Call this meeting to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of 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 welcome to the April Pledge.
2026 regular school board meeting of the Richland Dean Boswell Community School Corporation Board of
Trustees. I'm glad you could all be with us this evening. Please let the record reflect that Mr. Tucker
and Mr. Durnal and Mr. DeMoss and Mr. Kerr are present this evening. And now we have visitor comments.
Are there any visitors who would like to make comments this evening?
Seeing none, we'll move on to the Mustang moment, and we have Dr. Sanders wants to make some recognitions.
Yes, I'm very excited to be able to recognize Edgewood Primary School, Principal Matt Wooden, Assistant
Principal Elisa Van Dusen, and our wonderful teachers that are here tonight.
As everybody probably knows, and I say this every time, but a few years ago we started down the path
of high reliability schools as a way to help us to have a mindset of continuous improvement and utilizing
data to make that happen.
We've had several teachers. How many of you have gone to one of the HRS conferences? Yeah. And so we
take more every year. And so all of our schools have been working towards level one in HRS. And then
we're starting to work on level two.
We just got word, how long ago? A few weeks ago, Matt, that EPS was certified level one. And so we want
to give them a round of applause. And they're, I'm sure, already starting to look towards level two.
And so it's a lot of hard work. Teaching and being a principal is hard.
Every day, I mean, your plate is full. You're often working late hours and on weekends. And somebody
like me comes along and says, hey, we've got a little bit more to do. Sometimes that's something we
might push back and say, what else do you want me to do? But our staff here at Edgewood schools have
done an amazing job with this.
The school board and each of our schools continue to work on this at HRS. And I'm excited about the
future. And so once again, good job, especially a school that had a transition in leadership.
just as we were starting that. But EPS is catching up real fast. And so just wanted to recognize them
tonight. And then I wanted to recognize our Director of Maintenance, Arnold Caldwell. Arnold, can you
please stand up? And Arnold has been recognized as the IASBO Director of the Year.
Arnold's family is here, even his granddaughter came to witness the recognition. Now, Arnold is not
a guy that likes recognition. But, yeah. But. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
Erin Crook, first grade in DPS. I'm Melissa Drews. I teach kindergarten in DPS. I'm Stacy Peay. I'm
a Chinese teacher. I'm a pathways teacher. I'm a special teacher. Great April, first grade.
Jennifer Montal, special education. Lindsay Paulson, first grade. Caleb Barker, computer. Just a second.
Just a second.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all you do for us. Thank you so much. Right now we're K through
12 now at level one across the corporation. Okay. So what's, as far as the next step, is that another
year or how does that work timewise? You know, level one was probably the biggest challenge because
it was all brand new to us.
Trying to figure out, you know, what are we doing here? Because HRS is a little bit different than what
we've been used to in terms of school improvement plans. So we had to kind of get used to that. It was
some areas that as teachers, you know, we don't think about as much terms of school safety and things
like that.
but level two and level three is more curriculum and instruction and so that's gonna go a lot faster
because that's the air they breathe. Now I like the view. From there. We put it through
forward for an additional? Well, the batteries are just out. Oh, the batteries are out on it. I'm sorry.
So, at any rate, level two and three are going to go much faster because that's their wheelhouse. So,
yeah, I'd say, I don't know, Matt, I don't want to put you on the spot,
what would you see would be a reasonable time for like sometime? Probably maybe next year sometime
definitely, next school year. This whole thing has been like learning a language, right? But when you
get into curriculum instruction, when you get into teacher efficacy, that's a language we've been speaking
for a long time. We've been immersed in the PLC model for so long, and the Marshawn model for so long,
and a lot of that.
I know I went to, I think Ms. Abe was with me, I went with you guys to Birmingham. That was a lot of
stuff in two days, that was cross-eyed. So those workshops will continue on for level two and three
at the same rate? Yes, the conference that they have in January in San Antonio, that's always the year
that they, the conference that they recognize
schools and school corporations across the country who have earned another level of certification and
next January EPS will be recognized as well as the school corporation as a whole because we will now
have all of our schools at level one and we may even have some schools at level two by then but there's
no hurry in all this so
There's no pressure to get this done as soon as possible. We want it to work at the right pace so that
it's becoming a meaningful process. The old way of school improvement plans were about checking off
the box. Check this box if you do this, check this box. This is a lot more deeper and meaningful because
we're all taking a look at ourselves and what we can do to
Provide a better higher quality education for our students Okay, it just keeps the continuity going
then. Yep. Okay. All right. Thanks Congrats As well I and again this was you know gonna be a tough year
we knew that we knew that going in When Mrs. Whitaker left, I mean she was here for a very long time
and you know, so it's difficult to
to make that change from one year to the next. And to be able to pull this off during this year of transition
meant that you all have worked very, very, very hard. And we appreciate that and appreciate all the
hard work that you put in. And we so much appreciate, you know, leadership getting you through this.
And we just, again, just celebrate your achievement.
We'll just take it on up to the next step. So thank you all so much for coming and celebrating.
And thank you, Arnold, for all you do. Accolades. Too bad your family left. Couldn't hear us go on and
on more about you, but we do appreciate you and all the hard work you do.
all the things you do to watch out for our corporations, so we really appreciate you. Anything further?
Just ditto. Okay. Before we get to the consent agenda, I'd like to keep my questions about position
and not about people.
I had a few questions and they got answered ahead of time, but I had some other questions and it's related
to the school psychologist and training positions. They are not something that I've seen before and
so I did get a number of questions answered. I understand that these positions are paid for out of a grant.
that their four-year positions, that the positions will keep, they are considered teacher positions
with the people that have them, which is one of my questions later, and the people will keep their salary
schedule as it is now.
questions I have is do we have these positions on our schedule? Do we have job descriptions? Have the
board approved those job descriptions? That's a good question. I don't believe that we have the board
approved the job descriptions. We took the school psychologist position and obviously there are pieces
of this that these people will not be doing.
we edited that job description for the positions that we posted on Nimble. Okay, so I mean, because
usually we don't put anybody in positions until we formally have those positions, and we usually don't
formally have those positions until the board votes to make that position. And Christine, I'm not sure
on this. When the board approved to vote for the subaward through the SEEDS grant,
in that piece being the school psychologist in training, did that approve those positions? We didn't
approve the job descriptions that approve what that position was. Okay. So that's. Okay. Okay. I don't
think it included that. Yeah, because I mean, we've created a number of positions through the years
and this is just, you know, one that I haven't seen.
I guess that was my fault. I sort of saw this as temporary. This wasn't a position that we would have
long term. It's something we would approve of through the grant, and I guess that's what I was thinking,
that if we're approving the grant, we're approving the position.
That was my misunderstanding. So that's my fault. It is important that if we can provide you those questions
at a later date, we'd like to get these positions taken care of because it does impact the important
conversations we're having on staffing. And it impacts that.
There are opportunities here for us to save money for the school corporation. We're factoring that in.
We're trying to. Our goal is to save $500,000 this year. If not more, we have to cut up to a million
dollars. And so taking some of these individuals out of the classroom will actually save some
Some a lot of money for the school corporation and it's a big part of saving that five hundred thousand
dollars And I understand a degree comes with this position Education specialist degree in school psychology.
Yes. So the grant pays for that schooling and
So is that a master's? It is a step above a master's. It's an education specialist degree. So a little
bit below a doctorate, a little bit above a master's. It's about 63 to 67 hours, depending on which
university you go through. OK. And who pays for the college fees? The SEEDS project does. The grant
does. That's part of the budget of that grant.
Will any of the classes be during the day? Some of them can be. It depends on which school we go with.
This is a hybrid type of program. So some of these will be in the evenings. Some of them will be on
Saturdays. They could potentially be during the school day if we would go with ISU's program, for example.
So I know that it gets reimbursed, but so we would be
paying people to go to school and get their higher education degree, did we advertise this? Yes, this
was part of the grant and every person that we spoke with when we interviewed, this was part of the
interview process, yes. I mean, was it put out there corporation-wide? Yes. That anybody in the corporation
could apply for it? Yes, it's been on Nimble and has been sent out
usually every Friday Robinson sends an email out to the corporation that says check our postings. We
ended up having we had eight people who applied for the position. So there was did people know that
that's degree was part of the package? Yes. Seems like you would have got more than eight people if
They need to get a higher education degree while they were making the regular salary and getting paid
to go to school during the day. Not every one of the options is going to school during the day.
Like I said, one of them is giving up a Saturday once a month to go and do that, or evening classes,
also going to school during the summer. And we don't pay them to do that during the summer.
that's what they would be committing to with this grant. We don't pay them a stipend during the summer,
but they still very much may be taking six hours, seven hours during the summer in order to complete
this degree on time. Right, but I know other people on the master schedule, they did that on their own
time too. Sure. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew about this, knew that that was
opportunity that they had. Yeah, definitely. And I can share that job posting with you so you can see
exactly what that looked like and was an opportunity for anybody who was interested in that. It's certainly
not something that we just posted internally either. It was posted on our site for a couple of months
actually. We interviewed about a month into the position being posted.
So I believe it was posted either February 12th or 13th and we interviewed for those positions right
before spring break. In fact, it was right before spring break because we did not know exactly how many
we could hire going into spring break because we needed to work some budget pieces out there with IU.
So I was working on that, I remember, over spring break. So it was after that that the hiring decisions
were made.
Dr. Sanders, you mentioned that afterwards, the program, that they had three choices. If we had a position
here for a psychologist, they could have that, or they could go somewhere else, or they could go back
to the classroom. And my concern is, what if we don't have a position in a classroom for them to go
back to? And, you know, with a, you know,
I hate to make somebody a promise four years down the road that we don't know if we can fulfill such
a promise. Well, they are still employees of RBB. So there's no resignation. They haven't left the school
corporation. They're still all quality employees.
I would think we would have to have just cause for not giving them a position when they come back. I
think all four of these individuals, and by the way, I was not part of the interview process at all.
But I believe all four are interested in doing this as a future career. So I don't anticipate those
individuals
wanting to go back to the classroom. I think they liked the idea of they feel like they bring that valuable
experience in the classroom to this role of school psychologist. And so they see themselves as being
more effective support to the teachers because they've walked in their shoes. And that's the whole point
of the grant.
I've always believed that the more people you have available for students, the better services we're
going to be able to provide to them. And the more people you have supporting teachers, the more it helps
our teachers take just a little bit more off their plate. And so that's why we thought this was a great
opportunity
for our school corporation to get, now at the end of the four years, all four of them are not gonna
get school psychologist positions here. I wish we had that kind of money, but they're not. There's always
that chance that an individual may say, you know, I really miss the classroom and I wanna go back to
teaching. And because they've,
stepped out to take this opportunity, and there still are employees. I don't see how we could not promise
them a position when they come back. It may not be the exact same position they have right now, but
they're all highly qualified, highly effective employees, teachers, and I think we would
jump at the chance to have them back if they would like to. If attrition didn't happen though, it's
possible they could have to displace somebody in a classroom. In my eight, nine years, that's never
happened. It seems unlikely. I don't want us to hold us back on
a possibility that we just never see. What happens if they get halfway through and decide it's not for
them? They're halfway through the program. Somebody else can't come in because there's not enough time
left to do it. Then what happens? Yeah, we actually had that happen on a couple of the grants, the TIMS
and the SMART, where we've had some people leave in the middle.
We don't have them sign anything that they're going to stay with us for four years. We have had a couple
that have started their degrees and have dropped out of the program for different reasons. They've either
left positions to take something else or to move out of state. This one is a little bit different because
the degree is three or four years, depending on the school that they go with. And it's a four-year grant.
The TEMS and SMART with the counselors was a two-year degree, but a four-year grant. So in those cases,
we were able to pick up some people and go ahead and finish paying for schooling. In fact, we just hired
a teacher, or sorry, a counselor at the beginning of... Goodness. November, December?
something like that into the smart grant who had already started her counseling license and we would
have we still had time to help her finish on that and she works for accounts as a counselor for us at
ECC. So there are.
It's hard to say because you don't know exactly what the situations are going to be or when they arise.
But thankfully with these federal grants, we work really closely with our liaison there. And they're
really good about helping us come up with alternatives. They don't want to take the money back. I know
that sounds silly, but it's actually more of a hassle for them to take the money back.
they're bugging me constantly to spend excess cost. And in a lot of ways, it's hard to spend the excess
cost once it starts to build up. Just for the SEEDS grant alone, we received our first year of funding
for the SEEDS grant just shortly into January. And that first year, Debbie, you'd have to help me on
it, that we've received was 750, 800,000.
That we receive from them in order to go ahead and start the grant Well, what happens on these federal
grants is when they start on January 1st but we don't start the school year until July 1 August 1 on
contracts Then we're already seven to eight months behind because we haven't been paying anybody on
these grants so that's where
all of these grants that are going out to public schools across the entire country, we're already starting
to build up excess cost just simply because of timing with it. So that's where we have to, as the government
says, they don't want us to plan ahead for excess costs, but they want us to plan ahead for excess costs.
In other words, we want you to think about how you can make modifications to the grant down the road.
We just don't want to know that you're thinking about how to make modifications.
So it's an interesting situation to be in because I can't really talk with our federal contractor through
the grant about how we would do this. And in our case, we were able to hire four instead of three and
still have an excess cost at the end of this grant of over $200,000. But she does not want to know that
now. She wants to wait until the grant is up and running and then we put in modifications to the financial,
the budget side of the grant.
So you do have to plan ahead, but they don't necessarily want you to start submitting those things right
away. So to answer your question, Dana, I don't know exactly how that would work out. A lot of it would
depend on what the government allows us to do with the grant in order to open that position back up,
and then would they allow us to hire someone with a counseling degree? Would they allow us to hire someone
with a social work degree? Would it have to be a school psychologist?
Would we be able to have someone, we actually have someone now who has a license as a school psychologist,
but she's let that expire. If we were able to pick her up on the grant, if she was interested, would
we be able to get her relicensed and bring her back in in that capacity? So a lot of different options
there, and it's just hard to say exactly what would happen until the scenario pops up. But
we have experienced that with the TIMS grant and the SMART grant, and thankfully,
we found a lot of flexibility in what we can do with that. In fact, Mr. Dixon's probably tired of me
talking about what do we do? How do we spend this? Is there anybody else that we can hire? So. Any other
questions? Well, I was going to just mention, too, on the grants, I talked to Dr. Stewart and Ms. Barrett.
We've been more than blessed with grants. And when I started seven years ago, my biggest concern was,
Grant money runs out at some point. And then can we maintain those positions with our internal funding?
As legislators, guidelines change, this could become tougher and tougher with the education fund. But
that grant is from the federal government, correct? And I'm guessing there's a big shortage of school
psychologists is what they're trying to backfill that. So they're providing the funding for it. It takes
them out of our education fund
Correct. Including the benefits and everything. Teachers stay on the pay schedule. Okay. They stay on
turf. Okay. And then in four years, like you said, we may not need four people. We definitely will not
need four. Need is definitely different than want. Mr. Dixon would say, I would want four school
psychologists and I would want to hire every single one of them. The budget says we cannot afford to do that.
We're already looking ahead. We have a school psychologist position open right now. We don't have one
single applicant for it. And this position opened up back in January, February. We don't have a person
for this. So we have two school psychologists right now trying to man our entire district. And so we
are paying contracted services for a net person. That'll come off of our payroll and contract services.
Yeah, we have to use contracted services. We either use that through the education fund or through Medicaid,
one or the other, depending on where we are at that time. So we already have a need for a school
psychologist. Karen Nastrom is never going to retire, and I'm just going to put that out into the universe
so that we don't see any retirement come from Karen Nastrom anytime soon.
But I know that she's not gonna be here forever and I do know that there will come a time probably here
in the near future that Karen will say, I'm done. Probably when she's one of two school psychologists
in a district of almost 2,700 is when she's gonna say, I'm done. But we have a need, I know our surrounding
school districts have a need. There will be jobs for these people and the whole point of the grant was to
have additional school psychologists in the field. That's when we see these jobs pop up on the federal
grant side of things, it's because there's a need. And so they start pouring money into that to get
people licensed and get people into these careers. Yes, that makes sense to me. We're getting advantage
of it. Let's take another education fund as well.
Oh, eight of them internal. No, we didn't have. I guess I had a question. The four that you're recommending,
are they internal or was one of those an external, maybe, or two of them? I don't know. They are all
internal. Okay. We also had two external, and we interviewed one of those external candidates. Okay,
so we had six internal and two external then? Correct.
Thank you. You're welcome. policies we have two choices to make and I'll leave it up to my colleagues
decide which choice they wouldn't do we could table those to the next meeting or we could actually create
those positions right now the position of psychologists and training
We don't actually approve job descriptions. We'd be creating it without looking at a job description
based on what we've heard tonight. So if you're comfortable in doing that, we could move forward that
way and then fill those positions. Or again, we could table those appointments until they bring the
position to us.
Can we take the job description that was in the posting, have Jennifer go print it off and give the
board that job description and approve that? We've approved before the job description the same night
we voted the person in. We've done that before. Right. That'll postpone us, because the positions that
these folks are leaving have to be
Advertised to and we don't we have another meeting may so it gives us it correct, right? But we're making
staffing decisions now correct. I get it. I get it. We need to know What positions are going to be available
or not and they did post the position they did pose this wasn't created. Yeah, okay. All right Are you
okay with creating it tonight? Yeah, that'd be great
No, because I won't have time to look through the job description. OK. It's fairly short, but I can
do either way. Are you OK with moving the board? Yeah. OK, there's a general consensus that we should
move forward. So is there a motion to create a position of psychologist in training? I will move to
create the position of school psychologist in training. Yeah, I'll second. Moved and seconded.
I had lots of discussion, any more discussion? This is all funded through the CSRAM for four years.
100%. And we start off with three, but the budget allows us to do four across the board. Yes, and IU
also made, they did not want their full-time school psychologist to be employed by RBB. They wanted
to keep her under the IU umbrella. So they actually took her in through contracted services, which allowed
us a little bit more of a cushion there as well.
It does, Hannah Kassab. She is. She works with us now on the SMART grant. She will actually continue
on the SMART grant about a third of the time. She'll be working on the SEEDS grant about a third of
the time. And she received, IE received another, it's not called SEEDS, but another school psychologist
grant in a neighboring corporation. And she'll be working in that as well. As an employee through contracted
services with, as an employee of IU,
through contracted services with all of these schools. So the sub-award agreement that you all approved
last month, part of the funds that are going to IU are paying for Hanna's services to us. Mm-hmm. Okay,
thank you. I'll just make two comments for the vote. One, please bring the first job descriptions and
positions to us first so that we know what we're looking at. And two,
position like this comes up before I think extra efforts need to be made in getting that out there.
You know, yes, getting it posted, you know, Robin putting out there. But if I would have looked and
saw a psychologist in training as a position, to me, that's not going to sound very exciting, honestly.
But if I found out that, wow, that in training is going to get me a high level degree,
and it's gonna be paid for and I'm gonna get my regular salary and regular increases in salary while
all that's happening, that's a lot different. So I think a really, I hadn't heard anything about it
until this. So that's why I'm really surprised because I do think there would have been more applicants
if they'd known what
the benefits of being a psychologist in training were. So I would like it that when there's those kind
of extra benefits, that extra efforts be made to make sure that the word gets out there so people know.
Because again, the wording of what the title, the position doesn't look like it's very much a high paying
job or high fruitful job.
Any other comments? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we'll move on to the
consent agenda. Sorry. We have approval of minutes for March 24th, 2026, the regular board meeting.
We have the financial report, which is the treasurer's report for March of 2026. Mr. Turner, the claims please.
Thank you, Mr. President. For gross wages on March the 13th, 2026 is $856,877.57. For gross wages mini
payroll, March the 26th, 2026 is $1,194.42. For gross wages on March the 27th, 2026 is $729,901.03.
For total in that area is $1,587,973.02.
for claims and prepays from 3126 to 33126, $1,154,939.34 for claims regular vouchers for April 21st,
2026 at $616,454.79 for total in that area of $1,771,394.13 for a grand total, $3,359,934.
$367.15, thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, sir. We also have personnel, resignations, retirements,
non-renewals, leaves, and terminations, C1 through 19, and personnel appointments and transfers, D1
through 23, and we do have a donation this evening, and it is equipment from Boston Scientific.
We're excited, very excited about that. Dr. Sanders, would you give our field trips report on those?
Absolutely. We have four field trips for your approval tonight. The first one is a high school concert
band to Decatur Central High School for a performance. They'll perform on April 24th.
And then on April 25th, they will be going to Kings Island. And then the second one is the band camp
for our state championship band going to Vincennes University. And that'll be July 19th through the
24th. The high school senior class trip to Kentucky Kingdom is May 28th.
The high school drama club is going to Kings Island on Saturday, May 9th. Thank you. Do we have a motion
on the consent agenda? I move approval of consent agenda. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Can I
address Mr. Ackerman? He loves that.
I'm just curious, I've never heard this term Odyssey Students from choir. What's Odyssey mean? Is that
local Odyssey? It's one of the choirs. Is that a new name? Yeah. Okay, I had never heard that name before.
I didn't know if it was like a hybrid. It's the choir, it's a singing choir, it's not a performing choir.
Okay, okay, but they're gonna be going with the band to do this, okay. Yeah, it's just a new term, I'm
just curious about it on that one.
I had a quick question on the drama club that was not during the school day that's that's on a Saturday
correct yes that trip to Kings Island okay all right perfect leadership of the senior class that they
decided to do the senior trip after
all the class days were over so that everybody could participate. I just think that's terrific, that
they wanted to make sure everybody could participate. So I'm just so. Yeah. And yeah, that's just so
mature and so inclusive. I was blown away. And I want to congratulate Ms. Waterford for a great career
at the high school. And Ms. Cowden, 36 years?
Mr. Show, is that right? Yeah, I liked her resignation letter. Retirement letter is pretty good.
And Ms. Pittman is going to retire this year as well. And I hired Payne way back in the day and I know
she's done a great job in the guidance department. So, congrats to those two on those great careers.
And Mr. Brewer says that
The deja vu of having him and Berta Slinkard in the hallways again is a little bit otherworldly. Any
further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Dr. Sanders. Yes, Brad
just mentioned Pam Waterford, one of the nicest people I've ever met. Absolutely.
And she will definitely be missed. I haven't asked her what she's doing, but I hopefully, I hope it's
singing. You will be. And Christina Cowden, 36 years as a teacher. Now, I knew her husband and Craig
Cowden from Martinsville for a long time. So I've had the pleasure of working with both of them.
Let's love them both. They're great people, and I wish Christina and Pam the very best luck. I would
like to recognize Brian Paulson. I love that man to death. He's a great man, a wonderful man. He helped
all three of my children through show choir, taught them a great amount.
Some of you know that he's basically like family to me. When, after he moved here from the Boston area,
Waltham, it ended up, I think my son John was the second class he had. But we got really close. I ended
up being head dad for him for many years. And it was one year as head dad for Virta and him.
Anyway, he was spectacular with the students. They all learned so much. He taught all my kids so much.
We got really close. He started coming over to our house about every night watching Will and Jeopardy.
We watched Lost together. And we'd always have to watch the previous seasons where we started doing it.
So we're really close. We are really close. I love that man. He's great. He's outstanding. I just really
respect him. All my kids love him. They learn so much from him. I've learned so much from him. And I
know there's a lot of kids out there that have. I saw my nephew in here earlier. He left. He's probably sad.
Soft-hearted kid, strong boy, but soft-hearted kid. But there's a lot of us that's gonna miss Brian
in the schools. Again, he's a wonderful guy, and we're sorry that he's not with us in the schools, but
he's a great man, wonderful man, and just breaks my heart to accept his resignation tonight.
But just couldn't do it without telling how much I love you. But I must carry on with business.
That's my job. So next, we have consideration to approve latch key fees for the 26-27 school year. Dr.
Sanders. Yes.
We've always tried at Edgewood schools to support our families, not only with obviously an excellent
education, but before and after school childcare. And we try to keep those costs,
down as much as possible. We're so lucky to have the Boys and Girls Club to provide that service at
a very minimal cost. We have continued to provide latch key before and after school child care on our
campus in order to give parents options. But as I mentioned earlier in the meeting, with the financial
position the state of Indiana has put school corporations in,
We're trying to find every penny we can in order to continue to provide that quality education. So we
have increased the fees for latch key and that information was provided to you in the board packet.
I think we have, well we have,
Right now this year we have 85 students in the morning and 65 in the afternoon, so we still have a good
number of families who participate and utilize that. I tell you what, the increased costs also I think
will enable us to put that money into reaching, trying to pay a
competitive salary to these folks that, you know, this is kind of a job where you come in early in the
morning, you work in the morning, and then you have to come back in the afternoon. And there's not that
many people out there that will do that for what we were paying them. And so we are recommending that
we increase these fees.
It's not something we'd like to ever do, but we're still cheaper than most opportunities around us.
Do we have a motion? I move approval for a last key for school year 2026-2027. I'll second. Any discussion?
Quick question, Dr. Shainer. So last key in the morning, there's 85 right now. Does it start at six?
What time does it start in the morning?
Six thirty. Okay. And then in the afternoon to, I don't know what our participation is, the Boys and
Girls Club. Is that, do they go from the same time frame in the afternoon as the Boys and Girls Club?
I think Boys and Girls Club might go later. I think about an hour later. Heather can speak to that,
yeah. I don't know what time it is. Okay. I'm pretty sure it's six o'clock. It may be as late as six thirty.
But it is open. So the Boys and Girls Club, they get on a bus here. We take you over there. And transport
them down there. And that Boys and Girls Club is just in the afternoon. We would be interested in partnering
with the Boys and Girls Club maybe someday in the future for morning. Right. But I think the last key
enables parents to be able to where they would just stay right here on campus.
Right. I didn't know if a lot of the younger kids stayed on campus and the older ones went to Boys and
Girls Club, that's what. I'd like to know a little bit more about that for the future. Because I know
they've kept their costs at $25 a year, but they've got a lot of private donations too. Yeah. Boys and
Girls Club, they're just a great partner. They are. As you'll see later, we're partnering with them
for summer school somewhat. OK. And we're hoping maybe we can expand that.
partnership down the road. So we're always working together, meeting with Boys and Girls Club leaders
and trying to find ways to just enhance what we do for our students. Okay. I'm getting a little bit
ahead of myself, but is the latch key self-funded or are we supplementing it from the education fund?
We've always supplemented it. Okay. Yes. Okay. Then with summer school, would it be
would pay for itself through state reimbursement? We never get enough from the state to fully fund summer
school. We get some back, but not nearly enough. Yeah. OK, that's something over the time we may have
to look at. I mean, I don't want to give up summer school, but with the restraints the state's putting
on us. Yeah, we're looking at that in terms of,
conversations we've had this year has been really on transportation of, we're gonna try to, in the past
we, well we used to not provide transportation at all. A few years ago we started it and we take students
right to their home. We're going to look into the possibility
of having some group stops so we could reduce the number of buses. Because fuel for buses right now
is extremely high. And so we're, and that's kind of the mindset we have right now is where can we save
some money? Okay, all right, thank you. I know you'll be shocked by this Mr. Tucker, but they've continued
to add requirements for summer school, but they have not upped the reimbursement for summer school.
So second grade, third grade, any kid who has not passed, I read. Second grade is still not mandatory,
but any kid after third grade that hasn't passed, I read, it does become mandatory. If not, there are
pieces that we have to put in place for them during the school year. And then of course, as Mr. Ackerman
would attest to, the high school students for credit recovery, that's such a big piece there with our
summer school programming. So Matt and Andy are,
not really reducing our numbers, but we're probably a little bit more choosy about who we do take in
summer school, simply because we can't take everybody, we just can't afford to, but the mandates are
coming. Well, they're there, the mandates are there, but we have not seen an increase in that. Okay,
and we're still gonna do the food truck in the summertime? Ms. Coffey's gonna take care of that? That
is for the summer school students? Yeah, I know she would go out
stops in the summer, which I've gotten a lot of good comments from people. That's really helpful for
folks. I don't know if she's going to continue that this summer. I haven't heard. That is a good Mrs.
Coffee question that I don't know an answer to. Is she continuing it out in the community for summer
feedings? I'm pretty sure that it's covered. Like, it's free for the kids. Correct. Breakfast and lunch.
Right. Are you talking about the food truck?
Yes. Obviously for our students participating in summer school, we are definitely having free breakfast
and lunch. But we're hoping to continue what we did last year, which was we provided food, meals for
families to come pick up. Correct. And we haven't received approval, official approval on that yet,
but that's in the works.
Perfect. Okay. Yeah, I know a lot of people really appreciate that in the community. Thank you Now on
to that summer school program, yes So we are once again doing summer school and really the program that
I shared with you is a
Similar to what we've done in the last several years. The difference is we're going to partner with
the Boys and Girls Club for kindergarten and first grade. They have an excellent remediation program.
Andy Scholl and Matt Wooden have been talking with the Boys and Girls Club. And we're going to dip our
toe into that partnership by working
having our kindergarten first graders go to the Boys and Girls Club for summer school. What that will
do will enable EPS then to focus on iREAD3 remediation and helping get those students past the finish
line. And I like that idea of having that focus and
with iREAD 3 carrying so much weight more than ever, we want to make sure these kids pass. And I believe,
isn't it true, I'm glad we have our EPS teachers here, isn't this the first, the best year we've had
in terms of percentage of students passing iREAD 3? At second grade. And how did EIS do? Okay.
So that those dates will be June 1st through the 18th for EPS EIS and the high school will be June 1st
through the 19th and then junior high has more of a jumpstart program that is July 20th through the
30th and the hours are all similar to that I recommend your approval
I'll second. I didn't second it. Any discussion? I just had a question for the administrators. You guys
have all worked this out as far as summer cleaning? Because they have to be out by July. They'll be
done, right, Mr. Mitchell? Mine will start instead of where they have a couple weeks where they have
kids still in the building. Mine will start the day that kids are out of the building and we start cleaning
lockers out. OK, so I didn't know if you guys tagged team.
Like, your custodians would go help out EIS and vice versa while summer school is going on. OK. Arnold?
Arnold's the director of the year, so that's good pressure, Arnold. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Arnold has
it under control. Thanks. So second grade was the highest percentage passed? I believe so. Wow. Do we
have a second grade teacher? Congratulations on second grade. That's great. That was great.
So we love to hear. Awesome growth, awesome growth, thank you. Any further? All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next is consideration to approve sub for insurance pay for administrators.
We've done this for teachers, now administrators. Yeah, you know, it's really worked out well for us
to implement this program.
It benefits our retiring teachers and you know anytime we can do that it's a good day. It also benefits
the school corporation and so it's worked out so well. We explored the idea of expanding it to retiring
administrators and obviously it will include
the opportunity to sub in the classroom. But it'll also benefit the school corporation in so many other
ways. And so in the agreement, I list several different ways that they can sub or support the school
corporation. One of them is to serve as the expulsion examiner. That really will help us to have somebody
who truly does have a neutral
position to expulsions transportation support there are some times where Our director of transportation,
you know life happens and sometimes she might have surgery or her parents She might have to help her
parents out and she can't be here and when she's not here then I
man the radio and support the drivers. And sometimes that's a challenge with my other duties. I'll often
be sitting in a meeting with a parent or with administrators or teachers and have one eye on the person
I'm talking to and then my ear on the radio and trying to listen to both. So I would love to have somebody
like that who could sub in that position
or on those days where we're short bus drivers, where this person can come in and drive a school bus.
Sometimes administrators, principals, assistant principals have to be out of the building for a variety
of reasons. And I would see this as if there's a lengthy time that somebody might be out that we might have this
retired administrator come in and support the building and support the other administrator. Event assistance
if we would need that.
construction project assistance that takes up a lot of our time and addressing the construction projects
we have so I could see that person helping in some way and then serving as a substitute teacher and
really board it would be under my discretion my leadership to determine how this person would be used.
Your motion. Is there a second? He moved approval. Okay, I second. Questions? And this is very, the
way I read it, Dr. Chen is very comparable to what we do with our teachers, correct? What's that? It's
very comparable financially to the school as we do the sub-teachers. Yeah. Okay. Sounds like
the administrator though is gonna end up working a lot more. Correct. It sounds like he just created
a position.
All right, thank you. Anything else? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next
consideration to approve declaration of surplus items. Yes, so I don't know if everybody knows this,
but the farmhouse and the barns and silos
We purchased that years ago and the gentleman who farms the land out here lived there for a while and
he has since moved into his own place and the house and the barns are in very bad shape. One of the
barns is basically standing because it's leaning against a tree. And so we have plans to take down the
farmhouse,
barns and right now we're in the process of trying to get the asbestos removed before we can move on
to actually taking those structures down. The silos up there are still in good shape and we would like
to declare them a surplus in order to
Anybody that's interested, I don't know who goes around buying silos, but make them available. One of
them is 24 feet by six rings, whatever the heck that means, 6,500 bushels. The other is 18 feet by six
rings, or 2,750 bushels. So I recommend your approval. I move approval to approve the declaration for
surplus items. I second.
Any discussion? Do we have a contract for the demo, Dr. Sanders? Was that voted on at the last meeting?
I wasn't, I was not here at the last, is there a contract to demo the? No. Okay, but that'll come at
a next, another board meeting? Yeah, what we've been working on recently is getting with a company to,
first of all, to determine if we had asbestos and we do. So now we're gonna have to get rid of that
before we can start tearing it down. So one step at a time.
Okay, yeah, that's because it is a liability that building it's. All right. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now consideration to approve replacement of the Edward High School
pool deck. Yeah, we this is
It is unfortunate because it hasn't been really that long ago that we replaced the pool deck tiles.
But immediately, while it was under warranty, we had issues with the tile becoming loose, rusting, bulging.
There's puddles, so the surface wasn't level.
And it's really become a safety hazard. Our own maintenance department, once the warranty was out, tried
to keep it up, and it's just continued to cause problems. So we're recommending to, and we had quotes
done on this, and we're gonna have Jack, Jack Laurie Group had the lowest quote of 120,000
$105 to Replace the tile with an epoxy type flooring that will have like a it'll be rough, you know,
so Resist slipping And so if we can get that approved tonight, we'll have that work done this summer
Any discussion and I understand this coming out of the
Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you, Larry. It's coming out of the 2022 General Obligation Law. Okay, and
then I'm gonna put Martin on the spot. Who vetted this lorry outfit? Well, this is a company that we've
been using in a number of our projects, current projects that we just finished. They've been in the
elementary schools quite a bit. And we're not, if I read it, maybe I misread it.
and maybe Arnold could fill this in. We're not replacing the tile, we're putting this. The epoxy's gonna
cover the existing, and it's just on the deck, not down in the pool, it's on the deck. Correct, okay.
Right, so our warranty is gone for the previous contractor. And that was under VPS? Yes.
Thank you. So what if the tile underneath that epoxy breaks loose? Will it still be held by the epoxy
in place or would it? How long to guarantee it for? Yeah, I like forever. I like it. Okay.
But it won't be really, when you says epoxy, I don't want to be like super slick. It's gonna have some.
Okay, that makes sense then. It's got a little grit to it then, okay. That's what pools are going to
now. Okay, all right, got it. Any further questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
Next is consideration to approve the Ready 2.0 resolution. Yeah, so as you know, the school corporation
received a $500,000 grant through regional opportunity initiatives. The organization that supervises
that whole
grant process, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation has asked for specific documentation that
the construction bond dollars that we approved in the fall, that there's been $2,255,500 of that set
aside for the biomedical life sciences project. I sent them
The documentation I sent them was all the documents that we approved as far as the bonding process.
But they wanted something very specific. So I asked Christine, what can we do? And she suggested
a resolution. And we checked with IEDC. And they said that would be acceptable.
I'll move to approve the ready 2.0 resolution. Did they give us any kind of timeline on this as far
as making sure we get our, we can receive our half a million? Yes, well we just. We've got the contracts
in place to move forward. Yes, yeah. And we're in the process, we just met today talking about, with
our architect talking about the Bain and Quire expansion out here and also the biomedical life sciences
and we have until 2028 to spend that grant money. We'll be, unless there's a big setback that we don't
expect, but we should be good on that timeline. Okay, move and seconded, any further? All those in favor
say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next is consideration to approve the career coaching grant
a sub-award agreement, Jennifer Barrett. Yes, this is one, the Career Coaching Grant is a sub-award
that we're receiving through ROI. ROI receives the grant through the state. The Career Coaching Grant
essentially pays for the salary and benefits of Susan Harrington, who works as our career coach at the
high school. The grant runs from January 1st through June 30th of 2027.
The total amount of that grant is $112,476. I move approval of the Career Coaching Grant Subaward Agreement.
I second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Did we get the first installment already, Ms. Barrett?
This is a reimbursement grant.
So what Mrs. Tate does is about every quarter or so, she'll submit a reimbursement to ROI. She'll show
what we've paid Mrs. Harrington during that time. They send us the reimbursement for her salary and
benefits. It started January 1 of 26, but she didn't sign it until March of 26. Correct. That's why
I was a little nervous. I'll make sure we got our money. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
That's pretty typical with these types of grants that the money is already there in ROI funding from
the state It just takes them a little bit longer to get the sub awards out and in this case This career
coaching grant as an extension of the first career coaching grant that we've had Mr. Ackerman left a
year and a half two years in place so
from ROI's perspective, they're basically extending all of these grants that they already had in place
with the neighboring counties and school districts. Okay, perfect, thank you. Anything further? All
those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We are tabling item number 14, and so consideration
to award bid for the softball and baseball turf projects, Dr. Sanders.
Yes, this is, I think, a really exciting night for us. We strive very hard in our school corporation
to provide our students and staff with the highest quality facilities. And it really, people don't always
understand this, but we are in competition.
students the state has put us in that position where we have to compete and believe me parents take
advantage of that and particularly in this case if they have a softball or baseball player and they
they will look at neighboring school corporations that see what kind of facilities that they have
and exercise their options. So not only does it provide us with a safer facility, having turf, it helps
with the maintenance of the fields. When, and I've been there, I think it was a few years ago, we had
a sectional, we were hosting a sectional, but we had a lot of rain. And even though we were hosting
a sectional,
In order to play the games, we had to go over and use the turf field at North High School. And so with
the turf, we won't have to do that anymore. We obviously went through all the requirements of advertising
for bids. And last Wednesday, we opened the bids
Skillman looks and the architect Lancer architect they vet the the bids and So the the company that
had the lowest bid And really there was I Think the person works for Lancer right Martin that that is
the expert and field turf Okay, and so she will look at the
the products that these companies are offering and making sure that they're quality. So the base bid
came in at $2,603,221.
I didn't get that right yet, did I? $2,603,221 and we had two alternatives. The chain link fence will
be $51,977 and then alternative two is a sidewalk that will go from the junior high across the field
by the baseball field
and provide our students with a walking, an area to walk if they're walking down towards the high school.
That's just part of the project. Eventually we're gonna have a walking path right along the baseball
and football field complexes and to provide some safety for our students who are walking after school.
So that alternative, too, was $80,685. And so the total bid was $2,735,856. And that came in under the
estimated cost. So we're in good shape. And the work will start this summer. Old turf project.
I'll second. Martin, do you want to say anything?
Well, you came all this way. I didn't mean to steal your thunder. Can I ask Martin a question? Sure.
So this is going to take care of all the backstops, both also correct. The softball into baseball. OK,
and I'm a little concerned. I just want to make sure that we're going to get this done, Dr. Sanders.
The safety going from the junior high to the high school
I just hate to see those kids walking along that road. This isn't gonna take it all the way, it's just
gonna take a part way? This is the first part. Right, we're in the process right now of getting measurements
for that part of the project. Okay. And once we get those measurements, then we'll go through the same
process and tag that right along with this. In the end, it'll probably be happening all about the same
thing. That's what, yeah,
Scares me to death all the time there. Still. We're just approving this part of the project now. I'd
really like to see it once we get all these connections made. I've always wanted to see it where we
had a true walking path, where it was measured out, and a start here.
and maybe something along the way of history or something about the school corporation, something to,
you know, and now you've gone a tenth of a mile or whatever. I think it would be, that would really
be helpful for the community too, you know, and then so I would really like to see eventually that we
add that. I don't think it'd be very expensive once the trail is made to,
Right. To market. Several years ago, I wrote a grant. It was a grant for $30,000 and another community.
But we put exercise equipment along the path also. And it was for the community. OK. I've seen that.
And wearing my tennis shirt, it just makes me think we need to be looking at the tennis courts before
too long. Yep.
We put a patch on quite a few years ago to get us back a couple years, and it's been way past that.
I'd really like to see something happen. We're always looking ahead. We're wrapping up some projects,
getting ready to start some others, and then we have others that are kind of out in the near future,
and then we want to be prepared. There's always a need, but we want to be prepared
for when we qualify for additional bond dollars. Okay, any further discussion? All those in favor say
aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we move to our business manager's report and we have an update.
Good evening. So looking at the projections in front of you,
with the education fund and the operations fund. Right now, we have been on target with our projections
actually under, which has been really good and positive. I'm still making sure to move as much money
over to trust Indiana as possible. Anytime I see a balance that I can move, I move it over and then
I only pull it over when needed. So I just wanna make sure you guys are always aware that that's a constant
in my process. We are working so hard as a team with all these changes that are happening with funding
and everything, and we're meeting weekly, if not more than that, in very detailed conversations, like
we are speaking names, we are speaking positions, we are speaking
all kinds of things because we care so deeply about everything in this corporation. So the details are
very important to us. So we have a really good team, and I know I mentioned that last time, but those
are some things we are working on, new procedures, new processes, just so everybody's spending properly,
too. And nobody's just overspending just to overspend, just to make sure we're staying as low as we
can with everything.
And then one of the other things, I know Brad had mentioned this before with the seek money, I wanted
to make sure we do have that money coming in now. So that is something that has been, Noah and I have
been working on that. And so that funding is coming in at this point. So it's helping build up those
balances that were really high from those students, so.
Yeah, they were pretty excessive, but we got, I think the last month we had like 400,000 come in,
so we are, we're, yep, so they're reimbursing, we're on target with everything, so I wanted to let you
know that, because I don't think you were here last month, so I wanted to make sure you were aware of
that, so. So our cost will be 30,000 for our portion correct per student. Yeah.
As far as the transfers, are we up? Is our goal to get to 15% of transferring from the operational education?
We are staying under that right now. Well, I didn't know what percent we were at. We're at 250 per month
is what we're, I don't remember the exact percentage that it is right now. I don't know if I have that.
Because we can go up to 15%. But we can go up to 15% if we're still staying under that right now. Okay.
So. All right, thank you. Do you guys have any questions? Okay. Okay, thank you very much.
of our funds. Okay. Next we have the assistant superintendent's report. Just an update. Our first Edgewood
Ready magazine is going to be available at our next board meeting. We just got the preview of that today
from the printer, so I'm excited to bring that to you guys next month. We'll have them sitting out front
for anybody who attends. Information
The K-12 accountability is going to start taking place in 26, 27. You may remember back in 2018, that
was the last year that we received a letter grade as a district, as schools. It's starting again. And
I kind of cringe when I say it because all the things that we didn't love about it are kind of back
in place again, so starting in,
at the end of 2026, we're gonna see our first letter grade scores across the state come out. 2025-26,
I'm missing a five there, is considered year zero. What they mean by year zero is that we're going to
receive an accountability grade as a district and by school, but this is not necessarily going to count
for us or against us. It's to give us information
from year zero, so we kind of have a starting point, and then we can assess where we are. We can look
at our report card, if you will, and use that information to make decisions about where we can just
simply do better. What are we doing great? What can we do better? That's the type of information this
is gonna give. I gave you, if you really want to dig into this more, this is the future of K-12 accountability.
It really breaks it down into kindergarten through grade three. With all of these pieces, you're going
to see three areas, academic mastery, growth, and career readiness. So you'll see with kindergarten
through third grade, we're focusing on ELA and math. That's the academic mastery for iLearn. And then
the students can earn additional points for passing iRead.
Accelerated literacy, that's basically their growth on iRead. School attendance, and then for our students
who are English language learners, they can earn additional points when they pass their WIDA exam. So
we basically receive points by student. So each student, depending upon their
Individual goals, depending upon their individual progress, is how they earn points for their school
and their district. If you go on down grades four through eight, there are additional pieces in there.
You'll start to see that's where the growth comes in on iLearn. That's also where you will see the coursework
coming in for
high school level, so students who are taking high school classes, you'll see things in there like completing
a graduation plan. These things that Callie Schlummer has been doing for years now are a part of additional
ways that students can earn points by being a student at Edgewood Junior High School. So a lot of these
pieces, I would even say at this point, all of these pieces we already have in place and our students
can begin earning these points
ASAP. What's interesting with this, the high school piece actually started with last year's graduates.
So every school district across the state is going to their high school score is going to be based on
last year's high school graduates, not this year's. It will be one year behind. We are really sure how
this is going to look.
And there are a lot of pieces out there that we're still trying to figure out. Everybody across the
state is trying to figure out. But if you're interested in watching any of the webinars on it, I do
have a couple of recordings. They're about two, two and a half hours, but they are really interesting
and go into more depth with all of this. Also, you'll see a list of enrollment.
close to where we're going to be starting out 26-27. You can see what's happening in some of these pathways
that we've been talking about for the past few years. I'm excited to see that our biomedical pathway,
52 kids signed up for that Principles of Biomed.
anatomy physiology, which is a dual credit Ivy Tech course. We have 69 kids signed up for that next
year. That's going to be an interesting one for sure. Medical interventions is the third course there.
We have 22 kids. You may wonder what happened to those 54 kids in anatomy and physiology. A lot of those
kids are seniors. We did not get that
pathway completely built out and time for them to be able to take the third course, which was medical
interventions. So we graduated several of them, but we're keeping several of those juniors and medical
interventions. I don't know what the other Mr. Kerr is doing, but look at the growth there in those
engineering classes. The intro to engineering is the only pathway that starts with intro instead of
principles. I always have to keep that in mind.
50 kids taking intro to engineering next year, 19 continuing on to that second course after taking the
first one. Marketing fundamentals continues to grow. Digital marketing is our third class there. We
had six kids take it this year, 11 who will be taking it next year. Those are our dynamos who do most
of our work across the district on our website, all of our flyers, social media, all of those things.
So it's exciting to see that, that principal's a computing class, which is a computer science class,
also growing up to 25. So it goes to show that the work that we're doing
down at the junior high level, down at EIS, down at EPS, where we're starting to build these pathways,
you know, even just through things that, Earth Fair, you think it's just a one-day thing, you know,
the Earth Day is a one-day thing, but it starts getting them excited, starts to build their passions
for what is coming down the road. And, you know, we used to just hear from our little guys, I wanna
be a police officer, I wanna be a fireman, I wanna be a teacher, because this is what they saw in their
community, and now it's, I wanna be an engineer, I wanna do, you know, all of these different things.
So it's work that we're doing
all the way down, I would even say go as far as to say all the way down into EECC and the exposure that
we have there. Touch of Truck is coming up with those little guys here pretty soon. So it's definitely
showing the proof is in the pudding here with all of that. On the back side, you'll see a couple of
upcoming items. We are doing a second round of mentor training, March 12th, 13th, and 14th. So we'll
have another
9 to 10 mentors who will be trained across the district on those three days and then this year's a little
different at the end of the year instead of One or two end of the year teacher days. We have three so
the 22nd 26th and 27th I Did pretty well you have a minute 27 seconds
Dr. Sanders? Well, Mr. Durnall, I just want to point out that my report is only on the front page.
I tried, really. I almost just cut it off completely. I'll deal with that after the meeting. OK,
all right. I'll make this quick. A couple more congratulations that I'd like to shout out to. And EIS
ambassadors, they collected 319 boxes of cereal. Is that going to pantry 279?
And so that's always exciting. Did they have the, where you put the boxes down in the? Yes, it went
almost halfway around the front of the building. It was about twice as long as last year, so. Oh, wow.
Very exciting. And then I attended the National Honor Society induction. And I tell you, if you haven't
gone to that, you need to, because it sets a nice,
program and it's all run by the students and they, I mean, they did an excellent job. I was so impressed.
And then the theater arts team, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, once again, just a great performance.
I was just in awe of not only the
the set and the props, but the acting. And I don't know if you haven't seen it, the lion was a puppet,
a huge puppet. And it was created and built right in our ILC. That's pretty cool. I wanted to let you
know that Alec and I attended the Monroe County School Safety Commission meeting. That's held twice a year.
which basically we go over to MCC, they host it. They're required to host it as being the larger school
corporation in the area. And there are law enforcement there, police department, Bloomington, Ellsville,
sheriff's department. And then we just talk about school safety. And I really value that because we're
sitting around a table of experts
And those experts are informing school leaders on what we can do to keep our schools safe. And so I
appreciate that. Alec, he's a shining star for not only the school corporation, but for the Ellsville
Police Department. Once again, for the fifth time, we've sent students down to Brown County for the
annual student-run business conference.
we go down there, we go down as leaders in this area. Of course, we want to learn, but more importantly,
people are coming to our students and asking them what they're doing that's working out so well. I want
to give you the dates. I know it's hard
to believe I'm sharing this, but end of the year awards ceremony and dates and times. I just wanted
as a board for you to have that. And we invite you to any and all of those. And then we're in the middle
of iLearn testing. And the prom is coming up on May 2nd. And we have students going to Bradford Woods
May 4th through the 6th.
Six through the eighth we have such a big group. They've divided us into two groups. That's my report
tonight three minutes And now we have our BBEA comments Every every month I feel like there's something that just
makes me feel just awe for our corporation, and those pathways are just so exciting. I mean, it just
is amazing how our high school continues to evolve like that. In addition to the names mentioned, I
just wanna wish Katie Brookman, Micah Mobley, and Rachel Mathias the best. I can echo Mr. Kerr,
you know, all three of my children went through this corporation, and just lasting memories with so
many of the people on this list this evening. And speaking of recognizing someone, I think it,
You know, we can attest EPS teachers to paying our retirees for subbing because we have Vicki here this
evening and I think we're all always fighting for her to be in our room. So it's just a great program.
We love her and it just is working for us and probably other schools too.
you know, when I think of these lists, I'm gonna be giving our building reps just things to give out
trying to recruit new people. So they'll be seeing some things too to see if we can get some membership
before the end of the year. And then finally, I just, you know, I'm so appreciative of
all these wonderful colleagues that I have here to recognize our HRS level one and we know how hard
Matt and Elisa worked as well as all the other administrators. A very, very time consuming task and
we just appreciate all of you and just wishing everybody the best in these last few weeks. And Brandy,
we're good for the meeting on Thursday. We're good, we can be at your meeting.
Now for our board member comments, we'll start with Mr. Durnall. Well thank you, I appreciate that.
I'm really excited about the pool deck and of course the turf for the softball and baseball. Arnold,
thank you for keeping track of that. Thank you for helping with that, appreciate it Mr. Schruestel.
And I'm really impressed tonight that all the EPS teachers stayed through this whole meeting. I really
want to pat you on the back, thank you.
Vicki says it's a good example. She didn't even move when it was all over. Thank you. So appreciate
you being here. Good seeing you all. I was just gonna add, I think this is the largest audience that
Dr. Sanders has ever had for his report. So I was wondering if they were coerced. I don't know.
Congratulations to the EPS teachers and the administration for the level one accomplishment. Congratulations, Arnold.
really cool and well-deserved. And some thanks, thanks to everybody for expressing sympathy with my
family loss. It was, thank you. I also want to thank the volunteers, speaking of National Honor Society,
some of them showed up for, I was the race director for the MAG-7 kickoff and I had some volunteers
and they were outstanding and it was just, made my day so much better. Thanks to
Boston Scientific for the donations. And just want to encourage all the students to finish the year
strong. Mr. Tucker. To Mr. DeMoss and Mr. Dornal, thanks to the EPS folks for coming out tonight.
And Ms. Hardy, I hope you still have the energy to put up your Halloween decorations. Because I do have
to go by there.
Yeah, I have. I have to go to your house. So thanks for getting me out of my house. And I don't want
to bite any of your stuff at a yard sale, though. So thank you again, Kress, on the HRS designation.
It's kind of neat, my little trip down here with, I think a lot of EPS teachers are there at night.
It's kind of neat to see what all goes on. And the Marzano thing's been around Mr. DeMoss a long time.
He's kind of reinvented the wheel, but it just helps you reflect what you're doing. So thank you for
doing that, and kudos to all with that. And best of luck to all of spring sports, and everybody be safe
this spring. It's coming. I mean, the end of May is going to come fast. So thanks. Thank you. Back on
Thursday, it was supposed to be here tonight. It's not.
We checked the delivery. It's supposed to be here Thursday, so put it up proudly. We will hand-deliver
it when it comes. Didn't catch that, but hearing they died like five minutes ago. Mrs. Hardy, your husband's
name's Bo, right? Yes. You never know what influence you teachers have on kids. I'll tell you this,
because my daughter had a son, and because of Mrs. Hardy,
She always loved the name Bo. And so she named her son Bo. So you touch so many lives in so many ways
that you just never realize
So I'm glad that one came back around so you could find out about it. But I appreciate everybody coming
tonight. And I believe that we can get through everything together. And again, just because we're so
close, I am sorry for Mr. Paulson to go. And I love him. He's an outstanding man.
an upright man, and, but, you know, again, he's great, and I love him, and I know there's many out there
that do as well, and I get to say that because I can. I'm sitting up here. So, to you, I wish you all
very well, and I hope you have a wonderful evening, and this meeting is adjourned.