- Tonight, we honor the excellence of MCCSE's dedicated employees, students, and volunteers who make a
- difference in our school community. Ms. Harmon. Thank you, President Hennessy, Dr. Winston, Board of
- True School Trustees, and community members. It's my pleasure to share this month's excellence spotlight,
- which is a feature of every regular Board of School Trustees meeting. It's a dedicated time to honor
- the excellence occurring every day through the dedication of MCCSE employees, students, and volunteers.
- MCCSE is honored to announce Lisa Snooks for the October Excellence Spotlight Award. Lisa is
- the administrative assistant at the MCCSE Adult Education Broadview Learning Center. Lisa is truly the
- heart of our program. She consistently greets staff, students, and families with warmth, kindness, and
- genuine care, creating a welcoming environment for all. Her dedication goes far beyond her
- daily responsibilities. She anticipates needs before they arise and ensures that everything runs smoothly
- behind the scenes.
- Lisa's unwavering commitment and positive spirit make a meaningful difference every single day. Her
- impact is felt by everyone who has had the privilege of working with her, and she exemplifies the excellence
- this ward is meant to celebrate. Thank you, Lisa, for everything you do.
- Thank you so much for that work on your behalf. And I was supposed to read, this whole thing was scripted
- for me that I was supposed to read about us joining you and all this stuff, and I didn't read that,
- so apologies. So now, I know, it makes a lot of sense now. I'm like, oh, it was on me. So now it's time
- for public comments. We have two cards tonight. Just a reminder that for those who signed up to speak
- and acknowledge the guidelines,
- Mrs butcher will ring the bell once to signal that you have 30 seconds remaining for your comment and
- five bells to signal that your time has concluded, we will begin with Joseph and I cannot the ink is
- sort of maybe it's shame.
- My name is Joseph Shing and I'm a senior at the Academy. I'm here tonight as a concerned student who
- has personally experienced a deep systemic failure in our school system, a failure that undermines the
- very values MCCSE stands for. The school district's mission is to nurture and empower every student,
- but I am here to tell you that for immigrant and refugee students like me, the current system is doing
- the exact opposite. When I first enrolled at Bloomington High School South as a sophomore,
- I was automatically placed into English new letters, ENL class for months, despite being fully proficient
- in English. I was also placed in Algebra 1, despite having a much stronger math background. It took
- months of persistence of advocacy to be moved into courses that reflected my true academic level, and
- the process was unnecessarily difficult. Through this experience and through conversations like
- With students like myself across Indiana school districts, I learned that my story was not unique. Many
- students like myself are being misplaced into classes that don't reflect their true academic capability
- because a school admin decided that they are not academically capable. I believe that assuming someone's
- academic capability and level based on where they're from, their accent, their background or country
- of origin is a form of discrimination.
- There are current MCCSE policies, such as Policy 5410 and Policy 5463, which basically mandates that
- students be placed in classes that fit them. In practice, this was not implemented for my case. We can
- make all the rules we want, but they are meaningless if they're not being implemented. Therefore, tonight
- I have two urgent requests for the board. First, I request the creation of a clear, specific policy for new
- newly enrolling immigrant and refugee students as there currently isn't one. This policy will ensure
- they are properly assessed in core subjects like English and math upon enrollment. So they are placed
- in the right classes that reflect their true academic capability from day one. My second request is
- for a system to ensure policies are followed. We need a system where all students can provide constructive
- feedback on their administrative experiences. This will create a collaboration between students
- and school administrators to work hand in hand with the district to identify loopholes, improve policy
- implementation, and strengthen the system for everyone. I truly hope that the school board stands with
- me in this journey of making MCCSE a better place for every single student. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
- Sheng, for your courageous comments tonight. Next up, we have Darcy Fawcett.
- My name is Darcy Fawcett and I'm here to draw attention to the fact that there is still a need for a
- gymnastics coach at North as well as at South. My daughters go to North so I'm here advocating for the
- school board, any administrator to advertise as aggressively as possible of the need for a gymnastics coach.
- Andrea Smith was the gymnastics coach. She was the coach for over 20 years. During our season last year,
- she learned that due to her promotion to an administrator who was her hill, she would not be able to
- continue to coach. Even though it's getting close to a year, we are still without a coach. Bloomington
- North has placed as high as fifth in the state. They have gone to state competition every year for the
- last four years.
- My understanding is that there's a policy that administrators cannot be coaches, and I understand at
- times the need for that policy, and that it could give that administrator a lot of authority and control
- over the teachers that they ultimately supervise, that if a student wasn't perhaps able to participate
- in sports due to grades, that they could say, you need to fix these grades so my player can coach. I
- understand that. I am asking that whoever has the authority to do so, be it this board, the superintendent,
- or even the administrators at North,
- grant an exception that would allow Andrea Smith to continue coaching until we do find a replacement
- coach. I have spoken with her maybe probably too much to her chagrin. She had indicated that she would
- consider doing so but wasn't sure if that was even a possibility. Many of these athletes that have been
- gymnasts have been gymnasts as they were three years old. We've got three seniors who started as in
- a private club at
- Two years the other is three years and the other is four years and they're absolutely devastated that
- they may not have a senior a senior season here at North So again, if there's anybody who can grant
- that exception allowing coach Smith to resume coaching Capabilities, I would greatly appreciate it.
- And if there's any direction as to who
- Myself and other gymnastics parents who are here today as well could reach out to you all have my contact
- information And I would appreciate any direction. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comments tonight
- Sure Dr. Anderson, can you speak on the coaching? situation relative to gymnastics at both north and
- south in our efforts and
- Sure, absolutely. What I can report to you and the board is that the positions have been posted at both
- buildings since very, very early in September. The candidate pool for gymnastics coaches is very,
- very small. The candidates that have applied have been interviewed. But unfortunately, at this time,
- we have been unable to secure a qualified and well-trained coach to assume the role. Thank you. Thank
- you so much.
- We'd like to thank everyone for their comments tonight. And as always, we will be considering those
- in all of the ways that we do through proper channels and appropriate measures. We will now move on
- to our collective bargaining tentative agreement. We have a presentation on this collective bargaining
- agreement from on the tentative collective bargaining agreement from Dr. Winston. Thank you, President
- Hennessy. In terms of the timeline of events, formal bargaining began on September 25,
- and a tentative agreement was reached on October 22nd. A few highlights from the tentative agreement
- summary include the following, and all of these, this summary is actually posted on our website. Relative
- to our performance-based teacher compensation plan, for the next two school years, the corporation will
- provide teachers with annual one-time stipends. Eligible teachers, those who are rated either effective
- or highly effective,
- or receive a total of $1,000 for each of the next two school years. In terms of the state's new early
- literacy endorsement, the corporation will provide teachers who update their license to include an early
- literacy endorsement with a $200 increase to their base salary. Master's degree attainment, the new
- contract continues to recognize salary movement for teachers who earn a master's degree.
- For the instruction and supervision of students outside of contracted hours, the corporation will provide
- an hourly rate of $30 per hour for any teacher who is assigned and approved to instruct students outside
- of the regular contract day and outside of extracurricular activities. And $20 per hour for any teacher
- assigned and approved to supervise students outside of the regular contract day and outside
- of any extracurricular duties.
- The corporation will provide $20 per hour for any teacher assigned and approved to complete professional
- development work outside of the regular contract day. In the area of fringe benefits, the corporation
- will increase the number of paid parental leave days from 8 to 10 for teachers, regardless of gender,
- on rows A to E of the salary schedule. Beginning January 1, 2026,
- The corporation will provide a 20% discount on extended day program to teachers with children in MCCSE's
- pre-K through sixth grade program. And this discount will apply September through April. Beginning with
- the 25-26 school year, the contract updates how leave days are charged before and after major school breaks.
- In the area of insurance, the new contract includes agreed upon school corporation contribution amounts
- for 2025 and 2026 to account for the increase in insurance costs. Retirement benefits. The new contract
- updates the retirement benefit match for teachers in rows A to E on the salary schedule, changing the
- matching percentage from 5% to 3.5% and schedules for athletics and co-curricular activities.
- Girls wrestling, boys volleyball, and scholastic e-sports were added to the ECA schedule in order to
- accurately reflect the current ECA positions and pay rates. Additional details can be found on our website.
- I just want to take a point of privilege to extend my deep appreciation and gratitude to MCEA President
- Jenny Noble-Kachera and her leadership team for a very collaborative and genuine process.
- I would also like to thank our assistant superintendents Alexis Harmon and Dr. Jeffrey Henderson along
- with our CFO Matt Irwin for their leadership throughout the bargaining process. Thank you very much
- for the collaborative spirit and effort during the challenging times that all public schools are facing
- presently. So I just want to say thank you and that concludes my presentation. Thank you Dr. Winston.
- Are there any comments from the board?
- I just want to echo Dr. Winston's gratitude for the entire team that was at the table for this collective
- bargaining. I know that it was not a great year for any of us. We think about all of the budget cuts
- and sort of fiscal realities that we're facing at this moment. We always want to do more for our teachers.
- We always want to do the very best that we can do. And we have been extraordinarily limited this year.
- in what we're able to offer as a result of some of the cuts that are coming and the cuts that we've
- already seen. And so just my sort of ongoing sort of despair at that, at the state of things, and also
- my gratitude for you all continuing to work through this in the most collaborative way possible. I'm
- just really grateful for that. So thank you very much.
- We will ratify the MCEA agreement at the November 18th board meeting. And that closes this portion of
- the meeting. We will now move on to SEA presentation. So this is an update on the Senate Enrolled Act
- 1. Dr. Winston, will you introduce our guest? Absolutely. So it's my pleasure to introduce to you all
- Mr. Barry Gardner. He's the Director of School Services at Policy Analytics. And we have established
- a partnership with
- Mr. Gardner and his company because of their knowledge base and extensive expertise around school finance
- and property tax issues. As everyone is aware, SCA 1 introduces some very significant legislation that
- is impacting school districts throughout the state of Indiana. And I thought it would be helpful in
- talking with the school board. We wanted to be able to bring to the public what those impacts are and
- how that's going to affect our school corporation
- from a financial standpoint. So it's again, it's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Gardner. Thank you. Appreciate
- the opportunity to be here tonight. Dr. Winston and the rest of the board to talk a little bit in more
- detail about Senate Enrolled Act 1 and what it means for the school district here in Monroe County.
- As Dr. Winston alluded to, policy analytics works with school districts across the state and
- We're now engaged with a little over 100 districts across the state in this work around Senate Enrolled
- Act 1 because of the implications. And we're going to walk through that tonight, kind of localize that
- of what we're hearing across the state, but also what it means for all of you in terms of consideration,
- not just today, but really over the next several years, because Senate Enrolled Act 1 and the way it
- was implemented is really phased in over the next six years.
- And so we kind of have this churning of the legislation that's going to continue to come for the next
- few years. I won't go through really all of this. It's outlined in the presentation. This is really
- the impacts that are outlined in Senate Enrollment Act 1. This was sweeping property tax reform. And
- they pulled many levers at the end of the day in an effort to try to curtail
- the impact of property taxes specifically on homeowners, but on some of the other areas in terms of
- farmers in the business sector as well. And so what has really come in is what we call deductions, right?
- When we look at paying our property taxes, we have what's called our gross assessed value, what our
- homes roughly value that, and then they provide deductions that get us down to our net assessed value,
- which we're taxed upon. And anytime you increase deductions, you're going to have impact on
- net assessed value, which impacts tax rates, which impacts revenues. And that's what we're going to
- talk about tonight. So a lot of this in there. I don't know if it's a good example, but I said it's
- almost like you have a slot machine, except of only having one lever, you have four levers. And they've
- pulled four different levers all at once. And that's the kind of combination of difficulty this legislation
- has is in terms of how it comes out for each district.
- So I think to really start out and kind of frame a little bit of this conversation, I think there's
- some considerations for the district as you look at some future pieces. And we'll outline this in a
- little more detail in the slides. And please, if there's something we come across and there's a question,
- I'm more than happy to take it either during the presentation or after. But really overall, the mechanics
- of Senate Enrolled Act 1 are going to increase tax rates, regardless of what the school district does.
- And this is not just Monroe County schools. This is all school districts across the state. This is our
- county units. These are city units. This is the mechanics of the bill. And so that's often tough, right?
- And so we highlight here that we may have to rethink our messaging or our thoughts of how we talk about
- tax rates because oftentimes we may think increasing rates may mean increasing revenues. And that's
- not the case in this legislation.
- Rates are rising regardless of revenues at the end of the day. And so oftentimes that may cause us to
- think a little bit more about levy. Revenue is what we often, levy is revenue. And what do we need in
- order to support the students in the school district at the end of the day? And that's also going to
- play into some considerations. We'll talk a little bit about the referendum in this report. From a debt
- service perspective, again,
- this is going to impact that debt service rate at the end of the day. And it starts to have our focus
- around levy or needs really versus a rate. And that's really different because a lot of times across
- the state, school districts have been very rate focused in terms of their overall tax rate or their
- debt service rate and managing to a rate as we sometimes call it. And that's just not going to be possible
- without giving up millions of dollars in revenue at the end of the day to keep the tax rate the same.
- That's also what would have to be done. When we look at the referendum, because it is driving down net
- assessed value, referendum revenue will decline over the next several years to the tune of approximately
- three to four million dollars annually in terms of fewer referendum dollars for the district. And that's
- just in terms of where you stand today. We're very used to revenue in the referendum increasing or expenses
- associated with what
- in the referendum increasing. So the gap in some ways can be thought of even larger in that in terms
- of the end of the day for the district. And then the operations fund has some additional impact. It's
- going to grow at a much slower rate. But also they established that districts now that have at least
- 100 students and 2% of their population attending charter schools will have to share charter school
- dollars beginning in 2028. And it ramps up over a four year period.
- at the end of the day that's 1.8 million dollars as we stand today that the district would have to share
- on an annual basis. So that's revenue that you would no longer collect that you're collecting today.
- So again a lot of hits in terms of our revenues that I think are going to cause some just things for
- the district to think about and how you navigate moving forward you know in terms of you know those
- referendum and operations fund dollars changing while still trying to maintain
- the level of services for students across the district that you are used to in many ways. So really
- when we look at your tax base, this is really what drives this. We really, I won't spend a ton of time
- on a few of these slides, but we really highlight in detail down to what we often call is the parcel
- level. And a parcel is a piece of property that can be a home, piece of farmland, an apartment, a business.
- And we play those out in terms of this.
- One of the things that the district does have going in its favor is your low overall tax rates. And
- because you have a low overall tax rate, comparative to some places in the state, you don't have what
- we often refer to as circuit breaker issues, which is when a homeowner hits their 1% cap and can pay
- no more in property taxes and any dollars above that aren't collected. What that bottom right chart
- shows that really you have very few parcels that are at the caps. That's very, very unusual.
- that is a positive for the district in terms of a revenue piece to start. Doesn't mean it's still not
- impacted, but it's not an issue that we sometimes see in some places. The other piece that we look at
- is the makeup of your assessed value because this often drives some of the changes that we see. So these
- are the different tax classifications, residential, apartments, commercial,
- You do have what's called personal. It's business personal property. And this all really kind of tells
- the story of Monroe County in terms of the revenue at the end of the day. We often say sometimes this
- is the wallet, right? So it drives the revenue in terms of the assessed value. And having a diverse
- property tax base has typically been a positive, because the only group in the past that has gotten
- deductions has been the 1% homeowners. Well, now we're adding deductions to the 2%.
- and we're changing the rules around the business personal property. And that's going to begin to shrink
- this pie at the end of the day. And this pie really represents revenue. So what's happening over the
- next several years is reducing the AV base, which is reducing the revenue. And that's not just, again,
- for the town. That's also for the city and for the county here around the community as well. So one
- of the things that we do for districts is we look at what assessed value may do in the future.
- and having that assessed value outlook, again, because as assessed value goes, that impacts your tax
- rates and that impacts your revenues for us. And we saw a really unique change this year. And this is
- some of the diverse piece that we dive into is how your assessed value changed from 25 to 26. Overall,
- this is gross assessed value. This is before any deductions. And it grew by really kind of a moderate 3.2%
- overall.
- We see some pretty big jumps in the apartments, the commercial and industrial in a percentage basis,
- 10, 11%. But they're smaller pieces of the pie. So they often don't drive the issue at the end of the
- day. The other challenge with those from a long-term perspective is that there was a change by the Department
- of Local Government Finance. They had not changed their assessment of those types of properties since
- 2019 prior to the pandemic.
- They did a reset of what we call their cost tables. It's kind of a one-year reset. Moving forward, we
- want to expect to see those kind of growth in those areas. So that kind of helped a little bit. The
- other challenging piece is that residential assessed value really didn't grow. And that's kind of an
- interesting piece because when we look at this next chart, what we know about our assessment system
- is that it's what we call market-based.
- defined by a Supreme Court case that says our assessed values have to be market based, which means roughly
- what they're sold for on the open market. So as home prices go, typically the assessed value follows
- that. And so the last several years, we have seen home prices across the state, across the country,
- really climb over after the pandemic. And assessed values have kind of followed those. So that's what's
- driven a lot of the assessed value growth.
- What we see is we look at, you had some pretty steady changes from year to year. What's a little bit
- surprising in the data is that in 2024, it says the median sales price that year grew by 3.8%. That
- is home sales that happened in 24 are assessed in 25 and a part of your 26 budget. Your 26 residential
- didn't grow. It grew by a much smaller amount.
- We're hopeful a little bit that as we see 2025 sales data that we might have a little bit better assessed
- value growth moving forward. But I think it's a little bit something to watch. Moving forward, we have
- residential growing by about 3.8%. Why is that so important? Because we have all these new deductions
- that are going to pull down against that. So if you don't have some of that residential growth, which
- you did not have this year, what happens in terms of assessed value?
- You saw that decline. It says value went down this year. Why? Because residential didn't grow for you.
- So we really are kind of hopeful we'll see some of that residential growth. The data would support that
- we might see it, but the deductions get larger and larger and larger, which are going to make it more
- difficult moving forward. Yes, sir. Am I correct that this legislation and this round of deductions
- was triggered by the growth in AV across the state
- concerned about property tax? Correct. Some data we've done for some other places is over the last several
- years assessed value has grown annually by about 7.2% statewide, which has caused residential tax bills
- to grow by about actually 8% annually. And what we've seen is the tax burden has actually shifted towards
- homeowners and away from the businesses
- and apartments in some of those areas because they have grown so much so fast where the other sectors
- didn't see the growth. And so this legislation was spurred by these growing assessed values and a chance
- to try to temper maybe some of that property tax liability at the end of the day what people are paying
- in terms of their home bills.
- This next slide then projects out assessed value. This is a really key slide that's going to set up
- our revenues and rate conversation. Let me walk you through, just briefly, the top chart on the left
- with the lines. The green line is gross assessed value. And you can see that continues to grow. Why?
- They did not change our assessment system. They can't. Supreme Court case-driven. It's market-based.
- So we still project gross assessed value to grow, meaning a home worth $200,000
- They moved to be worth 210,000 to 220,000 from an assessed value standpoint. What they can change are
- the deductions. And when you increase the deductions, you drive down the blue and teal lines, which
- is the net assessed value. And that's what we actually tax on to generate revenue. And you can see that
- kind of downward slope. And we had a negative this year. Our assessed value actually went down by 1.1%.
- And we project in our data the next five years it will decline by 3.4% annually as we see things today.
- Why? We kind of shift our eyes to the bottom two charts. The bottom left shows the homestead deductions.
- And you can see from 2025, they grow from 3.6 billion to almost 6.3 billion in 2031. It's almost doubling
- the amount of deductions. So if we increase deductions,
- We're driving down that net assessed value, which is what we're seeing in the data. The bottom right
- is representative of the 2% class, and apartments would fall into that. You can see 2025 is blank. There
- were no deductions for this class in 2025. The legislation brought on new deductions for this class.
- They start in 26. Again, these are phased in. They kind of cap out in 2031 in terms of the percentage.
- But that again now creates $2 billion in deductions that weren't there before. And that again is going
- to drag on your assessed value growth. And so that negative assessed value now is going to impact. We're
- going to talk about some revenues and pieces. This is how it looks like just in individual years. We
- often talk in a percentage piece. You can see 2027 is a little bit larger. That's because they created
- for the 3% class, which is business personal property, a new exemption.
- Used to be businesses did not have to report equipment under $80,000 for taxable purposes. That now
- goes up to an investment value of $2 million that they don't have to report. We're just pulling assessed
- value out of the system, and that's why 27 is a larger kind of negative decline in that particular situation.
- They flip back, if you notice, in 2032. That's because all the deductions are fully in place in 2031.
- We kind of move back. As gross assessed value grows,
- net assessed value would start to follow. But we've got six years here where that's not the case. We're
- kind of moving into this new place. If you look on the left-hand side of that chart, we've seen growth
- in assessed value every year since I believe it's 2015, 2016 on this chart. And now we're moving into
- a new world in terms of declining net assessed values, not something we're used to. So what's that mean?
- Well, there's a lot of impact on your revenues that we have to consider.
- This first one is probably the most complicated. I apologize, but I did not write the legislation. So
- please don't shoot the messenger. This is a new piece of legislation that was introduced, which is a
- 10% homestead credit. So the way this works is a homeowner, if they're paying $2,000 in property taxes,
- they're going to get 10% off, up to $300. So in this case, 10% of that $200 is
- $200 off their tax bill. So they're only going to pay $1,800. Well, that $200 they're not paying is
- now revenue that the school and the city and the other local units will not collect. It's a benefit
- for the homeowner, but it creates a revenue issue on the school district. And that's what's detailed
- out here in this chart. So you can see from in 2025, it's a really small bar because you really didn't
- have any circuit breaker or what we might call unfunded credits.
- unfunded credit meaning revenue you don't collect, it spikes in 2026. Why? Because this new legislation
- comes on to the tune of almost 2.1 million dollars in revenue that the district will not collect in
- 2026 through this legislation. It's split between the blue and the orange. That is because right now
- the legislation allows it to be applied to both the operations fund and the debt service fund.
- There is an issue with the debt service fund that's already started to come out, because if you don't
- have enough money coming into your debt service fund, it makes it hard to make your debt payments. And
- you may have to eventually move into other funds like your rainy day to make your debt payments. I've
- drawn a line to it. Why? Because we believe in the legislation session, maybe even this spring in 2026,
- they may come back and do what they call protect the debt service, meaning all of the impact would hit
- the operations fund. So what's that mean?
- That $700,000 that's currently in the debt would now move to ops, and that would be an additional $700,000
- you would not collect in the operations fund. And that's something we have to keep aware of, something
- we've kind of talked, obviously, with Mr. Irwin in terms of his modeling of cash flow moving forward,
- because we do think that's something that is going to happen. There's precedent for it.
- There's already a standard and poor S&P who rates school districts have already written an article with
- concerns about this issue in terms of SEA 1. So we do believe that's going to happen. And that's going
- to be a negative impact, unfortunately, in terms of some revenue for the district. The second piece
- here within this, this is the referendum, the operating referendum revenue. As we currently stand, we've
- kind of called out the last year
- of a full revenue source from the referendum. And what you see again is this decline overall in terms
- of referendum revenue. And that is because we're increasing deductions, which is driving down the net
- assessed value. So that rate times net assessed value at a lower amount is gonna generate fewer dollars.
- And this is a real challenge. I think there was some projections that all school districts had in terms
- of referendum revenue. Typically in our past history is,
- As assessed value went up, so did the referendum revenue. So it had an inflationary component to it
- to help with salaries, to help with utility costs, or those kind of pieces that referendums might support
- across the district. Well, not only does it not have the inflationary piece to it, it's actually going
- to go down in revenue, which again is what I alluded to, creates that larger gap in terms of what it
- would have supported. This is a challenge.
- a number of school districts that are dealing with this across the state. And I think in a few different
- ways. One is you have fewer dollars, so you can't support as many things across the school district.
- You have to look for cost reductions. It's one of the natural pieces of having fewer dollars. The other,
- in terms of a referendum, is districts are considering going out for, in this case, when you already
- have a referendum, renewals sooner than what they originally intended.
- There's a number of roughly 55 school districts across the state that are currently considering operating
- referendums in calendar year 2026. What percent of those are looking at renewing a current active referendum
- and which are looking at new? Great question. I don't have the data source on that. Anecdotally, I would
- say over 50% of renewals. And is that
- somehow related to the charter dollar sharing? So there's a couple of components with this. It's a great
- question. One, yes, if you run the new legislation requires referendums in the future to also have to
- share the referendum revenue with charter schools like you are in your operations fund that will outline.
- However, if you run the operating referendum in 2026,
- Your revenue first starts coming in 27, and it predates that new language, which means you would not
- have to share with charter schools if you ran in 2026. So that's one of the reasons districts are looking
- at 26. The other reason is now you can only run referendums in even years in November. We used to be
- able to do every year, and we had May or November that we could choose. So now it's 26, 28.
- and I'm having to do it in November which from a school perspective in a school budget situation is
- school years already started and any adjustments we might make if a referendum passed or didn't we have
- to absorb in that that case not knowing if we're going to have that referendum pass so we have districts
- that reason the 26 numbers so high you have districts that were scheduled to go in 26 for referendum
- districts that were scheduled to go in 27 that can't anymore and have to come forward. And districts
- that were supposed to go in 28, but have said, you know what? We want to go in 26 because of maybe the
- charter situation. Or if it doesn't pass, we can still come back in 28 because now it's November when
- we would have done it in May. So there's just a lot of thoughts around this because of this legislation.
- And oh, by the way, right now it's creating a declining revenue. And so one of the other reasons is
- to try to level out that revenue source, at least during an attempt, so it doesn't maybe impact as much
- in terms of the revenue versus expenditures when it comes to the school district piece, right? So there's
- a lot in two minutes that a lot of districts are thinking about right now because of this chart. This
- follow-up question to that. So if we were to run one in 26, a renewal,
- Then for the entirety of that referendum, we wouldn't share any of those dollars. The referendum, correct.
- Okay. So you went and renewed it following in the next eight years or whatever it was. The other question
- is, if that renewal doesn't pass, do we maintain the current levy? Okay. Yes. So the way, typically,
- my understanding with your bond council or local council, when you submit to DLGF is you would say we
- are for districts that are doing this, right? So if they are coming and renewing new,
- early, I should say. If this passes, the LGF, we want the old one to go away, and we're going to just
- take the new one. If it doesn't pass, then we want to take the remainder of the years that we have under
- the current referendum. So that's the other reason is, again, if it doesn't pass and I can still come
- back in like a 28, I still have those dollars flowing that's not as impactful. And last question, we
- have two referendums right now. We have the family focused and then our typical operating
- Can we bundle those? In essence, so probably a little bit of a legal question. In essence, you potentially
- could in terms of running one new that would represent both, stating that both would go away. If the
- new would pass would be my understanding. But it's a legal question. We probably want to dive through
- in that piece. But that would be my understanding of it. OK, thank you. And just can you remind us,
- or maybe somebody else can, what we have to do
- have another referendum vote in 2028? Is that right? Is that when the teacher-focused referendum expires?
- I believe it's 2030. Yeah, 2030. OK, yeah. Thank you. The family-friendly one expires in 2030, and the
- early childhood one expires in 2031. And I have not thrown enough good news at you already, especially
- in terms of the referendum. The challenge, as you can see, is
- with the rates, because net assessed value is going down, that 25, 26 cent rate will generate fewer
- dollars. So if I need to generate the 28 or 29 million dollars it is today, I can't ask for 26 or 27
- cents. I may need to ask for 32 or 34 cents, because 34 cents times the lowest point of assessed value
- in 2031 may get me the revenue I need.
- And so that's a whole other piece of districts. We have six districts that are going this fall, November.
- We worked with four of those in planning. And the rates have gone from the district had a 17 cent rate
- currently, it went to 26 cents. District had a 22 cent referendum, it went to 36 cents. And so those
- are the times that jumps you're seeing in rates.
- because they need that, otherwise it doesn't generate the revenue in 2031 that's necessary. So again,
- all kind of moving parts to think, and that's why we put that up, is just some considerations, right?
- There's a lot to process. But at the end of the day, what you have to process is if the status quo is
- fewer dollars in the referendum revenue moving forward. I highlight this page. There's a lot of numbers.
- I just want to focus on the middle line. And that says the charter share.
- because this is what's going to impact your operations fund starting in 2028. The legislation was written
- that, again, if you have at least 2% or 100 students, we currently had you at 5.4% and 573. So well
- above that piece in terms of that threshold, that would say you would need to share a charter starting
- in 2028. It starts out as 25%. Think of it as a per-stude amount of your operations fund dollars. You
- take your operations fund dollars on a per-stude amount,
- 2028 they're going to get 25% then 50 and 75 and 100 and that's where it builds up as you can see in
- 2031 as it stood today would be that 1.8 million and so that is dollars that is coming out of your operations
- fund at the end of the day that you would not receive question say we say a school district falls below
- the threshold at some point how does does it does the
- Sharing continue or does it shut off? I don't know how well defined the process is yet on this calculation.
- It's a DOE piece that would come out each spring. They provide that to the auditor's office. So my assumption
- would be is if you didn't hit that threshold then they wouldn't provide that information to the auditor's
- office and you would not share for that following calendar year. But the timing all this is so new that's
- a great question to kind of
- That's really the point within this piece. Again, this is some of the modeling we do. The board is aware.
- We do 10-year projections on all these pieces down to that granular level to really give you the best
- case information we can in terms of your property tax revenues. This is a little bit of the summary
- pieces here. I want to highlight a few slides, and then I'll wrap up. The top left represents the operations
- fund. And this really falls in line with what you heard from legislators.
- in that they kept talking about your operations vandalism. You're not going to get less dollars. You're
- going to get less of more. And what they mean is your revenue is not going to go down. You're just not
- going to get as much as what you would have before. And that's kind of what their message was. We all
- need to tighten our belts. We all need to have some sort of constraint. And that's how the legislation
- was written in that piece. And that is true, because as you see, at least for Monroe County,
- Your operations revenue grows by about 2.5%. Much of that is due, especially towards the tail end of
- that charter share. Operations fund revenue typically would grow around 4% annually. So it is about a 1.5%
- kind of decline, so to speak, in terms of growth in your operations fund revenue. So that's a challenge
- when we know expenses
- Some of our expenses are outside of our actual property, casual insurance, utilities. All those kind
- of things can grow at a much higher inflationary pace. And we're going to have some curtailed revenue
- definitely in the piece. Again, something the district's going to have to work themselves through. I
- just want to show this is the tax rate slide. And really, for all intents and purposes, no matter the
- scenario, really no matter what you do in terms of your debt service or your overall rate,
- even if you do not ask for any additional dollars for so to speak in your debt service fund your rates
- are going to increase and that is the intentional mechanics of the bill so it's not a surprise in seeing
- that we're increasing deductions that drives down that assessed value which at the end of day increases
- tax rates and again this is not just a Monroe County school situation I say this chart looks the same
- for just about every district we work with it's just the numbers are different
- of where you're starting from and where you end up. And you can see there's some statewide averages.
- Again, one of the benefits for you in terms of your operations fund is that you have been well below
- that state average in terms of a total tax rate, which means you've not had that circuit breaker issue.
- So real positive for the district and kudos in terms of being able to manage to a lower overall tax
- rate at the end of the day. And then the last piece is just one of the things we take a look at.
- in terms of impact on the homeowner. So this is just pulling Bloomington City. It's Perry Township.
- It's a median homeowner. And what we project in terms of their tax bill over the next several years.
- This is gross. This would include the referendum as well. You do see a decline from 25 to 26 in terms
- of their tax liability. That is
- kind of played out in that chart at the bottom in the math, that is that new 10% homestead credit, right
- up to that $300. It's going to reduce the liability. I do see their bill come down. And then it slightly
- continues to rise up, though it is, I will say, fairly flat compared to some other places and other
- districts that we work with. So a little more stable tax rate here, probably, than what I'd say holistically
- across the state. But just a general sense of what we might see in terms of
- tax liability, we often, again, talk tax rates, but then they also, it's how much is the homeowner paying,
- right? And what's that look like? And so they will see a reduction that really over the next, call it
- six years, their tax bill is either less or the same as it is in 2025, which I think is a positive the
- other day for a homeowner. Last few pieces, I'll kind of, again, just reiterate some summaries and then
- more happy to take any questions, but we know again, we just talked tax rates are going to rise,
- Those additional deductions is really what's causing it. It's the mechanics of Senate Enrolled Act 1.
- That declining net assessed value is going to have impact on your referendum revenue and that's going
- to generate fewer dollars. You may know that your operations fund is going to grow at a more muted pace.
- That's really driven again by that last point, which is the charter share dollars increase starting
- in 2028 and increasing over the next four years to a fairly significant amount of that 1.8 million.
- really what's happening locally for Monroe County as the mechanics, which I think kind of takes us back
- to this future decisions, considerations for the district is navigating us, right? And this is a conversation
- we're having with school districts across the state is that we are seeing a reduction or a constraint
- in revenue. It varies from place to place. Obviously the referendum, if you have a referendum,
- There's a digital layer there that other places who do not have a referendum may have in terms of that
- revenue change. But that's just going to force the district to actually have to make some considerations
- in terms of how you operate, how you move forward, and what you think about the referendums kind of
- in future years. So I think that's, yes, my last slide. Within this, I know that's a lot. I'm more than
- happy to answer any additional questions
- So as you've talked about tax rates increasing, but tax liabilities on the individuals remaining flat
- or increasing at a much lower rate is not the right word because we're talking about tax rates. So one
- way maybe to understand that is due to the fact that it's done by deductions
- homeowner while they may see their tax rate go up, their tax bill will remain relatively flat, but yet
- they're going to see the equity advantage in their property of the increased value. Correct. The overall
- value of the property, the gross assessed value, which is that market base would still continue to climb,
- but the additional deductions would pull down on that impact and negate what they would have paid in
- increasing taxes moving forward.
- It's muted that it stays fairly level. And then the rates are somewhat arbitrary because they're going
- to go up, but it really doesn't have an impact on the actual liability at the end of the day because
- of the deductions. OK. In the spirit of shifting my focus from tax rate to total levy generated, is
- there any chance that new construction in Monroe County could increase our total levy generated?
- So potentially, this is one that's always hard because of the size of your assessed value base already.
- So we often hear this that, OK, I've got a business coming in or a commercial situation coming in. It
- has to be a fairly significant value to drive a whole lot of impact because your tax base is fairly
- large to begin with.
- That being said, yes, new homes coming in, new businesses coming in are obviously positives in terms
- of that assessed value, which would help maybe push back against the negative decline a little bit.
- But it's going to have to be somewhat significant to really have some impact. Thank you. Would that
- be? I just see a lot of construction. Would that benefit be nullified if those are in TIF districts?
- Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Not necessarily for you.
- It's a great question. So obviously a TIF district, the debt service fund and the operations fund do
- not have access to that assessed value of those that we call increment those dollars in the TIF. However,
- your referendum does. So you do have the benefit that if businesses do develop inside of TIF districts,
- you are going to see that benefit in terms of maybe some additional dollars inside of that referendum. Okay.
- So one of your pieces of consideration as you're speaking with school corporations is to transition
- away from a focus on tax rate and focus more on how much revenue do you need to generate to be able
- to operate your school corporation. That's really the conversation. That's the essence of the decision
- making of a superintendent and a school board and the community. Yes.
- believe I think in our conversations rates are going to increase regardless no matter what right and
- it kind of goes back to that that referendum piece right we can move the rate to 32 cents but it's going
- to generate the same amount of dollars so the rate yeah really doesn't matter it's really the levy and
- what we often say to to have in consideration is
- Levy is revenue, right? So what is the revenue needed to support the school district and what your goals
- are? And what do you need that to be at the end of the day? And I think that's really the question.
- It becomes really levy-focused, revenue-focused, and rates become a little bit of a side story. And
- that's very different, because everything used to be completely on rates, because rates drove the revenue
- much more than they do today. Can you talk also a little bit more
- in a little bit more detail around existing referenda and the way in which this new legislation
- is automatically and immediately going to decrease our revenue as soon as 2026. And I think you said
- by about 1.8 million. So charter shares the 1.8 million. You look, sorry the years are a little bit,
- Do you see a slight bump in revenue in 26 with your referendum? Because I know your net assessed value
- went down. This is the TIF question. But the referendum revenue went up just slightly, at least for
- 26. We don't expect that to continue. So you can see, starting in 27 and 28, that revenue began to decline.
- That's where we say, in totality, when we get to around 2030, 2031, it's about 3 to 4 million less in
- revenue. And again, annually.
- And the reason for that, the referendums are a pretty simple math problem for property taxes. It's your
- rate times the net assessed value gives you the revenue. Well, if my net assessed value is going down,
- my rate times a lower assessed value is going to generate fewer dollars. That's what's happening. Why
- is that happening? Because we're increasing the deductions, which gets into the liability kind of questions.
- And so that is the challenge within that is
- Again, it's outside of your control. You don't control the assessed value. You can only take your rate
- to a certain place because it's a maximum approved rate. And so that is what's going to cause the ultimate
- decline in revenue. So just to clarify or to be clear, and this is mostly, I think, for people listening
- too, right? So when you think about the ways in which we are losing money, there is the decline in revenue.
- There is also
- the loss of the growth of that revenue, right? So there's the loss of the growth and there's the decline.
- And then on top of that, there's the charter school sharing, which is additional. So it's like at least
- three, well you said four lovers, but yeah, I mean, I know what you mean. But it does feel like this
- little tug toy I bought for my two puppies and they're like both tugging at the same thing. And it's
- just like, yeah. So we're losing from all kinds of angles.
- You are. You're being impacted in multiple ways. Biggest one, biggest two, I would say, is the referendum
- revenue and the charter share dollars at the end of the day. Those are the two biggest nominally and
- I think biggest impactful wise in terms of revenue for the district. The only issue, and this is not
- an issue for you to solve, obviously, with talking in revenue versus rates is that when our voters go
- in to vote,
- they're going to see a rate and not a dollar amount, not like a revenue amount, right? We can't write
- it in such a way that they would see. So in a new ballot question, it's going to show the rate being
- requested, the impact on a median homeowner in terms of the dollar figure, 200, 300, whatever that dollar
- figure is, and the maximum amount of revenue that you would generate under that in an annual year. OK.
- And so those three things are listed on the ballot.
- The bigger challenge I would say in that question is if we looked at 2031, and let's say you need to,
- I'm gonna use some round numbers, 35 cents to generate the same amount of revenue as you are today.
- You went out and approved that. Well, in 2026, 35 cents is actually gonna generate more revenue than
- you need, because right now, it only takes 26 cents. And so that's the challenge that all these districts
- are facing, is they're having to approve this higher rate
- right and say but we're only going to take the levy in which we need which is 26 cents this year and
- then 27 and 28 is going to grow and that's where we often some of the work we do with the district is
- to show them that liability impact on homeowners because often what we're seeing in that situation is
- the referendum liability stays the same and sometimes goes slightly down because of the legislation
- even though the rates going up right and so that's where the messaging comes it's just a complicated
- piece right to your point they're going to see a rate they're going to see a dollar figure and it may
- not actually speak to the change in what they're paying in taxes from one year to the next in actuality.
- Right. So that that valid question reads something to the effect of a levy of 37 cents up to a total
- collection of x number of dollars so a levy not to exceed x cents to a total collection of
- to an annual collection. So the $0.35 and maybe $29 million in an annual piece. And those are your two
- kind of limits within that piece. Again, it's just a complicated question. Any other questions? Well,
- yeah. So first, I think in your analogy, we are the tug toy. Is that how that works out?
- I just want to make sure that I understand the pros and cons of running a referendum in 2026 versus
- 2020-2030. We'd be 2030. Oh, we'd be 2030. We are 2030. But the thing is, we're 2030 and 2031. So we'd
- have to figure out, we can't run the 2031. So you'd have to renew either earlier, or you'd have to lose
- a year. But whatever. Yeah.
- But no, that's OK. I think that was helpful. Now I have another question. Do we have to run them both
- at the same time? We could do one in 2026 and one in 2030, right? Can I just? Because I have a build
- on clarifying question. Because actually, when we ran the family friendly referendum, I think the ideal
- was always that.
- it would eventually be incorporated into the primary operating referendum. So I think that that was
- always the plan. So I don't think we would have continued to run to. So I think I understand that the
- main pros of running our referendum, in my mind, four years earlier than we would have to, than the deadline.
- would be that we would avoid the charter sharing issue. And what was the other one? That's the main
- benefit. And if it doesn't pass, then you have that time to come back within that section a couple of
- times, you know, potentially given your setup, because you aren't pulling it forward pretty far. And
- the main risk is that we either won't ask for enough in 2026 to cover our expenses in 2030,
- Or we ask for what seems like an astronomical amount in 2026, but is enough for 2030? The risk that
- is there in 2026 is kind of to your point. You have to work to really establish, what does that need
- in that delta over those eight years? And again, that might mean 35 cents, 37 cents. It might be a big
- jump, right? And that's all the issues we just talked about.
- versus a running in 2031, you really have that, excuse me, 2030, you really have that one year decline
- and then the deductions are fully in place and AV starts to go up and kind of return to our old mechanics.
- So that's kind of off the top of my head as it's the first time it has this question. So forgive me,
- but that's the bonus I would say of running in a 2030 is that you kind of get away from this
- situation of a declining net assessed value for all these next six years. The challenge, though, again,
- though, of waiting until 2026 is the declining revenue source. The challenge in waiting until 2030.
- Wait until 2030, yes. Wait until 2030 is the declining revenue situation. And can you adjust within
- those pieces? And I don't know if it's a pro or not, but there's going to be a number of districts going
- out in 2026.
- and I don't know again, some people might think that's a positive because it speaks to the needs that
- are there for schools and we're talking about the impact of this legislation and we're having to make
- adjustments and lots of people are having to do that. I don't know in terms of that piece. I'm sure
- November 30th of 2026, we'll have a better answer to that question if it was pros or cons, right? But
- there has been conversation around that. There's a lot of districts going out and what's that mean in terms of
- overall situation. Thank you. I'd like to also offer the opportunity for any member of my executive
- team, if you have a question or a comment that you would like to share during this moment, please feel
- free to jump in. Well, I appreciate the analogy of the tug toy. We're doing cash flows to kind of feel
- that a little bit. But the data is invaluable. It's not a ton of great news, right? It's not a lot of
- fun to hear some of this news.
- this data is invaluable in order for us to be able to plan appropriately as it relates to the projections
- and the things that we're doing on a year to year basis so that we're not just planning for what happens
- at the end of 2025 or in 2026. We're looking out five, six, seven years in advance to say, where are
- we going? And policy analytics, they bring that data that helps us to make the types of educated decisions
- to do what's best for kids. And so I think that I just,
- have appreciation for as I look at this, I'm looking at all these numbers. These numbers are included
- into the projections that I do as far as losses or revenues or AV and some of those pieces, which are
- incredibly helpful in us planning in the right way. So I thank you for that. And I would say that Barry's
- numbers are the things that keep me awake at night. That's my number.
- the numbers that you are bringing to us from our legislature thank you we're just even the projections
- of av they were you know when we got the initial report it was very accurate as far as just the projections
- of av so when you're talking about making plans year over year about declining av and that impact on
- revenue it brings a little bit more certainty of saying what i'm seeing on this page
- likely is it to occur based on what it is that we've seen or the data that they provided in the past
- and so that's immensely helpful for that. Dr. Henderson or Mrs. Harmon any comments or questions that
- you would like to ask? Well I think the comment that I would have is that obviously the implications
- are heavy in the operations fund and as the assistant superintendent for human resources and operations
- it certainly raises the eyebrows to
- How can we work within our operations team to find efficiencies and to save dollars? And those things
- are going to create significant challenges for us. But along with, obviously, Mr. Irwin, I want to echo
- our thanks for being able to provide long-range projections for us to be able to begin to make plans
- around how we manage that. And it will certainly have an impact, I'm sure,
- the board's decision with regard to whether or not we choose to go early for a referendum when we think
- about that declining enrollment. I think I'd be repeating most of what people have said, but I will
- say thank you again for the information. I think it's informative. I think we know referendums are essential
- to public schooling these days, and so to have good information about
- when to run it, what the impact will be is really essential. Thank you. Thank you so much. I just want
- to echo all of that. You've been an invaluable advisor to us on this matter and others as well. And
- being able to provide key decision points that we need to give consideration to is essential for us
- to be able to be good stewards of our taxpayers' dollars.
- and to make sure that we are well positioned to continue to be fiscally sound and to be able to deliver
- on our promise to our community in terms of excellence in our classrooms and excellence in our programs
- and excellence in our supports and services. And so it is exceedingly helpful to me. In spite of the
- heartburn, it is exceedingly helpful to be able to have this kind of information at our fingertips to
- be able to inform decision-making. And I cannot overstate
- my appreciation for how this does, in fact, guide the conversations that Mr. Irwin and I have on a daily
- basis about cash flows. And every decision, we go back and look to see what's the short-term impact
- and what's the long-term impact. And we could not do that without this information. So thank you.
- Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's given us a lot to think about. I mean, it's really a difficult
- time to think about asking people for more money, right?
- At this particular moment, we're thinking about SNAP benefits going away and people not getting paychecks
- at this moment with shutdowns. And I mean, all sorts of things, right? So to think about going and asking
- for more dollars, it feels really daunting. And there's always this sort of juggle. I mean,
- someone once said, oh, you'd be great at development. Would you like a development job? And I was like,
- heck no, because my least favorite thing in the whole world is asking people for money. Like, I never
- want to do it.
- It's just one of those things that like, as a member of this board, our job is really to think about
- this district and its well-being, fiscal well-being among other things. And so I think there's a lot
- for us to sort of discuss and talk about and think about in the coming months for sure. Appreciate it.
- I have one final question. Yeah. This is a newer development.
- but I am curious if any of the school districts that you're working with that are currently looking
- at their referendums early in 26, are expressing concerns or how to tackle the fact that the Lieutenant
- Governor is actively going out and canvassing neighborhoods to stop the referendum from passing in those
- areas. I wasn't gonna bring it up, but when you talked about concerns about what could happen,
- if we asked early that cropped back up into my mind. And so I didn't know if anyone has brought that
- to your attention or asked what the ramifications could be concerning that. I know your numbers, but
- I don't know how it changes the dynamic of the numbers for a pass. No, it's a relatively new development
- within the last week in terms of that piece.
- And so I don't know that anyone at this point has any sense on what that means. There's honest concern
- from a lot of constituents across the state about property tax liability. And that, unfortunately, back
- to this analogy, pushes up against what services are we providing for our students or not. And so I
- think it's just another wrinkle to a complicated story.
- Well, thank you so much for your time and energy. We appreciate you as always. Thank you. Appreciate
- the partnership. Absolutely. OK. We move on to something a little bit easier, which is our consent agenda.
- And that includes the following. The memorandum from the executive session and minutes from the hearings
- and regular board meeting held on September 23rd, 2025. The memorandum from executive session held on
- October 21st, 2025.
- ECA expenditures overnight and out-of-state field trips, financial report from September, appropriation
- balance report from September, register of claims from October 28th, 2025, payroll and payroll claims
- September 2025, request to declare a surplus and authorized disposal of out-of-date items. Do I have
- a motion regarding the approval of the consent agenda? So moved. Second? Second.
- been moved by Ashley and seconded by Asia that we approve the consent agenda as presented. All those
- in favor of the motion to approve the consent agenda signify by saying aye. Aye. Any against?
- Any abstentions? Yes, because I wasn't at the executive session. It's all abstained. Ah, OK.
- That's fine. So let it be known that we have six. Nope. Yes, we have six ayes and one abstention. Ross Grimes.
- But with that, the motion does carry. Next for our consideration are donations. We have received donations
- of over $9,000. As always, we thank our donors. Your generosity is greatly appreciated. Do I have a
- motion to accept our donations? Do I have a second? It's been moved by Ross and seconded by Aaron Wyatt
- that we accept the donations as presented.
- All those in favor of the motion to approve, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any against? Any abstentions?
- The motion carries. Next for our consideration is the personnel report. Do I have a motion to approve
- the personnel report as presented? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. It's been moved by Ashley and
- seconded by Ross that we approve the personnel report as presented. Dr. Henderson.
- President Hennessey, Dr. Winston, and members of the Board of School Trustees, this evening, I'd like
- to call your attention to the following administrative appointments. I'll give a slight pause to allow
- those administrators to address the board, and then we'll discuss some retirements. So first up this
- evening is Marty Koglazier being recommended to the board this evening to serve as the interim principal
- of the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship. Marty returns to MCCSE.
- After serving as the principal at Fairview Elementary School for five years, Marty holds a master's
- degree in elementary education from the University of Indianapolis. Marty? Thank you so much. I'm very
- happy to serve the district as the interim principal at the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship
- Most importantly, I'm happy to serve the students and to be there for them and to be there for the faculty
- at the Academy and for my friend Mrs. Evans. And I really wish her a very speedy recovery and to hurry
- up and get back to her school. And anyway, I'm just really happy to be there and to serve in this capacity.
- And I appreciate your willingness.
- And mainly the last reason that I am willing and able at this point to serve in this capacity is that
- I heard that the district was opening a retirement and a nursing home for retired administrators, and
- I wanted to be the first one in line. So thank you very much.
- I think we're good. I'd like to hear more about that retirement program, but yeah. Up next this evening,
- I'd like to introduce Hattie Johnson. She is returning to MCCSE to serve in the capacity of interim
- director of our child nutrition department. Hattie returns after serving the MCCSE as director of child
- nutrition for 14 years. Hattie holds a master's degree in counseling from Valparaiso University.
- Dr. Winston, members of the board. I am really happy to be here. I didn't think I would be this happy,
- but it feels like really great to be home. I'm appreciative that y'all thought about me when you needed
- somebody to step in for a little while. I didn't come to stay. I didn't come to stay. I came to be helpful
- and of service to the students and families at MCCSC. I am really looking forward to getting started
- Monday, so thank you.
- We appreciate you both being willing to come back and to serve again in the district. I would like to
- just echo that. We are so grateful and indebted to both of you for just your tireless years of service.
- And the fact that you're really ready to step out of retirement and come back and serve, we appreciate
- that. And our children are only going to benefit. So thank you both for your immediate yes responses.
- I do want to reiterate that one of the very first things that Ms. Johnson said to me on the phone when
- I was speaking with her about this opportunity was, you are talking about a short-term step, right?
- She was very clear. Again, this evening I'd also like to draw your attention to two retirements in the
- board packet this evening. We have one administrator retirement, Tim Hudson, who has been serving
- with MCCSE for the last 16 and a half years as an assistant principal at Bloomington High School North.
- This was actually Mr. Hudson's second stint with MCCSE, having previously served as assistant principal
- at Jackson Creek Middle School for three years prior to leaving the district for a little while and
- then coming back at Bloomington High School North. In addition to that, we have a certified staff retirement,
- Karen Papadopoulos,
- She's been with MCCSE for the last 29 years, serving most recently as a Title I teacher at Grandview
- Elementary School. On behalf of MCCSE, I would certainly like to extend a special thanks to these retirees
- for their many years of dedicated service and wish them well in their next adventures. And at this time,
- I request that you please approve the recommendations presented in your board packet in the personnel
- report. Thank you, Dr. Henderson. Any other comments from the board?
- Well, I want to wish our retirees all the best. And for Tim Hudson, we used to go Pokemon hunting together.
- When his grandson was about the same age as my son, we would go catch Pokemon on these hot summer days,
- because that's what you could do. That's what you could do to get these boys to walk. So that's what
- we did. But anyway, so best wishes to all of those retiring.
- All those in favor of the motion to approve the personnel report, please signify by saying aye. Aye.
- Any against? Any abstentions? The motion carries. We'll now move to contracts. Do I have a motion to
- approve the contracts and a quote as presented? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. It's been moved
- by Ashley and seconded by Tiana that we approve the contracts and quote as presented, Mr. Irwin.
- Thank you, President Hennessy, Dr. Winston, and members of the board.
- particular agreements that I would like to call to your attention of just kind of that feel-good nature.
- One is with Big Brothers Big Sisters. They provide mentoring services to students at no cost to the
- corporation. So that is an example of a great partnership we have in the community that come in and
- directly support our students. And then another one is with Stone Belt Freight. They provide a semi
- to help Bloomington North Band get their equipment to competitions and
- And again, that contract is for not to exceed $10. So I just wanted to call attention to both of those
- agreements as prime examples of the way that our community rallies around the school corporation to
- support our students and just say thank you. That's awesome. Thank you, Mr. Irwin. Anything else?
- You're good? That's it. I recommend us. OK, cool. Any comments from the board? I don't know if we can
- afford it. $10. That's a lot.
- pushing it. All those in favor of the motion to approve the contracts in quote, please signify by saying
- aye. Aye. Any against? Any abstentions? Motion carries. We now move to budget resolutions. Next is the
- recommendation to adopt the 2026 budget resolution. Resolution 2025-20, which is appropriations and
- tax rates for the 2026 budget.
- Resolution 2025-21 is for the 2026 capital projects plan. Resolution 2025-22 for the 2026 bus replacement
- plan. Resolution 2025-23, anticipated transfers. And resolution 2025-24, the budget resolution. Do I
- have a motion to adopt these budget resolutions as presented? So moved. Do I have a second? Second.
- It's been moved by Ross and seconded by Tiana that we adopt the twenty twenty six budget resolutions
- as presented. As you mentioned, there are five separate resolutions that you are approving. We talked
- about this throughout the process dating back to August when we asked for permission to advertise September.
- We did our hearing and then this month we do adoption and then
- With you all's approval, then we will submit that up in Gateway to the DOGF for them to work the budget.
- So again, everything has been submitted. We followed the plan as far as what the state's requirements
- are. The form for that, like I said, that's the resolution that shows the proposed levies and rates.
- Again, we said that has the fluff in it. We know, and I think many of you have been through this a few
- times, some of you not as much, but we talked about this throughout the process, that it has that fluff
- in there. That is the ceiling.
- DLGF comes in and works that budget. They put in actual AV. They put in the actual levies that we'll
- use and as it relates to what it is that we have in there. And then they come back and work that. We
- know that AV and we talked about some of these things in Barry's presentation that our AV this year
- did decline slightly, about a little over 1% in our non-referendum AV. And then our referendum AV declined
- about a little under half a percent.
- is that first form, that's the same form that every school corporation in the state approves. That's
- the one that's a part of the process. And then you saw the backup forms that feed up into it. It's the
- same things again, that we show during August and September. And then the capital projects resolution,
- that's for the capital projects plan that again, that's been advertised since September 2nd. The same
- thing would be for the bus replacement plan. Again, it's the resolution that flows along with the bus
- replacement plan that again, has been posted since September 2nd.
- And then the other two resolution one is the transfer amount for the last six months between education
- and operations. That just clarifies, I know at the beginning of the year you pass a resolution that's
- an up to amount for the entire year. This is just solidifying through the budget process what we expect
- to do during the last six months of the calendar year. It helps our DOGF rep and it backs up to what
- it is that we have in our budget in the individual sheets. And then the last one is one
- and that's a little bit newer that I'm accustomed to doing, but it's the resolution that gives Dr. Winston
- and I the ability to make any adjustments to the 1782 notice when it comes in from the DOGF in December,
- sometimes as late as January, hopefully not, but typically in December when that 1782 or the budget
- order, when the DOGF rep has worked our budget, they'll send that back and they'll say, you have a 10
- day period to make any adjustments to this that you wish to make. That allows her and I to talk that over
- make those adjustments to make sure that we meet the goals of the board. So with that, I'm recommending
- your approval of all five of the different pieces for the budget adoption. Thank you, Mr. Erwin. Do
- we have any comments from the board? OK. Yeah, I think we have done lots of discussion and meeting on
- these things in prior months at these board meetings. So all those in favor of the motion to approve
- the 2026 budget resolutions,
- As noted, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any against? Any abstentions? The motion carries. We now
- have a policy that is presented for first reading, new policy 5111, eligibility of resident or non-resident
- students. Dr. Winston. Yes, thank you, President Hennessy. Yes, policy 5111 has to do with revisions
- being made to update the current language.
- HEA 1064 amends Indiana Code 20-26-11-30 and 20-26-11-32, which addresses the transfer of students to
- a corporation outside of the student's legal settlement, ultimately to primarily eliminate the athletic
- reason prohibition when a student is transferring.
- to another Indiana school corporation. The elimination of this prohibition was in response to the new
- IHSAA ruling, which allows a student to transfer one time for athletic reasons to another member's school
- and maintain eligibility for athletics at that school. So this policy is presented for the first reading
- and will be presented for the second and final reading at the November 18th board meeting. Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
- As this is a first reading, there is no action that's required. If you have any questions or concerns
- about the policy as it's written, please do let Dr. Winston know. Thank you, Dr. Winston. And we will
- now move on to district updates. Tonight we have several informative updates to be presented. The first
- is the human resources update, Dr. Henderson.
- Dr. Winston and members of the Board of School Trustees like to thank you for the opportunity to share
- an update from the Human Resources Department with you this evening. I'd like to spend a little time
- this evening
- spend a little time this evening providing the board with and the public with a staffing update, share
- some more information about the review and analysis process that we engage in on a weekly basis, and
- discuss some of the current openings that we are hiring for and how members of the community can apply
- for those opportunities. At a previous board meeting I shared some data with you regarding how we started
- the school year and I just want to remind you of a few key items.
- 98% of our allocated positions were filled when school began. I wanna remind you that this is a typical
- percentage as we often learn of resignations from existing staff just before they're scheduled to return
- from summer break. And filling those late vacancies takes a little bit of time. I shared that
- our certificated staff to student ratio saw a minimal increase this year and I'll remind you of that
- number in a future slide.
- And as we analyze ways in which we could increase the quality of services we provided to students in
- the midst of this, one example of how we were able to do that comes directly from our Director of Health
- Services. She developed a plan that was not only fiscal responsible and saved the corporation money,
- but that also increased the number of registered nurses in our corporation from 11 to 13, ensuring that
- our students are receiving high quality care in our buildings on a daily basis.
- Every position in the school corporation is evaluated based on student needs and corporate operational
- functioning needs. So just to remind you of how we manage that process. So as I just shared, we've been
- strategic and measured in our staffing decisions across all areas. And this brings me to an important
- point about transparency and how our community accesses staffing information.
- like to take a moment to help everyone better understand how to interpret some publicly reported staffing
- data on the state's public dashboard, the Indiana Gateway. As a public school corporation, we're required
- to publicly report employee data, including employee positions and wages. It's important for everyone
- to fully understand how the data is reported so that it can be accurately interpreted.
- The first point I would like to make is that this data is reported on a calendar year basis, not on
- a school year basis. I'll talk about how that, what implications that has as we work through this slide.
- But before we begin, I wanted to find some standard human resources terminology that's widely accepted
- across organizations.
- The term administrator is commonly defined as someone who holds a leadership position and who
- has decision-making authority for that organization. At MCCSC, a few examples of administrators include
- the superintendent, the assistant superintendent positions, central office directors, and school principals
- and assistant principals.
- In contrast, an administrative position is a support position that performs administrative support tasks.
- A few examples of those positions within MCCSC could include human resources, staff, and payroll personnel,
- administrative assistants, or secretaries. It's not accurate to use those two terms interchangeably.
- Next, I'd like to outline how positions may appear on the dashboard.
- and how to interpret a listing of positions correctly. There are various reports in the Indiana Gateway,
- so I want to really share this general context that can be applied across those reports. The most important
- thing to know is that a position listed does not necessarily translate to an employee working during
- that particular school year, as we typically think of it.
- The way payroll works in a public school corporation, contracts for teachers and administrators encompass
- portions of two calendar years. So their payroll records span across those two calendar years. When
- looking at data in Gateway, an employee who left the corporation at the conclusion of school year 2022-23
- and is listed in the 2022 Gateway Report, still appears on a 2023 Gateway Report
- even though they are technically not employed during the 23-24 school year. As a result, people who
- have left the organization appear in both annual reports, but they're not actually serving students
- during the second school year. To get an accurate count of employees serving students in a given year,
- this overlap needs to be accounted for, and that is not evident in a Gateway Report. A perfect example
- of this would be myself.
- I appeared in the 2024 Gateway Report and so did my predecessor. However, I was the only one who worked
- for MCCSE during the 2024-2025 school year. That same situation occurs every time there's a transition
- during the summer between school years. So it's critically important that you understand that context
- as you're reading those reports.
- One example is that MCCSE has seen a net increase of 5.5 administrator positions in the last five years.
- However, during the 24-25 school year, when we began our two-year strategy to achieve financial balance,
- we applied the same process of leveraging attrition to administrators as we did with other certified
- staff members.
- This resulted in a reduction of four administrative positions for the 2025-2026 school year. But those
- individuals would still be listed on the 25 gateway report because they would have received pay during
- the 2025 calendar year. We continue to evaluate staffing levels across every employee group as we seek
- balance with our enrollment numbers and our available revenue.
- Viewing an Indiana Gateway data report without this context could easily result in inflated numbers
- of positions. So my goal in sharing this important information is to ensure our community members have
- the context of how corporation data is reported and some of the nuances that need to be considered when
- evaluating those reports. As student enrollment declined as shown on the slide above,
- numbers of teachers remained unchanged from the 2019-2020 to the 2024-2025 school year. With no certified
- staff reductions other than voluntary retirements and resignations in the 25-26 school year, our ratio
- is nearly unchanged. The ratio is, oops, sorry, transitioned twice there. The ratio went from 12.9
- to 13.4 certificated staff
- So a half a percent of change. This particular number doesn't necessarily relate to what teachers see
- in their classrooms with regard to actual class size. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about the
- process that we've gone through to analyze class size across the corporation. All schools submitted
- weekly enrollment counts every Wednesday, starting before school even started,
- and continuing all the way up through our ADM count day. Members of the human resources and curriculum
- instruction assessment teams went out and visited schools and physically counted students in classrooms.
- And we have weekly meetings with directors of special education that include reviews of caseloads, class
- sizes, pending evaluations and enrollments of students with special needs.
- So let's look specifically at class size averages across the district. Our early learning class sizes
- average 14 per classroom. Our kindergarten through sixth grade classes across the district average 23.
- At our secondary schools, counting all content areas, electives, everything that we offer, the average
- class size
- is 22 across all of our secondary schools. This includes the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship
- as well as Bloomington Graduation School. This is not just our larger comprehensive middle schools and
- high schools. When we dig a little deeper and we start talking about those content area classes that
- are really required for things like that honors seal that is new, if you look at English, math,
- science and social studies along with world language, the class size average is 23. So I want to point
- out that this data does not include the Hoosier Hills Career Center because that serves not only MCCSC
- schools, but five surrounding school corporations as well. So we didn't include that data in this analysis.
- We do recognize that there are outliers. There are classes that are smaller than this.
- And there are classes that are larger than this, depending upon the offerings and the content area at
- play. But at the secondary level, one of the things that we try really hard to do as a corporation is
- offer a diverse range of classes to meet the needs and the interests of the students that we serve.
- So that's why you see that reflected in those class sizes. When we begin to offer very discrete and
- very specific course offerings that are tailored to
- the interests and talents of our students, sometimes we see that impact the overall class average. I
- want to speak a little bit this evening to how the HR team works in collaboration with departments and
- directors, as well as the business office and the curriculum instruction office on a weekly basis. We
- conduct weekly meetings in my department, the HR department,
- with the directors of each department to review their current staffing levels, the metrics that we use
- to determine appropriate staffing, and establish context for a weekly staffing analysis meeting. These
- weekly meetings with directors really provide an opportunity to gain additional insight to each department's
- individual needs as well as the student needs at any given point in time.
- We then take that context from those weekly meetings with directors to a collaborative analysis meeting
- where leaders from HR curriculum and the business departments meet every Friday to review those staffing
- numbers and to make recommendations about filling positions. Our goal is always to meet the needs of
- our students while ensuring financial sustainability
- and meeting our operational requirements as an organization. I'd like to share a little bit about current
- openings that exist within MCCSC that are currently posted and highlight the fact that we have postings
- out for guest teachers, operations staff positions, a special education teaching position, instructional
- support staff positions, and our extended day staff positions as well.
- Some folks may be asking in the community, how in the midst of budgetary constraints can MCCSE still
- be hiring? So the positions that are being hired are as a result of new openings that result when employees
- leave MCCSE for a variety of reasons. Staff members don't just leave this organization during the summer
- months. It's important to know that that turnover happens all year long.
- These positions are student facing or operationally essential roles that must be replaced when a staff
- member has left a position. So as previously mentioned, these positions have all gone through a rigorous
- analysis process where HR curriculum in the business office leadership position members review these
- positions weekly to determine which vacancies meet the criteria for being refilled,
- and to ensure that we're remaining fiscally responsible to the community. As a reminder and a thank
- you to our community, in 2022, we passed a referendum that continues to support MCCSE employees, teachers,
- and staff members. That 2022 referendum funding continues to support a portion of all employees' wages
- and benefits. In our referendum impact report that we published in May of 2025,
- We reported $34.5 million of the 2022 referendum had been invested to date in teachers and staff through
- hourly and base salary increases. These significant investments have allowed MCCSC to continue to attract
- and retain highly qualified educators and staff in a very competitive job market. As always, I'd like
- to express a thank you to all of our employees, teachers and staff for everything that they do every day
- to make MCCSC a great place to learn and work. And a special thank you to our community for your support
- of our referendum. Thank you for the opportunity to present this evening. Thank you, Dr. Henderson.
- Are there any comments from the board? I really appreciate that you highlighted how to properly look
- inside of the database.
- because of the large inflation of numbers. Agree. I think it's really important. I mean, not only have
- I seen it be misreported in at least one of our local papers, I've heard people use numbers inaccurately
- as well. And I think it's very important for people to understand
- how to read those numbers and how those, the impact of those numbers will occur on that report.
- And I, you know, I think it's one of those interesting things because I think we stressed it too when
- we were beginning the, I don't want to say reduction, but the attrition process, right? And sort of
- reducing through attrition, we were very clear that, and actually the first round of that sort of
- attrition was at the administrative level, right? Both administrators and administrative and in this
- building and any, and that's the other thing that I just want to say. Like when you think about who
- is housed under the sort of main administrative office or the MCCSC main office, it isn't just the people
- who work in that building. There are other people who sort of get housed under that payroll because
- they don't have, for instance, like a homeschool.
- So I just, I think there are all of these sort of nuances and variables that people don't quite understand
- when they begin to look at that data and use those numbers to make points. So I really appreciate the
- clarity with which you delivered that. Yeah, I was gonna, well, I was gonna say everything that April
- said, but I definitely appreciated that. But I was gonna say, I appreciate you saying that you got those
- positions open and why.
- what that means, so thank you. Any other comments? Then it looks like our next presentation is an early
- learning update from Dr. Dowling. Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Winston, President Hennessy, members
- of the Board of School Trustees for this opportunity to provide an early learning update.
- The main topics I'll be talking about this evening are student and family impact, enrollment with a
- focus on increased access due to the 2023 referendum, academic outcomes, and then talk about our infant
- and toddler programs. First, again, I'm gonna talk about our early learning impact on both our students
- and families. In May of 2025, Dr. Henderson highlighted this. We shared a referendum impact report.
- In that report, we've shared in detail how we've spent the money
- particularly in the aspect of early learning. In that report, you can also see lots of feedback from
- our community members, from our families who have taken advantage of our early learning programs. I
- encourage everybody to look at it. It'll brighten your day if you read those comments. It certainly
- brightens mine when I read them. Just to share one on student impact, this is a quote from one of our
- families. My child has shown significant growth across all areas, academically, emotionally, and socially.
- has become more confident in his learning, more emotionally aware and resilient, and has built strong,
- positive relationships with peers and adults alike. We know that this has had a huge impact on not just
- our children, not just on our students, but also on our families. This is a quote from one of our families
- about the impact on the whole family. We love the Pre-K program. The program is full day, which has
- enabled me to keep a steady work schedule. It has also learned values we practice at home, like inclusivity
- and tolerance, which are of utmost importance.
- And I think this quote highlights among the student quote as well about this is not just an investment
- in our students, but an investment in our families and our community. Really happy to share some of
- these enrollment numbers to show how access to early learning has increased thanks to the 2023 referendum.
- MCCSE family access to early learning has more than doubled since we've expanded our programs courtesy
- of the referendum. Our three-year-old preschool and four-year-old pre-K numbers
- have increased from 262 to 526 students, more than doubling. We know for our pre-K program, 100% of
- our students either attend for free or half cost or less. And with our expansion of our three-year-old
- preschool program this year, we know that 75% of our students are attending for free, thanks to the
- referendum. I always like to take time to highlight our curriculum that we use. We do use a play-based
- curriculum because we know that's what's best for kids and how students best learn in early learning.
- We use a program called CRETA curriculum. We know that it improves kindergarten readiness. We know that
- it supports the whole child. We know that it's aligned to Indiana's early learning standards, and that
- it's in alignment with our desire to have a play-based curriculum. I wanted to circle back to our enrollment
- numbers, because I really think it shows how this referendum has had a direct impact on increased access
- to early learning in our corporation. These are our four-year-old pre-K number enrollment numbers earlier
- this year from September 10.
- Really just wanna highlight how we have a four-year-old pre-K program in all our elementary schools.
- As of September 10th, we had 322 students, which is higher than what we started with last school year,
- so we know our program continues to grow. We also have six community partners where students are accessing
- pre-K through the support of the 2023 referendum. Our numbers went from 46 last year at our six community
- providers to 62 this year, so we know that is also continuing to grow, which we're really pleased to see.
- Just highlighting some increased access, we know that our pre-K numbers more than doubled from 23-24
- to 24-25 when we increased with the referendum funds. And we know that our enrollment from this year
- in pre-K is higher than it was to start last school year. Looking at our three-year-old preschool program,
- which is what we've been able to expand this year courtesy of the referendum, we have 115 students in
- our three-year-old preschool programs across our six elementary schools and our two early learning centers.
- We have 27 students at our community partners who are accessing these programs using MCCSE referendum
- funds. So to highlight some increase in three-year-old preschool enrollment because of the referendum,
- in MCCSE-based programs, our preschool enrollment is increased by 47.4%. When you include the students
- that we're supporting in our community providers, access in three-year-old preschool is increased by
- 82% due to the referendum.
- What we know, what we know that increased access means more of our students are school ready. I'm going
- to talk a little bit more about that now. We use an assessment in early learning and in our early learning
- programs, iSprout is a commonly used assessment used in Indiana. It's an observational test so teachers
- are observing their students and then recording data. The goal of that assessment is really to see how
- our students, particularly for our pre-k students, is how they are measuring up in kindergarten readiness.
- At the beginning of last school year, 19% of our students were demonstrated to be kindergarten ready.
- By the end of last school year, it was now 83%, an increase of 64% of our pre-K students now
- being kindergarten ready for this year. We're really pleased by that data. I want to just dig into the
- data a little bit more to show that this data is more than just these important early literacy and early
- math skills. It also is about social foundations,
- physical well-being and motor development, science and fine arts, it's really a perspective of the whole
- child. So that red bar is a three, and the dark blue is at the end of school year. And you can see at
- the end of school year that our students were above that 3.0 line, showing that they were ready, not
- just one of the domains, but all six domains, that they were kindergarten ready. We know that that data
- is really important, but we know is equally valuable as our feedback from our kindergarten teachers.
- And since the very beginning of the year, as I was visiting schools, as I'm visiting classrooms, we're
- hearing from our kindergarten teachers that this year is different, that they can see that our students
- are more ready for kindergarten than they've ever been. Our students are feeling more confident, feeling
- more prepared, feeling more comfortable, whether it's classroom discussions or attending specials with
- their specials teachers. This is the feedback we're hearing across the corporation from our kindergarten
- teachers. We know that our students feel more prepared to know what's expected of them.
- It's just been a really positive experience for them to start this year. I want to conclude by highlighting
- our really important infant and toddler programs that serve children in our community. We have programs
- for our infants and toddlers that are two early learning centers, early learning center south and early
- learning center north. Some key takeaways I want to finish with is that just sharing that access to
- early learning in our corporation is more than double, courtesy of the referendum.
- Want to point out how amazing this is, especially in light of what's unfortunately happening across
- the state. In the state right now, we have over 25,000 students who are on a wait list for CCDF who
- are unable to access early learning programs because of these cuts that are happening across the state.
- We are protected and blessed to have this referendum. So we are having very different outcomes for our
- children because of this referendum. And for that, I'm eternally grateful.
- I'm eternally grateful for our teachers and our staff who are providing the high quality programs that
- is demonstrating exceptional student growth. So I guess I will just conclude by giving one more thank
- you to the community for this referendum, because we know the impact it's having on our students and
- our families. At that time, I'll say thank you and then see if there are any questions. I've got one
- quick question. Do we know what percent of our pre-K four-year-olds last year matriculated into MCCSE
- kindergarten?
- We do. It's about, I don't remember exactly what it is, between 85% and 95% of our students have continued
- with us moving from pre-K to kindergarten. The ones that didn't, did they go somewhere else within our
- community or did they move? Some of them actually chose to, they really enjoyed early learning, but
- they wanted to be homeschooled for kindergarten or they moved. But most of them, the ones I've talked
- with, continued on with us. Great question. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?
- Thank you, Dr. Dowling. Oh, you're up again. You're just going to stay. OK, I'm like, you're staying?
- Is there something you'd like to say? I'm looking. I'm reading my notes. What's next? OK, take it away.
- We are now on our last redistricting. Here we go. Yeah, so I'm excited to provide an update
- on our redistricting study and our commission. Nice topics. I'm going to talk about a commission dashboard
- that we've been using.
- and I'll talk about Dr. Baten who created that dashboard with our commission and how we've been using
- that. I'll talk about how we continue to study redistricting scenarios and we've had an even more robust
- data to our approach. Now those are things I want to highlight including next steps. I always like to
- talk about our project charter because it defines the scope of our work. Our project charter purpose
- is to study redistricting as a mechanism to balance socioeconomic status across our schools when considering
- cost effectiveness of both current and redistricted models. Our charter includes our goals and metrics
- and how we define success. Our commission is focused on finding considerations to achieve improved
- socioeconomic status balance to get a better understanding of that. We wanna get a better understanding
- of the factors that inform cost effectiveness of our buildings.
- We, of course, want to have a primary focus on the impact of these things that we're studying on our
- students and our families. And, of course, there's important data that we continue to study, including
- building utilization rates and demographic trends and those impacts they will have on our building
- utilization. The redistricting study timeline, we continue to study at this time elementary scenarios
- to see what insights we can get about the board considerations in our community
- priorities and community considerations. We will then shift to looking at secondary scenarios including
- at the middle and high school level and then in spring we anticipate sharing a board a report with the
- board in the community that will summarize the insights that we have gained through throughout
- the commission's work. Just really wanted to kind of share get into the details a little about
- the commission's work. We were working on
- evaluating reducing scenarios using some really important data that we got from a demographer,
- Preston Smith, that was really helpful in getting us started. The data that we had from him included
- enrollment, building capacities, we added some geographic proximity, and we were really focused on looking
- at socioeconomic status through using free and reduced lunch rates. We found that really helpful, but
- from the very beginning, we were working with commission members, they wanted more data, they wanted
- more robust data, and I think that was a really important ask, so we've been able to
- With the work of Dr. Beighton, who I will introduce shortly, we were able to add some data to our approach.
- That included US Census data and county survey data. So now that we had the data we're using and with
- the data dashboard created by Dr. Beighton, we've been able to have an even more robust approach to
- studying maps. We have an interactive tool that we now are using to study reducing scenarios, to gain
- those insights that we're seeking.
- At this time, I'd like to introduce Dr. Baten. He will talk more about the data dashboard that he has
- created. He is a GIS coordinator and, very importantly, a commission member. And he's been working with
- myself and Dr. Garmin McLean to create those maps that we've been studying as a commission. Thanks,
- Tim. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, so I'm John Baten. I work in the Monroe County Surveyor's Office, GIS
- coordinator from Monroe County. Yeah, this has been like a really fulfilling
- process to be part of. I have kids in MCCSC and so public schools are a foundation of our democracy
- and I also think for our community. So whatever is good for MCCSC is also good for Monroe County at
- large. There we go, yeah. So Tim mentioned that I've been creating this but it's been a collaborative
- effort between Tim, Blaine, myself and the rest of the commission to actually create these dashboards.
- As Tim mentioned, some of the data we were looking at
- to begin with for SCS was looking mainly at free and reduced lunch rates. What we brought in were some
- different metrics and some of this was parcel data. So looking at kind of the average assessed value
- of parcels, number of address points within parcels to get a better idea of kind of what would
- the composition of current attendance zones are. There's a QR code on here that you can access to
- look at the dashboard. This is configured for both mobile and desktop. I would say that the desktop
- functionality is a little bit more robust with some more kind of bells and whistles. So the parcel analysis
- gives us a good idea of the current kind of attendance zones, those ones that currently we're using
- for MCCSC. And again, it's kind of that compensation of the residential use type, thinking
- that a single-family parcel probably equates to a higher SES metric than, say, an apartment complex
- or a commercial housing, which would be a rental unit.
- We also brought in data from the U.S. Census, and now the census occurs in every decade, but there's
- also something that comes out that's called the American Community Survey, and what this is is almost
- like an aggregate value of kind of more in-depth qualitative questions that might be asked to census
- takers. The 2020 census, as I'm assuming a lot of you know, was wrought with errors and issues. There
- were questions in the census that were
- An appropriate initiative has been asked in the first place. It also took place during COVID. So there
- was a lower kind of count that we'd be getting. The ACS data, however, is a kind of a composition of
- data from 2019 to 2023. So it's a five-year average. And this has information about things like access
- to vehicles, educational attainment at a census block group level or a census track level.
- So we're able to bring that in as well. Now some of the challenges that we encountered with this is
- that the current intended zones were drawn, I believe, around 2006, 2005, and when they were drawn they
- weren't really following any type of authoritative geography. What I mean by an authoritative geography
- is actually using a established reference point to build off of.
- We're now beginning to look at using census data, census block data, or that geometry of the census
- to shape kind of these attendance zones to give us a better idea of who is there and also moving forward,
- who's going to be there in the future. So those are some of the things that we're kind of looking at.
- I think I've probably already gotten into some of these limitations. Again, these census tracts are
- not aligning with the attendance zones. And so what we might have here would be, I believe that's Lakeview
- attendance zone.
- it crosses something like four or five different census tracts. And so you get these kind of weird values
- when you're trying to get an actual number of what's going on within these different groups. Again,
- what we're doing today now is looking at
- using census block group geometry as that authoritative data moving forward to shape these new attendance
- zones. And it's like I said, it's been a really fulfilling exercise and a process working with
- the commission, working with Tim and Blaine throughout this. I think that's probably all I have. Yeah.
- So yeah, just to conclude, as John mentioned, we've been able to create these example scenarios for study.
- at the census block level and we have our data with the data that John has brought has allowed us to
- really bring a lot of robust table to these scenarios that we're studying and allowing us as a commission
- to gain insights about what we can learn about the board priorities and the community considerations
- through studying these example scenarios. Just to finish talking about our timeline, we're continuing
- studying these elementary scenarios to see what we can learn. We'll then certainly look at the secondary
- scenarios and what insights we can gain by
- studying those maps as a commission. And then we will conclude the commission by sharing a
- report, summarizing the things that we've learned and share with the board for consideration and with
- the public. Thank you. And are there any questions? I'm sure Dr. Bain would be happy to take questions.
- He can certainly handle the technical ones because I'll definitely defer to him on those ones, yeah.
- Questions from the board or comments? I have a couple of questions. Go ahead.
- Thank you, Dr. Payton. This sounds like really valuable in this process. So thanks for your help with
- this. This question might be premature, but has adding in those other considerations beyond free and
- reduced lunch changed, significantly changed your understanding of the socioeconomic balance between
- our elementary schools? I don't know if it's changed that. It's helped us. For example, one of the community
- considerations is about building utilization
- So that is something that I'd see kind of goes together. And thus, it allows us to study that one alongside
- balancing SES. So I wouldn't say that. I would just say it just allowed us to get more insight about
- a variety of things at the same time by adding the community considerations. Does that answer your question?
- It does. Yeah, it does. Sorry, that was loud. Thank you. It does. I'm enthusiastic. My other question is,
- is maybe sadder. So as you're considering cost-effectiveness, has your team at all looked to see whether
- other school districts that have gone through redistricting have had a significant loss in attendance
- or whether it might impact our ability to pass a referendum? Well, the first one I can address. The
- second one we haven't looked at. So I couldn't give that a truthful answer because we haven't studied
- that one. But as a commission, we looked at Dr. Carmen-McClain has shared
- research with both me and we've shared with the commission that it's a very low percentage rate of students
- who do choose. I know it's talked about, but a lot of the research we show is that you retain between
- 98% and 99% of your students. Thank you. That's great news. I think that's really good news and sort
- of what I had seen as well. Or sometimes you see a little dip and then a bounce back in subsequent years.
- I do just want to say thank you so much, Dr. Bing, for this amazing work. I think that this is an example
- of the best kind of collaboration between community and a school corporation or an entity like this,
- an organization. And I'm just really grateful, Dr. Dowling, for your leadership in this work and for
- the commission that's made up of so many community individuals who've invested so much time in this.
- I think we started this process
- It's been a while now, right? And it's gone through multiple iterations of how to proceed, when to proceed,
- what is the answer? And I think that, you know, this too is an answer of... Okay, I'm gonna say this.
- So where I work, at Blanchard, it's a leadership development company, and our CEO, Scott Blanchard,
- has sort of coined this first pancake term.
- And his notion is that the first pancake is always the crappy pancake. It's like you have to test it
- and it's burnt or it's not cooked enough or it's a shape in. There's always something wrong with the
- first pancake, but the first pancake is necessary for every other pancake after it. And so I think this
- is a really, really good example of a first pancake that came before the board or that the board put
- out there. I think it was actually brought to us in a particular way.
- we've moved beyond the first pancake, right? And the testament, I think, here is that not only did we
- have a board that was willing to come back to the drawing table over and over and actually did listen
- to its public and its commenters and say, okay, we're hearing you, let's do this, let's try this, let's
- move here, let's investigate this. And I think we've landed in this really beautiful process now, right,
- of this amazing collaboration that is obviously
- enriching the process and I think the people in it. And so I'm just want to say thank you to all of
- you for that work. Yeah, I'll just add my thank you to we have nearly 92 commission members who signed
- up who attended now seven meetings with more meetings planned and they continue to come and they continue
- to offer their input. And we have commission members like John who's at the level of expertise that's
- brought so much with his dashboard and with interactive tool that we're using for these maps that we're
- studying it's been
- It's been a really amazing experience, and I really appreciate all the commission members' time that
- they've given to the commission. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. No, I'm a step ahead. I have final thoughts.
- Oh, yeah. Any other questions, comments? All right, take away final thoughts. Oh, OK. Do you need a
- stall for you? No, no. I think I have them collected. I just, you know, I've
- It's easy to get down in public education right now because of all the challenges, especially in our
- state at the moment. But I've been just reflecting on all of the other ways in which our corporation
- is so rich. We talked earlier about the partnership with MCEA, the retired administrators who are willing
- to come back and fill in when we need them.
- the partnerships Mr. Irwin mentioned when we were talking about contracts, the partnerships that we
- have with community organizations, and then community members who will step forward and help us answer
- questions, as well as the thank you that we keep repeating because it's so important to our voters for
- supporting our referendum. And so even though I, like I said, we've had so many meetings with hard conversations,
- I think I'm leaving here tonight just really grateful for how fortunate we are in this corporation to
- have so much support. Thank you, Dr. Dowling. We appreciate it. We now move on to comments and committee
- reports. Does the board have any comments or reports you'd like to share? Seeing none, we will move
- right along to the superintendent comments and report, Dr. Winston.
- Yes, I just have a couple to share. First of all, I just want to mention and friendly reminder that
- Friday is October 31st. And I want to remind those that are driving during that time period that during
- trick or treat hours to be aware of our children who are walking and crossing the roads. We want to
- make sure that everyone has a safe and enjoyable time. I also want to make sure that our families are
- aware that on Tuesday, November 4th, we do not have school. It's generally
- closed for election day on that day, whether there's election held or not held, but for us
- it is a professional learning day for our educators and it's a very important time and our students
- will return on Wednesday, November the 5th. I'm very excited to share with you that Pat Wilson, a retired
- teacher from Bloomington High School North, is going to be honored at the Rotary Toast.
- She's a longtime MCCSE teacher and she is the founder of the Bloomington High School North Habitat for
- Humanity student affiliate and she's going to be honored next Friday, November 7th at the 11th Annual
- Rotary Toast at Ivy Tech's Shreve Hall. Ms. Wilson's contributions to the Bloomington community, MCCSE,
- and IU have been widely recognized at the national, the state, as well as the local levels.
- Tickets for this event are still available at RotaryToast.com. 50% of the proceeds will benefit the
- Bloomington North Habitat for Humanity chapter, while the other 50% will benefit Rotary Club efforts
- for nonprofits in Monroe County. So please, if you are available, make sure to take a moment to honor
- and help us celebrate Pat Wilson.
- I think one of the main topics of conversations from early, early this morning or late last night, depending
- upon your perspective, has to do with Wilmington High School North graduate Will Klein. What an amazing,
- amazing opportunity and experience. In his 2025 World Series debut, Wilmington High School North graduate
- Will Klein pitched four scoreless innings in the World Series.
- He recorded five strikeouts and he was credited with the win after the Dodgers secured a walk-off victory
- in the 18th inning of game three. His performance was a career-long outing and came in a high-pressure
- situation with the bullpen bullpen depleted. His mother teaches for us here at Fairview Elementary for
- those of you who did not know. But he pitched four innings, five strikeouts, two hits, one walk,
- 0.0 ERA, and he got the win. So anyway, so just a celebration for another continued example of excellence
- at MCCSC, which is what we all recognize. So can we just give Will a round of applause? Thank you. And
- of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say that Dr. Henderson was his principal.
- A couple other things I just want to mention. Fall sports are winding down. We have a number of fall
- sporting events, too many to go through, but on Friday we have our football sectionals. South plays
- at home against Terre Haute South, and North plays at home against Terre Haute North. Okay, yes, they
- coordinated that. On Saturday, November 1st,
- our cross country state finals for boys and girls. North and South will both have student representatives
- participating. And last night, Hoosier Hills Career Center hosted its College and Career Pathway Fair.
- It was standing room only. I couldn't even find a place to park. And someone said, couldn't you just
- park illegally? And I said, yeah, I probably could have, but I didn't want to get towed. But it was
- a wonderful event and a shout out.
- to Christine Reitzman and her team for hosting that. And this past Saturday at the community farmers
- market, a celebrating friendship event was held where the musical event was held on the steps of Bloomington
- City Hall. And it features singers from several MCCSE elementary schools, including Binford, Clear Creek,
- Fairview, Marlin, Summit, Templeton, and University Elementary. Very exciting. In the area of musical
- and performing arts,
- There are too many events to highlight for you, but hopefully you saw the newsletter that came out on
- Friday from our communications department highlighting all of the performances across our high schools,
- across elementary and middle schools, our winter performances, our coral festivals, everything. And
- so I think it's really important to continue to celebrate the arts. That's something that we also do
- exceedingly well.
- and want to give a shout out. And I would like to just kind of conclude by making sure that everybody
- had a chance to receive our inaugural MCCSE newspaper. I think we might have some in the back that would
- be available for folks if you didn't get one. Personally, I have not yet received mine in the mail yet.
- So I'm hoping that I will get one, but in the case I don't, I've got this one. And I just want to say
- a shout out to all of our schools that are represented in here. Our effort, our hope, and part of the
- goal and priority of our board has been to make sure that we are telling our stories, that we are celebrating
- the excellence that we have been accustomed to day in and day out. And this is just one example of our attempt
- to celebrate the excellence of our students and to celebrate the excellence of our staff members and
- hopefully you found it to be good reading and informative and certainly share a copy with a friend of
- yours and I would just conclude by saying
- We could not have done this without the direction, the leadership, the guidance, and the expertise of
- Mrs. Sarah DeWeese. And so thank you so much, Sarah, for all of the time and energy and effort that
- you've put into this over the last several months in helping us to tell our own stories. That concludes
- my report. Thank you, Dr. Winston. And yes, thank you, Sarah, very much for your work on this. But also,
- I think on so many other pieces of communication in this district, I think a lot of times people think about
- the communication as the crisis communication and the sort of weekly letters that go out just saying,
- like, here's what's coming or whatever. But I think it really is so important to tell our stories. And
- I think that we have seen a really beautiful uptick in the way that our students' stories get told since
- you've been in the district. So I appreciate that so much. All right.
- Our next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 and we are adjourned.