Welcome to the August 25th, 2026 meeting of the MCCSE Board of Trustees.
We ask that you come to order. I will drink water later. Tonight, we begin with the excellence spotlight
in celebration of excellence in our school community. Ms. Harmon. Thank you. Thank you, President Kinberman,
Dr. Winston, members of the board.
It's my privilege to present the August Excellence Spotlight. This monthly recognition is a standing
feature of each regular board meeting and serves as a dedicated moment to honor individuals whose daily
contributions exemplify the mission, vision, and core values of the Monroe County Community
School Corporation. First, I'd like to recognize Josh Willis, Clear Creek, who serves Clear Creek, Arlington,
and Marlin, and he provides exceptional support across those three campuses.
where he serves as the physical education teacher. He brings professionalism, composure, and a consistently
welcoming presence to every building he supports. His ability to collaborate seamlessly with staff and
students paired with his steady and positive demeanor strengthens each school community. Thank you,
Josh. I believe he's here. Is that right? There, yeah.
Next, I'd like to recognize the Tri-North Trojan Ambassadors. They are eighth grade student leaders
who mentor and support seventh graders through Trojan transition and Trojan time. Guided by Haley Morris
and Morgan Terry and built on the foundation established by Maria Cusis, the ambassadors help younger
students build confidence, connections, and an understanding of the armor code.
Their work strengthens school culture and develops future student leaders, making them deserving recipients
of an excellent spotlight. We're proud to recognize both Josh Willis and the Tri-North Trojan Ambassadors
as the August 2026 Excellent Spotlight Honorees, their exemplary service and commitment elevate our
schools and enrich the experience of the students and families we serve. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Harmon, and congratulations to all those who were recognized tonight. And now, if we
could have the recipients that are here come down to the front, we'd like to take a picture.
like we need to have like jokes to tell during this time or like something to break the ice. Some music,
a little music. I think there's a... Somebody can pull out a bad dad joke. All right I want to again
thank the recipients for coming and as always we won't be offended if they take this opportunity
to leave, although you are, of course, also welcome to stay. We will now receive our quarterly update
on the activities of the MCCSE Foundation from Mrs. Helm. The foundation, she's not here, I didn't think
so. We're gonna skip the foundation update. Next, we will have public comment. Thank you for all those
who signed up and acknowledged the guidelines to speak to the board tonight.
As a reminder, Mrs. Butcher will ring the bell once to signal that you have 30 seconds remaining for
your comments and five bells to signal that your time has concluded. The first speaker tonight is Linnea
Amy. Hello, my name is Linnea Amy.
And I, along with Cynthia Port and Amy Jackson, will be reading for the board a letter written by Brown
University professor, former MCCSE board member and parent, Jacinda Townsend, who could not be here
this evening. Once you love MCCSE, you'll always want the best for it. And so as a former MCCSE board
trustee, I write to you as you continue to consider the much delayed redistricting that has been on
the table since before my children even entered the corporation in 2011.
I write to you as well as a current board member of Integrated Schools, a national organization whose
mission is to foster racially and socioeconomically integrated school communities, and as former board
president of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, where successful attempts at equity included the kind of
school merger that MCCSE affected in the Child's Templeton consolidation and in copious use of inter-district
transfers. As many of you are well aware, school integration peaked in 1987.
and is now horrifyingly at pre-Brown versus Board of Education levels. A common narrative used by school
segregationists is that school segregation follows housing segregation. But in fact, if we look at data
and research, we find the opposite. Housing segregation follows school segregation and not the other
way around. Seattle and Louisville are great examples of this. As those school districts became more
integrated, so did residential housing.
as white wealthy parents sued Jefferson County public schools over and over again, making JCPS effectively
abandon its 50-year effort to remain desegregated several years ago, the city of Louisville has become
wildly resegregated. To say that Bloomington needs to solve its wealth disparity issues before MCCSC
does is to ignore data such as that written about by Philip Teagler and Michael Hilton, who write that quote,
School district boundaries and school assignment policies are key drivers of residential segregation.
School boundary lines sort families by race and class, becoming a key factor in residential choices
and a priority for white policymakers seeking to preserve the segregated status quo." End quote. We
all know that a prospective buyer can, in two clicks on Zillow, determine what school district a house
is zoned for. We all know how this works. Please don't let this be your excuse.
It is a false one. Our next speaker is Cynthia Port. I've also heard this excuse, that some children
won't be comfortable with other children, that some children might be ashamed of their shoes
in a socioeconomically integrated setting. This came right out of the mouth of a former trustee, or
that some children might not
might not invite the less wealthy children or children of color to their birthday parties straight out
of the mouth of a former superintendent. That the burden of school integration shouldn't rest on the
shoulders of people who, quote, are being constantly told what to do, unquote. To which I say this,
tell that to Thurgood Marshall. Tell that to Ruby Bridges. Tell that to anyone in my generation who endured.
As someone who was the only black kid in her school for two years, I'm going to tell you that I don't
remember at this point whose birthday party I went to. What I remember is that I got the same good education
as other children. What I remember is that I have never not ever felt that my intellectual needs weren't
being addressed and challenged in a school. What I know is that I'm well educated enough to know that
this particular objection is bull.
To point to tiny social issues in all this is to deny that the most important thing a school does is
prepare a child for their future. No child in year 12 is going to care what kind of shoes another child
was wearing. They're going to care whether they're doing math at grade level and whether they're headed
to college. Which brings me to another objection segregationists love to present when opposing
socioeconomically integrated schools.
The idea that Title I schools are special sites of assistance for under-resourced children. I present
to you more from Philip Teigler, executive director of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council,
who writes of the way, quote, progressive state legislatures have generally bypassed desegregation in
favor of compensatory funding for districts with greater student need and lower property wealth.
Teegler suggests that these funding systems support segregation and penalize districts that attempt
to de-concentrate poverty, and all herein put it in starker terms than that. Title I schools shouldn't
even exist. They are built to fail. They're a way of concentrating children into public outposts of
poverty. They're a way for bottle recycling Prius drivers to say, well, we gave them extra teachers
and they still can't learn. Rather than integrate schools,
so that there aren't 25 students in a class of 30 who are still sounding out the alphabet in second
grade. And next we have Amy Jackson. Tagler and Hilton also write of the racial and economic makeup
of public schools having, quote, a profound intergenerational effect on residential segregation
or integration by affecting students' academic outcomes and career prospects.
their interracial attitudes, and their desire to live and work in integrated settings as adults," unquote.
And in my work on the Board of Integrated Schools, I hold that sentence near and dear to my heart. As
someone who graduated high school in 1988, I am a beneficiary of peak integration. My high school, which
we used to refer to as a county consolidated, was the biggest in the state. My neighbor drove a Porsche
to school. We were friends with kids who lived in Section 8 housing.
There were kids whose parents were engineers and kids who shoveled manure in the mornings. Everyone
was at that high school and everyone got to be in community with everyone else. There was little division.
We all rub shoulders. It is something I've been able to carry with me in life that I've found to be
unique. The ability to be comfortable with just about anyone of any religion or race from any socioeconomic
background in any country.
In fact, the only environments I'm not comfortable in as an adult are the ones that aren't racially
and socially integrated. We lost our way on this as our country became more diverse on a macro level,
but just as segregated at the level of community. And that's why the pendulum has swung into this really
dark air. But friends, you only have to maintain your part of the fence. MCCFC is a beloved part of
the fence for me. I know Bloomington is a place where people are trying to do the right thing,
trying to be the brightest light in that Indiana torch of stars. I urge you to consider this while making
decisions about redistricting. Jacinda Townsend. Thank you to everyone for their comments tonight. And
I'd personally add in absentia, thank you to our former colleague, Jacinda Townsend for writing in.
We now move on to the consent agenda.
For our consideration, the consent agenda includes the following. Memorandum from the executive session
and minutes from the board meeting held on July 28th, 2026. Financial report, July 2026. Appropriation
balance report, July 2026. Register of claims, August 25th, 2026. Payroll register and payroll claims,
July 2026. Request to declare as surplus an authorized disposal of out of date items.
Do I have a motion regarding the approval of the consent agenda? So moved. Do I have a second? Second.
It's been moved by Ashley and seconded by Tiana that we approve the consent agenda as presented. All
those in favor of approving the consent agenda signify by saying aye. Aye. Any against say no. Abstentions.
Motion carries. Next for our consideration are the donations.
We have received over $41,000 in donations. Thank you to all of our donors. Your generosity is greatly
appreciated. Do I have a motion to accept the donations? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. It's
been moved by April and seconded by Erin Wyatt that we accept the donations as presented. All those
in favor of approving the donations signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Against, say no.
Any abstentions? The motion carries. Now on to new business. We'll begin with the personnel report.
For our consideration is the personnel reports. 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 April that we approve the personnel report as presented. Dr.
Henderson. Thank you, President Cooperman, Dr. Winston, and members of the Board of School Trustees.
This evening, I would like to call your attention to the following administrative appointments, changes
of status, and retirements. Thomas Henderson is joining MCCSC after serving as a strength coach for
Indiana University Health. Thomas holds a master's degree in sports leadership and will serve
both as a physical education teacher and an assistant athletic director at Bloomington High School South.
In addition, Jacqueline Casebeer, her position is changing from assistant principal halftime at Highland
Park Elementary School and halftime at Templeton Elementary School to assistant principal halftime at
Templeton Elementary School and halftime at IM MCCSC online.
We also have a couple of certified staff changes of status that I'd like to draw your attention to this
evening, and we'll have an opportunity to introduce those folks to you following approval of the personnel
report this evening. Christopher Herz continues with MCCSC after serving the corporation as the strings
coordinator. Christopher holds a master's degree in violin and arts leadership from the University of
Rochester, and he will serve as the assistant director of orchestras for MCCSC.
and also Marianne Ritter. Marianne Ritter continues with MCCSC after serving the corporation as a strings
teacher at Bachelor Middle School. Marianne holds a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's
degree in secondary education from Indiana University, and she will serve as the MCCSC director
of orchestras. And finally this evening, I want to call your attention to one support staff retirement,
Laura Massey, who has most recently served as a preventionist,
at Benford Elementary School is retiring after 37 years of dedicated service to MCCSC. On behalf of
MCCSC, I'd like to extend a special thank you for Laura's many years of dedicated service and wish her
well in her next adventures. At this time, I request that you please approve the recommendations as
presented in your board packet in the personnel report. Thank you, Dr. Henderson. Do I have any comments
from the board?
The congratulations especially to our retirees. Did you say 37 years? Thank you Is there anyone here
tonight that you wanted to give time to Following the approval of personnel report. I would like to
introduce our assistant orchestra director and our orchestra director Do I have a motion to approve
the personnel report I think we did that. Thanks guys
It's a team effort tonight. All those in favor of approving the personnel report signify by saying aye.
Aye. Any against say no. Any abstentions. Motion carries. Thank you again President Cooperman. At this
time I'd like to invite Christopher Hurst our new assistant director of orchestras up to the podium
to say a couple words to the board.
evening members of the board and first thank you all so much for of course your dedication and support
of the orchestra program it's been an absolute honor to first teach in the beginning strings program
as part of our elementary strings program starting back in 2021 and last year being hired as the assistant
orchestra director and now assistant director of
with different responsibilities. I'm really honored and privileged to be serving our students musical
journeys and really excited for the opportunities going forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. Finally,
I'd like to invite Mary Ann Ritter up to the podium, our Orchestra Director. Good evening. I'd like
to thank Dr. Winston,
and President Cooperman and members of the board tonight for this opportunity. The MCCSC orchestra program
has a long history of success and I look forward to being a part of that and also seeing what new heights
we can reach in the future. Thank you again and I hope to see all of you at a concert this year. Thanks.
Thank you and congratulations to both of you. Next we will move on to the contracts.
Do I have a motion to approve the contracts and quotes as presented? Do I have a second? Second. It's
been moved by Ashley and seconded by Asia that we approve the contracts and quotes as presented. Mr.
Irwin. Thank you, President Cooperman. I have three specific agreements for tonight that I do want to
highlight. The first one is CBRE listing agreement. I provided background information on that listing
agreement for facilitating the use
are facilitating the sale of the old Herald Times building because I felt like it was important information
for everyone to know as as to why they were chosen for that for that endeavor. Not only did they meet
our RFQP requirements, but they have the resources and the connections to help us with this type of
property with selling it. They've done business here locally successfully, and we're excited to have
a quality group helping us with with this endeavor.
Another one that I want to highlight is our CSO agreement, a familiar and trusted partner of the MCCSC,
but also well-respected and established across Indiana. They were recommended after a very thorough
review and interview of the responding firms for our facility's master planning process, and CSO brings
a wealth of knowledge and experience that will be invaluable to that process as well. And then the third
one that I want to highlight is the Skillman Agreement.
That is a new partner for us, but another highly respected and regarded firm in Indiana. They have worked
well with CSO and many other school corporations and specialize in construction management, estimating,
scheduling, and bidding. And they will be very impactful throughout the process for Facilities Master
planning. And we look forward to engaging with them as well. We're going to talk a little bit more about
Facilities Master planning later on in our quarterly update. But I recommend all contracts as presented.
Thank you, Mr. Erwin.
Are there comments from the board? I just have a quick question. Did we do a facilities master planning
some years back, a few years back? And was it CSO who did that, or was it a different entity?
Do we know? During Dr. DeMuth's tenure, there was a facilities master plan that was done many,
many years ago. OK. So it's been quite a while. Yeah. OK. Thank you. But you're recalling that CSO has also done
some facility assessments. Ah, that is I did remember years ago as well for us. I just didn't know from
the facilities perspective. Okay. Thank you. Other comments or questions? All right. All those in favor
of approving the contracts and quotes signify by saying aye. Aye. Against? Abstentions? Motion carries.
Next for our consideration is the authorization to advertise the 2026 budget. Do I have a motion to
approve the authorization to advertise the 2027 budget as presented? I might have said six before.
It's seven. Mm-hmm. Thank you. I really wanted, but I'm not going to do it. Oh, six, seven. OK. It's
been done. Six, seven. Now I need a motion to approve. OK. Thank you. Do I have a second?
Second. It's been moved by Aaron Wyatt and seconded by April that we approve the authorization to advertise
the 2027 budget as presented. Mr. Irwin. Yeah, it's wild to think we're already here talking about the
2027 budget and we're at that time of year again. So what I'm going to highlight tonight and just our
authorization to advertise the budget is talking about timelines, processes, normal procedures, so that
everyone is just reminded of that.
And that's kind of where I start tonight. And it's just a reminder of that process. So when you look
at this timeline of key dates, August is when we asked for permission to advertise. In between the September
meeting is when we would actually advertise the budget and the capital projects plan and bus replacement
plan. And then we'd have our hearing with another presentation over the budget in September. Adoption
is in October.
And then in that in-between time, between October adoption, in December is when the DOGF is working
through our budget. And then in December is typically when we receive what's called our 1782 notice,
which is just our budget notice, where they have then worked the numbers, brought them back to us. We
have 10 days to respond about whether or not we agree with what it is that they've come back with. And
then that budget becomes final. So that's just a reminder of that normal process that we follow.
and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about some of those details here as we keep going. So with that
publication date, it's planned right now in our schedule for September 8th, and it has to be at least
10 days prior to our public hearing, which is set for September 22nd, so our next regularly scheduled
board meeting. The bus replacement plan and the capital projects plan, those are also posted to Gateway,
and then they're also posted to our school website. I use the term form three,
And that's simply just a notice to the taxpayer. That's the form as you walk through the budget forms
the way that it's numbered. And that's commonly referred to that here just kind of in our world. But
that's an advertise with all of our major funds and our levies and our meeting notices. And then from
an accuracy and monitoring, this year the DOGF release was called Budget 2.0. So that is the program
that we used in order to work with the Department of Local Government Finance to submit our budget.
In that, in years past, we've always talked about when we input assessed value or certified net assessed
values into the budget, we've always used 85% of their previous year's AV. And this year when they released
that new program, they went ahead and did it for us because that's what they recommend that you do.
And we'll talk a little bit more about why that is as we get through this. But again, when
we are advertising, we are setting the ceiling on our budgets.
in our levies. So as soon as those go out, you can work down, but you can't work up from that number.
And so again, we'll talk a little bit more about just some of those rules of thumb and normal processes
that we follow. And then like you said, there's that regular ongoing monitoring of revenues, expenditures,
and the process of budgeting that we walk through each year.
So this slide, what it's showing you is a comparison right now of the budget that we plan to advertise
for 2027 in comparison to our current year 2026 budget of what was approved last year through the DLGF.
And so when you look at each one of those funds, there is one on there that there's nothing there and
that's our school pension debt service.
We make our last payment on that this year. Last year we had a budget for that and a levy for that.
This year we do not because that debt is retired. So that's why you see a zero there for that. The other
budgets that you look at our education fund are both of our referendum funds and our debt service fund.
The budgets are a little smaller than last year. And that wouldn't surprise you as we continue to talk
about the things that it is that we're navigating as a school corporation. But then our operations fund,
That budget is actually bigger than what it was last year. And a lot of that has to do with, again,
planning for and making room for the expectation of escalation of prices for utilities, for services,
for goods, and all of those pieces. But also, we did some fund simplification that we talked about how
we pulled back in some of the things from 21st Century Grant going away, Extended Day, Adventure Camp,
some of those things coming back to that home fund.
makes that budget increase as it relates to just accounting for the known and expected expenditures
within that fund. So that's the one fund that individually has a higher budget than last year, but overall
budget submission is right now a little over three million in decrease from what it was in 2026 here
this current year. Couple of other quick highlights as it relates to this is again, the education fund
is smaller
When we're looking at our estimation of revenue, so how much particular do we expect to receive in tuition
support, our enrollment projections, staffing changes, all those things, those factor in to the wholesale
number that you're seeing there for the education fund. Our operations fund, we're continuing to go
with the state set max levy. That is one of two funds where we have a max levy or operating levy that
we're allowed to collect.
And that budget is increased, as I said, to account for those escalation of expenses and then just moving
back things with extended day, adventure camp and so on. With both of our referendums, we plan for the
continuation of our voter approved rates, 18 and a half cents and eight and a half cents respectively
between those two referendums as they continue to support the initiatives of the referendums. And in
our debt service, we're advertising our max allowable cash balance.
Again, that fund has a max allowable. It's kind of like the operations has a max levy. The debt service
fund has a max allowable operating balance that you can have. So again, when we advertise, we're advertising
high and knowing that we can work down. And so with that in debt service, we advertise high for our
max operating balance in that fund. We did not sell any debt during 2026. And so that is something I
wanted to make note of as well.
And then the last piece on there, as I again make mention of the bus replacement and capital projects
plan, those are have to be submitted in order to have the ability to expend operations fund dollars
on those types of expenditures. They are plans. They are not set in stone. They encompass a number of
years. The capital projects plan over a three year period of possible expenditures, the bus replacement,
a five year period.
And so that is something that we work through with the transportation department, our operations team,
as we look at that to try to make them as up to date and looking at the big picture of what we think
could possibly happen over those years. But those will be posted to Gateway and also to our school website.
What I'm going to show you next, this is just a form that actually gets released. When I say the form
three, this is the top portion of that form. And what it's giving you is just
The information about when our hearing date is, location, adoption date and location. And then it has
numbers on there as it relates to when I talked about the operations fund has a max levy. That is our
max levy for our operations fund. And that is obviously what I said we were advertising for. The number
below it talks about tax credits.
That's not a positive number. That's the amount of property tax that they expect us to not receive due
to either property tax caps. But in this case for us, it's mostly SEA-1 losses related to the supplemental
homestead deduction. So that's their estimate of what it is that they expect. And so that's on every
school corporation's Form 3 is the information that you see. So we plug in Monroe County Community School
Corporation and our information. And this looks the same for every school corporation
when they post it to Gateway. The bottom portion of the form looks like this. And so obviously,
column one, as it shows, is the fund name. But column two is our budget estimate. Those are the guardrails
of which we expect our spending to stay within over the next year. And then again, in column three,
those are the ceilings of the levies that we would need
in order to raise funds to support those budgets. And then what you're seeing is our current tax levies
in column five. And then the percentage changed from that. The operations fund one is the MLGQ for the
operations fund this year is 6%. It shows 9.39% for us. And it's because last year we levied for school
pension debt. They take that levy out of your operations fund. So the levy that you're seeing for current
on operations
That is less what it is that we needed to be able to make our pension debt payments. And so it's truly
a 6% raise from what it is that we would have been allowed last year had we not had the pension debt.
A couple of quick reminders and just touching back on some things that I know that I've reminded you
of several times, but as we look at this, we're advertising high and we're setting the ceiling for the
budget. That is a normal thing that all school corporations do.
Column two and column three. Those are the ceiling numbers from the form three that I showed you. We
are creating in column two. That is the budget. That is what we're asking for an appropriation. And
when I use the word appropriation, that is the state saying what is your authority to spend and they
agree that you have that amount of funds that you could spend and still have cash on hand at the end
of that year.
It's guardrails for spending. It is not the expectation that we would expend every one of those dollars,
but that is what the budget is setting, are those guardrails. And then again, with column three, our
advertised total levy, that will come down. Again, we advertise high, and we did that last year. We've
done that in years past. That is to protect our budget so that if AV were to change after it's been
certified, it protects us to make sure that we get
the appropriate level of levy that we need to support our budgets. And so that is a part of best practices
that when I look at bullet point one from the DOGF is that we advertise those ceilings to protect against
those unknowns. The DOGF themselves have put in the 85% as a default in the budget. And again, the budgets
are the guardrails. And again, as we look at the budget, those are estimates based on known expenditures
or expenditures that we know will come.
and revenue and it's based on historical trends and things that we know that have changed within any
given year. I can't look at just historical trends and create a budget from that because any given year
rules change. We've talked about that a lot at different board meetings and so there's a lot of information
that goes into how we determine what is the appropriate amount of revenue we expect to receive in any
given fund or the amount of expenses that we expect as well.
So I know I've thrown a lot of information at you, but again, I just wanted to preview and remind you
guys of these things. And then as we move forward into next month, I'll give a little bit more in-depth
presentation as it relates to the budget itself and the process that we go through when we create those
budgets. So with that, I'm asking for your approval to advertise. Thank you, Mr. Erwin. Are there any
questions or comments from the board?
All those in favor of the motion to approve the authorization to advertise the 2027 budget as presented
signify by saying aye. Aye. Against? Abstentions? Motion carries. Next is the first reading of policies
5341 emergency health card
Five three three zero use of medication and two three four zero field trips and other corporation-sponsored
trips Thank You president Kuperman I am presenting policy five three four one emergency health card
policy five three three zero use of medication and policy two three four zero field and other corporation-sponsored
trips for their first reading. These policies have been updated to align language in accordance with
our new health care management system, school care. I so recommend. Thank you, Ms. Harmon. Are there
questions or comments from the board? This is a first reading. No action is required. As mentioned,
this will be brought back to the board for a second and final reading in September.
Tonight we have several informative presentations. We will begin with a back-to-school update from Ms.
Harmon. Thank you again, President Cooverman, Dr. Winston, members of the board. I'm really excited
tonight to share our annual back-to-school update. It's a look at how our staff and students started
the 26-27 school year and some of the highlights from these first few weeks.
As a starting point, I really wanted to talk about what happens before. So before a single student walks
through the doors, our custodial and maintenance teams were already hard at work behind the scenes across
the corporation. They're responsible for keeping nearly 2.4 million square feet of classrooms, hallways,
restrooms, common areas, clean, safe, and ready to learn. To put it in perspective, just sharing some
numbers here, given to me by Dr. Henderson's team,
They replaced and repaired 2,650 square feet of sidewalk, installed 17,604 square feet of new epoxy
and carpet flooring, screened and recoded 36,609 square feet of hardwood gym floors, and spread 575
cubic yards of playground mulch. This is the kind of work that happens every summer, mostly unseen,
but it's what makes opening day possible.
From there, thinking about August 3rd and 4th, where every building had dedicated time to collaborate,
prepare, and plan for the year ahead. It's a shift from our usual corporation-wide kickoff events. Instead,
that time was used in buildings to plan as a whole school, collaborate as grade level and content teams,
set up classrooms, and build excitement for the opening day. These are a few photos of just the energy
and teamwork that went into those two days and also
As tradition, we take staff photos at every school, so just giving you some time to see those as well.
These photos capture the staff across our buildings.
Again, before the day the school year officially starts, staff were ready. It was time to welcome students
and families back in before the first bell. At the elementary level, families and students visit the
day before school starts for a meet and greet, which is a chance to meet their teacher and find their
classroom ahead of day one. And at the middle and high school level, we held seventh grade and freshman
orientations, building tours and orientation activities that help our incoming seventh graders and freshmen
get comfortable navigating their school before the first day.
and then students come. And so turning to enrollment, as of our unofficial count on August 18th, we
are serving approximately 9,800 K through 12 students, 530 pre-K and preschool students. We have 668
students taking class at Hoosier Hills Career Center.
and 187 learners enrolled in our adult education program. We're in our second year of our MCCSE online
with approximately 69 students. Again, these are still unofficial numbers and will be finalized in the
coming weeks, but they give us an early picture of the year ahead. And then I just wanted to share some
of those pictures of students starting school and just a peek into it. So just a couple of slides of that.
None of this happens without students getting to school safely every day. And that's thanks
to our transportation team and, of course, their parents who are also bringing them to school. But our
transportation routed 6,476 students to a bus. They managed 3,000, I'm sorry, 762 bus stops and drive
7,427 miles a day.
Also as a highlight date, our electric bus usage has saved 96,031 pounds of CO2 as well. You can see
buses roll out in this short video that's just looping for you on the first day of school. I'd also
like to highlight our Child Nutrition Department, and it's had a busy and exciting summer getting ready.
Menu planning, they successfully taste tested a couple of new items at adventure camp, tricks muffins
and hush puppies. And those were very popular and have been added to the menu, as well as a brand new
pizza at the high school level. After just one week of school, high school prepared 45 pizzas a day
and 360 slices, a lot of pizza. On grants and innovation, our child nutrition program was awarded a
competitive farm to school grant.
which will fund training and resources to grow our local food offerings, starting with a Harvest of
the Month item in partnership with IU Health and Hoosier Hills Career Center Culinary Program. And I
think I'd like to also note that our department operates six USDA child nutrition programs, the National
School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, the Afterschool
Snack Program, and the Summer Food Service Program. And soon they'll be adding the Child and Adult Care
Program at the Early Learning Center.
Beyond the classroom, our fall athletic season is in full swing, and students are back in clubs,
art programs, and activities that makes our schools feel like home. We can see here students playing
the flute, our soccer players warming up on their new field, which is also then on the right, our ribbon
cutting for that field as well. It's a great reminder that school is about so much more
than the classroom, it's about belonging and the activities that engage our students. Finally, a quick
highlight about keeping our students in safe remains our highest priority. Most recently, we've updated
our school safety terminology to align with the standard response protocol or SRP, which is a nationally
recognized framework, you can see there on the right, and have shared and established clear protocols
for communicating with staff and families through parent square.
And we are conducting emergency notification tests. Many of you probably received one on Friday, August
21st at 12 p.m. and all of the ways. And we'll have another one. All the ways. All the ways. Wanna make
sure all the ways work. Friday, January 8th at 12 p.m. as well. That's making sure our systems and our
communication with families are working exactly as they should. And as a closing point, right, we have
so many through
Reasons to be the best that we can be from our staff to our students as well every student every day
Thank you Are there any questions or comments from the board? I mean, I feel like I just um want to
say thank you to everyone who made this day possible the opening day and then the days that follow
It's clearly so much labor that goes into just ensuring that our buildings are ready to open, that they're
safe, that our kids are well fed. I have asked my child not to eat pizza every day at lunch, but there's
not much I can do about that. He does branch out occasionally. But I just think there are so many wonderful
pieces and parts to every single one of our schools in this district.
Thank you to every single person out there who has made that possible this year and every year,
but for now, this year. Thank you again, Ms. Harmon. In addition to thanking everyone that made the
first day possible, I really enjoyed this report. Thank you for putting it together. We will move on
to designing and building to sustain excellence. Dr. Anderson.
Thank you. Good evening again, President Cooper and Doctor Winston and members of the Board of School
Trustees. Tonight I am honored and excited to provide you with our August 2026 quarterly update of the
designing and building to sustain excellence initiative. So this evening we will start off with a project
that you've seen in this presentation before. That's the Bloomington High School North Athletic and
Parking project. The first slide here is just a reminder of the architects rendering of the new entry
into the football and tracks complex.
to be able to compare that to how that actually came to life as the project was completed. So this photograph
shows you that new entryway. Part of the project also involved the relocation of what was referred to
at North as the lower lot for many, many years to the field just South of the football field and track
complex between that area and the actual school building itself.
This move increased the number of parking spaces and reduced the distance between the parking area and
the football and track complex, as well as reducing the distance from the parking area to the auditorium,
natatorium, and main gym spaces. And it also improved the ability to supervise that parking area. The
batting cages were replaced and relocated, and a new turf soccer field and bleachers were installed
as part of this project.
as well as concessions area that was added to the building next to soccer and baseball fields to better
serve fans in that space as well. Additionally, a new athletic building was added to the football and
track complex that contained an updated and larger concessions area shown here on the screen along with
new men's, women's and family restrooms. You can see that is a drastic improvement over the restroom
facility that used to be out there at the football complex.
And a team room for visiting teams as well as some of our home teams during the season on non-contest
events when they're out there practicing. And we were also able to repaint the auxiliary gym, which
was a dull yellow and is now a very nice bright white that matches the main gym. This project is 99%
complete with just some minor punch list items and a few landscaping finishing touches.
left to wrap that project up. I want to move on to the Bloomington High School South Auditorium and
Main Gym project. That auditorium project started with the removal of old seats and carpeting in preparation
for new floor paint under the seating area. So you can see that new epoxy floor paint there. Next up
was the installation of the framework and new carpeting. And then finally the installation of new seating,
which really brought this space to life and
turned out to be just an absolutely beautiful space. If you haven't had an opportunity to see that,
if you're over at South and have a chance to pop in there and look at the auditorium, I think you'll
be really impressed with how that turned out. It's a beautiful project. In addition to that, the main
gym floor at South was also completely refinished. This particular project was not included in the statistics
that Mrs. Harmon shared a while ago about the square footage of gym floors that were screened and resealed.
This is a totally separate project that involved
the entire floor being sanded down to remove the old finish, including all of the old painted lines
and graphics. So you can see what that floor looks like before they stain, paint, and install new graphics
and then put the final finish on. So the new Bloomington High School South main gym floor appears here
with updated graphics, updated paint, and really, really turned out.
beautifully as well. That project is also 100% complete. Next up the transportation canopy and detention
pond project that is being pursued right now in the southwest corner of the bus lot. Um, that area is
receiving a new solar canopy that will provide charging infrastructure for 16 electric buses. This next
photograph shows the trenching that is being done. Um,
to bury the electrical connections that will connect to the chargers and they'll eventually connect
over to a new transformer on the pad that's framed up there. I was over there today and that actually
is poured and the transformers are in place, but I didn't have time to get a new picture into
the presentation for tonight. So that's moving along quite well also. These additional chargers will
all be connected to our intelligent charging grid that power our electric buses.
Also, a stormwater detention pond is being added in the southwest corner of the property as a part of
this project, and it is currently about 20% complete with canopy construction starting in October once
the infrastructure is all set in place. And finally, this evening I'd like to highlight a few of our
other hardscape projects that were completed over the summer. Concrete repairs were made at University
Elementary School in the upper left hand corner there. That concrete area there was in really
bad shape with a lot of cracking and peeling and flaking of the top surface of that along with the band
trailer parking area and a bus pickup location at Bloomington High School North there on the center
and upper right. Additionally, a new sidewalk was added to Rogers Elementary School and the early learning
playground area was fenced in to ensure our youngest learners have a safe and secure place to enjoy
their recess time.
And then down on the lower area there, you'll notice that the main intersection and bus lanes on the
Rogers Benford campus were completely replaced with new pavement, pedestrian walkway and traffic lines
were all repainted. And we were also able to replace some curbing and stairway landing at Clear Creek
Elementary School, eliminating some trip hazards there as well. So these hardscape projects that occurred
during the summer at these various campuses are all 100% complete.
I think it's also important to point out that while these projects are a direct benefit to the students
and families we serve in the MCCSE, as well as all of the visiting teams, performing arts ensembles,
and families who visit our facilities from other school corporations, these projects also support our
local economy. Out of the 22 contractors that were involved in the projects that I just highlighted,
20 or 91% of those are based in Indiana. 16 or 72%
are based right here in Bloomington. And only two or 9% of all the contractors are from out of state.
And that is due to the specialized products, services, and expertise required for certain aspects of
these projects that don't exist within the state. So not only is this benefiting our students, it's
also benefiting the local economy, both locally and in the state of Indiana. So we're really proud of
that as a part of this as well.
I'd also like to remind everyone that all of these projects are 100% bond funded. Zero referendum funds,
zero educational funds, and zero operational funds were utilized in the completion of any of these projects.
And if anybody would like to learn more about our bond funded designing and building to sustain excellent
projects, both current or completed, you can utilize the QR code on this slide or visit mccsc.edu forward
slash building for more information.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this information to you this evening. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
Questions or comments from the board? Yeah, I was going to say thank you, and thank you to also the
construction. You're like the construction manager. Sam Fleener. Yeah. I know you. Sam Fleener, yes.
Thank you for all of that. I mean, it's nice to visit. I was at North. I mean, I happened to be at the
North-South game and got to see the wonderful
I think it was also like a change to not hear the audible gasp from the south
at the South graduation, right? When the bleachers would typically, you stand up or you sit down and
it shifts and you would always hear the entire crowd just like, because it sounds like it's going to
fall down, right? So I think it's a worthy investment for sure. Of course. I just want to take a moment
to give an additional shout out to Sam Fleener. Any one of those projects is a lot to manage. Any two
of those projects.
would be a lot to manage. But to manage all of those 22 projects in the midst of his day-to-day
responsibilities is a lot. He doesn't do it alone, and he'll be the first to tell you that it does take
a complete team. But his leadership, his oversight, his guidance, and the degree to which he holds our
contractors accountable and responsible to meet deadlines is second to none. And so I want to go on
record of acknowledging Mr. Fleener. And I also want to recognize
our team that supports Mr. Fleener throughout the process. Certainly the work that Mr. Irwin does in
making sure that we have the finances to be able to secure projects, the oversight that Dr. Henderson
provides, the support that Mrs. Harmon provides to make sure that we're addressing our academic needs
as our first priority, and certainly you won't be surprised to know that
Dr. Dowling also plays a role in supporting this body of work. And so we meet on a regular and consistent
basis to oversee the facility needs of the corporation within the notion of our academic and our arts
needs as well. So kudos to our entire team. Thank you, Dr. Winston. Thank you, Mr. Fleener. Thank you,
Dr. Henderson, for that report.
The last presentation is the quarterly report on our two-year strategy of sustaining excellence and
financial transparency. Mr. Irwin? Yeah, I'm appreciative of the next opportunity here to give you another
update. We're 18 months into a 24-month strategy and how time is going quickly. But I'm excited to give
you this update about where we stand.
I start in a familiar place as I normally do, just because, and I've said this in past board meetings,
I don't take for granted that people have always seen every presentation that we've given. I know that
the presentations are online, but I always like to start here, because I think it's a reminder. And
then there's some appreciation afterwards to see the progress that we've made as well. But when you
look at this slide, the numbers individually inside of each portion of a bar, that's the individual
fund balance of that respective fund.
And then the numbers at the top or as you move to the right at the bottom, that's the cumulative total
of what those three funds would be. And those are our three largest funds as a school corporation would
be had we had not taken any action before we started this two-year strategy. So I do that as a reminder
to people to know we've had to make a lot of hard decisions, but we had to make a lot of hard decisions.
and I think that's the point and we've done that. So with that, the next slide is something that I think
is important too. I spend a lot of time at board meetings and I know I throw a lot at you and you're
probably like, when is he gonna stop? But I put this information out because I think it's important
people understand how things continue to change. The picture is constantly evolving. And so when I put
these things on here, these are things that I see as major drivers in the changes that we've seen
even since the last time we gave this update in May. So the first one is the one that I keep up there
every time, but that's just we've had more months come in. So more things are actual unless things are
projected at this point in the year. The other thing is we're continuing to monitor our estimates with
student ADM and because student tuition support and student enrollment is our number one source of funding
as a public school corporation. And so that's a major driver
in the projections of our school corporation and the corresponding demographic changes is that we talked
a lot about not only across the nation and the state of Indiana, are there are there demographic declines
with population? But here locally, we experience it greater so than than other places in the state.
And so that's something that very much has to be at the forefront of our of our planning and paying
attention to that information.
Number three, we talked a lot about at past board meetings, but that's just the MOGQ. I talked about
that actually just earlier tonight. So with the state sets, the max levy growth quotient for our operations
fund, that was 6% this year. That was a change from what we felt recently, which is 4%. But then afterwards,
I'm projecting only 4% afterwards because I'm not going to project something higher. That has been a
bit of an anomaly than what we've experienced the last few years.
I would rather be on the conservative side of that. And then also we know that this year we had that
one time flexibility of spreading the SEA-1 losses due to the supplemental homestead deduction across
our debt service and operations fund. And moving forward in 2027 and beyond, it all goes to the operations
fund. And so these projections assume that as well. We have our current staffing level set for the 26-27
school year, and that's reflected in these projections.
which is a very important part of our number one expenses as a school corporation are the people that
we employ to serve children. And so that's something that is very much important when you look at these
projections. And then the actual input of reimbursement from the taxable general obligation bond in
2026 to support fund balances and then moving forward the planned amounts for 27 and 28. We continue
to keep at the forefront the use of one time funds and how it's played a role
helping us to achieve this strategy. The other one number six is policy analytics is a familiar partner
that you guys know that we work with and they are constantly on a regular basis evaluating tax base
changes and how legislation affects the moving pieces that interact with our budget and so
Right now, the net assessed value and expected tax revenue of how that impacts our referendums
is incorporated into these projections. Certified net assessed value this year, right now what's been
that has been certified now is relatively flat from where originally we were thinking it might be closer
to a 4.4% decline. It's relatively flat for this year, but their current estimations are that
we'll see it continue to go down as the impacts of SEA1. Remember, those deductions continue to increase
over time, which further counteracts whether or not there's any gross assessed value uptick, those deductions
are pulling down. So whether or not gross assessed value goes up, those deductions get bigger and bigger
and they pull it down. And then the last one, I talked about this at the last meeting, is that we've
now started to create a much more dynamic view
but that we are adding escalators in there for things for expenses that are outside of our direct control.
We don't control how much fuel costs. We don't control how much people charge for services. We don't
control some of the things that what they cost that we buy. And it's important that we continue to plan
for the escalation of those expenses. And so that's been factored into this next chart as we look at
where it is that we expect to be. So again, I go through those seven things because they are major drivers
and where it is that we are now and where we project to be. And so again, I want to remind us of that
as we continue to move forward. So with that, without further ado, as it was looking at, this picture
still is showing us what it is that we want to see. And that's progress of where we want to be as far
as we talked a lot about a position of financial strength. And so cash balance projections, if you look
at my middle takeaway,
is that they're showing still that we are progressing towards a position of financial strength. And
that's what we intend to do and intend to be. And we need that because we are one of the biggest employers
in this county. We educate thousands and thousands of children. And it's really important that we are
in a solid place so that we can continue to be a place of certainty for them in a world where a lot
of times we experience a lot of uncertainties. And so we want to continue to push ourselves to be in
that place.
The arrival and strategic use of one-time funds, they are continuing to work as intended. They very
much support the picture that you see, and they allow us that runway to make structural changes. As
well as I've talked about, you can achieve balance, but if you don't have the proper safety nets or
that position of financial strength in place, you still need to work your way to get there. So those
one-time funds are very vital in helping us to do both, balance,
with those appropriate safety nets. And the third point that is furthest to the left is that we have
to continue to monitor those demographic trends. Those are things that we can't entirely predict. They
are completely outside of our control as it relates to some of the pieces that interact with us, but
in the legislative piece as well. And those interact with one,
tuition support, so our largest source of revenue in the legislative piece very much interacts with
how how we are able to collect property taxes or how that impacts property tax collection. And so that
is something that is our number two source of revenue as a public school corporation. So we have to
continue to monitor that. But we're very, very pleased with the progress that we made. And we know that
this has been a collective effort of everyone across the organization. And so we're very appreciative
of that of that progress.
This slide you've seen a number of times. I leave it there just as that reminder. I'm not gonna go through
every point of this, but we have outlined what we believe are effective and ineffective uses of one-time
funds, and then continue to provide some concrete examples of what those are so that people continue
to understand that. We talked about strategic fund management, strategic use of one-time funds, but
putting a little bit more definition to
our perspective on operating from a position of financial strength. In our education fund, our goal
is 18 to 20% of expenditures. And there's some different rationale and context that's really important
to these numbers because numbers without context can be very misleading. And so when we look at this,
the reason that we're looking for 18 to 20% is one, the education fund is our largest fund. It has regular,
Revenue coming in, tuition support comes in on a monthly basis, but it supports a large amount
of expenditures and the cash flow needed to operate the school corporation on a day-to-day and month-to-month
basis. It helps guards us against the unknowns of student population variability. Like I said in the
last slide, monitoring demographic trends is really important. And so as those changes happen to us
every six months, if we don't have those sitting in a position of strength,
it puts us in a place of uncertainty immediately if we're not there. And then again, it guards us against
delays and or reductions in state revenue. And I'll talk about it and I'll connect it back as I get
to the bottom piece too. But it helps us as we in our other funds go periods of time without revenue.
So in our in our
Tax levied funds, so our operations fund and a referendum fund that are not statutory limited. Remember
I told you during my budget presentation earlier that the debt service fund has a operating balance
limit. Those ones we're looking for at least 23 to 25% of expenditures. But when you're looking at that,
some of those funds go almost six months without revenue and regularly occurring expenses on a monthly
basis. And so when you're getting out to month four,
five, almost six of no revenue into those funds. It's really important that your other funds,
most importantly the education fund, is in a really healthy place because it continues to allow us to
have the cash on hand to meet the in and out ongoing needs of the school corporation. It also puts us
in a place where as legislative trends and changes happen, and we talked a lot about that over the last
at least a year, a little over a year since I've been here and before that as well, is that when those
things change on us, it allows us again, to have a longer period of time to change if we need to change
how we're operating as a public school corporation and be in a place of certainty. So it's really important
that we not only achieve balance, but we continue to operate and move towards a position of financial
strength because it's what we need to do to provide that certainty for the people that we employ
and the children that we educate. My last piece, and I end on this as far as this part of the presentation,
but I just continue to put that reminder out there that the every dollar, every student website is up
there that has a ton of information on it. And a lot of that information is public available data, but
that information is in different places.
So we continue to bring it into one place and then we've created links so that if people want to navigate
gateway, they want to go into some of these different state websites, they can find it there too. But
we try to be as helpful as possible as it relates to getting that information and understanding how
we how we function as a public school corporation, how we're funded and where our expenses go. So.
With that, that concludes that part of the presentation. The next part of the presentation, I told you
we're gonna talk a little bit about facilities master planning, but this is a really important piece.
And like I said, we put out an RFQP for facility master planning services and we had some good response
to that. And we went through a pretty rigorous process as it relates to evaluating partners that would
help us to move through that process and have the
resources and the expertise to help us do that well and so we you guys already approved that kind of
those contracts with CSO and Skillman but we're excited about that partnership with those two and how
they're going to help us through that process because this is very closely tied to when we think about
financial balance and sustainability but it's also very much tied to sustaining excellence and so I
know Dr. Winston is going to talk more about that here.
Sarah, can you grab the clicker for me? Thank you so much, Matt. I appreciate that. So nobody's more
excited about this than I am. I'm beyond thrilled, although Matt thinks he's more excited. I'm pretty
geeked about it as well. When you think about schools, our schools exist to educate children, not simply
to occupy buildings. And when we think about our facilities, they should really reflect
and support the academic experiences that we want for our children. That's really the goal. It's the
kinds of experiences that we want for every child that walks through our doors. As we begin to embark
on the creation of a 10-year, yes, 10-year facilities master plan, our why for having a facilities master
plan is so that we have a collaboratively developed roadmap that's developed based upon
the wishes and the desires and the needs and the priorities of our community. So you're going to see
a collaborative process whereby we have community members, we have parents, we have teachers, we have
principals, we have students helping us to talk through what are the educational experiences that are
most important and most valuable for our students, not just for today, but for tomorrow as well. And
so that's the opportunity that we have in front of us
completing this roadmap. As we develop our facilities master plan, our community rooted educational
priorities will continue to remain the foundation for every decision that gets made and every recommendation
as we go forward. I like this particular graphic because it really represents our community and the
community as the foundation and as the forefront of making sure that the voices from all
aspects of our community and every corner of our community are heard and listened to and incorporated
into the kinds of educational experiences that we want for our children. And in fact, you know, when
we think about our schools and we think about the role that education plays, how do we ensure that our
children have the best learning environments, not just today, not just tomorrow, but for years to come?
That's the significance of the work that we
have in front of us, and it has the opportunity to be quite transformational. But we can't do that without
good data, without good information. And that's where our community partners are going to come in. Our
architectural partners are going to be able to help us take a look at that. You'll see down below the
designing and building to sustain academic excellence. This will become a part of that body of work
as well. In many ways, when I think about this work and I think about the role that the community plays,
This work has already begun in some ways when we established our Strong Schools Strong Community Advisory
Council back in the spring. We've spent a lot of time talking with our council about the vision for
education. You know, what are the opportunities that exist here in our school corporation? So we've
actually already laid the foundation for how we will choose to prioritize the needs of our students
through the voices of our community members and the voices of our parents and the voices of our students.
When I think about
This body of work, I think about it in terms of three priority areas that kind of are overarching or
three pillars. On the left-hand side, you see academic excellence. That's what we talk about all the
time. And when we talk about academic excellence, we're just talking about what does high quality teaching
and learning look like? What are the kinds of experiences that we want our students to have? What does
that mean for the arts, for the athletics, for academics, for literacy, for numeracy? Academic excellence
is certainly at the forefront.
But then we talk about our objective data and information. How will we make informed decisions guided
by data? That center column is really highlighting the kinds of information and the kinds of data that
we're going to be looking at. Comprehensive building assessments, that's the first phase of developing
a facilities master plan. Looking at our capacity, how many students can we comfortably and safely educate
in a building? What should the utilization look like?
Looking at that kind of data, what kind of financial sustainability needs to be at the forefront of
some of our decisions? What about the demographic trends that exist in Bloomington and Monroe County?
We all know that the population has been declining for the last several years here in Bloomington and
Monroe County. We also know that the birth rates are low, and we are seeing that evidenced by declining
numbers of kindergartners.
We've been monitoring our kindergarten enrollment for the last several years. And when you compare and
contrast that to the number of high school graduates, we see how the lower birth rate in our community,
and it's happening across the country, is impacting us. And so that kind of data must be considered
at the forefront as we are thinking about what do we need our schools to be able to do for our students
a year from now, five years from now, and 10 years from now. And the way to get there is through community
engagement.
And so the third pillar really focuses on the role in which our community will play in assisting us
in establishing those priorities. I'm very excited about the work that's happening in our curriculum
office that's being led by Mrs. Harmon. That's going to be at the forefront and we're going to be having
conversations with our community around what do they want to see, how do we make sure that that happens,
and we're going to find a variety of ways to engage folks. So it's a very exciting opportunity.
And so on the next slide, really just talking about why do we need a facilities master plan? Well, as
we establish our goals and priorities academically, we want to make sure that we have the facilities
to support those priorities. And so the overarching question that we will consistently come back to
time and time again, what learning environments best support student success today and into the future?
We have a long tradition of excellence.
in our school corporation. We have excellence in academics, we have excellence in the arts, and we have
excellence in athletics. We want to make sure that we continue to be strong in each of those areas.
And so we will consistently in each of those areas come back and talk about is this learning environment
conducive to the kinds of excellence that we want to provide for our students going forward. Developing
the long-term roadmap, I mentioned that it's a 10-year facilities master plan.
Not every school corporation does this and not everybody does it well. We are very well positioned to
do it exceedingly well with the kind of partnership that we have with Skillman and CSO. We think that
they are the right partners for us and for right now. And having that collaborative team that's gonna
help us focus on safety needs of our schools, that's gonna help us take a close look at our building
conditions. I've already talked about capacity and utilization. All of those are part of the conversation.
And then certainly we have to pay attention to the demographic trends. The next thing I want to kind
of highlight is just the overall benefit of having a long-term plan. We'll be able to take the demographic
trends that are happening in our community into consideration as we establish what our future footprint
should look like. A couple of years ago, our board commissioned a demographer to do
review and in his review he anticipated that we would begin to lose enrollment numbers over the next
10 years in fact and so it's really important that we take that into consideration as we are planning
the future of our facilities. We're going to have to adjust our projections accordingly. And I've already
spoken about how
board decisions in the future can be informed by this body of work. It's going to be an opportunity
for us to think about the financial implications. It's going to help us take a closer look at what kinds
of buildings and facilities are necessary to strengthen what we're doing in the arts. We just approved
a new director of orchestra, an assistant director of orchestra this evening. It'll be important that
their voices are at the table as well.
Later this evening, the board's going to engage in a conversation about redistricting. It is certainly
important to note that a facility's master plan process can be very instrumental in helping to inform
good decision making as it relates to redistricting and then overall long-term sustainability. So there
are a lot of benefits to engaging in a facility's master plan. As I prepare to close out, I just want
to highlight what to expect from the process. The process is going to include engagement,
Looking at the demographic trends, both for our city, for our county, but also our enrollment numbers,
we are continuing to monitor those very closely. Looking at the financial alignment of the expected
resources, it's very important that we don't exceed our capacity financially and that we don't overburden
our taxpayers. That's at the forefront of our conversations as well. It's more than just improving our
facilities, but it's certainly strengthening
what our facilities look like and making sure that our students are prepared for the future that we
can't even anticipate today. And then quality data and information will inform and guide those decisions.
The exciting part for me is that this board and administrative team has been characterized by strong
community engagement over the past two years in particular, and it will be even more important as we
develop our facilities plan. It will be imperative that members from throughout our diverse community
have an opportunity
to help us establish our academic direction so that we can have state of the art facilities aligned
specifically to our academic needs and the goals that we have for our children. We will work with our
lead architectural consultants to engage our community in a variety of ways throughout the process.
I think it's important to remind everyone that a facilities master plan is simply not about buildings.
It is about creating learning environments that allow every student to thrive.
Today's students and the students of tomorrow. By grounding our work at academic excellence, objective
data, and meaningful community partnership, we will develop a roadmap that reflects both our educational
mission and the values that are important to our community. I am excited about what we will do together
as we create the next facilities master plan for MCCSE. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Winston.
Our next update will be in November. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Irwin, for your report. Are there
any questions or comments from the board? Well, I was going to say thanks, Matt. I really appreciate
those seven things that you post up. I can't remember. I didn't even move down to the master plan, so
I really can't remember. I'll be honest. But I really appreciate that and that reminder.
And I'm excited about your master plan. Very good. Have you already start reaching out to community
members to be a part of the? Not yet. Tonight is our first public discussion of it. In the next several
weeks, I would anticipate we'll begin that process. How do we think we'll determine who serves on that
task force or committee? I'm very open to hearing suggestions and thoughts on that. We have not even begun to
strategize as to what that will look like. But we would want to have representation from all of our
buildings throughout the corporation. And we definitely want to have some parents and community members
at the table. So when we sit down with our architectural partners, we'll start thinking through. They've
got a lot of experience in doing this, so they may have some great ideas that we need to consider. But
at this moment in time, we haven't begun that process. But certainly, we are open to hearing suggestions.
a list of people that weren't able to participate in the strong schools. Yes, the strong schools that
might be. We do. Yeah, we absolutely could begin with that group as well as our master program. So I
think we have lots of possibilities. Thank you again, Dr. Winston and Mr. Owen.
Tonight we will begin a new segment in our meetings called committee reports. At each January
reorganizational meeting, board members elect to serve on corporation committees. Tonight and almost
each month following, those serving on committees will provide the public with an update on their respective
committee's work. The first committee update is from the Insurance Committee. Our Vice President,
Ross Grimes, sits on the Insurance Committee.
Unfortunately, he was unable to be at our meeting tonight due to a prior commitment. And so I have some
talking points from the insurance committee. And then I think I have some help answering questions if
you do have questions about insurance. The highlights are we are focusing on programs that make sure
members get high quality care at the lowest cost and many times at lower or no member out of pocket costs.
Next, we are looking at specific needs of our members, our claims categories, and how benefits are being
used so that we can help members utilize their health insurance benefits and drive better outcomes.
Sometimes that looks like the clinic or us engaging members directly to make sure they are aware of
specific health insurance benefit programs we have that align with their current needs and circumstances.
And finally, we believe these types of efforts will improve the member experience and outcomes
lower their out-of-pocket expenses, and reduce future liabilities of the plan, thus improving the chance
for lower health insurance premium increases in the future. Any questions or comments from the board
about insurance? Everyone's least favorite subject to talk about, ask me how I know.
I was just waiting for you to ask the insurance questions. This is outside my wheelhouse. This kind
of insurance. I think that's right. I won't take that as a reflection on my delivery of the talking.
If there are no further comments from the board on insurance, then we will open the floor for
our conversation regarding the redistricting study commission's findings. Would anyone like to begin?
April, would you like to begin? I'm waiting for someone else to begin. We can wait.
If you need to grease the wheels, we just start. Yeah, I can begin order. I just feel like I am always
the beginner. It's a gift. Oh, OK. Is that what it is? So, you know, I'm glad that we're here finally
to have this conversation. I know it was somewhat delayed, but I think it's. Obviously, there's a lot
here to take in, right? So we have
some of the data and findings from the demographic report that we got prior to the redistricting study
and prior to the merger conversations. And then the sort of deep body of work that the Redistricting
Study Commission has provided for us as well. And I think I want to start by saying that there weren't
really any surprises for me in the sense that
I don't think that I was surprised by any of the things that came back in part because, you know, I
think many of us had actually done that research, a lot of that research prior. I think it was interesting
to think about, well, one, I think we had an expert in our GIS mapping individual who came on board
sort of midway through that process who was able to help us really think through how do we create maps
Because that was one of the things that we put a call out for and no one had responded prior, right?
And so I think that led to us finding this individual who was able to assist us in thinking through,
how do we map? What do those maps look like? How could we potentially begin to think about overlaying
some of our student data onto like census block data and things like that? So I think that was very
helpful and came out of this process.
I do think that many of the assumptions that I moved into this process with were either confirmed or
sort of held steady with the work that came out of this. And I'll say more about those in a moment,
but the one thing that struck me as I was sort of like re-looking at our data
was that our disparity in free and reduced lunch data has actually shrunk considerably. Even in the
past, I guess I've been on the board now for six years or something, so five years, so even in that time,
When I was running, I remember that the numbers I had to work with were something like 93% free and
reduced lunch at Fairview and something like 7% at Childs. The disparity was massive. And with some
of the moves that have happened, like moving Alps into Fairview, which was again, sort of enormously
controversial at that time,
we've seen those numbers change. So that fair view at this point is only around 53% free and reduced
lunch. Now, again, I don't wanna use free and reduced lunch as a singular marker of socioeconomic status
because we do know that the parameters for free and reduced lunch are fairly narrow. But looking at
these numbers again today, I was kind of struck by the fact that at the highest, we have 61% and at
the lowest,
we have 14%. So the gap has shrunk considerably. And I think, I mean, I have a lot of theories as to
why that might be the case. But it did kind of make me scratch my head a little bit and say, huh,
we've like, the disparity is already starting to shrink. And what to make of that?
what that means for this process, what it means for the number of students that might then have to be
redistricted if that were the case. I mean, I think it changes things to some extent from just from
a numbers perspective. So I don't know, I'm just gonna stop there for now.
I'll just jump in to comment quickly on the shrinking of the disparity that you mentioned, April. I
did notice that even from the commission's report, which I think
listed our highest rate of free and reduced lunch as 74% down to our highest rate as 61%. I suspect
that some of that is a change in the federal guidelines for who qualifies for free and reduced lunch.
So it doesn't necessarily represent a change in socioeconomic status of our schools, but rather a change
in who's eligible and who's being left on the margins of the free and reduced lunch program. And also, as we do
consider the rates of free and reduced lunch. For Fairview specifically, I would suggest that we get
calculations on what their rate would be without the ELTS program. I think that when we moved that program
to Fairview, we did maybe a better job of integrating that program into the population at large in that
school. But they're still siloed within the classroom. So I don't know if that is a fair
model for integration and I would be curious to know what the numbers are if you remove the help students
from that number. I think those are great points. I want to pull on that thread just a little bit more
with regards to when we're looking at the free and reduced lunch numbers if we could also do a couple
of other things to look at the demographics as well
of the schools so what those look like for the different demographics that we have within that we we
have data for to see how those correlate with those numbers as well and I would also like to know how
those how those numbers look within the schools that we have
Like our, oh goodness, what are they called? Is that one? No, the special programming schools. So how
do those, what do the demographics look like within our special programming schools with relationship
to free and reduced lunch? And I'm gonna add another caveat to that. How many of those students in those
schools are opting in
from outside of their catchment zones and vice versa. So we also know what that looks like because I
think that those pieces can also impact our free and reduced lunch numbers within certain areas. So
for example, we've got schools like Fairview who has the arts program. So does that mean that more students
are likely to come into that school outside of that catchment zone?
that are driving down those numbers as well. So just more data on that I think is helpful. Could you
repeat your very first data question? Yes. So I would like to know with regards to our free and reduced
lunch what the demographics are for those schools as well. So white students,
Black students, Hispanic students, Asian students, students with special, students with disabilities,
all of those factors because there's probably some correlation that's living in between those numbers
versus free and reduced lunch notes. So I just wanna see what those look like. Does that, if I need
to get more precise, just let me know and I can throw you something in the email.
You would like that for every elementary school? Yeah, I would. I mean, if we're going to be talking
about redistricting and whether or not we need to look at the whole for the elementary school students,
I think that's vital to knowing how those correlate or don't correlate. So you would like us to run
some data that examines free and reduced lunch across demographics
as broken down by race and special service categories? Yes. OK. As well as a sub to that, then those
schools that have the special programming. So we know how many students are coming in or out of those
schools that don't go there. Transfer data. Or those that are in those catchment zones. That was a wrong word.
Thank you for clarifying. I don't know if I did, but. Well, I'll take a stab at it, and then I'll recirculate
that. It was a big one. Sorry. I'll take a go at it. First off, I want to say how amazing the work that
was done by the commission was. You all came up with all.
It was amazing. And the input and the time that I was taking the care, it definitely shows in the report.
Some of my thoughts on redistricting. I am always very mindful of barriers that are created, usually
unintentionally.
efforts to help or like in this case balance our socioeconomic economic status numbers. So that's been
my main point of concern is just ensuring that we are not creating barriers because while
While the numbers could look good, the supports that are available to some of our students in that free
and reduced lunch category, including like after school, I'm always mindful of thinking about
how redistricting is going to impact transportation.
for some of our students where personal transportation is a barrier and they are completely reliant
on our transportation and how that allows them to participate in before and after school activities,
tutoring and all those types of things that go on. But overall, what I would like to see
are some very specific maps and details to the impacts and maybe some of the impacts that we aren't
really looking at right now. I don't know that I have anything
new to add to the discussion except to kind of highlight just the unknown. And I echo what board member
Jester is saying about being mindful and unintended consequences. As I was preparing for tonight's meeting,
just thinking about how if we moved people further away from, because neighborhood schools can be good
for some people and not so good for other people, but then the reality is,
If you're moved farther away from a school where you are living, what does that mean for transportation,
after school supports, tutoring, all the things that you mentioned? And so I think there are so many
things to consider. Some of the data that Board Member Parani was wondering about and just looking at
the changes in free lunch and what that has meant so far. But I think that just goes to show the enormity of this.
No matter what, I think we all can agree that concept of integrated schools is something that is worthy
of our time and attention, but also thinking about what Dr. Winston was saying about our 10-year forecast
in terms of possible declining birth rates and people leaving the community. So I think no matter what
the reason,
we're going to have to look at redistricting. But I think as a board, some of the key findings, we have
yet to define clear parameters and what our non-negotiables are. And so I think that's gonna be our
biggest challenge. But I know that it's taking us time because we need to gather this information. And
I just would hope that people understand that
It is gonna take patience. I know that it seems like we've been talking about this for a long time,
but we don't want to make any decisions that could really negate the whole effort of us trying to make
this more balanced and causing more harm to certain people. And of course, there's always going to be
some things that are unavoidable, but I think we just need to keep having this conversation, but making
progress towards it. But what I'm challenging us to do is really come up with
what those parameters are, because it is difficult. So we have all these different maps that could be
used, but until we decide exactly what it is we're trying to accomplish, that's the thing that I think
that we really need to drill down. But I think that it's definitely worth continuing to pursue. So one
thing I'll add on to what Dr. Wyatt just said,
So definitely like the census block helped us, gave us the data to provide like a method for looking
at attendance zones and things like that. You're right, as a board we haven't made like decisions or
even know what is the percentage of the socioeconomic status we're trying to reach. I mean, I go back
and forth. I've enjoyed reading this and reading all the comments that people have made. But I think
as a board we have to know
What are our clear, like, financial targets? I mean, what is the cost savings with this as well? Because,
I mean, as you all were talking, too, about if you move students to another school, are schools going
to close? I mean, what's the capacity of that building? All of that, too, I think is something that
we should think about as well. I think, I mean, part of moving this conversation forward, I think, is
even beginning to understand if
the board is on a similar page or not in order to move the conversation forward, right? Is there enough
will of the board to even consider continuing to think about redistricting or not, I think? And I would
say that we should probably, existing attendance zones I think should not be treated as an inherently
neutral position. I think that there's this thought that redistricting is like a,
is a controversial decision. But I would argue that maintaining the kind of status quo or the districts
as they sit is also potentially controversial, right? It is not a neutral position to say, we're just
not going to redistrict. We will just stay as it is. The status quo is inherently sort of controversial
as well, I think, especially when we think about the fact that we truly haven't done or engaged in true
redistricting in
a very, very long time, and whether or not we're solving for population density, for moving populations
of individuals or groups, whenever you have a district that has lagged for so long in looking at their
boundary or catchment zones, I think you're going to end up with problems. It is very clear
from the research that we do have inequities within our catchment zones. That is clear from the data.
And I would say that if we look at the research, it also tells us that there is not great harm that
comes from redistricting. There might be harm from a community perspective because people have very
sort of vastly differing opinions. But when you look at the data on
the students themselves, they're not truly adversely affected. And some might argue that there isn't
massive amounts of gain either in some of those studies. But I do think that when it comes to thinking
about the reasons why we might redistrict, I think we need to get really clear
on those things. I think, yes, SES balance is part of that. I think at this point in our MCCSE narrative,
we know that we're in a very different fiscal position now than we were even a couple of years ago.
And so we also need to think about things like, you know, capacity of our buildings, utilization. What
does that look like? What does that mean? If we're going to continue to have numbers that are shrinking, I think
the Facilities Master Plan is gonna be immensely important to these conversations. And then, yes, I
think we probably do need to get down to some data points, like what is an acceptable or an allowable
gap in the percentage points of free and reduced lunch between our schools? Is it 25, is it 30,
is it 40, is it 37? Those kinds of things. What is our sort of maximum number of students that we might
actually want to transfer, right?
10% is too much? Is it 5%? Is it 20%? Like, what is the maximum sort of number of students that we would
consider transferring, right? And then what would that transfer look like? I mean, I think, I know Ross
and I will not speak for him specifically, but I just know that he's talked in other conversations,
even when we were sort of talking about the merger, about something like,
you know, moving sixth grade to middle school, right? What does that do as it sort of shifts the number
of students in our buildings, as it makes space? I don't know. I mean, I think there are lots of things
for us to consider, but the makeup of the board has changed since we started these conversations, right?
We've had a superintendent change. We've had multiple board member changes.
And I am not even sure at this moment if the board, if the will of the board is to continue to move
forward with this discussion. So I think for me, even tonight, walking away with some clarity about
that particular issue would be progress, in my opinion. I agree. But I also kind of want to come back
to the point you made about doing nothing is also a decision, or maintaining the status quo is also
a decision.
So I was also thinking about the parameters to Tiana and Erin's point about I think we're honestly since
2024 we've heard from the community that we need to have better parameters and in the literature they
call it they they use the terms goals and criteria
or at some places in the report, they say operational definitions. I heard that loud and clear, and
just as sort of a, as a test for myself, I try to make a list of measurable criteria that could be used
to evaluate different options. And I won't bore you with my list of criteria, but some of them overlap
with some of the things that you all have said tonight.
things like transportation time, cost savings, utilization. The one for me that was hard to figure out
how to quantify was access to activities. I really, I agree that I think that's really important, the
access to programming and activities, but I couldn't figure out how to quantify it, so it didn't make
my list of eight, but I think we should be mindful of it. I also tried to
plug in some sort of metrics for how would you define, if we say utilization is one of the criteria
by which we would evaluate whether a model was successful or not, kind of what, how would you define
a good utilization model and a bad or out of bounds? And I actually think that we have the data to start
to set those metrics already. I plugged some in from my own
thinking about it, but I do think that we have, I don't know if utilization, I kind of guessed on that
one, but something like one of my criteria was annual long-term financial impact. And just knowing what
our budget is, I just used AI.
disclosure to figure out what would be a meaningful cost savings for a budget of our size. And so I
was able to say like, aren't my metric for saying this has a significant financial savings would be
greater than 3% annual savings. That was kind of my high. That's just one example. I think I do think
that we have enough to start setting those parameters and metrics as a board now. I think we've heard
loud and clear from the community and from the literature that
that we need those parameters as we start to evaluate different options. I think that doing nothing
is one of the options, but even if that's our choice, we still need some metrics for determining that
that's a good choice. Personally, I would also like to broaden the definition of the project beyond
redistricting. I'd be curious to know what you all think about this. Something like the term redistricting
and restructuring,
that might capture Ross's and others' ideas about moving sixth grade to middle school. The report considered
things like closing schools, which I guess falls under redistricting, but honestly, I hadn't thought
of it like that before, but didn't consider things like school mergers. It explicitly said that was
something that they did not consider. And I would sort of like to consider all of the possibilities
for meeting whatever the goals are that we set.
I think a term that might be broader than redistricting would better capture that. I like also when
April was talking about, you know, seeing where we're at as a board, I think that's important.
Early on, I mean, I thought about it. I mean, I'm a parent too in this district and why I bought my
house. I mean, I am a fan of neighborhood schools. I was.
That's how I was raised too. But when I listened to them read Jacinda's end, we got the email, so I
don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but anyhow, that email. And I studied and read a lot of those
reports and that research that she had mentioned. And it makes sense, because I think about during my
time, and I'm coming up on my 30-year high school reunion, fairly young still, but that's OK. And how
our classrooms were.
I mean, being only two, I mean, you see I'm black, two black kids in a classroom and not having other
people that look like you or going to schools that were further away. Like some of my friends went hours
away because they needed that integration. And if we can do something here, regardless of me, our schools
aren't that far apart. I was thinking about it, I'm like now,
none of the schools are that far apart. And I get it that we're looking always at free and reduced lunch.
And I have a thing with that too, because sometimes when we think about free and reduced lunch, we don't
think about the temporary places people are on free and reduced lunch. Because when people quit their
jobs and have one income, they qualify for free and reduced lunch. But they were at a high threshold
earlier. So I don't want to make assumptions just because people are on free and reduced lunch. They
can't get their kids different places too.
But I mean, after all this, I say, I could go on forever, I'm gonna quiet down, is that I'm more for
redistricting than I was before. Because I was going back and forth and I've had conversations with
board members about it, but I think it's more benefit than not. And even talking to some of my kids
about it and helping understand where they're at. Because I mean, I told you 30 years ago I graduated,
so it's totally different for me than it is for them.
explaining it to them and asking questions really helped me to look at it at a different perspective
as well. And just because we're talking about neighborhood schools, I think, you know, this has been
one of the sort of common refrains that we've heard. It was one of the biggest resistance points when
we, when it came to the merger. And I think, you know, one of the things that I really had hoped in
that conversation that would be clear is that, you know, there is a, I think there's,
distinction to be made between a school that is a neighborhood school versus a school that might be
your very closest school assignment and those two things may not especially in a town like this right
Templeton could very well be your neighborhood school or it could be Fairview or it could be depending
on where you live within certain catchment zones you're on the edge of one school or another right and
so I think
this sort of distinction between what really is a neighborhood school, what defines it, what do people
mean when they say that versus the closest school assignment because sometimes the closest school assignment
was not a person's neighborhood school and yet they were talking about their assignment to their neighborhood
school, which was not their closest school. So I think that one, there needs to be a distinction made
between what school is closest to me versus what school I consider my neighborhood school
And then what sort of underlies the differentiation between those two things, right? If you are closer
to Templeton, but you consider blank school your neighborhood school, right? And I think ultimately,
I think that became a point that was embattled for us, like the board, the community, there was a sense
of like sort of being embattled about neighborhood schools. And I'd like for us to just maybe as we
begin to think about this,
You know, I wanna make it very clear that I do not think that people who favor neighborhood schools
are always motivated by segregation or bias, whether it's implicit or explicit, right? However, what
I will say is that the literature and the research and the data does support that neighborhood-based
assignment
can and does have a segregated effect, right? So however you feel about it, if you live in areas that
are segregated, your neighborhood assignments will be segregated in their schools, right? And so if
we can begin to sort of like pull those two things apart, like an ideological position versus just the
sort of data demonstrates that these things are true,
then maybe we can begin to have conversations about closest school versus neighborhood school and other
sorts of things. And then also, as you pointed out, in a town this size, we're not talking about Louisville.
We're not talking about busing across enormous distances, right? And so I think that's just another
thing for us to really consider when we think about redistricting and the time and access. I think that
we have greater ability to mitigate some of those things than
districts like Louisville or something else right and I think that we have to also keep in mind as well
when we're when and if we get to a point of considering maps of of recognizing that redlining did happen
here in this community and as as such we have pockets where
we can draw a map and it can still stay the same because of that. And so just thinking through all of
those things and which neighborhoods had those racial restriction covenants in their deeds and all of
those things, because we can look at the GIS. However, we have to keep that in mind as well as we're
looking through and fully recognizing that a certain groups of people were not allowed in those spaces.
and as such did not get to have that generational wealth and now they can't get in those places because
of this. So I think we have to consider that in tandem with everything else. I like the idea of talking
about parameters too, because thinking about how many, because even with the merger, I wasn't on the
board, but the Templeton Childs merger, a lot of people just transferred out of those schools so they
wouldn't be affected.
If we're going to redistrict, make sure it's doing what we want it to do. So I think that's a good parameter.
I think that's right. I think one of mine was like the percentage. And I did for what it's worth. I
know that the report had these community considerations that they wanted us to take into account. And
I think it's important to do this with community buy in. So for me personally, I
used all the community considerations in my list of criteria, I might weight them slightly less. So
for example, I had socioeconomic status as weighted at 20% and neighborhood schools weighted at 5%.
But I would still take it into consideration. I also, one of the things that I found
might be missing in the report, and maybe this would require more community feedback, is that I don't
necessarily see operational definitions for those things. So for neighborhood schools, for example,
there was one place where it was referred to as median distance from the student's residence to their
assigned school, which I think might be
how they're defining neighborhood schools. But I didn't necessarily see parameters for that. If neighborhood
schools are important to someone, how far is too far from their home for them to consider that a neighborhood
school? I think we would either need to go back to the community to ask them to define those parameters
or imagine parameters for ourselves if we were willing to take those into consideration. Which for myself, I would
take those things into consideration. I also had the percentage of students reassigned. I think that
was something else that was important to the community members that sat on the commission. That also
is something, actually we did that one 10%. That is also something I would consider as we evaluated
different options for change, even though I personally would still weight the board's priorities higher,
but I still
I want to take those things into consideration. I think to April's point, I think that it's kind of,
more specifically, defining those parameters is very necessary at this point. And as the commissioner
pointed out,
There were some places where there were no parameters in place. So we were completely unable to look
at those type of impacts. But I think that that is a good starting point. Being more specific in the
definition of the parameters. That way, when we're looking at the maps,
We're looking at specific impacts and being able to kind of really delve into the reality of something.
Right now, I feel like we have a lot of possibilities. And I think some are good. But yeah, being able
to come together as a group
Well, as April said, it would be good to know where folks stand.
Is everyone prepared to say where they stand currently on this topic to know if we have a go forward
strategy either to begin the go forward strategy to start looking at this further or if it's not something
we want to pursue and then what those parameters look like in terms of
creating why we don't think that it is. I think and I'm just from hearing it sounds to me like at least
there's enough interest to consider moving forward with creating and thinking through what parameters
look like and and because I think we can't really there's not a lot that we can task the administration
with until we begin to define those parameters right so thinking about
You know, right now, if we look at our numbers based on, and that is why earlier I said, I know our
free and reduced lunch rates are not telling the whole story right now because they're sort of very
narrowly defined at this moment and because of some of the changes that have been made, right? So right
now it shows a gap in our school district of 47% from the highest to the lowest. That is much different
than we've had in the past, right? And so it would be like, you know,
What is the sort of maximum allowable gap? What are, so we, and even like what are the parameters that
we, is it those eight? Is it something else? Like what are the things? I think that that is probably
a task for us to do in like a working session. Like we would need a work session to do that, right?
I don't think we're gonna get to those things today. So I don't know, I mean, how, yeah, so to answer,
Ashley's question person, if that's okay, April, then I'll kind of circle back to maybe what our options
are from here. My position is that some kind of redistricting, reorganization, or restructuring
is inevitable. Even if we were willing to say socioeconomic balance is not part of our criteria,
even if cost-effectiveness alone were our only criteria, which I don't think it should be, but even
if that were it, I think this report said that our current utilization rate is 69% across the corporation,
and at the industry standard it is 85. So even if we were only talking about redistricting, reorganization,
and restructuring to adjust for declining enrollment and financial realities, I personally think it's
inevitable. So the way I would answer the question is,
If the question is, do we move forward with defining parameters and applying those parameters or metrics
to options for change, my answer to that would be yes. I am on board with that. Same. I agree. I already
stated it. Just confirming. I agree, though. But definitely, I mean, that's what I was thinking.
Oh, thanks, Diana. I've been thinking about it for a long time. So I think that in the past, we have
sometimes made small task forces to bring something back to the board, whether that's a resolution or,
and it could be a working resolution that we take friendly amendments to. Could we talk about that in
a working session? Could we talk about parameters for this? The board, yeah. Yeah, OK. So we could also
have a working session with the full board
Um, I think the latter would be my perspective to have the full board in a working session on this topic
only because I feel like we do get siloed so often as a result of indoor law, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm less interested in a resolution at this moment and more interested in just getting together to sort
of hammer out some of those things to see where we land. I would be on board with that as well. I agree.
Doing the work, a resolution, you know, so.
I would be in agreement with April. Can we just request that, that we have a working session to set
these parameters? I'd like to formally request that of whoever. I will formally direct you to schedule.
Should we vote? All right, I'm going to take a vote.
100% sure we need to, but let's. Well, then I think we have to make a motion. OK. But I don't think
it has to be just to set a working session. I just need a collective directive from the board as the
entity. Yes. Yes. Does anyone not want Dr. Winston to organize a working session? Will there be food?
Just kidding. Kid. Kid. Hearing no objections, I feel comfortable saying that the board would like you
to request you to organize a working session for us, please, to discuss parameters for redistricting,
reorganization, or restructuring. Ahead of that, can I ask one more question? And this is something
that probably I don't know that there's an answer to this right now. But when we think about per pupil
cost allocations by building, so we always have cost x amount to educate a student at this building
versus this building.
Can we, can we maybe have a little bit more information on the sort of breakdown of why and how those
things come to be in the sense that like, is, and I guess, I don't know, I suppose there probably are
transportation costs and things like that already folded into that. Is that true? Like when you think
about per people costs per school? Yes. Okay.
So I'm going to think about this question. But I have a question about this particular data that I'm
not quite sure I know how to articulate yet, but it's going to come. So. President Cooberman, may I
just kind of clarify what I jotted down in terms of my understanding of the directive? Yes, please.
You would like me to organize a work session to establish parameters that would allow us to examine
redistricting, reorganization, and or restructuring.
That's the collective, not you, but I just want to make sure I capture that. Anyone want to amend that?
That's accurate, Dr. Winston. Thank you. Thank you. Any last thoughts before we close out this conversation?
I just want to say thank you to the board for doing the homework on this and coming prepared to share
your comments. I know there was a lot for us to read and think through, and I really appreciate that
everybody came to the table tonight with both a willingness to share and the background to do that.
Thank you. I think that was a productive discussion. Next, we will have an update on the policy task
force from Board Member Hennessy.
Thank you, President Cooperman. So the Policy Task Force is a recently organized task force. And essentially,
it consists of myself, board member Jester, and board member Arouge. Arouge. It's fine. You're good.
I really can't hear what you said, but it's good. Oh, you're so pitiful over there. But I think we have
just started to look at all of our policies.
body of our policies has not been reviewed since probably 2012, so almost 15 years at this point. Barring
the additions, addendums, and edits that come based on state legislature and other things that come
up. Obviously, we are not entirely legal experts, so we are not pretending to be that, but we are just
reviewing our policies to ensure that
There aren't conflicts or things that are outdated, things that might need to be sort of stripped because
something no longer exists in that way. And so we are doing a thorough review. We've met twice since
our last board meeting, once to kind of set up what our working time will look like. And the second
time to begin going over some of our reviews.
Our goal really is to take chunks of our policies. And essentially, if there's something that does need
to be revised, reviewed, or taken up by this board, we will bring back those policies to the board with
sort of policy revisions made. So for a first reading potentially, that way we can then have discussion,
comments, and whatever else needs to happen as a result of that.
We do know that we have access to ISBA and their policy consultants and legal team. And so we will consult
with them along the way if there are things that are confusing to us or that are, you know, we just
need some legal guidance on, but otherwise we intend to continue to do the work as a team and bring
that stuff back to you all. We are currently working our way through the 0000 and the 1000s.
And we will likely have some policies next time for revision, mostly based on things that are either
redundant and or, you know, there's two conflicting policies and one needs to be sort of integrated
as the primary. Any questions?
April, is there the opportunity if a board member that's not on the task force would like you to look
at a specific policy? Is that an option? Absolutely. I mean, we plan to look at all of them. So if there's
something that you find and you want to flag, please do send it over to us. I think at the end of our
work, once we've reviewed everything in total, we may also have recommendations of things that potentially
don't exist that we think should exist.
And so those would be different kinds of conversations that I think this board could have. Thank you,
April. And next on our agenda is the superintendent comments and report. Do you have any additional
information to share with us tonight, Dr. Winston? Yes, I have a couple.
So we are pleased to announce that music teacher Lisa Voss of Grandview Elementary School has been recognized
in the top 25, 2027 Indiana teachers of the year. So we're very excited for her. For more than 60 years,
this program has worked to inspire, rejuvenate and celebrate the teaching profession by recognizing
outstanding teachers from across the state. We are so honored to have such an excellent teacher in our
midst from Grandview Elementary. Congratulations to Lisa.
In the communications area, we have a number of updates. There are several publications that are being
released soon. The first is the MCCSE Expect Excellence in Education View Book that's on the table in
front of every board member. So we're very excited about this publication. This is part of our continued
effort to promote our schools and the hundreds of offerings that are available to all of our students.
This new publication will be shared far and wide throughout our community.
It will be our singular publication that covers pre-K through adult education with numerous examples
of excellence in our schools. When viewing this new publication, you will see more exemplars of the
amazing experiences provided to our students. And I believe it's online and available now online on
the website. Okay, soon will be online. In addition,
We are soon to finish our second annual MCCSE newspaper that will be distributed to our families and
the larger Bloomington community in the next few weeks. This issue looks to be even more informative
and impactful than our inaugural edition last fall. We are so pleased with the local businesses who
generously donated to support the MCCSE newspaper. We plan to have our newspapers in circulation around
the Labor Day holiday.
We recorded our second MCCSE School Voices podcast last week. In this podcast, we celebrated and recognized
the impact of our early childhood program through the eyes of one of our early childhood teachers and
a guest parent, and we also had our music teacher of the year, Lisa Voss, present. If you haven't added
MCCSE School Voices to your podcast list yet, I encourage you to do so. You can find it on Apple Podcasts,
as well as other platforms,
or wherever you get your podcast. Isn't that how they say it? And the final communication update that
I want to share is our CFO corner. Beginning in September, Mr. Irwin is going to be highlighted in our
CFO corner, which will be brief video updates on school funding matters. It's our intention to align
these videos with some of our podcast content as well. And I will have him as a guest
on one of my upcoming podcast episodes. It's my hope that the coordination of our podcasts and videos
will heighten our community's understanding of what we do and why we do it and how we pay for it. Stay
tuned for more exciting updates on this. Student athletes. Our fall student athletes are in full competition
mode. Last Monday, we had a ribbon cutting ceremony for the North Soccer Field and Athletic Complex,
and then we watched our students compete.
North and South football had their Crosstown rivalry game last Friday. Kudos and congratulations to
South. During halftime, we recognize the Bloomington North High School Boys track team for their 2026
Indiana High School Athletic Association state championship. There are so many more games being played
across our corporation. I encourage our families and the community to find time to support the excellence
of our student athletes and attend a game, match or tournament this school year.
And finally, I want to provide an important update on an important matter. President Cooperman, board
trustees, and members of our community, I would like to take a few minutes to provide some clarity regarding
the proposed changes to policy 8910 and my decision to withdraw that recommendation a couple of weeks
ago. There's been some misunderstanding about the intent behind the recommendation, and I do believe
it is very important to correct the record. First and most importantly,
The recommendation was not an effort to eliminate or reduce AFSCME bargaining rights. It was not intended
to diminish AFSCME or its leadership, and it was in no way intended to support or replicate the actions
of the Indiana General Assembly that have reduced the scope of teacher bargaining rights. Nothing could
be further from our intent. The recommendation came from our genuine effort to better understand the
differences in our existing bargaining processes and, from a management perspective,
to clarify what appropriately belongs in a collective bargaining agreement. In particular, we were seeking
to remove management and operational language from the bargaining agreement and establish clear boundaries
around matters that are appropriately the responsibility of management. Prior to the July board meeting,
members of my team met with local AFSCME leadership to discuss the proposed resolution and changes to
policy 8910. Based upon that conversation, we believed the intent and rationale
for the recommendation were understood and that there was a general understanding and support of the
proposed changes. At the July board meeting, however, it became clear to us that we had not achieved
the level of shared understanding that we believed we had. I also used the terms parity and equity when
describing the recommendation. I now understand that those words were interpreted very differently from
what I intended.
particularly in the context of changes to teacher bargaining rights at the state level. I understand
why that created significant concern. Our intent was not to reduce rights and our recommendation was
not connected to actions regarding teacher bargaining rights. I regret that we did not make that distinction
sufficiently clear. I also want to acknowledge directly that the process moved too quickly. We did not
take the sufficient time
to fully understand the perspectives of our labor partners before bringing the recommendation forward.
As superintendent, I alone take full responsibility for that. Following the July meeting, members of
my team met with AFSCME leadership to listen and better understand their concerns and their perspective.
I, too, spoke with local and state leadership.
Those conversations gave me a much richer and deeper understanding of how the recommendation was being
perceived and why there was such a strong reaction to it. I regret all of that. Leadership requires
us to listen when we learn that our intent has not been understood as we intended it. After considering
those perspectives, I have concluded that withdrawing the recommendation was in fact the appropriate action.
So I want to leave the board and our community with three simple points. First, this was never an effort
to take bargaining rights away from AFSCME. Second, it was never intended to support or replicate the
state's reduction of teacher bargaining rights. And third, the management objective was to clarify bargaining
boundaries and remove management and operational language from the agreement. I acknowledge that we
did not communicate clearly enough and we moved far too quickly in bringing the recommendation
forward. I own that. I have listened. I have gained a better understanding of the concerns that were
raised, and I do believe that withdrawing the recommendation was and is the right thing to do. I value
our relationship with AFSCME. I respect our employees and their representatives, and I remain committed
to open, respectful, and productive labor relations throughout MCCSC. Thank you very much for affording
me this opportunity
to clear the record. Thank you Dr. Winston. Are there comments from the board? Thank you for allowing
this moment. I just want to say that you know there are these moments when things happen right and and
I sort of I watch both from my position as a board member and from my position as a community member
And I just want to say, I mean, it sometimes is frustrating to see the rate at which the backlash comes
without sometimes full understanding. And I think that those moments are important because they allow
for us to sort of take stock
and to pivot or to change. All of this to say, really, I just want to say that this is a moment of true
leadership from Dr. Winston and from her administrative team. And I think that I hope that when we walk
away from this tonight, that what the community sees and what the community hears is a leader
who truly did listen to the responses in the room, the responses from her board members, the responses
from her community members, and she pivoted, right? And so I just want to say with, you know, I have
such great respect for you, Dr. Winston, and for your administrative team, and I think that there was
never any malicious intent here. I think that there were a lot of wires that got crossed, unfortunately,
And as you said, and I just I just want to take a minute to say thank you for the statement for the
work that you did on the heels of that incident and for the decision that you came to. Thank you. I
appreciate that. Yeah, I just want to echo this is definitely a sign of a great leader. So thank you.
Absolutely. I appreciate your open mind and your open heart and your accountability. And I just think
this is just another
good great leader you are thank you very kind and very generous all of you and I think it was the right
choice and like the rest of the board I appreciate your reflection on this thank you are there any other
comments from the board on anything that happened tonight or otherwise I
Seconds out. Temperature check in the future. It is very cold in here. Also, there's that. OK. The next
regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 26. We are, yeah, 2026. I'm not
doing numbers anymore tonight. We are adjourned. Thank you.