I'll call this meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you all very much. Please be seated. And I would like to open the second preliminary determination hearing. And if you would be interested in speaking at the hearing this evening, we would ask that you sign in and you would be, we'll go through the rules of that if anybody signs in. So at this point, I'd like to ask that Jacob McClellan from Bo's McKinney and Evans explain the purpose of this hearing. He's our public counsel. Thank you, Mr. President. Jacob McClellan with Boaz McKinney and Evans. Under Indiana code, it's 6-1.1-20-3.5. Given the size of the potential bond that you're authorizing, you have to hold two public hearings and kind of present the financial information and the need for the project. before you adopt a resolution, assuming you're determined to proceed forward, preliminarily determining to proceed with the bond issuance, given that this is in excess of what's called the control project threshold under the Indiana code. So the public, the hearings and the resolution, they incorporate parameters provided by Stiefel, and those are not to exceed parameters, not necessarily what you guys will end up proceeding with. But I also know, just for purposes of the statute, that there's some statutorily required information here, some calculations that we had to run through, just like in the past when you guys have done control projects. And there's another stack. I brought out some extras, and Robin has them out in the lobby. So the project is, just for the record, for various improvements, some renovations at the high school, which could include roof replacement, repair renovations and solar installation, band and choir expansion upgrades, improvements and renovations, constructing and equipping additional classrooms, constructing and equipping biomedical training classrooms, installation and upgrades to turf at the baseball field, installation of turf and other improvements and upgrades at the softball field, technology office storage and workspace upgrades, replacements and equipping, parking and asphalt repair upgrades and replacements, tennis court repairs and renovations and other related renovations. At the high school, a list of renovations at the junior high, roof replacement, renovations and repair, solar installation, band choir expansion, upgrades, improvements and renovations, constructing and equipping additional classrooms, replacement of bleachers, parking and asphalt repair, upgrades and replacements, tennis court repairs and renovations and other related renovations. and other renovations at the primary school and the intermediate school, including roof renovations and replacements and solar installation, playground expansion, asphalt patching, resurfacing, and parking improvements, and other related renovations. And I'll note just for the record, just for the public's purposes, You're listing all the projects to authorize them. You won't necessarily do all those projects. It's just to authorize and to provide notice to the public of what you might do. As far as timing, this is the second preliminary hearing determination. Assuming you adopt the preliminary determination resolution, we would provide notice. There's a 30-day period when folks could remonstrate to have the referendum process apply. During that time, we'll also put out a notice. This would be a bond issuance through your building corporation. That's a 30-day notice, and because of the way that your meetings run and the newspaper runs, we would be back at your September board meeting, and we'd also have the building corporation meet probably just before your meeting to consider an amendment to your existing lease with the building corporation. This would be a building corporation bond. Then we would be back in October to authorize the issuance of bonds. There's a couple of additional public hearings there just to make sure the public has a chance to comment. And then we would be in a position to close potentially in mid-November. I think Jerry would work with Stiefel to kind of determine the best time when you need funds, if it's best to wait till closer to the end of the year or when it's best to price. So with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Mr. President. And now we'll hear from Dr. Sanders about the process of determining the scope of the project and the need for the project. And he'll also provide a general description of the project. Mr. McClellan did a pretty good job at that and how it addresses the school, community, and student needs. So as Jacob mentioned, we have a number projects that we have established for these bond hearings. We've gone through The process of identifying the needs and we did that by first of all, we had a facility study done in 2022 and we continue to operate off of that facility studies study that we've identified the needs that are prioritized in that study. We've had two demographic studies, the most recent one by McKibbin demographics in 2024. And then most recently, the board has met with teachers, administrators, athletic director, representatives from the performing arts, maintenance departments, skill and construction, technology and also Lancer architect firm. And so we feel like the needs that we've identified are very important to the corporation and providing a positive, safe environment that will be engaging to our students. Thank you. And we will now hear how the proposed project will be financed as well as information about the effect on the typical property tax payers. We'll turn it back over to Jacob McCall. I have a tag team on this one. This is the same presentation that we had at the first preliminary determination meeting. You can see on this first slide is the current situation with our outstanding debt. And if we did nothing, that this would be the years that the debt would be coming off in different bonds. The next slide is if we get approval for the projects, the asking permission to bond for the $40 million. This is how it would show in terms of current debt and potential debt over the next several years. And then the last slide here really just shows some of the specific projections in terms of numbers, interest rate, payment, estimated payments, and how this project would impact the finances for Edgewood schools. Do you wanna add anything? Slide two, if you can go back to slide two. Those are, I guess I would just say it's based on, that's max parameters, and that is assuming that you guys were to issue everything at the max parameter. I think Jerry will work with Stiefel, and based on your needs, you'll probably do multiple series. We've authorized multiple series over the next couple of years. And this also makes some assumptions about the impact of Senate Bill 1. But I think the point is, working with Stiefel, Jerry, your goal is to make this kind of tax neutral for the taxpayers. What's that? That's at the 7%. That's at the max. I think that assumes a drop in net assessed value, and it assumes very conservative growth, if any at all. So yeah, they're trying to set you up to show a worst case scenario. To note that this will be done over a series of bonds and as we plan the individual projects to be done. Okay, now I will open the hearing to public comment. Is there anybody who would like to comment here at the second preliminary determination hearing. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Thank you. And now next, we have another hearing. And so I will open the 1028 public hearing and turn to the statement of purpose that's The 1028 hearing, again, if you're interested in speaking, please let us know. We'd be happy to hear from you. I would like to note that the notice of this 1028 hearing was published as legally required as was for the second determination hearing before this. And then, so, you know, I'll turn it over to Jacob McClellan with Boaz McKinney and Evans, who is our bond counsel to state the purpose of this hearing. So again, the 1028 hearing was in statute before the preliminary determination hearings were in statute. So this is essentially kind of the similar exercise. It's a little bit lesser than what you have to do for the preliminary determination. The resolution that you'll have before you later at the board meeting runs through essentially these parameters to show that you've considered the impact. So again, unless folks want us to go back through, I think you can revert back or reference back to the prior hearing. So everything that you've covered in the prior hearing is more than you need to cover for the 1028 hearing, in other words. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or I'll turn it back over to you, Dana. Just to clarify, the effect on the levy, the tax levy, is Neutral you you guys have the ability to control it and that's what I think that's what your goal is and what you what you're going to do That's I mean, you're gonna you're authorizing 40 million But I believe you're gonna look and work with stifle to keep that levy right the same as it was or the rate the same as it was Thank you. Yep Thank you at this time I will open the hearing up for public comment if there's anyone who would like to comment and at the 1028 hearing regarding the purpose or anything related thereto. Seeing none, then I will close the 1028 hearing. Thank you for those two items. And so now I will call to order the regular July, 2025 meeting of the Richland Beam Lawson Community School Corporation School Board. And please let the record reflect that all of the members are present. And are there any visitor comments? Again, no visitor comments. So we'll move straight into the consent agenda. So we have approval of minutes from June 17th, 2025, the regular school board meeting. We have the treasurer's report for June of 2025. And Mr. Durnall, the claims please. Thank you, Mr. President. Gross wages on June the 6th, 2025, $1,021,273.05. Gross wages on June the 20th, 2025, $698,979.62 for $1,720,252.67. Vouchers, claims, prepays for June the 1st, 2025 through June the 30th, 2025 is $3,866,776.69. for claims regular vouchers for 7-15-2025 at $278,893.74 for $4,154,670.43 for grand total of $5,874,923.10. Thank you. We also have personnel, the resignations, retirements, non-renewals, leaves, and terminations, C-1 through seven. personnel appointments and transfers D 1 through 35 and do we have a motion on the consent agenda? Moved and seconded. Any comment? None. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries and Mr. Ackerman do you have an introduction? Yes, I have a couple teachers here today that are on the packet. This is Jacqueline Sorg. Jacqueline is our new English teacher. She's coming to us via Bloomington North. She's been a half-time German teacher. So with the numbers we have in our German classes, we'll probably take advantage of that as well as her being an English teacher. We're really excited to have her. Matt Stark, who is the principal at Bloomington North, is a good friend of mine, and he really just had just great things to say about her. So we're excited to have Jacqueline and Ryan Stone. Ryan comes to us via A member of different places, most recently, I think LA, right? And has a lot of different teaching experiences in private schools, public schools, and he will be teaching algebra two and algebra at the high school. So we are really excited to have both of our new teachers at Edgewood High School, along with five others that we've already sent through the board. One teaching mainly sophomores. and freshmen. Okay, so Melissa's load. Okay, welcome. You both could be here tonight so we could get to meet you. Thank you. Thank you both for coming. Okay. Now there's the supplemental personnel report and Dr. Sanders. We are asking the board tonight to approve Samantha Richards to be the head custodian at Edgewood Intermediate School. Indiana code 20-26-5-11.2 requires any school personnel hired after June 30th, 2023 who have certain offenses on their background check must be voted on and approved by school board in a separate agenda item. You received the background information from me and so I'm asking for the board to approve this hire tonight. I move approval of the supplemental personnel report. I'll second. Second, discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now moving to our financial report. And for that, we bring back a friend from the past. Could you speak at the mic for cats? I'm sorry. It doesn't amplify in here, but it helps for the, yeah. Hello to everyone. And I'm glad to be back. However, it's much better circumstances than it was six years ago. So I'm pleased with that. And I wish Matt well. I really do. This is his cash flow. And so primarily we look at the education fund and we look at the operations fund. And you know what the state's been doing a little bit with property tax movement. And so we're going to, for the next three years, pay real close attention to the operations fund. It is going to be okay in 2026. They are allowing that 4 percent growth factor to enter in. But then in 2027 and 2028, they zeroed that out, and it is gone. So what they do with any kind of increase in the future there, it could be nothing, it could be 1, it could be 2 percent. So we will have to watch that. That is going to eat into the levy. And so we want to be really aware of that. When you get your cash flows, you want to pay attention to January 1st. You look at that number, January 1st, up in the upper left-hand corner, and you look at the last number over on the right-hand side in the little black box, December 31st, down there. And if those two numbers match up pretty close, your year is rolling along pretty good. And that's where you are. You're a little over 4 million, close to 5 million in January. You're 4 and 1 half million at the end of the year. And that's what you want to see. This is just kind of a snapshot of the future. The operations fund will be one, like I said, that will be interesting to watch. But it's doing the same thing right now. It's starting with a number, ending with a number that's very close to that, or maybe even a little bit higher. And that's OK. You know, you always get into a debate about how much cash to keep in this fund, especially the education fund. When the state put the screws down on the operations fund and debt service fund and that and said you can only have 15% of it in cash like you used to carry 50% in debt service, now it's 15, your operations You've got to keep it lower because it moves your budget and affects the budget in a bad way when it comes to that fund when you do the budget in August, September. The education fund then carries more cash balance. It doesn't really have a number there that the state tracks or anything, but when you're spending $2 million a month on average, and if you look at your budget, it's around 20-some million, you're spending around two million every month. And so you've got to have a certain number there in hand, or if you don't and you fall too low there, you're going to be borrowing money to operate on. And you don't want to do that if you don't have to. Now, you know, there's ways to do it, but our goal is not to do that. So right now I'd say you're in pretty good shape. And like I said, we'll keep an eye on that operations fund as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It'd be really good to have Paul back. It is, yes. And when I think back to when I became superintendent and the situation we were in back then, and it was really a great year working with Paul. And then when we brought Matt on board, A lot of our financial success over the years can be traced back to Paul. We're glad to have him back working with us. We have him coming on Tuesdays so we can go to a China buffet restaurant for lunch. They don't do Mondays. That's something you don't want to forget. OK, well, welcome back. Now we'll turn to consideration to approve the preliminary determination in 1028 resolution. So Dr. Sanders. Actually we're gonna have Jacob come back up and talk to us about the purpose of the resolution. So again, so this outlines everything we discussed in those public hearings. It outlines the project that you've complied with the statute and we've combined, I know you'll recall a few years ago we would do these as separate resolutions, but we combined it into one since there's such overlap. And it makes the preliminary determination to proceed with the project, to proceed with the issuance of the bonds. It includes those parameters from Stiefel, the not to exceed $40 million, 20-year term max for each series of bonds, and the 7% max rate. Stiefel will work with Jerry in sizing as you guys have needs and to make sure that the rate stays level given the impact with SB1. And again, assuming you guys adopt this, we'll put out a notice that starts at 30 day clock. We'll put out another notice at the same time, and we'll be back in September for another public hearing, and this time it'll be on the lease, and it'll cover kind of a lot of the same topics, but again, you want to have thoroughly considered everything and given the public a chance to comment. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, any questions? This material we've been looking at for Quite a while, huh? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. We really appreciate all the work that you put in and helping keep us on track for this, I'd appreciate that. Okay, next is consideration to approve the course agreement, so Dr. Sanders. The annual agreement for the fire alarm sprinkler monitoring system is part of this agreement, it's a monthly service fee of $280. and also part of the agreement is a five-year plan for internal inspection of sprinkler pipes for the Edgewood Junior High School and Edgewood High School. The annual fee is $1,165 for the junior high and $2,093 for the high school. I recommend your approval. The course and agreement. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now consideration to approve the transportation handbook. So the transportation handbook was in desperate need of being updated. Audrey Myers, our director of transportation, has taken this summer to go through the handbook, update all of it, and I've listed for you in the board packet the different areas that the handbook covers, the general qualifications and conditions for employment, contract and fleet buses and drivers, information, general use and care of school buses, bus operation, transportation of students, routes, safety procedures and emergencies, and security and threat awareness. I recommend your approval. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. No consideration to approve a memorandum of understanding with JAG Inc. All right. So unfortunately, we received really late in the summer that the Indiana Legislative Legislature approved the fiscal year 26, 27 by Annamen. Can't say that word. Yeah, state budget bill transitioning state funding for school dropout and prevention programming into a new freedom and opportunity in the education fund within the budget of the Department of Education. Essentially, this eliminated the state JAG funding from the Department of Workforce development's budget. However, the DOE chose not to provide funding for the JAG program. This has been a really effective program at the high school, really targets a very important population of students. So we worked with Sam Perkins, who's the manager of region eight, to use the grant's remaining dollars for 100% funding of the JAG position for the 2025-2026 school year. Under the new MOU, the JAG teacher will actually be an employee of RBBCSC, and we will submit reimbursements to the JAG grant to cover the cost of the JAG teacher. At this time, We are committing to only one year continuation of the program. We're hoping that they will find funding somewhere to continue it after the 2025-26 school year. And we will be also evaluating the possibility of finding our own funds to continue the program and we'll try to have an answer back to the board in six to nine months in terms of whether or not we feel like we can continue JAG into the future. So I'm asking for the board to approve this MOU with the JAG organization. Approval. I second. Second, any discussion? Even though we're paying this person, we'll still use the JAG curriculum. They'll give us support, right? Yes, we're gonna continue to use the JAG curriculum. One more year? Yes. And then we're not doing it down in the junior high now, right? Right. Okay, so it's freshmen through seniors? We're hoping to have expanded to ninth through 12th grade at the high school this school year. Okay, all right, thanks. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we need to look at the JAG position itself. Senator? So basically, for all the things I've just said, we're asking since we have to have this position as an employee for RBB, we wanted to create the position of JAG instructor at Edgewood High School. I'll second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we look to revisions of policies 4162 and 8510. Dr. Sanders? If you'll remember at the June school board meeting, I presented these two policy revisions as a first reading. Policy 4162 is drug and alcohol testing of CDL. holders and other employees who perform safety sensitive functions. It's really being revised at the direction of the Indiana State Police who do the inspections on our buses and suggested that our policy was not in line with their protocols. So we made those revisions. We also made revisions to policy 8510, which is a wellness policy recommended by the Champs Committee, and it better aligns with the USDA smart snacks in school nutrition standards. Ferguson Law has reviewed both policies for compliance, and so I recommend your approval. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we're going to look at the Administrator Assistance Agreements. Dr. Sanders? So it's interesting that we already have Paul come up and give a presentation. You haven't approved the contract yet. But you're familiar with this before when Paul came around the first time we used an organization called Administrative Assistance and they're a networked program throughout the whole state of Indiana that provides services to school corporations. It could be interim superintendent, interim principal, interim business manager, like we used Paul the first time. And this contract will be for $6,300 plus mileage and it'll go through July, 2026. And I listed for the board in the board packet all the things we'll be asking Paul to do. Mainly he's going to be doing the 2026 budget and at the same time training Debbie Tate in that process. And really Paul is going to follow the same formula that we used when we brought Matt in. And as you could tell, Paul did an amazing job training Matt. And so he's going to do the same thing with Debbie. And so I request that you approve this contract. The administrator assistance agreement. Second. Any discussion? I feel a lot more confident having Paul back to backstop us as we move forward here. Yes, yes. Kind of got near a ledge six years ago and he pulled us to safety, so he's our knight in shining armor. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. No, we turn to the Heritage Schools Agreement. And Jennifer Barrett, welcome to the front row here. It's after many years. I'm thankful that Paul also is here. I'm asking you to approve an agreement with Heritage Schools in Utah. This is an agreement that we have with them to provide a free appropriate public education to one of our students who lives here within our district. Contract is effective from July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2026. Basically what this agreement says is that we will maintain the students individualized education plan, their IEP. We will monitor that through the school out in Utah. So we meet with them on a regular basis. They're a part of the students case conference committee. We receive general progress updates at least every nine weeks. They allow us to be a part of that student's education in a setting that will meet his or her needs more effectively than what we can provide here for this particular student at Edgewood. I'm asking you to approve this agreement. Once it has been approved, we will go ahead and we will submit, along with Noah Dixon, our special education director, who has just will be approved hopefully here shortly. Noah will start working on a seek application so that we can be reimbursed for the majority of these funds. Basically, the way that works is with the state of Indiana. Once a school board has approved the agreement, then we can start the application for seek. There's no guarantee that we'll receive those excess costs. It's a finite number that the state puts into that fund, but the goal is that we give them everything they need in terms of that application so that we do receive that reimbursement on a monthly basis. And what's the value of the contract? The value of the contract overall. It's different for each kid. Let me pull that up for you, Dana. This one is roughly $300,000. They do not break this down into individual hours, but they break it down into per hour, what they charge for. the student services. So a lot of that will depend upon what the case conference committee decides. So when we meet again for this particular student coming up here in the next month and we'll be reworking that student's IEP, those hours could change depending upon the needs of that student at that time. So it depends on what type of services we're going to be adjusting from the previous IEP. So that is in this as far as the hourly amount or the daily amount that Heritage would charge for those services. So for each one of these students, we're looking at roughly $250,000 to $300,000. Is that sufficient for Steven? Yes. Is that Exhibit A to the contract, the rates? Am I looking at the right thing? I am not sure on that, Christine. I don't think that one was for the full 365, Christine. It just showed for 200 days in the board packet. show 200 days of special education and 365 days for room and board and therapeutic services. Correct. Yeah, we're paying for the full year, because they stay there year round. For Heritage, we're paying for 209 days of academic, 365 days for room and board, mental health, therapeutic services, just depending on what those look like for this individual student. So that is on number nine of the individual service agreement. And I think that's the same thing that's broken down on Exhibit A, which is page 243 of the packet. Yeah. OK. So I'm just going to make sure we cover everything. OK. I'll move approval of the Heritage Schools Incorporated Agreement. I'll second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Mr. Carano, is it time to move on to the next one, Ms. Barrett? It is completely up to you. I asked her to kind of give us a quick overview of how this works. Because I know we just did this last year. And they're in our school district. We're going to give them the best care that they can get. For sure. But there were some things I was unaware of that we pay for. We also accommodate the families to help them travel to see their kids. That's part of the expense. And per the law, we may be required to do this until they're 22. Is that correct? Correct, yes. So I just kind of let you give the quick sum synopsis there. Yeah, absolutely. I shared with you guys today three different documents. One of those is the Special Education Excess Cost Funding Manual, SEEK Funding Manual. And so it does go through and talk about all of the requirements that we must provide to students and families when we fall into this type of financial I'm going to say that the state calls it a burden. So what this says is that if we are over three times the state average of what a student would typically receive in Indiana, then it falls under excess cost. So that allows us then to submit an application to be able to reimburse on those excess cost. So for both of the students that I'm asking you to look at agreements with tonight, we are definitely over the three times there. And as Christine pointed out, Exhibit A in this contract does break that down, so you can see, it's the very last page in that contract, you can see how much Heritage, for instance, charges on a daily rate to provide special education services, how much they charge to provide room and board, and then any therapeutic services that are determined as a need for that student as well. We are required to exhaust all funds in terms of what we can provide for those students, so for instance, amount that we receive on ADM for each of these students, we go to pay for our deductible on these kiddos, which is around $30,000. That is actually determined by the Indiana Department of Education, how much we are required to spend out of pocket before SEEK, as long as we're approved, begins picking up reimbursements for that. We also will take the special education funds that we receive for each of these students for their disabilities, and we will apply that towards the deductibles as well. The additional funds for us, we will take out of Medicaid to be able to pay for these students at the level that we're required to pay. And then I can't stress this enough with the hope that SEEK funds will pick up the rest of that. If SEEK funds does not have enough in that fund to pay for it, then it goes back to the school. It does. Okay. It does. And that will be A situation where SEEK can say we can reimburse 100%, they can also come back at any point in time and say we can reimburse up to a certain percentage. That is not anything that we have any control over. We will make sure that the applications we submit are thorough. We'll make sure that we have justification and need put in there in writing for every single one of these students. What will be a little bit different about the applications for SEEK this year than what we did last year. These are considered re-applications, so we do work really closely with the offsite residential placement facilities in terms of providing documentation that these students are gaining in terms of academics. That's important. If we see that they're not gaining academically, if they're not making behavioral gains or whatever the situation might be, then as a case conference committee, that's where we have to come back to the table and say, is this the appropriate placement for this student? And so we're keeping a close eye on that. That'll be a piece that we'll report on in those applications. And these are two students that live in our school district. Yes, they are two students that live in our school district that have siblings who attend our schools on a daily basis, two families that I've known for a long time that really work well with us and thankfully trust us to make good decisions for their kids. You know these services? can be expensive, but my wife's a teacher and on her wall she has fair is not everybody getting the same thing. It's everybody getting what they need to succeed. That's absolutely the agreement that we have with every family and it's also what we pledge to provide as a public school system for every single one of our students that walk through the door. Which is named by all public schools, including public charter schools. That is correct. Okay, perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And now we'll look for the agreement with the Judge Rottenberg Educational Center. So this is a very similar agreement for another student. This student is receiving his or her special education services in Massachusetts. We're asking you to approve this agreement for this student on the same basis, same outline, just like we talked about previously, this organization has a little bit different fee schedule, which makes sense. But ultimately, we would be looking at 250 to $300,000 as an agreement for the student special education services out of state at this facility. And just like the previous agreement, we will be submitting a seek application for this kiddo as well. And hoping that the state has those funds available to be able to reimburse us 100%. I'll move approval of the judgment for educational center agreement. Any discussion? The board packet does include the specific amounts for this one. It will not right now, Larry. The reason for that is that will be determined once we finish the IEP and determine what those services look like for that student. So it would depend. on that student's disability, it would depend on a lot of different pieces there. So once we have that, then we can go ahead and get the contract written. So this is just simply the agreement with both of these facilities. Once we have the IEP, we go ahead and we start the contract with them. And then we can bring that back before the board so you can see those actual amounts. But keep in mind with IEPs, those are completely flexible. They can change at any point in time. If we see a change in services that are needed, we come together. almost immediately to look at those services and they can change on a dime. That's a good thing. That's what we want to happen because we want to make sure that we're providing what those students need even if they're in Massachusetts or they're in Utah. So we will show you the initial contract and we'll ask you at that point in time to understand and to make sure that we have the flexibility to be able to change that as needed. Thank you. You're welcome. to consider this a not to exceed 300,000. Well, and it sounds like it'll come back to you with the exact amounts. But yeah, I would say that. OK. All right. Any further discussion? Maybe at the end of the year. I know Ms. Barrett said we were able to seek money this past year. Yes, we have been. Just make sure that we continue to get that. And we make sure we got across our T's and dot our I's, Did we have two cases last year as well? Yes, and these are the exact same two students who have been placed since that time. So no new students. These are the same ones. What you have approved are their agreements for the upcoming school year. So July 1 to June 30 is the contract date on those. Thank you. The agreement will have to be approved every year. Yes. The agreement allows us to apply for the seek funding. Then we'll move forward with the IEPs. All of that is sent to these organizations. The contracts are written up, and then we bring those back to you. Anything further? We pay upfront, as far as you're right, for the whole year. And then we get the money later. So that's a great question. So we will pay upfront our deductible. Now, we will be charged, so we'll receive an invoice from each organization over the course of the year. I don't know if that's monthly or quarterly. I would have to look at that and see. What we do then is we go ahead and pay that and then we turn around and we apply for a reimbursement through SEEK. So Debbie Tate takes care of all of those reimbursements. As far as the deductible that we would pay on each one of these students, we pay that upfront and then that money comes back to us in terms of our ADM count, in terms of our Part B grant when that's dispersed, December count with our education students and then Medicaid billing throughout the year. So we would see that come back on a rolling basis. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we look for at the furniture bids for the high school and junior high school. Dr. Sanders. Thank you Mr. Kerr. I am recommending the board approve the purchase of additional classroom furniture for Edgewood Junior High School and Edgewood High School. Both schools have been working on us to get the new furniture for a while and we've heard them and we agree that this furniture is, It's well overdue to be replaced. It's well over 20 years old. And so we will be paying for this furniture out of the 2022 general obligation bond. The quotes are already competitively bid through the co-op and meets procurement policies and rules. The total cost of the furniture for the junior high, and it's the same cost for both schools, 158,000. $279 and 80 cents. And the new furniture will be installed over fall break vacation. The furniture bids. Discussion. I like the more flexible design, the separated desk and chair that I see. I know I had within the last 20 years, if you say, a number of desks that were the pieces, the bottom storage racks were broken and it was hard to keep them looking good and they were dangerous at times. So no, I like this. Yes, I saw the chairs first and I thought that was like student chairs. It's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I saw the same thing. But that's teacher chairs. I understand. OK. Anything further? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we're going to look at purchasing staff laptops and for that we have our tech director Rick Ratton. Evening everybody. So it's that time of year, our time when we do capital replacement. It's been five years since we came to you and got the original laptops for the staff. Great time. Looking forward to seeing some new laptops for our staff and everybody around here. So we did do bid proposals. We only received two back. We sent out six, but only two actually replied. One was Trafera, a new company that we just started working with about a year ago, and they've been competitively bidding on some of our other stuff, but this time they did not come in at the lowest price. We have been using Paragon Micro for the last purchase, and they again won this year's process of elimination. About $3,000 difference, but they were both very high-end laptops, one's with Lenovo brand and one was a Dell brand, so we've been looking at both, both area. So I'm asking for your approval tonight to approve that we move forward with the purchase of Dell laptops from Paradigm Micro for a total of $341,996. Move approval of the staff laptop purchase. I'll second. Moved and second. Any discussions? Does that take care of whole staff? It takes care of 400 staff members. Is there any residual value on the computers that we're replacing? So on the residue, the runs we're going to keep that are still in good shape and have not been stickered to death, we're going to repurpose those into some of the classrooms that have some old workstations that really do need to be removed and updated. So we're going to repurpose them. We have to be careful because our licensing with Microsoft, we have to stay within a certain range. And so some of them we won't be able to actually reuse. We'll have to, we'll try to get some money out of them. More than likely 20, $30 is all we seem to be getting for refurbished equipment. Yeah, I was just kind of curious. When do you think they'll be ready to roll? We probably won't see these until somewhere October, November, just because of the way that orders have been going and the tariffs and everything. And then we'll have to start doing the rollout to all the individual teachers. So by the time the furniture comes in? Approximately, we also have a lot of other stuff coming around. We just don't have time to even start that process. We have already received the 900 laptops for the high school, or excuse me, Chromebooks for the high school students, and we're already getting those into the students' hands. We're trying to get those out early, because it's a lot of processing to do. Right. But from time to time, the teachers can see them as Christmas presents, so. That's what I'm looking at. I thought we'd just get Dr. Sanders to dress up as Santa Claus, and he can deliver a few of them. Make it a little happy, happy end of year season. Yeah. Is that part of collective bargaining? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. But it's something that we definitely need in this time. Five years is about the maximum we can see out of all the devices. Is that from a rolling fund or part of bonds? We got a bond. That's what I thought. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we have consideration to approve agreement with IU for DBT informed training and school counselors and they're for Barrett. That agreement is actually being paid for out of our SMART grant. That's one of our federal grants for mental health. We have in excess carryover funds of about $500,000, and this grant is very specific about how it can be spent. This is a type of training. It's a therapeutic approach, and it will be a virtual training given by the same IU instructors that we currently work with in partnership of the SMART grant. So we're asking you to approve this. This training probably won't take place until spring, and I'll be bringing a contract back to you after the agreement has been approved for the contract also to be approved. I'll move the bill. I second. Moved and second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. In consideration to approve the Northwestern University Medical social service service agreement. This agreement also same terms and with a smart grant and what we're looking at here our counselors have learned about a new therapeutic approach that is being researched out at Northwestern University. This is a single session consultation, so we're looking at those students who aren't necessarily needing long-term therapy, long-term counseling. This approach is more kind of a fly by the seat of your pants, get the kids back in class sort of approach. And it's one that we think will definitely come in beneficial to the students in terms of maybe being proactive in some of the situations that we have going on versus being reactive And possibly taking more time out of classes for them to receive those therapies. So this is again with Northwestern University and coming out of those carryover funds with the smart grant And is this one where the contract will come later as well I am I believe that this agreement has all of the terms and there was an amendment. Amendment isn't the correct term. There was an appendix to it that had all of the work agreements in it. So this one was a little bit different because it did have all of the particulars in it, whereas the first one did not. So I'll be bringing the contract back to you on the first one, but this one did have the particulars in it. So this has everything we need to approve it in one fell swoop tonight. Okay. And its value? Say that one more time. The total value? Total value of this one is... $64,750. That's correct. Thank you, Christine. Awesome. Thank you. Has it already been moved in a second? Yes. OK. It was all fast. OK. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And now we'll look at revisions to the roles and responsibilities of the corporation administrative staff. Dr. Sanders. Yes, so sometimes the change is really hard. And we have a team approach here at Edgewood. And when you lose an all-star part of your team, it's really devastating at first because I really appreciated Matt Irwin and what he brought to our team. He was a good, great partner. And when that change happens at first, you're just really upset about it. But then you start to think about, well, how can we take this opportunity to make ourselves better? And when I started thinking about the different scenarios of how we might respond to Matt's departure, we really came up across the realization that here at Edgewood, we're deep and rich in talent. And so it really didn't take a lot of consideration to realize that we had people right here already on our team who could step up. And in the sports analogy, it's always a next man up. And what that means is that the most successful teams They may have their maybe their starting lineup, but they're a great team because they have a great bench who could step right into a starting role. And that was the idea is that we I wanted to continue on without missing a beat for the school corporation. We've made a lot of progress over the last several years, and we want to continue to march forward and keep that momentum going, not only for our students, but our staff also. And so being very transparent, what I did is I asked Matt to make a list of all the things that he does. or has done here in the school corporation. And I took every item on that list and assigned it to somebody in this office. I'm taking on more responsibilities. I'll have more direct responsibility for operations, transportation, food service, technology, maintenance, some of the things that Matt took care of there. Jennifer Barrett here is going to become our assistant superintendent. She's going to keep doing most of what she's been doing in terms of our focus on instruction and curriculum, but she needed to take on some other responsibilities. We have two especially talented people in the office and Debbie Tate and Susan Shockney and so we wanted to take, give Debbie, expand her roles and responsibilities where eventually she will be doing the budget and she'll be doing the forecasting of our funds and where we're going for our finances in the future. Susan Shockney will be taking on more personnel responsibilities. And so we basically took all those responsibilities and signed them throughout the office. And in order to do that, we had to make adjustments to everybody's roles and responsibilities. And the two goals I had in mind was one, to continue to be efficient. We want to make great decisions for our school corporation. But we also wanted to save some money. and consideration of the financial situation that all school corporations are finding themselves in right now, that we wanted to make sure that we were taking this opportunity to be cost effective so that we can better pay our teachers, so that we could better provide programs and services to our students, but at the same time continue, like I said, the great momentum that our school corporation has had. So, and really if sometimes I wish that I could put a camera in a room because when this group here in this office sat down and we had these conversations. It was just an amazing conversation. Nobody knows better how to do the job of providing a corporation-wide leadership than the people in this office. And to hear them talk about what our needs truly are, it ended up enabling us to make the best possible decisions. And so, I shared this information with the board in terms of wanting to get your feedback. Did you think we were headed in the right direction? Did you have some concerns with that? And so a lot of work has gone into this plan and I would ask the board to approve this plan tonight. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Dr. Sager says he'd like to have a camera to record the interaction among the people in the office. I don't know that I need the camera because I can imagine those people how they would interact and how eager they would be to make sure that things run smoothly and do what they can to continue our work here as a school corporation. I'm just, I'm thrilled with the group that we have. I think they're well positioned to carry us into the future. So I think it's a good plan. I agree with Larry. I see a lot of long time loyal employees here. That really warms my heart that we can we can take up the slack and be a better school system because of it. So thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Jennifer, for working this out. Appreciate it. And I would tell you, Paul was a very important part of that process. One of the first things that I did, not only, we did not only come up with this plan was to bring Paul on board so that we would have a year to make sure our finances continue in the right direction. And we're gonna use this year to evaluate the roles and responsibility each person has and make some adjustments accordingly. And a year from now, Debbie's gonna be ready to fly on her own, but even then we'll provide support for her through networking, through Stiefel, and provided her with a team that could back her. And I will tell you already, I feel really good about this. As I mentioned when I first started, change is hard. You don't always want change, but I could tell already, today I had a conversation with Susan Shockney on several different positions, and we were talking about the rates that we should apply to each person. And she came to me, like we should in this office, she came to me with solid information, facts. She gave me options, and she gave me recommendations. We had a conversation. In the end, we made the best possible decision, and that's what excites me. I feel really good about our future moving forward. you're improving the career of our folks that are here. Because I think if you get stagnant, sometimes that's how you lose valuable people. And so I'm very excited about this. And I think they're only going to continue to make us stronger. So I'm very happy with how it has gone. Ditto to all that. Dr. Sanders, Ms. Barrett, for pulling us all together. One thing I do want to challenge all the administrators and the contract change peoples for these positions are funded by grants. And we have to continue to seek new grants to continue some of these things that are moving forward. So Mr. Dixon, good luck on that. No pressure, Ms. Barrett. And I do want to mention on the RDC grant, it funds two positions. I've been sitting on that committee for the last whatever day in three or four years, and that's, they're meeting again tomorrow, and they're talking about shortfalls at the RDC, and that makes me nervous. But we always have, it's just, we gotta deal with it as it's thrown at us, so. But yeah, I think this is gonna work out great, and kudos to everybody stepping up to the plate. Absolutely. Any further discussion? I do appreciate all the conversations and I think this was well thought out and definitely was a strategically planned transition and so I appreciate that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now consideration to approve the contracts for the 15 bulleted individuals under number 22. Let me explain this a little bit too in terms of when you're adding additional responsibilities, not just the number of responsibilities and duties, but the significance of what they're doing, a lot more pressure that's gonna be on somebody. So we wanted to fairly compensate each of these individuals who are taking on additional roles. And once again, this is where the team here came together and we were in the conference room and they had a spreadsheet up on the screen and Susan and Debbie were entering data into that spreadsheet and providing me with information that I could simply look at it and say, okay, that makes sense, we need to adjust that dollar figure and kind of repeating what I've seen earlier, it's a team that's already started to work well together. And the other thing that I wanted to try to do, take this opportunity in, was last year we took a number of our employees because we thought there was, well there was a law that was passed that we had to move people to hourly that were on salary and then that that law was stopped by a judge, I believe. And so we took this opportunity to move these people back to salary. So some of the people on this list are getting a pay increase because of the changes in roles and responsibilities. Others are having the same Salary, but they are moving from hourly to salary So Jennifer Barrett, you know, it was really a no-brainer for me to to Bring her to be my assistant We work very well together. I think we've accomplished a lot over the years and We're gonna make a great team. That's that's so important for this superintendent to be able to have a strong team supporting him or her. And Jennifer is definitely a great partner. And so she'll be the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning with a salary of 109,000 and that'll be paid out of operations. Debbie Tate will be the director of budget and finance and her new salary will be $71,000 and she will also be paid out of operations. Susan Shockney will be the director of personnel. Her new salary would be 64,600 paid out of operations. Jenny Johnson, she will be the manager of student services and business operations. That'll be her title for a salary of $63,120. And her salary split 50% out of operations and 50% out of education. Robin May has the same title, basically executive secretary and deputy treasurer, but she has also taken on additional roles and responsibilities for a salary of $60,619 paid for out of operation. John Keefer is our payroll specialist. His salary will remain the same at $53,601.60, and mainly that's because we wanted, you know, payroll is so important, and I really did not want to add something to John's duties, and suddenly he's overburdened, and we have a mistake made in payroll. And so he's going to have the same duties. Now, as we make adjustments down the road, we might add something to him if it makes sense and doesn't overburden him. And I'd like to introduce Noah Dixon. Noah has been a special education teacher at Edgewood Junior High School, and he has his, Director of Special Education License, and Noah blew us away in his interview. And it's one of those interviews, if you sat in on an interview and while you're sitting there, you're thinking, oh my goodness, this is our person. And it's kind of the same feeling I had several years ago when we interviewed Jennifer Anderson the first time. When we were interviewing her, I had the same thought. She's the person I wanted, and that's how I feel about Noah. He's gonna be a great addition to this team. His new salary will be $82,000, and it's paid for out of the Part B SPED grant. I know I'm taking a long time here, but one of the things that we were trying to do with this Jennifer Anderson's departure was I wanted to take some some duties off of that that position. And the idea originally was to focus that position just be focused on special education and mental health. But it was very clear that really everybody we interviewed was either very strong in one area or the other. And with this I see change as opportunities. So with this opportunity, I wanted to have Noah be specifically focused on special education and supporting his team and meeting the needs of our special education students. Noah is just going to be over special education, just. He's going to be over special education. But he won't have to worry about also being over mental health. And so what we did there is Jordan Truax was already at that position. But we're going to have asked Jordan to take on some more administrative support in terms of providing support for administrators with behavior issues throughout the school at the elementary level. We have a plan, but we're still working on that plan for a six to 12 mental health coordinator. And we wanted to have some more discussion on that before we brought that to the board. So you could look forward to that here in the near future. Jordan's salary will be $70,000. It's paid for out of the SMART grant. Megan Scott and Mariah Bruce, they're taking on some of the duties and responsibilities that Jennifer had that we had to take off her plate so she could take some of Matt's duties on. And so Megan's new salary will be $79,837. Mariah Bruce will be $76,000. $675 and that'll be paid for out of the RDC grant. The rest here are from our technology department and they were switched from hourly, from salary to hourly, and we're going to move them back to salary. So their salaries didn't change any, but they will be on a salary and that'll, bringing a lot of benefits both to them and the school corporation. And then one of my concerns with Matt's departure is it's very important for us to have plenty of eyes on our construction projects. And one of the worries I had was even though Arnold Caldwell does a good job as superintendent, I'm all often called away for this or that. And I might miss a punch list meeting. I might miss something very important on the construction sites. So I asked Rick Routen to take on some additional duties in terms of supporting construction projects. And so he's already come in handy where he's joined me as we've walked through the different construction projects. He's I think it's next week he's going. We have a schedule for a punch list in one of our schools and I already have a previous engagement. So Rick's going to be there for me and Rick brings a lot of experience to the to the table in that and he's very detail oriented and. Well, the The first time I asked him to go represent me at a meeting, at the end of the night, I got this very detailed report. And I thought, yep, that was the right decision. So that'll be a $2,000 stipend for Rick. And that'll be for this year, and we'll see what happens down the road with other projects. like, you know, we're taking on a lot of extra salaries and I want to make sure to note in our operations fund we're actually looking at a net change of almost negative $9,000. In the RDC grant, a net change of negative $41,000. In our SPED grant, a net change right now of negative $27,000. And in our education fund, we would be increasing that by about $1,200. So I do want to make sure and note that, because when we're talking about increases in salary, it makes it sound like we are definitely adding that money on. And I don't want that perception to be out there that we are tipping the scale on administrative salaries here. And in fact, what we're doing is saving the district quite a bit of money, thousands of money, thousands of dollars here, because we have been very intentional about making sure that we're replacing positions where we need to, but we're also absorbing roles and responsibilities where we can, and stretching ourselves here a little bit to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible in these decisions. So I just want to make sure and note that in all of those funds. I appreciate that, Jennifer, and actually we're saving even more than what Jennifer noted there because We were going to we were already trying to figure out how to take some money off of the RDC grant and we're gonna have to Jennifer's salary a lot of that was paid for from the RDC grant and we were trying to Work on a better budget so that we would have some funds to be able to do some other things not just with personnel and so We already had plans of taking her salary and put it into education. And so this takes care of that also. We have a motion. Excuse me, I'll move approval. I second. OK. Any questions, discussion? I just note that Dr. Barrett's addition there at the end is exactly what we need from that end of the table. So thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, yes. Okay, anything further? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And now we turn to the superintendent's report, Dr. Standard. I haven't spoken enough tonight. I'll make this quick. I know I already shared with the board that our 1003 flexibility waiver was approved by the state. But what I wanted to add to that is that we were approved for three years. So we're good with the flexibility waiver through the 2027, 2028 school year. And so I thought that was really good news for the school corporation. We've talked many times about the biomedical training program. I think we've shared with you how we've made progress with Boston Scientific in terms of getting precise with how we're going to transform their training modules into the high school setting. We had a great meeting and visit at Cook Medical yesterday and they were enthusiastically on board with continuing to work with us. They talked about their mission. They talked about their training modules. And these trainers are full of passion. And while they were talking to us, all I could think about is, man, these These people are going to be great in front of high school students. They're going to really connect with them. They're going to inspire them. They're going to make the connections necessary. And so we've got some momentum going with Cook now. And we are setting up a regular meetings so we could take what they do there and transform it to what we can do at Edgewood High School. And also I'm going to be, we know we've talked about the construction and adding on the biomedical training rooms to the high school. And so I'm going to get their input on the architect plans that we have. So they could say, yeah, that works. That's the right size. You don't need that much space and that type of thing. So very excited about that progress. And the rest of this is just really for the board and the public to know that, I hate to, some people may not like this news, but the 2025-26 school year is just around the corner. And I'm going to be getting out the letter to our staff on the 17th, to students and parents on the 18th. Our school calendar is already on the website. We'll be including that information in the email to parents. And once again, we'll be giving every student and staff member magnetic calendars to put on the refrigerators. So everybody will know what's coming up during the school year. Our principals and secretaries that are not year round will report on July 21st. And we'll be getting out information to our parents on school supply giveaways that we will have. Of course, we have our own RBB student assistance fund that we use to provide school supplies. There are other organizations such as Tri Kappa that provides donations to the school corporation. And then Ellisville Christian Church will have their annual back to school bash on July 26th. from 10 a.m. until noon, it's a fun day to come out and enjoy some activities and also get a backpack and some free school supplies. I just want everybody to know that there is not one Edgewood student that would go without school supplies. And so if somebody, if there's a family out there that's really worried about spending that money, you don't have to worry about that, we'll take care of you. School offices will open to the public on July 23rd. Registration window is going to open July 23rd. Back to school meeting for nutrition services staff will be August 4th. The bus drivers will have a meeting on July 31st. We'll have a back to school breakfast and meeting for our staff and teachers the morning of August 4th. August 5th, the teachers teachers will have a work day in their classrooms to get ready for school. And then the first day of school will be August 6th. It usually starts about seven. And the new teaching orientation, what time will they show up here? What time you have that going, Jennifer, the new teachers orientation? On the 29th, it'll be just brand new teachers, and on the 30th it'll be brand new teachers and teachers who have experience but they might be new to Edgewood. We're working on that plan right now. Megan Scott's taking the lead on new teacher orientation and mentor teachers. I just saw the proposed agenda for that today. We're looking at starting that around 10 o'clock or so on July 29th, keeping those brand new and one year teachers till about three o'clock that day. We have a full agenda for them just to introduce them to Edgewood, answer just basic questions. You know, first year teachers coming right out, no experience may have. And then the 30th will be a half day session where we'll have all of our teachers new to Edgewood joining those those first year teachers from the first day. Do you mind if we take a session on that Mr. DeMoss? I'll get you on the agenda. Well thank you very much and now we'll turn to RBBEA comments and we have Brandy Able with us here this evening. three weeks, my daughter Paige, I know many of you remember her, has been texting me this whole time and for some reason she has my location on her phone and her last message was, you're starting with meetings already. So here we are. I want to start by saying we do have another co-president. Hopefully you'll be meeting him soon. Stepped up at the 11th hour. Ty McGinnis, he'll be coming from the high school. And so I know that was Doug's hope to have somebody represent secondary and I'll be representing elementary. We met with Nancy a few weeks ago, had lunch with her, and since we're both newbies, it'll be nice. We're already making plans and hopefully can delegate more and just change change how the leadership has been since we're both brand new. And speaking of, I was going to say next week I would be reaching out but, Jennifer, I'll be reaching out maybe tomorrow to you and Megan because I know we always have that lunch for the new teachers so I'll get those numbers from you so I can start organizing that and know when to do that. I just want to say, again, I appreciate Matt Irwin for everything he's done. And I was able to thank him personally for his service. And just again, he and Dr. Sanders, I've enjoyed working with both of you for the past couple of years with Association Matters. We've had hard conversations. And I just appreciate the communication and all the information and seeing through your eyes things that I don't see on my end. So anyway, just. continued I look forward to continuing to work with you and bargaining and all that so that's all I have to say yeah thank you thank you now for board members we'll start with mr. boss tell page that your meetings are just starting and you will have more of them I am just so excited it there is such a a positive feel about where things are going. And I'm excited about the beginning of a new school year. It's hard to believe three weeks from tomorrow, kids will be in the classrooms, teachers will be ready to take them away. And I'm looking forward to it. I feel the same way. Thank you, sir. I'm so pleased and so happy for Jennifer and her crew that she'll be So we appreciate your your loyalty so much. We appreciate it. Thank you. I'm very excited about the new changes of contract in our administration team. You know it is nerve wracking is nerve wracking as a board when you have somebody step away and the capacity that Matt was in. However. I feel complete calm as as myself as a as a board member, I feel that this corporation is going to be in great hands. We have nothing to worry about. I know that everyone is going to be working very hard. You know, the next few years for us is going to be difficult. But with this team, I believe in all of us and that we're going to get through it. And it's going to continue to be a great school system. Mr. Director. Yeah, Ditto. I feel very much at comfort. I think we're in good shape. Thanks for helping us out again, Paul, for a little while. And yeah, looking forward to the school year. Three more weeks. Thank you. Yes, it comes fast. It's amazing how fast the summer goes. And it's hard to believe that we're in for another year. But it's exciting. I feel calm and confident that we're going to have a great year this year. And I always want to make sure all you out there very careful with the buses and things. It's always kind of rough the first couple of weeks or at least a few days. So please be patient and we would appreciate that and safety is number one. So I appreciate everyone coming tonight. I'm so glad that we're in the position we are and we've got the team we do. I think it's a successful team. So with that, this meeting is adjourned and you all have a lovely evening.