Let me call to order the September 16th meeting of the Monroe County Redevelopment Commission. Jeff,
would you call the roll, please? Mr. Martin. Present. Mr. Kiesling. Here. Commissioner Jones. Here.
Commissioner McCarty. Here. Commissioner Tucker. Here. Five members are present for our voting, and
therefore a quorum has been established.
First, I want to thank RBB School Corporation for this lovely facility we're meeting in today, and also
thanking Katz for moving things here so they could broadcast. He's been crawling all over the table.
Well, I'm glad we're able to be here today. And we have, on a regular basis, we get a presentation from
RBB School Corporation, where we are a contributor to
various programs here through the commitment of TIF tax dollars, and have been for many years. And they
have a very productive program going, and I will turn it over to you for the presentation. Yes, and
you're more than a contributor. You're actually the heart of what you've been doing. And it amazes me,
and I've mentioned this to you before, but it amazes me
how far we've come over the years because of the contribution that you guys provide to us. And it's
so nice to have you come over to our campus. We try to provide our students with the absolute best programs,
best facilities, best teachers, and I think
If you look over some of our past presentations, you will know that we are very student-centered and
working. Everything we do is work to prepare our students for life, for life after high school. And
so Jennifer's going to lead the, she's going to drive the car tonight. Jennifer Baird, our assistant
superintendent, but I'll chime in whenever
I feel the need to. Hello. Thank you for coming this evening. We are really excited to have you guys
right here on our campus. You're going to get a pretty no frills presentation today and there's a reason
for that. We know that here within the near future that you are going to be considering whether or not to
proceed forward with the TIF money that is currently being given to Richland Bean Blossom schools. And
we're hoping that you walk away here tonight without a question in your mind about whether or not that
has been a good investment and whether or not it will continue to be a good investment, not only for
our students, but I think that you will see
If you don't, I haven't done my job well, but I think you will see that the work that we're doing is
extending far beyond just our campus at this point. So I'm gonna dig in. By all means, please stop me
at any point, ask questions. This is really meant to encourage dialogue, and I'm hoping that it brings
up some things along the way.
Are we broadcasting this? I think it's going to be broadcast from cats. I don't think it's live streamed,
but it'll be OK. Do we have a zoom connection? We do not. We do not. OK. All right. Thanks. I can share
it. Yeah. One of our school board members and Kent Rensselaer, our principal at Edgewood Junior High
School. And Mariah Bruce. Mariah is usually with us. She's usually with us. She's part of the team.
OK. Sorry.
That's OK. Would it be helpful if I sent the presentation, since we're not live streaming, to be able
to share later? If you could send it to me, I would. I'll be happy to. Yeah. OK. Let's dig in. So you
know who we are.
You've been familiar with us for several years now. We come to you, we talk about all the things that
we're doing. I think at this point, you also know what we stand for. When we say caring, daring, and
preparing, we mean every single bit of that. Down to the depths of our soul, we live these three words
day in and day out. The partnership between the RDC and Edgewood began with a pitch all the way back in 2019.
That was the first time that we came to you and we said, you know, we would like for you to consider
a proposal. And I remember this night well because we said, do you know what STEM is? And at that point
in time, STEM was just kind of starting to get out there. And it was one of those buzzwords, science,
technology, engineering, and math. And we made a pitch to you.
And we said, we want to invest in our kids. We want them to have more access to STEM. And we would love
for you to help us in this process. On February 26, 2020, an initial investment was made of just a little
over $127,000. So in that time, how has this investment directly benefited our students here in the
Richland and Bean Blossom townships?
So in year one, we employed four STEAM coaches or teachers across our district. We paid stipends to
our teachers to begin training and project-based learning. We made our initial investment in project
lead-the-way modules and a lot of teacher training that went along with that. We paid for WeVideo access
for our students. You may, you're not, I shouldn't say you may.
You know about our adventures here with Edge Media and what our students do with media production. This
was where it started. Each of our kids had an account on WeVideo, and they started just playing with
it. They started making little videos about what they were learning. They started making videos about
things they were creating. And you were a part of that. You were the part of that. We began our robotics clubs.
It's been that many years since we started robotics here at Edgewood, and it started with this initial
investment. By year two, we had absorbed one of those positions into the education fund. So we went
down to three STEAM coaches across our district. We were continuing to pay stipends and pay for training
for our teachers to expand their learning and project-based learning. This became a requirement for
our district.
This wasn't a choice. We said if you're going to work here at Edgewood schools, then you're going to
understand that the way kids learn is not necessarily in that traditional textbook manner. They need
to be hands on and they need to be engaged. And so it became the way that our classrooms ran.
From there, we continued our commitment with Project Lead the Way. Project Lead the Way has everything
to do with science, technology, engineering. They are hands-on, engaging modules that we use with our
kids. We invested heavily in that second year in biomedical sciences, computer science, and the PLTW
Launch and Gateway curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade.
We've expanded at that point. We video is a success beyond anything we could possibly imagine. This
was kind of before TikTok and Instagram. Little did we know that we video was going to explode in the
way it did.
or that the entire world was going to explode in the way it did with social media and all of the things.
So WeVideo is kind of our kids' first venture into that. We expanded it across our district. And we
also expanded our robotics clubs to the junior high. Year three, we went ahead. We kept those three
STEAM coaches. We also created a STEAM coordinators position. Because what was happening in year three
is that the growth was taking off.
across the district. And we really needed to create a better framework around that. We needed to have
goals that were going to guide us. And we realized that what was happening was that this was really
embedding in the culture of who we were and how we were teaching our kids. And we really needed to have
a person that was guiding that initiative. We sustained our project lead the way. We sustained robotics
clubs. And then we started
Purchasing equipment and supplies for our elementary maker space and our junior high design lab by that
point in time those spaces had been completed and we needed to get different things tools into our kids
hands and Man, I wish we were actually holding our meeting in one of those areas for you to be able
to see just what those look like for kids it is certainly not a traditional lab space that you would
think about in terms of
maybe an old fax lab or wood shop or something like that. In year four, we absorbed the STEAM coordinator's
role back into the education fund. Again, we kept those three teachers there, had them spread across
the district. Not only were they directly hands-on with kids, but they were also coaching our general
education teachers in the classroom.
We paid our first district-wide team to learn about Marzano's high reliability schools framework. This
year was pivotal in the work that we continue to do with high reliability schools. It's how we look
at all of the systems that we have across our district. We find holes and we tweak them. We make them
better. We create new systems to replace old systems if needed.
We sustain the six robotics team at teams at EIS, and we quickly found out that when you have successful
teams in fourth grade and fifth grade, those kids don't want to stop when they go to sixth, seventh
and eighth grade. So we ended up with eight robotics teams that year, which was absolutely ginormous
for us. I should say that we are now up to
12 teams, I believe, at the junior high. And we also have invested in robotics curriculum during the
day so that students who are already in extracurriculars are getting that built in as an elective during
the day with Mrs. Grimes. By year five, we had changed our approach a little bit. We had two ready schools
coordinators. At this point, we're now employing one
engineering teacher at the high school. We had expanded those classes to a point that a full-time teacher
there was needed, and we hired a junior high design lab assistant for our junior high to lead the work
that we were doing in that area. We continued to expand our training with HRS and continued to bring
additional tools, equipment, supplies into not just our junior high design lab, but at this point we
had our innovative learning center at the high school now open.
Year six and seven, they look pretty much the same, but you're going to see a lot of these things have
been pared down over the years. The initial investment really went into people. It went into supplies.
It went into curriculum. It went into training people how to use all of these things. What we've done
since then, and these are the pieces I'm so excited about, this is what your investment has done and
how it has indirectly benefited
benefited our students. These are the additional some, I don't think I even have them all on here, additional
grants that we have received because of the work that we're doing here at Edgewood, because of the work
that we started with your seed money
These are additional grants that we've applied for and been able to receive. We received a
digital fabrication grant for a little over $50,000, a STEM integration grant from the state. ROI and
a career coaching initiative, a little over $100,000 there. Smithville student media grant, $15,000.
I just put in another one, so.
STEM Robotics Competition Grants. We realized that the initial investment that all of you made into this
This state started to recognize we need to pour money into this. So we are nearing $100,000 in STEM
robotics grants that we're receiving to continue to sustain the initial work that we've done there.
The kids are not going away, in fact. They beat down the doors for those teams. An opportunity to learn
project grant, we just submitted this for $75,000.
If we receive the planning grant, it will open us up for a $1.75 million competitive grant opportunity
through Eli Lilly. All of that will be used to think about how we educate kids, how we prepare kids
for education before they ever step in the doors at Edgewood schools. We all know that once they get
on the school bus or they step in the doors, that's the first step.
But the work that we do leading up to that, whether it's support that we wrap around support for families,
it's transportation that we're able to provide to kids so they can participate in these after-school
opportunities. So many other pieces than just the eight o'clock to three o'clock timeframe there. 63,000
in a three-e grant from the state, and another 130,000 from ROI for our Ready Schools initiative. So
let me jump in. Yeah.
point too quickly so when you're writing grants and the more meaningful information the more meaningful
data you could put into the grant application the better your chances are of receiving that grant so
the money that you provide us actually enables us puts us in a position to secure additional dollars
So I want you to know that because that's very important. We appreciate that. For sure. It allows us
to brag in those grant applications a little bit too. Additional positions that we've added through
our education fund to support this work. We've added a full time project lead the way specialist for
EPS, full time project lead the way specialist for EIS. They both work in our elementary maker spaces.
So our kids are in there every single day.
full-time design lead at EHS Innovative Learning Center.
Our coffee corral is blowing up. They are begging for additional space. We have a full-time coffee corral
lead that we pay out of our education fund. We also pay all of our students still out of the education
fund. That is about ready to change because they have about $40,000 in their account and they're continuing
to let the district pay their employees.
We're still waiting on a new business plan, a new business model to be thrown our way to take some of
that. We put that, sent that back to the students who are running this business and said, OK, you've
been so successful. Now you have to come up with a way how you can be self-sustaining.
So it's funny though, they're dragging their feet on that Dr. Sanders. I don't quite understand why
just yet. Nobody likes to pay the bills. No, they definitely don't. And what we have found is that kids
are tighter with money than adults are.
We have hired a computer science teacher at the high school biomedical science teacher What started
is just three classes in biomedical science and we have a full-time teacher all day long I'm going to
show you some numbers on that here in a minute Marketing and business teacher in addition to that the
career readiness coach that we have in high school These are all positions that are supported outside
of the RDC grant
These are partnerships that we've obtained, we've nurtured, and this is just a very, very small number
of these. I've already mentioned several of these through grants that we've received. Many of these
industries or business leaders we meet with on a regular basis through our business leaders advisory
team. Obviously, one of the biggest partnerships that we have, and when people ask us, how did you start
this work?
We say it's Monroe County RDC that helped us start this work. We would not have had the funds to really
get us up off the ground, put the people in the positions to start the training. From there, the impact
that it's had on our programming. Project Lead the Way is built in K through 12 across our entire district.
Every single student, K through eight, is engaged in Project Lead the Way modules.
All of our teachers are trained in Project Lead the Way so that they can implement these modules so
that they are engaging, so that our students are getting those skills in science, technology, engineering,
and math in so many different invigorating, exciting ways. We are PBL-focused in our Rotational Course
Offerings at the Junior High. These are ones that Mr. Rentschler could speak about probably all day
long. From our EDGE Media program there, which is just
phenomenal what's happening. If you come to the Ellitsville Chamber Awards here in the next few weeks,
you'll see their work there. They create the video for that, for the ceremony. Design and entrepreneurship,
journalism, robotics, computer science. We just had journalism come to us this week, and they said,
we need a new solution for the platform we're using. They're using Google Sites.
They said, we have so many kids collaborating on the Colts Chronicles newspaper at one time that we
keep crashing our website. It's a good problem to have when you have that many kids focusing on one
project. The Business Leaders Advisory Panel, like we spoke about. The Success School Partnership with
Bloomington Chamber. We still implement the Reality Store, STEM Fair, Tours of Opportunity. And our
work-based learning program at the high school has grown to over 100 students this year.
first time we hit the triple digits where we are sending over a hundred of our students out into the
community working in either job shadowing, internships, apprenticeships. They are really getting to
see what the real world is like. They're getting
Those practice in soft skills or readiness skills, as we call them, are graduate profile skills. And
Mariah is now leading that program at the high school. We know that this program will probably grow
to about 300 students here in the next couple of years. So we are growing this not only with our kids,
but that means that our partnerships have to grow as well.
We have had an implementation of K-12 instructional framework. What that basically is, that is education
lingo at its finest. What we have done is we have adopted a framework to say to our teachers, this is
what we expect. This is how we expect you to instruct our kids. This is how they need to be engaged
when they're in your classroom.
Our teachers are students. We now work with our teachers day in and day out. We coach them in the same
way that they are teaching our students to become better. We are teaching them to become better instructors
as well. So we've created a whole model with mentor teachers, with instructional coaches, so that we
aren't just focusing on the outside pieces.
You have to get down to the nitty gritty and what's happening day in and day out with those teachers
that have the most impact with our kids, whether it's a first grade teacher, it's a sixth grade reading
teacher, it's a calculus teacher. Every single one of them is engaged in that work.
Because it's so important to us, that's also how we evaluate our teachers. We have a new teacher evaluation
program in place. Both of these things go back to the initial training that we used RDC money to help
us with, with Marzano and high reliability schools. As I said, our coffee corral, $50,000 this year,
which is incredible. We've had feature articles in different magazines. Last night, we no more than
closed up our
Board meeting and we didn't realize we had a couple of people in here from WFIB radio station And they
were ready for an interview at eight o'clock last night after we'd finished a two-hour board meeting
because they really wanted to talk to us about What's been happening here our thoughts on work-based
learning our thoughts on school vouchers all of these different things and they came here because This
is the work that we do
Day in and day out, we're engaged in this.
All of our schools have attained level one with HRS, high reliability schools. That is our safe, supportive,
and collaborative culture, our environment that we create for our kids. We are all now working in level
two. Mr. Rentschler and Mrs. Clark at the high school are in a steady fight to see which school is going
to certify first in level two. What they do not know is that the intermediate school was in here all
day yesterday finishing all of their work.
I think it might have possibly been submitted, so they're kind of flying under the radar. Competition
is a big thing in our district. These are some numbers I want you to see. For the past three years,
we have been growing this biomedical, even prior to the last three years, we have been growing this
biomedical pathway. You can now see that we have 55 kids in the first class.
Anatomy and physiology has grown to three sections this year, 69 kids. What I love about that is these
are kids that are in other pathways that look at that anatomy physiology class and say, that's gonna
benefit me down the road. These are kids who are maybe in our exercise science pathway. These are kids
who are looking at going into something healthcare related, but haven't necessarily decided on what
that's gonna be,
but they know it's a dual credit course and they're gonna get it off of their path now before they head
to college. Engineering is just absolutely blowing up. The Intro to Engineering class has grown to 51
students this school year. We're maintaining those kids from the 32 kids that we had last year in Intro
to Engineering who thought engineering might be for them.
18 of them said, yeah, we're going to keep going on this and see what we think about the second course.
So now they're in the Project Lead the Way Principles of Engineering course. The third course we just
opened up this year, and it's civil engineering and architecture. And we had six kids enroll in that
course because that is something that they're interested in doing post high school.
Marketing is continuing to grow. Computer science, we've shifted gears a little bit with that because
what our kids are telling us is that they want more opportunities with IT fundamentals. They want more
opportunity in network security and in cybersecurity. So we've shifted gears a little bit with that
so that we can meet the students' requests and what they want to do after high school. We're also listening
to our employers who are saying those areas are blowing up for us as well.
We did something new this year. I should say we did something new last spring. We've kind of just developed
this mantra here at Edgewood, and it's grown because we don't tell our kids no very often. If they ask
for something and they can justify the need, our answer is we'll figure out a way.
And we had kids that were coming to us in high school and saying, I really want to go into physical
therapy. I want to go into occupational therapy. I want to be a physical, an athletic trainer. And this
grew because of a junior high teacher at the junior high, or sorry, junior high teacher who started
a program for weightlifting. And he didn't just teach kids how to lift weights.
He talked about how it was growing their muscles. He talked about how to nurture their muscles,
how to, the nutrition that they needed. It became a passion for kids that became a lifeline for them.
And so we opened it. We didn't know who was going to teach it. We didn't know how we were going to fund
it. But we had 38 kids sign up for it. So we made room in our education fund. And here we are with two
sections of it.
A couple of hot off the press announcements. Our Ready 2.0 grant, that's a $500,000 grant through ROI
and through the state has been finalized with IEDC. That is gonna go straight into our new Edgewood
Life Sciences Training Center. We're getting ready to break ground on the new band and choir edition,
and when those move out,
That will become our new life sciences training facility for biotechnology and biomedical.
We just, Dr. Sanders and I have been crazy busy over the last couple of weeks with meetings. We are
actually now being recruited by the Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway. This is NCAP through the
state. We are working specifically with BioCrossroads, which is one of the industry talent associations
through NCAP. And they have asked us to be one of the fall 2027 launch locations for the new Life Sciences
Operator Pathway.
This will directly benefit two employers right here in our area, Simtra and Singota. Both of those companies,
Simtra has already signed on with BioCrossroads, Singota is getting ready to sign on with BioCrossroads.
Hopefully here within the next couple of weeks, Boston Scientific is already on board with BioCrossroads
as well. What this does is it strengthens our partnerships right here in this region.
We in this partnership have been offered a $20,000 grant from Eli Lilly Pathfinders to become the first
Monroe County Eli Lilly Pathfinder School. They have never come down into this area. They haven't reached
outside of that Indianapolis Marion County before, and we're gonna be the very first school here in
Monroe County for them to invest in and continue this pathway.
The curriculum is going to be developed by Ivy Tech and BioCrossroads. This is going to be an opportunity
for our kids at the bare minimum to receive 150 hours of work-based learning to meet the Employment
Honors Seal, which is part of the new diploma. What's exciting is some of our students will be receiving
650 hours of work-based learning through an apprenticeship in order to earn the Employment Honors Plus Seal.
Our kids will also have the opportunity to earn the biopharmaceutical manufacturing certificate from
Ivy Tech. They can then stack those 18 hours on top of their applied science associate's degree at Ivy
Tech if they wanted to continue that learning. It comes back altogether because basically what happened
is we said we're not comfortable leaving Boston Scientific and
and cook medical behind in this project. We've been working with them. You all are aware of the project
that we've had going on. And they said, will you come on board? And in a year, will you allow us to
create a local pathway just for you in your biomedical training facility that takes what they have done
with the operator pathway
and adding on the medical devices classes, robotics, and innovation into that pathway so that the kids
right here at our Life Sciences Training Center can benefit not only the biotechnology side in terms
of medical devices, but also biotechnology related to the chemical side and all of that with Cimtro,
Singota, Novo, all of those. We are thrilled. And I say all of these things because
It started right here. It started right here. There is no way that we would be in the position that
we are in today if it wasn't for the initial investment that you made with RBV schools. I'm sure you
were as worried about it as anybody thinking, what in the world are they going to do with this?
And I hope that we've shown you that not only have we invested it wisely, but we have grown it exponentially,
not only benefiting our kids, but benefiting our community, benefiting our wider region. And I just
hope that you will see these benefits and understand that this partnership, if it continues, will just
continue to grow leaps and bounds.
Brad Tucker said today, he goes, what would happen, Jen, if this money doesn't continue? I said, well,
this work can't stop. But other things would have to change. We would have to pull these things over
into our education fund. You're probably well aware what SEA 1 has already done to education funds across
the state. And there would be other things that we would have to cut. That's just the plain and simple of it.
but these are things that we are invested in we know the benefits of and We're committed to no matter
what and we hope you guys join us in that commitment Thank you, we're really proud of it and I
I think I got you down to maybe about 20 minutes, so. That's probably the best I could do. Do you have
any questions? I do have a couple of questions. Good. You've been doing it as I try and look out at
the landscape that keeps coming at me all the time. There is a growing emphasis
in our economy on trade skills. Part of it you address in the work that you do, but there are the whole
other kinds of trades that you're not addressing. Do you have any plans to try and integrate some of
those other trades into your educational curriculum? Are you thinking along the lines of welding,
electrician? Yeah, plumbing, carpentry, traditional construction type stuff. 100%? We continue to partner
It's over at Bloomington North High School. And that, we're not in competition with Hoosier Hills. We're
enhancing that work and trying to address the needs of all students. So that's where a lot of those
trades will be, that education, that training will happen in Hoosier Hills. However,
we continue to expand our internship program. And I don't know if you want to speak to that a little
bit, Jennifer, because that's so important for our students who are going out and working in the different
trades as an internship program and really getting hands-on experience. And that helps them to decide,
yeah, this is something I
definitely want to do, or this is something I don't want to do, and they can figure that out in high
school. So I don't know what else you want to add. In addition to that, we have maxed out our seats
at Hoosier Hills. Hoosier Hills gives each high school now a number of seats for each of their programs.
We have maxed those out, and we have a, do what? Oh, sorry. We have maxed out those seats, and we have
a wait list for some of our students.
What that means then is we have to create things internally or with partner schools in order to continue
this work. A great example of that is Robert Boltinghouse is our new principal at the high school. Robert
was the previous principal over at Owen Valley. He started work over there on a cosmetology program
because Hoosier Hills dropped the cosmetology program certification.
that doesn't mean that kids don't want to go into cosmetology. And so now we're working to create that
program ourselves between Owen Valley and Edgewood so that we can keep that up and running for our students.
We will pay that person out of our education funds so that our kids can attend there, receive their
certifications, and then hopefully just go straight into employment. We've also looked into
microelectronics. We have a big facility down at Westgate that was started through ROI. We have a lot
of students down in the crane Westgate area that are a part of that program. The problem is we're 45
minutes away.
our kids can't give up a period to drive down there and a period to drive back. So we are starting to
open those conversations with ROI, with Owen Valley, with Eastern Green about how we can take the program
that is successful there at Westgate and rebuild that here. I don't know that our campus can take much
more construction at this point, but Owen Valley is open to some conversations around that. We've talked
with Superintendent Klein over there. So those conversations are
happening, because what you're describing is exactly what we're feeling. Not only do we need kids to
have work-based learning, but on top of that, we need that work-based learning and the education to
be in fields that are desirable, fields that are high paying. And I love our new diploma in the state
of Indiana for that reason, because it's no longer everybody's looking to go to college. And it is changing
the ballgame for our high school students.
mindset of reaching out to companies or different careers. So for example, we had a booth down at the
fall festival this past weekend and I had a gentleman came up and he's known as the bearded baker. And
he recently started a bakery, I think it was. At any rate,
instantly started recruiting him and say, hey, if we have some students who would be interested in that
career, can we send you some internships? And we exchanged information. And so it's just a kind of a
mindset. OK, then I'll drop the big bomb. How has, I don't know how to quite phrase this, but the buzzword
is AR these days. And your students are probably using it.
I'm sure they are using it. What impact, I guess, what kind of guidance are you providing them about
how to effectively use that kind of a technology, which they have ready access to, which has such tremendous
potential, but some really negative downside under certain circumstances? That's a great question. I'm
going to actually show you the guide that we've created.
This was adopted by our. This was adopted by our school board May 16th of last school year. We spent
all last school year working with a team of teachers, administrators, students, outside professionals.
AI is really hard in school. It's really hard because we want the kids to do their thinking themselves.
And when we started this work, we had every
perspective imaginable. We had English teachers who said, we're going back to paper pencil. We are not
even going to give them access to computers because that would create work that isn't theirs. We had
science teachers saying, let's give them access because, man, what could they do with AI and advance
that creativity? We had elementary teachers who said, I don't even know what this is. Do not touch it.
I'm just trying to teach kids how to read over here.
We created an Edgewood AI guide. And this is the piece that I want you to see. We will start professional
development with our teachers in this semester. So we have not rolled this out yet to students.
Last spring, we worked with eighth grade students. We gave them access to Google Gemini.
One of our coaches did work with all of our eighth grade teachers in terms of how would you implement
AI in the classroom. And they were our guinea pigs. Did everything go well? Nope, it sure didn't. But
did we learn a lot? We sure did. And we completed surveys with those students, with those teachers,
with those families after it was done to find out what we would do differently before we created this
guide and we got board approval on it.
What I want you to see and how this is going to be rolled out here is we're going to have a student
guide in terms of how we use AI and five levels in terms of what that would look like. This will be
posted in every single classroom. So when a teacher says this is level zero with AI, that means I want
all of your own work with this. We're not going to use any Google Gemini. They're not going to have
access to ChatGPT, all of those things. I want to see what your human brain can do.
Level one gets into a brainstorming. You can use AI to help with ideas, structures, research suggestions.
It's probably the same way that we use AI every single day. Polishing something. So in other words,
when they have created a piece of an essay or something like that, putting that into AI and letting
AI do the work then of cleaning it up. It's their ideas. It's their work. Let AI finish it for them.
And then also using AI then to analyze and evaluate work. So in other words, once they have it back,
we're going to take it back through our critical lens, through our human brain, and say, what can I
add to this what's missing? And then there are going to be some things where we're going to have level
four full AI projects that are going to be going on. It's one of those things that, no matter how you
look at it, we have to teach it thoughtfully. We have to. Kids cannot not be exposed to it.
graduate from high school and go out into the world because what will happen is they will either use
it inappropriately and wind up in trouble or They just simply won't know how to use it period
And so it has to be a thoughtful approach. We have the guide for it. Now we start the professional
development of it. Once teachers start to feel comfortable, we'll also start putting that communication
out to our families, starting to train our students little by little. And it's probably going to take
a couple years for full implementation, to be honest. OK, good. You weren't kidding. That is a bomb
that you dropped. It feels like a bomb.
Well, I mean, I use the anthropics quite a bit now and find it very, very useful. But you really have
to pay attention to how you prompt and how you keep going back at it so that because it gives you the
surface. And if you believe the surface, you're not getting anything out of it.
You really have to learn how to dig deep. The information is there. Getting at it can be very difficult.
Do you find yourself fighting with AI? I actually find myself sometimes in arguments. Oh, all the time.
And I think to myself, how did I get into an argument with my computer? But yet, here I am. We are arguing
back and forth. And it's scary.
It's really scary because now we have to teach kids how to do this. This notion of argumentation and
how you formulate arguments is really important for kids to learn if they're going to start using that
technology. Exactly. Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. We're going to need to use that statement.
Do you guys have any other questions for us? All right. Well, good. Thank you.
Great presentation. If you're going to send it to Jeff, Jeff can get it to us. You have the recording
that will be available on cats, I assume. Yes. Okay. Good. And this is good. I had a conversation with
someone a couple of weeks ago that were decrying to stealing money from the
county government and from other agencies, and the reason we steal money is because we have good things
to do with it. And this is one of the really good things that we've done with it. Well, Commissioner
Martin, you can send them my way anytime. I will take them through the same 20-minute presentation and
show them just what it has done for these townships over here. And I think it's interesting, because
I was here when we started this, and I would have guessed it was before 2019. But either way.
Yeah, but what really triggered it was. The the TIF district we did the calculation and it was taking
about 10% of the TIF revenue would have gone to the schools for their transportation fund and maybe
some for their capital fund. And so I think what we were trying to do and I think it's been successful
is kind of. Give you the statutory limit.
but take away some of the strings that would have been there if it had gone through the normal process.
And I think that's really been a huge benefit. Because you always get the argument, if the TIF wasn't
there, then all this money would have went to the school anyway. And then the response is, yeah, but
it would have been in, they would have nicer school buses, but they would not necessarily have all these
things that they do now.
given us the flexibility you can see as the years have gone on, we've changed our priorities with it
as we've built this, you know, from the ground up. And we didn't have to run it through, you know, red
tape and everything else to get those things done. It allowed us to move with a freedom that you don't
really have very often in schools when it comes to finances. One caveat, and I'll give you my doomsday.
Tis don't stay forever.
target date is like 2039 and that TIF will have paid off all its bonds and will likely close at that
point and you're gonna close right and so you will have to prepare for that date well in advance of
that date to figure out how you're gonna make up
Well, it's always, everybody says it's too far in the future, but let me tell you, it gets here faster
than you expect. 2039, 2040. Yep. I think it ends, but then the following year, because we get payment
of taxes in arrears, so the year it technically ends, I think they still get another year of revenue.
But I mean, that's what the kindergartners today. By any means.
You you know bless us with this again We will continue to to pour into it and we will have a plan in
place by 2039 2040 in terms of How do we sustain the work? I think we're already sustaining a lot of
the work But how do we make sure that we have that a hundred percent over into our funds? One of the
things that happens is you're doing so well with money that For which you are not as accountable as
you would be if other through other funding
opportunities, people are going to see that she got money. So we don't need to give you any more money.
And that's the hard part. I was a little afraid about that. Yeah, that is the hard part. But if you're
well aware of it and you plan for it, then you'll have to figure out how to deal with it. And we very
much are. And that's why I brought up the point about the
other funding opportunities that this opens up, that enables us to one day be able to operate and sustain,
understanding that the RDC doesn't last forever. And so, and one other thing is, you know, we always
wanted everybody in their professional and personal lives, we try to invest our funds wisely. And I
really can't imagine
A better way that for you guys to have invested this money that it's it's gone tenfold What you've invested
and so I think the community ought to be very appreciative of what you've done in your wisdom We probably
should do something similar in one of our board meetings so that
public does understand the TIF money and that it is coming back into our townships. Yeah, I think an
educated, like it's just a, not a 20 minute presentation, but a presentation so that they understand
that their taxes are coming back in that way. Yeah. Well, and I think the Lilly partnership will be a gateway
for many, many things. So that's kind of buried the lead there on that presentation. But at least in
my point of view, because you're exactly right, to have that central Indiana center of gravity for economic
activity in the state reach out down here to this school corporation, that means a lot. To know that
Edgewood High School, Edgewood Schools was being discussed
at Eli Lilly sitting around the table and saying, this is a high school that has done this work. We
want to invest in that. It's incredible. And it gives me chills to even think about it. And I haven't
let myself think yet about what doors it potentially could open for us because it does kind of make
me a little bit nervous and also a little emotional because this is what you hope for. This is what
you wish for for your kids. But you're exactly right.
things are happening at a rate that we would have never anticipated three years ago, five years ago,
for sure. But it's really exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. Just keep moving. That means you've
got work to do now. Yeah. Keep moving. Keep moving. We will. I promise. Doing great. OK. All the board
members here will
Tolerate us for carrying on some of their business now. We have a couple other things we need to do
one of which is our claims So for the month of September we have two claims one is from RBB
School Corporation in the amount of a hundred and sixty three thousand three hundred and five dollars
and thirty five cents and
And the other is from Financial Solutions Group for $3,975 for a total of $167,280.35. I move that we
approve the claims as presented. Okay, we have a motion for approval. Second. And we have a second from
Colin. Jeff, would you relieve the roll? Commissioner Martin. Yes.
Commissioner Kiesling. Yes. Commissioner Jones. Yes. Commissioner McCarty. Yes. Motion is approved.
Four to zero. This is just the second installment, so it comprises the 270 annually, so I just want
to make sure the public knows that. Right, I just want the public to understand it. And it's a great
commitment. This is the first one, and then the second one will happen probably in January, February
will be about
$107,000, and then there will be two more payments under the current contract, so that's the time period
we have to get a new contract in place. Thank you. Okay. Our next item of business are the minutes,
and we have minutes for... Colin, do you need your signature on that?
We have minutes for the meeting of July 15th, 2026, and for August 19th, 2026. Are there any additions
or corrections to these meetings? I would like to make an addition to the 19th meeting. I could not
get here because I get to our meeting because I had no transportation, but I watched you all on television.
Katz was very good. I could see you all.
but I did not have access to Zoom either, so. But I want to make a record that I was actually, I would
have been there otherwise, because I always looked like I wasn't even available. So I move that we approve
the August 19th meeting minutes. With the addition of you having viewed the broadcast. With the addition, yeah.
additions or corrections for the minutes of July 15th. I will note that we need to correct the spelling
of Keisling on items four and five. That's right. Was Mr. Cassidy not there? Because I noticed his name
isn't down there. He would not have been there. Pardon? I do not believe he was at the July meeting,
but he was. He was not available or absent or something because he was he is a member of this board and so.
Any other additions or corrections? Do I have a motion for approval of both minutes sets? I move. Okay,
we have a motion to approve the minutes of July 15th and August 19th. Is there a second? Second. Second,
we have a motion to approve and a second. Jeff, please call the roll. Commissioner Martin? Yes. Commissioner
Keesley? Yes. Commissioner Jones? Yes. Commissioner McCarty? Yes. Motion is approved, 4-0. Okay.
All right, next item of agenda, our staff comments. Anything? I would just comment that I've been working
recently with Ivy Tech. As you know, we can transfer the building, although they own the ground for
the Indiana Life Science Center. So we're just trying to make sure the Ivy Tech's attorneys appreciate
how I handled that. But that should be on your agenda in the next couple of months.
She did not mention anything, and I know she's on vacation this week, so that could have been. Alright,
Commissioner comments. Colin, do you have anything? Just reiterate. Thank you everybody for the presentation
tonight and as as an alumnus of this school going back to the day where he's I started at Steinsville
for kindergarten and went all the way to graduate from Edgewood. I'm very proud of this and
And we have a kid in the system. And I think he's taking advantage of that. I think that there are some
great opportunities there. Glad to see the engineering piece so strong. You seem to be hitting on all
cylinders right now. And I don't think there's ever been a time. And Larry, you go back, right?
We go back a ways. And where we had construction almost on an annual basis, it seems like, which that's
a great problem to have. And to see all the homes go up as quickly as they are, too. And I had a meeting
down in Green County today. Crane is just going to take off in growth. There is an admiral coming to
the base with 400 in tow.
400 people in tow. So you add that with what Prometheus is doing and the growth on the base currently,
7,500 employees, 33% of which, they come from Monroe County and a lot of them from this area.
So keep going. Just keep going. So yeah, great stuff. Brad?
growing out this side of the county. It's exciting and kudos to what the school corporation is doing.
Mr. Jones, it just makes me curious how rapidly is the enrollment growing here? We've had two demographic
studies done which shows a slow but steady growth, which is really ideal if you have too much growth
and you have problems or you're going to put the students so.
and they factor in birth rates and all kinds of data. But yes, and you can see going back to 2018, we
do have a positive trend. Okay, looks like you're set up to serve them well. So yeah, appreciate the
presentation. Thank you. Well, I would like to make sure that the minutes show all the people that were here to
see this going, what we saw, because I don't think we all know each other very well. I know some of
them, but I would like to have everybody else's name on the minutes also, and who made the presentation,
please. Thank you. Either way. I just sent you the presentation, so I'll follow up and email for that.
Okay. Okay. I do have... You got a couple things.
If you'll recall at the last meeting, I talked, gave some information out about thinking about future
TIF areas in Monroe County. And I passed out some stuff. Since then, I have talked with the county surveyor,
with the county planning director, and the assessor about suitability of
TIF areas, where we might find the data that we would need to do the studies, and identified the two
areas that I had talked about previously, and got good feedback from all three of them. I think the
next thing that we need to do is to kinda scope out exactly some areas that we can study. And I don't
wanna have to select those areas, so I'm looking for some help
sitting with a map and saying we draw the line here and down there and over there and up there. I guess
I think one of the critical thing is where is sewer available or potentially expanded to? I've got most
of that information. I still have to have a conversation obviously with the city of Bloomington and that's
kind of next on my list. But the the second area the one that was South in the South area. We probably
know what the situation is there and we can deal with it. The area in Van Buren Township is a little
more problematic. We have an estimate of what about what a new facility would cost. And it probably
is outside the bounds of what we could
reasonably do I have put together a kind of a short list of topics to consider one of them was a kind
of a minimum tiff revenue that we could expect and I kind of set the low threshold at about $100,000
a year which would give us enough money to get involved in some kind of bonding activity. But since
we're talking about residential tips and residential areas.
they don't grow in value very fast. So that presents, you need a big enough area that you do get some
growth. So there are some difficulties ahead to make this thing work, but if we don't take a shot at
it, it isn't gonna happen. And we get good feedback, yeah. That's the question I was gonna ask while
you're primarily looking at areas for residential
But that's the discussion we've had in the past. This is okay. This would be residential triff and certainly
the target is to leverage tiff dollars to provide infrastructure which allow us to develop the property
at lower cost so that the resulting housing is more affordable. Right. That's kind of the basic outline.
Well, it'll be good to see what the city does with their rest tip that they're preparing.
right for summit and putting up more buildings in had somebody complain about it this morning and I
want some of these conversations there are more going up be prepared being taken down that don't need
to be taken down the city is in an interesting dilemma
The most affordable housing is the existing housing. But they tear down the existing housing to put
up more density. Which is more expensive. Which is more expensive. You get one thing and you lose another.
So this is a very difficult problem. And it's not unique to us. Everybody has it. Well, how would you
want to proceed?
a mating baby with as many of us as we can do. Well, I think I'm going to try and get, and the planning
department said that they would prepare any mapping that we need. So we can get a big map and draw some
sketchy ideas about where we might want to target. Then the assessor can do valuations on those properties
once we know what the line is. She can give us information on current value and
prior value so we know what the growth has been. We can get some kind of estimate about how much difference
we have between the single and up to four residential units versus multifamily that's already there,
commercial that's there, et cetera. So we've got some idea of the distribution, which is part of what
we need in terms of information. And we can go from there.
This is not going to happen fast. Can't we meet unofficially? But you have to notice it, but it isn't
a special meeting. If you wanted a quorum, we'd have to have a official meeting. We'd have to notice
it if we're if I guess. If two people wanted to form a common and sit in the office and look at it,
we just have to be careful because we can't go to and then another two and then another two, right?
It would be those two until the next.
Official meeting and then we can have we could talk about it at that official meeting. We just we just
got to make sure we're not So I would say if if there's somebody that wanted to join that why don't
we Go ahead and volunteer and then we could schedule Richard and that person could schedule meeting
and we could sit down and we could kind of work through some of these issues and
I just don't want it. I don't want that second person to change, right? Because I don't want to have
a zero meeting. Who wants to who wants to sit in a room with a map with me? I'm sure Randy would. Randy
is going to be covered up, I think, for the next few weeks.
He has a grandchild, and I think he's committed to helping them with that for the next few weeks. Good
for him. It's going to take me a while to get everything done. And as I said, I still need to talk with
the city. So that's kind of my next one. And part of the city discussion also is with my hat as a member
of the South Central Reno sewer board, where we have
We have an agreement with the city for the areas along 45 for sewering, and only part of those have
been sewered. So there is still part of that agreement that we have to figure out what its real status
is at this point. And that's the next thing I'm going to do. But that would be roughly 40 or 50 lots
that would become available if they wanted to connect and who knows.
But I can't imagine it's going to be that difficult to do. But it is one avenue of say, well, if they
don't want to do it, can we transfer those to this property over here in an affordable housing kind
of project kind of thing. So and the city's I see no end to the debate about city annexation. So trying
to work around all of that, too. Those are my comments for today. Thank you.
Appreciate you doing the work on it, because I haven't had time to do that. Just say if anybody else
wants to be the second person, just email me and we'll get it set up. Yeah, I think you'd be good if
you would do that. I'm just going to corner you. You have to forgive me. I was going to nominate you.
I could use one more thing to do.
Yeah. Okay. And with that, I think we're done. Do I have a motion to adjourn? I move that we adjourn
this meeting. Thank you everyone.