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. Please be seated.
Our first meeting this evening is the public budget hearing for the Richland Bean Blossom Community
School Corporation.
And please let the record reflect that we have board members Mr. Tucker, Mr. Durnall, Mr. DeMoss,
and Mr. Kerr present. And we will be considering the 2027 budget. So we'll ask Deputy Tate. First of
three items would be the 2027 proposed budget.
Deputy. So as you said, this is for consideration of the 2027 budget. This is our public hearing. We
advertised the budgets on Gateway and on our school website. These budgets cover our education fund,
the debt service fund, and the operations fund. The education fund budget that we advertised was $22,500,000.
Debt service was $10,409,476 and the operations was $9,549,280. So that is what we have proposed for
the plan for the upcoming year based on our projections and our debt funds and what the balances are on those.
turn this over to you, Mr. Kerr, if you wanna open this up to any public comments or if you, oh, I also
wanted to ask, do you wanna do public comments for each category or do you wanna do it all at the end?
I believe that we could, you could go through all three and we could ask for public comments on all
three of them. So I put in front of you guys also the capital projects plan that we have proposed.
for next year. These are just different projects. And as we've talked about before, a lot of these projects,
they're just estimates. We're gonna try to find other funding sources for a lot of it, but this is our
projection that we're required to put together. And then the bus replacement plan, again, same situation.
We were required to put together a plan. We have set aside some money to kind of project what
buses if we need any buses or not, but it's not a guarantee that we will actually make those purchases.
So it's just a plan, just have an estimate and just an idea of the future purchases that could be in
place. And I think now we can turn it over to public comment if you'd like. Okay. At this point, again,
this is the public budget hearing, the actual hearing. So at this point, we will open
the hearing up for public comments on any or all three of, if you have comments on any or all three
of the proposed budgets, the proposed actual full budget, the capital projects plan or the buzz replacement
plan, you're welcome to come to the podium and state your name and we'd love to hear from you. If you have any.
Seeing, oh, go ahead. I'm Jeremiah O'Neill. So I was curious of the proposed operating budget, how much
of that goes towards special education? Like the teachers, the IAAs, all that sort of thing, because
I know we've had some issues already this year with staffing and stuff, so just wanted to make sure
that was taken into consideration.
So the operations fund is what you're specifically asking. We do have specific needs for each fund.
So education fund is based on the teachers, the IAs, things like that. Operations is like transportation
or maintenance there. It's separated out so you can only use those funds for certain things. You can't.
Yeah, it has to specifically be used for that purpose.
You can't commingle the funds. And the State Board of Accounts requires us to use certain guidelines
with those funds, so we have to abide by those guidelines when spending that money. It can't ever be
mixed, and it has to be specifically used for those purposes. So is there a definitive number on that
which is for special education? If you have specific questions, you can reach out to us, but I can't
give you an exact number at this time.
Any other public comments? Hearing none. Now that these three have been completed, that's the end of
the public comment portion of the public hearing and the end of the public hearing. Thank you very much.
That will adjourn our first meeting of the evening. And now I will
and call to order our second meeting. I will assume that we will all continue to pledge our allegiance
to the flag, so we do not need to do that again. I will, for the record though, ask the record to reflect
that eight board members, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Durnall, Mr. DeMoss, and Mr. Kerr are present.
Are there any visitor comments for our regular September 2026 regular meeting? Seeing none, we will
go to our Mustang moment and we have the junior high school with us this evening. Dr. Sanders, would
you like to address? Oh, he's gonna introduce.
Before I get started, I want to take a second to introduce our new school counselor, Mr. Chastain Baker.
Chastain comes to us as an Edgewood graduate, so I just want to welcome him back home. The original
goal this evening was to have Edge Media come and present, put students in front of you like we normally
do. Mr. Greil had some other commitments, so you get me.
I also noticed that the superintendent reports are a page and some of the back so I have to go really
quick so we have time for everything tonight. But what I wanted to do is take some time to share with
you guys how we utilize Wednesday mornings. About a year and a half ago, we were given the opportunity
to expand that from 30 minutes to a full hour. And it's one of those things that's super valuable, not
just to me,
but 100% to our staff. So I just wanna give you guys an idea as to how we use those mornings and some
of the things that we do. So we'll just kinda jump into it. The junior high is a unique situation. And
the reason I say that is because at the elementary school, they very much have to focus grade level
all the way across. So this graphic here kinda shows how we have to structure things at the junior high.
We're not just working on kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We're also not the high school who
can only, who's only focused on math. And the reason that's a little different, especially at the high
school level, is we have a lot of students at the high school level that might be taking algebra one.
They might be a freshman, they might be a sophomore, occasionally a junior, just depending on how they're
going. So that algebra class isn't limited to one grade level.
At the junior high, we're taking some of the stuff that the elementary has done while they're focusing
on foundational skills and we're still working on that. But we also have to transition these students
into the high school role and we have to refine what they've learned at the elementary school and make
sure that they have those content specific teachers. So at the junior high, we have a need for not only
departments but also grade levels. Every one of our Wednesday mornings,
is split up into some type of meeting. First Wednesday of the month, which we're coming up on, we focus
on our grade level teams. All those bullet points right there show you what those topics are that our
grade level teams might be talking about. The first one on there is FLEX. FLEX is our extra time to
do remediation and enrichment.
We're gonna talk a little bit more about how that plays in towards the end. But a few of the other things
that we look at is cohesion across the grade level, trends, grading practices, parent communication,
student behavior. Because our sixth grade and our seventh grade are very much still grouped. We have
a south block team and a north block team. So those students will see four core teachers every single day.
and it's the same group of teachers. So as a cohort or as a group of teachers, we can look at a smaller
group of kids and say, hey, we're struggling here, we're struggling there, or this student needs this
or that. So we make sure that our grade levels have a Wednesday morning that they can get together and
work through all of these tasks. It's not limited to these tasks, there's a lot of other things that
pop up through the month, but this is kind of their base agenda for their hour. Some of the housekeeping things,
curriculum tasks, field trips, testing schedules, and other logistical things that might pop up. On
our third Wednesday, we get into department teams. And department teams, they jump in, it looks like
a much shorter list, but again, this is just their base agenda. We look at vertical curriculum, we look
at vertical alignment. Already this school year, we've sent our,
our special ed teachers who transition students up into the high school to the high school to work with
the high school team to make sure that when we set transition documents and build those IEPs that when
they leave our building, they're walking into the high school with a plan in place ready to go. We have
a couple of classes that go from Algebra 1
biology, geometry, and we wanna make sure that we have time to communicate with the high school on how
they want those classes ran and what we need to be doing to meet the standard at the high school.
So again, this is an hour every third Wednesday that we can get together with the high school and make
sure we have that vertical alignment. The other thing that we look at on this one is, you know, does
a student, is a student showing some problems on a skill that correlates
Maybe an eighth grade student that correlates with a sixth grade standard. What are those standards?
What are those conversations that need to happen to make sure that we're providing refreshers and everything
that student needs? When we look at textbook adoption, again, not one of the things that's on there,
but when we, well, textbook implementation. When we look at that, we spent the spring semester looking
at our English language arts textbook.
We brought in several companies. We had those teachers dig through those textbooks. We made sure that
they had time to teach units from those possible textbooks before we spent a load of money buying those
textbooks. So another thing there are PD shares. What's been brought back from HRS trips? What podcast,
what things that that group of teachers
Soul focus might be math or social studies. What are things that they can bring to talk to each other
and to help each other grow? Common NASOT goals. One of the things that we did this year, this is a
snapshot model of our new art and science of teaching. It's kind of our bread and butter when we start
looking at how we teach and what we do on a day-to-day basis in classrooms. This year we took our grade
level chairs,
and our department chairs and got them together and said, hey, what are the top 13 or 14 elements out
of this book that makes sense for what we do at the junior high? And what that's really done for not
only my teachers, but also for me as a principal and an evaluator, is now instead of trying to learn
and memorize and be a master of 43 elements, it's cut it down to 13 or 14.
The other thing that's done, as I know right now, number 16 on that list, highlighting critical information,
is four of my six social studies teachers goal for the year. That is going to be their focus. So I know
that I can bounce in and out, I can see that happening, but on the third Wednesday of every month, they
can bounce ideas off of each other. Every other Wednesday that we have available,
We allow for our teachers to work together. We have two content teachers for math, for social studies,
for science, and for ELA in every grade level. We want those teachers to work together to determine
common essential standards. A lot of those are already set by the state. Create common formative assessments,
determine tier two instruction, refine what they're doing every day in the classroom.
With all three of these, the hardest thing to do is give everybody a common purpose. So we use this
highway right here that kind of helps keep us on track in all of these meetings. There's a hidden fifth
line that we'll talk about. But when we look at this, the first one on the far left side is curriculum.
And we're refining and reflecting on our scope and sequences. On our assessments, we're reviewing questions, data,
developing CFAs, instruction, we're focusing on that new art and science of teaching. We're really looking
at how and what did you do to get the results on that assessment? How can I reteach and make sure my
students really get it? When we look at achievement, we're looking at celebrations, remediations,
interventions, incentives, and the last one that we've
We try to use as an off ramp because once you get into housekeeping, you could be stuck there forever.
But that's where we're planning field trips and we're delegating day-to-day work and some of that stuff
that has to be done, but we wanna keep to a minimum. We wanna try and keep that hour as focused on those
four lanes that you see in front of you as we can. Our grade level partner meeting notes. This is a
live document that I've screenshotted.
is from our seventh grade teachers, our seventh grade ELA teachers. It's kind of small up there, it's
kind of hard to see, but we have some directions on that document. You can't really see the dates, but
that is from the 26th and the 9th, so August 26th and September 9th. That will get updated tomorrow.
But on there, you're going to see as it kind of worked down, those teachers are creating a quiz that
assesses and what you want it to assess, because if this is a math lesson,
you wanna make sure that if you're asking a story problem, that you're not assessing comprehension,
that you're actually getting students to pull the math out of that. So making sure those assessment
questions are on level and assessing what you want is a very tedious task. There's action items on there
so that the teachers know what they're expected to do and what they're going to be doing in the next
week or the week after.
One of the things that's important on there is there's a section for questions for admin. Tomorrow,
we're going to be in department teams. The following week, let me back up, tomorrow we'll be in department
teams. That's five different teams. I can bounce around to each of those and make that happen pretty
easy. The following week when we are with our content partners, there's going to be approximately 16
meetings going on at one time. That gives me about seven minutes per meeting
if I can just teleport into the room. That leaves me no walking time. So to say that I'm in the meeting
when teachers have a question, maybe. And if I need to devote more time to one team than another, somebody's
gonna get bumped. So what this does is allow the teachers to ask me questions, ask Mr. Siglin questions
on the document. And the great thing about that is it holds us accountable that we have to check the document
It also means that we're checking the documents, so they're getting their notes in. Down at the bottom,
we talked a little bit about, hey, we're going to come back to flex and what some of that means. We're
going to get into some of the details of this. When we start looking at numbers, sometimes it makes
your stomach want to churn. Sometimes it's really great. But at the bottom of that spreadsheet there, you see,
four tabs at the bottom, one that says agenda notes, ES1, ES1 data, ES1 data richie. What those are
is where we collect and look individually at every student. So I know that ES1 stands for essential
standard one. We give our teachers a lot of autonomy to where they can put in the exact standard or
they can label it ES1, ES2, ES3.
Those tabs on that page are going to grow as they assess every essential standard. What this shows me
here is a lot of things. I took names out of this. This is again a live sheet. But what you can see
here, students that are green did very well on the assessment. They met a certain threshold. Students
that are yellow, they're somewhat on the bubble. Students that are red, I'll let you guys make that
assumption. We know where they're at. But how this helps us.
This tells us right here where our students are, individually, by name. It's not a percentage. I know
from this, those red students most likely need to come into our flex time, that time where we do remediation.
Those students who are green, they probably have the option to go into some enrichment. Those students
who are yellow, they might just need a refresher. They might just need some extra time to practice.
So what this does is our teachers spend a lot of time going over those notes and they spend a lot of
time getting in here and setting up these spreadsheets to make sure that our students are looked at
individually. Individually is where we wanna go. This next slide is difficult for me. It doesn't necessarily
show the greatest parts of Edgewood Junior High, but it's the truth. So I'm not gonna back away from it.
Preliminary scores have us, preliminary, these aren't final scores, have us at somewhere around 39%
on our seventh grade ELA iLearn scores. Now, if we're talking baseball, 39% is a really good batting
average. We're not talking baseball. Here's what I know. 15 students came within 10 points of the cut
score in ELA.
That cut score was around 490. When we do the math, that 10 points equals about one question. We had
15 students within one question of app proficiency. That would have been a 7% swing. We know those students'
names. We know who they are. That number goes up even more when you look at the students who missed
two questions.
Originally looking at 39% makes my stomach churn. Knowing that we have 25 to 30 students within two
questions gives me hope, gives me a lot of promise. And I know who those kids are and they can do it.
I don't know why they didn't do it, but they can do it. That jumps us up to a 46%. I'm not exactly sure,
100% sure what the state averages are.
but I know we're really darn close to them. And I know if we were at 46%, we'd probably be well above
them. The next one down, 88% in M class, 135 of our 154 students tested in sixth grade are decoding
words on level. 88%, that is a, that is huge kudos to Mr. Scholl and his team. Like those, they are
knocking it out of the park. That is beginning of the year level.
19 of those students aren't decoding well, and we have a plan in place for them. What we're looking
at right now, and this is a huge growth area for the junior high, 58% of our students, 89 students struggle
with fluency. So think about reading any one of those lines above there backwards. All the words are
spelled backwards. And that's how our students are trying to read and put together those words.
and then answer a question about them. Pulling this back to our teams, our sixth grade team is now able
to go back and provide some help and some simple strategies to the entire sixth grade staff to say,
hey, when you read instructions, we want you to do a choral reading. We want you to read it, we want
them to read it, and then we want you all to read it together.
A simple tactic like that helps to improve reading fluency and will make a big difference, especially
when kids are doing it all day long. That's why it's important for us to have the time to dig through
these numbers and get to individual students and understand individually where we're at. Another goal
that we have is to increase our attendance rate by 2%, taking us from 94 to 96%. That sounds like a lot.
But when you break down the numbers off the chronic absentee list, that's two or three students. We
can get together again with our grade level teams and our department teams and find those students and
make a plan for them. Start reaching out, start building those connections, start connecting those students
with school. Coming back to our tracking sheet, when I look at this, I can do a lot of things here.
I look at that first class, the one that has several red in it.
And I know I'm going to have to figure out what I did from first period to sixth period, the one on
the far right. Demographics look fairly similar, but the grades look completely different. So as a teacher,
I can look at that with my grade level partner. I can also go back and vertically look with my department
team and say, hey, these individual kids struggled here. Where were they with you?
It helps us decide where the priorities are when it comes to our flex time. Maybe those kids that are
red are red everywhere, not just in this one class. Now as a grade level team, we need to decide who
gets that student first. Where does that priority need to lie? Again, without the time that you guys
have awarded us, we don't have time to make those decisions and do those things.
Wrapping up, I'm not saying all this, the last few slides were very negative. At least I felt that way.
But my number one thing is we absolutely value that time. And for those parents who feel that inconvenience
of it's an hour, I have to get to work, I have to do all that, this is time for us to look at each student
individually. It's really important to us. Without that uninterrupted time, I don't know how we manage
everything that I was just able to present there. Last thing, I just want to say, our teachers really,
really appreciate that time. And it's extremely useful. So again, year and a half ago, you guys made
a decision to help us out. We appreciate that. Thank you. Next time I'm up, Edge Media will be here,
and we're going to talk about pathways a little bit too. So if you guys have any questions, feel free
to shoot them at me.
Any questions? I appreciate the data and the sharing, the nuts and bolts of how the Wednesday mornings
are operating. And take care on the right track. Thank you. You are bringing in the instructional aides
as well. The instructional aides, they're part of the teams also, correct? Instructional aides are,
and they get filled in later on, but this time,
because of how we have to kind of work hourly employees, we try to keep that time to just our certified
staff, and then our IAs, we- They come in after that? They come in after that, that way we can use them
to work specifically with students. Okay, but your findings are shared with them when they come back?
Yes. Okay, and out of that red, is there a way
indicate whether those are some inclusion students or not? Yes. So on that list. You have a way to track
that. Well, and that's the thing. And I didn't go much into it. There's a couple lines right there in
the middle. If you notice that second green column is pretty narrow. The first and the third one, there
are some acronyms in there. We have WIN and IEP. So that designates the students who are already receiving some help
alongside. Thank you. Yep. I think this is very, very helpful and illuminating. And I'm very impressed
at the amount of work that you fit into that hour on Wednesday. So I really appreciate the hard work
that you and the teachers put in and your staff.
Getting getting this much work in In that short period of time and it's it's one of those things even
you know with a half hour You sit down and you blink and you feel like it's over We blink twice in an
hour Good work. Thank you. Thank you Now we'll move on to our
consent agenda. We have approval of minutes from our August 18th regular board meeting. We have for
financial, we have our treasurer's report from August 2026.
And Mr. General, our claims, please. Thank you, Mr. President. We have gross wages, many payroll on
August 13th, 2026 for $373.75 for gross wages on August 14th, 2026, $720,037.12 for gross wages, many
payroll on eight 20, 2026, $487.50 for gross wages, many payroll again,
$786.48 for gross wages on 8-28-2026, $845,155.77 for gross wages mini payroll on August the 29th, 2026
is $157.25 for a total in that area of $1,566,992.87.
For vouchers, pre-claims and pre-pays, August 1, 26 to August 31, 26, $1,133,226.63. For claims and
regular vouchers, September 15th, 2026, $709,412.12. For total and adder, $1,842,638.75 for grand total.
$3,409,631.62. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next, we have personnel, resignations, renewals, or resignations,
retirements, non-renewals, leaves, and terminations, C1 through 18, and appointments and transfers,
D1 through 45. There are some student
employment for educational purposes. But again, we do not list for privacy purposes. I'm happy to report
that there are two donations. One is for student supplies from CEMTRA. Greatly appreciate that. And
there's also a donation of $200 in books to the EPS library from Dr. Vivian Orenstein. I remember
in law school, if I remember right. So we have a motion on the consent agenda. I'll second. Moved and
seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you so much.
Next, we have some informational items. Our first is a presentation of the Edgewood Student Services
and some updates, and we have Brittany Strong with us to go over that this evening.
Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Brittany Draw, and I am the person with the honor of leading our student
support team here at RBB. I am here with one of my colleagues and very best supporting people, Dr. Hanna
Kassab. And we, sorry, I should tell you what she does. She is a supervisor and grant coordinator on
the IU side of our mental health team.
So we work really closely together whenever we're doing projects, coming up with interventions, all
the things. So she was nice enough to join me today, definitely for moral support, but also to help
me click those slides. All right, so today I'm excited to walk through this presentation about transforming
student wellness through an NTSS structure.
For the next few minutes, we're going to look at how we move from a reactive support to a proactive
framework, one that ensures that every one of our students is getting the exact level of care
and intervention, that they need to be successful.
going to be looking at understanding MTSS, which is a multi-tiered system of support, to support our
students and also how we identify students and select different evidence-based interventions for them
while they are at school and in our care. So kind of to start off, we wanted to look at the Indiana
statistics. So we took a look at the Indiana Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
And through the students that were surveyed in the state of Indiana, 47% reported that they had persistent
sadness or hopelessness on a regular basis. This is really problematic because the other stat that is
also concerning is that one in four of our students in the state of Indiana have experienced suicidal
thoughts. Whenever we look at these kind of statistics, we have to look at this and realize that
that this is an epidemic that we need a response to. And we can start gathering some baseline data through
different observation in order to get the ball rolling here in RBB. And that's exactly what we've been
doing and what we've been working towards for years with your support. We can do that through a universal
screener. So here at RBB, we utilize the student wellness teacher rating scale.
This is not a diagnostic tool by any means. What this tool is is gives us a starting point of how our
students are doing in the classroom. So whenever we have earlier identification it also means that we
are able to have the opportunity to provide earlier support. So this data includes teacher insights
which means that our students outcomes are stronger because our teachers know our students really well.
And so when they're sitting in the classroom and we're asking them to complete a 10-question survey
on how students are performing in their classroom, they're the first ones that can tell when a student
is off. So the questions that they answer are like, does the student engage with others in your classroom?
engage in the material. So we're looking at some very simple basic questions, but questions that can
help us to figure out where a student lies and their level of support. Again, this is just one data
point. This isn't a solve all by any means, but it is a really great place to jump off. So through,
we're looking at data from the spring of 2026. And using that sweater's data, we were able to note that
181 students in the elementary school were
were noted as high risk or a potential for high risk. And we had 74 in the secondary schools. Whenever
you get this kind of information, you can go to the next slide. Yeah, it can kind of feel like a chaotic
closet, like truly. You elicit this information, it comes in and it becomes really overwhelming because
oftentimes we have to ask ourselves
OK, now that we know that there's a potential here, what do we do with that? So what we want to do is
to take the system that we have and that we've been getting in place and continue building it into that
multi-tier system of support. It will take like the disorganized closet and make it into a really nice,
pretty organized place where we can quickly find the resources that we need.
MTSS allows us to connect what we're already doing into a sustainable framework. And that means that
we have the observational data as a baseline. Then we can then funnel those who are identified through
this through a different measure to help determine their level of need. Stay right where you're at.
For this to work, we have to know the story of the data and what it tells us, and we need clear communication
and coordination, and all of that must be supported by a strong leadership, which we have had time and
time again here at RBB through our administration, through our school board, which makes the work that
Student Services provides on a daily basis in our buildings possible. We have to be able to have a commitment to
acknowledging, noticing, and supporting behavioral health to allocate the appropriate staff to respond,
and then also maintain funding to keep everybody on our team and providing the level of care that our
district proves a need for. Again, the really great news here is that RBV is full of leaders who support
this work, and we're able to continue to do the work day in and day out with your support and able to
share some of these
Statistics with you that I'm going to share with you today Whenever Jen had asked for me to present
at the board meeting I was trying to wrap my head around where is a starting point because I also know
that upon my hire Brad Tucker came up and he asked me a question about like the roles and the
responsibilities of Student Services and just kind of wanted to know some clarity around that
And I felt like that was a really big maybe missing piece that we had was being able to be visible and
known throughout our community for what we do here. And I think that that question from a board member
helped me to see that there is a gap in you know kind of showcasing in a sense who we are and what we
provide. So then I thought it would be a perfect time to be able to come to you to talk about our MTSS
model because
You guys are used to this, or most of you are used to this, seeing it in the classroom, because this
is what we do all the time for academics. Like Mr. Richler was talking about for math or ELA when there
are deficits and things of that nature, we have tiered responses that we're already doing. Now having
the opportunity to expand our student services team as we have been able to over the last few years
allows us to align ourselves with that same model and mission.
So here's the basic multi-tiered system of support. And much like a classroom, we use this framework
at the tier one. Tier one involves every person. This is universal. This is part of our social emotional
learning curriculum. This is part of our wellness initiatives. And then whenever we realize that number
one maybe isn't cutting it with a certain population of students, we go up to tier two where we are
able to provide
targeted interventions to a group of students. So this might look like small groups. This might look
like some short-term solution-focused counseling. And again, if we are doing these things with these
students and start to realize that we are still missing something with our students, that it's still
not getting the momentum that we were hoping for, then we're able to look at that tier three more intensive support.
Again, without this type of model, things kind of feel a little chaotic and crazy, but being able to
follow this model allows us to take the personnel, I'll have you go to the next one, that we have in
place and fit us right into that tier. Just like we have math, science, social studies, and how they
respond to the data that they collect in the classroom, we now are also able to do the same thing. So
you'll see up here,
where we start to differ in the student services arena, so to speak. So when you're looking at that
tier one and the counselors and teachers, we're really doing those things every day to reach every student.
Then you're gonna notice that whenever we are at our capacity in that space, so as teachers or as school
counselors, then we will refer to a next tier. So for us here at RBB,
That looks like counselors may be leading some of those interventions, but we also tag in our school
psychologists in training, which are the people that we have on our team through one of the grants that
we have established. They are an integral part of our team. They host our groups. They support our teachers.
And are able to bring a different set of eyes and ears to the interventions that we have because again
counselors and social workers even though we have a common ground with Mental health focus. We also
have a different lens in which we see things The same holds true whenever we move up to the tier three
That's where you're gonna see when we talk about our social workers in our buildings. This is where
they're functioning They are functioning with that top high need high risk five percent of our population
So we have our social workers. I put our school psychologists in there as well because as part of our
special education team we have school psychologists that are involved in those evaluations and such.
You can consider them a tier three in that like academic world. So I did want to include them because
they're also pivotal part of what we do each day. And then also I added up their center stone because
center stone as you may already know works in our building.
as well, and we utilize them as if they're a part of our teams, just like we do with IU and our RBB
staff. So really, what we want to showcase right now is just that intention of being more visible as
a cohesive team and working alongside each other. I won't spend a ton of time on this for the sake of
time, but this I just tried to show you in another way to show the differences between those
roles and responsibilities. So when you think of counselors and you think of that universal support,
you're thinking of development of your programming, your prevention, your intervention. You're looking
at academics, college and careers, and social emotional. When you're looking at school sites, you're
looking at that intervention, but also with the consultation and with the behavior data that they collect
and bring to the table. That isn't always a strong point of a school counselor.
And then whenever we're looking at our social workers, we're really digging into those barriers and
we're digging into family systems and bridging that gap between home and school. They bring a certain
set of skills and knowledge base that the other two people or persons in these categories don't bring.
When we bring these three people together, we're actually able to serve a whole student through various
lens and that in and of itself is
a true gift when you have that many people to be able to look at a student and then you're able to respond
to their need in a very well intended way. That is a gift that we have here at RBB because of the programming
that we have in place. Now I'm not going to like go through every single one of our providers but I
did want to showcase just the
the level of talent and commitment that we have in our RBB community with our team members. So I've
broken this up. Our RBB elementary team, you can see up here just how many people that encompasses,
what their roles are. And I just, for giggles, I added what tiers they're most likely to support so
you can see the differences and how it relates to our conversation today. Next, I have our secondary
team. A little bit smaller, but just as mighty.
Next, we have our IU school site. So these are master and doctoral level students that work in our buildings
each day. They're working alongside us. They are providing fresh eyes, new perspectives. We are learning
from these students just as they are learning from us. So this partnership with IU has been and continues
to be a really big important role for all of us in continuing to
to advance and meet the students' needs in a, what do I want to say, up to date in a, like, we're constantly
getting the new information that's coming because of this partnership. We're not going to be complicit
and compliant in our, like, old ways because we have those voices at the table all the time and it is
so valuable to us.
And then I did go ahead and add our Centerstone team up here as well, because like I said, even though
they are not RBB officially, they're very much a part of our team and who we are. These are the people
that work in our buildings. Again, they sit at the table alongside us, they problem solve, they ask
the card questions, they bring in the families just like we do. We collaborate with these people on
a regular basis to make sure that continuation of care is happening.
And what we're trying to be even more intentional about now more than ever has been that duplication
of services because whenever we pay attention to the duplication of services, we're actually able to
better maximize the number of students that we're serving because we're not spending all of our resources
kind of like too many irons on the fire, so to speak.
As we get ready to wrap up, I thought it would be really good to just share just a little snippet of
the data. We can go really far into the data to show you, to really showcase what these amazing people
do. But for the sake of time, we're gonna look at the primary and the intermediate school to get an
elementary lens. We're looking at the spring of 2026, so that same data that you saw with the sweaters,
universal screener. In that 15 weeks of time,
our providers, so those four providers, had 1,200 student interactions. I say that because that is just
the documented interactions. Those are not all of your touch points that these people are getting with
other students throughout the day. This is not accounting for lunch and arrival and just being in the
hallway and stopping into music. Of those provider interactions, 45 and a half
of those interactions were directly from internalizing behavior. So these are situations where students
themselves may have a feeling and they're seeking out the counselor, but this is also where our teachers
are reaching out for help and for support and our providers are responding and they're making a difference
in our classroom by supporting our teachers and our students. I thought it was notable to also look
at how much task avoidance that we see in elementary.
counted to 15.7% of all of those interactions. What a great opportunity for skill building and working
with these students on how you do school, you know, how we interact with our friends, how we self-regulate.
The other important thing to note is that so many of these interactions were documented and able to
be resolved in 15 minutes or less.
The reason why that is important is because if you have a solid Tier 1 foundation, then your Tier 2
and Tier 3 are much smaller. And I took the graph out and now I wish that I wouldn't have. But we had
a graph up there that showed you how big our Tier 1 was and how much smaller our Tier 2 and Tier 3 was.
And it just again shows that what we are doing here in RVB is working.
I also added up here for the junior high, just so that you could see, students themselves refer to us.
So I wanted to give you a view of what it looks like when our students have the autonomy to speak up
and advocate for themselves. So in that same 15-week timeframe, we had 368 students who signed up online
by themselves to ask to speak to one of us. So over that time, a quarter of those are
signing up to see us for personal life things. This is things at home. These are friends things. They're
seeking out that support to help them feel better so they can get to their learning in the classroom.
Another like kind of thing that stood out to me is one in about every four of those entries involved
a safety risk. So these are students who are proactively seeking support for how they are feeling or
how a friend of theirs is feeling. This allows us to provide that early intervention.
Basically, and I'm wrapping it up, basically all of this, and you can go to the next one, shows us that
when we have this MTSS system working for our student support teams, we are able to reduce our disciplinary
referrals, and the data will show that we're able to increase our academic engagement by our students,
and that includes our at-risk students who sometimes have a really hard time engaging. It also helps
our students themselves improve their regulation and coping skills through all the tiers.
And it also has been reported on numerous studies and personally that whenever these things happen and
they work as they should, teachers are reporting lower incidences of just overwhelm and burnout because
they have more confidence in the classroom because students can regulate themselves giving them the
time to put their energy into teaching.
So moving forward, our team is going to continue to build and redefine this cohesive model across our
district. We're continuously defining our supports, our roles, and our responsibilities. So we are maximizing
those targeted high impact student interactions. We really have to focus and will continue to focus
on sustainability as our top priority. Our schools rely on these dedicated providers to maintain our
positive outcomes.
And we want to be able to keep this momentum going year after year after year. And it takes us sustainability
to do that. While we could continue talking about all the great things here at RBB, I realize that time
is of the essence. So we're going to save the rest of this presentation and hopefully present to you
again here soon to be able to go over grants and go over initiatives and really dig into that as well.
because we're making a lot of really great progress at RBV. And we can do it without you. So thank you.
Any questions for me? So the last thing on the screen says come see us at the showcase. Yeah, come see
us at the showcase. Where are you going to be? We are going to be in the wellness hallway at the junior
high. And I added the shirt that we designed and we will all be wearing. We are very excited about our
team shirts. This is the first time that we have done this. We are excited.
caring, daring, preparing. We all know caring, daring, preparing, but what I love is that they took
that. Yeah, so we took it just in order to make it, you know, kind of, you know, feeling like counselors.
Caring through connection, daring through advocacy, and preparing for lifelong success. So, that is
our presentation. Can you go back to that first triangle of life?
The first triangle. The three tiers. MTSS. Right, so. You went with the actual intervention. This is
the time to change your PowerPoint, but I just, I'm thinking it through the math on this. So if you
got 2,700 kids, tier two is 270 kids up to three, three and a quarter. Tier three is about 27 to 80
kids, correct? I'm not.
I told Jen earlier, I'm a feelings, not a number of person. But I'll go with that. Well, I understand.
But I want people in the community to understand the number of people that we have in all these support
roles is on top of the classroom teachers and the instructional aides and so forth. Our legislators
need to understand that too. And you use the word sustainability.
That's the grants that the corporation has been blessed with from the work of everyone here. If we don't
have those grants, we can't do this. And I worry about that for the future and the sustainability. So
I appreciate the partnership with IU. Keep up with us with grants. And I will encourage you to hopefully
you're sharing this with each individual school.
Well, this is the first of those. They need to see this. But we will. They don't see the big. Our plan
for this year is to really dig into our outcome data and show all the cool things that have come out
of the work we're doing. It's a big picture of what goes on. And this hasn't even got it in the preschool.
And you take. Yeah, this is kind of our first year at the preschool. Right. You take tier one, and you
mention counselors and teachers. Well, I want to throw in.
You got your SROs, you got your custodians, you got your bus drivers, you got your structural aids.
Everybody has, the village helps with this school. And this is some great things to show the community,
but they don't know about this. And it's probably too quick to do it before the showcase, but it'd be
cool to have this to share with people what goes on. And I've learned tremendous amount today about
the number of staffing we have.
Even those IU students that are coming here, they're not on the payroll, correct? Correct, no. But we're
using their skills to help us, and that partnership is tremendous. Yes, and that's why it's, I mean,
again, I can't reiterate enough how much we learn from the students themselves. They bring so much to
the table, fresh eyes. Right. It really is a really great partnership, and one of the things that we
had our very first all-district
student support team meeting today and we talked a lot about visibility in one of our goals and so we're
going to be doing more things about being out because we acknowledge that you know we do all these great
things and nobody knows that we're here.
So you'll notice if you get the emails starting in August, counselors at every building put in like
a counselor corner so that we're trying to showcase who we are. We're giving tips and tricks for those
people at home that they can use that coincide with some of the strategies that we use here at school.
So then we can again bridge that gap between home and school and provide consistency. We know that kids
need consistency. And the more that we provide that for them here at school, the more successes,
opportunities we're giving them.
And we haven't even thrown in the occupational therapist, the speech therapist. We've got so many different
of these resources going on. And the last vision, I'll be quiet, is I love the two closets, because
the one on the left, that's how my brain has worked the last couple years. I have no clue who does what,
because we've got great grants coming in, but nothing's organized. So I pray that we're going to get
to the closet on the right at some point and keep getting that.
where everybody knows where everybody goes. Absolutely. I think that the benefit of you guys being open
to a position such as mine is what is allowing the time and the space for us to do this. The great thing
about this is this braiding initiative isn't a new term whenever it comes to MTSS. The beautiful thing
about having a position such as mine, which I love, by the way, every day, I love, we are able to just
take the things that we're already doing really well and organize them.
You know, so we're not duplicating things. We're not finding like, oh, you're using this resource. You're
using that one. If we do this one, which we're going to talk about a little bit later in the board meeting,
if we all use this one, we can have a common language in that continuation of K or pre-K all the way
to 12. And that's what our students mean. OK. And Mr. Tucker, your comment about all of these people
pushing together to support these kiddos and their needs, I think it goes back to Mr. O'Neill's question
about how much money is spent on special ed.
It's not black and white and that's the hard part because you can't just pull these little pieces out.
There's so much to it. So it's a great question. It's one of those that needs to sit down. Let's talk
through that and we can show you some of those pieces. But it really is that tier one is every single
person and it includes our board.
because we couldn't do what we do at tier one without the board recognizing the needs that we have and
putting those in place and approving not just funds for those, but approving positions and all of those
things. So that is work that we do starting at the board, like you said, all the way down to the first
person in the kid OC when they get on the bus in the morning, the bus driver. So it's huge. It's absolutely
huge what we do here.
back to Mr. O'Neill's question, spending per student, what, it's about $7,800 a student, we get reimbursed
from the state now? That's what we get reimbursed, yes. About $7,800 per student, but that doesn't even
come near enough to cover what goes on here. This is where those grants have helped out. Yeah. And again,
I thank you guys and the whole community for doing the grants. That's been awesome. Yeah. We're honored.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, ladies. I think one of the things in the outreach, too, letting people know,
If they have a concern, how they can reach out, where they can go. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize you
were talking to me. In your outreach to the community and parents and teachers and so on, letting them
know if they have a concern, where they should go.
who should they should go to with that concern, who should they bring it up to, where, you know, so
it's great to have these services that also you need to know where you can tap into them. Yes, and that's
actually one of the things that's also in the works. I've coordinated with Brittany Tucker for a counseling
part of our website so that families there will hopefully, it's going to take a while, but have an area
for families, for students, and for teachers to be able to have all of our
resources available, not just resources here at RVB, but also resources that we're aware of in the community,
that people that need some resources that may not feel comfortable reaching out, that they can go somewhere
from their kitchen table and seek some support. So yeah, that's in the works too. That's awesome. Thank
you so much. Thank you. Thank you. OK. The next item on the agenda number nine will be postponed till next
And so then we will look now to our storm damage report. Hey, okay. I was sorry about that. Okay, so
back up to number eight. We have a presentation of the outstanding design award. Dr. Sanders. Yes, I
like to introduce my good friend, Randy Taylor, who is
Currently with Lancer Associates. Now, Randy and I worked at Martinsville in central office for a dozen
years, I think. But Randy has been teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and he retired from
being superintendent at Mooresville schools. And Randy is, like I said, a good friend, but also
has been a good mentor to me. I've learned a lot from him over the years. But Randy is here to present
an award to us. Well, I don't know if I can live up to what you just said. Now, I got to tell a story
before we get going for the presentation. In 1960 and 69, I was part of the boys basketball team. And
on that basketball team, we played a tour in high school.
And Edgewood had a player, Clarence Figg. And we were so good defensively, we held Clarence that night
to 42 points. It was quite a battle that night. So I just want to know, I still remember some of that.
42 points. What school? Martinsville. Yeah, so it was quite a defensive battle that night. A lot of
points scored. As Dr. Sanders said,
teachers together in the same school system, we were principals at different buildings, and then we
went into central office. I learned more from him than he realizes, and what puts him at the top of
the level is he really does care, and I don't have to tell you that. I'm here because I now work for
Lancer Associates, which has just finished up, wrapped up a project for Edgewood Early Childhood Center.
I was talking to Mr. DeMoss earlier and he thought that possibly this is the third time you've been
recognized in schools and university publication for design and the facility is an excellent facility.
It means that the design has been recognized throughout the state of Indiana as well as your best bang
for your buck. So I'd like to present to the school system and Dr. Sanders a plaque to be placed for the early
compliments about our early childhood center, not only the facility, but more importantly, the staff
that worked there. And I always tell them they have the best job in the school corporation. Every time
I go down there. Now granted, I always head to my grandchildren's classrooms, but
they working with our preschoolers is just, I'm sure they have challenging days, but it looks like a
lot of fun too. But thank you, Randy. This is a great article, Randy on this. And I want to thank, if
I remember right, Dr. Sanders, the first picture was of that, of the trees painted on her.
That was Mr. Drew's, wasn't it? Yes. Yes. That was a local Edgewood graduate, all those trees,
that painting. Well, and his son. And his son, who was in high school. But the best view out of that
building is looking out in about three weeks, looking out over the hillside, those front windows with
the cafeterias. That beautiful view. And part of that hallway was painted in the dark because we're
trying to get the electricity going as the building was being finished.
They do an amazing job. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the design work. And it really came to fruition.
And we really appreciate that hard work. Awesome. Now we will skip number nine and go to the storm damage
report, Dr. Sanders. Yeah, I just wanted to give the board and the community an update on the storm damage
that occurred on our campus from the August 26th storm. I believe it was just mainly high winds,
but it sure, if you drove through our campus right after that storm, you would have seen a lot of trees
and tree branches down all over the campus. But we did have some damage. Now, it's not significant enough
that it's going to reach our $50,000 deductible.
but we are in the process of addressing these different issues and I just wanted to give you an update
on that. In the bus lot back here, we had a big tree branch that fell on a part of the fence and mainly
the top of a school bus and that damage will be fixed in-house. Our maintenance department will fix
the fence and also the
transportation department will fix the top of the bus, so we don't have to send anything out to be fixed
for that. It always makes me nervous when we have damage to the turf, but we had a batting cage that,
a portable batting cage that blew from the baseball complex over to the football complex, knocked out a fence,
put some gouges into the track and put a gouge into the turf. And then blew across the field to the
visitor's side and knocked out a fence on that side. Now, you can imagine how the batting cage looks
today. That will have to be replaced. The turf has already been, we did a temporary fix. We contacted
the company that
that installed the turf, they gave us directions on how to do a temporary fix, and then they sent down
a team who did the permanent fix. So the turf is all in good shape now. We're in the process of contacting,
working with a company to come fix the gouges in the track, and that has to be done before winter, and
so we will certainly get that done.
The wind screens that we had on the back of the visitor bleachers, those were torn and will have to
be replaced. So we're in the process of getting a new design and getting a quote from the company to
fix the wind screens. The pole vault pit is also going to
have to be replaced. Quite honestly, that's the most expensive piece that we're probably gonna have
to fix. We are gonna look and see if we can repair it first. But if we have to replace it, it's over
$20,000. So that's pretty, we're gonna try to repair it. The batting cage I mentioned to you, the fences
at the football complex,
We're getting some numbers on those. And then the cross-country course had some damage also with fallen
trees and also an area that was washed out and they had to put some more gravel down. One of the teachers
who takes her students out into the course there for some
classes, there's a little path that had some trees knocked down. She asked if we could repair that,
and that's being done. If you look at the campus now, you'll see a lot of the tree branches that were
pretty much done with picking up those branches, cutting down the damaged trees.
We're looking pretty good. We're catching up on it. There's one big tree that fell over by the tennis
court that's being cut up now. So we're gaining on it. And we reported all this to our liability insurance
company. But if you have any questions, just let me know.
Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my report. Okay, all right. All right, moving on to our action items
for this evening. The first is consideration to approve the contract with Susie's place for body safety
training. Brittany Straw will be back up for it. I won't take as much as your time this time.
All right, the state of Indiana requires that we provide age-appropriate research-based instruction
on abuse prevention, mental health, wellness, and bullying prevention. We are requesting $5,250 to implement
the Child and Teen Safety Program through the Morgan Burr Foundation. That is in partnership with Suzy's Place.
The reason that we really like this curriculum is because that they have now added a new chapter,
so to speak, to their curriculum that includes pre-K. So we truly will be able to be aligned in our
programming from our smallest students all the way up to our graduating seniors.
I probably don't have to tell this to you, but that is important because whenever we have the common
language that we are using with our students, especially whenever they're growing up using the same
language, it removes that area of misinterpretation, confusion whenever students are talking about some
of the needs that they have. So we wanted to bring that to you to see if this is something that you
would like to consider or if you had questions for.
Motion? I move approval to put a contract with Suzy's police on body safety training. I second it.
Second it. Any questions? Now this does cover them to work with our students pre-k through 12th grade?
Yes it does. This also, this quote also includes for us to be able to have a
practitioner or trainer of the body safety lessons, one person in each of our buildings for
the sustainability of this program so we can start doing the training in-house each year because this
contract will go until May of 2027 and then we'll be looking at a renewal, but instead of doing some
offsite training, we're able to provide that training in-house.
Everybody know my daughter worked for Susie Place. There's no pecuniary interest in the contract, and
she is not part of my household, but my daughter does work there. I know that this type of training
is very highly specialized, and I would want to make sure that if we were to
do it on our own in the future that we are very well trained because the training that goes place for
those at Susie's place that does this type of training is so much far beyond anything that they could
teach us to do in a short period of time. So I would like to think in the future that using them to help with
continue with the training might be considered. Yeah, they provide a lot of resources and a lot of support.
Last year we asked them if they had interest. Actually, no, they came to us. They were doing a parent
workshop on cell phone safety and we accepted their offer to present here at RBB. So that is actually
a part of our contract with them as they will continue to do some of those outreaches in the community
as we would like them to.
So we'll be able to have resources such as that. They share parent communication, toolkits for like
parents for conversations at home. And as you know, when you're having these conversations that deal
with very sensitive topics, you know, being able to guide those discussions is really important. And
even the DOE has Susie's Place and Morgan Burr Foundation as one of the most recommended. So we wanted
to go with that, knowing that we can stand behind it.
get in disclosure my daughter does work there but I didn't she does not have a pecuniary interest in
any contracts and she does you know and again does not live in my household so okay thank you is that
sufficient okay all right any other questions okay we have a motion in a second all those in favor say
aye aye opposed
Motion carries. Next, we have consideration to approve the 2026-2028 Title III Consortium Participation
Agreement. And for that we have Jennifer Barrett. Yes, I am asking you to approve the agreement with
Wabash Valley Education Center.
This is our chosen education center for the Title III consortium. Basically what happens is with Title
III across the state of Indiana, every student who is receiving English language learner services receives
slightly over $100 from the state to provide services to that student.
For example, if we have a student who moves in, like we were just talking about today with Dr. Fishman,
who only speaks French, we receive $104 for that student from the state and from the federal government
to provide services to that student so that she, or he, can be successful in an English speaking classroom
here in Ellitsville, Indiana,
anywhere else in the United States. So because we only received $2,884 in Title III funds, we actually
don't qualify to keep all of those funds here in-house. You have to have over $10,000 in order to do
that. So we put our money, along with every other district in the state that is under that $10,000 threshold,
into a consortium. What is great about this is that it allows us to do things that we wouldn't be able
to do with the
$884 ourselves. We are able to receive professional development at a discounted rate. We are able to
put our funds together to receive discounts on products that we would use for EL learners. And so I
keep seeing that $104 because it's disappointing.
It's nowhere close to what those students deserve and what our district needs in order to educate them.
But just like every other student in the district, we're going to make sure that we have what they need.
We're going to make sure that we do the absolute best by these kiddos. We just hired a new EL teacher
in our district who is phenomenal, comes with 20 plus years of experience. And sitting down with him
this week, just my heart swelled because I know that these kids
and the teachers who are struggling to teach them are going to be in good hands. So I'm asking you to
approve this contract. I wish I was asking you to approve a lot more money, but this is the best that
we can do with what we have. I'll move approval of the Title III Consortium Participation Agreement.
I'll second. Move seconded. Any discussion? Ms. Barrett, how many students where our EL teachers serve
That's a really good question, Mr. Tucker. It's a K-12, right? Yeah, it's K-12. We are nearing 40 students.
And I say that because I can't give you an exact number. The reason I can't give you an exact number,
and to be honest, it breaks my heart, families don't want to report if another language is spoken in
the home because of fear of what might happen if,
it is found that there is another language spoken in the home and then people start to question potentially
their visa status and things like that. It is really difficult sometimes to get that information from
families and a lot of times we don't even know it until they come into the building and we realize that
the parents themselves don't speak English. So a lot of times what happens is we can give you an estimate
But we are constantly looking for these kids. The SLP at EPS this year started working with two kids
who came from MCCSC. Both of these kids had IEPs. And on both of these IEPs, it was not marked that
they spoke a different language in the home or that they were receiving any type of English language
services. Should they have been, yes. Did MCCSC do something wrong? Absolutely not.
These were two families who were afraid to report that. And so we identify that once we start working
with the kiddo and we provide those services to the kids. But the incredibly frustrating part is that
getting an accurate measure on what that student needs from the very beginning sometimes is a really
tall task. So I say roughly 40 simply because
I can't give you an exact number. And then in addition to that, we have kids at the high school that
speak very fluent English who do not need these services, but yet because they filled out this home
language survey when they were in elementary school saying that they were living with grandma who spoke
Spanish, we are required to give them those services until they test out on WIDA. And we have students
who cannot pass I-Learn
let alone WIDA, and it's a pretty high standard. So there's a lot of frustration wrapped up with this
program. But I'm proud of the services that we offer here. I know that we're doing the best that we
possibly can. And I hope that families know that bringing their children to RBB, even if you don't speak
English, your child is going to receive the best services.
that we can possibly provide to them. And we will continue to make that better and better all the time.
Thank you. You're welcome. I know this may be kind of out there, but are there any of our foreign language
students at the high school that may be willing to offer some sort of like tutoring and things like
that? Yeah.
discussion. That's a really really good idea and I think that's something that we could start to tap
into. You know last year when I came to you and our numbers were sitting around 30 students and I asked
to take two of our part-time assistant positions and turn that into one full-time position across the
district for that ML assistant or that English language learner assistant. We've gained
so many students since this year started that we've also had to add another half-time assistant back
to this program. So when we look at this and we see that we're getting $2,884 from the state for Title
III, from the federal government for Title III, we have a full-time English language learner teacher
working with not only our students but our teachers across the district. We have a full-time
ML assistant working with these students, and now we have a half-time. And the reason I bring that up,
Mr. Kerr, is our half-time assistant that we just hired speaks Spanish fluently. And that is obviously
one of the biggest languages that our non-English speaking students speak. So we're really excited about
Anna Suchuga coming onto this team, it's gonna make a big difference. She will work primarily with our
babies at the preschool and at K2, working with those language barriers that can definitely inhibit
academic growth. Thank you. Any further questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
brings us to our last action item of the evening, which is to approve consulting agreement with ESOL
Solutions LLC. This one I think you're gonna be excited about. It goes back to Mrs. Straus, her presentation
earlier and goes back to Mr. Tucker's comments about we have all of these amazing people and services
in place for our kids.
But how do we build that framework and really make the system work seamlessly here at RBB? For years,
ever since we started receiving these grants, starting with Eli Lilly, moving up to our Tim's grant,
our SMART grant, our SEEDS grant,
Jen Anderson has been writing and receiving these grants. Jen would be the first one to tell you. She
is not a licensed social worker, counselor, any of the things. She's just a really great grant writer
that brought in a lot of money to this district, and we're so fortunate. I would tell you the same thing.
When I had this on my plate last year, I
don't know the things that Brittany knows. And then Brittany coming into this role and our board recognizing
this as a need for our district says on the other side of this, I don't necessarily know how to set
this up. I don't have that leadership
experience or building these systems. And so what we're asking you to approve is an agreement with Esolve
Solutions. Esolve has been working with us from the very beginning on all of these grants. They know
RBB inside and out and what we are doing and where we're trying to get to. And they're going to be providing
coaching to Brittany as she is
really building this framework out and we're understanding how all of these pieces work, digging into
the proactive piece of this, looking at all of this data, we're asking you to approve the contract,
not to exceed $5,000, and this will be paid entirely through our smart grant fees. I move approval of
the consulting agreement with ESOL Solutions. I second. Moved and second. Any discussion? Thank you.
You're welcome.
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. That concludes our action item. So now we'll
move into our reporting. We have the business manager's report first. So Debbie Tate, back up. I'm back.
So I've presented you guys with our cash flows for education, debt service, and operations. And it has
the August updated totals. We are still on target.
with our projections. At the end of this month, I'm planning to update those projections because we
now have our insurance elections in with everybody. So I'll be able to have a really solid number on
where all that's going to be. And that'll be really nice. But a positive, when I did put the August
numbers in, they were very positive. And they're in line with our current just
basically just showing the patterns of what we've been anticipating with savings. So we're really excited.
That was a good positive thing to see that starting to take place, things we've talked about with the
staffing, us sitting down again in our groups, going through every single detail, looking at all the
numbers and just making sure we're saving everywhere we can. So it was really positive to see that once
we put that in.
this month. So, yeah. Yeah. Do you have any questions? No. The instructor has been able to sit in on
a meeting or two of those, and it's very informative. And you guys really do a deep dive. And so we
really appreciate all your hard work and the team's hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Do we see much
of an increase in HSA participation this year from our employees?
We haven't got, like, I have to put in those progressions. Okay, okay, I was just, when you said you
were plugging the numbers. Yeah, once we get through September, I'll have all of that information, and
so we'll have a better idea of where everything's at. Okay. And I think, doesn't open enrollment close
October 1st? It's already closed. It's already, yeah. So we're getting all that information. We're waiting
currently on the insurance to finalize their numbers with us, and then we'll be able to put those in.
Okay, because I know the trust bumped it up, so. And then the new plan starts November 1st.
So that's how, it's kind of a, it's not January, it's November, so it's kind of a weird timing with
everything, but yeah, we're waiting on those final numbers from her insurance right now. Thank you.
Yeah? I think we'll excitedly be crunching after she's closing out September, just so we can see. Yes.
We want to see the same progression that we're seeing in August. Yeah.
Our office has definitely been in celebration mode this week, seeing these numbers come out for August,
but we are really excited to see September and see this trend continue and see Paul smile for once.
So that would be really nice as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so moving to our assistant
superintendent's report.
Mr. Durnall, I know it's two pages, but I promise it will not take me very long to get through this.
I have a really exciting update for you. Mr. Kerr attended a meeting this week at the high school. We
met with representatives from the Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway, otherwise known as NCAP across
the state. We specifically met with reps from BioCrossroads. BioCrossroads entails
biotechnology and biomedical. So this is an industry talent association for the life sciences. You've
heard us talking about life sciences like crazy around here the last year and a half with the life sciences
training center.
A lot has happened in the last two weeks and we are actually being, and I put it in bold there, we are
being recruited. Edgewood High School is being recruited by NCAP as one of the fall 2027 launch locations
for a new pathway for biotechnology for life sciences operators. This has been created.
This pathway has been created in partnership with employers across the state of Indiana, biotechnology
partners, life sciences partners, I should say, Indiana Workforce Development, and with support from
the Indiana Department of Education. What does this mean for Edgewood? These are some big things. It
allows us to extend our partnerships, not only with Boston Scientific and Cook Medical, but also into
Cimtra and Cingoda.
Simtra and Sangota are two industry leaders right here in Monroe County who have signed on under NCAP.
So they are one of the, or they are two of the businesses that have signed on there. Boston Scientific
has also signed on. Cook Medical, we're getting close. NCAP is getting close to getting them there.
But three out of the four companies that we're looking at all fall under that umbrella.
We would be the only Monroe County school that is also being offered a partnership with Eli Lilly for
their Pathfinders program, which would allow us to receive $20,000 from Eli Lilly to credential a teacher
for this pathway and also provide equipment to our facility that we're looking at, that we're building.
The curriculum, we've had so many questions about how do we develop this curriculum?
We aren't specialists in biotechnology and healthcare and all of that. And so we've been working with
Ivy Tech. What's exciting about this is it takes this out of our local hands and it puts it at the state
level hands. And so what happens is this curriculum is developed with Ivy Tech and BioCrossroads in
mind with high school students. So we're taking Ivy Tech curriculum and we're
differentiating that down for high school students and how we know high school students learn. We will
have an opportunity for our students in this pathway to earn a minimum of 150 hours of work-based learning.
This would meet the employment honor seal and at most 650 hours of work-based learning through
an apprenticeship earning the employment honors plus seal, which is gonna be a really difficult seal
for students across Indiana to earn and receive.
In addition to that, the students who complete this pathway would earn Ivy Tech's biopharmaceutical
manufacturing certificate and be able to stack those 18 hours onto an Associate of Applied Science through
Ivy Tech. And I think one of the most exciting pieces of this, even going beyond all those things I
just said, is that it allows us to continue our partnership with Boston Scientific and Cook Medical
because what we will be doing here
after the first step of life sciences operator is we're gonna be kind of the guinea pigs across the
state of Indiana and they're gonna create a pathway just for us here in Monroe County where we can take
biotechnology and we can break that down into two different areas and we can look at what Cimtra and
Singota do on the chemical side of that
And we can look at what Cook Medical and Boston Scientific do on the other side of that with medical
devices. We can combine that into one pathway that our students can complete. And as they're working
through those classes, split off into one of those two areas after they get that foundation. What's
awesome is that the state is saying, we want to do this work for you.
We wanna do this work with you and it allows us to deepen our roots in this project even more. So I'm
excited about it. I would love to answer your questions. Mr. Kerr was in the meeting. Obviously I can't
have a ton of you in that meeting, more than two at a time.
If you're attending the RDC meeting tomorrow afternoon, I'm gonna go through that there as well, and
we'll give more details about what that looks like, but happy to talk about that. Mr. Boltinghouse was
in that meeting as well. We have a lot of pieces happening right now very quickly at the high school,
and it's super exciting. Any questions you guys have about that? Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna add that
This is a great opportunity for our students. And while there can be some additional benefits to some
of our students who may actually get picked by some of these companies to be a part of the program,
even if students aren't picked to be part of that company's aspect of it, they can still be part of
the program and still
earn the same status and it's just exciting, you know, that this is the thing that we have been hoping
for out of our biomedical, technical facilities that we're putting in place to prepare our students to go
who want to to go into the workforce, into skilled positions. It's really exciting. It is. It is. I
think Heather Baron Cottle from ROI said it best when she said the state is catching up to Edgewood
because we started this work a year and a half ago and we were really on an island out there by ourselves.
And now within CAP and the work that the research they've been doing over the last 10 years with the
Swiss model and apprenticeships, that research is catching up now to the work that we've been trying
to do on our own. And it feels really good to have a little bit of a weight off our shoulders in terms
of now we have a model that's being implemented across the state and the state is coming to us and saying,
can we partner with you? Well, and it's this group of
companies too in the region that representative from that group of companies coming to Edgewood pitching
for us to be a part of their program. Not, you know, we're asking them to, hey, can you partner with
us? Can you do this? They are so interested in Edgewood that they're coming to Edgewood pitching a sales
pitch to us to be a part of their program. I mean, that's awesome.
That's awesome for Edgewood. And these first four apprenticeship positions, which we are hopeful are
with Simtra and Singota. They're working on those logistics right now. So Simtra and Simgota, if you're
watching, know that we are beyond excited, and I know they know that. These first four apprenticeships
would not even be offered to other students outside of Edgewood High School.
our students are gonna receive the very first four apprenticeships with biotechnology here in this area.
So I think it says so much about Edgewood High School and what they've been building, what Edgewood
Junior High and Edgewood Intermediate and Edgewood Primary do all the way back and the intentionality
that we've put behind these pieces. I get emotional because we're seeing the benefits for our kids.
Also this week, maybe last week, they're all running together right now. We received the final approval
on our Ready 2.0 $500,000 grant. It has made it all the way through IEDC, which was the last level of
approval. If we were working on that project today, we could start drawing on that money tomorrow.
So that $500,000 investment is being made into this work right here. And these kids, not only
in biotechnology, but in healthcare, which I'm gonna show you some numbers here because it's really
exciting. We are going to be benefiting kids with this facility, hundreds of kids in this community
for years to come. Long after we are done in education,
there is gonna be a benefit to this and it's just wildly exciting what's happening. Okay, so talking
about the Pathways student enrollment, Mr. Kerr asked for some updated numbers and I wanted to get these
to you. The first little part that you're gonna see there, this is our Biomedical Pathway, Principles
of Biomed, Anatomy, Physiology, Medical Interventions. Those numbers just continue to climb.
I want to make sure and note that as we have kids coming into anatomy and physiology, not all of these
kids are necessarily taking all three of the Pathways courses. Katie Brickman and Caitlin Flood do a
phenomenal job teaching that PLTW course, and we have kids signing up for this course simply because
they love the teachers, but also if they are in the Principles of Exercise Science Pathway, this is
a good class for them to take in addition to
a separate pathway there. So you'll see 69 kids in anatomy, physiology. We have three sections of that
this year. You'll see that we have 17 kids in medical interventions. You may wonder, why didn't 54 of
those kids move on? It's because we have a lot of seniors in anatomy and physiology. So they graduate,
they don't have the ability to take that third course. So we're seeing tremendous growth in that pathway.
That will be one of the pathways that moves into the new facility.
You'll also see the engineering pathway in there. I'm so excited. We added the third course this year
as the students asked for. Intro to engineering continues to climb. This year we have 51 kids in intro
to engineering. We have 18 kids who stuck with us for principals of engineering this year. And Mr. Beaver
is teaching a new PLTW course called civil engineering and architecture. And we have six kids in that
course this year.
So that's pretty incredible. Our marketing, we know a lot about what we've been doing with marketing.
Our kids are out there all the time. We have 30 kids maintaining that marketing fundamentals course
and eight kids in digital marketing there.
Principles of computing, it's funny how kids just don't hear principles of computing and think this
is a really great course to take. But 21 of them signed up for it this year. And in our CompTIA plus
IT fundamentals course, we have five kids in there. We just added one this past week. And if you build
it, they will come has been our mantra for a while now.
The kids said, principals of exercise science, we want this pathway. We opened it up. 38 kids signed
up for this pathway and are taking the first course. So Megan Kincaid, who is our athletic trainer through
IU, is learning how to teach in the classroom. And we are supporting her just like we would any other
first year teacher.
She realized she was going to have to teach two sections instead of one. I think she had a little bit
of a panic attack, but she's doing a really phenomenal job, and we're excited about this. Last but not
least, IDOE announcement. I put the exact announcement in there.
The iLearn scores have been released in the centralized reporting system. They are in the Indiana Family
Portal. So our teachers can log in and see student scores. Our admin can log in and see student scores.
Our families can log in and see their student scores. What I can't do is I can't release those scores
publicly until Friday. They're still embargoed publicly until Friday. So what I did is I gave you a
copy of those scores.
and ask that you don't share those publicly. That will all be released on Friday. And just to note,
we are seeing math gains across this district left and right. It's really exciting to see. And the area
that we knew is an area for growth with us is ELA. And where we are pouring a ton of our resources into
still shows up as an area of growth.
But we're seeing signs of so many good pieces there. Going back to second grade, I read scores last
year. We're seeing signs of this, and we know this is just one measurement, but it's still a pretty
big measurement that we have to take into consideration. So, you know, when Mr. Rentschler talks about
looking at those individual students, this is why. This is why right here.
And then, like I said, tomorrow night we're hosting the RDC meeting here at 430. I'm hoping that we
can have a couple of board members there. Mr. Tucker will be coming, and we'll be talking more about
the NCAP partnership, and we're going to give a presentation on past, present, and future. This is a
big meeting for us because
RDC is going to be determining whether or not they continue our funding for another three years, Mr.
Tucker, three years. And this funding is really crucial to the work that we do here. This funding will
pay for the teacher who will be teaching potentially this new pathway.
It pays for a Ready Schools coordinator who is working across our entire district. It pays for design
lab assistants who are working in all of our buildings. Can we do it without this? We can, but we would
have to take that back into the education fund and all of that work that we're doing, we would then
have to figure out how do we reduce, again, what we're doing in the education fund to continue to provide
for our students.
It's a big meeting tomorrow night. A lot on the line. And that is it for me. Thank you, I got it done
fairly quickly, Mr. Durnall. We don't have a clock up there anymore that is counting it down for us.
Thank you very much, thank you very much. Okay, now we will move into the superintendent's report, Dr.
Sanders. All right, start off with some good news.
The Chamber of Commerce from Bloomington and from Ellisville, both have announced their Educator of
the Year award winners. And so for the Bloomington area Chamber of Commerce, Heather Kensick, our EECC
director, Lisa Beeman, Edgewood Junior High School teacher, and Brian Rosenberg, Edgewood High School
teacher, all received the Educator of the Year award. And Dirk Ackerman, our retired high school principal,
received the Lifetime Achievement Award, and those awards will be given out tomorrow night at six o'clock.
Ellisville Area Chamber of Commerce, their awards banquet will be October 22nd, and Amy Norris, Edgewood
High School Teacher, received the Educator of the Year from the Ellisville Area Chamber of Commerce.
I'd just like to say I was really proud of our school corporation.
for the community involvement we had with the Fall Festival. Obviously our Edgewood Show choirs opened
up the festivities on Thursday night. We had our RBB booth that had a lot of visitors come by and we
shared a lot of good information with our local parents and community members.
and we are well represented in the parade on Saturday. I'd also like to recognize some people making
a positive difference and that's all those people who participated in and volunteered for the dollars
for scholars race. As you know, they raise a lot of money that in the spring will be given away to our
students and all the scholarships.
And then we did receive again our school safety grant award, although it's a little bit less,
about $13,000 less. We are going to be having some conversations with the Elksville Police Department.
But it's just because there's so many schools
who are seeking those funds and those funds are limited. So we're really appreciative of that grant.
It helps us pay for our school resource officers. I think I've reported in the back,
Previously to all of you that my ask shares celebrate meetings that I was planning on holding.
I did that. I spent an hour at each of our schools and it was really a good experience. I had probably
20 or so teachers across the corporation come by to actually sit down and talk, but I was able to connect with
probably four times that many walking through the buildings and those folks seeing me. And so, you know,
that's what I really enjoy about the job is not only going to our extracurricular activities, but sitting
down and talking with our teachers and got a lot of good ideas from them. And so we'll try this again
later this semester. Real quick construction update.
So the project where we added boilers at the high school and the junior high school, that project was
supposed to be done before the start of school. We're obviously well into September, but the good news
is that the part that they've been waiting on, the fuse for the boilers did arrive
at the junior high yesterday. They're being installed at the junior high and we should be able to get
those boilers fired up Friday or next Monday. High school is just right behind and hopefully we'll get
those fired up next Wednesday. And I really appreciate all the patience of our teachers and principals,
students as we kind of struggled through
trying to get this HVAC work going. And I want everybody to know that this is a long-term plan to improve
our HVAC system. It's just gonna take a number of years to really get to where we want to get to, but
there is some relief in sight with these two current projects. The roof at the junior high and elementary
schools is like 98, 99% finished. That should be wrapping up soon.
The field turf project, they've put the concrete border around and then they've started working, I think
it was yesterday, on the sidewalk that would go from the junior high parallel to where the baseball
field is to Edgewood Drive. So they started forming that yesterday. The floor at the basketball field,
for the basketball court that was damaged from the roof project. That demolition is starting, they might
have started today. And so I think that'll take about a week to tear out the old floor. And we're expecting
that floor to be finished by the end of October. Last thing is our Edgewood showcase.
And I'd like to invite everybody to the showcase. If you remember, this is an opportunity where we invite
the whole community, not just Edgewood students, but we invite students who might be attending other
schools and their families to come in and see all the great things that we're doing at Edgewood. We'll
have food trucks and bounce houses up
behind and beside the junior high. We'll have a health fair and PTOs inside the junior high. At the
high school football field, we'll have our band and dance teams. Cheerleaders will be performing in
the field house. We'll have also show choirs and our theater group and auditorium. Our coffee shop will
be open. We'll have volleyball.
and soccer athletic events that night and it'd be free admission. And I was looking at the weather today,
I'm locking it in because it says it's gonna be partly cloudy and in the upper 70s. So we're gonna lock
that in and we'll be ready to have a really nice evening on September 24th. Okay, well thank you very
much. Next we have RB
EA comments and we're glad to see Brandy April back. Good evening. Today marks the first day of official
bargaining season and so earlier today we had our public hearing and Monday is our first formal meeting.
I'm happy to report that our team, our pretty much brand new team from last year, they're all returning
and this summer we spent a number of hours sitting together
really reading through the contract thoroughly, discussing the language so that we could go back to
Kristi Billings, our director, to get better understanding of language and discuss possible changes
we want to make in the contract. So we'll be bringing that to the table next week.
as always, my goal is to always continue improving communication and transparency and so I asked building
reps to hold two meetings, one being before today, I held mine this morning, just to
Again, inform members about the bargaining process, the timeline, what we can and cannot bargain. And
also we did, I forgot to mention, we did send out a survey at the beginning of the school year just
to have members give actually the entire bargaining unit a chance to voice their priorities of what
they were hoping to see achieved on this next contract. And then we could have our building reps report
that back to our members today.
I've also asked building members to hold a meeting between the 22nd and the 28th. Those are our two
formal dates that we have scheduled just to let members know the progress of that first meeting so that
they can see what was discussed, what will we have discussed next Tuesday and have those conversations
so that when we return on the 28th, we can share back with the entire team how members are feeling.
So that is the plan.
Yeah, good to be back. Okay. All righty. As we wrap up, we'll go to board member comments. We'll start
with Mr. Durrell. Well, thank you, sir. I really appreciated the presentation tonight, and yours, Mr.
Shaw, but the Wednesday morning
was really good, I really enjoyed that. That makes me feel really good about what you're doing there,
so I appreciate that so much. Appreciate all the principals being here, and congratulations to Edgewood
for the win Friday night with Owen Valley. That's it, thank you. Mr. Demos. I echo what Mr. General
said about the rivalry week last week, and looking forward to homecoming this week.
I got to spend last Wednesday morning at EPS. I thank Dr. Fishman for having me. I got to observe the
PLCs and also got to welcome children getting out of their cars out front of the building. That was
an experience for a high school teacher, I gotta tell ya. But most of them tried to avoid eye contact.
Who's that weird guy there? But anyway, she says they'll recognize me next time. Thanks for the donations.
Ms. Barrett, the ELL, as frustrating as it is, we have come so far in the last 25 years. I know at one
point we had a student that could not speak any English, was Chinese, and we didn't know what to do
with him, and couldn't find anything that we could do with him. So we have made tiny steps, but we have
made steps. But thanks for the donations. Thanks to Mr. Rentschler for his,
presentation and I am very much looking forward to the showcase. Okay, Mr. Tucker. Jimmy and Larry had
just mentioned there and thanks again for the report about NCAP, Ms. Barrett. Hopefully that will help
relieve my concerns about that messy closet of what that biomedical center looks like and maybe like
Ms. Strahl said, get it organized. Cause I really do worry. It's kind of like we're piecing it together.
So hopefully this will help clarify that.
That makes me feel better as long as it's not an unfunded mandate by the state I want to thank you.
Whoever came up with the solution the SROs or the tow truck Friday night a block it off the road to
the baseball diamond I saw the one over by the junior. I mr. Bolting house Well, that's a good use of
an SRO truck
or a car, then whoever put the tow truck there, that was a good warning, you won't get towed. That has
always scared me, that little red road, it was chaos. So I missed the first half, I enjoyed the second
half, other than mosquito bites, and the fence looking in, because I forgot my pass. So that was a good
night, crowd was awesome. I could not say, Mr. Wells kept me on outside of the fence, so I was in jail,
he said. But that was a great crowd, it was great to see that win.
And hopefully we will continue to stay on top of that contractor on that gym floor, because that's a
burr on my side, that they need to take responsibility for their actions at the junior high.
So thank you. Looking forward to next week. Thank you. Of course, I would like to start with thanking
you all for coming. I think I'll do a recap of every wonderful thing tonight.
No. There was so much tonight. This is great. It's a great school corporation. We're doing a lot of
great things. I know that 20 years ago when I was walking around knocking on some doors that one of
the well-known people in the community said, you know, what are your schools doing for, you're preparing
kids for college, but what else are you,
you know, what are you doing for the rest of the kids? Oh, gosh, I wish he could see us now. It's amazing.
So I'm really appreciative of all the hard work of all of you, all of our teachers, all of our staff.
We're just doing some great things. I couldn't be more excited about where we're at right now. And just,
again, thank you all for coming. And I hope you have a wonderful,
full rest of your evening. This meeting is adjourned.