the Ohio Department of Education, Office

118of Budget and School Funding. Pretty interesting document. And over the last week and a half, I spent an awful lot of time looking at it. And just a couple things that came to to mind as I look at this is that in terms of where we stand in funding, Edgewood is in the bottom third of the 10 districts in Butler County in terms of dollars per student that comes in state, federal, and other funding means. So, we're at the bottom of the we're at the bottom of the ladder in terms of the money that we get. But if you look at what it costs to educate kids, we're in the top third as far as being able to do it at the lowest cost, the lowest revenues. If you take these numbers and you compare

119them against similar districts, we are we are well above the performance of districts that are very similar to us and we are way above state averages. So really, as I kind of went through this, I I I found that that was very promising because I I do think we're good stewards with our money and I think that we're doing we're doing an awful lot with the resources that we're given. As you dig into this a little bit deeper, the percentage of students inside the district that are identified as having disabilities are are 19% which is well above the average for districts that are similar to ours. It's well above the average for the state. And when you compare that inside Butler County, we are we are in the top four in terms of highest percentage

120of kids with a disability. And the schools that are above us are New Miami, Hamilton, and Middletown, and they're not that much higher than us. So, I actually had some conversations with Patty today about some of these contracts and some of the things that we're doing. And a lot of this is IEP related. Um, and I asked her how much of this that we actually recovered and we probably recover about half of it. So obviously I think that you could probably make a comparison or at least draw some conclusions that the the more students that we have with disabilities probably leads to some special accommodations or at least as an IEP. So, you know, when you add that into the funding that we that we have and the fact that we don't recoup all of

121that, you know, I I just I kind of look at this holistically and and I think that this this information in these three pages kind of helps me draw an impression or an opinion of how the district does when compared to the rest of Butler County and really districts all over the state. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about this because, you know, I've seen some of the comments on social media. You know, they won't show us their books. They won't show us their numbers. You know, we'll show our numbers if anybody'd like to see them, but I think what people really should want to see is this right here, cuz this isn't our numbers. These are numbers from the state of Ohio. So, I wanted to talk about this and thank you,

122Patty, for pulling this together and putting it together for us. And I just want to let anybody that's here tonight or anybody that's watching, if you're interested in this information, I'll be glad or Patty would be glad to get you a copy of it because it does it does tell the story. It tells you where Edgewood ranks amongst all other districts in Butler County and across the rest of the state. So, just want to say thank you for pulling this together. It was very educational for me. I think it's a useful document. If anybody's interested, I think we can we can work to get a copy for anybody like to see it. I I was I looked at that too and it was really good information. The thing that stood out to me because I've

123been looking at a lot of data too in the last three weeks more than I probably envisioned I would be. But uh one thing I noticed, you know, because I also I asked Chris Brown to send me all the salaries of uh the basically the teacher salaries for the whole county. And um I noticed that our on the in the county our starting teacher pays the third lowest in the county. But on that on that particular sheet it just says average teacher salary. Ours was one of the highest. But then if you dig deeper into it, it shows a percentage of the teachers that have 10 or more years experience. And every other school has a lot fewer teachers with 10 or more experience. So in other words, we have a veteran staff. And obviously,

124it's going to cost more for a veteran staff than a a staff with a lot of beginners. And you know, I I don't know. My kids are grown now, but when I was a young parent with kids starting school, I was probably if I was selecting the teachers, I was probably choosing teacher with a few years under their belt versus brand new. Not that our brand new ones aren't doing a great job, but so that's a little misleading because our teachers are pretty low paid, but our average on that particular report shows a little higher because of the fact that we have a veteran staff. So yeah, I think we're highest in the public in Buffer County in terms of number of teachers or percentage of teachers over 10 years 10 more years. Yeah. And

125that's going to change which says a lot about our district. Yeah. It's going to change over the next five because the changes to STRS. So there's going to be some incentives for some of those veterans to retire here in the next few years if if they can. But that is really good information. Yeah. Is this information something that can be uh sent out districtwide? You can pick and choose. You can compare Edgewood to three other districts. You can pick and choose the schools you want to compare to. It's probably a link you could share out on the website or something that people could pick and choose. If we were going to send it out, I'd recommend you send it out just like this because this compares us literally against every district in public county. Really

126good information. Did you combine them all into one document? No, they're three separate documents. Yeah. Okay. I we want to send it out. I recommend send it out just like that. We'll try to make that happen. That's all we got here. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Mr. M. Mrs. Ashcraft. I don't have anything. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Ashcraft. Mr. President, nothing sir. I don't really have a whole lot to add. Mark covered a lot of what we all probably would like to say. You got to be careful what we do say. So, uh, at this time, I'm going to look for a motion to to move to executive session to consider the appointment, employment, dismissal, discipline, promotion, demotion, or compensation of a public employee or official. So, Mr. Mor Smith, do I have a

127second? Second. Michael, Mrs. Bower, you call role, please. Mr. Mark, yes. Mr. Michael Presley, yes. Mrs. Amy Ash, yes. Mr. Gary, yes. Place 40 at 7:48 p.m. All right, we are back from executive session. Is it 9:13? Item A, I'm going to look for a motion to approve the administration certified classifi classified exempt and supplemental nominations as presented. So, Mrs. Ashcraft, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Measure. Mrs. Bowers, would you call the role, please? Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mr. Gary Gab. Yes. Mr. Michael Presser. Yes. Motion carries 4 Z. Item B, supplemental nomination of Tim Presler. Looking for a motion to approve the nomination of Tim Presley. So next, Mrs. Ashcraft, Mr. Meers, Mrs. Bowers, would you call a role, please? Mrs. Amy Ashcraft, Mr. Mark Meers. Yes. Mr.

128Barry Gabber. Yes. Mr. Michael Presley. Stay. Next, I have item C, resolution to initiate procedures under Ohio law for remployment of retired employees. So moved. Mr. Measure, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Ashcraft. Mrs. Bowers, would you call the role, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Gary Gabbert. Yes. Mr. Michael Presley. Yes. Motion carries 4. That item D, resolution to suspend administrative staff contract as presented. So moved. Mr. Measurement, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Ashcraft, Mrs. Powers, would you call the RO, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraft. Yes. Mr. Barry G. Yes. Mr. Michael Presser. Yes. Motion carries 40. Item E, resolution to suspend the certified staffed contracts as presented. So, Mr. Measure Smith, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Michael Presler. Mrs. Bowers, would

129you call the roll, please? Mr. Mark Measure Schmidt. Yes. Mr. Michael Pressler. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashkra. Yes. Mr. Garrett G. Yes. Motion carries 40. Item F, resolution to suspend classified staff contracts as presented. So, Mr. Measures, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Michael Presler. Mrs. Bower, would you call the role, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler, yes. Mr. Gary Gabbert, yes. Mrs. saying the ash. Yes. Motion carries 40. And last we have item G, resolution to suspend exempt staff contract as presented. So moves. Mr. Measure Smith, do I have a second? Second. Mrs. Ashcraft, Mrs. Bower, would you call the role, please? Mr. Mark Measure. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashcraftoft. Yes. Mr. Gary Gabbert. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler. Yes. Motion carries 4. All that was on the agenda that the public sees without

130any just those I just were did they see all that? The public see all that? Let me get after let me get a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Mr. Meid, do I have a second? Second. Mr. Michael Presler. Mrs. Bowers, would you call a roll, please? Mr. Mark Measurement. Yes. Mr. Michael Presler. Yes. Mr. Gary Gabbert. Yes. Mrs. Amy Ashgra. Yes. Motion carries 40. is 9:16